Sea Jade

by Phyllis A. Whitney

Her sudden vehemence made me wonder. She seemed too anxious to dismiss the very letter that spoke of my parentage.

  “I will ask the captain’s wife,” I said. “Perhaps she has the letter now.”

  I closed my eyes against the swirling fog of my own thoughts. It was as though I could grasp only one strand of meaning at a time. I reached for another such strand now.

  “When I first came to this house, when I was first in this room, you told me that my father—that Nathaniel Heath—had shot your husband. You wanted me to believe, as Brock did, that I was the daughter of a murderer. You emphasized that again last night. Yet even if Nathaniel had been guilty, it wouldn’t have mattered because you knew I was Obadiah’s daughter. So why—”

  She fixed me with the bright malice of her look. “You are Carrie Corcoran’s daughter. I could ask nothing better than to hurt you at every turn when I had the chance.”

  It had been foolish of me to think for a moment that Sybil McLean might change in her feeling toward me, or want to change. I left my chair and moved blindly toward the door. With deadly intent her voice followed me.

  “And now we know that you really are the daughter of a murderer—if, as you say, the captain’s statement tells us this. You are daughter to the man who killed Brock’s father. When he comes home we will tell him this—you and I.”

  I managed to get through her door and across the hall into my own room. I stood beside my window and looked out upon the jutting of land that formed Bascomb’s Point. I said to myself, “Nathaniel Heath is not my father. I am the daughter of a man who committed murder and let a better man take the blame. I am the daughter of a man who seduced my mother and did not marry her. All these things are in my blood, all this guilt flows through me.”

  Yet I could not believe or accept a word of it.

  What a fortunate thing nature does for us in a time of shock. When there is too much that is dreadful to be comprehended all at once, we simply cannot absorb what has occurred. By the time the enormity of what has happened reaches through our daze and is fully realized, there has been some slight healing. Some meager ability is given us to accept and endure. Perhaps greater suffering sets in later, yet we are stronger by that time, better able to meet it and live.

  So it seemed to be with me at that moment. I was more dazed than anything else. My mind could not yet encompass what had been presented to me. I could still reach for only one strand at a time to pull myself along.

  Certain things there were that I must do. I must find out if Laurel had returned from the village. I must seek out Lien. I must recover my mother’s letter. That was the one thing that mattered, that became paramount. Perhaps in her own words Carrie would give me meaning to cling to: some slight thread of truth upon which I could begin to string the beads of my life again.

  As I stood at the window looking out at the lighthouse and toward the rock cliffs, with the sea beyond, I began suddenly to listen. There was a strangeness in the air that I could not place until I realized that the dog had ceased to howl. I wondered if he had given up, resigning himself at last, even though he had no way of knowing whether his master would ever return.

  Breaking this uneasy silence came an explosion of barking from the direction of the lighthouse. My unseeing eyes focused and I saw to my horror that Laurel was there on the walk and that she had that great brute of a dog by its chain. The child was not leading the dog. Rather, Lucifer was dragging her along, barking furiously the while.

  I ran downstairs without bonnet or mantle and flung myself through the front gate, running desperately in Laurel’s direction. I did not know what I could do, but only that I must somehow come to the child’s aid before she was harmed by that great, savage beast.

  Lucifer heard me coming and jerked around with blazing eyes. His chain slid through Laurel’s helpless hands as he came at me. The little girl cried out a warning and hurled both arms about the creature’s neck, letting him drag her weight along with his own. As she struggled with the dog, a long black garment she carried slipped from her grasp and fell upon the ground.

  “Stay where you are!” Laurel shouted. “Don’t come toward him in a hurry.”

  The dragging of her limp body halted the dog. He stood still, quivering, staring at me with those wild eyes. I obeyed Laurel and stopped on the path, realizing that the child was far less likely to be harmed by the dog than was I. When Laurel was sure I would come no closer, she unwound her arms from Lucifer’s neck, picked up his chain and stood beside him, speaking to him soothingly, softly. When his shivering quieted, she smiled at me.

  “There—he’s feeling better now. It’s time he got to be friends with you, Miss Miranda. He’s so frightened of everybody and he tries to hide it by growling and barking and springing at people. Just hold out your hand for him to smell and I’ll bring him to you.”

  Somehow I managed to stand my ground as the two approached, the little girl whispering in the dog’s ear, while Lucifer hesitated and dragged his feet, not in the least anxious to become better acquainted with me. When at last, at Laurel’s insistence, my hand met that black, ugly muzzle, it was all I could do not to snatch it fearfully away. Oddly enough, Lucifer did not sink his teeth into my hand as I expected. He sniffed me a bit and studied me, while it was my turn to stand shivering.

  “Speak to him,” Laurel said. “Then he’ll stop being so nervous about you.”

  How did one speak to so terrifying a beast? “Lucifer,” I ventured inanely, “—good boy, Lucifer.”

  He snuffled at me doubtfully—a gesture Laurel seemed to regard as loving acceptance.

  “There!” she cried triumphantly. “You’re friends now. My father will be pleased if you and Lucifer like each other.”

  I doubted this, but I did not argue the point. I was very cold, both from anxiety and from the chill bite of the wind. The black garment on the ground that Laurel had dropped was a cloak and I picked it up and flung it about my shoulders. As I drew the hood over my head, I caught the perfume of sandalwood and knew it was the cape I had seen Lien wearing.

  “You shouldn’t have put that on!” Laurel’s distress was so extreme that for the first time I forgot the dog and regarded the child who looked more like the witch girl I had seen on my arrival than she had done for some days. She pounced on me, holding Lucifer by one hand, and would have pulled the cloak from my person if I had not stepped aside. At her movement Lucifer growled as if he might come to her aid.

  “Stop it!” I commanded her. “You’re upsetting Lucifer again!”

  Laurel let the cape go. “I suppose you’ve spoiled the scent anyway. Now I’ll have to find something else.”

  “Something else for what? Laurel, what is it? What are you doing?”

  She flung a despairing hand toward the lighthouse. “The figurehead! Someone has destroyed it. Miss Miranda, someone tried to murder you the way Tom Henderson was murdered.”

  I blamed myself for not having warned her, for postponing too long the task of telling her what had happened.

  “I know about the figurehead,” I said gently. “But as you can see, I’m very much alive. It was only the face of a wooden figure that was destroyed.”

  Laurel regarded me uncertainly. Lucifer had quieted and sat upon his haunches, alert and listening, seeming a more intelligent animal than I had thought him.

  “I went to tell Ian the minute I found it, but he already knew,” Laurel said. “He thinks it must have been Lien who did this awful thing. I went to ask her, but she was different—not one bit friendly to me. When she sent me away, I picked up her cape in the hall and brought Lucifer from his kennel. I was going to make him smell the cape and then walk around inside Ian’s workroom and see if he could pick up Lien’s scent. That’s the way they do in stories. Then we’d know for sure if it was really Lien whom the evil spirits have possessed.”

  I shook my head ruefully. “I don’t think it works exactly like that, Laurel. Besides, Lien must have gone into the lighthouse many times, so you co
uldn’t tell a thing, even if Lucifer was willing to play bloodhound for you.”

  Laurel sighed deeply and her shoulders seemed to droop as purpose went out of her. “Something is dreadfully wrong. I’m frightened, Miss Miranda.”

  Something was indeed dreadfully wrong. For me it was far more wrong than it had been before. I knew too much—and too little. I smoothed back a strand of hair that blew over Laurel’s forehead and touched her cheek lightly. “Go put the dog away, dear. Just think what would happen if he ever got loose.”

  “Nothing would happen,” Laurel said. “He’d just go down to the docks and wait there for my father to come home. That’s why he howls. He wants to go there and we won’t let him.”

  I nodded. “Nevertheless, you must put him back in his kennel. Then in a little while come to my room and we’ll talk. I’ve something to show you.”

  I would wait no longer to explain matters to Laurel. She had a right to know and I would try to make clear to her whatever I could make clear.

  She smiled at me more agreeably and tugged at Lucifer’s chain. He went bounding along with her as she hurried in the direction of the kennel.

  I held Lien’s cape around me as protection against the wind as I started toward the house. The garment gave me an excuse to visit the woman to whom it belonged. Despite any uneasiness I might feel, I would postpone seeing her no longer. It was Lien who could find my mother’s letter for me. It was Lien in whom the captain might have confided.

  I went through the front gate of the Bascomb house, but this time I did not go in by the front door. I went instead to the door of the older house and raised the brass knocker. Inside the echoes raced hollowly up the stair well.

  SEVENTEEN

  At my second knock the captain’s wife came to the door. I held out the cape, explaining that Laurel had borrowed it, and she took it from me, offering courteous thanks.

  “May I speak with you for a moment?” I was equally polite.

  Lien bowed her assent, inviting me in. It was as if we fenced with each other using the delicate weapon of polite conduct. I took no encouragement from these extremes of courtesy, for I knew there was a state of war between us.

  Lien’s foreign visage was strange as ever to me and in it I could read neither welcome nor rejection. My mind’s eye held remembrance of the ravaged figurehead, and I was not eased of my fears.

  Today she wore her white jacket above dark Nankeen trousers, but there were smudges on the white, as though she had worn it for cooking and cleaning. Her hair was not as smoothly combed as when the captain had been alive and there were evidences that despair and discouragement had brought her to a careless state. This change in her gave me no reassurance. Despair could lead easily to acts of desperation. But I must not give way to my own fears before I had said what I had come here to say.

  Surprise would be the best weapon to use with her. When I had seated myself in the captain’s big chair at her invitation, I spoke in a manner that I hoped would seem quiet and matter-of-fact.

  “This morning Mrs. McLean told me that Captain Obadiah was my father. Do you know if this is true?”

  “It is true,” she said without evasion, and seated herself on a hassock not far from me.

  If I had hoped that Lien might contradict Sybil McLean’s words, her answer ended my last doubt. Whatever Lien knew she would know from the captain himself.

  “But why did Captain Obadiah keep this from me? Why did he bring me here, yet not tell me the truth?”

  Lien showed no hesitation about answering. “He was a devious man. A man with no gods and a troubled soul. He wanted to win you to him first. He feared that you would despise him when you knew, if he did not first win your love.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I might have. But he didn’t tell Brock the truth either?”

  “No. All this would have been revealed gradually to both of you after the marriage, once he knew all would go as he planned. He wanted your forgiveness for many things. He had on his conscience the killing of Brock’s father and the way he let Nathaniel Heath take the blame.”

  “I know about this too,” I said. “But I’ve come here to ask about a letter the captain must have had in his possession. A letter written by my mother before she died. Do you have it?”

  “I have seen such a letter long ago, but I do not know where it can be,” Lien said. “It is possible that the captain placed it in the desk he kept in the cabin of the Pride. He felt his secrets were safer there.”

  I had feared as much. Now I knew I must brave the depths of the ship again. I wanted to hold the letter in my hand. I wanted to read whatever Carrie Heath had written with my own eyes. And I wanted to know if there was something further that Sybil McLean held from me.

  “This seaman, Tom Henderson,” I said, “what do you know of him?”

  There seemed a quickening of attention in her, though she met my question with waiting silence. I went on.

  “Who could have wanted the man dead?”

  Again her answer was evasive. “The captain was afraid because of what this man knew. After the voyage on which Andrew McLean was killed, the captain paid his first mate well and sent him away to Burma, to Ceylon. Every year he sent him money to stay far away. But the captain was growing old and this man feared the money might stop coming at any time. So he returned to see if he could get more by threatening to tell everything he knew. When the captain saw him, he was afraid, lest all his plans be defeated. Especially he feared what Brock would do if he learned the truth about who had killed his father. The shock, as could be expected, was too much for the captain’s heart.”

  Much that I had puzzled over was coming clear—but not the matter of what had happened in the hold.

  “If Tom Henderson was pushed from the stairs, as they say, it was not the captain who pushed him,” I pointed out.

  “Who is to know?” Lien’s gaze was strange and distant. “When a powerful and evil force is set into motion, where is it to stop? Evil breeds evil without end.”

  I had no answer for this and tried another approach. “Do you know what happened the other time? I mean when Andrew McLean died aboard the Sea Jade?”

  “Mr. Henderson has told me. He wished to speak with me away from this house, so we met and talked where no one would hear.”

  I stiffened, remembering Tom’s words—that he had been paid by someone. Had he meant the captain long ago? Or was it some more recent payment he had meant? By Lien, perhaps?

  She went on, speaking as if to some shadow across the room. “The three captains sailed together on the first voyage because they wished to observe the behavior of the new ship. Though only Captain Obadiah was master. On the way home in a storm off Good Hope Captain McLean became angry, claiming that Captain Bascomb did not know how to sail such a ship. He said Obadiah would wreck the vessel and drown them all. Captain Heath agreed with Captain McLean, who had designed the ship, and he asked that McLean be permitted to take charge and save the Sea Jade. Mr. Henderson was at the wheel at the time and the others were nearby. He saw what happened. He heard everything.

  “Captain Obadiah drew a gun and commanded the other two to stand back or he would shoot them down as mutineers. He said he had the right to do this. McLean would not give way and Captain Heath tried to stop Obadiah. He struggled with him to save McLean’s life. But the gun was discharged. Whether by chance in the struggle, or because Obadiah meant to kill, Mr. Henderson could not be sure. Afterwards Captain Obadiah proved his skill by sailing the Sea Jade safely through the storm. He placed Captain Heath in irons, accusing him of McLean’s death.”

  “Why?” I said. “Why would he do such a thing? Captain Obadiah would not have been held guilty, as master of the ship.”

  Lien lifted her white clad shoulders eloquently. “Captain Heath was the only man who ever defeated him. Captain Heath married a woman Obadiah had loved. He had taken Obadiah’s daughter for his own and he would not give her up. Of course Mr. Henderson did not tell me such things. Bu
t I knew the captain well. He would have said, ‘I will save you if you will give me the child.’ But Captain Heath was a good man and this he did not do. In the end the captain was forced to save him from prison with another lie.”

  These things too I had guessed, and with Lien’s corroboration I knew they must be so. Yet I felt oddly baffled, listening to her. I did not understand the nuances of her oriental nature. The Chinese, I knew, did not respond well to questions that were blunt and rude. Yet I had to ask a blunt question and I watched for her reaction.

  “Was it you, Lien, who destroyed the figurehead?”

  She laughed softly, as though I had said something funny, something that pleased her. “I am a humble person from a distant land. This you know. You are a young lady of great wealth, but you are of more uncertain birth than I. So which of us is to command the other to speak?”

  “I’m not commanding,” I said. “Ian thinks you did it. He is very angry. His best work had been destroyed.”

  Lien was not impressed. “He is well served. Always he was kind to me, attentive. Always I thought that when the captain died Ian would take me as his wife. We would have the wealth and the power together, and all who had scorned us would be as nothing. Then you came—and all was different. From the time you first appeared, I could see that his kindness to me was only kindness. You won him to you with your face that is of his own people. You won him with your unhappiness, your danger, your need.”

  I made some small sound of remonstrance, but Lien raised her hand in an imperious gesture, perhaps learned long ago in a more elevated station of her life.

  “Ai-ya—let me finish! These things in you Ian could not resist, but he has it in him to be cruel as well as kind. I remember one day when he sang your praises to me—as if I had not feelings of my own. As if he did not know how greatly I loved him. When I heard these things, I could have wished you dead in my first anger. How could I endure it that he chose you to model for his carving?”

  “So you destroyed his work?” I said.