The Rathbones

by Janice Clark

  Mordecai had erased our lesson from earlier that day, but it was still just visible on the blackboard under his newly drawn grid, the legend still there in the bottom right corner: “The Anatomy of the Sperm Whale.” The details of its massive body—its carefully labeled bones and organs, rendered in white chalk—had all been rubbed into one large and ghostly smear. Next to the blackboard, nailed to the neck of a headless figurehead, an aquatint showed a whale rolled on its back, impaled on all sides by men in whaleboats with lances and harpoons. With a flourish of his pointer Mordecai had indicated the whale’s blowhole on the aquatint and asked me about its angle (sharp, leftward, identifiable at a great distance). He had often drilled me on the sperm’s diet, nodding at my answer (squid and skate are preferred, though he will, if pressed, eat commoner fish), had often informed me that a lucky few evaded the whaling ships and lived to be as old as eighty, then drifted down to the ocean’s bed, where smaller creatures ate them away.

  I could see that Mordecai was ready for our next lesson. Lined up on his worktable was a row of jars filled with murky liquid. Pale tentacles curled in some jars; in others rows of suckers pressed against the glass. We would be reviewing the cephalopods, he had said, with particular attention to anomalies in the chambered nautilus.

  How could I go back to my lessons after what had just happened?

  I sipped my broth and stared up into the rafters, where the busts all dozed, trying to ready myself to tell Mordecai. Clearly he knew something had happened to send me, bloodied and fainting, to his attic in the middle of the night, my dead crow tucked into my dress. And clearly he was no more anxious to talk than I was.

  Though I spent all of my time in the attic, we never discussed anything other than our lessons. Mordecai was just my tutor, who happened to be my cousin too. Besides tutoring me, he had in recent months also instructed me in those graces a mother should teach her daughter, consulting the encyclopedia entry on “Gentility” for details. Each day I improved my posture by walking the attic with a large volume balanced on my head: An Epitome of Navigation or The Eventful History of the Mutiny at Spithead and the Nore. On days when I drifted, tired of some lesson I had long since memorized, Mordecai would mutely hand me a stack of small red missals and watch me struggle along the attic, the little tower of books teetering, my walk as stiff as his. Or he would disappear under a beam into his galley and presently I would hear spoons clinking against china. Mordecai would emerge with a tea tray. “And now, show me how you can pour with decorum,” he would say, while the crows squawked outside the attic door, longing for a taste of the biscuits Mordecai had arranged on a plate.

  When I was younger I would ask him to come to Mama’s room with me, to choose bones from her stores, odd pieces for which she had no use; I knew he coveted them. “Your mama is busy with her own bones,” he always said, with a dry little cough, and never came with me.

  Staring up at the busts, something red caught my eye. At the end of the row, past the larger Socrates, stood the head and shoulders of a woman, her narrow, delicate face framed by lush marble curls. That day, her hair, until then unadorned, sported the cocked red hat of a ship’s captain.

  With Mordecai still busy at his board, I moved my chair under the bust, stepped up onto the seat, and lifted off the hat. The stiff red felt was trimmed in blue ribbon and boasted cockades. I held it to my nose: salt, tobacco, and another scent—more feminine, one plaster didn’t produce. Mordecai looked up and, seeing what I held, snatched it away and returned it to the bust’s curls. He turned back to his blackboard.

  “Cousin. Where did this come from?”

  He didn’t turn around.

  “I found it in a drawer,” he said.

  “A drawer?”

  I frowned down at Mordecai from my chair, for once taller than him. He perched on the edge of a stool, turning a piece of chalk in his hands, not meeting my eye. One knee jittered up and down; the heel of his boot tapped on the floor. He seemed to be considering some other, more acceptable answer to my question. Then he looked sharply up at me.

  “Where did those burns on your hands come from? What happened to your crow?”

  Now I looked away. Mordecai said nothing else. When I looked back he was running his hands through his hair, trying to smooth it down; it drifted up again in a white haze. His hair looked bleached by sun and sea, though he never went outside. His skin, too, was always pale; it looked lightly powdered, as though it wore a thin brine crust. He turned on his stool to face the blackboard and added a point to his grid. He took a deep breath and said, “He was looking for you in the night. I heard him.”

  My legs buckled. I dropped down onto the chair and gripped the edges of the seat.

  “Calm yourself, he is gone. I heard him out there, after you came in, searching up and down the halls, but there has been no sound for hours. He must have given up.”

  I pulled my knees up, locked my arms around them, and hid my face. A coppery smell rose from the bodice of my frock, where my crow had been.

  Mordecai’s stool scraped on the floor and I heard him tiptoe over to my chair. He attempted to pat my hand, tapping it lightly a few times with three long white fingers. A few moments later I heard him begin to pace back and forth.

  “Mercy …”

  I lifted my head slightly and peered up from between my knees at Mordecai. He was standing with his hands clasped behind him, rocking on his heels, the hectic glint in his eye even brighter.

  “I had planned to tell you later, but now …”

  Mordecai flashed out a book from behind his back and thrust it in the air—a logbook, bound in frayed green linen, salt-stained.

  “I have found it! The missing link!”

  I looked at him, waiting.

  He laid the book down and turned to his board. I saw that he had drawn more points on the grid since I last looked, a scattering of white circles, and that he had labeled the lines of his grid with numbers. With a series of quick twitches, he now connected the white points with his chalk. He stood aside and swept a trembling hand across the surface of the blackboard, glancing eagerly at me.

  I looked more closely and saw that the numbers on the grid were latitudes and longitudes. The connected points now described a rough shape.

  Mordecai picked up his pointer and tapped it here and there on the map as he spoke, his voice coming faster and faster.

  “Certainly there were some troubling incongruities; allowances must of course always be made for slight deviations in the lunar tables, not to mention the”—here Mordecai snorted—“predictable inaccuracies of the seaman’s less than keen observations … nevertheless, I have long suspected that the aberration in the southern loop was not a singular deviation but a periodic recurrence, mirrored in the northern portion … and we must certainly not neglect the effect of the currents at forty-one degrees and thirty-four minutes north, seventy-one degrees and ninety-five minutes west, owing to the Doldrums Trench—”

  “Mordecai …”

  He peered closely at the board, scratching his forehead, leaving a long white streak of chalk.

  “I am in fact nearly tempted to shift my route half a point north-northeast—”

  “Mordecai!” I shouted. I stood up from my chair, my hands clenched at my sides, my face hot. “What does this have to do with anything?”

  He started and slowly straightened up from the map. I had seldom seen him smile before; his eyes shone and his mouth stretched in a grin that looked painful. He opened his arms wide.

  “The path of Leviathan!” He stabbed at the bottom right corner of the blackboard. The legend now read: “Route of the Spermaceti from Summer to Winter Waters.” “They traverse the waters of the globe from pole to pole in their migration. I plotted, from the logs, the rhythms of the sperm, when and where the ships harvested the greatest numbers. They do not move at random, as sailors have so long thought. The mighty sperm departed their summer grounds off Antarctica three months ago, in late July. Based on my calculat
ions, they are on their way north, now approaching the forty-second parallel. They may, in fact, have already begun to arrive. They will stream through for days and days.” His pointer tapped at a circle near the center of the map. “Just beyond the Stark Archipelago.” He picked up the green journal again and shook it at me. “I finally found the missing segment, I needed only these last coordinates to confirm it.”

  I tried to take it all in. “The Stark Archipelago?”

  “Scarcely ten leagues away!”

  I stared at Mordecai’s map. I thought of whales, live sperm whales, of what it might be like to see one, its great blunt head thrusting through the waves. I had never seen any whale nor any spout, though I had often scanned the sea. I thought of being out on open water, away from this house, away from Mama and that man and what had happened on the walk. But what I saw when I looked at Mordecai’s blackboard was not the map or the whales or Mama but the face of my lost brother, his features mapped in chalk like stars in a black sky.

  It had been nearly ten years. Why should this not be the year that Papa finally returned, in the wake of the whales? Why else would I have heard the singing voice that night, as living as mine, calling out to me across the water, from a ship not on the other side of the world but just a few leagues away?

  Mordecai picked up his chalk and drew an X on the Stark Archipelago. “And perhaps, just perhaps, when we find the whales we will find your papa!”

  He had read my mind.

  We would go to find the whales, and Papa too. And with him my brother. I felt a flood of joy.

  Mordecai’s grin faded.

  “We must leave now, before it’s too light.”

  He did not say before the intruder might come back, but he didn’t need to.

  “I’m ready,” I heard myself say. “I … what will I need? I don’t …”

  Mordecai cleared his throat.

  “I have anticipated somewhat and have taken the liberty …” He nodded toward a shadowy corner. A row of mismatched suitcases and sailors’ ditty bags huddled there. “I have packed your clothing and gloves and boots and”—he flushed, on his white skin a faint pink—“various necessities. I need only collect a few more items.”

  Mordecai picked up two large leather satchels and began bustling around the attic, opening and closing cabinets, rummaging through bins. Into one bag he slid a stack of books, bundles of papers, a box full of writing instruments. He set the bags down to dash a few notes into a small journal, copying off the blackboard, tossed it into one of the bags, and picked them up again. Continuing quickly around the room, he picked up his favorite treasures, adding some to the bags, setting others back down.

  There was a rap at the door. I jumped and put a hand over my mouth; Mordecai dropped an armillary sphere, shattering the outer planets. My crow’s head appeared around the edge of the door and he croaked loudly, flapping his wings.

  I hunched a valise under one arm, picked up two more bags, and headed for the door. I stood looking back at Mordecai, waiting.

  He tossed a sextant and a roll of charts into one satchel, hung the ditty bags around his neck, and picked up both satchels again, looking longingly at three suitcases that remained with no one to carry them. He hurried toward the door and, before reaching it, stopped abruptly, then took a step backward. His gaze traveled slowly around the attic. His eyes lost their manic gleam.

  I wondered how long it had been since he had walked out of Rathbone House. Maybe he never had.

  Mordecai took a deep breath. He set the satchels down, picked up a broken telescope from his table and with it shattered the glass case over the eye of the giant squid. He popped the eye in his breast pocket, picked up the satchels again, and together we hurried out the attic door.

  We moved as quickly as we could along the twists and turns, trying to be quiet, our cases bumping on the corners in the narrow halls. As we neared the hallway where I had last seen the man in blue, I slowed down, afraid to turn the corner and find him lying there in the middle of the hall, gigantic, blood crusting on his face where my crow had gouged it. I imagined trying to squeeze past, my skin tingling, not sure if the man were dead or alive. Hearing his giant’s breath. Seeing his great chest heave, his eyes snap open—

  “Mercy!” cried Mordecai.

  I blinked. The hallway was open and bright. The first rays of the sun were washing in from the white rooms.

  Mordecai took my hand and pulled me along—my crow flew out from the last room and clutched my shoulder, cawing—around the last corner, down all the stairs, and out the front door, into the light and the fresh salt air and toward the harbor.

  And that is how our odyssey began.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MOUSE ISLAND

  {in which the wives of Moses make Mercy over}

  MORDECAI GROANED, DROPPING a suitcase to throw an arm across his face as we ran down the lawn toward the sea. I glanced back but saw only the open door, the house rearing up behind us. Crow, scouting ahead, circled back and flew just above us, his wings casting a shadow over our faces as we ran. He shrieked and banked sharply to the right, toward the cliff where the lawn dropped away to the surf. I followed, pulling at the tail of Mordecai’s coat.

  “No, this way, we must go to the harbor.” Mordecai took his arm away from his eyes to pull me the other way, then put it back, moaning.

  I spotted an opening in the green, the stair of tumbled boulders that led to the beach. I tossed my bags down and leapt from rock to rock to the sand.

  Mordecai sat huddled on the grass at the top of the boulders, wincing. The sunlight must hurt his eyes, I realized. I’d never seen him outside before. I untied my cloak and threw it up to him. He wrapped it around his face and hugged his knees, rocking.

  The blue skiff lay on the beach, overturned in dune grass. The paint was wind-scoured, the oarlocks rusty, and it had never been tested in open sea. But it seemed sound, and there was no other choice. I squatted, reached both hands under the side of the hull, and heaved it over. The oars tumbled out. A crowd of pink crabs scuttled from the seaweed that had drifted underneath. I tossed my bags and the oars into the skiff and hurried to the stern. Digging the toes of my boots into the sand, I started pushing the boat toward the water.

  Mordecai groped his way down the rocks, my cloak still draped over his face, and helped me push through the surf. When the skiff started to float I hopped in. He pushed us farther out, then climbed in and lowered himself onto the seat in the stern, wedging his suitcases between the benches, and doubling his long legs up like a crane to fit. The boat was far too small for him. I sat in the bow, set the oars in the shafts, and began to row. Mordecai leaned over and tucked his head between his knees, breathing hard.

  My heart began to slow as the oars steadied. Crow hunched on my shoulder, canting his head at the gulls overhead, hopping with a squawk each time I finished pulling a stroke and leaned forward again. My skiff moved well against scant wind, through a low chop of waves. The dawn fog lifted from the surface as I rowed, a layer of warm light taking its place, as though it rose from the sea.

  “Let me row.” Mordecai tried to hoist himself up and fell back again, panting. His breathing was so labored from so brief an effort that I wondered if he had ever run before this day. He raised one arm again, across his eyes. When had he last seen the sun?

  At first when I looked up over the water between us and the shore, only the top of the house showed above the cliff face. As I rowed, the lower floors slowly tilted into view. The widow’s walk, still in shadow, crowned the roof, pricked with lightning rods and topped with weathervanes of maritime form: a merman, a manatee, a compass rose. Under the walk, the white columns of the unfinished third floor stood against a pale wash of sky. To the west, between two pediments, Mordecai’s attic sloped; then the red brick of the second floor, its multipaned windows topped with keystones. Below the second story were the heavy timbers of the bottom floor, squat and dark, with small grated windows low to the ground. Now and th
en I glanced up at the house as I rowed. Though the hill on which it stood grew indistinct as the distance increased, the house itself seemed to me no smaller. A few other houses, none as large as ours, were hidden among the trees west of the high ground on which Rathbone House stood; once inhabited by competitors to my family in the whaling trade, they had long stood empty.

  By now we were about half a mile from the house. To the east lay the harbor I had not seen in many years, and never from so far away. My only voyages had been short excursions in the cove, searching with the crows for specimens for my lessons, or hugging the shore west of the house. Mama didn’t approve of my lingering near the docks where the whalers passed their time between trips, though no whaleman had docked there in nearly ten years. A few fishermen remained in the town of Naiwayonk, a cluster of cottages along the shore. Dories and smacks bobbed against the docks, masts tilting. The shapes of men moved through fog. Beyond the docks, on the far side of the harbor, the trying sheds where the whales were once boiled still commanded the western point, their high double doors locked for generations. According to Mordecai, in Great-Great-Grandfather’s time you could see the mammoth cauldrons through the open doors, the trying fires burning bright.

  The air this far from shore had no trace of tidal rot, of old fish and weed turned again and again in the surf, only keen clear gusts from the open sea. A sharp breeze blew the fog into tatters; the watery blue of the sky began to strengthen. The surface of the sea was a vivid green, brisk with whitecaps. I began to feel as though my mind were clearing as well, though I wasn’t yet ready to regard straight-on what I’d seen the night before: piercing glimpses of the broad back of the man in blue, of my mother turning away from me.

  I reapplied myself to my oars until the house was distant and the harbor too far for even the faint cries of fishermen to carry. Though my arms began to ache it felt good to stretch them, and I took comfort in the steady rhythm of my rowing. I heard only the splash of the oars, the water humming along my hull. Crow, lulled by the motion of the boat, tucked his head beneath his wing and dozed. My other shoulder felt bare; I tried not to think of my lost companion. My gaze drifted over the side to find a school of flounder swimming nearby, all their eyes looking up at me. The water was so clear; I could see far under the surface. I let go the oars and stared for a while. The flat, silvery fish swam tight together to form the shape of one large flounder. They drifted apart, then reformed, keeping always just alongside my skiff. Beneath them groves of kelp spiraled from far below and jellyfish pulsed and swayed. Some larger fish slid below the silver school, its dark scales shimmering in the clear green. I lay my head on my knees, wondering what Mama was doing now, how long it would be before she noticed I was gone.