by Janice Clark
“I do apologize, Miss Palmer, it’s something of a challenge, getting through this hall … permit me.”
He struck a path, his legs deftly nudging light boudoir chairs and heavy breakfronts out of the way. I started to follow in his wake, but Mordecai held me back.
“I will just have a quick look at the library. You will be fine without me. Engage them in witty banter. Repartee,” he whispered, with a flourish of his hand.
“But I don’t know them, I have nothing to say.”
“Constrict your conversation to the mundane. The weather. Cookery.” He considered. “Crustaceans. I will have the merest peek and then we’ll be off to see the whales.” He cast a hungry look toward the library. “Perhaps a bit longer. Meet me on the east side of the house in, let us say, half an hour.” He began to creep away, then stopped and turned around.
“Oh, and by the by, you do know them, in a manner of speaking. This is where your mother’s people came from, generations ago. Your mama is descended from the Starks, on her mother’s side, and so are you. And I.”
Descended from the Starks? I stopped short and knocked up against a tallboy; a porcelain shepherdess and her flock fell from a shelf and shattered. Roderick, not hearing, or used to such accidents, given the ornaments that cluttered every surface in the hall, forged on.
I had never really considered any ancestors but those whose portraits hung on the stair. If asked, I might have said that the first Rathbone was begotten by the sea itself.
In a loud whisper Mordecai called back, “Oh, and this is important: Do not mention the Rathbones. Or Naiwayonk. I’ll explain later.” He skirted an unstable stack of footstools and scuttled away toward the southeast corner of the house.
I looked with fresh eyes at Roderick as he strode on. His tall, slender form reminded me so much of Mordecai’s. I hurried to catch up with him and soon we’d reached the dining salon.
We entered between two crouched dragons of glazed green porcelain, each taller than me. The room and its occupants were in thrall to the same Oriental airs as Roderick. The walls were hung with pale green silk figured with court scenes from an ancient dynasty, lit at intervals by hanging lanterns with garnet paper shades. The floor was cushioned with thick fringed carpets in rich patterns that I thought my great-great-aunts might have admired. In the center of the room a peaked tent of persimmon silk sheltered several low couches around a low black table laden with dishes. The tent was lit by more of the hanging lanterns, whose light shone through the translucent silk walls so that the tent glowed scarlet in the dim twilight, as did the faces of the robed diners who reclined within. Roderick parted a silk panel and we entered into air that swirled with smoke of a heady but pleasant odor. I collected myself, smoothing my braids and the front of my gown, and looked around me. Roderick spoke to an old man on a low brocade settee.
“Grandfather, allow me to present Miss Luna Palmer of …”
I thought quickly. “Of Narragansett Bay.” Narragansett was many leagues east on the map; I hoped that the Starks knew no one there. I wanted to blurt out who I was and ask a hundred questions, but Mordecai had been so insistent.
The elder Mr. Stark peered at me from under a flat silk hat with long fringes that swung back and forth over his brow. He was just visible through a blue haze of smoke from a long-stemmed pipe lodged in a corner of his mouth. His face had the same harsh cragginess as Roderick’s. Was he some old uncle of mine, Mama’s great-uncle? He wore a saffron robe over embroidered pantaloons and had a long thin mustache of gleaming black. His eyebrows, plucked into a surprised arch, were the same youthful black, at odds with his aged face. He reached for a delicate teacup, but his fingernails were so long that they curled back in a circle and he couldn’t grasp the tiny handle. His nails clicked uselessly against the china for a moment, then he leaned over and slurped directly from the cup.
“From near Newport, are you then, Miss Palmer?” he asked in a thin, quavering voice. I tried not to notice the way his mustache trailed in his tea.
“Quite near.” I knew a little of Newport from Captain Avery’s chatter. He said it was a summer residence of wealthy city people.
The elder Stark’s eye had a wary gleam. I was afraid he saw something familiar in my face, but my appearance would in no way suggest Rathbone to anyone who knew our family, such of it as remained. I was so small and dark compared to Mama and Mordecai.
“Palmer, you say? And your mother’s family?”
I lunged for a tea biscuit, stalling, then blurted out: “Have you frequently visited Newport, Mr. Stark? There are so many fine homes on the hills above the harbor, though none surpasses yours.”
The elder Stark’s sharp look softened. With a gratified air, he turned his attention to a tureen of soup in which a bird’s nest floated. I breathed out.
I continued to make my way around the table with Roderick, curtseying at each introduction, wondering if I might be expected instead to prostrate myself, as one does before the Eastern potentates.
“My grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Percival Stark. My parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Stark, and my sister, Miss Lucretia Stark.” Each nodded his head in vague recognition, then returned to his tea.
There was no doubt that all were of Roderick’s family: each had the same grim look, including an infant Stark, attended by a nurse. All wore richly worked Oriental garments and glossy black wigs that only made their faces look more barren. The elder Starks had attempted to adorn their faces with paint and powder, but nothing comfortably adhered; through lead-white the forbidding cheeks still showed, like the guano-laden cliffs west of our docks at home. All were alike but Roderick’s mother: She had a fair complexion and wore her heavy golden hair twisted up in a comb, disdaining a wig. She was quite pretty, though nowhere near as lovely as Mama. Clearly it was Roderick’s mother who had married into the Stark family. But the mother’s beauty had not found its way into any of her three children. In the infant Stark, who was wigless, though in a little frogged coolie suit of blue silk, I saw some faint evidence of the mother’s fairness. But a glance at Roderick’s sister, near to him in age, showed me that the ugliness had only been lying in wait like an eel in its cave.
Roderick led me to a silk divan. “Please, sit down.”
He saw that I hesitated; the seat of the divan was as high as my waist. He hurried out the door, returning moments later with a chair of the correct proportions, fished from the hall. I tried not to mind its childish pattern of nursery figures. Roderick sat close by me, on the silk divan.
“What may we offer you, Miss Palmer?” Mrs. Stark asked, gesturing listlessly at the tea table.
Bowls and dishes of food crowded the table from edge to edge. In the center was a large gilded platter filled with pickled vegetables in glowing shades of ruby and emerald, thinly sliced and cut into the shapes of phoenixes and dragons, arranged around a central mound of steaming meats.
“Perhaps a taste of braised shih-shih tsu?”
She speared a thin pink slice onto my plate. It smelled of wet dog.
Roderick leaned over and slid the plate away. His gray face reddened, and he was frowning. He leaned closer to me and whispered, “I’m so sorry. My family is … unaccustomed to visitors.” He sat up straight and in a louder voice said, “May we find something more familiar for you, Miss Palmer?”
“Oh. Just a biscuit would be lovely, please.”
“Come, something a little more piquant?” Mrs. Stark insisted. She pushed a bowl toward me. Several small jellyfish pulsed in a bed of seaweed dyed jade-green. “Or a taste of Golden Eyes? Burning Brain?”
“Please don’t trouble yourself … A simple egg?”
Mrs. Stark leaned over the soup tureen and plucked a small speckled egg from the bird’s nest that floated there. I recognized it as the egg of a quail, though of a startling cobalt blue. It had scarcely touched down on my plate before it was snatched away by the elder Mr. Stark.
“I’m certain Miss Palmer would prefer a hen’s egg?”<
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I nodded gratefully as Mr. Stark set a plain white egg on my plate; I was by then quite hungry. I cracked the shell with the edge of my spoon and out fell an unborn chick, in its beak a large pearl. I lay down my spoon. Mr. Stark popped the quail egg, unshelled, into his mouth, closing his eyes as he crunched, his teeth turning blue.
Mr. and Mrs. Stark began to argue about the relative merits of pickled quail and duck eggs, then lapsed into languid sampling of the many dishes at hand. I finally selected a dried sea cucumber and lay it on my plate.
I thought of the dining room in Rathbone House. How different meals were at home. I ate alone, at the great round table in the dining room on the second floor. Larboard brought my unvarying dinner of broth and stewed fruit, while Starboard polished the long rows of plates that ringed the dining room, ranging from the old wood trenchers of ships’ messes to bright porcelain to bone china of refined design. There were no arguments. There were no conversations at all, except for those I sometimes made up when I was younger, moving around the table to take each part: “Good morning, darling, I hope you slept well?” Papa would say; “Fine, Papa, and you?” I would reply. Papa would turn to Mama and say, “How are the roses coming along, Verity, my dear?” In truth, there were no roses. Though there had once been formal gardens behind the house, with orchards and box hedges, now only a few tree stumps dotted the barren ground. Sighing, I bit cautiously at the tip of my sea cucumber.
“Pardon …” A servant in a crimson silk jacket had appeared at my elbow. He picked up several dishes from the crowded table and set a jade-green plate in front of me. A plain hen’s egg, poached, lay on a fanned bed of buttered toast wedges. I looked over to see Roderick nodding at the plate, smiling at me. His face twitched in what I took to be a wink, though it was difficult to read expression on that blighted face. I gratefully began to eat.
Lunch continued in silence, other than the occasional slurp or crunch from a gluttonous Stark. The elder Mr. Stark drew on his pipe; the infant Stark snuffled at a bottle in the arms of his dozing nurse. I felt Roderick’s eyes on me throughout. Blue smoke eddied and swirled. I wondered about Mordecai. I saw no clocks in the room and doubted that within their robes any Stark concealed a pocket watch, but certainly the better part of an hour had passed.
As I tried to think of a polite excuse to leave, a servant entered the room, in his hands an ebony footstool that I recognized as one of those from Captain Avery’s deck. The elder Starks came suddenly awake. They leapt from their divans and rushed in a body to the outer hall with shrill cries of delight. Through the door I saw Captain Avery’s suite of furniture attractively displayed atop a row of commodes, the captain walking along the row, polishing the legs of his chairs with a handkerchief.
Roderick got up and leaned out the door, calling after his parents, “Mother, please? Father? Not more!”
The Starks ignored him, converging on the chairs, elbowing one another aside to be first to caress each piece.
Roderick, sighing, returned to his seat. “The family Stark, it seems, is about to abandon the mysteries of the Orient for those of the pharaohs.” He looked at me with a faltering smile.
I felt more at ease with the elder Starks gone; only Roderick and his sister remained in the dining salon with me. Lucretia Stark was even more lavishly dressed than her elders. Her glossy black wig rose in diminishing tiers, each draped with pearls, topped with a jeweled cricket in a little bamboo cage. Her golden robe, worked with peonies of silver thread, fit closely from throat to hem. Its sleeves were tight at the shoulder and belled wide at the wrist to fall to the floor. She remained slumped on a divan, eyeing my woolen gown.
“How charming your gown is, Miss Palmer. So … fresh, so unaffected.” She snickered, smoothing the sleeve of her robe, admiring the silver threads shimmering in lantern light. Staring at me, she reached her hand into a bowl of small scarlet sea urchins and began to flick them at me.
Roderick leaned over from his seat next to me and held his arms up to block the little blobs as they flew across the room, but then there was a whistle at the doorway, and Lucretia froze. The striped arm of Avery’s mate slowly appeared from one side, draped in a selection of garments patterned with jackals and ibises. Over the last gown the mate lay a broad collar of beaten gold. Miss Stark dashed for the door.
I was left alone with Roderick. He watched me intently as I sipped my tea.
“Miss Palmer, I hope you won’t think me rude, but … your hair, it’s fascinating. Like Medusa’s.” He looked a little startled, as though he had surprised himself by saying such a thing to me. He hesitated, then continued. “If she’d had your braids instead of snakes, her gaze wouldn’t have turned men to stone.” He reached to pick a scarlet blob from the skirt of my gown, his eyes still on mine, a half smile softening his sharp lips. “I must apologize for my sister.” His eyes traveled up and down my figure. “I think your gown is very charming.”
The blood rushed to my face. I had never before been complimented by a man, only by my great-great-aunts.
I glanced at my reflection in a pier glass framed in bamboo that hung behind Roderick. I supposed I was as pleasant to look at as Roderick’s mother, though my skin was ruddy, what with recent days spent in the sun, where hers was fair, my eyes a vigorous green while hers were a delicate blue. Roderick leaned toward me, holding out a tray of marzipan. I reached to select one in the shape of a nightingale but before I could grasp it, it was snatched away. The little monkey I had glimpsed in the Chinese pavilion on the tiny island now sat on Roderick’s shoulder in its tasseled cap, nibbling the sugared bird. I gripped the chair seat beneath me with both hands. Its gilt carving, damp from the salt air that found its way inside even this enshrouded house, bent off and crumbled in my fingers.
“Are you and your brother on some sort of pleasure cruise?” Roderick asked.
Brother. For an instant I didn’t realize he was speaking of Mordecai, and my heart jumped. Roderick didn’t seem to notice Mordecai’s absence; his focus was wholly on me.
“Avery’s brig seems an odd choice of vessel. Not very comfortable for a young lady, though she’s a fine, weatherly ship.” When Roderick spoke of the Able his eyes shone in his ravaged face.
“Well, yes. Just to take the air for a few days.”
“I envy you. I wish I were at sea.” He turned his head toward the harbor, invisible from that house.
I thought of the crimson barge in which I had seen him languidly rowing. I couldn’t picture him on the open sound. He sighed and pushed a wandering jellyfish back into its bowl.
“I’m home only for a brief visit. I must return to Boston and my studies.”
“Oh? What do you study, Mr. Stark?”
Roderick squirmed in his seat, frowning in a way so like Mordecai that I flinched. He must, after all, be a distant cousin of Mordecai’s and mine.
“I study the history of the arts. My particular field is the Neoclassical.” He turned his cup around and around on its saucer, staring into his tea. “My family’s choice, not mine.” He glanced down at his clothes and back up at me. “As is my clothing.”
“What would you prefer to study?” I asked.
Roderick sat with his elbows on his knees, head in hands. “Oh, I don’t know. Something more useful than the significance of first phase Classicism in the Louis XVI style,” he said with a weak laugh.
“Well, then why don’t you study something useful?”
Roderick looked startled.
“Oh, well, my parents would never … That is, I couldn’t possibly …”
He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, and lapsed into thought.
“Mr. Stark, I was wondering …”
I wanted to ask him what he knew about my family, about our connection, but strident voices came from the hall. I turned in my chair to look out into the hall.
The elder Starks were attempting to bargain with Captain Avery over an ebony armchair.
“Pirate! Not a penny over fifty!
” shrieked the elder Mr. Stark, waving his pipe violently.
Captain Avery calmly shook his head.
“Two hundred it is and two hundred it stays,” he said, crossing his arms.
“One hundred and fifty! You must take one hundred and fifty!” Mr. Stark clawed at the captain’s arm with his long nails, but the captain stood firm.
The women’s shrill voices joined in, screeching out figures. The mate, now wearing the collar of beaten gold, ran past the door, Miss Stark running after him. When some heavy piece of furniture, or an embattled Stark, struck the floor, the lanterns above our tea table bounced and jangled on their chains and the flames of their candles wavered. No whale oil was used in this house, I had noticed, only wax. A faint dust of gold from the scrolled ceiling drifted down onto Roderick’s wig and into our tea.
Surely Mordecai was outside waiting for me by now; or he might still be in the library. I began to fidget with my braids and tap my foot.
“Shall we take a turn?” asked Roderick. I glanced in the direction Mordecai had gone; I had no ready excuse to escape Roderick. I would try to lead him in that direction and find a way to evade him when we were closer to the library.
We toured the perimeter of the great hall, squeezing along the narrow lane between wall and furniture. The walls were as thick with paintings as the floor was with decorative objects, still lifes, portraits, and landscapes ranging through the same discarded styles as the furniture. Roderick stopped now and then to point out portraits of his ancestors among the crowded ranks. Near the front of the hall the men and women depicted in the paintings looked much like the living Starks, reclining on various couches and settees in lavish clothing, and equally unfortunate in appearance.
Toward the back of the hall, Roderick stopped below a large painting that stood out in its plainspoken style: A robust, handsome man in simple tradesman’s clothing stood on a dock, surrounded by barrels and crates stamped with a trademark. Looking more closely, I made out an S of rope framed by adzes and chisels. Behind the portrait subject was a busy port scene with men hurrying along docks, a brisk sea, and open sky.
