Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  Gideon gave me a look of disgust and walked out of the room, closing the door carefully behind him. As I lay there, all kinds of visions chased themselves across my mind. I was out in a sailboat, only it was the Archangel Michael at the tiller in place of Gideon. We flew faster and faster over the waves, and at last took to the air and soared into an exultation I had never before known, a state of such wonder and splendor that I actually thought I might die of it. We were surrounded by flaming clouds, and a choir of winged and white-robed angels sang so beautifully that they made me weep for joy. Then God the Father, looking like my father — or rather, the way I used to see my father when I was a child — came toward me with a golden whip in His hand, which He gave to the Archangel Michael, directing him to flay me. As the golden whip dripped red, I felt my sins let out with my blood until I was as light as air. God then enfolded me in His arms and I swooned with ecstasy.

  Though at first I didn’t notice, what with the death of my father, my mother’s refusal to move in with us even as Gideon’s mother had refused, as if they sensed the evil in this house, and the renewed hostilities between Gideon and me, I finally saw that Sally was apparently thriving on widowhood. She had lost weight, and that puffy bloated look along with it. More, she had regained the air of intense vitality that was one of her most attractive features. She had never been beautiful nor, if the truth be known, very intelligent either, but her enjoyment of living had given her the handsomeness of a sleek, well-cared-for animal who out of sheer high spirit frolics in the pasture. I was glad for her, for she had been punished for her greediness and now deserved some happiness.

  Though I went about the parish day and night on my rounds and was praised handsomely by the new preacher, a chubby gentle man who was the antithesis of my father, I was restless and had trouble sleeping. I could find no peace even in my wooded copse, incapable as I was now of sitting on the bench without fidgeting or of communicating with my heavenly friend and protector. To make things even worse, those terrible headaches returned more excruciatingly than ever. I thought immediately of obtaining another brown bottle, but some sense of cunning dictated that I must wait until I was sure that Gideon would not come upon me when under its influence. I had seen that when I took enough of the fluid, whatever it was, I could not hold my tongue, and I realized instinctively that if Gideon knew about the medicine, he would take it away from me, for he wanted me punished for not catering to his lustful demands every bit as much as I wanted him punished for having them.

  One summer morning at breakfast, much to my joy, he announced that he was going to Boston for several days or possibly even a week because the Andromeda would be in harbor there and he wanted to examine her to see how the metal and wood joins were faring. He had also heard that there was a library in the city containing plans and other materials on ships and shipbuilding, and he wanted to see for himself if there was anything there of value. I nodded wordlessly, inwardly rejoicing at the news of his absence, and I could hardly wait for him to leave. He would be riding Dasher, and I wondered if the lively sorrel might possibly be the instrument of the punishment that Archangel Michael had promised me. I had a swift vision of Gideon paralyzed in a wheelchair, but resolutely put it from my mind. It was too like the visions I used once to have of my father bedridden while I nursed him.

  He had no sooner trotted off than I ordered Charles to get out the carriage and take me downtown to shop. I was left off at the same comer, and once again I heard the derisive tinkle of the bell on Mr. Sneed’s apothecary door.

  “Yes, Mrs. Hand?” Again the planes of light on the square lenses of his spectacles.

  “That medicine you have, the one for ladies. I’d like another bottle, please.”

  His eyebrows went up, though it had been months since I’d bought the last one. “Very well, though I should warn you, Mrs. Hand, it is powerful stuff, very powerful stuff indeed.”

  “I’m sure it is, Mr. Sneed,” I said coldly. “Only remember, I’ve a whole household to think of, not only myself. The scullery girl has pain every month, and my husband suffers from cruel headaches. I even gave some to Charles, the coachman, when Dasher stepped on his toe and broke it.” I realized that I was explaining too much, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Charles had actually had his toe broken in that fashion, though it was brandy, not medicine, he was given, but of course the rest was nothing but lies. Why couldn’t this horrid little man simply allow me to buy what I wanted and mind his own business?

  He must have sensed my irritation, for he hastily handed me the bottle and sought to placate me. “Naturally, of course, Mrs. Hand. Why, I certainly didn’t mean to imply … oh dear, well here it is. I only meant to say that it could be dangerous, was all, should any of the servants or someone like that get hold of it …” He trailed off and smiled uncertainly.

  “You were quite right to warn me, Mr. Sneed.” Now that I had backed him down I could afford to be magnanimous. “It is indeed powerful, and I hope that you warn everyone you sell it to.” There was an implied criticism of his not saying anything the first time he’d sold it to me, just to keep him on the defensive. Before he could recover, I put down the necessary coins and sailed out with a grand “Thank you, Mr. Sneed” trailing in my wake.

  That afternoon I returned with Archangel Michael to the place of the heavenly choir and once more knew the ecstasy of the purifying scourge. I was happy.

  That evening I was just finishing a dinner that I had done little more than pick at when someone sounded the knocker at the front door. I wondered who it could be, and wondered even more when I heard Joseph arguing with someone, a woman from the muffled sound of the voice. I was just getting up to go see what was going on when there burst into the room a distraught Sally Culp. Her eyes were swollen from crying and her face unattractively mottled. “Where is he? I’ll make that bastard pay, see if I don’t!”

  I saw at once that besides being distraught she was drunk as an owl. “Where is who, Sally?” I said soothingly. “Sit down, why don’t you, and I’ll have Nellie bring you a nice cup of tea.”

  “As if you didn’t know who!” she exclaimed sarcastically, her eyes bright with malice. “The high and mighty Gideon Hand, that’s who!”

  “But he’s gone to Boston, Sally, truly. Joseph must have told you that. Is there anything I can do?”

  She peered at me closely then, and burst into a cackle of laughter. “By God, I don’t think you know at that. And here I thought it was you put him off me.”

  “Put him off you? I don’t understand.”

  “You will, Miss High and Mighty, you will. Gideon and me’ve been lovers, what do you think of that?”

  I seemed determined to be dense. “But that was before we were married, Sally. After all, it was you who turned him down.”

  “More’s the pity,” she mumbled, “or I’d be sitting where you are now.” She shook her head, and tears trickled down her cheeks as she looked at me. “We’ve been lovers since, that’s what I’m trying to tell you, and this time he jilted me. It was something like a month after Chester died on me, and poor old Gideon, he was like he used to be when he came back from the sea, he was that eager. I don’t know what you did to him, but he was famished.” The tears started again. “And then he got to seeing me less and less and finally quit altogether. Oh, what am I to do, I love him so!”

  So that explained Sally’s recent air of well-being. There was another mark on Gideon’s ledger that would have to be cleared before he had paid in full. Strange, but I would have minded terribly if I had found out about it when the affair was still going on, but now I only felt a sense of extreme distaste. How could this slovenly drunken creature ever dream she could hold on to a man who looked like an archangel? “If I were you, Sally, I would cut my losses and try for someone else,” I said unsympathetically. “He’ll never go back to you. He didn’t promise you anything, did he?”

  “He — he said I was like finding water in the desert,” she wept pathetically. “That’s t
he same as saying he needed me, isn’t it? You’ve changed, Emily. You’ve gotten hard, and that’s a fact.”

  “You’d best get hard yourself, Sally. If it had been anyone but me had seen you make this disgraceful scene, the whole parish would buzz with it in no time and you’d surely have to move away.” I rang the little handbell for Nellie. “Now have some tea, do, and pull yourself together.”

  Nellie came in then and I ordered tea for both of us. It wouldn’t take long, because Mrs. Perry always had water boiling on the stove for her own tea. Sally’s words had hit me harder than I was willing to admit, and I began to wonder if I shouldn’t begin to pay more attention to his comings and goings, for I had no intention of simply being abandoned. I saw then that all along I had meant to have him back, but on my terms. I wanted him to be the companion he had been on our honeymoon, only without that disgusting physical relationship. The vision of him in a wheelchair flashed across my mind once more.

  “When did he lose interest in you?” I was all business.

  “Toward the end of March, as nearly as I can remember. By the middle of April he had dropped me. I thought perhaps if I let him go without an argument, he would come back, but it’s four months now and he never has.” She blinked owlishly. “I tried to see him in the yard, but they wouldn’t let me in. They’ve got a man on the gate now, you know, to keep anyone from stealing their models like what happened at Fowler’s last winter.”

  To show how far I had grown from Gideon, I didn’t know, but I nodded wisely.

  “Sally,” I said, very sure of myself suddenly, “you may as well face it, you’re finished with him. I doubt, in fact, that he ever really forgave you for turning him down the first time.”

  Well, let her ponder on that. As I had good reason to know, Gideon was a stubborn one, and if he’d made up his mind to quit her, he’d go without rather than return to her. I smiled sweetly at Sally. The sword of Archangel Michael was raising for its final blow.

  Chapter IV

  When Gideon returned from Boston at the end of the week, I looked at him with new eyes. To begin, with, he was clean-shaven, which made him look years younger. Further, for the first time since our honeymoon, he actually looked happy and content and pleased with himself. Had he looked like that before he had gone? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember. I surmised that his Boston trip had actually occupied only a day or so and that he had spent the rest of the time holed up with his present lady love. I had a feeling that there would be many more trips to Boston in the near future, since this one had served him so well.

  “That library is marvelous, really unbelievable. From modelmaking to rigging and finishing, they’ve got papers, books, pamphlets, you name it. They even have actual models. I promised them the one of the Andromeda, though it’s really old stuff now. I can’t stay away from the yard very long at a time, but I figure if I make a couple of trips a month to Boston, in the end I’ll double our quality and output.”

  There it was, all laid out innocently for me to see. He went on chattering away casually, hardly the silent, grim-faced Gideon who had left me a week before. As it turned out in reality, I had other things on my mind besides Gideon’s secret love life, for I was already getting short on the brown bottle, and I was afraid that this time Mr. Sneed might balk or, worse, tell Gideon. How he would love to have a lever like that! Instead I had Charles drive me to Marsh on a spurious errand. My impatience made the trip home seem to take years.

  This time I didn’t even wait until after lunch. Gideon had gone harling off to Boston again, as I knew he would, so I didn’t have to worry about his whereabouts. I told Mrs. Simmons that I had eaten an early repast in town and that I wouldn’t be needing lunch.

  “A pity,” she said. “Mrs. Perry made a chicken pie especially, and now it will all be wasted.”

  “Why can’t I have it for dinner?” I asked impatiently, unconsciously fondling the package in my hands until I saw Mrs. Simmons eyeing it curiously.

  “Well, I don’t know that the roast will hold for another day,” she said.

  “I can’t think why you’d be getting roasts when I’m here by myself anyway,” I snapped, wild now to be off to the copse. “I don’t care what’s served, just don’t go on so about it!”

  Mrs. Simmons’s carefully plucked eyebrows shot up, but she pursed her mouth then and had sense enough not to pursue the discussion.

  For appearances, I took a book with me to the copse, and of course the bottle in one of the voluminous pockets of my gardening skirt. As if in some sort of conspiracy to delay me, both Nellie and Nick, the gardener, engaged me in silly conversation concerning their respective parts of the household. I’m afraid I finally became quite short with them, for Nick actually stamped off muttering under his breath about people who had time to sit under trees but not to make decisions until it was too late to do anything about them. I would have to soothe him down later, for I didn’t want him taking an inordinate interest in my activities in the copse.

  At long last I was seated once again on the marble bench. I took a deep breath and pulled out the bottle, which I unwrapped with trembling fingers. I broke the wax seal and unstoppered the top, then tilted the bottle to my mouth to let the welcome familiar bitterness slide down my throat. For the first time, nothing happened except a distant feeling as if I were looking at myself from outside, as I had had that day among the dunes. I cast my thoughts out toward Michael, but with no result. Panicked now, I took another long swallow, and at last gratefully saw the colors about me shimmer and grow brighter.

  How can I describe the glory and the splendor to be found in that ordinary brown bottle? I was no longer plain old Emily Hand who had trouble ordering servants and could easily be faced down by any woman in town who gave herself airs. No longer did I have to scheme to hold on to Gideon, for the brown bottle gave me infinite power and wisdom. When I was with the Archangel Michael, in truth I didn’t care any longer about the servants or the townspeople or even Gideon, for in some indefinable way Michael was Gideon, or rather was the Gideon who should have been: pure, holy, strong, faithful, chaste, and wise. When he scourged me, it was to make me pure and strong as well, and as I writhed under the lashes, my ecstasy and love of God became well nigh unbearable, and I half-swooned to the ground, pierced by a passion and rapture that left me gasping for breath.

  For hours afterward I would feel a warm contentment, a sense of having been fulfilled, even sated, and I floated airily about a world more gentle and mellow than the real world ever was. At such times I was tempted to let Gideon in on my delicious secret, for I knew that he too would then be purified and become the man I knew he could be. Fortunately he always came home late enough, when he came home at all, that the vision had worn off and I had come to my senses to realize that his wickedness would not only resist purification, but probably result in depriving me of my holy experience as well. So I determined to go on seeming to believe his story that he often slept at the yard at night.

  However, gone entirely was the morose stranger who had lived with me for nearly two years. It wasn’t just that he looked younger — that could be accounted for by his having shaved off his beard — but there was a kind of — well, radiance about him, that was the only word to describe it. He glowed as if from some inner flame that lit his face. Sometimes I shivered with a sudden sense of foreboding as I had on the day of my wedding.

  Things went on like that for several months, in the course of which Gideon as a surprise anniversary present took me clear to New York, an overpowering city that first terrified and then fascinated me. We stayed at the Regent, an old-fashioned hotel with impeccable service and an air of quiet dignity, where we had a suite with separate bedrooms. I remember standing out on the balcony of our rooms looking down at the throngs of people pushing and shoving at each other for all the world like warring ants, and at the wagons and carriages thrusting and jostling their way through the narrow street, and all of a sudden I wondered what would happen if I leaped
into the midst of the crowd below. Would they part for my falling body, or would I be cushioned by a sea of human flesh and descend unharmed?

  One enormous boon that New York brought me was an ample supply of the elixir, of which I now took a small amount each morning and evening, soothing my ragged nerves and giving me the courage and energy to get through each day. Gideon had apparently decided to be as pleasant as possible to me short of exercising his conjugal rights. Only occasionally did I take enough to have a vision, for I seemed to know instinctively that to be greedy would ruin everything, and the Archangel Michael would disappear never to return. To my delight, I found that in New York there were pharmacies in almost every block, an opportunity I made good use of while Gideon was off at the docks and talking business with possible customers. He was more than generous with my spending money, and by the time we were ready to return home, I had bottles stashed every which way in my valise and even in my voluminous handbag. It would be a long cold day indeed before I would have to put myself at the mercy of Mr. Sneed and apothecaries in surrounding towns again.

  The long cold day was not as tardy in its arrival as I thought, however, for the winter was hardly over before I was staring at the last two bottles. Without realizing it I had been needing more and more medicine each day even to maintain a state of calm, and at the same time I felt increasingly apathetic about the visions. I found that I vastly preferred to float along in my softened world, content with watching the days drift past in a pleasant haze.

  Once a week I paid a duty visit to my mother. I didn’t really care if I saw her or not, but I knew that there would have been unpleasantness if I didn’t. She had blossomed since my father died, and now wore bright colors in place of the blacks and grays in which she had always appeared formerly. She did her hair in a different way as well, looser, softer. Gideon had bought her a small house not far from the center of town where it would be easy for her to walk to do any shopping she required, and she now had a canary, a cheerful little thing, and a gray kitten.