by Sally Cabot
Indeed, it took Allgood under half a minute to appear at the door. As had Franklin, he stepped through it and drew it closed, but he possessed none of Franklin’s charm under duress.
“You! What the devil do you think, coming here? What of Robert?”
“Nothing of Robert, sir. ’Tis I who need your help. I didn’t like to say so at the door. I must leave Philadelphia. Now.”
“And what in bloody hell do you expect me to do about it?”
“I thought, as you and Robert are such good friends to me, sir, you’d do what you could to assist me, and quickly, before your wife is disturbed. I took a chance on finding you home, but as you are home, this means your ship is still here; when does it sail next and where?”
“It goes nowhere for a fortnight. I can be of no help to you. Now get on.”
“But have you no friends amongst the other captains? You must know of someone sailing to New York or Boston soon. Or shall I call again another time? Then, of course, I should run the risk of missing you and finding only your wife at home.”
Allgood opened his mouth, but his brain must have caught up to it there. He closed it. “Wait in the stable.” He stepped back and closed the door.
Anne headed in the direction Allgood had pointed, toward a low building pale against the thickening dark at the end of a fine sweep of lawn. She stopped outside the heavy double doors and listened, but heard no sound; she lifted the bolt and slipped into the steamy smell of wealth: horse upon horse neatly stalled on fresh hay, leather newly oiled, bins full of grain. The horses smelled Anne in their turn and began to stir, first one and then the next all down the long row. To keep from thinking, Anne tried counting them in the dark, but hadn’t gotten beyond six when she heard Allgood working the door.
He stepped up to Anne and slapped a letter into her hand. “The Falmouth. ’Tis tied up at the Market Wharf. Give that letter to Captain Simms and he’ll take you to Boston. Be gone.”
Allgood left. Anne stood. There was little reason for it, this sense of a fresh-cut wound, for the whole transaction had gone exactly to plan, but in all her dealings with men Anne had seldom left a disgruntled one behind, never one anxious for his acquaintance with her to end. She was quite sure she could fly after Allgood, offering him a last three-shilling ride wherever they happened to fall on his fine lawn, even put on his breeches if it were required, but it wasn’t her risk to take alone. She now had William to consider, perhaps awake and crying for her in the strange house. She now had her son.
ANNE COULD HEAR WILLIAM from outside the door. She thrust it open and ran up the stairs. Mary sat on the boys’ bed, the candle on the floor casting wild, flailing shadows across the slanted ceiling: Mary’s hands reaching for William, William batting them aside. “Mama!” he cried.
Anne hurried up to him and cupped his hot, damp face in her hands. “Hush, now. Here I am.”
William looked up at her, pulled free, loosed a fresh gush of tears. “I want Mama!”
Oh, how Anne’s womb twisted at that cry! But, “Very well,” she said. “We were to go aboard a ship first, but if you’d rather go home now—”
“A ship!”
“Come, William. Get into your clothes as fast as you can or it will be gone.”
What would Anne have done if William had refused? She would never know. The lure of a ship was enough for even this not-bold child.
BELOW STAIRS MARY STOOD between them and the door, candle in hand. “Anne.”
“Don’t.”
“I will. Do you not see? Where can you possibly—”
Anne held up the letter. “We’ve a ship waiting on us. We must go.” She put the same confidence into her voice that she summoned whenever she faced a new man, but it didn’t have the same effect on Mary. She took the letter from Anne’s hand and broke the seal. Anne snatched it back and read the few lines, with Mary leaning over her:
Honored Sir,
The bearer of this note is a woman of such character as you might imagine; she has made certain threats you might also imagine, but it will serve us both to have her gone. I ask as the greatest favor that you deliver her to Boston, and if you keep her aboard till you do I shall repay you twofold on your return.
Your obedient servant,
J. Allgood
“Anne,” Mary said again.
Anne refolded the letter, carefully lining up the two halves of the broken seal. She took the candle from Mary and touched it to the wax, melting away its imprint but resealing the letter; perhaps Simms wouldn’t notice, or perhaps he would, but it mattered little. Either he trusted Allgood to pay him or he didn’t. Either Anne trusted to this chance or she didn’t. She had a ship to Boston and she had fifty pounds and she could make more the minute she landed; it was as good a plan as she could make with so little time. Anne repeated the words to herself: It was as good a plan, but in truth the letter she held felt newly flimsy in her hand.
THEY WALKED, AND THEN Anne walked and carried William, and then William walked again, silent now, gripping ferociously to Anne’s hand. She took care to keep off the main ways, coming at the Market Wharf along the riverbank, and managed to discover the Falmouth without being discovered herself, or perhaps the truth of it was that any who saw the muddy clothes and disheveled, whimpering child at her side would think her just another of the city’s whores and pay her no mind. The sight of the ship brought William out of his sulks at last, and he was so fast over the gangplank that Anne feared losing him amongst the crates and barrels that loomed like dark ghosts across the crowded deck. Anne approached two men hunched around a lantern reading a log.
“I’m after Captain Simms.”
The nearest of the two men, short, solid, and square, as if designed for keeping upright on a slanting deck, lifted eyes so deep socketed Anne couldn’t in fact say she saw them. “You have him.”
Anne handed him Allgood’s letter. He read it, looked again at Anne. “It says naught about a boy.”
Anne made a quick assessment of Simms and decided there was little hope of winning an argument over the fare, but she also decided he was no different from any other man. She said, “I’ll pay for the boy. However you like it.”
Simms’s head lifted; he turned to his companion. “Bleeker, give this lad a turn at the helm.”
Bleeker picked up the lantern and led William ten feet aft to the great wheel. William looked back at Anne, but only once, his eye drawn compulsively to the huge wheel. It will be all right, Anne thought. It will be all right after all. She continued to say it as Simms stepped away to speak to his mate, as she was led below to a compartment fitted out with a good-size berth, mahogany cabinets, a desk, and two lamps, all bolted to the walls. The rigidity of the furnishings troubled her—nothing could move—or leave—but she stepped into the cabin, turning to speak her opening lines, and found herself in air, half carried, half shoved onto the berth, the captain’s weight bearing her down.
“Hold!” Anne attempted to wriggle free of him, affecting her most confident laugh. “You must let me show you—” But Simms didn’t pause. He yanked away what clothes he needed to yank away and slammed into her with a ready violence that even after all these years of teasing men into impatience came as a surprise. Very well, she thought. Very well. Let him get his job done and move on so she could see to William. It took him even less time than the shipwright, but when Anne again attempted to wriggle free he pinned her again. Began again. When he finished he got up and went out without a word; Anne barely had time to pull her skirt into place when the door opened and the mate stepped in, already working his buttons.
Anne sat up. This man could not hold the power of the captain over her, this one she could manage as she’d managed two dozen others like him. “’Tis not free,” she said. “I’ve already paid the captain for our passage. ’Tis three shillings to you, sir.”
The mate didn’t slow. Indeed, he was already at the bed, his breeches riding down over his buttocks, ready as any man Anne had ever seen. He was
big where the captain was small, amiable where the captain was fierce. He returned Anne’s smile. “And I’ve already paid the captain for you.”
Anne took in the mate’s clear, hard eye above the false smile and saw the life she’d so carefully constructed begin to fade like a candle flame at sunrise, the world roll over, leaving her at the bottom instead of the top, the person begging instead of being begged. The rest blurred, swam, flickered. He went at her forever, turning her from raw to numb, and then there was the captain again. Anne’s limbs began to tremble; she would admit it: She was helpless against these men. She braced herself for another assault, but the captain said only, “Fix yourself.”
Anne didn’t move, her limbs weren’t ready; she refused to let the captain see her shaking.
“Fix yourself!”
Anne sat up. She lifted her fingers, and although they felt as if they quivered like cats’ tails, she saw they were steady enough. She pulled her clothes into place. She smoothed and reknotted her hair. She slid her legs to the floor and stood; her legs were steady too, and so were her eyes as she stared back at the captain; her long practice at acting hadn’t been for nothing after all.
The captain left. The new man came through the door so hard after him that Anne blinked to make sure she wasn’t making up the switch in her mind. No. He stood even taller and broader inside the confines of the cabin, the boy even smaller, clinging to his father’s jacket like a kitten.
“Well, my dear,” Franklin said. “Here we are again.” He looked around the room, selected the captain’s best chair, and sat down. He kept William on his lap, the boy shrinking against his father’s waistcoat as if knowing himself too big to be sitting there, as if afraid that were he noticed he’d be pushed away and ignored. All this Anne could see in him because she’d seen it before, and it pinched her heart every time. Franklin reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, intricately carved wooden horse, which he handed to William; the new toy diverted the boy’s attention from his father at last.
Anne said, “Who told you where I was? Allgood?”
“Allgood!”
“Grissom, then.”
Franklin’s brow knitted. “Your sister Mary told me where you were. But only for a price. Like you, isn’t she?”
Mary was nothing like Anne, but only because she didn’t need to be. “What price?” Anne asked.
“That you wouldn’t be arrested and sent to prison. That I find you new work.”
“I’m able to make my way.”
“Yes, you are.” Franklin looked her over with closer attention. “But do forgive me if I observe that you’re beginning to look somewhat the worse for it, my dear. You can’t enchant us all forever, you know.”
He shifted William, reached into his pocket, and drew out a paper, folded and sealed. He held it out to Anne. “You wish to go away; I shall be overjoyed to help you in that endeavor. I have a friend at Boston, a mantua maker; carry this letter and she’ll find a place for you in her shop.”
Anne looked at the paper. She looked at William, twirling his new toy about in his fingers, his head nestled against his father, as oblivious to Anne as he appeared to be to the conversation. She’d cost herself this boy, but she wouldn’t leave him again without at least attempting to improve his condition over what it had been. “What assurance can you give me of the safety of someone who is of great concern to me? What steps will be taken regarding that person’s care?”
Franklin lowered his voice, and it changed to a thing Anne had never before heard—something dark, cold, viperish. It even brought William’s head out of its nest to look at his father with large eyes. “The only danger that has come to someone who is of great concern to me came this night, when I discovered him climbing up onto a gunwale unattended. Now you may take this letter or not, but you’ll take your passage aboard this ship; if you attempt to leave it before it sails, the captain has been instructed to call the sheriff. Is that clear, or are you a greater fool than I imagined?”
Fool. Oh, how that word stung! She looked again at the paper in Franklin’s hand, thicker than a mere letter should be, perhaps with a supply of paper money enclosed. She would have liked to say she didn’t need it—that she didn’t need Franklin’s money and connections and she didn’t need Mary’s meddling—Mary, who’d had a dress to wear and soup to eat only because of Anne’s willingness to take what came her way and make something of it. Anne had managed to keep her pride while she did it too, but only because most every man she’d ever met had been a fool.
Anne took the paper. She reached out one last time and stroked William’s fine, fair hair, but he didn’t even lift his face from his father’s waistcoat.
27
ANNE SAT IN THE captain’s cabin and made a fierce effort to collect herself. She knew she had little time; she was surprised the captain hadn’t already burst through the door, claiming his next charge against her fare. She attempted to erase the image of William’s face turning away from her and struggled to call up Franklin’s words; she needed to concentrate on a certain few of them, like mantua maker and Boston but she heard instead gunwale. Was Ezekiel Lee right? Was she the mad one? Was Franklin right, that the only true danger had come to William when Anne had brought him aboard this ship? Certainly Deborah’s great lapse at the wharf could be called nothing worse than what Anne had allowed this night. Perhaps Franklin was right that Deborah would never purposely hurt the boy. Anne would need to believe this if she were to depart with any peace of mind for Boston.
Boston. Anne ripped open the seal on the paper Franklin had given her and discovered folded inside it two pound notes. The letter was headed, To Mrs. Jane Bellamy, at Frog Lane, Boston, and began Honored Madam. It went on to plead with this Mrs. Bellamy to find the bearer a situation in her shop. Unlike Allgood’s letter, it said nothing of Anne’s character one way or the other. It was signed, Ever your Friend and Servant, B. Franklin. Anne looked again at the words in the heading—Frog Lane, Boston—and discovered she misliked them. She found frogs repulsive; she didn’t know this Boston, or anything of mantua making; come to that, she didn’t know anything of Franklin’s good faith. Philadelphia was where her family lived. Philadelphia was where the shipwright and others like him lived, people she could rely on for subsistence, by one or another means. On the other side of it, Franklin had spoken at least one true thing: She couldn’t enchant them all forever. There was blackmail such as she’d used on Allgood, of course, but thus far it had not proved successful. The additional Boston advantage was that Anne was not known and could, indeed, make a new name for herself if she desired. Anne pondered the thing back and forth for a time, but soon enough realized all such musing counted for little.
William was in Philadelphia. So Anne must be.
Anne put the pound notes into her pocket; she gripped Franklin’s letter between thumbs and fingers, about to rip it up and discard it in the river, but then reconsidered; for once, Franklin had affixed his name to a document, and it might yet prove useful to her.
Anne’s next difficulty was going to be extricating herself from the ship unnoticed. She sat still and listened; she heard more than one tread on the deck above her, and even one would likely be enough to stop her unless she could think of something cleverer than she’d managed thus far. She tried the captain’s door and it did indeed crack open, but only to expose her guard, a sailor too young to be whiskered but already thick muscled, leaning against the wall just outside the companionway. He leaped upright. “Get back in there, you cow!”
Anne cast deep into the well of her evaporating reserve and managed to draw up what she could only hope was at least a shadow of her old smile. “Come with me, sir?”
“Get inside or I’ll put you inside in pieces!”
The argument was a strong one. Anne retreated, closed the door, latched it from within. She examined the cabin again. The hatch above would no doubt bring her out onto the deck and right into the middle of those treading feet; the hatch could be of no
use to her. The cabin also contained a small-paned window, but on the water side, away from the dock, with nothing below it but deep, cold water. The window was no use to her. Anne turned and turned about, a new kind of panic growing in her, a new kind of helplessness that had for a long time been entirely foreign to her. She couldn’t pick and choose her own space, she couldn’t pick and choose what man to use or how to use him or even to come or to go; she was trapped, waiting for whichever man came next through that door. Anne’s skin grew damp, her hands trembled; she turned and turned around the captain’s cabin, looking for any opening, any tool to fight her way free; she spied the window again, and thought, again; it was the only chance for her.
Anne pulled a locker below the window and climbed up on it. She pushed out the glass and looked down at the water. You see what the water is? It doesn’t sink you, it carries you! But carry her where? Anne looked to the far shore and could just make out the dark line that was New Jersey. In the middle the river rages too strong for any man . . . Not New Jersey, then. Anne wiggled her shoulders through the window and looked left and right; the ship was tied to the dock, but the dock didn’t help her—it stretched deep out into the river and rose too high for her to reach it from the water. It must be the Philadelphia shore, then, not a dark line, but a row of dark squares—warehouses, shops. It looked a great distance away, but the waves were gentle and appeared to roll, if not directly to shore, then not away from it either. Always best to cut across the tide, not against it . . . But could she swim such a distance? It was one thing to do so with Franklin’s strong hands hovering near; if she grew fatigued before she reached the shore, she might float all she liked but she’d only float . . . where? To some piece of shore farther along. She might be lost but at least she’d be off the ship, away from the captain.
