Shadows of Love

by Gail MacMillan

  When I turned to ask Captain Madison who owned the marvelous dwelling, I discovered he’d left me alone. His attention on the task of seeing to the final docking arrangements for his ship, he appeared to have forgotten my lingering presence on his deck. I shrugged and returned my attention to the village.

  On the wharf, my former shipmates were assembling their scanty possessions and reuniting families separated in the rush of disembarkation. I saw a buggy drive in among them, a man whose attire marked him as a clergyman at the reins.

  “Is there a Miss Mary Constable among you?” he asked, clutching a Bible to his chest as he alighted. An elderly little man, he appeared to be in a state of nervous agitation as he looked about at the new arrivals.

  “Here I am, Vicar.”

  A young woman about my own age, whom I’d met briefly and who I knew was also coming to America to be married, detached herself from the group and went hurrying toward him.

  “Did Kevin send you?” she asked, her face bright with anticipation. “Are you to marry us at once?”

  “I’m sorry, child.” The shabby little man’s voice shook. “Mr. O’Brien won’t be coming for you.”

  A silence fell over the ragged group on the pier. All eyes turned in Mary’s direction.

  “What are you saying?” Mary clutched his sleeve, her eyes widening.

  “He was killed yesterday, my dear, in a shipyard accident,” he said weakly. “I’m so very sorry.”

  A shocked silence encompassed those near enough to overhear the clergyman’s words. Then Mary screamed. And screamed.

  One of the women with whom she’d traveled rushed forward and enveloped the hysterical young woman in her arms. Overwhelmed with pity, I picked up my case and hastened down the gangplank to join the pair.

  “Mary, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “She don’t need anything from a whore like you!” The older woman’s eyes flashed with outrage as she addressed me. “Go peddle your false sympathy elsewhere, you two-faced bitch.”

  “What!” I gasped.

  “Don’t deny what you are.” She held the sobbing Mary to her ample bosom. “You left the hold and never returned. Today, you come up on deck from the officers’ quarters, fresh and clean and well fed. How many of those gentlemen did you have to satisfy to manage that state of affairs?”

  “I swear I…” I began, but again she interrupted me.

  “Whore!” she yelled. “Filthy sailors’ whore! It should have been your young man what died. Then he’d have been spared taking trash like you as a wife.”

  “Ladies, ladies, this is no time for such talk.” The clergyman ended the confrontation. “Mary, child, come with me. My wife and I will be glad to share our home with you until you can sort things out.”

  “Go along with the vicar, Mary.” The woman released the young woman but continued to glower at me. “He’ll see to it that a good, respectable girl like yourself is well taken care of.”

  Sobbing, Mary joined the clergyman in his decrepit buggy, and together they drove off the wharf. I was left with a pounding heart and clammy hands desperately gripping a shabby portmanteau.

  The people on the pier began to disperse. As they passed me, many cast belittling or sneering glances in my direction. Stunned by the woman’s vile accusation and the fact that most of my fellow passengers appeared to share her opinion, I stood rooted in place and watched them go. Only when I was alone on the pier, except for a few men engaged in further securing the Maris Stella and unloading her empty water casks, did I think again of Darcy and wonder where he was.

  I looked up at the great ship, as her sails were furled away by deck hands, and sat down on a squared deal, one of the large logs now missing its rounded sides and ready to be safely stacked in a hold or milled further into planks, and prepared to wait for Darcy. The joy of my arrival in America had been muddied by the woman’s vile accusation and my fiancé’s tardiness.

  “Your intended is late,” Captain Madison said.

  His ship safely laid up at dockside for the night, he’d come down the gangplank and stood before me, a canvas duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

  “He’ll be here,” I said. “Darcy Pod has never made a promise he didn’t keep.”

  “Ah!” he said. “Then, due to his elegant name, may I wish you all the happiness and intimacies of two peas in their natural confinement.”

  I was about to make an angry retort when a clatter of hooves made me turn toward the town. A young man wearing impeccable riding habit and mounted on a fine bay gelding was cantering toward us. He led another saddled horse, a huge, highly disgruntled black stallion that kept tossing its handsome head, snorting, and kicking up its heels.

  What a beautiful creature, I caught myself thinking. In spite of its bad manners and ill humor, the horse was magnificent. My attention captured by the stallion, I took little notice of the young man on the bay until he spoke.

  “Welcome, Barret. I trust you had a good voyage.” The stallion snorted and half-reared. “Now, will you kindly take this black devil and come with me? Father is anxious to hear from you.”

  “Lucifer, my child.” His face relaxing into a pleasured expression, the captain strode over to the prancing horse. “Come, my lad, what’s the problem? Did you miss me? Has Colin been mistreating you? You look in fine fettle. Perhaps a good run is all you need.”

  He patted the horse’s gleaming neck and took his reins from the young man. The great horse quieted. Docile as a kitten, he lowered his head and nuzzled the captain. Barret Madison gave a deep, satisfied chuckle and swung into the saddle.

  “You are a problem child,” he said. “You have to be tutored with a firm hand.” He cast a glance filled with nuance at me, then swung the animal about and headed at an easy canter from the pier and up the town’s dusty main street.

  “Ma’am.” The young man the captain had referred to as Colin touched his hat brim in courteous salute, then followed Barret Madison from the wharf.

  I was left with an impression of a tall, handsome youth of perhaps twenty years of age, blond and athletically built, polite and decent in contrast to the captain’s crude insensitivity.

  ****

  The afternoon became a sun-scorched, dust-filled agony of waiting. Loads of squared timber and other lumber products were pulled to the wharf by sweating, hard-muscled men driving teams of foaming horses and plodding oxen. Some of the men were kind and offered me drinks of water. Others, their bodies glistening with perspiration and streaked with dirt, made obscene suggestions and leered at me as they worked.

  With each lurid remark and sly, appraising glance, memories of the overseer and his brutality rushed back. Nauseous from fear as well as from the heat, I longed to remove my cloak and open the throat of my woolen dress, but I dared not. Such a gesture might be interpreted as an invitation to the crasser suggestions of the workmen. Some of them had heard me called a sailors’ whore. Hot, weary, hungry, and confused, I huddled against a pile of deal near the Maris Stella and waited… And waited.

  ****

  Dusk fell over the waterfront, and still I sat alone. The workmen had departed. A single watchman on the deck of the Maris Stella lit a lantern and, after giving me a cursory glance, settled down, his back against the bulwarks, to smoke his pipe.

  Stars appeared in the hot, dark heavens; crickets and frogs began to lace the sultry heat with their creaking songs. The village appeared to have retired in preparation for another long, arduous day. Only from a tavern in the center of the township did light and raucous laughter give evidence of wakefulness.

  I wondered if Captain Madison was among the boisterous gathering. Mosquitoes swarmed about me in a droning, stinging cloud. I slapped at them, looked up at the towering, naked masts of the Maris Stella silhouetted against the charcoal sky, and decided I couldn’t wait there for Darcy any longer.

  I picked up my carpetbag and, with my shabby woolen cape draped over my arm, started toward the inn. C
aptain Barret Madison, the only person I knew in the village, had to be there, had to help me find my tardy fiancé.

  Cautiously I pushed open the door and blinked in the brightness of the hot, smoke-filled barroom of the Black Horse Inn. The stench of sweating, unwashed bodies gushed out to greet me. In an instant, I was back in Simon’s hut. Run! Get away while you still can, a voice deep inside me urged.

  I was about to obey when, at the rear of the room, beyond the sea of glistening, red faces, I saw him. Looking relaxed and unaffected by the heat, Captain Madison sat at a table in a far corner, playing cards, a cigar clamped in his mouth, a tankard of ale on the table near his left hand.

  One of his two comrades was an attractive brown-haired man about his own age. From the fine cut of his clothing, I guessed that he, too, might be a ship’s master.

  Captain Madison’s other companion, a woman, stood behind his chair, her arm draped about his shoulders. She wore a flame-red cotton gown that swept low over her curving breasts and molded itself down about her body to blossom out over shapely hips below a slender waist. Her shining blue-black hair was piled into an artistic swirl about her head, a few wayward curls hanging loose and alluring about her face. She was smiling smugly down at the captain, her long dark lashes spread out like delicate fans over the creamy complexion of her lovely face.

  I couldn’t approach him under those conditions. Turning to leave, I felt a hand on my arm. Startled, I whirled to face a huge brute of a sailor, his face flushed from drink.

  My entire consciousness swirled into a whirling vortex. Oh, dear God, it couldn’t be! But it was. Simon the overseer, turned sailor.

  “Come in, missy,” he leered over those rotting, tobacco-stained teeth I remembered with such horror. “We can always use another pretty wench, with two crews fresh in from sea today.”

  “Let me go!” I cried, terror rendering me so desperate I would have allowed my arm to be torn from my body to be free of the brute’s grip.

  “Come now, dearie.” He laughed as a crowd began to collect about us. He appeared not to recognize his former victim in the woman I’d become. “What’s one little roll in the straw worth to you? See”—he reached into his pocket and drew out a gold piece—“I have a spankin’ new coin for a likely lookin’ lass like yourself.”

  “Let her go.”

  Simon and I turned as one to face Captain Barret Madison. Like the Red Sea before Moses, the crowd had parted to allow him to pass. Now he stood before us in all his charismatic power.

  “The lady is a friend,” he said. His tone held undeniable authority. “Leave her be.”

  “As you wish, Captain.” Simon was instantly submissive, as I recalled he’d always been in the face of his betters. His hand fell to his side. “I was only lookin’ for a bit of sport, you understand, what with bein’ fresh in from sea, much like yourself, sir.” He glanced at the captain’s barmaid, who’d followed him to the site of the confrontation and now stood behind him, hands on her hips, a knowing smile on her face. “I meant no offense, sir.”

  “Of course.” The captain’s reply reeked of sarcasm. “Now get out.”

  Shuffling and muttering, Simon left.

  “The rest of you”—Captain Madison raised his voice and turned to the onlookers—“if you want to remain healthy, you’ll leave this lady alone, understand?”

  Muttering their dissatisfaction, the group dispersed. Captain Madison grasped my arm and drew me to his table. There he shoved me into a chair opposite his brown-haired companion.

  “Meg, fetch me another pint, that’s a good girl,” he instructed to his companion in the red dress.

  She cast me a belittling head-to-toe glance, then sauntered off with a hip-swinging gait.

  “Jared, allow me to introduce Mistress Starr Reynolds, the most troublesome bit of baggage I’ve ever been forced to transport.” He sat down, raised his mug, and finished off his ale before continuing. “Mistress Reynolds, this is Captain Jared Fletcher, my good friend and master of the Maris Stella’s sister ship, the Linnet.”

  Without rising, Captain Fletcher nodded. Obviously Captain Madison’s scathing introduction had made him feel justified in foregoing the proprieties due a lady.

  “Why did you come here?” Captain Madison asked. He stuck the cigar back into his mouth and continued through clamped teeth, “I had assumed that by now you would be giving Mr. Pod a sample of the wares he’ll soon be enjoying on your wedding night.”

  “Darcy didn’t come for me.” I fought to ignore his crude remark. I needed his help. “I thought you might be able to direct me to the house he was building for us.”

  “I’ve been away for the past few months,” he replied. “I can’t help you on that score.”

  “What am I to do?” My will to fight was fast evaporating in the hot, smoky barroom. The possibility of being alone and penniless in this strange, feral land was becoming a stronger possibility with each passing moment. And somewhere outside in the darkness was Simon…

  “I’ll order a room for you upstairs,” he said. “You’ll be safe there until your intended decides to put in an appearance.”

  “I can’t stay here.” I gasped. “This is a tavern!”

  “And the very best I can do for you.” He shrugged and picked up the cards he’d left lying face down on the table. “Take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll leave it, thank you very much. Darcy will come. Soon. You just wait and see.”

  “Fine.” He returned his attention to his cards. “Then you’re on your own.”

  Confused and desperate, I stood and headed for the door. Near the exit I collided with Meg, who was returning with the captain’s ale. I looked into her painted face and stumbled away from her, backwards, out into the freshness of the night air. I knew what Captain Madison had really been suggesting, and I’d made my decision. Better to die in the streets than to share a room with the belittling cur who’d brought me to this country, who’d called me a doxy fresh off the London wharves.

  Keeping in the shadows, with tears of despair coursing down my cheeks, I made my way back to the pier, the heavy carpetbag a leaden weight in my grip, eyes furtively peering into the darkness for the hulking shape of Simon.

  ****

  It must have been nearing midnight when I saw a man on horseback coming onto the pier. The horse’s hooves clopped hollowly on the planking as the animal walked slowly forward, his rider unsteady in the saddle.

  For a moment I thought it was Darcy, and I rushed from my hiding place among the lumber piles. As he drew closer, my heart sank. I recognized the rider as the handsome, blond young man who’d come to fetch Barret Madison that afternoon. He drew rein before me and slid rather than swung to the ground.

  “Starr?” he asked, holding onto his saddle to steady himself. “Starr Reynolds?”

  “Who is asking?”

  “I’m Colin Douglas,” he slurred. “My father owns the Maris Stella. And a great many other ships. And the shipyards. And that big, white house on the rise yonder. And this entire valley, for that matter.” He waved an arm expansively. “I’ve come…I’ve come to bring you some sad…news…that is, if you are Starr Reynolds.” He staggered, causing the horse to snort and shy as he stumbled against him.

  “Perhaps you should sit down, Mr. Douglas,” I said, taking his arm and lowering him to sit beside me on a deal. Cold terror at what his news might be was washing over me.

  “Yes,” he breathed as he sat down. “I guess I’d better. I’ve been drinking, you see, and I’m not very good at it.”

  “You said you have news,” I pressed, when he fell suddenly silent, and I feared he might be falling into a doze. “You can tell me. I am Starr Reynolds.”

  “Very well.” He roused himself with an effort. “It’s about Darcy Pod, my dear friend, Darcy Pod. He’s dead, you see. My friend Darcy is dead. Dear God!” He broke down sobbing, burying his face in his hands. “He killed himself.”

  My world reeled. I stared at the young man an
d saw his image twist, then blur. The ground rose up and hit me in the face.

  When I came to my senses, I found myself propped up into a sitting position against a pile of lumber. Colin Douglas, looking ill, chafed my wrists.

  “Tell me,” I breathed. “Tell me it isn’t so.”

  But he couldn’t. He could only explain how he himself had found Darcy near the cabin he and my fiancé had built for us. Darcy had put a pistol to his temple and taken his own life.

  I listened mutely, still too shocked to react. I could not imagine my world without Darcy.

  “Miss Reynolds?” Colin Douglas brought me out of my trance as he touched my arm and spoke in a shaking voice. “Will you be all right? I know it should have been a clergyman who broke the news to you, but suicide… No one wants to admit it happened, not even our own minister. They wouldn’t allow Darcy to be buried in the church cemetery. His grave is out in the forest, all alone…all alone.”

  His voice broke and again he was sobbing, his face in his hands. Too horrified to care, I stumbled to my feet and staggered around behind the pile of lumber. There I wretched and vomited until my insides throbbed.

  When I finally regained control, I remembered Colin Douglas’s distress and returned to the young man who sat on a log waiting for me. He, too, had managed to quiet himself and stood when he saw me approaching.

  “What am I to do?” Weak and totally confused, I stared up at him. “I don’t know anyone else in Pine, and I have barely enough money for a meal. Where will I live?”

  “Come.” Colin took my arm and spoke reassuringly. “We’ll go somewhere out of these God-awful flies and talk. We’ll find a solution, don’t worry.”

  With my new acquaintance leading his horse, his trembling fingers beneath my elbow, we left the wharf and walked into the darkness of the wilderness village. What was to become of me, I wondered, as I stumbled along the dry, rutted street. I knew only one way of earning a living, and the tiny village of Pine with its rudimentary homes did not seem a likely place to find work as a scullery maid.