by Fortune Kent
Chapter One
Beth Worthington, alone on the top deck of the steamship, shivered in the autumn breeze. She gripped the rail with both hands, her fingers tingling with the beat of the engines. The only other sound was the churning hiss of the great paddle wheels biting into the blue green waters of the Hudson.
Beth, her maroon redingote buttoned to her neck, the matching reticule at her side, stood tall and solitary on the white deck. The wind tousled her long black hair and brought color to her cheeks. Her face, with its high cheekbones and high forehead, was open and direct, almost challenging, yet her hazel eyes hinted at a warmth beneath.
She looked across the water, saw the shadows of the trees reaching like fingers from the far shore toward the ship, saw the sun low over the mountains of the highlands. For how many thousands of years, she wondered, had these mountains stood guard above the river? Beth felt the doubt and loneliness of an adventurer entering a foreign, hostile land, for somewhere on one of those wooded mountainsides was the Worthington estate. Could she, alone except for Mrs. Jamison, face the family and convince them? Would they believe she was Beth Worthington returning as though from the dead after fifteen years?
Last March—six months had seemed time enough and more to prepare—began a long summer of study and drill with Mrs. Jamison repeating each lesson over and over again. But now, as they sailed the last few miles up the river, Beth frowned. The dress rehearsal was almost over and the curtain was about to rise. Am I ready? she asked herself.
The wind-blown spray stung her face, and Beth’s eyes smarted until she grimaced to keep back the tears. But when the wind changed and she looked up, her dark hair blew free behind her and she lifted her face to the wind, exhilarated.
Footsteps sounded on the wooden deck. She turned, startled, then smiled as Margaret Jamison joined her. The older woman, wearing a black dress which accentuated her short and heavy figure, carried an embossed daybook by her right side. As a priest carries his missal, Beth thought.
“Less than an hour more,” Mrs. Jamison said. She pulled the black lace veil closer about her face to hide the white scars from the smallpox of long ago. What anxieties did her impassive features hide? Beth knew Mrs. Jamison had never seen the estate and, despite her sister’s four years of service there, was as much a stranger as Beth to the members of the household.
Beth held out her hand and touched the older woman on the sleeve. “Let me begin at the beginning,” Beth said. “Just once more before we dock at Newburgh. Please.”
Mrs. Jamison glanced around the almost-deserted deck. She nodded. “Bring a chair over here for me and one for yourself,” she said.
“May we walk instead?” Beth asked. “I don’t think I could sit still—we’re so near.”
Mrs. Jamison nodded, and the two women strolled toward the bow. “Your name?” Mrs. Jamison began.
“Beth Worthington.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-four. I was born on March 29, 1818.”
“Tell me about your family.”
“Why, there’s only Grandmother Worthington, my brother, and myself.”
“No, no, before the shipwreck, when you were growing up on the Worthington estate.”
“Oh. My father, mother, my brother, and, when I was a baby, Grandmother Worthington lived in the gatehouse.”
They turned near the bow and walked back along the other side of the ship. The river had narrowed, and on both sides mountains loomed above them, the slopes heavily wooded, the darkening valleys dropping precipitously into shrouded depths where sunlight never found its way.
A bell tolled on the shore and the sound—deep, funereal—made Beth tremble, for to her each peal of the bell said Death. Over and over. Death, death, death. The sound echoed from the steep sides of the mountains, and the bell and the echo seemed to rhyme—Death, Beth, death, Beth.
“What did you say?” Mrs. Jamison had asked another question.
“Why don’t you tell me about Jeffrey?”
“My brother Jeffrey. He was always moody and alone, tramping in the mountains with his dog, knowing more trails and hiding places than the locals who had lived in Canterbury all their lives. I was never close to Jeffrey, never thought of him as Jay or Jeff. I was more interested in books. And in my father.”
Mrs. Jamison leaned the daybook on the rail and turned the pages. “Here in Beth’s journal,” she said, “do you remember the passage about Jeffrey and the dog?”
“Wait,” Beth said, “let me think. Yes, I have it—‘Snowed all morning. The river is frozen, and the men were out cutting ice this afternoon. Jeffrey missed supper. Papa was angry and sent him to bed. Served him right. Big came to me in the library tonight and sat at my feet. Big much prefers me, even if he is Jeffrey’s dog.’”
Mrs. Jamison nodded during Beth’s recital. “Remarkable,” she said, “word for word. You have a wonderful memory.”
“I can remember whatever happened since the accident, can picture whole pages of books, recall what people said, the things I’ve done. But I forget so much of what happened before. So unusual, don’t you agree?”
“Unusual?” Mrs. Jamison asked. She smiled, hearing Beth slip into her role.
“Strange, uncommon,” Beth explained. She heard her voice become more shrill, more artificial, and she felt a distaste for the pretense, but she went on.
“The accident is like a watershed in my life,” she said, “the fifteen years on this side as clear and well defined as a formal garden, the nine years before the shipwreck, on the far side, tangled and confused. In those first nine years of my life, though, here and there is a sort of promontory, an event I remember distinctly, but the rest is like a path overgrown with brush and weeds.”
Beth stopped and shook her head. “I can’t go on. I sound so false.”
“You were doing very well.”
“No, I wasn’t. I have to be natural, be myself.”
Mrs. Jamison frowned, and Beth turned from her and looked down at the wake foaming out to the side and behind the ship. I could actually be Beth Worthington, she told herself. Mrs. Jamison doesn’t believe it’s possible, but I could. I wouldn’t be here if I knew this was all a fraud, merely a scheme to inherit part of the Worthington estate. I had to come as long as there was a chance, however remote, to find out where I came from, who I am.
“Beth, please, try to be calm.” Mrs. Jamison’s voice was soothing. “I want to help you. You’re going to be challenged, tested from the moment you arrive at the estate. You can’t trust any of them, for each in his own way will try to trap you. And you can convince them by being the granddaughter old Mrs. Worthington expects and the sister Jeffrey expects. And I’m sure they picture you as a proper young lady. As it is, you’re too forthright, too outspoken.”
“But you know all of the Worthington women have been strong willed. My grandmother, my mother. Remember the stir Mother caused when she was being courted and was the talk of New York City?”
“Not the same, at all,” Mrs. Jamison replied. “Both your mother and grandmother were married by the time they were nineteen. The high spirits of a girl of seventeen or eighteen are quite different from the lack of good taste in a woman of twenty-four.”
“I think I must frighten young men.”
“Still, I’m surprised you never married. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t take after the Worthington women, and they’re well known for their beauty.”
Was there a wistful note in Mrs. Jamison’s voice? Or a stronger emotion, like envy? Ever since they met months ago, Beth had sensed almost a hostility in Mrs. Jamison, usually well concealed but occasionally, as now, just beneath the surface.
Why does she direct her antagonism at me?
Beth asked herself. Does she resent my clothes, my youth? She knew Margaret Jamison, scarred from childhood, never mentioned men in her life, not even the long-absent Mr. Jamison. Yet despite the older woman’s sharpness, Beth admired her purposefulness and determination. And now they found themselves bound together as though by chains of their own forging.
“Look!” Beth went to the rail.
“Why, what is it?”
“The island, there.” She pointed just ahead and to their left.
“Sentry Island,” Mrs. Jamison said.
“Sentry Island? The map said Krom’s Island.”
“Sentry Island must be the local name. My sister told me the sentries had to do with the Revolution.”
The ship’s whistle signaled their approach to port.
“Only two or three more miles to Newburgh,” Mrs. Jamison said. “We have to go below and get ready.”
Beth stared at the island which was now opposite them. “A few more minutes. You go ahead and I’ll join you.”
Mrs. Jamison hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll get our things together,” she said, “and meet you on the lower deck at the stairs.” She walked away from the rail and into the cabin.
The ship was past the island, and the wake was lapping at the rocky beach. Beyond the shore the trees and the dense underbrush were covered with a gauze of haze. On the far side, only barely visible, there appeared to be ruins—stone pillars with jagged cracks, incomplete archways, walls strewn with rubble. And everywhere twisting vines, tendrils exploring the decay, trying to take back what once had been theirs.
I’m afraid, Beth thought. I’m being foolish, but I’m afraid and I can’t say why. She turned her head as though listening, her lips tight, her hazel eyes half-closed.
Why did she say that? Had she imagined a woman had spoken, warning her? You must not go to the island alone, the woman said. You must not go to the island alone.
I’m tired and I’m imagining things, Beth told herself. She blinked her eyes. The island was well behind the ship now, and the setting sun reflected dazzlingly from the water, making the land a misty, receding blur in the distance.
Beth watched a seagull swoop down behind the stern and skim over the bubbling wake. The water seemed to have a life of its own, surging away from the ship in green, blue, and white swirls. She thought of the island, the woman’s voice, and the water below, and the dread flowed over her, the sometimes nightmare, sometimes daydream, remembered from early childhood, the terrible fear circling whirlpool-like within her.
She saw herself alone in a closet-small room, a room with three doors, water dripping, dripping, and the light flickered and went out. She heard a rumbling and she struggled to the door but found none where there had been three. No way out, enclosed, unable to see, the water gurgling on her legs, cold, higher and higher, and the knowledge, as certain as only dream knowledge can be, that in a few minutes she would no longer be able to breathe.
The whistle sounded. Beth shook her head. She turned from the rail and hurried to the lower deck and joined Mrs. Jamison and the other passengers who were waiting to disembark. A bell clanged and the clamor of the engines stilled, but the ship continued to glide unerringly toward the pilings of the wharf. Two seamen held the mooring lines poised, ready to throw them across to the men on shore.
“Newburgh, Newburgh,” a man’s voice rang out. “All ashore.” The landing platform clattered into place, the lines were secured.
It was only a dream, Beth told herself. She firmly grasped her reticule and walked with Mrs. Jamison down the ramp and entered her new life.
Chapter Two
They stepped from the gangplank into a laughing, shouting, whistling, bustling furor. Men pushed carts past them, the wheels creaking under the weight of stacked luggage destined for the ship’s baggage hold; to their right, upriver passengers impatiently milled behind a straining wooden gate; all around men called out to disembarking friends, women waved handkerchiefs, and children hopped from one foot to the other with unconcealed excitement.
The two women followed their porter to the street where, richer by ten cents, he left them surrounded by trunks and carpetbags. A cabman raised his hat. “Carriage, madam? Carriage to the Palatine House?” Beth shook her head. A boy ran past, alternately blowing a horn and crying, “Fifty cents, fifty cents, no cheaper fare to Albany.”
Beth looked about her and watched the soft twilight transform the coming and going of the carriages into a life-size shadow show made real by the clatter and the sparks struck by the horses’ shod hooves on the cobblestones.
“Miss Worthington?”
“Yes,” Beth said and stepped back to look up at the tall young man who had approached them. He was heavyset, with the bigness of strength rather than indulgence.
Was this her brother Jeffrey? He removed his cap. No, not Jeffrey she realized when she saw the long blond hair and was able to examine more closely the heavy, rough jacket and the trousers tucked into high laced boots. If not Jeffrey, who?
“John Price, ma’am,” he answered her unspoken question. “From the Worthington place.” She had the uncomfortable sensation of the eyes in his round, moon face boldly appraising her while he stood with his cap held before him in both hands, his head lowered in mock deference.
“Mr. Jeffrey couldn’t come,” he said. Was this the Worthington way of showing their distrust, their doubt? she wondered. After all these years, shouldn’t Jeffrey have met his returning sister?
“I see,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment. They stood looking at one another.
Mrs. Jamison broke the impasse. “Come, come,” she said, “where is the carriage? Take this bag. You’re big and strong, John. Here, carry this one too. I’m sure Jeffrey would have come if he could,” she said in an aside to Beth. “Ah, a wagon, is it? Careful with the trunk, we’ve china inside.” She swept John Price forward into hurried activity. In a few minutes the baggage was in place, and he had helped the women onto the wooden seat and joined them from the other side.
“You there!” John suddenly leaped from the wagon and ran to a boy tacking a notice on a warehouse wall. John grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him about, and Beth saw the boy look up, alarmed, and drop a sheaf of papers to the ground. The boy recovered, kicked John sharply on the shins and, freed for a moment, darted away into the crowd.
John Price gathered the notices from the street and resumed his seat. “They go too far,” he said, handing one of the placards to Beth.
End Tyranny, she read, Abolish Serfdom. Down With The Rents.
“What does this mean?” Beth asked.
“A scheme to avoid just debts. They’re rabble, anarchists.” John flicked the reins and the wagon jounced along the street. He continued to mutter epithets under his breath.
An occasional gaslight half-revealed, half-concealed men lounging in doorways, sauntering along the wooden sidewalks, entering and leaving the hotels and rooming houses. A shout followed by laughter came from a brightly lighted saloon.
“They’re having a good time tonight,” John said. He sounded reproachful, Beth thought, as if but for the untimely arrival of these two women he too would be a party to the pleasures of the night.
The hooves and wagon wheels quieted, and Beth knew they had left the cobblestones and were on a dirt road. Behind them she heard the whistle of the steamboat and looked back to see the ship, a lighted palace on a river of darkness, become smaller and smaller and finally disappear, leaving only the glow of the city’s lights creating a faint luminescent crescent on the horizon.
The last tenuous link to home was gone, and her life in Ohio seemed to recede, as had the ship, into the night. Beth, for the first time, knew real loneliness.
She felt shut in by the night and looked overhead for the stars she knew so well and, finding none, realized clouds covered the sky. John, at her side, pointed out the location of local points of interest along the way, but the darkness was complete and she could only guess at the a
ppearance of “the quarry,” “the new carpet mill,” “the brickyard,” and “the road to the point”.
Mrs. Jamison dozed beside her, sleeping, awakening with a start, falling asleep again. Even when awake she spoke little, as though her part in the drama were nearly over and now Beth must assume the leading role. Beth could not sleep, in part from an unease about what awaited her at the Worthington estate, in part from the fear of appearing vulnerable to John Price, who leaned closer to her. She edged away.
The five miles from Newburgh to Canterbury seemed interminable. It’s a long road that has no turning, she remembered her foster mother, Ada Shepherd, quoting to her. All at once doubts crowded upon Beth and with them a longing for the security of times past, feelings for which there had been no room during the stage journey from Ashtabula to New York, the months in the city with Mrs. Jamison, and the steamer trip up the river. Why did I leave Ohio? she wondered.
Two years ago this coming November, her foster parents had passed away, both in their eighties, Mrs. Shepherd living only a month after her husband’s death. “She lost the will to live,” the doctor told Beth. “I’ve seen it often, as though after being together for sixty years she couldn’t abide the separation and God heard her prayers and reunited them.”
How she yearned to go once more into the parlor of the old farmhouse to sit on the floor at Ada Shepherd’s feet as she had so many times after they took her in; how she wanted to lean her head against the older woman and come away renewed by her strength. She had no one to lean on. I need no one, she told herself, no one at all. In the dark night, her shawl tightly about her, she recognized her bravado for the feigned courage it really was.
“Here we are,” John announced, and she became aware they were passing between stone pillars. There was a building beyond and to their right. So small, she thought, disappointed until she noticed the two rows of lanterns winding ahead on either side of the driveway, and she knew this was the gatehouse.
The wagon passed beneath a canopy of trees, rounded a bend, and ahead she saw the drive circle in front of the great old stone house. Beth sat awestruck and afraid. Four Doric columns, each three stories high, supported a peaked roof. To the sides the wings of the house seemed to extend unendingly to merge into the trees. The upper stories were shadowed, and she could only catch glimpses of the gables, the towers, and the turrets through the lowering fog.
