by Anya Seton
He reached up and unfastening the chinstrap on her sou’wester, threw the hat to the beach. Her hair fell about her ears and her face shone white as milk against the sky.
“Hes—” he said and stopped. She heard him swallow. Rough and off-hand, he went on, “Would ye like I name the dory after you?”
Her heart bounded, then raced harder than it ever had in the moments of fear tonight. A boat named for a real woman meant only one thing.
She nodded her head, inarticulate as he was.
His arm tightened around her. “It’ll be a long time, Hes. A matter o’ two, three years, afore I can ask you to be anything but sweetheart.”
“I know—” she whispered. What money Johnnie made from the trip on which he sailed tomorrow must go to help his mother and the brood of children, for the shoe shop could not support them alone. Not tomorrow—today he was sailing.
“Johnnie, you’ll be careful on the Banks. You’ll do nothing rash?”
He had to smile at this but he answered quite sharply. “Gorm, Hes. Ye talk like a landlubber, like those chits in silks and laces off the excursion boats—‘Oh do be careful, Harold, you might wet your feet!’ The sea’s a job like any other—”
She stared at him, feeling in her heart for the first time the gnaw of aching worry that fretted the fishermen’s women, and one must not voice it. Already she had broken the code.
“I’ll be waiting at the wharf when you sail back to the harbor—” she said, trying to smile. “Look for the brightest dinner pail, it’ll be mine for you, and filled with a savory pork brew, the best in Marblehead.”
Johnnie chuckled. “I’ll dream on’t, when I’m tossin’ in the fo’c’sle and smellin’ little Sandy’s cautch o’ stinkin’ garney—Aye, Hes—it’ll be good to know you’re waitin’.”
He pulled her close, and pressed his young beardless lips to her mouth. She returned it shyly, and they drew apart. Neither of them felt the need for more. They understood each other and were content.
They turned and walked together up the path, past Pitman’s fish warehouse and the fish flakes, under the elm and the apple trees to Hesper’s home.
CHAPTER 5
HESPER awoke late on the morning of her nineteenth birthday, the fifteenth of April, 1861. She yawned and nestled deeper into the feather bed. Ma’d let her dawdle a while on this one morning of the year. A slanting ray of sunshine fell across the ladder-back chair where she had flung her underclothes last night. It would be a good day for her junket with Johnnie.
She held up her left hand and looked at the ring Johnnie had given her three days ago; two gold wires twisted into a true lover’s knot, a tiny diamond chip in the center. “Cupid’s tear trembling in a golden chalice—” Hesper whispered tentatively. Would Pa think that a pretty phrase? Anyway, Johnnie’d think it silly. She smiled tenderly at the ring. Johnnie’d gone all the way to a jewelry shop in Lynn to buy it, and he’d used the money he’d saved for a new dory-roding. Spliced up the old one somehow. Johnnie was smart, all right. Ablest young fisherman in Marblehead. A “high-liner.”
On last fall’s fare to the Banks, Cap’n Trefry said Johnnie’d outfished them all. Twenty hours a day when they had a spirt, lashed himself to the mainmast so he wouldn’t fall overboard if he dozed. His share had been big, near a hundred dollars. And he was just as skilled at the mackereling, as he was at catching cod. Cast and burnished his own jigs, some heavy and blunt for rough spirty days, some sharp and delicate as fly hooks to tempt the most finicky of mackerel. He’d worked so hard, never skipping a fare to the Banks, and mackerel and Bay fishing in between too. But it was only this past year he’d begun to get ahead a little.
There’d been a long spell of bad luck, after that night on the beach when he had bespoken her. The Diana stayed out till November that summer, and she did very badly. Came home with only half her salt wet, and but four hundred quintals of cod in her hold. And the next fare was far worse, for she sprang a leak and foundered in a storm off Cape Breton, and though all her crew had been rescued by the Ceres and eventually conveyed by steamer from Halifax to Boston, nine hundred quintals—the fruit of their summer’s work, had sunk with the Diana to the bottom of the sea.
Yes, those were bad times, Hesper thought. They’d seen so little of each other, a week here and a week there, before Johnnie’d sail off again. But when Johnnie sailed next time it would be as master of his own pinkie. He had his eye on a right trig one in Salem. A good banker she’d be, tender but fast, and when he got the bounty money, there’d be enough to buy her—after the wedding in June. Wedding.
Hesper sat up in bed, drawing her breath and looking down at her pillow. A delicious apprehension tightened the muscles of her stomach, and flowed along her back. Imagine, Johnnie’s head there on her pillow. The curly black hair, stubborn and crisp as hedge grass, the square brown face, shadowed blue all over the jaws, his powerful red neck, weathered by the sun and salt. And then what? Her body flushed all over and she jumped out of bed. Ma’d think it awful to have such thoughts before she was married. Anyway, whatever it was exactly took place between man and woman, would be beautiful with Johnnie.
She slipped off her long flannel nightgown, poured water from the dented pewter pitcher. The room was chilly and she shivered, but on a birthday morning one must wash all over. Start the year right, Ma said. Spanking clean underclothes too; best frilled drawers and petticoat, hemstitched bodice, new white stockings. While she put them on she sang blithely, a hauling chantey Johnnie was fond of.
Oh a yankee ship came down the river
Blow boys, blow boys, blow!
Oh how do you know she’s a yankee ship?
WHY—By the cut of her jib and the list of her skipper—
Blow, my bully boys, Blow!
She finished dressing, bundled her hair into a black crocheted net that was more becoming to her than any of her earlier efforts at dealing with her despised hair, and she went downstairs humming the last verse of the chantey, changing the words to suit herself.
Oh her masts and yards they shine like silver
Blow my bully boys, Blow!
And who do you think was the captain of her?
Why—Johnnie Peach was the Captain of her
Blow boys, Blow boys, Blow!
Susan was in the taproom setting it to rights before the day’s business commenced. Her tight mouth softened as she surveyed her daughter, but her eyes were grave. “Morning, Hes. Happy birthday. Kettle’s on. I fried you up some fishcakes.”
“Thanks, Ma. Isn’t it a grand day!”
“You aiming to go out junketing with Johnnie?”
“He said he’d take the day oil, maybe we’d go sailing in back of the Neck.”
Susan turned and began straightening the beer mugs. The girl was happy at last for sure, never had heard just that lilt to her voice before, but she should have some warning. Susan banged a beer mug onto the shelf.
“News is bad, Hes. When Benjie brought the flour he said there was a big crowd hanging around the Town House waiting for the proclamation. Might come any minute over the telegraph.”
A tremor shook the girl’s mouth, she compressed her lips. “What if it does. Johnnie wouldn’t go. He’s not in the militia. They want to fight down there-along—let ’em.”
Susan shook her head, her heavy face showed a kindling. “Marbleheaders’ve been the first to fight in every war we’ve had. You could hardly call ’em stay-at-homes even without the wars, always off to the Banks or someplace. Excepting your pa—of course.”
Hesper ignored this familiar jibe. “Well let the shoemakers go fight then,” she said with angry contempt. The Peaches had had plenty of trouble with that Porterman and the other shoemen. The strike last year had come to nothing, and then Lem Peach had taken ill and died of the consumption all on account of trying to work too hard.
Susan shrugged and hung up her dishcloth. “Not a bit o’ use scorning the shoe manufacturies, my girl. Like it or not we’d be in a
bad way here without ’em, now our fishing fleet’s so small. No—have done, child—” she checked Hesper’s retort with more sadness than asperity. “Someone’s got to face facts around here, you’re a lot like your pa with your romantical fancies. Go eat your breakfast.”
Hesper sighed and turned into the old kitchen, determined, however not to let her mother dim the radiance of her day.
Her father had left his study door ajar, and he came out into the kitchen when he heard Hesper. His narrow stooping shoulders hunched beneath the alpaca jacket, his graying hair hung nearly to the velveteen collar, he had grown even thinner of late, and his recent nickname amongst the small fry of Marblehead was “Scare-crow,” but Hesper saw only his eyes beaming through the spectacles with undisguised affection.
“Blessed be thy natal morn, fair daughter of the Western Star—” he said kissing her cheek—and quoting from the birthday ode he had written for her. “Do you feel much older?”
“Well, I do—Pa,” she answered laughing, and happy again. “Have some coffee with me.”
He pulled up a Windsor chair and sat beside her at the heavy oak plank table. It was covered by a shiny oilcloth square, patterned with sulphurous yellow roses. Roger with sudden irritation lifted a corner and threw it back. “I wish your mother wouldn’t cover the table with this thing!”
She smiled at him, wondering how soon she might expect Johnnie. “But, Pa, the table’s so dreadful old and scarred. I guess it’s all right in the kitchen, but I wish we had a new one.”
“Ah, but Hesper—if this oaken board could talk. Look child—” He pointed to a dent, long since filled level by applications of beeswax. “The mark made by the dagger Davy Quelch the pirate threw the night they captured him here. In 1714 that was. And look at this—”
Hesper had heard it all before and many times, but she bent over indulgently. A name had been carved on the trestle beneath the table. “lzak Hunywood, 1642.” “That was young Isaac, born right here in this house shortly after they settled. He must’ve been about eleven years old and I wager he got a larruping from his mother for marking the table. His mother was Phebe, you know.”
She nodded and poured out more coffee. She was not much interested in tales of the old house, and she listened vaguely to her father as she had listened to Gran long ago; today it was an especially pallid pastime, and she glanced at the banjo clock and then toward the window.
“Speaking of Phebe—” continued Roger, oblivious as always to lack of interest from a hearer when he was riding his twin hobby horses: Marblehead and Honeywood history—“This’d be a good day for you to hear the Lady Arbella’s letter about Phebe, again. I’ll get it now.”
“No, Pa. Not now,” she said decidedly. Poor Pa, he acted as though that letter about people dead two hundred years was a sort of talisman, or a magic incantation. “Maybe later—” she added because he looked so disappointed.
He sighed and accepted that, finished his coffee. “Lafayette drank a glass of punch at this table in ’84. My father remembered it,” he said at last, a trifle sulkily.
“I know. Pa,” She touched him on the shoulder while she stacked the plates. She knew too how it saddened him that there were no more male Honeywoods and that the name would die out with him. That was one reason he set such store by the house itself. It would go on if the name didn’t.
She was glad that she didn’t have to leave him—and Ma, of course. Johnnie and she were going to live in the big yellow bedroom in Moses’ wing after they were married, until they had enough money to buy a cottage. That way they didn’t have to wait as long as many bespoken couples. Poor Clara Messervey had been waiting six years for her Jacob.
Hesper began to hum again as she tossed the Staffordshire cups and plates into the stone sink, barely avoiding nicks. She pumped water over them hastily. She was never one to linger over the household chores and certainly not this morning.
“How’s the work coming, Pa?” she asked, as he still lingered. Only Hesper referred to the hours he spent in his study composing the “Memorabilia” as work.
“Pretty well—” he said brightening. “I’m working on the canto that treats of Elbridge Gerry’s birth—I feel he was a veritable Solon, and shall draw that comparison later.” Roger frowned, thinking of the proper presentation of Elbridge Gerry, one of Marblehead’s most famous citizens, vice-president, “signer,” and of course the “gerrymander,” it would take several cantos to do Gerry justice. Might tie him in with Captain Mugford’s daring exploit when the “Memorabilia” eventually reached to the Revolution....
“Oh, Pa—do move!” cried Hesper laughing. “You’re standing on the sweepings. You know I’ve got to leave the kitchen clean or Ma’ll never let me out with Johnnie.”
Roger nodded and shambled back to his refuge. Hesper heard the tinkle of the door bell, and waited, her fingers tight on the broom handle. But it was only little Snagtooth Foster come to fetch a mug of ale for his granny.
When Johnnie did come she did not hear him, having decided to work off her impatience by getting ahead with the chores. She stood by the west window grinding the next twenty-four hours’ supply of coffee.
The rattling coffee beans and the rickety old grinder drowned out Johnnie’s footsteps. He put his arms around her waist and kissed her on the neck. Hesper jumped and dropped the coffee bag.
“John-ee—you scared me.”
He grinned, showing his blunt teeth. He bent over and picking up one of the scattered coffee beans, held it out to her. “Found the red one—” he said. “Means I should do it again.”
“Nonsense—” she backed off blushing, always this wave of delicious embarrassment when Johnnie looked at her like that. “That’s only for corn-husking and you know it. Johnnie—Ma might come in!”
He put his hands on her shoulders, pulled her toward him, and kissed her hard and long on the mouth. “That’s for your birthday, sweetheart.”
She whispered “Thank you—” confused and blissful, knelt quickly to gather up the coffee beans. They’d never been much of a couple for kissing or spooning. That was only for low-life easy girls, Ma said, plenty of time for that after marriage. And it was true, when you saw each other so seldom and had so much to talk about, and plan, just being together was enough.
Johnnie helped her get the beans back in the bag; then he said, “Boat’s over by the town dock. Wind’s fair south. Ought to have a good sail.” Johnnie had a small fishing sloop now, as well as his dory. “Get your jacket, Hes—” he continued, “and we’ll be off. Have you the lunch?”
“Fishcakes and gingerbread and a bottle of ale.”
He nodded. “Where would you like goin’? I must be back early but we could make Baker’s Island or Cat. I’ve much to say and I want no interruption.”
Johnnie’s keen young eyes darkened and slid from her happy face. She pushed down the fear. It’s not that. I know it isn’t. And if it is—I can make him see—coax him out of it.
“Let’s go to Castle Rock—” she said softly. “Can you land at this tide?” Castle Rock, on the ocean side of the Neck, favorite meeting place for lovers since the earliest days of the settlement.
“I can beach the Fire-top anywhere—” said Johnnie laughing again. “She'll do my biddin’.” The little sloop was also named for Hesper, but as the dory had duly become the “Hessie H.” Johnnie had adopted the girl’s childhood nickname for the newer boat, nor had Hesper minded; any link with his seafaring life was precious.
Johnnie picked up the wicker lunch basket. Hesper put on the blue pea jacket he had given her and started off beside him.
As they reached Front Street they both paused and took instinctive summary of sky and water. Breeze still south but veering a little to the east, so the Great Harbor was calm, the dozens of bare masts hardly swaying. Tide on the turn, slack just past, all the bows and bowsprits pointed out to sea again as they would for six hours. Overhead the thin blue sky was brushed with scattered mare’s tails, but the Cape Ann s
hore, four miles away, showed neither too clear nor too misty. The fair weather would hold for today at least.
They walked up Front Street past the line of tight-wedged silver-gray houses, neither of them conscious of passers-by until, at the corner of State Street, they were checked by the Widow Cubby who was hurrying along the tiny sidewalk. Leah Cubby stopped in front of the young couple and her magnificent dark eyes, which had been peering into the shops and the little waterfront tavern, focused on them slowly.
“Oh”—she said—“Have you seen aught of Nat—or Mr. Porterman?”
“Why no, ma’am—” said Johnnie, while Hesper shook her head, staring curiously. It was seldom that Leah left home nowadays, and she was a striking figure. Slender and handsome in her black draperies. She looks younger than she possibly could be—thought Hesper, startled out of her own absorption. Leah’s pale oval face was totally unlined, her full lips redder than ever, her dark wings of hair untouched by gray.
“I can’t think where they’d be—” said the widow in her soft, hurried voice. “They left the house before breakfast and never a word to me. ’Tis not like them to go together. You know Nat’s wrong about Mr. Porterman. He doesn’t see what a wonderful man Mr. Porterman is. I have to beg and coax or Nat’d turn him from the house, but Mr. Porterman’s no trouble at all, and he pays us so much money for his board. His wife’s worse, you know.” The widow leaned nearer, and her lips curved in a gentle smile. “I saw her once—she’s not very pretty.”
Hesper gave the beautiful face a startled glance, and yet she thought at once, Leah hadn’t actually said anything out of the way, no more than any landlady gossip, and Ma said it was cruel to remember the fit of madness Leah had once had. Grief drove many to temporary distraction, that time healed completely.
“You’d better go home, ma’am—” said Johnnie very kindly. “I reckon they’re at the Town House waiting for the proclamation. I wouldn’t fret.” Even Johnnie showed a protective admiration toward Leah, Hesper thought, ashamed of a twinge of jealousy.
