She didn’t go into the store again.
Across High Street their neighbors, no doubt tired of the unreasonable amount of noise coming from the Ashton household, had long since moved out. Now Eveleen and Matt, who had regained the sight in one eye, were planning to move in as soon as they tied the knot.
And down in the Ashton Shipyards, a new ship was taking shape on the ways, not far from where the legendary Kestrel had been built. She would be a brig, sleek and graceful, with a jaunty nose and a tapered tail and masts that scraped the sky. Her figurehead would be a blonde maiden with soft eyes, and the name across her counter would be Eveleen. And her drafts, carefully locked in Ephraim’s office, had been drawn by a naval hero named Merrick, an Anglo-Irishman who’d met his end in the wilderness of Penobscot.
For Mira, the days passed in a thick haze of grief. She didn’t eat. She didn’t think. She didn’t sleep, but spent her nights in the bed that had been Brendan’s, clutching to her heart the pillow that had once cradled his dear head and crying until she had no tears left to cry. The days merged into each other, one after another, until the day of Matt’s and Eveleen’s wedding finally arrived.
It was late afternoon, with celebrations planned far into the night. St. Paul’s Church filled rapidly, despite the heat of the day and the short length of time since the couple had made their announcement, for Matthew Ashton was a Newburyport hero, and the whole town turned out to attend his nuptials. The Reverend Edward Bass sweated in his long robes. The groom looked carefully dressed and resplendent for once; the bride, soft and beautiful in a simple gown of pale blue. Guests sat fidgeting in the hard pews: sea captains wearing their best uniforms, mariners in freshly washed shirts and homespun vests, merchants in silk and velvet with the sweat pouring out of their powdered hair. Men scratched beneath their wigs. Ladies fanned themselves and dabbed at their brows.
The Reverend Bass cleared his throat. Ephraim looked at his watch. Somewhere in the back, a baby yowled and split the tense silence with lusty cries.
“Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today ...”
Mira heard the words through a foggy, pressing daze. She saw her brother’s gentle smile for his bride, saw something of Brendan in the grin that Eveleen returned. She felt herself smile, desperately wanting to be happy for them. But her own eyes filled with tears.
This was the wedding day I never had. You said you would marry me, Brendan, as soon as you got back to Newburyport. You and I were supposed to be standing up there. But you’re never coming back. You are dead and my reason for living has died with you, and I will never smile again.
Reverend Bass droned on. The shadows grew long. The baby screamed louder and had to be carried out. Outside, a wind came up and the trees rustled, and from far off came the distant roll of what sounded like thunder.
“Captain Ashton, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Matthew stuck out his chest and said in his best quarterdeck voice, “I will.”
“Miss Merrick, would you please repeat after me . . .”
From outside came the mad approach of flying hooves.
The doors of the church burst open and a horseman, breathless, tore off his hat and pressed it to his heaving chest. “Come quick! Two ships’re just off the river’s mouth! There’s gonna be one helluva battle off Plum Island, mark my words!”
The pastor blanched at the horseman’s rough language. In dismay, he watched as a sea captain grabbed his hat, strode down the aisle, and breaking into a run, raced out through the door. Another followed. Another.
“Gentlemen, this is a wedding!”
But that didn’t seem to matter. The Tracys, privateers and shipbuilders themselves, were hard on their heels. One by one, and then as a mass exodus, every sea captain in the church went running out of the church and out the door. Then the seamen went, the fishermen, the fresh-faced boys, and finally the women.
In moments, the big church was nearly empty.
And then the Reverend Bass put down his Bible and, with long robes trailing behind him, hurried down the aisle and out the door, leaving just Mira, her brother, and Eveleen alone in the church.
Matt took a deep breath, and, with a helpless little smirk lifting the corners of his mouth, faced his prospective bride. “Guess we’d better go watch as well, Eveleen. . . . You don’t mind, do you? We can get married when everyone comes back.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” she said, linking her arm with his, and together, they left the church.
And Mira, sinking down into a pew, was alone.
Then, and only then, did she finally allow the tears to flow as off in the distance, some ship engaged another, the thunder of distant cannon bringing back grief-filled memories. On and on it went, each distant report tearing a little piece of her heart out. A long time passed. And then the deep reverberations stilled and from far off, probably down along the riverfront, she heard a wild cheering.
She put her face in her hands and sobbed wretchedly, her heart breaking. Whatever the identity of the victorious ship down there, that glorious welcome should have been Kestrel’s.
Time passed. The cheering was getting louder now. Closer. A carriage raced past in a clatter of wheels and thunderous hooves, the driver yelling something she didn’t hear. Mira sobbed harder. Strands of thick, heavy hair drooped from beneath her mobcap and she pushed them off her damp cheeks. Damn them all, why hadn’t they cheered Brendan when he’d gone off to war, taken his little ship into battle and faced Crichton all alone, sacrificed himself for Matt—
The cheering grew deafening, just outside the church now. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the swelling crowd, numbering in the hundreds, surge past the window, with a man lifted to their shoulders. She heard their voices, raised in excitement and glee. “Huzzah! Huzzah! Let’s make it a double wedding!”
“Aye, a double wedding!”
“Where’s Reverend Bass?”
And Father: “Blast it all, ’bout time ye showed up, and in the nick of time, too! Where the hell were ye? Now, git in there an’ take yer place next to her, dammit! I’m already gittin’ me a daughter-in-law, ’bout time I got a son-in-law, too, and I ain’t waitin’ no longer, ye hear me?!”
“Marry her! Marry her! Marry her!” the people cried.
It became a chant, growing louder —
“Marry her!”
And louder—
“Marry her!”
And louder, until the doors exploded inward and the wild chanting spilled into the church.
“MARRY HER!”
Late afternoon light streamed red-orange across the varnished wood of the pew before her. It slanted through the still-open doors and picked out striations in the wood. And then that light was cut off.
Mira looked up, the sobs catching in her throat. She turned.
There, framed in the doorway with the crowd behind him and pushing him forward, was a tall, immaculately dressed man with a jauntily set tricorne and a weightless grin.
He was holding a sketchpad up for her to see.
On it was a drawing depicting a frigate with a British flag at its masthead, and a beautiful schooner with sharply raked masts.
The schooner, victorious, was firing on the frigate. And the frigate was sinking.
He grinned, and their eyes met across fifty feet of space.
“Mira,” he said.
And it came out, Moyrrra.
Chapter 33
In the big four-poster tester bed in the east bedroom of the Ashton house, a man lay sleeping.
He was tall and handsome and nearly naked, with well-muscled thighs, long legs sprinkled with auburn hair, and bare feet that stuck out over the foot rail by a good ten inches. His was a handsome face, even in sleep; the jaw firm, the lips sensual, the mouth and eyes framed by laugh lines that appeared to get much use. His hair, dark against the white pillowcase, tumbled rakishly over his brow and was the color of September chestnuts, rich and glossy and curling at th
e ends.
He was her new husband, and he was, by far, the best-looking specimen of his gender Mira had ever seen.
Dawn was breaking just outside. Her eyes still heavy with sleep, Mira rested her cheek against the little white scar on his chest and listened to the heart beating so steadily beneath her ear. In all her life, she had never heard a more precious sound. His arm came up to hold her close, and then his fingers twitched and the arm grew heavy and she knew, by the sudden change in his breathing, that he was dreaming. . . .
###
For Brendan, time had rolled back to the evening before, and he was once again commanding Kestrel’s desperate flight from the sea, the mighty mouth of the Merrimack approaching off their bows, HMS Viper—having chased them all the way from Maine—in hot pursuit, and his sketchbook spread out over his knee and fluttering in the breeze. . . .
“Brendan!”
Liam’s voice, desperate and wild.
“Bren-daaaaan!”
Faith, where was their confidence in him?
Boom! The frigate’s guns thundered behind them, and overhead, a cannonball slapped through the mainsail.
“You won’t be foolin’ Crichton a second time, Brendan! He’ll be wise to you now, and he’ll know where those sunken piers are!”
“Now Liam, I have no intention of leading him into the river. A final reckoning this may be, but I can assure you I have no wish to die this day. Not until I see and wed my wee lassie. Now, prepare to come about; we’re close enough in, I daresay.”
“Close enough in for what?”
“Why, to fight, Liam. What do you think?”
“God almighty, I wish I’d kept us all out to sea a week or two longer after ye collapsed following our escape . . . I ain’t ready for this!”
“Well, you’ll have to be, because I need you. Crichton is running out his guns, and I didn’t get us safely out of Penobscot only to lose Kestrel to him now and in plain sight of Newburyport, as well. Where is my sword? Ah, thank you, Dalby. . . .”
Astern, Viper was gaining on them, her bowsprit growing larger and larger, her great guns coming, one by one, to bear on them.
“Brendan—”
“D’you know, Liam, that when a river the size and length of the Merrimack meets the sea, there will be sandbars, sediment, and shoals for a good mile or so out? I really am glad I had a look at those charts before I came topside.”
“What charts?”
“Why, the ones that say that we’re only in about three fathoms of water, and shoaling fast.”
“Ye’re not leading him into the channel, then?”
“Faith, of course not. We will clear the shoals, and only just. But Crichton, with his deeper draft, will not. Pity that he’s so intent on catching me that he’s thrown all sense and caution to the wind. I expect him to regret his recklessness just . . . about . . . now—”
With a sudden groan and a hideous swaying of her three masts, the British frigate suddenly struck the plateau of sand and sediment that the mighty Merrimack, with its origins in the far distant mountains of New Hampshire, had deposited for a mile out into the sea. One moment, she had been gaining rapidly on them; the next, she had pitched to a sudden stop, her stern swinging violently around with the force of her momentum and her hull beginning to pitch dangerously over as her keel buried itself deep into the sand beneath her bottom. With an awful shrieking scream, her mainmast came down at the same time her guns banged harmlessly out, and on her smoke-wreathed decks, Brendan could hear the confusion and shouts of her crew.
“Shall we just leave her there, Brendan?”
“’Twouldn’t be very Christian, Liam, now would it?”
“Nay, Brendan, I suppose it wouldn’t be. Holy bleedin’ hell!” Liam ducked as some gunner aboard the stricken frigate managed to bring his gun to bear on the schooner, and a hail of iron went screaming overhead. “He’s not going to give up.”
“No, I didn’t expect that he would.” Brendan picked up his speaking trumpet and with an exasperated sigh, yelled, “Ready about, Mr. Keefe! Larboard guns, load and run out!”
Kestrel came across the wind, her great boom went over, and her sails were sheeted home. She continued her turn and then ranged up alongside the frigate, safely out of the range of her broadside, ineffective now with the sharp angle at which the larger ship had impaled herself on the shoals. The frigate’s marines had rallied, though, and now gunshots cracked out from her listing decks, and metal began pinging off Kestrel’s cannon, popping through her sails, and taking chunks out of her railing.
Brendan raised his speaking trumpet. “Will you strike, Crichton?”
“Never!” came the enraged bellow.
“Hull her,” Brendan said simply, already twitching with impatience, for there was a certain lass in a certain Georgian house with a certain anchor out front that he hoped would be waiting for him, and he had better things to be doing than sinking a ship that was already well into her death throes.
Kestrel’s guns roared, and great plumes of water bloomed all along the frigate’s exposed underline as the cannonballs found their mark.
“Again,” Brendan said.
Viper was leaning further over now; too far for her shrouds to support her remaining masts. Grimly, Brendan watched as one by one those shrouds began to snap and the masts, with loud cracks! that sounded like guns going off, split from deep within the hull and tumbled into the sea, taking sails and spars and rigging down with them. A deep rumbling issued from the dying ship as her cannon broke loose from their moorings, charged down the listing decks, and smashed through her bulwarks and into the waves. A last gun cracked out somewhere forward in a final show of fight, and then a lieutenant appeared, clinging to the rail, holding up a white handkerchief because Viper’s once proud colors had fallen into the sea along with her mizzen and there was no flag left for him to lower.
There was no sign of Crichton.
“She’s striking, Brendan,” said Liam, quietly.
“Heave to, and stand by to pick up survivors.”
Viper, dismasted now, was settling by her bows and sinking deeper into the sea, her timbers making awful groans as she began to break apart. Her sailors swarmed her rails, and some began to leap overboard, floundering in the surf, their screams rending the air.
Brendan had seen enough. As Kestrel turned into the wind, sails luffing as she stood helplessly by and watched the death of her nemesis, he called for the boat and, ignoring Liam’s admonitions not to go across to the stricken frigate, climbed down into the little vessel and in moments, was pulling himself up Viper’s sharply listing tumblehome.
Her decks were pure carnage. Planking had buckled when the masts had fallen, guns were scattered, twisted lines and shrouds and rigging were everywhere, and Brendan knew the frigate didn’t have long.
The young officer who had waved his handkerchief at him came forward, his face numb with disbelief that his once proud ship had come to such an inglorious end. Introducing himself as Lieutenant Stafford, he unbuckled his sword, and in defeat, presented it to Brendan as an official surrender of the ship.
“You outfoxed us once again, Captain Merrick,” he said with a rueful smile. He took off his hat and wiped an arm over his forehead. “I tried to warn Captain Crichton that we drew too much water to continue the chase, that there were shoals here, but he was so intent on capturing you that he didn’t listen.” Beneath their feet, the decks gave a sudden lurch, and both men caught at the wreckage of the mizzen to keep their feet. “He never listened. He was blind to all but his own ambition.”
“And where is your commanding officer, Lieutenant?”
For answer, Stafford merely turned, and, picking his way across the sharply listing deck, the tangled cordage, spars and overturned guns, led Brendan aft.
There, lying half-buried beneath the wreckage of what had once been the mizzen’s gaff, was the man who had haunted Brendan’s dreams for the past four years, who had shattered his sister’s life, who had pu
rsued him with a fervor that went beyond fanatical. Only his legs and torso were visible from beneath the sailcloth that had fallen over him when the mast went down, and this was no longer white, but bright, bright red with spreading blood.
“Lift the sail,” Brendan commanded, not wanting to look, but knowing that he must if he was to live the rest of his life without the specter of Crichton hanging over him.
Wordlessly, the lieutenant did as he was asked, and it was enough.
A jagged piece of wood some five feet in length had driven itself straight through Crichton’s bowels, impaling him to the deck.
Brendan turned away. The nightmare was over.
Beneath them, the doomed frigate moaned, and the deck tilted still further over. Wordlessly, Brendan replaced the bloodied sail cloth over Crichton’s face, and straightening up, motioned for Stafford to follow him. Time was running out if they wanted to escape the dying ship.
And he had somewhere he wanted to be.
Moments later, he and Stafford were back aboard Kestrel, whose boat was picking up the remaining survivors, and standing together at the rail as they solemnly watched the frigate’s last moments. Bathed in the fiery afternoon light, Viper sighed and with a deep and awful groan, finally capsized, her tallowed underside glistening wet in the fading afternoon sun. She floated that way for five minutes, maybe ten, then, slowly began to sink.
Brendan felt someone tugging at his arm. “Not now, Dalby.”
But Dalby didn’t answer, the tugging persisted, and with a start, Brendan opened his eyes.
And saw that it was not Dalby, but Mira, and that he lay in his old room at the Ashton house, in his old bed, with his new wife—which was exactly where he wanted to be.
“Nightmare?” she asked, her impish green eyes wide with love and concern.
He smiled and drew her close, pressing his lips against her hair and gazing out through the open window at the dawn just pinkening the sky outside. “Nay, stóirín,” he murmured, softly. “Just a dream. The nightmare, I daresay, is over.”
Captain Of My Heart Page 40