The Rathbones

by Janice Clark

  At the end of the row of chairs, between Mama’s room and the door to the walk, sat Starboard on a stool, not dead after all. He bent over a small writing desk, on top of which stood an inkwell and an hourglass. He was making notes in an open ledger, his head wobbling on its stalk. The door to the hatchway was cracked open. Starboard consulted his pocket watch, turned the glass, and jerked a thumb at the first man in the row. The coal miner stood, smoothed his suit coat, producing a faint puff of coal dust, and passed through the hatchway door, closing it behind him. The other men, prompted by Starboard, all moved down one chair.

  After a few minutes a familiar sound began above. The sound of Mama walking back and forth, I had once thought, but now I knew it for what it was. By their reactions, I judged that the men had not expected to take part in a contest that evening. A few looked at each other, eyes wide and blinking; one glanced up at the ceiling with a puzzled expression, then his brow cleared as he recognized the source of the sound and he turned his gaze quickly down. The men must have expected a more formal interview. I glanced at Captain Avery; he was busily packing his pipe, stuffing it with tobacco until it spilled over.

  The minutes passed. The sand sank in the glass and the rhythmic sounds from above continued. The woodsman consulted a note in his hands, first running a finger along the writing, then closing his eyes and mouthing the words. The farmer stroked a runtling sow that lay in his lap, its neck encircled by a ribbon. Captain Avery began to tap his foot and kept glancing back down the hall, toward the staircase. Now and again sand sifted down from cracks in the ceiling, where light from the walk also burned brightly.

  The sounds above abruptly stopped. A minute later the coal miner slid out the hatchway door and hurried down the hall past the men, head lowered, continuing down the stair past where I crouched behind the column. I pressed back against the wall, but he didn’t look up as he passed. In a few moments I heard the front door quietly open and close. Starboard, having observed the miner closely as he passed, scratched vigorously in his ledger and turned the glass, though its sand had run only half through. He again jerked his thumb.

  The woodsman stood, laying aside his ax and hiking his trousers, and strode through the hatchway. The sounds from above started again. The runtling sow began to squeal loudly. The farmer cuffed it across one ear, at which it fell silent. The four men who remained, looking increasingly troubled, neglected to move down one seat. They attempted to train their gazes on the wall across from their seats or on the floor, avoiding their neighbors’ eyes. The sound above was less steady and forthright than it had been with the coal miner, and the waiting men looked alternately pleased or worried by the faltering sounds.

  I waited on the landing with Crow, as the men waited below, trying to understand why Mama had arranged this gathering of suitors. Papa was still alive, as she well knew. Or maybe he had drowned that day when he swam after Mordecai and me, after all, and the figure I had seen on the sinking island was only a shadow, a shade come back from Hades.

  I watched Starboard at his desk. When the sand had nearly run out I heard the rope ladder creaking behind the hatchway door. The second suitor, the woodsman, was descending. Starboard had by now laid his heavy head on his ledger and fallen asleep. The woodsman snatched up his ax and hurried away. When he had disappeared down the stairs I stood straight, smoothed my skirts, and walked down the hall, Crow firm and steady on my shoulder.

  The four remaining suitors looked up. Captain Avery’s face went red and he jumped up, snatching off his hat.

  “Miss Rathbone, I didn’t … I couldn’t …”

  His face went slack and he looked down at his feet. He took a deep breath and looked up at me. “I always fancied her. Not that she ever talked to me, I only saw her now and again when I was visiting with Bemus. I thought that now, maybe …” He shrugged and smiled. He held a hand out toward me, then snatched it back.

  “Sorry, miss.”

  He put his hat back on, tipped it at me, and walked slowly off toward the stair. What had he called out from the boat? Try not to think too poorly of her … I stared after him.

  When I looked back at the row of men, I found them all staring at me. A few appeared to be confused, looking at the door where their competitors had entered, then back at me. Others seemed to be reconsidering their choice.

  The two suitors nearest me stood. The cowboy put his large hat on the empty chair next to him, spit on his hands, and slicked back his hair. The farmer rose and offered me his pig.

  Though I couldn’t, in the windowless hall, see where the tide stood on the pier, I could feel that it was on the wane. But I didn’t suffer like Mama from the ebb and flow of the sea. I felt strong and unafraid.

  I smiled and curtseyed. Nodding to each as I walked by, I slipped through the hatchway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MAMA’S SONG

  {in which Mama’s bones will not break}

  AT FIRST I was blinded. Every light in the house shone on the walk. Lanterns hung in clusters from the seams of the dome and from the spokes of the ship’s wheel; lamps stood on the floor all around and crowded on top of the trunk, their glow doubled and redoubled by the glass on all sides. Crow shifted to and fro on my shoulder, blinking, nudging his beak under my collar to try to cover his eyes. It was at first too bright to see anything clearly, but gradually, as my eyes adjusted, I could make out Mama’s silhouette. She wore what she always wore, an indigo gown and white collar, like those I was wearing, but the skirt of her gown was sodden and heavy with sand. The hem twinkled here and there with shards of crushed glass among the grains of sand. On the floor by her feet was the hourglass that had always stood in her room, broken. Her hair hung half loose down her back. She faced away from me, leaning against the side of the dome, her head turned to the sea.

  She hadn’t heard me come up, and I waited, my heart thudding. I had no need of rehearsing my words, I had said them often enough to myself. They were the questions for which I had so long wanted answers. Why did Papa come, only to go away? Why did you abandon your nephew? Why didn’t you love me? Even those questions fell away before the figure of my brother in the barrel.

  In the hall below, one of the three still-waiting suitors cleared his throat. Mama turned toward the voice, her movements weary, her face blank. Then she saw me. I opened my mouth to accuse her.

  “Mercy. Mercy.”

  I have sometimes wondered whether I imagined the joy I saw in her eyes then, the welcome in her arms as she stretched them out toward me. I saw what I had so long thirsted for. I faulted myself, afterward. But in the end I think there are few who wouldn’t have, as I did, run into her arms.

  In those moments, in her embrace, I made for myself acceptable answers to my questions. Papa hadn’t stayed away by choice: He had been conscripted by some distant army and was allowed only short leaves; he had learned to breathe water and could live only in the air a little at a time. Mordecai had not been abandoned, only mislaid. And I was not, after all, unloved. For Gideon’s end, I had no answer; I skipped it over.

  Mama’s skin smelled of coal and hay. Her hair was dank, her breath foul, but I didn’t care. I don’t remember just what she said to me. She asked me where I’d been, told me how she had missed me, exclaimed at my size. She stroked my hair and held me close. I wanted only to lay my head against her, to listen to her murmur into my hair.

  The rope ladder creaked.

  Her head turned. Her eyes opened wide. Her arms, so warm around me, went slack.

  For a moment it was that last night on the walk, when Papa’s hand had held me spinning in the air and my crow lay crushed in the trunk, when Mama had looked up, but not at me, called out, but not to me. She had reached only for him. And now, again, she set me aside, to reach for whoever was next on Starboard’s list, whoever’s head was now rising above the rim of the well.

  The cowboy stepped up into the walk. He pulled off his hat and stood there, blinking in the glare of the lanterns, clutching the ri
m of his hat in both hands. The silver spurs on his boots jingled faintly. He looked from me to Mama and back again. His mouth dropped open and he began to back away.

  If I had stopped to think only a little, I might have a different story to tell. I might have realized that Mama wanted no cowboy, no farmer, no landsman at all. She only ever wanted to lie under the wide blue back of the sea. She only ever wanted Papa. But I didn’t stop. And though the route might have been different, the end would have been the same.

  I felt suddenly calm. I didn’t think or decide what to do next, I only did it.

  I walked to the cowboy, took the hat out of his hands, and tossed it onto the floor. I started to unbutton the long row of buttons on the front of my dress, from the top down.

  Now Mama wanted to hold me. She pulled me away from the cowboy, who had backed to the edge of the well, as close as he could get without falling in, and was frozen there. He looked down at the rope ladder up which he had just come, then doubtfully toward his hat, which was out of reach.

  Mama clutched at me and tried to wrap my arms back around her. She struggled with me, but I was her match. Everything I wanted to say came flooding back, all my questions rushed out. I poured them in her ear as we struggled. Crow shrieked and flapped his wings in her eyes, darting his beak between us, jabbing at her face. He flew to the trunk and, hovering, took the clasp in his beak and flung the lid up. Something leapt and clattered inside. The cowboy’s head, hatless, retreated down the well. Then Mama’s sodden gown was twisting all around my legs, and I was falling. I must have struck my head on the edge of the trunk. Mama was still there, above me, moving slowly, her mouth making the shape of words I couldn’t hear.

  I wasn’t unconscious. Though I can’t say that I saw all of what followed, I saw, and heard, enough. It was best, I later thought, that a fog came between me and what I witnessed; it was easier to bear. But I have sometimes since wondered if the reality may have been easier to bear than what I remember seeing.

  A scuffling sound came from below. Chairs scraped and clattered; footsteps retreated rapidly away, down the staircase. Another voice sounded through the house, a voice that belonged to none of the departing suitors. It boomed up the well. The rope ladder went taut; in a moment he was up. The man in blue was back.

  I had never seen him so clearly before. A face smeared with blood as I dangled from the end of his arm; a pair of arms pushing through the sea, swimming after my skiff; a shadow standing on the sinking island staring after me who, even from that distance, had looked larger than any other man. Now, as I lay on the floor, looking up at him sideways, his body blocking the glare of lamp and lantern, he seemed a giant, he was so tall and broad.

  “Verity.”

  He didn’t see me, lying there next to the trunk, bright though it was. He saw only Mama. His face was split dark below and pale above, where his hat sat at sea. Veins beat high and blue on his neck. On his forehead and cheeks were fresh scars, beak-shaped.

  From below, outside the house, came the last sounds of the suitors, their footsteps hurrying, fading along the path.

  Papa stood there next to the well. His body was so wide and full of heat. His breath came fast. He held himself still, his arms stiff; his hands were shaking.

  He stood that way for a few more moments, then his body slumped and his breath blew out. He unbuttoned his coat and yanked it off. He unlaced the front of his breeches. In one stride he reached her and lifted her. She pulled the skirt of her gown up and over her head. She was naked from the waist down. He put his hands around her ribs and lifted her high, then ran her down hard, and up and down and up again. She rose and fell, her boots tapping against his thighs, her head lolling, her pale hair falling over them both. After a while he lifted her off and lay her on the floor and on they went.

  Something scraped inside the trunk, behind me; I jumped, jerking myself up from the floor. Kneeling, I lifted the lid of the trunk and felt for Crow. My fingers closed on him and I eased him out—with him came a spew of bones, clattering to the floor.

  I reached slowly down and picked one up: not a whalebone but an ulna, slender, s-curved. Its twin was there, too, and a pair of femurs. Crow, perched on the edge of the trunk, leaned down and tugged at something, struggled with the weight, dropped it back into the trunk with a soft thud. I moved closer and looked down at a rounded bundle, wrapped in muslin, nested in a bed of kelp. With shaking hands I unwrapped a skull, its jaw and teeth intact. Between the rows of teeth poked a fan of finger bones, a second smile. When I dropped the skull, it fell softly into the kelp but the fingers popped out, chattering.

  I slammed the lid down and scrabbled away backward, taking great gulps of air, until my back hit the wall of the walk. I held Crow close against my breast and pulled my knees up tight, dizzy, the walk spinning around me.

  Mother, Mother, make a bed, make it soft and long …

  She had made a bed for my brother in the barrel, but it was not his final resting place. Those were my brother’s bones in the trunk, on top of which I had curled, hiding, as I spied on Mama and Papa. My brother had been there all along.

  The glare of light on the walk, at first blinding, started to dip. In the minutes that followed the lanterns and lamps began, one by one, to gutter then go out.

  Mama and Papa looked just as they had the first night I’d watched from inside the trunk, his blue back swelling over her, her body rocking; the scraping sound as her skin ground against sand. But there were new sounds now—not the sounds of pleasure but of something creaking, something grating and harsh. Where before I couldn’t see Mama’s face, only her skirts and her lifted thighs, her boots moving back and forth, now I could see her face, and she was looking at me. Her mouth was open, her eyes huge, staring. Her skin drained to white.

  I’m not sure when I knew what was happening to her. I used to think that if I had realized sooner, if my wits had been keener, my head clearer, I could have stopped it somehow. But I have come to believe that whatever I did wouldn’t have mattered.

  Her hand went to her throat, to the wide white collar, crushed and wet with sweat. She pulled out the chain, the little trio of bones. She looked like she was trying to speak. Her eyes were still on me. The creaking sound went on, a ship in heavy seas, timbers grinding one on the other.

  I hadn’t noticed the difference in Mama, between that other night and this. That from the waist up she was fully clothed. That her breasts didn’t roll on each rise, her corset was not cracked open but laced tight, tighter than before by one bone. The whalebones bent with her own as she arched under the man in blue, but they wouldn’t break. She couldn’t breathe. Still he plunged on. Mama didn’t push him away. She made no gesture to let him know that she couldn’t breathe.

  I don’t know how long he rocked Mama before he realized that she was dead. He didn’t seem surprised to discover it. He pulled away from her and kneeled over her. He pulled her skirt down over her body and smoothed it, tenderly. He turned to look at me. It was then I realized that he had known all along that I was there. I thought he was going to speak, but a moment later he had dropped down the ladder and was gone.

  I looked at Mama from across the walk for a while, then went and sat by her. Her head was turned toward the sea. Her eyes were open, the horizon there in each iris as always before. I closed them. I lay my head against her. Now I could leave it there for as long as I liked.

  The last of the lanterns went out. The sky was thick with cloud, the moon hidden. The clean hot smell of oil hung in the air.

  When I finally looked up, a white shape was drifting up the dark well. Just before I lost consciousness I saw that it wasn’t my dead brother. It was Mordecai.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  BUILDING MY BROTHER

  {in which Mercy meets Gideon}

  CROW FLEW THEM down to me one by one. I sat on my bed and lay each bone among the sheets, then looked up to watch Crow again turn the corner at the end of the hall and fly toward me. He began with the larger
bones, his path wavering and dipping with the weight, flying low to place each bone before me, then circled around the room to head back to the walk. Panting, he dropped the pelvis into my lap; next the spine, disk by disk, then femur and humerus, working his way toward the extremities. He grasped a clavicle in each claw; the kneecaps required two trips. He beaked the smaller bones in batches, faltering for a moment as he passed the window under which his nest hung. The slender metatarsals seemed suitable to lend extra strength to a bird’s bed against winter gales or to fill the space where his companion no longer slept, differing little from the thin twigs and dry straw that lined the nest.

  As he neared the end, Crow’s wings dropped lower. The final bones, unbalanced, scraped the floor, chalking thin lines along the planks. The last phalanges fell into my hands, and Crow dropped to my knee, breathing hard, to rest for a moment before lifting off for his final trip. I dropped my head and drifted for a while, then heard a dull clattering and looked up to see him flying toward me, bumping a bundle wrapped in white cloth along the floor, slung from his beak. He dropped the skull into my lap. Mama’s white collar drifted down onto my gown, boiled and bleached, starched and pressed.

  I gathered the bones and started to build my brother, allowing a small space between them—no cartilage remained to soften the shock of joint on joint—so that they spread out, a constellation of bones in the dark. I knew how to map him. Mordecai had used the skeleton of a spider monkey to teach me how the bones fit together. The parts were much the same. I first lined up his spine, placing the pelvis at the base. It formed a shallow bowl that held what light there was from the sky and reflected it back into my face. I arranged his ribs in parallel lines, docked at his sternum. I made his legs as straight as I could, though with no cushioning flesh the long femurs keeled over, curving outward, so that his legs bowed. In the end they were all there except those of the ring finger on his left hand. I lay myself along the bones and stretched my arms and legs along the same lines. Had I found his bones before I fled the house that night months ago, they would have matched mine in size. Now my limbs stretched farther.