Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  Sally sighed and nodded, her face somber.

  “Bundle up well, dear,” her mother offered nervously. “It’s cold outside.”

  There was a long awkward silence before Sally appeared once more in a fur-lined cloak with a hood and boots. Knowing that something had gone desperately wrong, Gideon held open the front door for her and followed her out without another word to her parents. There had been a light early snowfall the night before that had now iced over, and as Sally slipped a little in her clumsy boots, Gideon took her arm and turned her to face him.

  “What is it, Sally? Why aren’t you glad to see me? What’s happened? Is it your family?”

  She flushed unattractively, her round red face with its frame of yellow curls and furred hood suddenly reminiscent of her mother’s. She wouldn’t look at him. “I —” she began, then cleared her throat. “I have something to tell you, Gideon, and I don’t know how to do it.”

  He lifted her chin with his left hand. “Look at me, Sally. It can’t be all that bad, can it?”

  “Oh, Gideon,” she wailed suddenly. “I c — can’t marry you now! I’m engaged to Chester Culp — we’re to be married next month.”

  “You must be joking,” he said slowly. “You can’t possibly do that.” His voice rose. “You’re promised to me!”

  “Oh, but Gideon, that was before, well, before your hand and all. My father was glad to have me marry a man who would make captain and have his own ship one day soon. That’s all changed now.”

  “I’m not marrying your father, Sally,” he said grimly. “What do you have to say?”

  “Gideon, Gideon, what can I say? You’re crippled now and without prospects …”

  The word “crippled” hit him like a blow, but he held on to his temper. Her parents had put that word on her tongue, he knew. “But I do have prospects now. I’ve taken over the shipyard, you know, and we have a firm order for a nine-hundred-ton packet. That’s a lot of prospects. In the end I’ll do better even than I would have as captain, see if I don’t.”

  Her eyes fell to his right arm. “I — I couldn’t marry anyone with … well, with such a deformity, I just couldn’t. Can’t you understand that? What if it was me had an arm cut off? You’d feel different then, wouldn’t you, Gideon?” She was almost pleading now.

  He had gone white in the face. He pushed up his coat sleeve and undid the straps of the ivory hand. “Look at this!” he demanded, holding the red puckered stump up before her face. “Do you know what kept me going after they did this? Do you? Do you know what drove me at the yard until I was ready to drop in my tracks? You! The thought of you went with me around the goddam Horn and halfway across the world. It was you who were my hope and my salvation. Well, take old Culp then — God knows he’s all you deserve!”

  He left her standing there shivering in the snow, and it came to her belatedly that perhaps she had let slip away her chance for glory and struggle and the fullness of what life could be, had she only had the courage to come to terms with that dreadful mutilation. At that point the thought of the hideously scarred stump touching her wiped all regret from her mind, and she turned thankfully back toward the house with a shudder of revulsion and disgust.

  Emily

  1830-1834

  Chapter I

  It was the worst winter in years. The ships foolish enough to stay on the river were frozen in and then battered to pieces with the breakup of the ice in the spring. The thought of the shipwrights and carpenters and riggers having to handle their icy tools in weather well below freezing was enough to make a body shiver. But God sent that winter as a warning to sinners, which we all are, and we should have welcomed the discomfort in the knowledge that He cared enough to give us a sign.

  The spring that arrived belatedly at the beginning of May was as warm and lovely as the winter had been harsh, and even my father in a moment of expansiveness gave his ready permission to the Church Society to sponsor a picnic, though he ordinarily held that such activities were frivolous and a waste of time that might be better spent contemplating the evils of worldliness and the glory of God. Would that he had not softened in that brief time to allow an event that changed my life forever.

  At the time, of course, I was delighted. At twenty-four I was on my way to being a confirmed spinster, which was fine with me. The thought of the kind of physical intimacy with men hinted at by my female acquaintances was sickening to contemplate, and what I really looked forward to was serving and nursing my father in his old age, no doubt still some time away as he was only in his late fifties that year. My joy in the contemplation of the picnic was in reality at the simple opportunity to savor the beauties of the countryside. I couldn’t very well walk out by myself, and my few friends, such as Sally had been before she became Mrs. Chester Culp and put on such grand airs, were all married now.

  “Please, Mother, can’t you hurry Father up a bit? They’ll all be waiting, and I do so hate being stared at.”

  “If you’re going to get into such a state of nerves,” my mother said disapprovingly, “I’m beginning to wonder if we should allow you to go. It isn’t seemly to lose control of yourself so, my dear. Hurry your father indeed!”

  It was true that the idea of hurrying Elias Holder took on the ridiculous proportions of hurrying the stars or the tides of the sea. I sighed and forced myself to stop fidgeting as I counted the precious golden minutes of freedom lost forever in the gloom of that great drafty house. Most ministers’ houses are small modest affairs that at least have the virtue of being easily heated, but my father had been offered this chill barn simply because Matthew Jackson couldn’t find anyone foolish enough to buy it.

  At last, after what seemed like a thousand years, my father and mother were both ready and our old bay gelding Hamilcar was hitched to the buggy. I glanced nervously at the two boxes done up in colored ribbon that held our lunches. My mother’s ribbon was blue and mine yellow, I remember. The male picnickers were going to follow an old custom and bid on the lunches, the proceeds going to the church building fund. Of course the lady went along with the lunch as a dining companion.

  I wished heartily that the custom would be dropped, for I was notorious for having my box bid last and cheapest. Boys were afraid of me, not because of my sharp tongue or disapproval on my side, or even because of my father, though that was reason enough. The truth was that not only could I not make conversation, but I became completely tongue-tied, and my box partner and I would invariably end by staring at each other in dumb agony, choking down the food we couldn’t taste just to be freed of one another. Once I even had the humiliation of having my father have to bid.

  Never before or since have I seen such a glorious day as that one. It was as if the good Lord was trying to make up for the cruel winter through which we had just passed by bringing forth a world achingly green and bathed in a light so golden that I knew how the Garden of Eden must have looked back in the world’s innocence. Even old Hamilcar seemed to respond, for he trotted eagerly instead of laying back his ears as usual and breaking into a sullen shuffle.

  The picnic ground was a wide bare area beneath a grove of great fir trees, the benches and tables made from split spruce logs with the bark still on. A short distance away was a grassy field that had been scythed the day before for the children’s games, and beyond it were woods and a busy stream that eventually cut below the picnic grove close enough to hear its gurgling had it not been for the excited conversation of the picnickers. I can close my eyes even now and smell the fir resin mixed with the tang of potato salad and pickles and chicken still warm from the oven.

  While the picnic boxes were being arranged, the tables covered with bright cloths, and large pitchers of lemonade put out, the children ran in shrieking packs across the scythed meadow, and the younger men wrestled and guffawed self-consciously among themselves. I looked up casually from helping to set the tables as a strong shaft of sunlight struck down through the trees and bathed in flaming splendor the head and shoulders
of a red-haired man with a beard, turning him for a moment from a mere mortal into one of the archangels who needed only a fiery sword and wings to complete the image.

  I’m afraid I stared beyond all bounds of modesty, the pitcher of lemonade in my hand forgotten. He was laughing and had his arm affectionately around an older woman. Then all at once I knew who he was — Gideon Hand come back from the sea. I hadn’t recognized him with the beard, especially since I hadn’t seen him for several years. He had been little more than a boy then, though even so already with a hard mouth that only seemed to soften when he looked at Sally. Without thinking, I looked around for Mrs. Chester Culp, for I knew she was there, and found her staring at Gideon even as I had been. For no reason, I felt a twinge of sinful satisfaction at the naked longing on her face. Mr. Chester Culp certainly wouldn’t like surprising on her face that kind of look for another man. Her voice came to me across those years:

  “Oh, Emily, I love him so! He’s so handsome, don’t you think, and so — well, so masterful. He’ll make captain in a few years, he’s promised me so, and I’ll have a grand house with an iron deer on the lawn like the Trelawney house, and a widow’s walk to watch for him coming home from the sea with a ship full of tea and silk and ivory. We’ll have a carriage drawn by matched white horses, dishes of delicate china from the Orient, and I’ll have a whole bed carved of ivory and necklaces and earrings of sapphires and rubies and emeralds. See?” And she showed me for the hundredth time the ivory combs for her hair he had brought her back from the East.

  Even then I felt a certain measure of skepticism, for her glowing descriptions seemed to involve the things he would buy for her more than they did the young man himself. There was never a word about kindness or generosity or virtue or love of God; she seemed impressed only by his being handsome and overbearing, either or both of which I found unattractive in a man. The few times I ever daydreamed at all of one day marrying, the man was a younger, far gentler version of my father, and we held hands and prayed together and read to each other from the Bible. I could weep now for how innocent — face it, how ignorant — I was in those days.

  I made a determined effort and pulled myself away from the unchristian thoughts I had been entertaining about Sally and Gideon. After all, they had both been punished for their sins, whatever they were. I had heard that Gideon had lost a hand and given up the sea, and I now knew that Sally had married a man she didn’t love. Heaven knew that to my mind Chester Culp was not very lovable, being one of those overhearty, red-complected men who clap other men on the back all the time and die young of apoplexy. However, he did have a lot of money, which I suppose was recompense enough for our Sally.

  The time inevitably came for bidding on the picnic boxes, and I realized that I too would be punished, in my case for my uncharitable thoughts, and I determined to endure with as cheerful a mien as possible. My box was once more offered last except for the extras made up in case there were extra men. The few young men left had obviously determined that since they had been outbid for the girls they really wanted, they would wait to be provided with an extra for a nominal fee, and eat comfortably with each other. There was an uneasy silence as my box was put up, not even the piece of Mother’s famous marble cake being enough to make any of them subject themselves to the well-known ordeal that eating with me had become. I wished fervently that I could simply sink into the ground and disappear.

  “Come, come, gentlemen,” Mr. Prentice said impatiently as he held up the box with the yellow ribbon, “bid on this so the rest of us can begin eating, will you?”

  There was another silence, and just as I saw my father take a breath and open his mouth to bid, a voice called out, “Ten dollars!”

  A gasp of mingled surprise and relief went up. My head snapped around to find out who my generous rescuer could be, and I couldn’t have been more startled if it had been the Archangel Michael himself, for it was Gideon Hand who had made that preposterously high bid when everyone knew that I was far more likely to go for fifty cents or a dollar at most. The few times he had seen me with Sally, he had barely been able to conceal his impatience to get her alone, and I sometimes suspected that her friendship for me was based in large part on my being such a biddable chaperon. The thought crossed my mind that before long I should probably wish that my father had purchased my box after all, as humiliating as that eventuality would have been.

  Everyone began milling around busily, seeking a place to sit and spread out their food, while I stood rooted to the spot with flaming cheeks and downcast brimming eyes. Gideon lifted my chin with his left hand, the lunch box clamped under his right arm. “Come on, lass,” he said gently, smiling encouragement. “Let’s go off where we won’t be stared at.”

  Without so much as a by-your-leave, he took me by the hand and we went off toward the stream at the bottom of the grove. I was all too painfully aware that if it had been anyone else but me he was carrying off like that, there would have been a scandal, but as it was everyone, even my father, seemed to give a sigh of relief not to have to witness the painful episode of my again being humiliatingly incapable of speaking to a young man.

  His hand warm on mine, he pulled me gently down on the grass beside the gurgling little brook and handed me the box. “Here, you open it. It’s hard for me to do when I’ve got on my company hand.”

  In the wonder at the strange turn of events, I had forgotten all about his hand, and I now glanced involuntarily at the gloved still shape at the end of his right arm, realizing suddenly how most people’s hands move constantly as they talk.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked conversationally as I was opening the box.

  I looked up at him to find an odd expectant expression on his face that belied his casual tone of voice, and his mouth was hard as it used to be when he would return briefly from the sea. I forgot entirely about being tongue-tied. “Of course it doesn’t,” I said without hesitation. “Why should it?”

  His tone turned bitter. “It does most people. It bothered Sally.”

  “It did?” I replied stupidly, trying to get all of this straight in my mind. “I thought it was because you weren’t going to be a sea captain and rich after all.”

  He then unexpectedly threw back his head and laughed, all at once seeming much younger. “By God, I’m sorry now I didn’t bid twenty dollars, I am indeed,” he said.

  “Please,” I said primly, “I wish you wouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain. There’s no call to do that.”

  He stopped laughing, but there was still a twinkle in his eye. “Good girl — you know how to speak up for yourself after all. I stand corrected.” He lifted the lid of the box. “Come on, let’s eat, I’m starving.”

  Thus began a long golden afternoon every detail of which I can bring to mind, for it sustained me through many times of anxious doubt later on. He talked easily of life on board ship, the foreign lands and strange heathen customs he had seen, his hopes for the shipyard, his pride in the packet they had just completed. He treated me not as a girl he might court, but as a valued friend, and before I realized it, I was positively chattering away myself about opinions and interests and expectations I hadn’t even known I had.

  When my father came looking for us, luckily my mother was with him, for he found us dabbling our bare feet in the brook, the remains of our lunch still scattered on the grass, and deep in conversation over the meaning of the word “charity.”

  “Emily!” my father roared. “What are you thinking of, wretched girl, exposing your feet and ankles like that? Satan has entered you —”

  “Elias Holder, you should feel ashamed of yourself!” my mother snapped. I gawked at her, for never before had I heard her offer so much as a hint of a difference of opinion from that of my father.

  His beard fairly trembled. “How was that again, Rachel?” he demanded, his voice shaking.

  “The first time your daughter has ever been able to say two words together to a young man, and you have to come ranting around
about bare feet! Do you want her to end up a withered old maid like your sister Maud? For heaven’s sake pull yourself together, Elias!” My mother was undaunted.

  “It’s the devil’s work, that’s what it is,” my father rumbled, but he didn’t sound quite as sure of himself.

  I had scrambled to my feet, panicked, but Gideon rose with no haste and stood easily now looking at my father with an interested, good-natured expression. The combination of my mother’s unexpected attack and Gideon’s obvious lack of guilt or embarrassment was too much for my father, and his splutterings came to an uncertain halt. We were left to look at one another in an increasingly uncomfortable silence, all except Gideon, who was smiling broadly now.

  “I didn’t mean it to be a picnic and me without my shoes on, Reverend Holder, but I’d like to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

  I could only gape at him openmouthed. Before this afternoon I had laid eyes on him perhaps three times, and at none of those times were he and I overly impressed with each other. I thought he was arrogant and irreverent, both of which qualities Sally seemed to find irresistible. I wanted to cry out “No!” but I found it so difficult to comprehend the sudden turn of events that I felt as if it were all unreal, a foolish dream from which I would waken with, I must confess, a feeling of relief.

  My mother burst into tears and threw her arms around me for one of the few times I could ever remember, for my father did not hold with unseemly displays of physical affection. On his part, as soon as he had recovered from his astonishment, he began to roar again. Never had he looked so much like one of the Old Testament patriarchs.

  “You have a nerve, young man! Just what expectations do you have, with only one hand and a failed shipyard? Worse, you are ungodly, as I well know, working on the sabbath and attending church only when it suits you. And you dare to ask for my daughter’s hand! A pox on you, I say!”