Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

  “What’s your name?” asked the ginger-haired one.

  “Edward Fairfax Rochester,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “Edward Fairfax Rochester? That’s far too much of a name for a boy your size.”

  I blinked at him. I had little experience with boys my age—only Rowland, who was not my age, and the two stableboys, with whom I had sometimes played horseshoes when their duties allowed.

  “How old?” he demanded.

  “Eight.”

  “Eight,” he repeated, in a tone that implied I had affirmed his suspicions.

  “And how—”

  But he was interrupted by a woman’s voice from below: “Boys!”

  The two immediately began throwing on their clothes. I rose from my cot—despite the cold and my fears of this place, I had slept like the dead—and I set myself to straightening my rumpled clothes and running a hand through my hair and putting on my shoes, and I hurried downstairs after the others.

  Mr. Lincoln was already seated at the table, drinking the first of, as I was later to learn, many cups of coffee, a huge globe on a stand beside him. He glanced up as we tumbled down the steps. “You have met Rochester, I presume,” he said, as if new boys appeared all the time.

  “We have,” the ginger-haired boy said. The smaller one nodded silently.

  “And,” Mr. Lincoln continued, “has he met you?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and Mr. Lincoln spoke into it. “I thought not. That one is Thomas Fitzcharles,” he said to me, “but for obvious reasons he’s called ‘Carrot’ in this place. And the other one is William Gholson; we call him ‘Touch.’ As for you”—he leveled his eyes at me—“I shall have to see. In the meantime, sit down, the three of you, and put something in your stomachs.”

  I held back, unsure, as the other boys took their places, and then I sat in the remaining chair, the one to Mr. Lincoln’s left, next to the globe. A woman, who I later learned was called Athena—but who seemed as little like the Greek goddess as I could imagine a woman to be; perhaps Mr. Lincoln had given her a new name too—brought coffee in mugs for the three of us, and a plate of bread, which the other two fell to pulling apart, leaving barely a crust for me. Mr. Lincoln seemed not to notice, and I took my crust and dunked it into my coffee and hoped my stomach would not complain too vociferously.

  “Your father is a gentleman,” Mr. Lincoln said, looking at me over his spectacles.

  The other two stared at me. “I believe so, sir,” I said.

  “But he is also in trade.”

  The boy called Touch looked down at his mug, but Carrot continued to watch me, his eyes slightly narrowing at this last.

  “I suppose he is,” I bumbled on, too inexperienced to understand the disapproval the phrase might carry.

  “He has business interests,” Mr. Lincoln went on. “In Liverpool, I believe.”

  I hesitated.

  “Not in Liverpool?” he asked, his eyebrows rising.

  “I think he has some business in Jamaica as well, sir,” I said, unsure what, exactly, was the case. I felt as vulnerable as one of Rowland’s mounted butterflies.

  “Jamaica,” he said, “hmm.” Then: “Do you know where that is?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir, what?”

  Panic rose, but nothing came out of my mouth.

  “One must speak civilly at all times,” Mr. Lincoln admonished, ignoring my discomfort. “A gentleman does not give the shortest possible answer to a question if he is able to phrase it in a more comprehensive manner. ‘No, sir, I do not know’ is an acceptable response to such a question, although it is the least acceptable of all possible ones.” He was still staring at me over his spectacles, and I could hear the other two sniggering into their hands.

  “No, sir, I do not know where that is,” I said.

  “And why not?”

  “I hadn’t a map that showed it, sir.” Not that I would have thought to look for it if I’d had one.

  “Not even a globe?” he demanded.

  “No, sir, not even a globe.” At that, I felt a quick nudge of my foot under the table, and I glanced at the two boys, who were both gazing at me, but I did not know whose foot had touched mine, nor what it had meant.

  Mr. Lincoln took a swallow of his coffee and rapped the table with his knuckle. The woman came and refilled his mug. “You’re a quick learner, I’ll say that for you,” he said to me. Turning to the others, he asked, “What do we know about Jamaica?”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Carrot said, “I don’t know anything, sir. Except where it is.”

  “I don’t know anything either, sir,” Touch said, the first words from his mouth that I had heard. His voice sounded rusty, as if from lack of use.

  Mr. Lincoln turned to the globe and gave it a spin. “Here we are in England,” he said, pointing a broad finger. Then he looked closely at me. “Do you know where London is?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.” I laid a finger on the globe.

  “No!” he shouted. “One does not touch a globe with what undoubtedly are greasy fingers!” He pulled out a pocket-handkerchief and rubbed my filth from the face of England.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said.

  He stared steadily at me, and I wished I could melt into my shoes, and then he said, “How far from London are we on the globe—if you can tell me without touching it?”

  I looked at the globe, afraid to bring my finger close to it, and unable to understand what he was asking.

  “How far?” he asked again, leaning forward. “A finger’s breadth, two fingers?”

  It was a large globe, but still, England is a small country. “It’s a finger’s breadth, I think, sir,” I said.

  To my great relief, Mr. Lincoln turned to Carrot. “And where is Jamaica? You said you knew that?”

  “Yes, sir, I do know.” He pulled a handkerchief from his own pocket and, with it covering his hand, as he had evidently been taught to do, he turned the globe, located the place, and pointed, his finger close to but not actually touching the globe’s surface. “Here is Jamaica, sir, in the Caribbean Ocean.”

  “And how far is that from us, would you think?” Mr. Lincoln asked me. “How many handspans?”

  I had no idea.

  “Well?”

  “Would that be my handspans or yours, sir?” I asked, playing for time.

  He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “It’s goodly far. Not a distance one travels on a whim. You understand that, I suppose. And what do you know of Jamaica, other than that your father has business there?”

  “I know nothing of it, sir.”

  “We shall have to remedy that. You see those bookshelves?” I could not have avoided seeing them; they almost completely covered the walls of the room. “You will find there books on nearly everything you might want to know, as well as many, many things you never thought to wonder. That is the purpose of a good library. You will no doubt find something there about Jamaica, and you shall report on what you have found at tea this evening. In the meantime, these two shall study with me. You are excused.”

  I rose and turned, overwhelmed by the task before me. The books—shelves upon shelves of them—seemed arranged in no particular order. How would I find Jamaica in this apparent hodgepodge? I glanced back helplessly, but Mr. Lincoln and the two others had already focused their attention on the tabletop, rolling out sheets of paper that I later learned were maps, and placing little square tokens on them. In desperation, I stepped to the nearest wall and began my search. Eventually I discovered that indeed there was an order to the books—a mostly geographical one—and with that, I was able to find some likely-looking volumes and I sat down on the floor and began reading.

  I was soon swept up by that far-off island, and nearly half the day passed before I realized that those at the table were not speaking English. Startled, I looked toward them: Mr. Lincoln was still in his chair, but leaning over the table, while Touch and Carrot stood at each side of
him. All were gazing at the display before them, but I had no idea what they were talking about or even what language they were speaking. Curiosity got the better of me for a moment, and feeling exiled, I longed to join them, to see what was so intriguing. But I reminded myself that I had been given a different task, and this first day was the time to prove myself, so I turned back to the book in hand and did not notice anything else until Athena brought me a cheese pie and a glass of watered beer.

  The fact that my meal had been brought to me made clear that I was expected to stay in place, and so I did, still feeling the exile. No one spoke to me: it was as if I were not even in the room. Remembering Mr. Lincoln’s shout not to touch the globe with possibly greasy hands, I ate cautiously, careful not to drop crumbs into my book. The day slid by, neither fast nor slow, but by the time it grew too dim in my corner to read, I had gone through the Jamaica parts of six books. To tell the truth, at that point I knew more about that island country than I did about England.

  At the end of the day, Mr. Lincoln said, “Well?” and I knew by his raised voice that he was speaking to me. “What have you to tell us?”

  He did not invite me to the table, so I stayed where I was. “Jamaica was discovered on May 5, 1494, by Christopher Columbus—”

  “Discovered?” Mr. Lincoln interrupted. “Discovered? Had no one else ever been there before? Was it vacant of any population?”

  The sudden vehemence of his attack startled me, and for a moment I struggled for a response. “No, sir,” I said. “There were native people there and they came out in seventy or more canoes to greet him, all painted and dressed in feathers.”

  “Ah”—he leaned back in his chair—“there was a battle.”

  “No, sir, there was not, because Columbus made a big show of friendship, and even later, when he thought it necessary, he brought forth his crossbows and after a few of the natives were wounded, they left off any more shows of defiance. Also, he had a dog.”

  Mr. Lincoln raised his eyebrows. “He had a dog?”

  “A very big one, sir. A frighteningly big one.”

  “Did the natives have no weapons?”

  “Yes, sir, they did have some, but only lances and bows and arrows. No crossbows, which are more powerful and can be used from a greater distance.”

  “Come join us for tea and tell us the rest,” he said, as if I had piqued his interest. “Athena!” he called. “It’s past our teatime.”

  I gathered up my books and brought them to the table in case I needed to make reference. At some point, Athena brought the tea, but I hardly took notice; I was so busy reporting on all that I had learned. It was the first time such a thing had ever happened to me: one adult and two other boys listening raptly to my accounts of the Spanish colonization, the pirates who circled the Caribbean, the battle with the English for the island and their use of buccaneers against both the Spanish and the French, the great sea battles for control of the island, the slaves and the Maroons and the Creoles—both white and black—the cocoa and later the sugar plantations, the earthquakes and the hurricanes, the slave trade; all of it taking place on this exotic, sand-garlanded island. I had, on that day, fallen in love with Jamaica.

  It was nearly bedtime by the time I finished. Carrot was staring at me. Touch was drawing figures with his finger on the tabletop. Mr. Lincoln was beaming. “Very good,” he said, nodding. Then he leaned forward. “But there is more, you know.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” I said.

  He leaned back and smiled. “But you will,” he said. “You will.” He gazed at each of the other boys in turn, before looking again at me. “You have made a start at least, and that is enough for one day.” He rose then and lifted a candlestick as signal that it was time to retire. He started away from the table but suddenly turned back to me. “Jamaica,” he said, “is a very interesting place. Very interesting. Jamaica. We shall be calling you that: Jamaica.”

  “Very good, sir,” I said, not knowing at all whether it would be good or not.

  Chapter 4

  I could not get Jamaica out of my head. As I climbed into my cot—barely noticing that Athena had put a quilt on it—I was already recounting more than I had told at teatime, starting with Columbus’ huge black dog, larger than any such animal the natives had ever seen, frightening them so terribly that, after their first attempt, they rarely tried to attack again.

  “That’s no surprise,” Carrot said. “He probably ate some of them.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said. “I’m sure. The book never said it, anyway.”

  “I bet he did, though.” In the dark, I could tell he was grinning.

  “Tell again about the buccaneers,” Touch said.

  “No, tell about the earthquake,” Carrot said. “But here, come get in bed with us. Tell about the man who was buried alive and then washed out to sea.”

  So I climbed in between them, as they insisted, pulling my quilt on top of the three of us, and I whispered to them about Lewis Galdy, who was first swallowed up by a massive chasm when the Great Earthquake erupted, and afterwards, in a subsequent shock, was spat out of the ground and cast into the sea, whence he escaped by swimming to a boat.

  “Could you do that?” Carrot asked. “Or would you be too afraid?”

  I imagined the earth closing around me, imagined the panic.

  “You would be afraid, wouldn’t you?” he challenged.

  “I would be,” Touch said.

  “I don’t know how to swim,” I said.

  “I don’t either,” Touch said.

  “We’ll have to learn,” Carrot said.

  We all went to sleep that night imagining ourselves sitting down to dinner and hearing the terrible noise when the ground opened with choking fumes of sulfur, everyone thinking hell was coming forth on earth as the streets washed into the harbor and the sea rose in mighty waves, tearing ships from their anchorages and sweeping them inland over the sunken ruins of the town.

  After that, we three always slept together, with me in the middle. It was cozy, and we found it easy to imagine ourselves bunked together in a pirate ship, sailing in the West Indies. Some nights I told stories about Captain Morgan, who quit being a buccaneer when he was made lieutenant governor of Jamaica; and Blackbeard and Calico Jack; and the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who were not executed with the rest of their gang because they were both with child at the time.

  And sometimes Touch would make up stories of his own for us. As quiet and gentle as he was, he had a powerfully inventive imagination. The sea was full of not only pirates in his tales, but sea serpents and mermaids as well, and more than one sailor lost his heart to those golden-haired sirens, or his life to a beast that rose unexpectedly from the depths of the Caribbean. I marveled at the way he could make my mind see just what his mind saw. He was four months younger than I, yet he seemed to have absorbed so much more of the world’s magic. I wanted to see things the way he did—to have his imagination and his kindness—and at the same time I wanted to be like Carrot, too, who was so sure of himself, who never doubted that life would always treat him well.

  In those first days, around Mr. Lincoln’s map-covered table, I discovered the world. He was consumed by maps—in fact, among ourselves we sometimes called him “Maps,” because he had so many and seemed to love them above all else. Meticulous, colorful, hand-drawn maps, printed maps, entire books of maps—the whole world laid out like an architect’s drawing, as if one could indeed know all the workings of the universe if one could only devour enough maps. Soon enough I came to notice drawings on those maps: a sea serpent peeking over the waves, a compass decorating a corner, even a schooner in full sail.

  Carrot nodded toward the schooner. “Touch drew those,” he said.

  I glanced at Mr. Lincoln for confirmation, and he smiled and nodded. “Our friend here has a rare talent,” he said.

  I noticed then that Touch’s eyes were downcast, but he was grinning.

  “You could be a mapma
ker!” I said enthusiastically.

  “He could, if he wanted,” Carrot said.

  “Indeed,” Mr. Lincoln said. But Touch did not acknowledge their words, nor did he look up at us, and the smile had disappeared from his face. It would be months before I understood why their encouragement pained him so.

  Though he never beat us, Mr. Lincoln could be a most difficult man, and he brooked no foolishness. I quickly learned, as the others already had, to see beneath the surface of his questions, understanding that the correct answer was never enough; it was always more important to know why it was correct. He believed in saturating us with learning, so that from the moment we came downstairs for breakfast until the light had faded and we trooped up to bed, we were nearly always studying something, talking about something, learning something.

  His teaching was all about war: the wars against Napoléon when I arrived, but later, Julius Caesar’s campaigns and other wars that suited his purposes from time to time. What boy does not imagine himself a hero? Five and a half days a week, Monday morning to Saturday noon, we leaned over the maps, aligning our tokens in battle order—red for the British troops and blue for the French, and green and brown and black and purple for the other nations—and we fought those battles. Or we calculated the time it would take a thousand troops to pass a specific point, or the trajectory of a cannonball or the operation of a trebuchet, the weight of a barrel of salt pork or a barrel of rum, and the mechanics of lifting such heavy weights aboard a ship.

  For the Napoleonic Wars we spoke French—or the rest did, as I struggled to follow along. Unswayed by my ignorance of the language, Mr. Lincoln spoke to me in French anyway, asking questions I did not understand and waiting impatiently for answers I could not give, until the others finally supplied the answers for me. The fact that I had no French seemed to matter to no one but me; they gave me no quarter, and thus I learned it to keep myself in the game. Though, in fact, it was no game; every discussion was deadly serious.

  Touch came from a village twelve miles away, which distance he walked if the weather was fair when he went home after noon on Saturdays, with part of a loaf of bread to eat en route, returning by dark on Sunday evenings. If the weather was inclement, his brother came for him on horseback and they rode double on the return. Touch never said much about his home, but I learned that he was the elder of two boys, and his father was a vicar, and I could imagine that there were high hopes laid on Touch’s narrow shoulders. As I watched him leave each Saturday, I often imagined going with him, sitting down at the vicarage table and enjoying a family meal. I actually asked once, after I had been at Mr. Lincoln’s for a few weeks, if I might go home with him sometime, but with less than his usual warmth, Touch just said, “You wouldn’t like it,” and turned away. I never asked again.