Miss Whittier Makes a List

by Carla Kelly

  “Such a bother,” she said into the tiny mirror, as she tamed it down and braided one heavy pigtail. Mama had told her once, when she had been in tears about her hair, that someday she would come to appreciate it. Well, that day had not dawned yet, she decided as she left her cabin, nodded to the Marine, and went to Captain Spark’s door.

  She knocked.

  “Come.”

  She entered the room to see the captain and ship’s surgeon seated by the table, drinking Madeira. They rose when she came closer, and the captain ushered her into a chair at the table. He sat down across from her, and Lease took the other place. Trist set the food before them, and it was the same as she had eaten for several weeks now, only served on rather fine Wedgwood. She smiled.

  “Are you weary of ship’s fare yet, Miss Whittier?” the captain asked, noticing her expression. “I hear from my junior officers that you do not care for surprises in your ship’s biscuits.”

  “They told you truly,” she said as he picked up his fork. “Sir, can we not say grace?”

  The captain put down his fork, and Lease eyed her with a cross between amusement and respect. “Do you really think that an appeal to the Almighty will make it more palatable?” the surgeon asked.

  “What? Have you no faith?” she teased.

  “None whatsoever,” the surgeon replied, his face quite serious. “And no hope, and precious little charity.”

  There was an awkward pause, and then Hannah plunged in. “All the more reason to ask the Lord to bless it. Bow your heads, gentlemen.”

  She asked a blessing on the food specifically, and the HMS Dissuade generally, said amen, and picked up her fork.

  They ate in silence at first, then the captain looked up at Hannah, amusement on his face. “Forgive us, Miss Whittier, but we have been so long at sea that the art of dinner table conversation quite eludes us. What should we be speaking of? Affairs of state? The economy of the nation? Ladies’ fashions? Price of corn whiskey? What interests Americans?”

  Hannah smiled and tapped her biscuit on the table. “As to that, in Nantucket Mama tells us of her day, and Papa usually complains about the high price of everything.”

  Lease laughed. “I like that,” he said, and then went back to eating.

  “What did you talk about at table, Captain?”ont/span> she asked when the surgeon seemed no more forthcoming.

  The captain rested his elbow on the table. “I almost don’t remember. I was ten when I went to sea, after all. I suppose my mother asked about my lessons, when she was there.”

  “And your father?” she prompted.

  “He was seldom there, either,” was the captain’s short reply. He addressed his attention to the salt beef again.

  How sad, she thought, remembering the lively conversations around the Whittier table. “We argued politics, made fun of our neighbors, and Papa generally wished James Madison to the devil. Papa is a Federalist.”

  The captain laughed and pushed away his plate. “Do you care about politics, my dear Lady Amber?”

  “I think it is the duty of all Americans,” she replied, taking another bite of the biscuit and wondering at his endearment.

  “Even those females who don’t vote?” he asked, twinkling his pale eyes in her direction.

  She entered into his banter with no qualms. “Especially so, sir. Mama insists that someday I will be quite influential in helping some man cast his ballot!”

  The captain nodded. “I don’t doubt that for a minute, Miss Whittier. How is it that you have escaped parson’s mousetrap thus far?”

  “Sir, have a heart! I am just seventeen!”

  The captain winced. “I had thought you older,” he said, and poured another, deeper glass of Madeira. “What, then, was a tender Quaker lass of seventeen doing traveling unescorted to Charleston? Excuse me if I am nosy, but we don’t get much good gossip on ship, and I don’t care to discuss President Madison myself, although my political leanings are Whiggish.”

  She smiled and held out her glass. He paused a moment, then poured the Madeira. “You’re too young for very much of this,” he warned.

  She drank. “That’s good.”

  “It should be. We picked that up from a Spanish coasting sloop out of Jamaica, didn’t we Lease?”

  The surgeon nodded. “Really, Daniel, this lady will think we are little better than pirates.”

  “You don’t want to know what I think of you, sir!” she said, regretting her words the moment she said them, but forced into honesty by her nature.

  “No, I suppose we do not,” the captain murmured. “But for the sake of improving our dinner table manners, do tell us why you were bound for Charleston.”

  She told them of Hosea and his bride and the expected baby. “Which I am sure is born by now. I would like to have been there to help out.”

  Spark shuddered. “Children are a nuisance, Miss Whittier. I am grateful that to my knowledge, ave none. Always mewling and puking, I wonder that anyone tolerates them.”

  Hannah thought of her list and smiled to herself as she crossed him off it yet again. “Perhaps if you had your own, they would not seem so troublesome.” She sighed. “And I suppose that was my other reason for Charleston. Papa and Hosea mean to find me a husband; someone steady with sufficient income.”

  Spoken like that, it sounded so bald. She stared into the Madeira. Perhaps it is good to lay one’s cards on the table, she thought. It would be hard to do otherwise with present company.

  “Is that what a woman wants?” Spark asked, leaning forward with both elbows on the table now, his eyes intense. “Sufficient income and a male—any male—as long as he breathes?”

  She thought of her list again, weighed the probability of ever seeing this man again once they reached Portsmouth, and sailed ahead fearlessly. “Do you know, Captain, I once assembled a list of the qualities I wanted in a husband?” She blushed when he chuckled. “Silly, wasn’t I?”

  “That would depend on what the list contained. You don’t strike me as an empty-headed chit. Irritating, I own, but not slow of wit, Lady Amber.”

  As she looked into his disconcerting eyes, Hannah wished he would not call her that. “One thing was that he love me enough to place my welfare before his own.”

  room without further comment. Hannah felt her cheeks burn, and absurd tears rushed to her eyes.

  “Did I say something terrible?” she asked, her eyes wide with distress. “Oh. I meant no offense. I would not for the world hurt him.”

  The captain shook his head. “I think that what you wish is what everyone, man or woman, wants. Few have the temerity to list it. My congratulations.”

  “But ... why did he leave like that?” she asked, bewildered.

  The captain sighed and filled her glass again, this time to the top. He pushed aside his own wineglass and pulled forward a tumbler, which soon was brimming with Madeira. “He’ll have to tell you himself, Lady Amber. I don’t uncloak others’ intimacies. God knows, I can’t understand my own.”

  It was a quixotic comment, and she knew better than to follow up on it. Hannah sipped her Madeira, the pleasure gone out of the drink. The captain downed his tumbler of Madeira and tipped the bottle toward his glass again. He looked at her, his eyes faint with amusement.

  “You probably have something on your list about men who drink too much.”

  “Well, no, actually,” she said, “but I could certainly add a rider.”

  He did not pour the wine, but set the bottle upright and pushed it away, clearing a space on the table in front of them. “I really had another reason for asking you here, beyond table talk and cornering you with my limp wit.”

  She watched him, her eyes wary.

  “And don’t look like that!” he protested, throwing up both hands. “I have no designs on your person! What I need is some help.”

  “Ask away then,” she replied, trying and failing to keep the tremulous relief from her voice.

  He noticed it anyway, and touched he
r hand. “Lady Amber, you needn’t worry about preserving your virtue on this ship, not while I command. I know this is a difficult situation for you, but we will not make it worse. Please believe me.”

  “I do now,” she replied softly.

  “It is this, then. I am shorthanded since my last encounter with the French. I would like to use my midshipmen for other purposes, but I must maintain a watch in the lookout. Can you do that for us?”

  She considered his request.

  “I didn’t think of it until this morning’s little diversion in the rigging. If you could take one watch a day, perhaps even two, that would help me.”

  Hannah nodded. “I would be glad to.” She hesitated then. “There is one condition, sir.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I will not call down to tell you I have spotted American vessels,” she said. “But I can look for the French.”

  He took her hand again to shake it. “Very well, Lady Amber, very well. Your terms are not onerous, and I do respect your Federalist tendencies. Tomorrow then, the forenoon watch? I know you will miss the oakum, but after all, England is at war. You may use my glass.”

  “I shall do it, sir.”

  Chapter Seven

  She slept well that night, full of plum duff and too much poached Madeira, eaten off Wedgwood and drunk from Waterford crystal. The hammock rocked her to sleep, and she succumbed to a pleasant dream that may have included a curly-headed man, but which, upon awakening, she could not quite recall.

  Hannah put her hands behind her head and wriggled more comfortably in the captain’s nightshirt. I should be practically bleeding with homesickness, and yet I am not. She considered the matter, staring at the deck overhead. My life has been so circumscribed, she thought. Everything I have done, has been at the instigation of others. But now ... I do not know what will happen.

  The knowledge did not frighten her, and she wondered why, but only for a moment. It is that I trust Captain Sir Daniel Spark, she thought. He is a hard man in a hard service, but he is fair. He runs an orderly ship. She turned onto her side, and stared down at the cannon. I wonder if he can fight? She swallowed and felt the hair on her neck raise. More to the point, can I?

  “Well, Hannah Whittier, thee can climb a rigging,” she told herself as she carefully stepped onto the gun and then the deck below. “Such knowledge can only be expanded.”

  She dressed quickly and opened the door. The Marine clicked his heels and stood at attention, then held out a small parcel for her. “From Trist, ma’am,” he said.

  She took the package and went back into her cabin. She read the note: “For a change from the vanilla extract, Lady Amber. Yrs, Spark,” and opened the package. Chortling with pleasure, she took out a bottle of extract of almond. She sniffed its sharp scent and dabbed a bit on her neck.

  Cookie had the green coffee beans ready for her to roast, and she made short work of her morning ritual, humming to herself. Cookie sniffed the air suspiciously, then looked into his pantry, when he thought her attention was occupied elsewhere. Hannah smiled to herself as he located his own almond extract, and could make no complaint, or demand an extra peeling of potatoes.

  The air was brisk with the feeling of a more northerly latitude as she came on deck with the captain’s coffee. He stood as usual on the quarterdeck, his glass trained on the distant horizon. He wore the heavy woolen boat cloak that swept to his ankles, pulled back to reveal his impeccable whites. He turned around at her approach and nodded a greeting.

  She set the mug on the deck by the gangway as usual, and as usual, he crossed to the rail and squatted gracefully beside her as she sat on the rung of the ladder. She watched as he took a sip and pronounced it successful.

  “You could get yourself a cup, too,” he offered. “This really is excellent brew, Lady Amber.”

  She made a face. “I do not care for it, sir. It makes me jittery and keeps me awake. And Mama claims I am not fit to live with when I am cross.”

  “I would not doubt your mother for a moment,” he said after a good swallow. He sniffed the air around her appreciatively. “I think I like the almond even better.”

  She grinned up at him. “Except that I smell like dessert.”

  “Exactly so,” he replied. “Do you know what I like to do first when I come off a long cruise?”

  She shook her head, secretly pleased at his sudden talkativeness.

  “I drink about a quart of water that comes fresh from a well, and then I have my housekeeper make me an almond cake with gooey icing, which I eat all by myself.”

  She clapped her hands in delight. “You do not share?”

  “I might, with the right person,” he said, then drained the rest of the coffee and handed the mug back to her. He nodded, and pointed to the aft hatch. “And there your oakum awaits. Lively now, Miss Whittier.”

  He turned back to stare at the ocean again, the interview over. A smile on her face, Hannah took the mug below deck and then returned to her task of picking oakum. She shivered in the early morning breeze and willed the sun to warm the deck soon. Sailors holystoned the deck around her, rubbing the already spotless planking with sandstone chunks the size of prayerbooks and then sluicing it down with seawater.

  “Hannah, think what an oakum expert thee is becoming!”

  She looked up in surprise at the sailor closest to her on the deck. “Adam!” she exclaimed. “Oh, sit and talk!”

  He shook his head, his eyes on the bosun’s mate. “I daren’t. Are they treating thee well?” he asked as he continued by the hatch on his knees, scraping the deck.

  “Oh, yes. And I will be sitting in the lookout soon, keeping watch for the French.”

  He chuckled. “Who’d have thought it? Not I, surely. Well, I do not believe thee was ever partial to sewing samplers, was thee?”

  “Oh, thy sisters have tattled,” she said and impulsively reached down to ruffle his hair.

  “Belay that! Ship’s discipline!” called Mr. Futtrell in ringing tones from his watch on the lee side of the quarterdeck.

  To her embarrassment, Captain Spark looked down at them and frowned.

  “He’s my friend,” she protested.

  “And he is my crew,” the captain reminded her, biting off his words. “Mind your manners, Miss Whittier! You may tousle his golden mane all you choose, once you’re back in the United States.”

  The other sailors on their knees laughed and Adam blushed a rosy pink. “Oh, Hannah, thee is a rascal,” he muttered, and continued along the deck.

  Hannah cast a speaking look at the captain, which was entirely wasted, because he had already turned his attention back to the sea again. “Golden mane, indeed,” she muttered to herself. “This is Adam Winslow, whom I grew up with.” She nourished her feelings of vast ill-usage until the sun rose higher and warned the hatch she sat on. Then she abandoned herself to the pleasure of another day’s sailing, wishing she could stretch like a cat and curl up for a nap.

  At four bells, the midshipman in the lookout scampered back down to the deck and reported to Captain Spark on the quarterdeck. Hannah sat where she was, then tucked the rest of the oakum in the burlap bag at her feet as Spark took off his boat cloak at last and came down the gangway toward her.

  “Well, Lady Amber, it is time for you to tempt the fates again. Mr. Futtrell? Will you fetch my straw hat from the great cabin, and my glass, and bring that copy of Ships of Nations?”

  “Aye, sir,” the lieutenant replied and hurried below.

  He stood beside her on the main deck, and she patted the hatch.

  “You could sit down, sir,” she invited.

  He looked at her in surprise, his eyebrows high arched. “Never, Miss Whittier. A captain does not sit on his deck, especially on a hatch.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired?” she asked.

  “I would never admit to it. Ah thank you, Mr. Futtrell. Sir, please take my place on the weather side until I regain the deck again.”

  He clapped the hat on
his head and picked up the telescope, which he hooked onto his belt. He grasped the book in one hand and nodded to Hannah. “After you, Lady A.”

  She climbed the rigging, mindful that the captain was right behind and probably observing her at uncomfortably close quarters. The thought made her blush. She paused where the yardarm crossed the mast, feeling the old, sick fear of yesterday returning.

  “Up you get, and lively now,” came that brisk voice at her bare heels. “Please don’t look down.”

  Without a word, she climbed higher until she was perched in the lookout on the topgallant. She took a deep breath and dangled her bare feet over the edge of the little platform, resting her arms on the modest railing. The mast swayed in the wind, and she gulped again.

  “If you feel like heaving up an ocean, do it now, and not when I am on my way down,” the captain admonished, his voice amused, as he held on to the rigging below her, a picture of grace. He edged higher until he knelt on the narrow platform with her, then took the straw hat from his head and put it on hers. “That should cut some of the sun,” he commented and grinned at her. “I like it, Lady A. Makes you look even a more roguish scamp than usual.”

  She made a face at him and then clutched his leg when the mast swayed. Rather than utter some barbed remark, he laid his hand on her shoulder and kept it there until she loosened her grip, but did not release him.

  “There now. It’s something you can get used to,” he said mildly. He unhooked his telescope and set it beside her in a small bucket intended for that purpose that was attached to the mast. He opened the book to a well-worn page and directed her attention to it.

  “This is what you are looking for,” he said, pointing out the pages of French men-of-war, all bristling with guns and painted black, with occasion gilt ornamentation. “The ensign is like this, and it may fly a pennant like this. Look for the tricolor.”

  She followed his finger, studying the pages. He smiled and leaned closer for a moment as the mast swayed. “I believe I do like the extract of almond the best.”