Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  The dissidents nodded.

  “And as for you, Teach Turlock ...” At this portentous opening, the disheveled waterman turned to the spectators and grinned, as if to say, “It’s me they’re talking of.” The judge continued, “You have no tobacco, nor any means of acquiring any. You have no personal goods worth the taking, but you do have a deficit of three hundred pounds, so this court orders that you cede to the Rector Wrentham eighty acres of the fast land you hold north of the marsh.”

  The grin vanished. The scrawny waterman looked in dismay at the bank of justices, appealing silently this terrible verdict: they were wresting from him land which he cherished, which his ancestors had acquired from Indians and protected with their lives against wolves and mosquitoes and tax collectors and Steeds who had wanted to plant it in tobacco. A strangled cry rose from his throat. Throwing himself toward the bench, he cried, “No!” The constable pulled him away, but in doing so, thrust him in the direction of the rector, who was at the moment hauling his ponderous bulk out of his chair.

  Without considering the wrongful thing he was doing, Turlock leaped at the fat man and started beating him about the face. The court became an uproar, and after the constable and two farmers had quieted the fiery waterman, the presiding judge said balefully, “In jail, six weeks.” And the waterman was dragged away.

  When the court was cleared of spectators, the justices accompanied the rector to the wharf, where with the aid of six men he was loaded back onto his barge. The presiding judge walked along the shore, throwing obsequious farewells to the clergyman, but his two companions stood soberly on the quay and one said, “Next year, believe me, I will no longer enforce the claims of that pious wretch.”

  “It’s the law.”

  “Then the law must be changed.”

  “Such thoughts are dangerous, Edward,” and the second judge looked to see if anyone had heard the treason.

  “These are dangerous times. I’m an Englishman, born, bred and consecrated, but recently I’ve begun to fear that London ...”

  “Be reasonable. Teach Turlock deserved jail ... for a score of reasons.”

  “But not to have his land taken.”

  “What does he care for land?”

  “Did you see him when Arthur delivered the sentence? And Steed and Paxmore? They’re good men.”

  “They’re dissidents. The time is coming when all must pull together.”

  The judge who spoke first looked toward the main street of Patamoke, then indicated that his companion must look, too. What they saw was Simon Steed and Levin Paxmore walking arm and arm, deep in conversation. “Do you realize,” the first judge asked, “that here this day we’ve performed a miracle?”

  “A strange word, miracle.”

  “Yes, we justices have made it inevitable that three men as unrelated as Steed, Paxmore and Turlock will unite on common ground. I warn you, we’ll see the day when those three and others like them will strip the fat Rector of Wrentham of all his lands, and after that they’ll—”

  “Edward! I pray, don’t finish that sentence.” The second judge put his hands over his ears to blot out his associate’s final judgment.

  “Ideas will be set in motion which all the justices in this county will be powerless to halt.”

  THREE PATRIOTS

  THE TWO JUSTICES WERE WRONG IF THEY ASSUMED THAT Steed and Paxmore were talking treason. They were discussing commerce, and when they reached the boatyard Paxmore invited his co-defendant into the plain wood-walled office from which he conducted his business.

  “What makes thee think that vessels will be at a premium?” Paxmore asked as they sat on chairs he had carved from oak.

  “The hatred I saw in Turlock’s eyes ... when the justices took his land.”

  “The Turlocks are always savage.”

  “But this was different. This was a declaration of war, and frankly, Levin, I’m afraid.”

  “Of what? Turlock’s powerless ...”

  “Of the spirit. There’s an ugly spirit abroad, Levin, and sooner or later it will engulf us all.”

  “And that’s why thee wants vessels? Against days of riot?”

  “Exactly. I think the day will come when people like you and me who want to maintain ties with England will be pushed to the wall by the canaille.”

  “Thee has the advantage of me. I didn’t study in France.”

  “The mad dogs ... the Turlocks. Soon they’ll be shouting that the colonies should break away from England. England will resist, as she should. And I’m afraid there might even be war.” He hesitated, looked nervously at the floor and whispered, “If war does come, we shall need ships.”

  Paxmore, seeking to ignore the awful freight of those words, took refuge in nautical pedantry. “Friend Steed, thee uses terms carelessly. A ship is a very large vessel with three masts or more. Nations own ships. Businessmen own brigs and sloops.”

  Steed, also eager to avoid talk of war, asked, “Which should I build?”

  “Neither. Thee wants a schooner. Able to move about with speed.” And each man sucked in his breath, for each knew that a commission had been offered and accepted, and this was no trivial matter, for if Steed was prepared to pay for a schooner, he must allocate to it a substantial portion of his wealth, and if Paxmore undertook to build it, he must put aside the lesser projects on which his normal income depended.

  So the two men sat silent, contemplating the obligations they were about to assume, and finally Steed spoke. Moving briskly to the desk, he jabbed it with his forefinger. “Speed, Levin. Above all else, we must have speed.”

  Now it was Paxmore’s turn to act decisively, and for him this was an intense process. Without rising, he began to twitch his body, turning his shoulders and edging his elbows back and forth in a performance that might have seemed grotesque to someone unfamiliar with what he was doing. Years before, Steed had told men at the store, “When Levin Paxmore thinks of a schooner, he becomes that schooner.” And now the canny builder wrestled with those problems which had agitated the most ancient shipwrights. Finally, at the end of his contortions, he said, “Thee can have speed, but thee can’t have speed and maximum cargo. I can pull the lines out this way”—and he indicated the length of the intended vessel—“but that means I must squeeze her in here, just where you’d want to stow the hogsheads.”

  “Forget the hogsheads. This schooner will be hauling compressed cargo of treble value.”

  “We should keep the freeboard low, but the masts must be extra tall. We’ll need a spread of canvas.”

  “I’ll want a very stout superstructure.”

  “That’ll decrease speed.”

  “But I must have it. For the cannon.”

  At this word Paxmore placed both hands on his desk. “I can’t agree to put cannon aboard one of my vessels, Simon.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to. But you build stoutly, so that when you’re through I can place the cannon.”

  “I could not agree—”

  “You leave the spaces—four of them.”

  “But that would make it top-heavy,” Paxmore warned, and as soon as he spoke these words he realized that Steed had tricked him into connivance on a military matter, and he drew back. “I am not building some great ship of war,” he warned, and quickly Steed assented, “Never! Ours is to be a small schooner of peace.”

  For two days the men planned the vessel that was to become the hallmark of the Paxmore yards: sleek, swift, maximum canvas, minimum beam, sharply formed bottom, lively tiller, fantastically protruding bowsprit. It was to be a schooner defined by a businessman, executed by a poet, and at every critical point each man made his decisions in reference to a view of the future that he had constructed after the most careful analysis of what he saw happening in the colonies.

  Simon Steed saw that hotheads like Teach Turlock were going to nudge the colonies closer and closer to a confrontation with the mother country and that agitations of vast dimension were going to disrupt trade and the norma
l use of oceans. This probability influenced him in two ways. He knew that in time of turmoil adventurous traders prospered, for they were willing to buy and sell when others were immobilized by anxiety. And he was also spurred to daring ventures by remembrance of his grandmother’s stubborn fight against pirates; like her, he believed that the seas must be kept free. He was therefore willing to take risks and was prepared to pay not only for the vessel he and Paxmore were planning, but for three others in swift succession, for he saw that with a fleet of four he could trade in these troubled times with sharp advantage. But that he would do so under the British flag, now and forever, he had not the slightest doubt.

  Levin Paxmore, in his forty years at Patamoke, had built many oceangoing vessels, but they had been stodgy affairs: snows with ridiculous paired masts, and brigs with stumpy ones. He had always known that better craft lay waiting to be built among the oaks and pines of his forests, and sometimes when he had seen a large British ship putting into the harbor outside his boatyard, her lines trim and her three masts justly proportioned, he had felt pangs of artistic regret: I could build better than that, if anyone would buy. Now he had his customer, a man with insights at least as profound as his own, and he was eager to start. He would do so as a Quaker pacifist who abhorred war, and it never occurred to him that cooperating with Steed would lead him step by step to compromise those convictions.

  So these two men of good intention launched their project believing that they could pursue it without surrendering past allegiances. Dimensions of their schooner had not been agreed upon, but at the close of that second day they proposed that on the morrow they would lay out the specific measurements; however, shortly after dawn two slaves sailed to the ramp at the boatyard with the exciting news that a trading vessel had put into Devon from London, bringing Guy Fithian and his wife on an inspection tour.

  “Were they made welcome?”

  “Master Isham’s wife, she said come in.”

  Simon Steed had never married and at forty-three had no interest in doing so; he ran the family business, read speculative books sent over from Paris, and allowed his younger brother Isham and his wife to supervise the social life of the Steed empire. If Isham had extended the courtesies, there was no need to quit the exciting business of laying out a great schooner, so Simon told his slaves, “Sail back and assure Fithian I’ll be there by nightfall.”

  “No, Master. He say come now.” And one of the slaves handed Steed a brief note from his brother advising him that grave news had arrived from London. His presence was mandatory.

  So Steed told Paxmore, “We have two hours to do the work of two days. What size shall our new craft be?”

  The two men, in shirt sleeves even though the January day was brisk, began to step off the proposed dimensions. “I’ll want her longer than before,” Paxmore said. “I’ve been thinking that we must go to eighty-four feet and some inches.” And he drove two pegs to indicate that considerable distance.

  “Longer, rather than shorter,” Steed said, and he moved the pegs slightly.

  “Narrow in the beam, something under twenty-one feet,” and again Paxmore drove his pegs.

  “I like that,” Steed said. “Gives just enough room to swivel the cannon.”

  The Quaker ignored talk of ordnance, but standing in the middle of the design, he said, “I think we must go to a depth of eight or nine feet in the hold. Of course, Steed, you won’t be able to navigate in the shallow waters of the bay.”

  “We keep to the channel ... to the ocean. Make her bottom as sharp as you need.”

  “I calculate she’ll come in at a hundred and sixty tons.”

  For the remaining two hours the men reviewed all aspects of their decision, and when they were satisfied that they had reached a sensible compromise on many conflicting demands, Paxmore called one of his nephews and said, “Martin, that large oak we’ve been saving. Start it into a keel,” and before Steed left the boatyard the reassuring sounds of an adze were echoing.

  On the brisk and pleasant sail back to Devon he tried to guess what kind of information might have caused his brother to send that imperative note: Since it came from Fithians, it must have originated in London. And since there’s no longer war with France, it must concern the colonies. Something about politics. Then he frowned. Could it possibly be business? Surely, Parliament can’t have passed legislation damaging to our trade.

  He was convinced that London would not be so foolish, and his reasoning was original: The one staff the king must lean upon is the support of men like Paxmore and me. Only we can hold the rabble in restraint. And at this thought he flinched, for the sloop was passing Turlock’s marsh, and he visualized that hot-eyed radical wasting in jail, planning vengeance, and this encouraged him to summarize ideas which had been brewing for some months: Society must be a compromise between new, untested men like Turlock, who want to destroy old patterns, and old, tried men like Paxmore and me, who tend to cling too long to the patterns we’re trying to protect.

  He speculated on this for some minutes, and true to habit, whenever he dealt with large concepts such as society, mankind and change he began to think in French, and this was the fatal canker in his character: by every external sign he was fitted to be an English gentleman, except that he had learned to read French books, and these had corrupted him.

  He was enormously captivated by Montesquieu and had spent one summer evaluating the Frenchman’s challenging theory that the governance of man is best served by dividing authority into three insulated compartments: executive, legislative, judicial. It had never occurred to him that those were the functions of government, but under Montesquieu’s exquisite tutelage he saw that this was the case.

  But as soon as he reached this conclusion, he drew back from its logical consequences: The best way to attain this balance is by following the English system. A just king, a stalwart Parliament, a wise group of judges. It was contradictory: in all his practical applications he was an Englishman; in all his basic attitudes toward goodness of life he was a Frenchman. And now he turned practical: It would be a tragic day if our colonies ever felt tempted to break away from England, and when his boat touched the Steed wharf he bounded up the path, hungry to discover what kind of crisis had brought Guy Fithian across the Atlantic.

  People inside Rosalind’s Revenge heard him coming and hurried to the door to meet him, and there for the first time he saw Jane Fithian, many years younger than himself, gay and blond and lovely on the arm of her capable brother. She was so compelling in a light-blue dress of India cloth with its bodice of delicately applied lace, that she seemed to float toward him, extending her hand and saying in a soft voice, “Hullo, I’m Jane Fithian.”

  “Welcome to Devon, Mrs. Fithian.”

  “Oh, no!” She laughed merrily. “I’m his sister, not his wife.”

  At these words he blushed so deeply that everyone watching, even the slaves, knew that he was excited by this elfin English girl, and as soon as he found himself alone with Guy he asked, “Why did you bring her?” and Fithian replied with no embarrassment, “Because it’s high time you were married, Simon.” The words, and the intention behind them, were so bold that Steed blushed again and was about to protest when Fithian said, “What really brings me is disaster ... twofold.” And he proceeded to spell out the worsening situations which had made an ocean crossing imperative.

  “The fall in tobacco prices means that many of the great plantations with which we’ve done business ... well, they’re bankrupt. And if we continue to extend them credit, we’ll be bankrupt too.”

  “We’re solid,” Steed said defensively.

  “Would to God all the American plantations were in your condition. You and Isham know how to work, how to keep things in balance.” He shook his head gravely. “Simon, would you have any interest in taking over Janney’s—that big plantation on the Rappahannock?”

  Without a moment’s reflection Simon said, “No.”

  “Isn’t it somehow related to
your family?”

  “Vaguely. But of no interest to us. Is that why you came?”

  “Janney’s is only one of a score. Do you realize that factors like us own most of Virginia? I represent a consortium. Six London factors, and we’re being asked to absorb American debts amounting to millions. You call these places Maryland and Virginia. They’re really Fithians and Goodenoughs.” In great agitation he moved about the room, shaking his head and saying, “We own the damned plantations, and we don’t want to. Simon, at least come with me to see what can be done about Janney’s. You owe me that.”

  Again Steed protested that for an Eastern Shore man to fiddle with a plantation in Virginia was insanity, but Fithian stopped him short. “Like it or not, Simon, we’re caught up in insanity.” And the gravity with which this trusted old friend uttered these words forced Steed to listen.

  “You feel safe because you run your plantation and stores prudently. Well, government in London seems determined to drive you out of business. Yes, you as well as the lazy Janneys.”

  “What now?”

  “Tea. They’re going to cut your throat with tea. And if that succeeds, then step by step everything else.”

  “Why tea?”

  “Because the East India Company—”

  “I know. I know. One of the poorest-run companies in the world. But it has that government monopoly.”

  “And it’s going to exercise it. The trick is this. If you American traders want to buy tea in London, you’ll pay a heavy tax. The India Company won’t. You’ll not be able to compete. The company will land its tea on your docks and undersell you.”

  When the intricacies and injustices of this device became clear, Steed slumped in his chair, pressed his hands to his forehead and said, “It looks to me as if Parliament is determined to crush the very people in the colonies upon whom England must depend.” And with obvious frustration he reviewed the succession of acts already discriminating against the merchants of Maryland: the restrictions in trade, the unjustified taxes, the advantages awarded London monopolists at the expense of colonial businessmen, the preposterous shipping laws, the arrogance of the tax collectors.