by Anya Seton
“You mean where we keep the brooms and the old guns?”
Susan nodded impatiently. “Come, I’ll show you. I reckon you’ve got to be told.”
Hesper followed her mother back into the kitchen. It was quiet and empty as they had left it, the banjo clock ticking, the cookstove giving off a subdued crackling, Roger’s door closed.
On the walls either side of the fireplace the wide pine sheathing was darkened and glossy from the smoke of countless hearth fires, but otherwise exactly as it had been placed by Mark Honeywood, except that a shallow cupboard had been cut through two of the planks. Susan touched the latch and the door moved silently open on its wrought-iron snake hinges. Hesper watched dumbfounded while her mother pushed the brooms and the old muskets to one side and wedging herself into the narrow space, reached high over her head groping for the head of a tiny iron pin which was hidden at the top and back of the closet. She pulled the pin up, releasing the two-foot-wide plank which she slid sideways to disclose a narrow opening, and some wooden steps.
“Go on up—” she said to Hesper, “I’ll keep watch down here. Wait, take the dust rag with you, here—and a can of water, and some of this.” She dumped gingerbread, and the remains of the sausages and fishcakes into a wooden trencher. “We mayn’t have as good a chance again to provision.”
“But Ma—” whispered Hesper, “where’s it go to? And what is it? I never knew—”
Susan twitched impatiently, then relented. “It’s a pirates’ hidey-hole. ’Twas built about 1700 by Lot Honeywood, he’d a sister married Davy Quelch. This Davy and his brother John pirated ’gainst the Portygees, or some such. They’d hide the loot up there. Honeywoods wasn’t so domned law-abiding in those days—” she added with a glance towards Roger’s door. “Now, hurry, child.”
She draped Hesper’s arm with the dust rag, added the water, trencher, and a lighted candle. The girl walked nervously into the closet while Susan shut the door behind her. The flickering light showed narrow wooden steps thick with gray dust. The steps circled to the back of the central chimney and mounted steep as a ladder to a cubicle about six feet square. It had been built from space cunningly filched from the attic and from her parent’s bedroom which had once been the loft of the original house, and in a structure so full of irregularities and additions, its existence had never been suspected after Moses Honeywood had added the large gambrel-roofed wing to the house in 1750. Moses had left a notation about the pirate’s hidey-hole amongst his private papers, but no Honeywood until Roger had bothered to look through these.
The candle trembled in Hesper’s hand; she saw a lumpy shape on the floor and gave a stifled cry, but it was only a straw pallet. What if there was a ghost? Ma believed in ghosts—Old Dimond—the phantom ship—the screechin’ woman who’d been murdered by pirates. So did lots of other people. Her heart thumped on her ribs, and she put the candlestick on the floor. It burned calmly. An inch-wide crack, running along the ceiling, took in air from the attic. Hesper dabbed at a few cobwebs, put the food and water on the pallet, picked up the candle and retreated.
In the bright sunny kitchen, Susan was mixing cornmeal for johnnycake, as though nothing out of the way were happening at all. She showed Hesper how to slide the false panel, and drop the iron pin that held it rigid. “Your Pa’s gone out—” she said in an acid tone, “to the depot. Seems he’s expecting a package of his everlasting books from Boston. Pity our packages can’t be handled so easy. I’ve been thinking, Hes, and I’ve made the plans. First I want you should find Johnnie.”
“Johnnie Peach!” cried Hesper, her eyes shining.
“Aye, I thought you’d not object. His family’s abolitionist, and he’s just the boy to help with this business. We’ll need a good seaman, and a lad with spunk. You can tell him, but no one else—mind!”
“No, Ma,” she breathed. Find Johnnie, share a great secret with him. He’d have to notice her then. She gave an irrepressible skip, starting toward the entry where her cloak hung.
“Stop, bufflehead! That’s not all. We’ll need more than Johnnie. Go to Peg-Leg and ask him to come here, but don’t say why. I’ll tell him myself.”
Hesper nodded, slightly dampened. Peg-Leg was Susan’s brother Noah Dolliber, and a stop at his house meant boring delay, for his wife was an interminable talker.
“Don’t let your Aunt Mattie catch wind o’ anything”—she waited while Hesper nodded again—“then go on up Gingerbread Hill, try at Ma’am Sociable’s and Aunty ’Crese’s if they know a fiddler I can get for tonight.”
“Fiddler!” cried Hesper—“Oh Ma—you’d never mean we’re going to have dancing here!” She stared at her mother with incredulous joy. Susan, a staunch church member, did not hold with frivolity of any kind. She ran the Inn with stern decorum, always limiting drinks when she saw fit. And there had been no party at the Hearth and Eagle since the Fourth of July celebration two years ago.
“Stop teetering around like a chicken with the pip,” Susan snapped, ladling the corn batter. “You needn’t think I’m going to hold a regular tidderi-i, but since the crews’ll be here, and I daren’t stop them coming, for they’d think it strange, there’d better be as much rumpus as possible to cover the arrival of them two packages.”
“Oh Ma—what a grand lark!” Hesper clapped her hands, intoxicated with this succession of excitements. The secret room—find Johnnie—a fiddler and dancing.
Susan turned her bulky body and confronted her daughter squarely. “It’s not a grand lark, Hesper. There be two human lives at stake. And there’s danger. For them, and maybe for us too.”
The girl flushed. She’d never heard Ma use that solemn churchy voice before except once. That was the way Ma spoke so long ago at the wharf, the day they got the news that Tom and Willy were drowned.
Hesper got her cloak silently and went out the kitchen door to find Johnnie. She stood a moment in the yard, considering. It was past eight o’clock, so he’d likely be down at Appleton’s Wharf by now or on the Diana making ready to be off tomorrow. She walked under the chestnut tree, new-leafed in tender green, and on Franklin Place turned left to the Great Harbor. The land breeze had slackened and the tide was out so the water lay in quiet seaweed-fringed pools amongst the bare rocks on Fort Beach. There was an April softness in the salt air that smelled of drying fish from the flakes and of oakum and tar from the wharves. There were other smells, too, less pervasive than the key odor, whiffs from privies and pigsties back of huddled houses, and a pleasanter scent of cordovan leather from the cordwainers’ shops. Along Front Street the unpainted houses, weathered long ago to silver—some clinging catty-corner to rock ledges, some squared with the street—presented a melody of angles and gables and gambrels, each man having built as he pleased and as he could find tenure in the scanty soil.
On the waterside, past the blacksmith’s, where Mr. Murchison hammered on a small anchor, and the grovers and ships’ chandlers, three schooners and a square-rigger from Portsmouth rode quietly at anchor in the harbor, the gaudy colored stripes on their hulls gleaming in the sunshine. And behind them again, hugging close to the Neck, a huge Nova Scotian coaler edged up towards the coal wharves past Bartol’s Head.
As Hesper neared Appleton’s Wharf at the foot of State Street, Swasey the fishmonger began to blow “Poko White,” the Marblehead “Bankers” call, on his fish horn, thus announcing his wares, and a dozen mewing cats precipitated themselves from adjacent doorways.
Hesper picked her way briskly around the cats. The accustomed smells and sights and sounds of Marblehead made no impression on her. She was looking for Johnnie.
The wharf was teeming with busy seamen in red flannel shirts and knitted Guernsey frocks, and they all wore clumsy leather fishing boots made by Mr. Bessom in his wharf shop. Hesper threaded her way among kegs and coiled rope, passing two other schooners, tied up along the wharf, the Ceres and the Blue Wave, before reaching the Diana.
The Diana was an old ship of seventy tons burden, a “
pinkie” with high-peaked stern, high sides, and a saucy uptilted bowsprit. She was sluggish as an old turtle and even her newly tarred rigging and fresh-painted blue hull and gold stripe could not disguise her air of obsolescence, but she had weathered the Great Gale of ’46 and many another too, and her Master and crew were fond of her.
Two of the crew were toiling up the gangplank carrying a cask of water. Hesper knew them by sight, but a sudden shyness prevented her calling to them, nor did she dare go on board without invitation. Bred as she was to the waterfront, she saw that they were stowing in the hold the last of the Great General, which consisted of the salt, the water, the fuel, and tackle. The Small General, which consisted of provisions, would be already on board.
She walked to the end of the dock trying to peer into the Diana’s square dark portholes, when she heard an unwelcome drawl behind her. “Well, now if it isn’t Fire-top! Have you come to ship with us, my lass?”
Hesper frowned and turned around. It was Nat Cubby staring at her morosely, one foot resting on a stanchion, and his jaws champing a plug of tobacco. He was twenty now and still an undersized and scrawny youth, but there was a quality in Nat which canceled all impression of youth or smallness. He had wiry strength, the stubble of beard on his narrow jaws was heavy as a full grown man’s, and his yellowish eyes were wary and unyielding as those of an old lynx. As he contemplated Hesper his mouth set in its perpetual slight sneer. It was a thin red scar that drew up the right half of his upper lip, but it was hard to allow for that, because the resultant snarl was so in keeping with his usual manner. Nobody knew for sure how his lip had been split open, it might have been some boyish accident, but many thought it had been done by Leah, his mother, in a fit of the madness with which she had been afflicted after her husband was lost at sea. Yet Nat adored his mother, never leaving her alone when he was ashore, and she was the only person to whom he did not show a brooding malevolence.
Leah was but sixteen years older than her son, her curly hair was a glossy black, her mouth full and red as a girl’s, and her magnificent dark eyes were luminous and unstained by the agonizing tears they must have shed. Strangers seeing her beside Nat might have taken them for almost the same age.
“Well, what d’you want?” repeated Nat to Hesper, spitting into the water. “We want no women cluttering about the wharf at loading time.”
“I came to find Johnnie Peach—” said Hesper with spirit. “I’ve a message for him.”
“You won’t find him here. Likely he’s gone home. I gave him leave.”
“You gave him leave...”
The small eyes, cold as yellow glass, surveyed her without interest. “I’m mate on this ship now.” He hunched a shoulder towards the Diana.
“Then for sure Johnnie’ll be a mate soon too—” she cried hotly. Or skipper over you, she added to herself.
Nat shrugged and shifted his tobacco to the other cheek. “Very likely he will. He’s an apt seaman.” You couldn’t tell whether he was mocking or not, but Hesper was silenced. There’d always been a queer sort of companionship between Johnnie and Nat. Queer because as boys they’d belonged to different gangs, Johnnie a “Barnegatter,” Nat a “wharf rat,” and they’d fought each other many a time, and while everyone liked Johnnie, nobody else had a good word for Nat. Still, you couldn’t tell what Nat was really like. He seemed indifferent now, remote—but you always had the feeling there was a lot going on in his head. And he was known for a troublemaker; known for a copperhead too, she thought with sudden disquiet, remembering an argument in the taproom when Nat had sneered at all the abolitionists gathered there, and obviously from no motive but malice and the desire to annoy.
“You coming to the Inn, tonight?” she asked quickly. She felt herself flush and tried to look indifferent.
The yellow eyes shifted and rested on her. “I might.” He took his boot off the stanchion, and walked up the gangplank onto the Diana.
Lord, thought Hesper, if he should get wind of anything he’d turn us in sure. For the reward, if not just for deviltry. But Johnnie’ll know what to do.
She gathered her cloak around her and hurried down the wharf and along State Street. The Cubbys’ house was in the middle of the block; she glanced at it and saw a slender black figure standing on the roof behind the railings. The white face was turned towards the sea, and even at that distance gave an impression of stillness and patient waiting. Hesper felt a thrill of horror. Had Leah taken to standing in the “scuttle” again, as she used to, day in, day out during her madness, watching for her drowned husband’s ship? Hesper hurried faster, but the eerie fear subsided before common sense. Leah’s madness was over long ago. Surely she had merely climbed to the scuttle to look for Nat on the wharf so that she might know when he started home.
Hesper turned down Washington Street and now her progress was impeded by traffic on the narrow sidewalk. Old seamen, past sailing, were wandering uptown to bask in the sun on the steps of the Town House, or on chairs outside the firehouses, and shawled women carrying wicker baskets were market bound to the shops around Mechanic Square. Two of these, Mrs. Cloutman and Mrs. Devereux, stopped Hesper to ask her if her ma was going to provide the cakes for the church supper at the Old North on Wednesday.
“I don’t know, I guess so—” said Hesper distractedly. “I’ll remind her.” But the women didn’t yet let her pass. “What you doin’ out o’ school, Hes?” said Mrs. Cloutman, eyeing the girl’s flushed haste.
“Errands for Ma. Going to be terrible busy tonight.”
“Humph,” said Mrs. Cloutman, unsatisfied, but Hes Honeywood wasn’t the kind to be up to mischief. Big homely girl, and a good student at the Academy she knew through her own daughter.
Hesper escaped, but only for a block when Cap’n Knight came bearing down on her. She bobbed her head and stood aside for him to pass, as all children must for a sea captain, but this skipper, whose ship was not sailing for the spring fare, was in no hurry.
“Mar-rnin’, child—” he said. “Be’nt ye Hes Honeywood?” He rested on his briar-thorn stick, his fringe-bearded face turned towards her amiably.
“Yes, sir—” she tried to edge around him but he lifted his stick and held her back. “Gr-reat stroppin’ gur-rl ye’ve gr-rown to. Oi moind when ye was no bigger’n a minnow tumblin’ about the wharves. Ye favor the Dollibers, Oi see, wi’ all thot carrot hair.”
“Yes, sir—” repeated Hesper. “Please, I must be off—”
“Sweethort-rt waitin’ fur ye?—Ye’d best drap hobnails in the tallow pot, n’ see if he loves ye true, lass. Aye, well—shove off if ye must.” The captain lowered his stick. “'Tis a stavin’ spring mar-rnin’. Oi can’t blame ye.”
Oh dear—thought Hesper, hurrying past the Old North and up the hill on Orne Street. It’s getting so late—suppose Johnnie isn’t home any more, suppose he’s gone out in his dory.
The Peach house was set back from the street in the old section of the town called Barnegat, perched on the cliff that overlooked Little Harbor. It was a small house and quite new, being built only thirty years ago, but already its clapboards had weathered to a buff-toned silver like the older houses.
Johnnie’s mother, Tamsen Peach, opened the door to Hesper. Mrs. Peach had a baby at her breast, a weanling tugging on her skirt, and the five-year-old twins scrambled on the rush-strewn kitchen floor behind her. Johnnie was the oldest of nine living children. Not a large family for Marblehead.
“Well, Hessie—” said Mrs. Peach, her kind rosy face breaking into a smile. “ ’Tis donkey’s years sense Oi’ve set eyes on ye. Come in an set. Oi’m bakin’ the sable cake for Johnnie’s sea chest.”
“Where is Johnnie—” said Hesper so anxiously that his mother gave her a startled look. “I mean, Ma—” no that wasn’t right, why would Ma summon Johnnie—“I wanted to say good-bye to him,” she finished, lamely, since Johnnie had sailed for many a fare when she hadn’t seen him at all.
A smile twitched at the mother’s mouth. So man
y girls after Johnnie, and he’d scant use for them.
“Well, ye may, then,” she said. “He’s out back in the shoe shop.”
Hesper thanked her and went outdoors. The Peaches’ shoe shop stood in the back yard between the privy and the shed. It was a small wooden shack lighted by two windows and warmed by a pot-bellied stove, as were all the hundred other backyard shoe shops in Marblehead. Here the men worked during the winters and at other times when they might be in port, skiving and lasting and sewing and finishing shoes for delivery to the manufactories, the uppers having been earlier stitched and bound by the women in their kitchens during moments snatched from cookery and baby care.
Hesper heard the sound of tapping and men’s voices inside, and she hesitated at the door. The shoe shops were male sanctums like ships, where women intruded only with haste and apology. Then she heard Johnnie’s easy laugh, and she knocked.
“Come in, then—” called the gruff voice of Johnnie’s father, Lem.
Hesper opened the door, and paused choked by the thick air. Smoke poured from the cracks of the pot-bellied stove where they were burning scraps of shoe leather, and it poured too from the four men’s white clay pipes. The warming glue pot on the stove exhaled its own stench, and the visible air that swirled around the three cordwainers’ heads was white with chalk dust.
“Why ’tis Hessie Honeywood—” said Johnnie, who had been lounging on a stool, smoking and reading the Essex County Gazette to the shoemakers.
Lem Peach looked up from his last. “Well—come in, gur-rl, an’ shet the door, ye’re makin’ a domned draft.” He coughed long and hard, ejecting the blood-specked spittle against the stove. His face was pinched and his thin shoulders were peaked in the shoemakers’ stoop.
“Will ye set down?” said Johnnie, laughing a little, and pointing to the stool he had vacated. “It’s rare we have a visit from a lady.”
Hesper smiled timidly and shook her head, her heart beat fast as it always did at the sight of Johnnie—his close cropped dark hair, the thick muscles of his neck rising careless and easy from the open red flannel shirt, and his blunt white teeth grinning at her.