Kingston by Starlight

by Christopher John Farley

  I left the room and walked down a winding white staircase. The main room was even grander than the bedroom. There were more large windows and flowered curtains. In the corner of each room was a cage with a parrot— one was blue, another red, another green, the last a mix of the other colors. Silver plates hung on the walls, as well as oil paintings of stern-faced gentlemen and pale, red-cheeked ladies. Just off this grand parlor was a wood-paneled smoking room adorned with the heads of bears. I could smell breakfast cooking and followed the aroma into the kitchen. Several servants were at work. On the table were laid out biscuits and bacon and several baked hens and something I would later learn was called grits. A tall white woman in an apron turned away from the oven and smiled at me.

  “Oh dear. Oh dear me!— you’re on your feet! Welcome to Mount Apollo!”

  I had been in a swoon for more than a fortnight. My ma was dead. I wept bitterly. The slavers had done it. But they had dropped off their cargo and their remaining passengers before any justice could be done. The Praying Mantises had saved me, begging the captain’s help and seeing me safely to shore in Charles Town, South Carolina. (I could only imagine their change of heart, and their prayers: “She gave her life. Safeguard her child, O Lord.”) When my name was learned in town I was brought immediately to my da’s estate. My da’s luck had changed. Through some business venture called the DeDanann Land Holding Company, he had engaged in real estate speculation in the Americas, thus successfully and profitably harnessing his inclination to gamble. He had established himself and his name was starting to be known around these parts. He lived just outside of Charles Town, down Broad Way in a vast mansion with tall white pillars. He was renting this abode while he searched for permanent accommodations. The woods all around were filled with tall trees and fragrant flowers. The nearby homes were grand, with high walls and drawbridges and wharves and servants’ quarters. My da, I was told, had lately purchased an even grander estate elsewhere and would be leaving the area soon. He was away on that business even now, working on the final details of his expected relocation. When he came back, there would be both a welcome-home party and a going-away celebration. Surely my unexpected arrival would only add to the gaiety of the event.

  My ma was gone. For some time, I kept to my room and refused all food. My ma was gone. I cared not for the curtains and the staircases, the vast lawns and the large meals. She was gone. I kept the curtains closed and remained in the dark. My ma had been a maid when she met my da but never talked about it. Her union to my da had begun in scandal, but she had draped all that history in silence. She had fought to create a space for herself, to be part of a family with a name, and she had succeeded, only to see Da squander it all away. And now, when his luck had turned, she had failed to see all the profit in it.

  I recalled what my dear ma said: I should save my tears, for I would have need of them later. So I dried my cheeks and swallowed my sadness. I could not remain in my room forever. There, I was alone with my thoughts, which were miserable; on the outside, there were distractions to be found, which could be consoling. The tall white woman I had met in the kitchen was named Siobhan. She was the mistress of the house and directed all the servants.

  “You and I aren’t alone here,” Siobhan confided. “This town has English, Scotch, Dutch, French Huguenots. But many other Irish are here also. Richard Kyrle— he was governor of Charles Town. And so was James Moore. And many of the great families— the Lynches, Barnwells, and Rutledges— they’re Irish, every one of them.”

  Siobhan took me into the city with her as she purchased goods to prepare for my da’s homecoming. The town was large and loud and hot. I begged Siobhan to pause for a sip of water, but she cautioned me that the water in Charles Town was so brackish that it was scarcely potable unless it was mixed with liquor. We passed by many shops on Broad Street and Bay Street selling drinking glasses, looking glasses, livestock, tobacco, silver-headed canes, sugar, rum, calico petticoats, bodkins, Bibles, and Africans, these last two being offered at the same store.

  “Best to stock up, and not just for the party,” said Siobhan. “Privateers are prowling the coast, and if one of them lays siege to the city, we ladies should not be out-of-doors.”

  “Privateers?” I said.

  “Yea. All of the men of the town fear them, but can’t do anything about them. They come from New Providence, many of them, where there are no rules and no laws. New Providence! What a cursed place! New Providence is the very opposite to Charles Town: where here we have proper families, there they respect no ties of blood; where here women have a cherished place, there all society’s dictates are broken and women curse and drink like men. Where here a man’s reputation may be ascertained and weighed, in New Providence, among the privateers, men cloak themselves in lies and mystery and are all the prouder for it. Mind you, I’ve never been, but I’ve heard the stories, all of them, and many more than once.”

  I looked out to the bay. There may have been a hundred vessels and of every shape and size and sail— sloops, schooners, canoes, scows, brigantines, and other kinds I could not name. But if a privateer’s ship was among them, I could not say.

  * * *

  My da was due in at three o’clock. That was the traditional time to eat dinner around these parts so that one could get an early start from recovering from the heat of midday. A beautiful gown had been prepared for me. It was pink, with a low neckline, elbow-length sleeves, and a full skirt. It was made of damask silk, and beneath it I wore a matching petticoat of buckram cotton. On my feet I wore leather shoes, which were tight but made my feet appear to be pleasingly small. I twirled in front of the mirror in my bedroom and, liking what I saw, I twirled around again.

  “What do you think?” I asked Siobhan.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “Oh dear me.”

  “What?”

  “The sun has kissed your skin.”

  “We don’t get sun like this in Ireland. But what do you think of the dress?”

  “Perhaps you should choose another color that doesn’t bring out . . .”

  “There’s no time! This is my color!”

  Downstairs were assembled all the prominent families in their finest clothes. A magnificent feast had been prepared: spiced venison; oyster soup, okra soup, and terrapin soup; plum marmalade and loaves of rice bread; mince pies and white custard in glasses; and all varieties of wines, with especially large quantities of port and Madeira. Awaiting, too, was a long table, draped with a red tablecloth, each place set with sparkling silver cutlery, each piece’s handle fashioned into the image of a parrot’s head.

  But around me I heard whispers and titters. As I sipped fruit punch made from lemons and limes imported from the Bahamas, a planter’s daughter pointed at me from a few paces away. As I watched from the side of the room as guests danced the minuet, I could feel eyes on me. I tried to focus on the dance: the honors to the audience, the partners facing each other on the floor, the plié on the left foot, rising to the ball of the right foot, straightening both legs, heels close together.

  The whispers continued: “Look at her hair . . . her eyes are . . . the color of her . . . she arrived out of nowhere . . . Charles Town is the place for it . . . there is scarcely a planter in Virginia who has not tasted a sweet black berry . . . can’t tell the whites from the blacks . . . she acts as if she doesn’t . . . the sun brought it out of her . . . look at her skin . . . does she know . . . does he know . . . the mother is dead . . . does the father know . . . look at her hair . . . everyone does it . . . everyone has one or a dozen in some cases . . . blood should not mix . . . the sun brings it out . . . we can sniff them out down here . . . Charles Town isn’t the place for it . . . is she really his daughter?”

  I knew why they gossiped. Family secrets are the closest held of all confidences. They are discerned but not discussed, they are passed down in glances, in nods, in silences. But I knew why they tittered and talked. Some seventy years ago, on June 20, 1631, Moorish corsairs had kidnapped
almost all the residents of the Irish town of Baltimore; 154 souls had been stolen away to Algiers, never to return. Baltimore is in County Cork. The raiders left their mark on some of the women they left behind, but the incident had faded into local history, and then into legend, and dispersed into innuendo. But Zed, that old Moor, had filled me in on many of the details. He had even hinted that he had witnessed the events, and perhaps even participated, tho’ he would never share such facts with others in my town. I knew the gossip of course, of corsair blood flowing through the veins of friends and neighbors. I chose to ignore it all, both from outsiders and from inside my own head. I didn’t even care to acknowledge the question, much less search for answers. I told Zed I didn’t want to hear any more stories. I wasn’t blind. But I knew who I was. I was Irish. I was like they were. I knew that in my heart. So let them talk, if they wanted to, and let them choke on their words.

  But the heat of the day had been too much for me. I had not fully recovered from my earlier swoon. I found myself sweating, and my petticoat clung to my legs beneath my dress. The room shimmered and shimmied and faded in and out and rocked like the deck of a ship and I was back on the slaver again. The African men were naked and shackled on one side of the deck and the African women were on the other, clutching on to one another. The little girl who had jumped overboard now floated down from heaven. She walked toward me, her hands behind her back. Now she stuck her left arm out. She was holding a silver sword. I looked in her face and saw Ma staring back at me.

  I awoke back in my feather bed. Siobhan was standing over me.

  “I thought you were feeling better . . . perhaps you left your bed too soon . . . I thought he’d want to see you . . . oh dear . . . oh dear me.”

  “What happened? Where are the guests?”

  “The guests are still here. But your father has come and gone.”

  I noticed then that all my things were packed.

  “Da? Where is he? What did he say? Am I to go with him? Tell me! Tell me!”

  “I cannot say wither he is bound. But he did see you after you swooned, and I can tell you what he said.”

  “What? What?”

  “You must understand, he did not expect you. He did not know you or your mother were coming. He was surprised—”

  “Tell me! What did he say when he saw me?”

  Siobhan’s voice was cold.

  “He said, ‘This girl is not my daughter.’ ”

  * * *

  Carrying a bag, I ran downstairs, my tears flowing. I was fatherless, motherless, homeless, hopeless. There is this strange power that fathers have over their daughters— the more they withhold their love, the more we desire it. And when it is withdrawn altogether, it pulls us inside out, like a gutted fish. All other men, save fathers, want women for one thing, for the secret that is between our legs. Fatherly love is therefore the purest and the most valuable of all the ardor that comes from men, and the only affection from them that is irreplaceable. But I had been cast out of the possibility of that love. I was in flight. All around me, in the halls, on the stairs, in the great rooms, were the many slaves of the estate. As I rushed out each one in their turn looked up from their labor. Strange that I had not noticed before how many there were, and how completely the happiness of this house depended on their exertions. I pushed open the front door and drew the cool evening air into my lungs. I rode a horse to the wharf and took the first ship that would take me. One thought was on my mind.

  chapter 7.

  So I set sail with the sickle moon as my only companion and my course fixed on New Providence, a place with not a little reputation for revels and emprise. My heart itself was a waning crescent moon, a sliver from going all dark. My da’s actions were still inexplicable and hurtful. And the grief from my ma’s passing was still with me; such things, like shadows, never leave; they just seem to fade for a time, only to return later. So to the sea I would go, and to New Providence, in a vain attempt to outdistance my own adumbration. I paid for my voyage with several silver spoons from my da’s mansion that I filched upon my removal from that place. The captain of the vessel was at first reluctant to take on board a young woman traveling alone. But by the time I unveiled a set of stolen forks, my cutlery had won him over. And so I was bound away. In my way of thinking, an island in the Bahamas, which New Providence was, would be an ideal spot to sate my love for the far fathoms. Once there, if I applied some industry, tho’ in what field I knew not, I could make my way in the world, wherever that path might take me.

  I suppose my romance with the deep began, in large part, because I have always had more than some fair amount of fascination with the ways of men. My father was ever occupied with his affairs of business, and failures thereof, and, having no uncles or brothers to which to look, I found myself drawn to sailors and the like to unravel the mysteries of masculinity. Zed had his sea stories and they enthralled me. All who worked the sea— the fishermen and the boatswains, the lighthouse keepers and the captains’ boys— were male. Accordingly, large bodies of water, to me, seemed to be churning cauldrons of manhood, stirred at the bottom by long-bearded Poseidon with his scepter; oceans, lakes, and rivers, in my mind, contain’d in their white-flecked crests the very sum of the rages and storms and swells of that other sex. If I could just learn the ways of water, of ships and the sea, then, by my faith, I would have something of real value in my life.

  On the isle of New Providence, having established my residency by booking a small room for eight shillings a fortnight, I would stroll the dock by day, watching sailors come in from the sea and observing others as they caught the wind and blew back out into the deep. It was a world on the fringes of a world. Whilst the wan-faced landsmen wore their long waistcoats over knee breeches and white stockings, foppish hand-me-down fashions inherited from Europe, the sailors had their own style, casual, comfortable, fit for work and sweat: short blue jackets over checkered shirts, long canvas trousers and heavy-soled black boots. Only rarely had I seen a man in any form of undress, and then only by accident or surreptitiously through door cracks; the men on the docks, given the tropic heat of the region, would with regularity go about their chores stripped to the waist, their thick muscles as dark as brown leather, their chests and arms and broad backs gleaming with sweat and salty sea-spray. As white-winged gulls circumscribed the air above and green curly-tailed lizards skittered across the gray wood planks of the quay, the men would pack the holds of their ships with crates of salt and turtle shell and barrels of indigo, all destined for foreign ports. As other women breathe in the scent of periwinkle or Easter lilies given to them by some gentleman caller, I would suck in deep the reek of workingmen’s musk, ship’s tar, and sea water. By my faith, I must confess it smelled like it issued from some flower to me.

  Ofttimes, the sound of a fiddle would dance through the air, and the men would sing as they worked, led by a crew foreman or chantey man, a call-and-response rhythm that undulated with the tides.

  “Me bonnie bunch o’ roses, O!

  Go down! Ye blood red roses, go down!

  It’s time for us to roll an’ go!

  Go down! Ye blood red roses, go down!”

  At such times, I would inch closer, straining to hear every word, every note. I wanted to rub my small hands over those muscled backs and smear the sweat from their spines onto my face. I would lose myself in the sound of the docks, forget myself entirely, only to be reminded of my sex when, noticed by the sailors, the deep-voiced work chants would change to rude, high-pitched whistles and my eyes would open to see the leering gazes of sailors running over the length of my body like those curly-tailed lizards scampering over the wooden planks of the quay.

  “Ho there, you mariners!” I cried. “I am not some evening lady, but am of good stock. I seek some employment to make my way across the waters.”

  “Ha!” shouted one sailor. “The only industry for women quayside is performed whilst on the knees, tho’ some harlots of a short stature may tend to their duti
es standing!”

  There was much loud laughter all around.

  “You make me blush, sirs!” I said.

  “Your cheek is too tan for blushing,” another sailor hollered. “Put away thoughts of employment, you Moorish maid, and sail with me to my bedchamber!”

  “You have me mistaken for some other creature,” I replied. “For tho’ my skin has some shadow on it, ’tis true, I am an Irish woman born, as was my mother before me. And I would not take up with you if you were the lord of Blarney Castle!”

  And so I walked off. This scene repeated itself, with some variation, and saltier language, all along the docks and throughout my search for employment and sea-passage.

  Now, I had been told, by men whose intentions were, without doubt, not entirely honorable, that I was a comely lass, though I did not take such commentary to heart. Taking after my mother, who as a lass was known far and wide for her surpassing beauty, my skin is not necessarily fair, but is more correctly described as the same shade as beach sand or the flesh of almond nuts. ’Tis true that, in sunny seasons, there is a Moorish tint to my cheek, but do not even the trees, as constant as any thing that lives, change their colors as the months give sway one to another? Men have remarked in a complimentary fashion on the color of my eyes, comparing them to the green of the River Liffey or that of Montego Bay, but I pay no mind to statements of this sort as well, since I think of my eyes as a kind of ridiculous shade of emerald, too bright and too gleamy in appearance, rather like a cat’s eyes or a cheap piece of jewelry haggled for in a Sunday market. My hips, perhaps, could be described as shapely, but it is all undone, I must admit, by my height, which is comparable to that of a full-grown man; it is hard to imagine the size of the dowry that would make me acceptable to a gentleman of breeding and station.