My heart is singing.
13
23rd day of the tenth month in the year 1767
Numerous times each day, Silo popped into the captain’s cabin to bring Phoebe peppermint candies or lemon drops to help settle her stomach. It never occurred to her that he had stolen these delicacies from other crew members. It should have.
Someone saw Silo rummaging in the forecastle and turned him over to Hiram Hoyt. Phoebe heard the commotion and went outside to see poor Silo tied to the main mast like an animal. His large eyes pleaded with her.
Phoebe tried to untie the boy, but Hiram Hoyt stopped her, grabbing her arm. “I’m sorry, but he’s been seen stealing from the crew.”
She shrugged her arm away from the first mate and sought out the captain. He was in the cabin, changing clothes. He stood by the window with his back to her, unbuttoning his coat.
Phoebe explained what she had just seen. “How could this be? He’s merely a boy.”
“He’s twelve. Hardly a boy. You distress yourself unnecessarily, Phoebe.” He slid his arm from his left sleeve and turned to look at her. “A crew requires severe discipline. The success of a voyage depends on the crew.”
“I believe Silo was trying to help by bringing me things to ease my suffering.”
He rolled his eyes when she used the word “suffering,” as if he was tired of it. “The first mate is making an example of the boy. Better to instill respect for the ship’s authority now, when the barrels are empty, than to face a mutiny when the barrels are full.”
“Captain Foulger, a crew would not mutiny a captain they respect.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Phoebe, your naïveté was once charming but has already worn thin. A whaling captain bears a heavy weight of responsibility. I not only have to train and manage my crew, but I must answer back to the owners of the ship with a full hold of oil.” He buttoned each button of his jacket. “If you plan to continue this journey, you will keep silent about things that you know nothing about.”
She stared at him. It suddenly dawned on her why he had never requested that she call him by his Christian name, only by his formal title. She was nothing more than a crew member to him, a disappointing one at that. “Or what?”
“Or you will be put off at the next harbor, to return to Nantucket on a ship that is homebound.”
“Thee would put me off?”
“I have considered it. You’re not well. ‘Suffering’ was the word you just used.”
She couldn’t argue that. Her seasickness had not alleviated, and she was losing weight she did not have to lose. But to be put off ship by her husband, to return to Nantucket . . . how utterly humiliating.
“Don’t,” she begged in a tiny voice.
“Don’t?” he repeated, a hard edge to the word.
“Don’t put me off the ship.”
He looked at her directly, frowning. “Come,” he said.
She followed him as he moved to his shipbox and watched him unlock it. The captain’s shipbox was considered indispensable by seamen. She’d seen him open it once, to fetch something for an ill sailor, then he locked it up again and slipped the key into his coat pocket. Each compartment was fitted with a corked glass bottle and each bottle was marked with a sticker, its contents named in the captain’s neat handwriting.
He took out a small vial, uncorked it, measured one grain, and mixed it into a cup of grog.
“What is it?”
“A wonder drug called Sea Calm.” When she objected, he said, “Drink it. It will chase away the sea devils. ’Tis harmless. Not like rum, which addles the mind.”
She took a few sips, nearly gagged at the bitter taste—both grog and drug, but the captain insisted she finish.
By the time the cup was empty, she found the drug to be effective. He helped her into bed. Drowsing, drifting, she murmured, “Ah, blessed relief. The sea has finally calmed.”
The captain laughed. “Not hardly.”
Her eyes popped open. “Silo! He must be unseized.”
“I’ll see to it.” He knelt beside her. “Phoebe,” he said, “where did you put Great Mary’s journal? ’Tis not in your purse.”
The journal? Where had she put it? When had she last read it?
“Phoebe? The journal? I have looked high and low for it.”
Her mind was floating, and before she could grasp words to answer him, she fell into a deep sleep.
The door to Matthew’s cooperage opened behind him, and he immediately knew it was Phoebe by the swish of her skirts accompanied by a slight hint in the air of lavender oil. That and the smile on Silo’s face—much like Jeremiah’s moonstruck look whenever he encountered Phoebe. “Hello, Phoebe.” He turned, the hammer still in his hand. She hadn’t yet found the seaman’s stance—legs sprawled for balance. She held onto the doorjamb with both hands. “Feeling any better?”
“The captain gave me something to sleep away the cover of darkness.” She dipped her head. “But then I woke again to the pangs of seasickness.”
Matthew’s curiosity was piqued. “The captain gave you something to help you sleep?” He put a hand on Silo’s thin shoulder. “There’s the bells. You’d better see if Cook is looking for you to deliver the captain’s tea.”
Silo had come by the cooperage and held a barrel steady while Matthew tapped the bottom into it. As soon as the boy disappeared through the door, he turned to Phoebe. “What did the captain give you?” The ginger root was long gone. Cook had given him a few stale horehound candies; Matthew smashed them and steeped them to make a tea for her. But there was not much else he could think to do to ease her symptoms.
“I . . . don’t remember.” She blinked. “’Tis harmless, he said. I was finally able to sleep. And at least until I woke this morning, I was not seasick.”
Matthew leaned back against a barrel. “Are you feeling better today?”
“I was.” She seemed so hopeful. “It should improve soon, doesn’t thee think? How long does it usually take?”
“Usually? Just a few days. It’s been nearly three weeks since we left Nantucket.”
“Only three weeks? It feels like months.” Her face clouded over. “Shouldn’t we be reaching a port soon? Any . . . port?”
“It usually takes three weeks to cross the Atlantic, but that’s with fair winds. We’ve had nothing but storm after storm.”
Frankly, he wasn’t quite sure where the ship currently was, nor which port the captain was aiming for. When he’d asked the first mate, he’d responded in his usual apologetic way. “I’m sorry,” Hiram had said, “but you’ll have to ask the captain for specifics.”
That answer annoyed Matthew, particularly because he took care to avoid the captain. He was afraid he would say something he would regret . . . and get put off the ship. And how would he face Barnabas if he returned to Nantucket without his daughter? He couldn’t. A promise was a promise. Barnabas was right too. Phoebe did need someone to look after her. The captain certainly didn’t. She’d been naught but a shiny new toy to him, exciting at first but soon forgotten.
She cleared her throat and he realized he had forgotten she was standing right there. “Need something else?”
“Nay.” Again Phoebe cleared her throat. “Aye.”
His hand holding the hammer tightened upon its handle.
Phoebe’s eyes shifted downward nervously, then back up. “I wonder if thee knows where the captain holds services for First Day. It wouldn’t do to miss a meeting.”
Matthew gave her a sharp look. “Why’d you say it that way?”
“Well . . . because that’s what we do. We go to Meeting.”
“Why?”
“Is thee being contrary? Or does thee truly not know?”
“I’m not being ornery. Not intentionally, anyway. Tell me why.”
“I haven’t missed a First Day Meeting since I was born. Until now.”
“You think God is keeping track in his big black book up there in heaven? He’s going to mark you ab
sent?” He grinned, and she snapped that now he was being ornery, so she would leave him to his work. It pleased him, to see a spark ignite. He feared she was losing hope as she was losing color. “Phoebe, wait. I’m sorry. Tell me why you go to Meeting. I truly want to know.”
“So thee can mock me?”
“I’ll not mock you.”
“We are supposed to take a day off from work and go to church on First Day.”
“So that’s why you go? Because you’re supposed to?”
“Of course. Why else would people go?”
“To worship God.”
“Well, of course to worship God. That goes without saying.”
“No, it doesn’t. I think it should be said. Otherwise, if people go to Meeting because that’s what they always do on First Day, or because they think they’re supposed to go, then they’re going for the wrong reasons. And most do. That’s why the church is full of hypocrites.”
She looked at him for a long while. He knew what she was thinking—that he was a hopeless skeptic, faithless and futile. She dropped her head with a sigh and left him alone with his barrel staves.
As Phoebe left Matthew’s workroom, she didn’t know why, but she felt like crying. The feeling began as she arrived at the cooperage to find Matthew carefully explaining to Silo the intricacies of barrel making. She froze, bewildered by the poignant sight, by the way it triggered a wellspring of deep longing and unfulfilled dreams. Silo looked up, sending her a wide smile, so she swallowed hard and tried to tamp down this strange sense of yearning. She could smother it only for so long, despite Matthew’s best efforts.
She couldn’t tell if Matthew was trying to aggravate her about being Quaker or if he was sincere, but she didn’t have the emotional stamina to find out. This kind of frustrating stalemate was always where their discussions of faith took them, even before he had left on the Pearl. Had it been nearly four years now?
The memories came flooding back to her of the time when they were together, so young, thinking they were head over heels in love . . . walking along Madaket beach after a storm, gathering driftwood together, sitting on the water’s edge at Sankaty Head to watch for ships so they would be the first to see whalers return to port. And then his father bought an old sloop, the Pearl, and had it overhauled to serve as a whaler. It was a dream his father always had—to captain his own ship. She thought her heart would break when Matthew sailed away on the Pearl. She thought her life was over, at the tender age of fourteen.
But life went on.
No word came from Matthew. That was not unusual, she had expected as much. Voyages were long, destinies uncertain. Mail was passed when ships gammed together.
With both Matthew and her mother gone, Phoebe began to feel overwhelmed by anxiety: fear that Matthew would die at sea, fear that her father’s futile ventures would take them under. Captain Foulger was on island at the time. He was particularly attentive to Phoebe whenever she visited Sarah at 40 Orange Street, or when he saw her at Meeting. Once, he’d even given her a small trinket from his travels.
A letter finally arrived from Matthew, full of news and stories, but it did not fill the growing void in her heart. The sense of complete helplessness. She was helpless to keep Matthew safe. She was helpless to fix her father’s poor judgment.
A visiting minister spoke at the Quaker meetinghouse and made a comment that pierced Phoebe’s heart: “The Spirit of God is always present, waiting to be noticed. Has thee minded the Light? Gained an awareness of the Light within? If thee is living in the dark, how can thee mind the Light? The Light brings peace to thy heart, regardless of circumstances.”
Thunderstruck, Phoebe could barely hold back tears.
Later that afternoon, something happened to her that she would never forget. It was a typical July day, hot and humid in the morning; in the afternoon, rain clouds gathered to cool things down. The rain had come and gone, but clouds still filled the sky. Phoebe walked along the beach in a melancholy mood, watching the seagulls soar back and forth across the surf. And then the clouds started to lighten and separate, limned by the sun. Beams of light cast down on the shoreline, the lapping waves, the shrieking gulls, and on Phoebe. It seemed as if someone up above was shining a light behind the clouds down onto the earth. Suddenly a strange and wonderful feeling had come over her.
She couldn’t find the right words to describe it, but it seemed as though she was there and she was not there. She soaked up the beautiful scene, filled with peace as she had never felt before. Her heart seemed to be telling her something she could not understand, or put in words. This, this peace, this sense that she was not alone, this was what had been lacking in her life. There it was: she understood what it meant to mind the Light.
After a few minutes, the clouds gathered again and dimmed the sun behind them, covering the light; that special feeling was gone, but she was still so close to it, remembering it, that the peace of that moment stayed with her a long while.
A change came over Phoebe. She attended Meetings on First Day to seek that peace that she had found on the beach. And then she attended other Meetings during the week, and her faith deepened and grew. In it she found great sustenance. She wrote to Matthew of her newfound faith, but wasn’t sure if her letter would ever reach him. Knowing Matthew as she did, he would scoff. He found more amusement with the Society of Friends than sincerity.
To her surprise, a letter arrived from Matthew to his mother, with a note enclosed within for Phoebe. In the letter, he told of the Pearl’s encounter with a coral reef, its subsequent sinking with a full hold, of his father’s death. To Phoebe, he added that he had decided God was either a cruel despot, or there was no God. Either way, he wrote, he wanted nothing to do with him. He said he did not intend to pass through the doors of Meeting again. Not until pigs grow wings, he wrote.
Phoebe found herself caught in a terrible position. Sorrow for the Macy family, compassion for Matthew, coupled with concern for his soul, and concern for her own soul. The elders continually impressed on everyone the importance to stay close to the Light, and to not allow others to sway one from the Light. Phoebe felt herself struck, as if they were speaking straight to her heart. By the time Matthew was due to return, she had painfully sorted it out by “holding it to the Light,” a Quaker phrase for praying for discernment. She knew she could not marry him, as long as he felt the way he did. But it didn’t mean it was an easy decision. It didn’t mean she had stopped loving him.
As the memories came tumbling forth—recollections she’d always tried to keep tamped down—tears started to fall down her face, so she hurried to the captain’s cabin to seek solace. The captain and Hiram Hoyt sat at the teak desk with grim expressions on their faces, poring over maps. The air was thick with swirls of tobacco smoke. The captain waved her away with a flick of his wrist. Her ever-present nausea worsened and she spun around on the companionway. Where could she go on this ship to be alone? Nowhere!
Matthew was impressed that Phoebe would care about First Day Meeting when she could barely stand straight or have a conversation without fleeing off to find the nearest empty bucket. She looked awful. Dark circles under her eyes, a greenish cast to her skin. Why would she care about Meeting?
The Friends had set Matthew aside when he was only sixteen for laughing out loud one too many times in Meeting. Irreverent, they called him. He minded not at all. Religion had become distasteful to him. It smacked of rules and regulations and hypocrisy.
In truth, he was delighted to be set aside. He’d never liked Meeting—the solemn faces, the interminable silence during which he had to sit still, hands folded in his lap, waiting until someone felt moved to speak. And then he or she would stand and drone on and on and on. What a waste of a beautiful morning.
Phoebe assumed that if he did not make some effort to reconcile his disownment, then surely he was a pagan. Or worse still, an atheist.
He set down his tools and stretched his back, then went outside for fresh air. As he walked up
to the forecastle deck, he mulled over Phoebe’s assumptions.
The truth was, he did believe in God. How much nearer God seemed on the open sea than in a stuffy meetinghouse filled with hypocrites. Here was mystery, beauty, a sense of God’s infiniteness and man’s finiteness. But he did not understand God’s ways.
Phoebe did not allow room to question. Not in her world. He had to hand it to her—whatever she set her mind to, she did with her whole heart. Quakerism. Marrying the pompous captain. And now . . . seasickness.
By now, Matthew was fairly confident that she was not going to be able to shake the mal de mer. She reminded him of a story he’d heard from his father. He had sailed with a greenie who’d been affected by seasickness to this degree—it was thought to be an inner ear balance gone out of whack. It wasn’t as simple as mind over matter. The greenie nearly died. Nearly.
Matthew’s head jerked up. He remembered what his father had done to help that greenie. Mayhap there was something more he could do to help Phoebe.
He followed voices to the propped-open door of the captain’s cabin, but drew up short, stunned at the conversation he overheard. The captain was puzzling over maps with the first mate. They could not discern where the Fortuna was currently positioned. The onslaught of storms had blown the ship off course, and the sky was seldom cleared of clouds, making it difficult to fix the quadrant on the horizon to measure a reading. Matthew shielded his eyes and looked up at the leaden sky. Somewhere, up there, was a fixed North Star. Once that could be seen, they could position the Fortuna. And then he heard his named mentioned.
“I thought bringing Macy along would help us locate sperm whales.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I thought so too. His father was known for it.”
“Indeed. Better still, ambergris.”
Then there was silence.
“Who goes there?”
Matthew jerked his head down and realized the captain had spotted him. He moved into the open threshold. “I want your permission to build something that might help Ph—the captain’s wife—with her mal de mer.”
Phoebe's Light Page 14