Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  It took her some moments to adjust to the darkness; then, as her eyes began to pierce the gloom, she heard Paxmore say, “In this compartment forward of the mast, where you can’t even stand up, one hundred and sixty slaves.”

  “No!” Vaguely she had known that Matt was a slaver, just as she knew vaguely that during the Revolution he had seen great battles, but one fact was as nebulous as the other. To her he was merely Matt Turlock who sailed the oceans; slavery at sea was no more a reality than slavery at Devon Island. She could not have told Paxmore, at this moment, how the Steed slaves lived; they existed and formed no part of her consciousness.

  “And aft of the mainmast, eighty more.”

  “My God!”

  “Yes, only by calling on the mercy of God can we comprehend what this ship means.” And he forced her to lie on her stomach and peer down into the lower hold. “Forward, a hundred and twenty men. Aft, another hundred.” She started to rise, but he held her down. “Look at the headroom in which a woman with child must try to stand.”

  She was about to respond when she heard a roaring voice from aloft: “What in hell are you doing down there?”

  Calmly George Paxmore replied, “I am showing your lady how you earn your livelihood»“

  With a towering oath Matt Turlock leaped into the hold, grabbed Paxmore by the neck and rushed him toward the ladder. “Out! You preachifying rogue!” And after he had shoved the unresisting Quaker onto the deck he sped up after him and pushed him toward the gangway. “Off this ship forever.”

  “It’s mine too, Matthew.”

  This was said with such self-righteousness that Turlock quite lost his head and launched a violent kick at the departing boatbuilder. He missed, and Paxmore said, “God condemns thee and thy slave ship.” And he rowed ashore.

  Two sailors helped Susan climb out of the hold, and Turlock. expected her to be shaken by what she had seen, but instead she was obviously flushed with erotic excitement.

  “I’ve always wanted to visit the Ariel,” she said. “It’s a powerful experience.” And she allowed him to lead her to his cabin, and she could not feast enough on the charts, the carved ivory, the gimbaled bed. This was the essence of Matt Turlock.

  “Paxmore did me a favor, showing me belowdecks.” She sat on his bed and studied him as if for the first time.

  “He said this morning I was destroying you.”

  “No! You’re creating me. Matt, it was seven years ago that you lifted me up to see the cannonballs. Every day since then I could feel the pressure of your arms because you held me longer then necessary. You held me because you wanted me ... and I’ve always wanted you.”

  On the first afternoon in the big bed at Rosalind’s Revenge he had asked her, “Shall I untie the thongs and take off the fist?” and she had protested, “No! I want to feel it across my body ... everywhere.” Since then, whenever they began to make love she kissed the silver eagle as a kind of salute; it became the symbol of their passion.

  Now she kissed it again and whispered, “Poor Paxmore, he must have thought that showing me the slave quarters would kill my love for you. I love you even more for your dangerous life. Now I know why you require a silver fist.”

  Later, when they were resting in the gimbaled bed, there came a loud clattering on deck, and before she could slip into her clothes the door to Matt’s cabin burst open, revealing her husband, finally enraged to the point of madness. He had an ax and was screaming threats of murder.

  There was a wild scramble, and shouting that could be heard onshore. She would never be able to sort out precisely what happened; she did remember Matt’s throwing himself across the bed and knocking away the weapon Paul carried. In the end, Matt, with only a towel about him, grabbed Paul and tossed him into the harbor, and most of the townspeople were on the wharf by the time he swam ashore. A woman who had watched the scene from a rowboat summarized it: “Both of ’em was naked.” The scandal was now public property.

  When the young Steeds working in the Devon office heard of this disgraceful exhibition—even slaves were joking about it—they knew that they must act. Instructing one of the blacks to inform Paul of their departure, they marched soberly down to the wharf, climbed aboard a sloop and set out for the Refuge. As they sailed past Peace Cliff they rehearsed what they must say, and by the time they reached the marsh and entered Dividing Creek they were prepared.

  Gravely they stopped at each of the Refuge plantations, advising one senior or another that he must come immediately to Herbert Steed’s big house, and there they unfolded the shameful story.

  “Before I tell you what happened yesterday in Patamoke, I suppose you know that Paul’s flown apart ... as if struck by a bomb.”

  “I don’t know,” Herbert Steed replied somewhat stuffily. He was a rotund, pompous man who sniffed before each sentence.

  “He’s taken to beating Eden, that’s his wife’s maid, with a heavy strap.”

  “Striking a slave!”

  “And after he beats her, he lies with her.”

  “You haven’t told the women?” Herbert gasped.

  “Everyone knows. You must be aware that Aunt Susan is practically living with Captain Turlock.”

  This rumor had reached the Refuge, and Herbert Steed already knew what he thought about that: “Swamp trash.”

  “Yesterday things reached a climax. After practically condoning the affair for these months, Paul storms into Patamoke, tries to murder Turlock, and ends being thrown into the harbor.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Herbert broke into laughter. “Paul Steed thinking he could commit a murder. He couldn’t swat a fly. I’m surprised the maid—what’s her name?—allows him to beat her.”

  “She doesn’t any longer. One of the slaves told me she grabbed his wrist and said, ‘No more,’ and he was afraid to continue.”

  Now the young men resumed the serious discussion. “The scandal we could absorb. But Paul’s destroying the Devon plantations. And before long his pathetic decisions will begin to affect yours, too.”

  “How do you mean?” Herbert asked sharply; where money was involved, he was involved.

  “Take the stores. No one’s really supervising them. Clerks wander in at nine o’clock. Last month I visited all four—fly-ridden, filthy, didn’t look like Steed property at all.”

  The other nephew broke in: “Are you aware that the field-clearing gang hasn’t burned an acre this year? No one’s hammering at them.”

  “Enough!” Herbert said. And he underwent a remarkable transformation: his shoulders squared; his eyes focused sharply; and his mouth set grimly. He was fifty-three years old and for some time had believed that he had retired from daily responsibilities, but the possibility that the Steed plantations might collapse galvanized him. Briskly he rose from his chair and announced, “I’m taking charge of the Devon plantations—now.”

  He had allowed no discussion from his cousins. Packing a few things in a canvas bag, he went to the sloop and was about to depart with his nephews when a prudent thought occurred: “Timothy, run back and fetch us three good guns.” And when these arrived they set sail for Devon.

  Late that afternoon Paul Steed rose from his bed, left Eden and drifted aimlessly down to the office, where to his surprise he found the man they called Uncle Herbert, a pompous, seemingly futile type, installed in his chair. “What’re you doing here?” he asked with trembling authority.

  “I’ve come to run things,” Herbert said.

  “What things?”

  “Paul, go back to your whore. And don’t you ever again allow Captain Turlock to set foot on Devon Island.”

  “Are you commanding me?”

  “Paul, get out of here. You are no longer in charge.” Instinctively the two younger Steeds moved to positions behind their uncle, and the trio presented such a formidable wall of opposition that Paul could summon no strength to combat it.

  “You’ll not succeed ...” he began to bluster, but Herbert Steed left his desk, walked quiet
ly to the former master and escorted him to the door. “Go back to the girl, Paul. That’s to be your life from here on.”

  Ejected from his office, he stumbled toward the Revenge, passing through a garden of remarkable beauty without seeing it. He entertained the vain hope that when he met Eden she would somehow inspire him to oppose this capture of his prerogatives, but when Tiberius opened the outer door, uttering his usual gracious words, “Do come in, Master Paul,” he kicked it shut and stomped away.

  He walked not to the wharf, where he was no longer welcome, but westward toward those wheat fields which had always been the most productive; generations ago the Steeds had learned that to produce tobacco, a field required years of rest now and then, or the alteration of crops rich in nitrogen, and these fields had been kept vital. As he wandered through them he felt pride that he had kept them still viable: Maybe the best fields in Maryland.

  But when he reached the western end of the island he was astonished to discover that the fields seemed much shorter than they had been when he was a boy, but this was so improbable that he wondered if he were remembering properly. Shouting for the overseer, he was able to rouse no one, so he went to the edge of the land, kicking at the soil and inspecting the line where the waters of the bay touched the island, and as he was doing this he saw one of the slaves fishing. The man supposed the master had come to spy on him and started running, lest he be punished, but Paul cried, “Stop, Stop!” and when the man ignored his shouts, Paul set out after him, but the slave was speedy in retreat, and Paul could not catch him.

  So he resumed his solitary wandering and came upon that stand of pine in which he and his cousins had camped as children, listening to the thunder of the bay as the stars appeared: My God! So many trees have gone! And below him, in the waters of the Chesapeake, lay rotting pines.

  Again he shouted for the overseer, and this time an older slave appeared. “Yassah, what you need, Mastah?”

  “This shore? Is it falling away?”

  “Yassah, every year, more ’n more.”

  “Those trees. There used to be a little forest, didn’t there?”

  “Yassah. I was boy, trees out to there.” And he indicated a spot so far distant in the bay that Paul gasped.

  “Don’t you do anything about it?”

  “Nosah, nothin’ you can do.”

  Paul dismissed the slave and continued his walk, witnessing always the encroachment of the bay, and it seemed that in his brief lifetime a valuable portion of the island had disappeared: I must do something about it. I must talk to the people who look after these fields.

  When he returned to headquarters he found considerable excitement. Captain Turlock had sailed a small boat down the Choptank, bringing Mrs. Steed to her home, but Herbert Steed had forestalled him at the landing, refusing him permission to come ashore. There had been a scuffle; the two younger Steeds had supported their uncle; and Turlock had struck one of them with his silver fist, throwing him into the creek before marching solemnly up the path to the big house, arriving there just as Paul returned from his western explorations.

  “Good afternoon, Paul,” Turlock said. The confused events of these past days were too much for Steed—his demotion, the falling away of the land, and now this arrogance—and he lashed out stupidly. “Damn you, I’ll thrash you ...”

  “You’ll what?” Turlock asked.

  Steed made another lunge at him, then flailed his arms helplessly. The captain pushed him away twice, and when this did not halt the ridiculous attack, swung his left arm almost gently and with his silver fist pushed, rather than knocked, Paul to his knees. He was about to help the fallen man rise when he heard an ominous command from behind: “Stand where you are, Turlock.”

  Still offering Paul help, he turned his head to see Herbert Steed standing on the gravel path, flanked by two nephews, one dripping, and all with guns. “What in hell?”

  “Off the property,” Herbert Steed said quietly.

  “Put those guns down,” Turlock snapped, turning his attention from Paul and allowing him to fall backward. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I know what I’m doing, Turlock. I’m counting to five, and if you’re still on that porch, I’m going to blow your guts out. Boys, get ready to fire.”

  And he began to count: “One, two, three—”

  “Steed!” Turlock bellowed. “You’re acting like a—”

  Very calmly Herbert interrupted his count. “Do you think any jury would convict us? After that?” And with a look of sickening disgust he pointed with his gun at Susan. “Four. Aim at his guts, boys.”

  Before Herbert could utter the command to fire, Captain Turlock backed off the porch, looked contemptuously at the fallen husband and started slowly down the graveled path. He had gone only a few steps when Susan uttered a cry and started after him, but the three Refuge Steeds interposed with their guns. “You stay!” Herbert commanded. “The circus is over.”

  And he barred the way. When Turlock reached his sloop he got in and slowly moved it toward the creek, but three days later he was back, bringing with him the casks of salt Paul Steed had ordered. Herbert appeared at the wharf with the purchase money, but Turlock ignored him, allowing Mr. Goodbarn to handle that negotiation. “I’m going to the big house,” Turlock said.

  “No, you’re not,” Herbert Steed replied quietly.

  “I guess I am,” Turlock said, and three of his sailors produced muskets to neutralize the men in the headquarters building. While they stood guard, Matt Turlock walked gravely up the path, noting the last daylilies as they withered on their brown-green stalks. At the door he knocked politely and informed Tiberius that he had come to pay his respects to Mrs. Steed.

  Up to this moment Susan had been unaware of his arrival, but as his voice echoed through the hallway, she rushed from her upstairs room and ran down the flight of stairs, throwing herself into his arms. Her husband followed.

  After embracing Susan, Turlock half pushed her away. “I’m sailing for Africa. It’ll be years before I return.”

  “Oh no!” she cried, clinging to him again.

  “I must. We’ve hit the end of the road here, all of us.”

  “Matt, no!” She grasped his arms, begging him not to go, but he was resolute. To Paul he said, “I’m sorry. I hope that in the future things will be better for all of us.”

  Paul made no response, but Susan refused to accept this as the end of summer, the end of all she had so desperately dreamed of. “You can’t go, Matt,” she pleaded. Then an alluring idea came to her. “I’ll go with you. Eden! Pack the bags!” And she broke away from the two men and dashed upstairs, calling for her maid.

  “I must stop her,” Matt said, and he bounded up the stairs after her, overtaking her in the bedroom as she began to pull down boxes and bring out her dresses. Eden, standing in a corner, watched the hullabaloo, slim and silent and unsmiling.

  “Susan!” Matt said harshly. “It’s over. There’s no way you can board my ship.”

  “But I ...”

  “Unthinkable.” He brought her away from her frantic packing and held her by the shoulders. Ignoring Eden, he said tenderly, “Susan, you’ve been the most precious thing in my life.”

  “I must stay with you,” she whispered. “There’s nothing in life, Matt. Nothing. These last three days ...” She shivered.

  “We begin over again, all of us.”

  “There can be no more beginning.”

  “You could help Paul regain control of the—”

  “Him?” The withering scorn bespoke more than the end of summer, but Matt was obdurate. He started for the door, but she uttered such a pitiful cry that he had to stop. Then she threw herself at him, whimpering, “Matt, lift me up as you did that first day.” Clutching his hand, she dragged him toward the bed and waited for him to put his arms about her as he had done so long ago.

  Slowly he lifted her until her shoulders were on a level with the imbedded cannonballs. “Hold me long, as you did
then,” she pleaded, but he began to lower her. Frantically she clutched at him, failed to stop him, and found herself slipping down. Her feet were again on the floor; her life was over.

  She made no protest as he left, but did listen as he said to Eden, “Look after her. She’s worth loving.”

  With heavy step he stalked down the stairs, bowed to Paul Steed, and returned to his sloop. “Back to the Ariel,” he told Mr. Goodbarn. “We sail in the morning.” The sailors drooped their guns as Matt saluted the three Steeds watching from the office doorway.

  The Ariel left Patamoke the next day at dawn, heading for London-Luanda-Belém. She had assembled commissions which would keep her at sea for four years, and as she sailed slowly down the river Captain Turlock looked for what he suspected might be the last time at the familiar sights, the beacons that had guided his life. Abeam lay the Paxmore yards where his clipper had been devised; how grieved he was that his association with these honest Quaker builders had been ruptured; no one tended to the welfare of ships as they did.

  There was the family swamp; Cousin Lafe would be tracking deer through the tall grasses; herons would be fishing in the shallows. And on the rise stood Peace Cliff, that noble, quiet haven so different from the gaudy show of Devon. He remembered when George Paxmore’s mother had invited him to that telescope house and given him a book to take on his journeys during the war. “Thee doesn’t have to attend school to learn. A ship can be a school, too. But if thee doesn’t learn, thee dies young.”

  He had decided not to look back at Rosalind’s Revenge, lest it haunt his dreams, but when Devon Island lay to port his eyes were lured to that stately house, and he saw what he feared he might see. On the widow’s walk, her blue dress standing out in the breeze, stood Susan, her face not discernible from this distance but her handsome figure unmistakable. For as long as the Ariel remained in contact with the island, Captain Turlock stared at that solitary figure. He would never know another like her; she had been the capstone of his desire, a woman of exceptional passion and love. Inadvertently he looked away for a moment in the direction of his cabin: God, how I wish she was waiting in there.