The Rathbones

by Janice Clark

  “Nonsense.” Mordecai sniffed. “He might easily have purchased such specimens from other sailormen in his rovings, or in ports. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, forsake the worthiest of foes.”

  I looked across the dry little isle. The tide had by then begun to encircle it. I remembered how the latter emperors of Rome had sent their enemies and unruly daughters away to such places as this, accompanied only by one idiot or deaf-mute servant instructed to slowly starve or poison his charge.

  The traced map lay on top of Mordecai’s stack of books. I picked it up and lay it in my lap, smoothing the thin paper carefully. I thought of the map Mama and I had made in her room, many years ago. Her face had been lit by candles, a softer light than that of sperm oil, which burns a clear, bright white, and the fire had glowed warm in the hearth. She wore a gown of sunlit blue, and her hair lay pale and loose on her shoulders. She pulled my chair close to hers and leaned in to show me a running stitch on the sampler on my knee, patiently correcting my meandering lines of thread. Her skin smelled of sharp lavender and the piney soap she liked. She took me up on her lap and held me close, my back against her breast. I leaned and ran my fingers over what she stitched on her frame: an image of the globe, the kind that is like the skin of an orange, cut and spread flat—glossy continents of silk thread, green and sand and russet, oceans chain-stitched in long smooth waves. She spoke the names of the places to which Papa had sailed.

  “The Marquesas.”

  She took my hand in hers and we pricked the place with her needle.

  “New Caledonia. Fiji. Tonga.”

  On each island we made an X of thread.

  Mordecai plucked the map from my hand, startling me from my reverie. He placed the map carefully between two pages of Birds of Stream and Shore and slapped it shut.

  “I will make all of the arrangements. Captain Avery will carry us north. I will need to inquire as to our current speed, but certainly we will make up the lost time in a few days.” He shot me a bright, triumphant look. “Then we will join your papa in pursuit of the whales! We will sail with him all the way north, to where the route of the sperm turns to circle back again: the southwest tip of Greenland, just off Qaqortoq.” He slid his stolen books into the portfolio and started to tie the strings.

  Watching his hands, I began to see another pair of hands, tying not strings but a rope, large hands guiding my own through the turns of some complex knot. I had always thought the sailors on the dock taught me, but now I was sure it had been Papa. I remembered how I’d sat in his lap, his arms wrapped around me to guide my hands. The hard skin of his palms, brown arms whitened by salt. How he smelled of the salt sea with a tinge of burned tar, and a clean oily smell, like the inside of the empty shells that wash up on the beach. Running my finger along his hand, tracing a deep line on the map of his palm. Now, sitting next to Mordecai, I felt a finger touch my own palm. My heart turned over in my chest. I jumped up, rubbing my hand, and began to pace back and forth in the temple.

  I wanted only to be distracted from that touch on my hand, to keep Mordecai talking. “Greenland.” I tried to remember the entry in the G encyclopedia at home. “Isn’t Greenland where the tides race in so fast that ships are thrown onto the rocks and broken to kindling?”

  Mordecai eyed me sidelong.

  “Actually … I believe you’re thinking not of Greenland but of the Bay of Fundy, in the province of Nova Scotia. They are not all that far from each other. Scarcely two thousand miles, a perfectly understandable error. The sea rises from, I believe, 2.4 feet at low tide to 23 feet at high. Astonishing. In fact, during the 12.4-hour tidal period, 115 billion tons of water flow in and out. The indigenous people, the Mi’kmaq Nation, claim that the tides are caused by a vast whale splashing in the water.”

  My hand was itching and sweaty. I ran down the temple steps, into the trees.

  Another image came then, unbidden: the man in blue, chasing me through Rathbone House. I squeezed my eyes shut but there he was. Grasping the collar of my gown, holding me up to examine me. He had gasped at something he had felt while running a broad finger along my spine. The birthmark that floated among the freckles on my back, shaped like a ship. He’d recognized it, because he had seen and felt it years before, on infant skin. He wasn’t some strange man. He was my papa.

  My legs turned to water and I sat hard on the ground. The bright landscape around me turned to black.

  One time when Mama let me undo her hair, when I was much younger, she told me that I was born at night while the owls were out hunting, when Papa was far out at sea. He was so far away that it was day where he was, and he tried to look beyond the sun, into the dark behind it, to see you. Later, in the atlas, Mordecai showed me where my father’s ship had been when I was born, pointing to two lines crossing in the deepest blue deep of the Indian Ocean, on the far side of the world. I used to dream that if I could have dropped a line straight from my cradle with a lead plumb, down through the center of the earth, that the molten core might transform it into an anchor that would catch his ship and hold it fast, and I could draw him home to me, pull by pull, hand over hand.

  I lay down and buried my face in my hands. Crow landed on my shoulder, pushing a soft wing against my neck. That voice in the hall, calling out for me to wait—remembered from a dream, I had thought. Bawling out my name from the sea, as Mordecai and I struggled to get away. I must have heard it at least once before. My father must have visited me, to know the ship that floated on my back, must have spoken my name at least once for me to remember the sound of his voice.

  I didn’t recognize him that night on the walk. He hadn’t known me either, at first. Maybe he was shocked at the way I looked, not like Mama but like one of the old Rathbones, and thought I was someone else’s child. Or surprised that I was so old and still so small.

  After a while I walked slowly back to the temple and sat on a step, staring down at the map, which Mordecai had laid aside while he eagerly paged through other books. On the right of the map, across the Atlantic, only a narrow strip of the western coast of all the great expanse of Africa was visible. I wished I could see farther into the interior, could slip under the border and find some dark and coastless place. I wished Papa had gone there and stayed there, far from the ocean, far from the walk where he rutted Mama and left again. And not just once. Mordecai said he had spied on them many times over the years. Papa had been in the house again and again and never stayed, never spoke to me. Why had he come back now? I wished that he had stayed away altogether and found a desert whose dry swells would make another kind of sea, one from which he could never sail again.

  I knew then that I must tell Mordecai about Papa. That he had found his uncle after all, not on some distant misty ship but in Rathbone House. I would crush Mordecai’s triumph at having discovered Papa’s true and noble path.

  What would he say when I told him that the man in blue was not some mysterious stranger but Benadam Gale himself? It must have been hard enough for Mordecai to think that Mama had put him in the attic so that her husband wouldn’t know of her adultery. But there was no Captain Tayles. I couldn’t think why Mama would have called Papa that. Mordecai must have misheard.

  Mama had no real reason to have put Mordecai in the attic and left him there, alone. And his uncle Benadam knew and didn’t care. Or maybe he was ignorant, since he never visited either Mordecai or me. It was hard to say which was worse.

  Mordecai snatched the map away, prattling on again about longitudes and latitudes and the details of his route. Through his drone I heard a clipping sound and saw a movement on the other side of the temple. A man knelt there among the fallen columns, snipping the tufts of grass that sprouted between the paving stones with a pair of shears. Rather than a gardener’s smock, he wore a short toga such as the Greeks wore, and on his head a garland woven of mountain laurel. He lifted his face to us and I saw by the white cast of his irises that he was blind.

  “Visitors, am I right? I’d know your voices, otherwise.
Family never comes anymore, they’re usually at that Chinee gewgaw now. This one was always my favorite, so I keep it up. It doesn’t take much to keep it in trim.” I watched him work. With his free hand he constantly felt what he couldn’t see. He didn’t clip the tufts of grass smooth but worked to make them more unkempt. After a few minutes he put aside his shears and lifted a basket full of dead leaves, scattering them over the stones. “The Italian Grotto, though”—he gestured with his shears back toward the main island, toward a dark opening in a cluster of jagged rocks near the shore—“I’ve let that go. Never liked crawling around in them caves. Too damp.” He stood to feel along a twist of the vine entwining a column, his fingers running over a few wizened fruits. “Besides, I’m fond of the olives. Though there’s few enough I can coax out of this soil, and the birds take most all of them.”

  “Birds? What sort of birds?” Mordecai’s head snapped up.

  The gardener jerked his head back over his shoulder, toward a tall poplar nearby; among its branches I could see dark forms and hear munching sounds and low cackles. “Oh. Those.” Mordecai snorted and returned to his map.

  Crow, who had been napping on my shoulder, was now wide awake and uneasy, shifting from foot to foot, speaking to himself in a low chatter, and flicking his wings. From between the branches of the poplar a large glossy crow emerged, in its beak a fat olive, and stepped onto a low bough that began to bounce. A female, I thought. Crow hopped down from my shoulder, snatched a lizard from a tuft of grass, and flew to an unbroken stretch of pediment at the top of the temple, along which he began to strut, the lizard dangling from his beak.

  The gardener clutched his vine. “This is all they’ve left me. Not even a jar’s worth.”

  Mordecai looked up with an absent air. “It is simple enough to keep them away. You need only scatter the droppings of a natural rival, such as the starling, or the jackdaw, any of the Gracula, on the stones, and they will keep well away from your vines.”

  The man rose, brushed his hands on his toga, and made his way along the columns to where Mordecai sat. He felt for Mordecai’s hand, grasped it, and pumped vigorously. “Sir, I’m very grateful. Very grateful indeed.” Mordecai, looking a little startled, smiled, then turned back to his book.

  Crow flew up to join the female on her branch, whether in hope of an olive or her favors I wasn’t sure.

  “Beg pardon, I couldn’t help overhearing, sir. You mentioned looking for a Captain Gale? I may be able to lend you a hand.”

  Mordecai waved the gardener away impatiently. “No, no, thank you, there is no need, I have his bearings exactly.” He peered closely at the red line on his drawing and poked at it with a dry twig. “Let me see … he has by now passed Wellfleet, perhaps is even now looking into Cape Cod Bay.” He went back to his map, chuckling to himself.

  The gardener felt for my arm and led me down the temple steps, away from Mordecai. “Beg pardon, miss,” he said in a low voice, “but Wellfleet ain’t in it. Captain Gale, he’s on an island just up the coast. Not a morning’s sail away.”

  My heart slammed in my chest.

  “Benadam Gale,” I said.

  “Yes, yes, Benadam Gale. My people live out on the peninsula, a few miles inland from the island. Benadam, that’s the name. All the Gales used to live there. My brother mentioned seeing him on Arcady when he passed, let me see … a month ago, give or take.”

  “Arcady?”

  I was sure I had misheard. He couldn’t mean the island of Mama’s bedtime stories.

  “Lovely place. Tall bluffs, I remember, rosy pink. Never seen rocks that color before; wish I could see them now. Pine and balsam thick as Eden, and a waterfall springing right off the cliffs into the sea.”

  He began to scratch out a map on a paving stone with the point of his shears, feeling along the line with his hand, warning me of the shoals and explaining the channels, speaking of how he had known the coast and all the islands from boyhood, before his eyes failed.

  “Yes, Gale was there, on Arcady. My brother used to see them, Gale and his boy, coming and going. Whaling. Didn’t mention the boy this time, though, wonder if he was along?” The gardener stopped his scratching for a moment and tilted his head up at me. “Mr. Gale a friend of yours?”

  A face swam up in the air, so bright I blinked: a young boy’s face, ruddy and forthright, green eyes shining, so near I put my hand out to touch his cheek. His lips were moving, but no sound came. The image shimmered for an instant, then wavered and disappeared.

  I turned away, my hand over my mouth, waiting for my breath to slow. I felt again as I had felt that first night when I heard his song sound out true and clear. My wrist felt suddenly bare. My hand went to my wrist, but my brother’s bracelet wasn’t there. I had been wearing it since we left Rathbone House and had shown it to Mordecai on the Able, but couldn’t remember having noticed it since then.

  I questioned the gardener eagerly about the boy he had seen with Papa, asking when he had seen him, what he had looked like, was there anything else he could recall. The old man tried to call up a clearer memory, then shook his head slowly.

  From across the water came the soft slap of oars. The dinghy, rowed by the mate, was on its way to fetch Mordecai and me. It was nearly twilight, and the Able hovered out in the sound.

  “Come, Mercy. Greenland ho!” Mordecai caressed his map, folded it, put it in his breast pocket, and began to gather his things. He had heard nothing of my conversation with the gardener.

  Mordecai hoisted his bags and we said our farewells to the gardener. The water that encircled the little temple had grown with the tide from a narrow ribbon to a gurgling stream; we jumped over it and headed back to the main island.

  Installed once again on the Able’s deck, we looked over the rail, back at the Stark Archipelago, squinting against the sun that hung low in a dusky sky. With the making tide, the temple on its mound had become a true island. The gardener had moved on, to tend some other Stark folly.

  I felt Mordecai’s eye on me. Glancing up, I found him looking at me curiously. I held the image of my brother close and said nothing. Something about the cant of Mordecai’s head reminded me sharply of Roderick and of the elder Starks.

  “Mordecai.”

  “Hmmm?” He was deep in his stack of books again.

  “Why did the Starks react that way to the Rathbone name?”

  Mordecai, looking up, sniggered. “If the old ones had seen me it would have been far worse. They detest the Rathbones.”

  “But I don’t understand. Why should they hate us?”

  He put his nose back in his book.

  I pulled the book from his hands and held it behind my back. He started to reach for it, then his eyes drifted to the stack of books he had not yet touched. He picked up the next and was instantly absorbed.

  Captain Avery, who had been in the foretop with his glass, slid down a backstay. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. Leaning on the taffrail, he looked back at the Stark house and shook his head.

  “A handsome family, they were, you have only to look at those old paintings. But all the looks drained out and never came back again.”

  I looked back, too. The main island was by then shadowy, though the house, high on its hill, glowed in rosy light from the setting sun. Through the trees I saw a movement at a window high up in the house. A curtain moved aside, a tall figure stood looking out: Roderick, watching us sail away. I saw him as clearly as though he were beside me on the deck. He stood stiff and still in the jade-green robe, his powdered wig askew above his pale face.

  “All hard to look at. Not like your mother.”

  I had pulled out Mordecai’s journal and was attempting to draw my brother as I now knew he looked, while the image was still strong in my mind. I looked sharply up at the captain’s words.

  “Captain Avery, do you know my mother?”

  Avery looked at me, startled, for once speechless, though only for a moment.

  “No, n
o. That is to say, I’ve seen her up in the house, just from deck, you know, close enough to know she’s a handsome woman.” He mopped his face again, then folded his handkerchief and folded again until it was a tiny square, which he popped in his pocket.

  I drew him by the arm along the railing, away from Mordecai.

  “Was there ever … did you ever see her with a boy?” I whispered.

  “Boy? Don’t remember any boy.” Avery rubbed his chin, hitched his pants, and looked up at the rigging. “That topsail could use another reef or two. I’ll lend you a hand,” he yelled to the mate. He ran up the rigging and passed behind a stretched sail and so out of view.

  I went back to Mordecai and bent over the map with him, tracing our route north toward Greenland, a route that would take us past an island with tall pink cliffs.

  Something shifted in the pocket of my skirt. I reached in and pulled out the bundle of envelopes I had stuffed in my pocket. I had meant to put them back but in the rush had forgotten. The writing on the outermost envelope was too faded to make out. I pulled out a letter of several pages and unfolded it. The salutation read “Dear Mother.” I turned to the last page; the signature, in a tall, elegant script, read “Lydia.”

  Avery’s voice floated down from the foretop.

  “Now, let me see … the old man, the one with the mustachios, Percival Stark? His aunts, I believe, married into the Rathbones. So that would be, what, three generations back. There were three girls, now what were they called? Lydia. Lydia was the eldest …”

  Captain Avery talked on. As with my great-great-aunt’s account of Hepzibah, it was an incomplete tale, one whose bare stretches I would later weave with all that I found in Lydia’s letters.

  I called Crow to me and sent him off, over the water.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE GOLDEN GIRLS

  {in which the Stark sisters meet their matches}

  1800

  LYDIA STARK DIDN’T at first notice the unfamiliar boat. Her eyes were fixed instead on the dock where her brothers’ ship was making ready to sail on the morning tide. The Venture had begun loading before dawn. She and her sisters had been watching since first light, leaning over the parapet at the end of the lawn, looking down at the harbor.