by Anya Seton
“The Liberty?”
He bowed his head. “I saw her go down not half a mile away. We could do nothing. Our own mains’l went like a tar-rn pocket han’kerchief.”
Susan stepped back, and others filled her place. The air grew harsh with despairing questions. The Sabine, the Pacific, the Trio, the Warrior —the agonizing list grew. Sixty-five men and boys had been lost. Scarce a home in Marblehead that had no kin amongst the drowned, and from the crowd behind, a woman’s voice raised in a long moaning wail.
Susan turned and pushed her way back through the people. Hesper followed close. She was awed and excited. Ma had been right. The great storm had got the fishing fleet, and Tom and Willy. She felt no special sorrow. Her brothers had been big men of sixteen and eighteen, away fishing half the year, and with no time for her when they were home. Cousin Tom Dolliber had been on the Liberty too. So he was gone with the others.
Hesper followed along behind her mother filled with a sense of importance and drama. By Lovis Cove they met her father hurrying towards them, his thin face anxious, his vague eyes peering into their faces.
“What is it, Susan? Why didn’t you tell me there was news?”
The child watched them nervously expecting her mother’s ready anger, because Pa had somehow failed again. But Susan was even quieter than she had been on the wharf. She laid her hand on her husband’s arm. “Come back home, dear.”
He gave her a startled, uncertain look, as surprised by this gentleness as Hesper was. They moved away from the child, and though Susan’s hand still rested on her husband’s arm it was as though he leaned on her, his long body drooping over the broad figure beside him.
Hesper trailed after them. She paused at Fort Beach a moment to watch a sea gull catch a fish, and felt a rough hand on her hair, and a painful tug.
“Don’t—” she cried, whirling around, tears smarting her eyes. Two boys had crept up behind her, Johnnie Peach and Nathan Cubby. It was the latter who had pulled her hair, and he now began to caper around her jeering—“Gnaw your bacon, gnaw your bacon—little Fire-top’s head is achin’.”
Nat was a skinny boy of eleven with watery yellow eyes and a sharp nose. Already Hesper was used to being teased about her flaming red hair, but she had not yet learned any defense. She shrank into herself and tried to keep the tears from rolling out of her eyes.
“Oh, let her be,” said Johnnie, carelessly. “She’s just a little kid.”
He was a year younger than Nat, a handsome boy with curly dark hair. He shied a stone at the water and watched it skip.
“What for you’re blubberin’—Fire-top?” taunted Nat coming closer. “Blubberin’ cause your head’s on fire?” He made another grab at her hair.
Hesper ducked. “I’m crying ’cause Tom and Willy’s gone down with the fleet—” she wailed.
Johnnie turned. He raised his arm and struck down Nat’s outstretched hand. “That’s so—” he said. “They was on the Liberty. My uncle’s lost too, on the Clinton. Reason enough to cry without you roilin’ her.”
“Oh, whip!” said Nat contemptuously, using an obscene Marblehead expletive. “I betcha my Pa’s lost too. Leastways he hasn’t come in from the spring fare yet. Ma, I think she’s give him up.”
Young as Hesper was, she was conscious of an obliquity in Nat, and that his speech about his father sprang from something stranger than bravado or the callousness of childhood. Though he was of normal height for his age he had a hunched and wizened look, and maliciousbrooding eyes. He reminded her of a picture of an evil dwarf in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales her father had given her.
“You shouldn’t talk like that—” said Johnnie severely, “and you shouldn’t say ‘whip’ front of a little lass. Run along home, Fire-top.”
Hesper caught her underlip with her teeth, though she didn’t mind the hated nickname from Johnnie. She looked at him adoringly, but the two boys had lost interest in her. They had sighted Peter Union’s dory pulling around the rocks to his landing, and they clambered down to the beach to see what luck the fisherman had had.
Hesper wiped her face on a corner of her white muslin pinafore, threw the trailing ends of her shawl over her shoulders in a gesture duplicating her mother’s, and continued homeward. The old house awaited her, and she thought as she often had when approaching it from the water side that it looked like a great friendly mama cat. It’s unpainted clapboards had weathered through two centuries to a tawny silver, and the huge chimneys, one on the old wing, one on the new, stuck up like ears. And the inn sign above the taproom door swung back and forth like the cat’s tongue. There had once been painted emblems on the sign, a pair of andirons and a flying bird above the letters “The Hearth and Eagle,” but they had all faded into a rusty red blur.
Hesper, moved by a feeling of special solemnity, went through the east door under the sign instead of around to the kitchen entrance as usual. The taproom door was closed, but she could hear her mother’s voice, slow and thick with long pauses. So Ma and Pa were shut in there. Hesper wandered into the kitchen. It was still warm with the sunlight from the windows over the sink, but there were clouds building, and the wind rising on the harbor.
Beside a small bright fire in the great hearth, Gran sat huddled in her Boston rocking chair. She was wrapped in fleecy gray shawls and she looked like a tiny old seagull. Her sharp black eyes were sea-gull eyes too. “What’s Roger doin’ in the taproom with Susan?” she asked querulously when she saw Hesper. “And why’d he run out before?” Her voice was high and thin, but on a good day like this it had a snap to it.
“There’s been a tor-rible thing happen to the fleet,” said Hesper importantly, imitating Cap’n Chadwick. “Tom and Willy aren’t never coming back. Ma’s telling Pa.”
The old woman’s wrinkled eyelids hooded her eyes. She stopped rocking. “They ain’t never cornin’ back?” she repeated, seeming to consider. Her eyes opened and stared unseeing at the child. Her mouthdrew itself into a pucker. “No more did Richard. He didn’t come back.” She shook her head. Her gaze slipped around the bright kitchen to rest on the hooked rug by the entry. “Right there I stood when I last saw Richard. I hooked that rug myself. ‘Ship and sunset’ we called it.”
Hesper stared at the rug on which she had walked a thousand times. “It’s real pretty,” she said, then drew in her breath. There was a queer noise from the taproom. A broken cluttered sound as if someone was crying, and mixed with it Ma’s voice, firm and comforting. Pa was crying? thought the child in amazement, when he hadn’t seemed worried at all about Tom and Willy before. The sounds frightened her, and she puzzled over them until she found the answer. It wasn’t that Pa didn’t feel, it was that he lived so far away he didn’t believe in real things, and when they happened he didn’t know what to do, except turn to Ma, and let her comfort him.
Old Sarah Honeywood did not hear the sounds from the taproom. She kept on staring at the rug, and the misty present dissolved into the vivid emotion of seventy years ago, emotion she had thought long outrun, and yet it was still strong enough to rush forward again and overpower the changed body and the dim mind.
She saw Richard as he had stood that July day, boyish and handsome in his regimentals. The “handsomest man in Essex County,” she had said that herself—that long-forgotten Sally Hathaway when Richard first came a-wooing to her father’s house in Cunny Lane. She had said it again on the rug, her arms around his neck, the tears running down her face on to her red linsey-woolsey. With the memory of the red linsey-woolsey the scene grew sharper and brighter. From outside she heard the shouts of the other men in Glover’s regiment. Orders had just come from General Washington, saying the Marbleheaders must proceed to New York. Already half of them had sailed over to Beverley. Richard must hurry, yet she clung to him begging and sobbing. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, an eight-months bride, and carrying his child. Yet he had been in high spirits.
“Us Marbleheaders’ll show the stinking redcoats how to fight, show the rest of them
quiddling farmers too from back country. And so be it they’ve water down around New York, we’ll show ’em what a boat’s for too.” He had said that even while he kissed her again, and pulled her clinging hands down from his neck.
“Fare ye well, Sally lass—I’ll be back by snowfall.”
But he hadn’t come back. He had helped row the retreat from Brooklyn to New York after the dreadful battle of Long Island, and he had written her a letter, cocky as ever—“We saved the army, us Marbleheaders, we muffled the ors and rowed the poor lubbers acrost that little millpond they got down here-along. Don’t fret, sweetheart, it’ll be over with soon.”
How long had she kept that letter sewn into her bodice? Years it must have been, because she had nursed little Tom for two years, and long after that the letter was still in her bodice. It was the only letter she had ever got from Richard.
The Marbleheaders had rowed again on the night of December twenty-fifth. The old woman, caught by a single-minded urgency, got out of the rocker and walked gropingly toward her own room, the warm kitchen bedroom near the great chimney. In the bottom drawer of the pine chest, she unearthed beneath piles of flannel nightcaps an ancient tea box, its purple roses and green daisies still glowing on the lid after seventy years. Richard’s letter was inside, tied up with black ribbon and rosemary, but it was not that she wanted. She shuffled through other keepsakes until she found a yellowed newspaper clipping. It was headed “Speech by General Knox,” and she held it at arm’s length, squinting her eyes.
“I wish the members of this body knew the people of Marblehead as well as I do. I could wish that they had stood on the Banks of the Delaware River in 1776 in that bitter night when the Commander in Chief had drawn up his little army to cross it, and had seen the powerful current bearing onward the floating masses of ice which threatened destruction to whosoever should venture—”
The remembered anguish of a few minutes ago gave place to the old thrill of pride. Sorrow was a solitary business, but pride must be shared. She put the clipping on her knee, and called the child.
“Hessie—I want you should come here.”
Hesper obeyed slowly, a little rebellious. The strange noise in the taproom had stopped, and she had been amusing herself seeing pictures in the fire, the red leaping castles peopled by tiny golden fairies.
“I want you should listen to this. Set down, child.”
The high quavering voice read the first paragraph out loud, and went on from Knox’s speech. “ ‘I wish that when this occurrence threatened to defeat the enterprise, they could have heard that distinguished warrior demand “Who will lead us on?”’ That was General Washington speakin’, Hessie.”
Hesper’s attention came back with a jerk. She nodded politely. The clipping trembled in Gran’s hand, “And you listen what Knox says next. ‘It was the men of Marblehead, and Marblehead alone, who stood forward to lead the army along the perilous paths to unfading gloriesand honors in the achievements of Trenton. There went the fishermen of Marblehead, alike at home on land or water, alike ardent, patriotic and unflinching, whenever they unfurled the flag of the country.’ ”
The long words meant nothing to the child, but she was impressed by the way Gran looked, shining as if somebody had lighted a candle behind her face.
“Richard was the first port oarsman right back of Washington, Bill Blackler commanded the boat. Josh Orne told me all about it months later. He said there was Richard, the sweat freezin’ on his face, and cussin’ something dreadful, but tryin’ to swallow his oaths on account of General Washington there.”
The old woman gave a sudden cackle of laughter. “Richard was a terrible one for bad language. Anything he didn’t like, he’d yell, ‘To hell I pitch it and let the devil fry it on his rump!’ I used to beg him to talk gentle, but pretty soon I give up,” she sighed. “But he was a good boy.”
Hesper frowned, struggling with a new impression. Gran often told stories, often changed like this, going from sad to glad so they didn’t make much sense. Half the time she didn’t listen. But something in the way Gran had said, “He was a good boy...” made it real.
The child put her hand on the bony gray knee. “Who was Richard, Gran?”
The old woman twisted her head. An immense futility engulfed her. Explanations—why didn’t people know without being told, why didn’t anyone remember....
“He was your—no he was your great- grandsir, I guess—” she said dully. “And he was killed at the Battle of Trenton.”
Killed, thought Hesper. A queer word. A quick rippling word. It didn’t sound very scary. Not like drownded. That was heavy and black.
Sarah had been wandering back again, not to clear-cut scenes, but to a long confusion of strivings. The striving to give birth here in this room—give birth to Tom. And forty years later his own hopeless striving for life, there on this very bed. Then the striving to make a living, running the tavern alone, until Tom grew up enough to help before he went off fishing with the bankers as a cut-tail. And another striving to give life, in this old Birth and Death room, the night Roger was born, and the niminy-piminy daughter-in-law, Mary Ellis, whimpering she couldn’t get through it. Nor did she. Death again. Opening and shutting, opening and shutting the door of this room. I wish it’d open for me, Sarah thought, I’m getting mighty weary. And she looked at the long cradle which stood in the corner of the room. Built two hundred years ago for Mark, the first Honeywood, who had something wrong with his spine. Rocking would soothe him, ’n’ it soothes me too. In the cradle you could let go all this memory of striving, the beautiful gray peace folded over you, you floated back and forth, back and forth in the gray peace, and sometimes the rocking brought your mother’s voice humming a soft little spinning song—and sometimes it brought Richard’s voice singing above the lap of waves against a boat in the harbor.
“He sang real nice—” she said out loud, and she began to quaver—
A pretty fair maid, all in a garden,
A sailor boy came passing by.
He stepped aside and thus addressed her,
Saying “Pretty fair maid, won’t you be my bride?”
“Gran!” cried Hesper, tugging at the old woman’s arm, for Gran had got up still singing and was going toward the long cradle. Her eyes had sunk back in her head and there was a silly little smile on her face. She was sliding into one of the bad times, when she wasn’t Gran at all, just a helpless old baby wanting to be rocked.
“Gran”—the child repeated urgently—“don’t get in the cradle—Tom and Willy are drownded.”
The old woman paused, the appeal in the child’s voice reached her. Tom and Willy are drownded. Tom and Willy? She groped through the clinging gray peace, and shook her head half in annoyance that the child’s voice was detaining her, half in sympathy. “Well don’t take on, dearie. There’s a many drownded here, and off the Banks too. Hark! I can hear the keel gratin’ on the sand, that’s what folks used to say, when Death’s cornin’ for them.”
Death—the soft grayness floating down through peaceful waters that rocked you back and forth.
Hesper saw that the answering look had gone from Gran’s face. Shaking off the child’s hand she climbed into the long high cradle. She settled down with a sigh like a swish of wind through leaves.
“Rock Sally—” she whispered plaintively. “Sally wants to be rocked.”
Hesper looked down at the small face on the pillow beneath the sheltering oak hood. The wrinkles were smoothed away, the lips smiling in anticipation.
The child put her foot on the rocker and gave it one sharp push, but misery welled up from her tight chest. She jerked away from the cradle, and stumbled into the kitchen.
Gran had gone back to her secret world. Ma and Pa were together behind a closed door. They were talking about Tom and Willy. It was an awful bad thing had happened. But I’m here, she thought, don’t they care that I’m here—
She crept to her special stool on the hearth inside the fireplace and lean
ed her head against the bricks, sobbing quietly.
The small flames kept shimmering and dissolving between the huge andirons, the black balls that topped the andirons stood quiet above the noisy little fire like two proud, strong people. She watched the andirons and her sobs lessened as she began to think about them. Pa and Gran used to talk of them sometimes, though Ma thought they were dreadful ugly and liked the brass ones in the parlor lots better. Pa called these tall black andirons Phebe’s fire-dogs. Phebe’d brought them on a ship across the sea, so long ago that there wasn’t any Marblehead here at all. Phebe was Mark Honeywood’s wife. The first American Honeywood, Pa always said, though nobody ever would listen except Hesper. Most everyone in Marblehead had families that went way back too.
But Pa thought there was something very special about Phebe, because of a letter. Pa said a great lady had written it, and it was something to be very proud of. He kept it wrapped in a yellow Chinese silk square in a carved wooden box in the secret drawer of his desk. He’d read it to Hesper on her last birthday, but she hadn’t understood it very well, even though he made her repeat some of the phrases about being brave: “She hath a most sturdy courage,” and “it is such as she who will endure in my stead.”
Hesper had been much more interested in the embroidered yellow silk and the black box carved with the faces of slant-eyed men. These had belonged to Moses Honeywood, Pa’s great great grandsir who had owned three schooners in the China trade, and made a lot of money. The only Honeywood who had.
But Pa wouldn’t let her play with the box, and he kept on talking about Phebe and Mark. He spoke of them as heroes and gods, comparing Mark to Odysseus and Phebe to a radiant all-conquering Hera. Sometimes he was bad as Gran, making her listen to old stories when she wanted to be playing hide and seek between the fish houses with Charry Trevercombe.
Hesper watched the andirons, and the small leaping tongues of fire between them, when suddenly a thought struck her with the thrill of revelation. It was over two hundred years since Phebe’d brought those andirons here, but she must have sat just like this sometimes and watched them too. Phebe was dead—all those others after her—Isaac and Moses and Zilpah and Richard, and now Tom and Willy too. They were all dead. But the andirons were still just the same. They’re letting me watch them now, she thought, with awe.