The Maze at Windermere

by Gregory Blake Smith

  Have had no recurrence of my Melancholia, nor of those Fits that sometimes follow upon. Tho’ he is the type to keep the Confidence, still I regret having told Smithson of the Circumstances of my Scar. I sometimes catch him gazing at me with something like fraternal concern, as if he were gauging me, measuring my Mood.

  Apr 1

  The news at breakfast was that two vessels laden with Oysters and blue crab and Flounder from Long Island Bay had entered the Harbour and were selling their fish to whomever could pay. I was sure this was someone’s clever All Fools’ joke (poisson d’avril the French call such pranks), but no, there were Oysters to be had. I sent Private Stephens to procure five bushels. And then to alleviate the Dullness these last days have put me under followed after him down to the Harbour.

  When I drew up to where they were unloading the fish I had the surprize of seeing, in the midst of the gathering, Judith accompanied by Hannibal and a Negroe boy also of the Jew’s house. When I expressed my Wonder at seeing her, she said that she would have me know that with her Step-Mother gone, she was charged with running her father’s Household. It was too dull not to have employment, she said. We colonial women, she said, are not the delicate flowers you English raise in your Orangeries.

  Did she not, then, consider herself English as her father did?

  Indeed she did. If she was not English, then what was she? She hoped she was not an Arab! But she ventured to say that she was an American Englishwoman.

  This bewildered me. I wanted to ask did she think she could be a Jew and an Englishwoman at the same time, but of course I did not. Instead I found myself relating how a German friend of my family who had visited Newport before the War had remarked that the Jews of the New World were not known by their Beards & Clothes but dressed like other men in colorful silk and white wigs, and that their women were in the same French style as other women. To which she responded, But we are as other women.

  Indeed you are not, Miss Da Silva, I had wit enough to say. And I followed the remark with some further Gallantry I will forgo reproducing here.

  But I did not fall into the Badinage that has become the mode of our usual Intercourse. For I had the Inspiration that it might no longer do to take up that bantering way, even if that Banter brought with it the Vivacity of her eyes. Instead I saw clearly that from this point on, the way forward lay in Sincerity and in the evidence of a Troubled Heart. So I let my voice grow thoughtful and told her that it sometimes saddened me that we had met under the Dreadful circumstance of War, for I held it a Privation that I might not enjoy her company under more Civil circumstances. And I sighed and accounted it a lack that in Devon where I grew up it might be permitted us to walk among the shops or to have a Pic-nic upon the Meadows. But here there were eight thousand pairs of Military eyes upon us. Was that not a Hardship, Miss Da Silva?

  She said I was not Bold enough, that if she wanted a Pic-nic, there was nothing that would stop her from having one.

  Did she want me, then, to be more bold? I asked her.

  To which she answered that I was an Officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, was I not? Attach’d to General Pigot’s staff, in charge of marshalling his Spies? She supposed I was bold enough.

  I told her I would endeavor to be as she wished.

  When her slave boy return’d with his basket I noted it had only Flounder in it, and remark’d to Judith that it was a pity she was forbidden the eating of Shellfish, and did she know that the Romans considered Oysters an Aphrodisiak? And that they used to put them in Saltwater pools and fatten them with Wine & Pastries for some weeks before enjoying them?

  Apr 3

  Word comes this morning that at Genl Pigot’s order I am to accompany a party charged with a Survey of the island’s Defences. I am to take some of my Spies with me and distribute them as I see fit that they may report on the Locals. We shall be gone several days. I shall take this Opportunity to show a crest-fallen face at Da Silva’s this afternoon. Parting is such Sweet Sorrow, &c.

  Had coffee that was part of the lading of the rebel Schooner lately taken by The Maidstone. Bradshaw managed to place his hands upon it. I took a cup in Satisfaction of his debt. Delightful aroma.

  And now just returned from Da Silva’s. Learned there that Smithson has called upon the Jew under his own sail. Extraordinary. What is he after? I wonder.

  Da Silva being still at his Counting-house when I arrived, I had occasion for some private talk with Judith in which I mentioned the writing of this Journal. Told her I wrote it with the Imagination that years hence I would read it and remember my Youth. Perhaps it would form the basis of a Memoir, for were these not Historical times? She asked did I write about my visits with her, and did not Blush asking it. I told her oh yes, I did. Told her our Conversations before her father’s fire were my chief respite from the unhappy Duties of War, and more of the sort. Told her I would remember them, and her, wherever Life took me.

  A good move, letting her know the Impression she had made upon me, and that I carry that Impression with me. It prepares the way for more Intimate confession.

  But Smithson! The man sees me shave every morning, sees the Scar upon my throat, knows its origin. Is the damned Fellow telling tales behind my back?

  When Da Silva returned I could not keep myself from goading the Jew about his Loyalties, did he not work both ends of the Conflict? There was a Suspicion to that effect amongst Admiral Howe’s staff, I told him. Was he not a kind of Sebastiao to the Loyalists and an Isaac to the Rebels? Contemptible mood that only grew worse with every sight of Judith’s bosom. Imagined myself forcing the girl. Upon leaving, signaled to Phyllis to come later. She is just left. Treated her roughly, but with great Pleasure.

  1692

  6th Day

  Ashes told me once that when she sleeps, her Spirit travels back to Africa. There she finds her Village and her mother and her sister with whom she talks as if she had never come away. It is then her Spirit is happy, she says. Someday, she says, her Spirit will stay in Africa. And we will see her no more.

  I had once, shortly after Mother died, said to Ashes that we were both orphans now. I meant it I know not how, but as if it was my Fear speaking that it might not be so. And that she would say it was not so, that Father would yet return, as to comfort me and to reassure me. And indeed she answer’d that we were none, but it was not as I had meant her to answer. For she then said that her Mother and Father were still alive, and I felt the Force of what she said and was shaken. And I thought, too (why had I never consider’d it before?), how she must feel the loss of her Mother. For now it has come to me to know somewhat of that. And it is not so clear to me as it has been beforetimes that God has given it to us to be above the African Race as I have heard it said. But I do wonder now.

  2nd Day

  In Meeting yesterday, John Pettibone would stare at me so! Every time I look’d across at him his eyes darted away!

  We used to throw Mussels at one another down along the breakwater.

  3rd Day

  Oh, those first Days when we learn’d that Father had yet to make port! I would lie in bed (and Mother suffering so!) and I couldn’t help but picture the Dove engulf’d in Storm, the rolling deck, and the Waves breaking over the bow, and the Sails shredded! Yet whatever pictures my Fancy would conjure I would just as quickly counter them with a Saving. Oh, they had got the ship turn’d into the wind just in time! They are not stove as they had thought! They made it into the dory and might yet brave the storm! It was as if I were there aboard the ship and could alter what was fated, tho’ I lay in my bed still. As if (as Ashes says!) my Spirit travel’d to Father that I might save him.

  Is it not possible that he is wreck’d upon one of the lesser islands of the Indies? He and James Beecher and the others? And that in time we will hear of it, that he is Saved, that he returns aboard a Newport vessel any day now?

  If his Soul is with the Lord,
yet I do feel such Fear and Dread. How low I am in my Understanding!

  4th Day

  Jane Beecher and I have had our soap-making. She is such a handsome and yet I think forbidding woman. But I am grateful to her for making a Party of the soap-making as she used to do with Mother, for it is the most unpleasant of the household Chores.

  She is taller than me, and strong, and altogether what is accounted a buxom woman. I feel so very slight when she is around. Her two young children were there to play with Dorcas, and I brought Ashes to help. She cannot understand Ashes, who speaks as do the Negroes of the Islands. Again we did not speak of her husband James or of Father.

  We set the leach and she show’d me that it must be strong enough to float a potato so that a part just the size of a Ninepence stands up out of the Lye. Like a woman’s nipple, she said with a look that embarrass’d me. The work took us all morning. We were in the Dooryard and we had to keep the children away for it is burny stuff. And then we boil’d and boil’d, but we had luck and the soap was soft and good and without Grease. Toward the end there was some light Snow. We heard it falling in the dry brown leaves that were still on the oak, and we look’d at one another with Satisfaction.

  When we were done we divided the Soap and I sent Ashes home with our share.

  Jane then spread a Supper for we were tired and hungry and cold from working out of doors.

  She was very soft of me. She ask’d did I not miss Mother, and was it not hard to have no Woman to speak to? She told me that she had seen John Peele and John Cole come to the House third day last and said she knew why they came for they had come to her too. I told her they had brought as well the news that some of our Society had put themselves forth to adopt Dorcas and me. She ask’d whether a Match had been propos’d, which made me Blush but I answer’d that there had been None, that doubtless I am accounted as yet too young. To which she said I was come into a Woman’s body and that there would surely be a man would not mind my Youth. There was always such a Man, she said. I mark’d the tone with which she spoke, for I had heard her do so before. A girl’s body is like a Garden that ripens, she said, and there will always be someone who will want the harvest of it.

  She says too that she will not remarry if it is the case that her James is lost. That she will turn her hand to sewing for others, and if she needs to, she will get a small shop of Fabric and sundry sewing Articles and become a Mercer. But she will not remarry.

  1st Day

  After Meeting today I had a Visit at the house of Henry and Esther Pennington which tho’ I try not to write on first days I must set down. For the news is of the late witch Trials in the Massachusetts. There are some two dozen hang’d we are told and more awaiting, but now the dissenting minister Mr. Mather has spoken against spectral Evidence. We talk’d much of whether the Townspeople there, even their Magistrates and Divines, have been laboring under a delusion of Satan.

  John Peele then express’d the Idea that if there is a Light that comes to us, may there not be also a Darknesse? I was greatly work’d upon by this Conceit. For I have always thought, from my own Experience, that the opposite of the Light was an Emptiness, or as I may say, an Absence. It is, for me, a lack of Light that I live in most. But this Conceit of John Peele’s has struck me with great Force.

  Are there, then, those among us who have Visitations of Darknesse, as we of the Society hope to have Visitations of Light? Is there, if I may follow out the Conceit, a type of Inner Darknesse as there is the Inner Light? This is most terrible to think of! For as I hope to live my life by the Instruction of God’s Light, are there those around me who live their life under the Influence of a Darknesse? And who are they? For the news from the Massachusetts is not that these Witches are the Thieves of the highway or the Water-rats of the wharves, but they are Members of the Community, tho’ they be not Friends. There is an Awe in that, I think, a Dread that makes me quail at the World around me.

  And now that I write this I am struck that the Matter may be even more subtile. For these Townspeople of the Massachusetts, did they not think they were acting in a Brightnesse, and now that Brightnesse is reveal’d as Darknesse? Can the Devil act so to perplex us? Can our Spirits be so bewilder’d that our Minds and Hearts are as a Maze?

  I walk’d home with Jane Beecher and we did talk much of this news.

  4th Day, 2 ix mo.

  I have been all the way out to the land which is call’d Doubling Point, past the farms and the old Narragansett sites. I walk’d and walk’d as if I would outwalk Affliction. When the land gave out I stood and look’d at the blue bay and the great blue sky with the gulls crying all around me. There was one sail on the Horizon, and for a moment my Heart leapt, but I soon saw it was not sloop-rigg’d. I sat on a rock and look’d across the water.

  A Conviction has come into me as an Intruder who has taken up a seat at our Hearth and will not be moved: there can be no more denying Father is lost. That we can not be certain of this is no Reason to go about in blind Belief. As Jane Beecher says, it is the nature of the Sea that we often do not know a vessel’s Loss for a Surety. And to hope in the face of such Likelihood seems a Blindnesse.

  I have known this without admitting it, but now it seems to me as a Child’s thing that must be put away. I must admit it so that I may set a Course based on the Apprehension. Dorcas and I are Orphans, and God has seen fit to place my little Sister in my Care and I must find a way whereby she may be saved.

  What are the Difficulties? What is the End to be aim’d at?

  The Difficulties may be named. We must have Firewood enough and flour and corn and fish. And tho’ there is enough money in Father’s Bible-box for this Winter, it will run out and then what? I might let out Ashes to another Family. I might even sell her outright. That would increase my work, but not, I pray, beyond what I can do. And it might earn enough that we might have our Wants taken care of. I shall have to think on this.

  And the End? Are there, as Jane Beecher says, men who would have me? She says I own a House now, and a Servant, and she says I am pleasant enough to look at, what Man would not take this? But I would not have a Man who wants me for my House and my Chattels. Is that not suspect? Yet all others are but Boys and I am not sure Dorcas and I can manage until they are Men.

  John Pettibone is throwing Mussels at girls still, I fear.

  I must be strong. I must look to Jane Beecher and her Strength, for I am amaz’d that she is able to face the Prospect of her Husband being lost with such belief in herself and her Abilities.

  2nd Day

  This morning I went out to Abraham Levi’s shop with Dorcas. When we return’d there was on the door-stead a neatly folded-over scrap of muzlin and inside some several Coins amounting to 1£, 8d, 4p. This anger’d me, and sham’d me, and made me thankful all at once.

  6th Day

  Over the course of the last few Days, Jane Beecher has come to the house to look over our Stores, and our Firewood, and much else. And she was stern with Ashes, and brought her a new broom when she saw how unfit ours was become. She has given Dorcas some of her Ruth’s gowns that have grown too small. And today she brought over two of her own stays that she said have become too small for her. She ripp’d out the stitches, and had me standing before the fire in my smock that she might lay the Pieces against me and measure them to fit. We cut and sew’d and I was endlessly putting on and taking off my Petticotes and waistcoat. She watch’d me as a Mother might, I suppose, tho’ she would say now and then, that yes she could understand a man’s being interested in me. She pull’d my Smock tight against me, against my waist and elsewhere, as if she meant to show how I have chang’d. After a while I stopp’d smiling at this, for she did not do it as Hannah or Martha might.

  Still she is become a great Friend, and a Strength to me. She calls me Prudence, and it is so nice to hear my name spoken by one who might love me.

  2011

  The mo
re Sandy saw of Aisha—and their getting together always had to be clandestine—the more he appreciated how her life in Newport required a certain tiptoeing finesse. From the outside she seemed so free and self-assured, her summers spent working in the Orangery while in her Brooklyn studio a couple of MFA students from Pratt Institute were knocking out a retail year’s worth of what she called her donkey designs. But she didn’t quite make a living from her business, she let him know. Between the salary she paid the interns, and her Brooklyn rent, and the fact that she wasn’t, you know, famous yet—no, she couldn’t really support herself. And the gems she used for her real pieces—jade, malachite, lapis lazuli, not to mention the gold and platinum—were expensive. If something were to happen to her situation here—and someday, of course, it would happen; surely she and Alice couldn’t be college roommates forever—well, she needed time to establish herself, to get her high-end designs into the shops on Newbury Street, Bloor Street, Rodeo Drive: that’s what she was shooting for. She was ambitious, she admitted.

  Okay, if she didn’t hire the Pratt students each summer to do the donkey work, instead spent the better part of the year doing it herself, then yeah, she could probably support herself. But that wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was to design and make stuff that was hers, hers alone, unlike anyone else’s. Beautiful, expensive stuff that would be bought and worn by beautiful, expensive people. And fate or luck had put her in this unusual situation where she had the freedom to design and make what she wanted and she wasn’t going to wreck it. She never quite declared to Sandy just exactly what her unusual situation was, but if she admitted she couldn’t support herself then money was coming from somewhere, wasn’t it? So it presumably wasn’t just the residual habit of looking after Alice as it’d been during their college days. Well, he wasn’t going to be holier-than-thou about that. And he had to admit her designs were beautiful in an edgy kind of way. He’d seen a couple of them in the display cases at All That Glitters, an upscale store down along Thames Street, and more of them on her website, all professionally photographed in moody light and shadow. The snaky mermaid figured in a number of them.