Arundel

by Kenneth Roberts

  Having read this letter, James Dunn sat down without further comment, which indeed he was incapable of making; and I might here add that this sort of incapacity of his was of great value in giving him his reputation for wisdom; as whenever he could find nothing to say, people were impressed with the idea that he was engaged in powerful thoughts. The other Sons of Liberty remained silent as well, staring into their tumblers, but looking as though their ears were athrob to hear how the rest of us would take it.

  Now God knows I had been a peaceable citizen, deploring the violence of the Sons of Liberty; but when I heard these words out of James Dunn I knew no fat King in England could throw me an order and then send troops to jam the order down my throat, not so long as decent men like Sam Adams and John Hancock and Benedict Arnold said there was no need to obey the order. Therefore I stood up and said I was provided with enough firearms to stand off our share of English troops, and would undertake to furnish the residents of Arundel with muskets, powder, and bullet molds at their exact cost, and show them my books into the bargain so they could not accuse me of growing rich out of them, which they otherwise would be sure to do. Such a wild hurroaring and hurrooing arose at this that it cost me a small keg of French rum; and the very next day I despatched Phoebe in her sloop to Portsmouth for additional muskets, powder, and lead.

  It had been a stroke of fortune for my mother and myself when we made Phoebe the master of the sloop Eunice—a name Phoebe had bespoke on the day her keel was laid. From the look in her eye I suspected she wished this name so that I would not call it the “Mary M.,” which I would not have done, though I had given some thought to calling it the “White Lily,” but decided against it for fear of what Cap Huff would say in case he saw it.

  Knowing how pestilential she could be if crossed, I agreed to the name Eunice, whereat she set Thomas Scammen to work carving a seal’s head for a bow ornament. This head she herself decorated with whiskers, having me make nails at my forge so she could drive them into the side of the nose, causing the head to appear to pout and bristle, very realistic, like Eunice imploring me for fish.

  She carried two hands on the sloop, selecting always the stupidest men she could find; for she said she wanted a crew that would take orders without knowing enough to try to think for her because she was a female, or to be afraid. Thus she got her men cheap; though after she had taken me out in a brisk southwesterly breeze and run me so close to the ledges, dodging in and out among them, that they would have rubbed off my finger nails had I thrust my hand over the lee-gunnel, it was in my mind that her crew would need to be wholly witless to sail under her for any amount of pay at all.

  She carried our lumber and fish to Boston as fast as they could be carried, and faster than most folk said was possible. There she exchanged them for such goods as I needed in the inn, trading discreetly, and holding the high respect of those with whom she traded, even though she persisted in wearing sea boots like a man. She might, indeed, have been mistaken for a small-waisted boy save for the East India chains and necklets she was forever wearing, in especial a string of stones called cat’s eyes that she had from an East India sailor in trade for two stone hatchets and a magnifying glass which she had swapped for a gray parrot from God knows where.

  The sloop’s business, however, was Phoebe’s and my mother’s. The inn kept me busy—far busier than I wished; for if ever I wanted to be an orphan child with no responsibilities to weigh me down, it was on the second occasion that Benedict Arnold’s path crossed mine.

  I had been off around Cape Arundel in my flat-bottomed skiff to cut ash poles, in the spring of my twenty-second year. On returning up the river and into the creek with the rising tide, I saw a crowd of people—my mother and sisters and James Dunn and several others—standing near our front door. As I watched, a man among them made a short run and took two steps up the sheer side of the house, so that he was above their heads; then threw himself backward in a somersault, landing neatly on his feet. Instantly there flashed into my mind the memory of a man in a white blanket coat going hand over hand up a rope as easily as I could walk up a staircase; and I knew I was looking at Arnold once more.

  I shouted and ran up, happy to see him, and found those about him entranced by the tricks of skill he had been performing. Even while he greeted me my sisters clamored for him to do a feat he had done for them. Nothing loath, he went to the cart on which we dragged our whale boat from the creek to the beach at low water, measured the height of the wheel with his outstretched hand; then backed away, ran lightly at it, and vaulted completely over without touching hand or foot to either wheel. Never have I seen another man who could do this, though many tried it in after years, especially when elevated by rum, and narrowly escaped breaking their necks.

  Though I could see he took pleasure in the amazed head-wagging of those who watched him, as who would not, he beckoned James Dunn to give him his broadcloth coat and three-cornered hat, donned them, and clapped me on the shoulders, saying he had come from Cape Porpus to see me. As soon as we were by ourselves in the inn, he flipped the back of his fingers against my chest, lengthened his face in the smile I well remembered, and shot at me abruptly: “I’ve seen your girl!”

  Now any faint suggestion of Mary was enough to constrict my heart as though a hand had closed around it. I could only gawk at Arnold and whisper, “Mary Mallinson?”

  Arnold shook his head. “Marie de Sabrevois. Slender and golden-haired, with freckles across the top of her cheeks like yellow dust on a lily.”

  “Mary Mallinson,” I said again, and closed my eyes to see her on her knees, holding my face between her hands.

  “Marie de Sabrevois,” Arnold repeated, tapping his forefinger on the table, “sister to Henri Guerlac de Sabrevois! The only fair-haired daughter the house of Sabrevois has ever known: fair and beautiful and a Catholic!”

  The kitchen door burst open. Phoebe Marvin, thin and dark and quick as a cat, whirled into the room and stood with her back against the door, dried salt spray showing white on her high sea boots and brass-studded pirate’s belt. The string of cat’s eyes glowed and dimmed on her breast from the quickness of her breathing.

  “There’s hell to pay in Boston,” she cried. “The troops shot into the Sons of Liberty on King Street and killed a mess of ’em!”

  Arnold jumped to his feet, upsetting everything on the table. “What did they do to the soldiers?” he shouted, his face darkening until it was well nigh the color of Malary’s, and growing strangely bulbous.

  Phoebe looked at him coolly. “Nothing! The mob fired first.”

  Arnold groaned. “The mob! Mob! Citizens like you and me, peacefully pursuing their lives and liberty!”

  “Well,” Phoebe said calmly, “there might be two ways of looking at that. I saw it, and it was a mob, with a half-breed negro at its head; but they got no business to turn the King’s troops on ’em. It was terrible!”

  “Terrible!” Arnold cried, striding to the wall and hitting it such a blow with his clenched fist that the pine sheathing split. “It’s wanton, cruel, inhuman murder! Good God! Are Americans all asleep, and tamely yielding up their liberties; or are they all turned philosophers, that they don’t take instant vengeance on such dogs?”

  “To hell with that!” I said. “What about Mary?”

  Arnold whirled on me. “Mary! Mary! You want to talk about a damned little baggage sniveling in a convent school when troops of a foreign tyrant tramp over stones bespattered with your countrymen’s brains! Mary! My God!”

  I reached around and took hold of a stool, ready to brain him for speaking so of Mary. Arnold’s pale blue eyes widened, like a cat’s, fierce and waiting. My senses came back to me and I dropped the stool.

  “Sir,” I said, “I’ll go against any English troops with any man, or alone, anywhere; but I’ve waited as many years as I can remember to have word of Mary. I’m sick of waiting!”

  Arnold stared at me for another moment, then moved his thick shoulders in his
blue broadcloth coat, as though to loosen them, smiling so the darkness and bulbousness passed from his face, leaving it light and gay.

  “Why,” he said, “you’re all right! When the time comes they’ll find us ready for them if we can keep from each other’s throats—if we can work together instead of at cross purposes!” His face darkened again. “That’s the devil of it—cross purposes! D’ye know what happened in New Haven? A dirty informer set the English on me for evading their damned laws, and I lashed him! Gave the English a lesson in what they’d get if they didn’t let Americans alone! You’d think my own people would thank God someone had the heart to stand up to their oppressors, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?”

  He thrust his face almost into mine and eyed me furiously; then, not waiting for an answer, went on again. “Cross purposes! Cross purposes! Even my own people can’t see what’s plain to be seen! They’re so used to oppression that they won’t consent to stop being oppressed! They fined me fifty shillings and rebuked me publicly. Rebuked me, damn their cowardly ratty souls to hell! Rebuke! I’ll give ’em something to rebuke me for!” He shook the table until it clattered on the floor, drew a deep breath, held it a moment, then expelled it gustily and smiled again.

  “Well,” he said, “the way of it was this: I went into the drug trade in New Haven for myself, after I brought you down from the Kennebec. Then I began to export horses to the Sugar Islands, and bring back such cargoes as all of us bring back nowadays—molasses and sugar and rum. Having learned the ropes in Quebec, I took goods there, drugs, the best of drugs; and having sold them I bought horses, which I know as well as any man, and sold the horses in the Sugar Islands. Do you remember I told your father, and a fine man he was, how easy it was to make money in Quebec?”

  I nodded, wondering when in God’s name he’d get to Mary.

  “I was right,” he went on. “In New Haven I have a fine home and a sweet wife and two children, as pretty as you’ll see anywhere. I own three brigs—one in Cape Porpus, that I captain myself, and two others at sea, one between New Haven and the Sugar Islands, and t’other bound home from England. On top of all this, the young bloods in New Haven elected me captain of the Governor’s Guards, who’d fight the devil in hell or the troops of that fat swine King George. It’s all one to us!”

  He tilted back and looked at me contentedly, and with reason; for this man I had thought to clout with a stool was the equal in property and position of any in our colonies.

  Satisfied, seemingly, with my round eyes, Captain Arnold got at his tale. “No man knows,” he said, “when special information may prove valuable; so I’ve never gone to Quebec without asking for your friend De Sabrevois. Until this trip I learned little I didn’t know already. He’d been taken by an English corvette and carried to Jersey; and on the signing of the treaty he went to France.

  “At first the English planned to seize his estates—a seigneurie on the Island of Orleans and a house in the upper town; but having their silly damned ideas about pacifying the people of Canada, they decided to interfere with neither property nor religion. So De Sabrevois comes posting over to Quebec with his beautiful sister Marie and settles down among his iron stoves and fur rugs, pleasant as pie to all the English, and prodigal of his wines because of his delight, he says, at having the odors of his dear Canadian forests in his nose. Then around come the handsome English officers to look at this beautiful gold-flecked lily, Marie, his sister. Such is the intensity with which they look that the lonely brother, who has a slit in his cheek and nick in his ear as if a stoat had been chewing at him, has never a chance to see her from morning to night.”

  Arnold’s eyes popped out at me; then slipped instantly back to their usual state.

  “Now,” he said, “I don’t know whether De Sabrevois was displeased at this, or whether he was bitten by another reason. I know I wouldn’t be displeased if a troop of young officers crowded around my sister, whom I love dearly. At any rate, he sent the beautiful Marie to a nunnery in Montreal, saying she wished to perfect herself in astronomy.”

  “Astronomy!” I said, trying to remember whether the word had to do with the study of flowers or cookery.

  “So, too, said I,” Arnold declared, smiling a knowing smile. “From what I saw of the lady, the stars have little to fear from her investigations.”

  “You saw her before she went to Montreal?” I asked eagerly.

  “Why, no,” Arnold said, with a reckless look I was to know better before our acquaintance ended. “I heard all this from friends. Since the gentleman was so insistent that the beautiful Marie was his sister, I thought it might be to my advantage to have a shot at it to see whether it was so or otherwise. When I sailed up to Montreal I took with me four English uniforms for four of my seamen; and one night I called at the nunnery, accompanied by four red-coats, and commanded the mother superior to open in the name of the King and produce for my inspection the person of Marie de Sabrevois.” He laughed, silently and slyly, and his broad shoulders shook.

  “She was produced,” he went on, “and the reports I’d received in Quebec were borne out. She was as sweet as a cluster of arbutus with the leaves peeled off: fresh and pink and delicious; and her bright hair bound around her head like a rope. She was so soft in her gray gown that if I’d taken her by the waist I’d have looked for her to hang limp across my arm, like my sister’s cashmere shawl.”

  I could hear Phoebe go stumping to the door in her sea boots, but I threw her not even a glance, having no interest in knowing whether she was jeering at me, or how she felt.

  “I spoke to her in English,” Arnold said, hitching forward and prodding the air before him with his forefinger. “I said I was come from her friends in Arundel. She answered in French, vowing she didn’t understand. I said, still in English, that since she wished to adopt this attitude I’d call my men and take her away, so she could be questioned at our leisure. She looked at me piteously out of round blue eyes and said in English that she had no friends in Arundel; that if any considered themselves so, she prayed I’d tell ’em to interest themselves in their own affairs and leave her in peace.”

  Arnold leaned back, nursing a knee and staring at me foxily. “That gave me a hold on De Sabrevois, if ever I should need one, so I came away.”

  “For God’s sake! When you had her, you fool, why didn’t you take her!”

  “A little less emphatic, if you please,” Arnold said. “I have business in Montreal and Quebec. Why should I steal a young lady who might be unwilling, to thrust her on you, who might be ungrateful? There may be other and weightier business in Montreal and Quebec, before long, for all of us, and De Sabrevois might be of great assistance. Why should I sacrifice that assistance for your private affairs? You exaggerate their importance!

  “I explain these things after being called a fool,” he added, his head lowered between his massive shoulders, “because you’re unbalanced by love, which is worse than the throat distemper, since it unhinges the brain.”

  “Sir,” I said, “I ask your pardon again. Now I must do what I always planned—go to Quebec after Mary.”

  Phoebe went to tapping on the floor with her boot. I was surprised to find her still in the room. “Your mother can’t manage this inn alone,” she said.

  “Let James Dunn help her,” I replied. I had employed James to watch over the gathering-room of nights, since his dignified appearance and his position with the Sons of Liberty had a value in those troubled days.

  Phoebe shook her head. “You know James Dunn as well as I do.”

  Arnold pulled me down onto a seat again. “I came here for one purpose: to tell you these things before you should hear them in another way, and go galloping off to roil the waters and frighten the fish for others.”

  “I’ve got to get Mary,” I protested. “I’ve waited all my life for the chance.”

  “A body’d think you were tottering on the verge of the grave!” Arnold cried. “Listen to me a minute. We’re going to fight England! Y
ou people here in the backwoods may not know it, and some of the cowardly money-hoarders in the cities won’t believe it; but fight England we must!”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s in the air,” Arnold whispered. “You can feel it in the crowds. You can hear it in their talk. They want to be let alone. They don’t want to be interfered with, except by their own people, and damned little by them. They’re angry: waiting to strike, like rattlesnakes.”

  His voice rose and sent a stirring along my spine. “And look at England blundering along! What does she know about us? Nothing! What has she ever known about us? Nothing! What will she ever know about us? Nothing! Who does she send to govern us? Fools or knaves! Everything she’s done has been wrong! She can’t change. Everything she does will be wrong. Wrongs piled on wrong! More wrongs added to the pile! More and more and more! And then war! For God’s sake, can’t you see it, here in this inn? Can’t you hear it in the talk of nights?”

  I nodded.

  Arnold gathered the front of my shirt in his hand and shook me. “Wake up! You can’t go traipsing into Canada at a time like this, trying to break into nunneries, and bellowing through the streets of Quebec! You know Indians; you know the country. How many do? We’ll need everybody who knows such things. I wish to God your father was alive! You wouldn’t catch him running off to Canada at a time like this!”