Mercer Girls

by Libbie Hawker

  “Mercy,” Dovey said, “what’s come over you?”

  Josephine gave a shaky laugh. “Travel nerves, I suppose. Don’t worry about me; I’ll be fine.”

  Dovey tilted her head to consider Josephine’s washed-out complexion and trembling hands. “Jo, are you sure you’re well?”

  “I’m perfectly positive.” Josephine tried a reassuring laugh, but Sophronia pursed her lips at its unconvincing sound. “I’m not terribly fond of trains—that’s all.”

  “Get sick, do you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You do look very pale,” Sophronia told Josephine. “Do you have any gingersnaps in that trunk of yours? They’d cure your stomach.”

  Josephine made no reply but pressed herself into the bench’s back as if she hoped her navy-blue wool might blend into the train’s interior and hide her from view.

  Whose view? Sophronia peered sharply out the window. Did she see someone out there—someone she recognized? Somebody she’s fleeing? What other motive could explain Josephine’s sudden, strange turn of behavior?

  “Josephine,” Sophronia began, “who—”

  But in that moment, the engineer called the last boarding, and the train’s whistle shrieked again. The sound of it vibrated down the length of the car, rattling Sophronia’s bones until her head felt ready to split.

  Then the train began to move, ponderous, slow as molasses dripping from a spoon, and all the while, Josephine remained pressed into the bench’s cushions. It wasn’t until the train found its speed that Josephine began to relax. Its rocking, swaying rhythm seemed to smooth the rough edges from her fear.

  Whatever ails her, it’s not travel sickness, Sophronia decided. She glanced out the window again and saw the town of Lowell falling away, its smokestacks dwindling, the long, empty rows of cotton mills vanishing behind the screen of the train’s coal-black breath.

  “We’re really on our way,” Sophronia said quietly. “We’re truly leaving Lowell behind.”

  Josephine breathed a reply, so softly Sophronia was sure she wasn’t meant to hear. “Thank God.”

  You’re keeping a secret, Josephine Carey, Sophronia thought as the city vanished on the horizon. In Sophronia’s experience, secrets were born of shame, and shame had its origin in sin. I’ll find out what you’re hiding, for sin endangers us all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHRISTIAN DUTY

  Sophronia stood silent and resolute on the curb outside the boardinghouse, watching the streets of New York City fill, moment by moment, as the morning grew later. Men in square-topped hats shouted to one another—greetings or threats, Sophronia could not tell. All the shouts sounded alike from her perspective, harsh and sharp and booming, like the barking of agitated dogs. Horses tossed their heads as they pulled jouncing carriages to and fro, dodging one another, swerving around the men who scurried between gray buildings with sides as smooth as glass.

  That focused, tight bustle of industry was a sight she had not witnessed often in recent days, as Lowell sagged ever further into depression. Although she had never been interested in business, she watched New York’s awakening with keen attention, as if by focusing on the city’s pother she could blot out her own predicament so completely that it might vanish altogether.

  She had been the first woman to rise from her bed that morning. She was always early to rise, but the urge to be up and decently pulled together before any of the other women stirred was especially strong. There was no privacy to be found in a boardinghouse. Especially not one of this type, crowded and close, where the party of fourteen women and their lone guide were obliged to wait out the days until their ship, the Illinois, arrived to bear them south to the Central American railroad town of Aspinwall.

  Sophronia endured those long hours of confinement with the best grace she could muster, guarding her modesty with a keen eye and an iron will. Oh yes—the first to rise in the morning. She would rise and dress hours before dawn if necessary, having no wish for any of the other women to look upon her bare skin. Sophronia abhorred the very thought of vulnerability, of exposing any part of herself to scrutiny or observation. She would not allow herself to be seen—not in the company of women she did not know.

  And so she was the first to pack her things, the first to exit the boardinghouse and stand, expectant, in the chilly air outside. She was glad to leave the hard bed in that stuffy, rented room. The room itself was almost as narrow as the bed, and sepia shadows clung damply in every corner. The women had spent two nights and one day confined in the boardinghouse, and with each passing hour, as Sophronia had stared at the age-yellowed paper on the room’s walls, as her eyes had roved over the buckles in its surface where moisture had collected beneath, her concerns and suspicions had only grown.

  Two hundred and fifty dollars, indeed! Surely better accommodations could be had for such a princely sum. Since arriving in the shabby boardinghouse, Sophronia had begun to wonder whether the rumors in Lowell were true. Perhaps Asa Mercer’s professional, efficient, well-dressed exterior was only a disguise. Perhaps, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he had fooled them all, and was spiriting these women off—Sophronia herself!—not as respectable brides, but rather to force them into the coarse toil of ladies of ill repute!

  This—the surprise she found waiting for her on the curb—the thing she could not bring herself to look at—only seemed to drive home that grim possibility with the force of a sledgehammer’s blow. Sophronia sniffed and kept her eyes on the fine carriages whizzing by on the cobbled street, and refused to look at the—

  “Wagons!” Dovey’s delighted shout came from the boardinghouse’s porch steps. “What fun!”

  Wagons. Oh yes. That’s what her two hundred and fifty dollars had purchased: the hire of a pair of flat-bedded, open-sided wagons, painted a bright, vulgar blue. It was a remarkably inelegant way to travel to the docks where their ship waited.

  “Yes, indeed!” Sarah Gallagher, a pretty young woman with a pert, pointed nose, answered Dovey gaily. “And I, for one, will be glad to toss my travel box up into a wagon’s bed, and from there into a ship’s hold. I can’t stand to carry it about any longer.”

  Sarah drifted over the sidewalk and hooked her arm through Sophronia’s in an overfamiliar sort of way. “We’ll be ten days sailing to Aspinwall, Sophie. Imagine it—ten whole days without having to lift a trunk once!”

  Sophronia could think of no reply. She gaped at Sarah in astonishment. The girl couldn’t have feigned the rosy flush of her cheeks nor the sparkle in her eye. Apparently she truly did relish this adventure, untroubled by the prospect of seasickness—or of being set on display before all the male eyes of New York City in the back of some blasted wagon!

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Sophronia finally managed. “Sea travel is not as romantic as you might imagine.”

  She was no stranger to travel by boat, and the promise of a queasy, wave-tossed voyage was nearly as bad as the certainty of yet more cramped, dingy quarters. And if they were to proceed to the waterfront packed into buckboards like so many bushels of turnips—well! Sophronia could not expect the Illinois to offer much in the way of accommodation. Or basic comfort. Two hundred and fifty dollars, indeed!

  Sarah tutted good-naturedly at Sophronia’s dark mood, then flitted off to join her friends in excited chatter. Sophronia smoothed the front of her skirt, begging the Lord to grant her forbearance.

  I had best reconcile myself to this unrefinement, this coarse, hard new world. Mercer’s rough accommodations could only be a foreglimpse of the trial to come. Seattle was sure to be ten times worse than any half-rate ship, and a hundred times more difficult to bear than the narrowest, dampest room in the shabbiest boardinghouse. But Sophronia’s course was clear, and even if her road ran through Hell itself, she would walk it without complaint. Seattle—and her mission to save the fallen women of the frontier—was her last chance for earthly happiness.

  What I must endure, I shall. God will lend me the strength to
face all trials.

  When the last of the travelers emerged from their brownstone boardinghouse, and all the women of Mercer’s party stood arrayed on the sidewalk, the last of Mercer’s hired wagons appeared. There were three of them in total, flat-bedded and with low, open sides. The drays were pulled by stout horses whose muddy legs and weary, patient heads looked better suited to toiling at the docks than to driving through the streets of New York. Sophronia eyed the nearest wagon carefully as its driver sprang down from the seat and began loading the women’s trunks aboard. Beneath its coat of ostentatious blue paint, she could see the faint outline of letters: BOXLEITNER’S BEER.

  Even if my road runs through Hell itself, she vowed, I shall walk it without complaint. But she sighed. A sigh did not count as a complaint.

  Sophronia climbed aboard her beer dray with Mr. Mercer’s help and sat on her trunk, as straight and placid as if she were riding in her family’s fine clarence carriage. Several other women settled around her, including Josephine and, rotten luck, Dovey. That gamine little beast seemed amused by their situation, carted off to the docks in beer wagons for the whole of New York to gawk at. The girl grinned as the wagons began to roll, and fidgeted like a restless child where she sat on Josephine’s trunk. Once, Sophronia caught Dovey waving at staring passersby, and the audacity of the gesture so mortified Sophronia that she could not even summon the composure to correct the girl.

  Oh, there were not a few passersby who stared. Sophronia donned a mask of perfect calm, and kept it fixed in place all the long ride to the pier. But she felt every man’s eye upon her back, her face—her body. Yet, she told herself sensibly, trying to quell the flume of outrage that rose up in her breast, it was only natural to stare at a train of liquor drays carting off a cargo of women. She would stare, too, if she witnessed such a spectacle.

  What must they all think of us—of me? She felt exactly as tawdry as the men of New York deemed her to be. Her fair complexion always announced a blush most readily; she might sit regally still on her traveling box, as cool and composed as a queen, but she could not disguise her flaming mortification as the wagons rolled along. I will most definitely speak to Mr. Mercer as soon as the opportunity presents itself, she decided. And I will not bridle my words!

  Josephine noted Sophronia’s discomfiture. “Are you well?” she asked, leaning across the bed of the wagon to take her hand.

  Sophronia could only nod in response—her voice would certainly come out as an undignified squeak, if she could manage any sound at all. But her mind worked furiously, churning over this bleak dilemma, seeking some recourse and finding none.

  Have I gone and sold myself into filthy affairs? If she had, she would get out of this mess on her own. She did not need Josephine’s inquiries into her health, nor her sympathy, nor her help. She would not—could not rely on the aid of any of these women—who, for all Sophronia knew, were only too happy to become tarts. Dovey’s dimpled glee at their present circumstance was proof enough of that. The girl was completely at her ease, displayed before all the men of the city like a frosted cake rolling to and fro on a dessert cart.

  After half an hour, when Sophronia’s composure was strained to its absolute limits and she felt herself on the verge of standing up in the wagon bed to scream hysterically, the beer wagons reached the waterfront. The salty stink of wharves surrounded her, and that sharp, familiar odor of brine, rot, and bitter coal tar came as a relief. If a long journey into the unknown still waited ahead, at least their mortifying exposure to stares and speculation was ended.

  Sophronia was the first to scramble down from her wagon, only too happy to distance herself from that ignominious conveyance. She brushed the wrinkles from her skirt and stood staring up at the Illinois, moored at the nearest dock. Its hull was as black and glossy as a beetle’s shell. A needle-thin bowsprit thrust out from its forward deck, and the lines that ran from that long, sharp beak to the first of three great masts hummed lightly in the wind. The dark cylinders of two high, even stacks rose amidships, releasing gentle puffs of black smoke. At port and starboard, two huge paddle wheels reared above the decks, encased in white-painted wooden cages, reaching almost as high as the smokestacks.

  “What do you think of the boat?” Josephine had alighted on the cobbles beside her, and stood gazing up at the Illinois with a vague, uncertain smile.

  “It looks capable,” Sophronia said. “To be honest, it’s better than I’d hoped to find, after our stuffy little boardinghouse and these … wagons we rode in.”

  “You have an eye for ships,” Josephine observed.

  “I’ve sailed often with my family.”

  That was true. The Lord knew the Brandts were well traveled, but plenty of seasonal jaunts up and down the Atlantic coast hadn’t been enough to inspire Sophronia to learn about ships and seafaring. Only James Gooding had sparked her interest in the sea. James—her second suitor, and the only prospective husband with whom Sophronia had felt herself truly in love. The loss of his suit had hurt her more than all the rest combined. When James finally tired of Sophronia’s rigid ways, he had withdrawn his interest and returned to the sea.

  For all she knew, he was a bachelor still, married only to his ship and the sigh of the waves. Sophronia often wondered whether James recalled their days together, their sailing trips when he had shown her how to harness the wind and breast the swells. Did he think of her fondly now and then, or were all his memories of Sophronia ruined by the last bitter days of their quarrels?

  It’s just as well, she told herself ruthlessly, to quell the tears that threatened. Sailors are all fornicators at heart. Everyone knew that sailors kept loose women in business. Why else did fallen women love port towns and piers so well? If I had married James Gooding, it would have been but a matter of time until he took up with whores. Not even love could eradicate the filthy habits of seafaring from a man’s soul.

  Asa Mercer led the women aboard the Illinois. They were granted an hour to settle in and acquaint themselves with the ship, for the Illinois was primarily a mail carrier, and its cargo of letters and packages was still to be loaded. Sophronia was pleased to find that although the passenger cabins were narrow and rather dark, they were not as dismally uncomfortable as she had feared. The bunks were tolerably soft, and there was ample storage for her trunk and all her bags.

  But Sophronia refused to be lulled into complacency. She left her baggage sitting on her bunk and returned to the ship’s deck to seek out Asa Mercer. She found him without much trouble—a lone figure at the ship’s prow, distinctive in his dark, well-tailored coat. Mercer leaned his forearms on the Illinois’s rail, his hat dangling in one hand as he brooded down on the pier and city below. He looked up with a tentative smile as Sophronia made her way briskly toward him.

  “Miss Brandt,” he said. He reached up as if to tip his John Bull hat at her, and then, realizing it was clutched in the other hand, his flat cheeks colored.

  “Mr. Mercer.” She gave him a tight nod. “I have come to express my displeasure.”

  “Displeasure?” He seemed truly startled by this, and straightened gamely. “With what, may I ask? Only tell me, and I’ll put it to rights at once.”

  “I …” Sophronia hesitated. Mercer’s readiness to see to her comforts took her aback. She had spent so long musing darkly over his hidden motives that she had come to suspect the worst of him. She had been prepared for some other response—an evil cackle, perhaps, and a villainous rubbing together of his hands—not this eagerness to please, this genuine concern lighting his handsome features. She cleared her throat. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done about it now. But what were you thinking, sir, driving us about in beer wagons?”

  “Ah, that. Yes.” He scratched the back of his neck, in obvious abashment. “I hired the things without seeing them firsthand. I didn’t expect them to be quite so … exposed. I hope you were not too much offended.”

  “Now, it’s neither here nor there. The moment is gone and past. But r
eally, Mr. Mercer, certain of your decisions have led me to wonder …” She trailed off, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, suddenly reluctant to breach the terrible topic.

  “Yes, Miss Brandt?” He gazed at Sophronia, attentive and patient.

  “I have been led to wonder about your motives, sir.”

  “I see.” A certain darkness passed across his face—not anger at Sophronia, but rather a strain of self-doubt. He turned the John Bull hat in his hands, traversing its rim with distracted fingers.

  “Have we been led astray, Mr. Mercer? Are your intentions as pure as we were made to believe?”

  “I assure you, Miss Brandt, they are. It is my preference, like yours, to travel in greater style and comfort. But I truly thought I would find more women in Lowell who were eager to make the journey to Seattle. After all, Lowell has fallen on such hard times, with the cotton trade in dramatic decline and so many young men off to fight the rebels. I had assumed—falsely, I now see—that Lowell would be bursting with young ladies eager for better prospects. I’d thought to have dozens more to share the cost of travel. As it is, we must tighten our belts. We are not quite as poorly off as church mice, but I’m afraid we must cut close to the bone.”

  “Two hundred women,” Sophronia said, louder and more sharply than she’d intended. “I overheard your words to Josephine Carey at the train station. Land sakes, Mr. Mercer, what can you be planning for two hundred women? The figure itself is obscene; I can only hope your intentions are not.”

  “I intend nothing but marriages, Miss Brandt—happy, fruitful marriages. You cannot know how sorely the men of Seattle need the influence of good women—ladies of upstanding character, like yourself.”