Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  “Emily, my dear,” my mother tried to explain, “you’ve been out of your mind. As for your condition — well —” She broke off.

  “You’re going to have a child,” Gideon’s mother interrupted when it became obvious my mother couldn’t think how to go on.

  “A child?” I paused, waiting to take in all of this. “A child! I don’t believe it! Where’s Gideon?”

  “At the yard,” his mother said grimly. “He even sleeps there now. The times he’s tried to talk to you before, you’ve become so violent that we thought it best for you not to see him. Are you sure you want to see him now?”

  “Yes,” I replied resolutely, “I certainly do.”

  “If I untie you, you won’t take advantage of it, will you, dear?” my mother asked a little timidly. “Once you nearly killed Annie — she’s one of your nurses.”

  “I couldn’t have,” I announced firmly.

  All of this seemed completely unreal to me, and yet even now flickers of images all disconnected crossed my mind. My hands were around Mrs. Simmons’s neck, not the nurse’s; Gideon was kneeling by the bed saying something in a very earnest manner; a bird was hopping about the snow on the window ledge; I was running through the house with no clothes on pursued hotly by someone; I was being taken for a walk in the snow with a nurse on either side of me; Dr. Smedley was taking my pulse and talking to Gideon … It was true then, utterly and completely true. Michael! Michael would help me. I wasn’t mad, they were all driving me mad so they could send me off to some bedlam and have me locked up. I pulled the covers down and saw that under the nightgown my stomach was rounded, not flat. No I wouldn’t, couldn’t bear his child. How monstrous had been his revenge! I ripped off the nightgown with sudden strength and began to tear at my stomach with unkempt nails. They stopped me, and the nurses came in and someone got me to drink something and that is all I can remember.

  “Really, Gideon, she’s perfectly healthy except for her mind. She shouldn’t have any more trouble having a baby than any other woman. She’ll be going into labor any day now. That might even bring her around.”

  I could recognize Smedley’s voice. If he was here, I was in for unpleasantness, I could tell. I was surprised that I couldn’t hear the sea. You could always hear the sea from the Hotel Oceanic. Maybe Gideon and I could go sailing again today. What fun! Should I wear the middy blouse once more, or the striped shirtwaist? Let’s see, what would Gideon prefer? “Gideon?”

  “I’m right here, Emily. What would you like?”

  “Could we go sailing again today, dear? I loved it yesterday, truly I did.”

  “Of course we can, Emily.” His voice sounded strange. “Oh, I’m so happy.”

  I was, too, until die pain began. That was why Smedley was around so much, to prophesy the pain. There was always pain when he was around. First this pain was just a twinge once in a while, and I wet myself. Then it became harder and harder for hours and hours until all I could do was scream. I never knew there was this kind of pain in the world. I screamed and screamed and finally I fainted entirely away and the pain left.

  “Emily?” It was Dr. Smedley again. “Emily, you have a son, my dear, a healthy boy.”

  I felt too weak even to open my eyes. “Tell Gideon,” I managed, “tell Gideon I’m sorry for all of it.”

  “There, there, my dear. He’ll be here in a moment and you can tell him yourself. Making any headway, George?” George! I opened my eyes then to see Dr. Anderson doing something down between my legs. His hands and arms were all red, I couldn’t think why.

  “I’ve packed her tight, but it won’t stop. Tell them to bring some ice, will you? And you’d better get her husband and mother in here. I kept the family out in a case like this once, and I never heard the end of it.”

  Gideon’s face came into view then, and I could hear someone who might have been my mother sobbing in the background. In those few seconds I saw everything that had happened just as I’ve told it. “Gideon,” I said, “the baby is a judgment on me and a judgment on you. I want him called Judgment so that we will always remember how he was born of your sin and mine. Judgment for his given name and Christian because we’ll all be forgiven our sins be they ever so black. Judgment Christian Hand he’ll be, and walk in the ways of righteousness all the days of his life …”

  I felt so very weak now that I closed my eyes. “Forgive me, Gideon, as I forgive you.” I felt him take my hand in his and clasp it tight, and as I left him and drifted down into the ringing darkness I saw a spark of fire. “Wait for me, Michael!” I called gladly. “Wait for me, I’m coming …”

  Elisabeth

  1832-1839

  Chapter I

  She had just finished assigning accession numbers to the three books Admiral Howe had brought in earlier when she looked up and saw him come in. He wasn’t especially tall, but there was something about the way he carried himself, a kind of natural grace and confidence, that made you notice him. That and his red hair and beard, of course. Unselfconsciously he looked about him and then came over to her desk. His eyes were a bright fathomless blue like seas in whose depths it would be possible to immerse oneself and drown. She found that she couldn’t take her eyes from him.

  “May I help you?” she said automatically, but what she meant was, “May I know you?”

  “I hope so. Gideon Hand at your service, ma’am. I am a shipbuilder by trade, and I’m interested in what else you have on shipbuilding besides those models out there. Tell me, do libraries always hire such pretty girls?”

  She noticed suddenly that though he gestured with his left hand, his right remained in his pocket. She ignored his impertinent question at the end. “We have more than you could read in a month of Sundays. Do you wish to begin with historical accounts, or with present-day practices?”

  He smiled then and his whole face changed, became younger. “Why, let’s begin with present practices and work backward, wouldn’t you say? I think now that I’d like to go a long way back.”

  She hesitated. “This is what is known as a subscription library,” she said slowly. “To support it — and Malcolm and me as well — and to buy books, it has to charge each user. The initial fee is twenty-five dollars and an additional annual fee of ten dollars.” She had been looking at his hand and noted the many calluses, the numberless little fresh nicks and old scars that marked him a working man, not a shipyard owner, though he was dressed well enough. She didn’t know what made her say it, but unthinkingly she blurted out, “I could lend you the money if you don’t have it.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Do I look as poor as all that?” He pulled a generous roll of bills from his pocket and gravely peeled off thirty-five dollars.

  She blushed scarlet. “I didn’t mean —”

  “I know you didn’t Never apologize for a generous gesture; there are all too few of them in this world. Bread upon the waters, my father always called them.” He picked up her hand almost casually and regarded it thoughtfully. “Speaking of bread upon the waters, what are you doing for supper tonight? Such generosity shouldn’t go unrewarded, you know.”

  “Oh dear, you shouldn’t feel you have to invite me to supper just because I impulsively offered to lend you money.”

  He laughed at her. “Do be generous this one more time, anyway. It would be a pleasure for me, believe me. I’m a stranger in town, a lone, wayfaring stranger.”

  “Ladies do not go out unescorted with strange gentlemen,” she said primly, laughing herself as his face fell. “Howsomever, what would you say to a home-cooked meal?”

  “Cooked by your mother or cooked by you?” he asked glumly.

  She tipped back her head and laughed again. “My mother lives in upstate New York.”

  He grinned at her then. “I’d be proud to come. It’s right neighborly of you to ask me. You know, I don’t even know your name.”

  “Elisabeth. With an s. Elisabeth Bowman, at your service, sir,” she mimicked him. “Most people call me Beth.”
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  “I’m not most people. I shall call you Elisabeth. Of course, there’s always Liz and Bess …

  She gave a mock shudder. “Heaven forfend. There used to be a nasty little brute in the fourth grade who called me Lizzie, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

  “More the fool he. Before I forget I’m in a public place, I’d best get down to business. Now about the shipbuilding …”

  Before long he was seated in front of a stack of books and papers, and she noticed that he seemed to have the capacity to bury himself in a task once he put his mind to it. Through the morning the sight of that flaming finely shaped head burned itself into her very brain, and she had the feeling that an event of great and lasting significance had entered her life.

  At a quarter to one, Malcolm appeared to relieve her for her afternoon off. Dear Malcolm, he proposed on an average of once a week, and he was the only other man she had ever asked to dinner at the house. Gideon Hand seemed oblivious to their conversation, and she made out a receipt for the thirty-five dollars, adding on the back of it her address. “It’s my afternoon off, so come when you want to.” As she passed him on her way out, she put down the slip where he would be sure to see it.

  Without looking up from the page he was scrutinizing, he put his hand on her wrist. “I’m married. I want you to know that, Elisabeth.”

  “I thought you were. A man like you would be.”

  “The invitation still stands?”

  “It still stands.” She smiled wanly. “I’m only offering you a meal, you know.”

  He looked up at her then and smiled, squeezing her wrist. She knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

  The first night they settled for food and conversation. The second night he arrived clean-shaven with a bouquet of roses.

  “You’ve shaved off that beautiful beard!” she exclaimed when she saw him.

  “I grew it for rounding the Horn,” he said. “Now at last I’ve rounded it, and I don’t need the beard anymore.”

  The third night they played chess, and he didn’t seem to mind that she was better at it than he.

  By the fourth day she found herself looking forward to the evening with a kind of anticipatory joy that colored her whole day. Though Gideon said very little about his wife, in other ways he matched her trust by telling her of experiences and feelings she rather thought he had never before shared with anyone. She knew now about his having been violated on his first voyage, and about the Wendigo and the mountainous black icy water off the Horn and what ships did to the men who sailed them. They laughed, too, and teased each other unmercifully. Horatio, the big yellow tom, watched him with topaz eyes as he lay on Elisabeth’s lap, and at last condescended to jump up on Gideon’s lap. He laughed and said it was a great compliment. “We tomcats have to stick together.”

  On the fourth night Gideon had the inn where he was staying cook its best meal, with oysters and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, browned potatoes, and an apple pie. He hired a cab and took it all to Elisabeth’s house on a large tray.

  “Oh, Gideon, what a lovely surprise. My food budget was down to fishcakes and bacon.”

  “They would have tasted like ambrosia, my dear Elisabeth, but it’s time I let you out of the kitchen. I’ve been so bemused I didn’t even think.”

  They opened the bottle of wine he had brought and drank a glass before falling to on the meal, which except for the Yorkshire pudding had survived the trip surprisingly well. All during the meal, which they ate in the kitchen as usual, they never took their eyes off each other, as if trying to memorize each other’s features, and Horatio had to remind them that he lived there, too.

  After dinner they took their brandy into the sitting room and began a desultory game of chess to which neither of them paid a great deal of attention. At last Gideon dropped his hand from the bishop he was about to move.

  “I have no right to say this, Elisabeth, but I love you, you know.”

  She brushed back tendrils of hair from her cheek and sighed. “Yes, I know. God help me, it’s the same for me. I know that what I want to do, what I must do, is wrong, but I haven’t the strength to stop.”

  “I can’t leave Emily. I’m fond of her and she needs me. Besides, I gave my word not to …”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. What’s between you and her is your business, but I trust you to do the right thing.”

  “The right thing would be to get up and leave and never come back, and I can’t bring myself to do that. So much for your trust.”

  “I wasn’t trusting you to deny us both, I was trusting you to care.”

  “I couldn’t deny you if I wished to — it’s gone much too far for that.” He reached for her and slowly took her in his arms, his mouth tender and hungry at the same time.

  She broke away finally and stood up. “I couldn’t bear to have this turn into a furtive groping on the sofa,” she said in an unsteady voice. “Come along, love.”

  She led the way into the small bedroom that nevertheless boasted a double bed. He stood hesitant, looking down at his motionless hand. She pushed up his sleeve and undid the straps of his ivory hand, laying it carefully on the top of the dresser. She unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off back over his shoulders and down his arms, then raised the callused stump to her lips.

  “Don’t ever be ashamed of this, Gideon. There must never be any shame between you and me.”

  Looking at each other the whole time, they slowly took off their clothes until they were both naked. She moved into his arms then and they sank down on the bed. With a sigh that was almost a groan, he gathered her up against him, and she felt his warm, smooth flesh against the whole length of her. Though their bodies soon quickened almost unbearably, they made themselves go slowly, to savor all the tastes and touches of this feast in celebration of life. When they could hold back no longer, their already joined bodies leaped against each other in culmination, and their cries of fulfillment came so close together they were nearly one.

  For a long time they lay unmoving, their breathing quieting, and Elisabeth found comforting the reassuring weight of him. At last he rolled off and gently pulled her head over onto his shoulder while he stroked her loosened hair.

  “I wish it hadn’t been like that,” he said at last.

  She stirred in his arms. “Wasn’t it good for you, then?”

  “So good I can hardly believe it happened. You were already a part of my mind and heart, and now you are a part of my body as well. Oh God, I can never let you go.”

  “We’ll have a time explaining when they come to find out why I disappeared, won’t we?” she said, laughing. She didn’t want to talk of letting go, though she knew already that one day they would be forced to. Life didn’t allow forbidden relationships like theirs to continue for long. But for now they would make every second count, be aware of every last word and movement and intonation, not allow a moment to pass unnoticed. Instinctively they had both known this, and it had telescoped what would ordinarily have been a long, loving wooing into a matter of days. She turned and kissed his shoulder, his skin warm on her lips.

  “Tell me,” he said two weeks later, “what do you do when I’m not here?”

  She smiled. “The same as I did before. I shop and cook and go sailing and have Malcolm over for dinner once a week. He beats me at chess.”

  “He’s in love with you, you know. I’ve seen him looking at you, and he has the same besotted expression on his face that I do.”

  “He proposes regularly. I’m very fond of Malcolm, but I’m not in love with him.”

  “Thank God.” He kissed her. “When are you going to take me sailing?”

  She stopped smiling. “I —” She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “What’s wrong, Elisabeth? Did I step on a sensitive toe?”

  She looked at him seriously. “You’ve never asked about my husband.” It was a statement, not a question.

  It was his turn to be serious. “The one thing I won’t discu
ss with you — for many reasons — is my wife. I had no right to ask about your husband.”

  “I want to tell you now. Up until two weeks ago I thought I loved him … No, that’s not right. I did love him, and I’ll never know if the difference is that I knew I would spend the rest of my life with him — there was always plenty of time, and we were together all the days there were.” She smiled at Gideon sadly. “It shouldn’t, but it does make a difference, doesn’t it?”

  “Go on,” Gideon said, not answering.

  “We met when we were both crewing for John Rowdy, the carriage-wheel millionaire.”

  He laughed. “I didn’t know young ladies crewed for anyone.”

  “Ah, but I was no more a young lady then than I am now. I was good enough, is all, and Mr. Rowdy wanted to win races. He couldn’t have cared less if I’d been a Hottentot painted blue as long as I knew what I was doing.”

  “How did your husband earn his living?”

  “He didn’t have to earn it at all, but he was an engineer. He always wanted to design racing boats one day, but in the meantime he built bridges and dams and roads.”

  “There was money then.”

  “There was quite a bit of it, but I didn’t get much of it, if that’s what you’re asking. Enough to buy this house, and a small income that allows me to work less than full time at a job I enjoy doing.”

  “Isn’t that strange if you were his wife?”

  “He would have come into an enormous trust at age thirty, but you see, he didn’t live to be thirty, and I suppose the trust will revert to his sister. His parents really didn’t approve of me anyway; they wanted him to marry a girl of his own social standing. There were other reasons, too.”

  “If you don’t mind talking about it, what happened?”

  “I do mind, but I want you to know. He and I were out sailing one day in a small boat we had. We used to take terrible chances all the time, and on several occasions before, we had capsized when we simply pushed the boat too far. We capsized this time, too, only I came up and he didn’t. He must have hit the boom as he was thrown in and been knocked unconscious. Though we were a mile out, there was only twenty feet of water over a bar where we were, and I dived and dived before I found him. Then I couldn’t get him up on the capsized boat. I used to dream about that part of it later, trying to haul him out of the water and he being too heavy. When someone finally realized we were in more than ordinary trouble and came to get us, I had lashed us both to the mast, because I thought if I went on holding him there in the water, he would somehow come to life again. If I’d stayed there much longer, even though it was summer, they’d have found the both of us dead. There were times afterward I wished they had.”