Her heart sank. She had no desire to confront the man again; he was a British officer, and any connection with him must compromise her. She had a wild hope that she might be able to avoid him when he came, but that hope was soon dashed, for Silas was looking at her as he had the day before, and she could have no doubt that some scheme was afoot that concerned her. She was not surprised then, when the meal ended, that Silas asked her if she would come to his room. Without waiting for an answer he rose to his feet and left the kitchen and Martha, also rising, and casting a look at her aunt, so as to excuse herself, followed him out with lowered eyes and the sensation of moving through quicksand.
He was in his parlour, in his great chair, and she stood before him with all the humility of the family dependent in the presence of the master. It was a room in which she had rarely felt at ease, particularly at night, when the dark leatherbound tomes crowding the bookcases, and the black paneling on the walls, and the glass cases and stoppered jars that gleamed on the high shelves, all exhaled the heady forbidding fumes of male knowledge, male mysteries, male power. And there in his great chair, that great carved throne of his authority, with his stout-shod feet planted firmly on his own firm floor, and his big strong hands with the black hairs fleeced across their backs laid flat on the arms of the chair, and his face all crags and clefts in the shadows—oh, Martha Peake was a girl of strong heart, but Silas Rind, when he waxed severe, he put the fear of God in her.
But she showed nothing of this, she stood before him in a guise of meekness and willed the child in her belly to be still. What he had to say to her was simple but it confused her all the same. He wished her to be present when Captain Hawkins came. She asked him why. He said that she had known more Englishmen than he had, and that she could judge the captain’s intentions. I want, he said, another pair of eyes.
Silas, I believe, did not deceive with skill on this occasion. He said these words with a certain shrugging vagueness, as though they occurred to him in the moment of speaking. Martha sensed at once that he had another purpose which he wished to hide from her. She began to say she knew nothing of army officers, but he lifted a hand and she fell silent. They heard a footfall on the path outside the house, and Silas went to the window.
“He is here,” he said. “Sit in that chair, Martha. Say nothing unless I address you. Listen close, and afterwards you will tell me what you think of him.”
“Yes sir,” said Martha, and retired to the back of the room where he directed her.
The captain was brought into the parlour and on being introduced to Martha betrayed only the slightest hesitation of recognition; and said nothing. It seems he grasped at once the delicacy of her position, an English girl alone among the colonists. He wore a powder-blue coat streaked with salt and less than splendid. His bulldog features were grave, composed, watchful.
“Captain Hawkins,” said Silas, “this is Martha Peake, my niece. She is lately come from England, and advises me in matters that concern your country. I value her judgment. You will not mind if she is present at our conversation.”
Martha saw that Captain Hawkins found it as implausible as she did that Silas Rind should seek the advice of a girl, but he showed nothing of it. He bent over her hand, as she rose from her chair, and as his head came up she saw his eyebrows lift, and his eyes gleamed in the candle-flame as he caught the creamy flawless radiance of her skin; and there was, too, I believe, in his eyes, a whisper of friendship, a warm memory of the hour they had spent together aboard the Plimoth.
“Mistress Peake, honoured,” he murmured, and there it was, the peculiar rich cadence of his accent.
“Captain Hawkins,” said she, keeping her eyes down, for she wanted no traffic of looks and lashes here in her uncle’s sanctum.
The two men then threw back some rum—she should have liked to drink some rum herself, but was not offered it—and Silas led the captain to the far end of the room where Martha could not hear what they said. She had the opportunity then to examine Giles Hawkins at her leisure; and there was, she saw it now, as he patronized Silas, and played the English gentleman, an arrogant streak in him, a pridefulness that set him apart from those he considered his social inferiors; her uncle, it was clear, being one such. You must play him, she thought, like a big fat trout, glimpsing the vanity that lay behind his pride.
But was this not what her uncle was doing, even as Martha thought the thought? He knew it before she did—that there was one thing only the captain did not see clearly, and that was himself! So she watched Silas impersonate the rustic colonial, she watched him flatter the captain, but with such subtlety that nobody who did not know Silas Rind for the man he was would see it. Silas Rind did not grin at Englishmen! He did not scratch his head, nor slap another man on the shoulder, and he certainly never showed the effects of a glass or two of rum; but now he was doing all these things, and the Englishman watched him with an amused condescension that confirmed him in his assumption of his own superiority.
Then Silas was calling Martha over, telling her to go to the kitchen and fill the jug, and as she took it from him he grasped her by the cheek and turned her toward the captain, saying something about the flowers of England, and she guessed at once that he wanted her to show his guest how she bridled at being thus handled, but was forced to endure it—and the anger blazed up in the Englishman’s eye, but he, like her, could not show it under Silas’ own roof—and in that moment a new sympathy was born in him, as he saw Martha Peake as a maiden trapped in the house of a monster, the maiden an English maiden, and the monster—American.
She knew it for the bold tactic it was. Silas wanted the Englishman not to know his strength. He must think Silas a boor and a fool, and he must sail away from New Morrock believing the colonists a set of coarse buffoons incapable of fighting a war. Thus did Martha reason it as she left the room with the empty jug and filled it from the keg in the kitchen.
They were again deep in talk when she returned, and from what she could hear she understood Silas to be warning the captain that the men in the town were hard to control, and the less the British soldiers showed themselves the less the risk of confrontation, which neither of them wanted. The captain was nodding his head as his eye strayed from Silas to Martha, and she knew the bait was taken, the hook was in.
Thus far Martha had played her uncle’s game. Now, as she poured each man another tot, she asked herself: and what is my game here? What am I to have from all this? And then she thought: it is not what I want that matters anymore, but what my child wants—what can I do here in his best interest?
Later that night, in bed, her hands on her belly to keep him warm, she reflected that her child’s presence within her had again changed the direction of her thoughts, indeed their very nature.
But before she got to bed she had still to navigate the treacherous waters below. Captain Hawkins and her uncle completed their business and the Englishman left soon after, though not before once more taking Martha’s hand to his lips, and again his eyes spoke with some eloquence as his head came up. Nor was Silas blind to this. He saw him out. When he returned he sank into his chair and his head fell back and for a few seconds he closed his eyes. He sighed. Then he sat up.
“Ah, Martha,” he said. “Martha Peake. If you knew what all this costs me.” He gazed at her a moment, his fingers drumming on the arms of the chair. “Perhaps you do,” he said. “But I am pleased with you. Now tell me, what did you make of that fine fat enemy of ours?”
Martha had had but a few minutes to prepare herself for this question. But she knew it was the interest of her unborn child she served now. I am weak, she told herself, I must survive if I am to protect him, and so I must ally myself with the strong party. She had decided in those few minutes to ally herself with Silas. So once more, deeper now, ever deeper, did she come over to the American side. For it had occurred to her that she might have gone with Giles Hawkins, had she so chosen.
She picked her words with some care. “His pride makes him
blind,” she said. “He is not a match for you, sir.”
There was a silence. Had she said too much? Had she flattered when she should have been silent? But no; all was well. There came a brief loud shout of laughter and Silas leaped up and crossed the room with outstretched hands.
“You have it all!” he cried, pulling her to her feet. “You understand me, Martha Peake! Of all the children in this house, you alone understand me.”
For a few seconds he held her hands and with narrow bright eyes and a small tight smile, his head pushed forward and his whole body tense and trembling with the impulse of his soul, which was toward Martha, he gazed into her eyes. She held his gaze and kept it from the secret thoughts within.
“Good!” he cried, dropping her hands. “Good. Now we will talk. Sit. Listen.”
The next morning Martha was the first in the kitchen after her aunt. She tended the fire, which was allowed to burn low through the night, and got the water started in the big kettle. She had not slept well. The conversation with her uncle after the captain’s departure had left her worried and confused, uncertain how she was to manoeuvre among the men and still protect herself and her child. When she had gone to the kitchen to fill the jug, she had found Adam and Caesar seated at the table. She had hurried across the room to the rum keg and Adam had risen to his feet, his face alive with questions, eager to know what was going forward, but she could say only that they wanted more rum.
“But what are they saying?” he cried.
The two men gazed at her in silent expectation. Under the scrutiny of their eyes she was clumsy with the spigot, and as she wiped up the spilled rum she said she did not know what was being said for they spoke too quiet. Later she slipped upstairs to bed without encountering Adam, and fortunately her cousins were all fast asleep.
But there was no avoiding him for long. He waylaid her later in the morning, behind the house, as he was about to go off into the woods, and he would not listen when she told him that she must get back to her work in the kitchen. He was hurt not to have been asked to attend the meeting of his father and Captain Hawkins, and the fact of Martha’s presence there, and her long private conversation with Silas after the Englishman had left, all this was a further insult. He wanted to know what had transpired, and Martha saw nothing for it but to tell him the truth.
“Your father has bound me to say nothing,” she said. “I have given him my promise.”
“And have you not given me your promise too?” cried Adam. Oh, she had never seen him so distraught! That his father should bind his Martha with promises of silence—! She had not properly known men’s jealousy before, beyond the unnatural rage she had observed in her father during his madness. Adam did not understand why she was not plain and open with him, and she hated having to be politic with him, she felt a powerful reluctance, a repugnance, even, to deceive him. So she seized his hands and said with some passion: “Yes, I have given you my promise too. And if you would have me honour that promise, you must see that only with your father’s permission can I break my promise to him. Ask it of him! If he will release me, I will tell you everything.”
She knew as she said it that Silas Rind would never release her from her promise. Caesar stood waiting with the horses, and Adam left her, a little relieved, at least, by this evidence of the desperation she so plainly felt.
28
I paced my room and pondered these developments. My uncle, as I say, would tell me nothing of these events, and grew caustic with me at the mere mention of them. Nor would he acknowledge the extent of Martha’s difficulties. The night after the Englishman’s visit to the Rind house, Martha, on Silas’ instructions, went down the hill to visit an old widow woman who lived near the George, taking her four jars of her aunt’s pickles and a jug of her uncle’s rum. It was a windy night, the moon not yet risen, and the sea rattled on the shingle and crashed against the harbour wall. She was making her way home up a narrow twisting street behind the tavern when she heard someone softly calling her name. She turned to discover Giles Hawkins standing in a doorway in the shadows.
This she had dreaded. She tried to hurry on, but he called her again and asked her if her uncle was well. She said he was. He then said that as the night was dark, might he escort her to her house?
They made their way up through the town. The captain told her he was concerned for her welfare, he wanted to know how she fared among the colonials, he asked her did they mistreat her because she was English. “An unhappy story,” he said, “to lose both your parents, and live among strangers so far from home.” He made no mention of her pregnant belly.
“Not unhappy at all,” she said. “It pleased me to leave England. I am an American now.”
“An American, are you?”
She noticed that as they came up the empty street, the little fishermen’s houses pressed close together on either side, and a narrow strip of cloudy night sky overhead, he glanced constantly about him, into alleys and doorways, and up at windows and roofs, as though he anticipated being at any moment ambushed.
“Have no fear,” said Martha, “you are safe with me.”
This made him laugh quietly.
“Indebted to you, madam,” he said. “Let me offer in return to serve you as a soldier and a gentleman.”
“An English gentleman,” she said. “But it is from English gentlemen that I shall soon require protection.”
“Let us hope,” he murmured, “that it will not come to that.”
“You can hope,” said Martha.
They were up among the big houses by this time, where the merchants and sea captains lived, and as the moon rose over the forest, and spread a pale light on the world, they stopped and turned to look down on the harbour and the sea beyond. They were beneath an ancient oak tree, and cloaked in the gloom of its great bare boughs. The captain turned to her.
“You say this is your home now.”
“It is.”
“It need not be.”
“Where else would I go?”
“I could carry you back to Boston with me. I could find you a place with an English family there.”
“As a servant?”
“At first, yes.”
What did he mean? Was she to be a servant? Or was she, rather, to be his whore? We may imagine how Martha Peake would respond to such an invitation, if indeed it was an invitation; but once again she was politic. She did not lose her temper. She was civil.
“It is not possible, sir. I am to be married here.”
“Ah. That is too bad.”
“It is not too bad for me.”
Silas and Adam were still up when she returned to the house, the pair of them occupied by lamplight with the cleaning of a musket, which had been dismantled and its parts spread across an oilskin on the table. As she hurried through the kitchen Adam watched her with hungry eyes, and Silas flung a quick dark glance in her direction.
The next day she tried to go about her duties in the normal way. She took the children down to the dock but did not push to the front of the crowd, as she had the day before, to watch the men at work on the Queen Charlotte’s mainmast. No, this day she hung back and instead watched the captain as he moved about on the wharf. Had he meant what she imagined he meant, the night before? She was less sure in the cold light of day. She gazed at him now, strong brisk capable man that he was, his voice ringing out clear and clipped as he strode about in his white britches, issuing orders to his men. And he saw her, of course he did, and his eyes suggested nothing that would dishonour her, he seemed again the honest fatherly man she had met aboard the Plimoth.
She found more errands to perform after dark, again on Silas’ instructions. The old widow woman, Hezebiah Scunthorpe, whose husband had been carried off by the windy fever earlier in the winter, was again the object of her charity. And again Giles Hawkins intercepted her as she made her way home. She did not betray the suspicion he had aroused in her the previous night, instead she played the innocent, and steered the conversation
toward topics military and political. She told him what Silas wanted him to hear—that is, that no war preparations were afoot on the cape—and asked him the question Silas wanted answered, in her own way, of course, so as to conceal her true purpose, that question concerning the destination of the British fleet, when it left Boston; but the captain revealed little, he smiled indulgently, rather, for he saw her game at once.
He then startled her, he startled her greatly, by asking if her father was called Harry. Taken by surprise she said yes. What did he know of Harry Peake?
“We are talking of the humpback Cornishman who fell in with the Earl of Drogo?” he then said, and she said, yes, yes—“for the love of God, sir, tell me what you know!”
Oh, but to hear him talked of by another person, to hear news of him—!
“Little enough.”
They were sitting in an empty stable in back of the saltworks, for the night was wet. Martha in her excitement had seized the captain’s sleeve, her face was close to his, her eyes implored him!
“Tell me!”
“And what,” says he, in kindly tones—in silken tones—“will you tell me in return?”
29
The captain had indeed heard something of Harry Peake, ah but it lacked any of the detail Martha craved and it smacked, rather, of the gossip of the clubs, an anecdote to amuse the dandies, or prompt Horace Walpole to a bon mot for the pleasure of one of his old women. It was correct in its broad essential, but it missed the pathos, the tragedy even of the conclusions I myself had reached. After Martha left Drogo Hall Harry sank fast, I believe, which is not surprising, given how little he had to cleave to, those final days. Martha had been his last hope, the one true prop or strut to which he might have clung in his extremity, and she had fled him. This then was what he had come to, he had driven away all who had once been his friends, nor had he any clear prospect of regaining his footing and rising from the depths. He wandered the streets of London, his only buttress against encroaching darkness his own frail will.
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