“Bring up the hatches from the lower deck,” the captain called, almost in a faint.
I didn’t understand at first, but then I heard a stronger voice behind me. “Prest! Come vit me!” It was Sigerson, the violinist. He motioned to the other men, and we followed him aft, grasping at the railings hand over hand to keep from being blown overboard. We found four hatch doors snugly attached to the lower deck, which was taking much less of a beating. The big Mormon farmers wrenched one off with grappling hooks and we carried it forward against the wind, where Sigerson directed us to remove the most damaged forehatch. Hammers were found, and the Mormons soon had it battened in place. We did the same with two more of the lower hatch doors.
Then all at once the ship dived into a deep trough and a massive wave raced toward us. The foreboom snapped, coming within inches of smashing my head and sweeping the two men behind me into the flood. Fixing a rope fast to a spar, Sigerson passed it to me. I tied it round my waist and passed it to the next man. It was Henry Raymond. Thus linked together, the three of us hoisted the last of the lower hatches on our shoulders and struggled forward with it. The two remaining sturdy Mormons hammered it down, and at last the hold was safe from the surge of the storm.
On the deck we huddled together with our injured captain, who was becoming delirious. I wanted to get him inside, but none of us dared walk on the pitching surface. It was as slippery as cream. Then the wind turned fanatical, screaming and blasting away at the ship, pushing it alarmingly to port. The captain pulled my head down and panted into my ear. “She’s sitting athwart the wind. The helm … into the wind… .” It was all I could make out, but Sigerson understood. He loosed himself from us and disappeared into the black spray, his lean hands clutching at the wild lacework of ropes flailing over his head.
The deck tilted further and further downward, and still further. I found myself staring literally into an abyss, holding fast to the captain with one arm and to the rope with the other, praying and willing the ship to come level. Just as I feared I would lose my grip, the vessel made a great groaning noise, curved slowly into the wind, and righted itself.
But the ship still lurched like a mad horse. At length Sigerson reemerged from the blackness holding a cable and motioning us to pull ourselves to safety.
Just as Sigerson approached, I thought he stumbled and collapsed on Henry Raymond. For a few minutes I imagined them wrestling each other in the darkness, struggling for something to cling to as a river from the foredeck streamed over the two men and launched itself like a waterfall into the sea. I grabbed at a waving hand and pulled its owner out of the torrent with all my strength. It was Raymond’s hand.
He lay retching salt water, clutching my arm and tugging himself in convulsions toward me. I had no idea what had happened to Sigerson, but I reached out, found the cable, and dragged Raymond and the injured captain across the weather deck. It felt like forever before I could discern the pale lamplight coming from the lounge.
Inside, a dozen or so passengers, groaning and sick, lay lashed to the deck as the ship’s doctor hovered over them. Drenched and trembling myself, I volunteered to help as I could. At last fainting away, the captain waved us off to tend to the others. When we came to examine Raymond, we found him still in evening dress, exhausted but uninjured—he opened one eye and looked me over, then closed it again in sleep.
At length the rocking of the ship, the dull warmth of the room, and the mutterings of the sick put me to sleep as well.
When I awoke hours later, the storm still thrashed away at us, although it was light. The ship continued to soar and then dive into the wind with a rhythm that became strangely comforting as it was now quite predictable, and everyone began to breathe more easily. In the lounge the smell of sick turned my stomach, so I decided to venture out into the reviving wind. I braced myself behind a mast and, with the sensation that I was astride a great, slow horse, let the spray bathe my face.
Gradually, almost indiscernibly, the wind diminished. By eight bells, the indignant ocean had reconciled itself to our presence almost to the point of allowing us to stand and walk upon the deck, and a few passengers emerged once again, their faces green as the sea, shambling like drunks into the open just to get a gulp of air.
For the next two days we endured the unceasing misty wind as we proceeded at dead slow toward land, at last sighted on our seventh day out. There were no more gay evenings in the lounge, and meals were taken in silence. The third mate and two of the Mormon pilgrims had been swept overboard, so a general sense of gloom pervaded the ship. It was heart-rending to watch the Mormons gather on deck and pray mournfully over their loss—two wives were left alone with small children—but they appeared to rally round each other and quietly dispersed below once again.
Then I realized that Adam Verver was standing next to me watching the sad scene.
“What a catastrophe,” I breathed.
“Hadn’t we better wait a while before we call it a catastrophe? After all, we don’t yet know what the losses amount to.” And he walked away swinging his cane, his boots shined and his ascot correct.
I busied myself comforting Sister Carolina, who had dropped into a kind of terrified trance, and making inquiries about the welfare of the passengers, in particular Katherine Wells. I was met at her stateroom door by the taciturn Count Schindler, who gave me to understand that she was resting and would continue to rest until we reached port. It was made equally clear that I would not be disturbing that rest.
I also looked up and down for Sigerson. I wondered if he had come through alive, and I wanted to congratulate him for his resolute handling of the crisis. I learned that the helmsman had been rendered unconscious by the same lurch of the ship that had injured the captain, and that Sigerson had revived him so he could steer properly. We all owed our lives to the violinist. The porter told me not to worry: Sigerson and the other musicians were all “O.K.,” in that peculiarly American way of signifying no need for concern.
At length we made our way up the smooth Delaware River to Philadelphia, and the ship was one commotion of activity from bow to stern. Once on land, my legs felt like tree stumps. While awaiting our baggage, I hovered round the passengers’ gangplank hoping for a last moment with Katherine Wells.
I bade a pleasant farewell to Mrs. Miller and her intolerable son and a less pleasant farewell to the Shlessingers, who cut me dead. Adam Verver descended as if from Olympus, trailing bags and trunks and, on his arm, enwrapped in a luxurious cream-colored boa, his stupendously beautiful goddess-wife.
“An eventful crossing, Padre,” Verver paused to acknowledge me.
“Indeed.” I glanced at Mrs. Verver, who looked as if she were about to be buried alive, and felt an urgent blessing was called for. “Pax vobiscum, Mrs. Verver.”
“And with you, Padre,” her husband said with no attitude at all, bowed, and continued his progress.
When nearly everyone else had left the boat, Mrs. Wells came down—subdued but still grand—closely supported by her two retainers, Raymond and Schindler.
I had not encountered Raymond since the night of the storm. He was inconspicuously elegant once again, his dress tactful and his black whiskers carefully managed. “Padre!” he greeted me. “We weathered the tempest together, didn’t we? For a few moments, I was afraid we were going to end up a couple of Jonahs.”
“Indeed,” I smiled. “But, like Jonah, ‘I cried out of my affliction to the Lord, and he heard me.’”
“I’m glad you could depend on the Lord, Padre. I was depending on those big shoulders of yours. I’m in your debt, sir.”
I shook my head, but Raymond was already walking away. Mrs. Wells stopped him and came back to speak to me.
“I’m so happy to have made your acquaintance, Father. If you ever come to New York, please call on me.” She put her hand on mine.
“It would be my pleasure. Bless you.”
/> She hesitated, then quietly asked, “Did my message get through?”
“Your message? Yes, I posted it with the porter.”
“Ah,” she halted. “Posted. Of course. Well then. Goodbye, Father, and happy journey.”
“Kitty!” Raymond was calling, and she was swept into the crowd with her retinue. I didn’t tell her about the copy I had made and could still feel rustling in my breast pocket.
CHARLESTON
Chapter 16
In after years it was known as the Great Gale of ’78. The storm we stumbled into had marshaled its forces as a hurricane in the West Indies and then marched across the States as far north as Philadelphia, ravaging towns, crashing church steeples, even twisting iron rails from the ground before it swerved out to sea to meet us.
As a result it took us nearly two weeks to reach Charleston. Sister Carolina forthrightly refused to go by sea—“As God is my witness, I’ll never board a ship again!”—so we were forced to make our way over land. With the rails and the roads disrupted, the journey was interminable and marked by miserable nights in stinking, overcrowded inns along the way. I couldn’t sleep in those places—the cold and the smell were bad enough, but the labyrinthine drawing Katherine Wells had given me kept me fitfully awake. Some nights I crept out of bed with a candle to puzzle over it again and again, harassed by the sense that I had seen something like it before. To add to my anxiety, one night I caught someone watching me from a window—a lean shadow that jerked out of sight as soon as I became conscious of it. I was indescribably relieved when at last we arrived to find Charleston, fortunately, intact.
I immediately carried out Holmes’s instructions with precision, placing an advertisement in the Charleston and Atlanta newspapers, as I had been charged to do. I also wrote Holmes a long letter describing my experiences on the water and lamenting the fact that he would not receive it perhaps for weeks. In those days the Atlantic mail always slowed to a trickle in the winter months.
Conversely, within only three days of my advertisement, I received a curious visitor.
“Father Grosjean, sir? My name is … Joe Harris of the, of the … Atlanta Constitution.” He stood there hat in hand, lisping and stammering, his blazing red hair as abundant as his chin was scarce.
“Yes, Mr. Harris. What can I do for you?”
“You, um, you placed this item, sir?” He held out a dirty, wrinkled fragment of newsprint. It was my advertisement.
“Yes, I did. Now, how can I help you?”
“It’s I who can, who can help you, sir. You, um, you must know about the … the scuffle over yonder … in Atlanta?”
“Scuffle? No, I don’t know what you mean. Won’t you come in and sit down?”
In my heart, I was excited at this first response to my advertisement, but did not want to appear so. Instead I tried to use Holmes’s methods to discern as much as I could about this odd stranger as he bowed and bobbed his way into a chair. From his frail albeit pudgy appearance, I deduced a poor diet. The undersleeves of his coat were glossy to the point of transparency—this coupled with the ink stains on his fingers indicated that he spent a good amount of time writing. His extraordinary diffidence, his stammering and shyness, pointed to humble origins. He could barely raise his eyes to mine, and my heart went out a little to Joe Harris.
I offered him a glass, which he gulped gratefully, and then I urged him on to his story.
“Your notice, F … Father, your notice has caused some … disquiet. In Atlanta. A good many people want to know … the same thing.”
I glanced again at the paper:
$500 reward for information regarding the murder of the Tarleton brothers of Jonesboro at battle of Gettysburg. Inquire at this newspaper, &c.
“Surely your publication must feature many such inquiries. The late war resulted in so many unresolved cases like this one.”
“Yes, sir, you are correct there, sir. But not many … cause such a stir. $500, for one thing … a lot of money. A lot of money. But another thing. It’s the word … the word …”
“Which word?”
The muscles in Harris’s forehead worked hard to get the word out: “M … murder, sir.”
“Oh, I see. I’ve created a stir by representing the death of the Tarletons as an instance of murder rather than a battlefield killing?”
Harris nodded. His face bore a look of pained and permanent surprise, as if he were never sure what sounds his mouth might produce. “May I ask, Father, what is … what is your interest in this m … matter?”
“I am the pastor to a friend of the Tarletons, a member of the Order of Sisters of Mercy here in Charleston. She is convinced that her friends were deliberately murdered and has undertaken to resolve the matter if possible. I am merely acting on her behalf. Now, may I ask you, what kind of a stir are you talking about?”
“In Atlanta, the Tarletons had m-many friends, sir. The idea of m-murder … it’s raised suspicions, sir. Yes. Suspicions falling on one per … person.”
“On whom?”
“As you might expect, sir, on someone who … who isn’t likely to be able to de … to defend himself, sir.”
“Please, Mr. Harris, you needn’t keep calling me ‘sir.’ Who can’t defend himself?”
“Oh, I’m s-sorry, sir. I mean, I’m sorry. His name is James. Just … just James. An old family retainer. He was … a dog robber. A dog robber to the Tarleton brothers.”
“What on earth is a dog robber, Mr. Harris?”
“A cook … a servant … in the Army. James was their s-slave on the plantation and went to war with the brothers. To keep the pack horse, cook, clean … take care of the weapons.”
“Why would suspicion fall on their servant?”
“The Tarletons … and James … no love lost. They whipped him. For eavesdropping, spreading tales, and the like. Everyone knows he hate … hated them.”
“I see.” It was the old story in this part of the country: the colored man as scapegoat. Of course, I knew immediately it was not true; besides the knowledge I had from Holmes, the intrigue surrounding the Tarletons could not be the result of a mere fit of temper on the part of a mistreated slave.
“So when I read your n-notice, Father, I thought there might be more to the story. I’m only a cornfield journalist, but … but I, I cherish a good story.”
“Perhaps you’d like to meet the person who is offering the reward,” I suggested. “I’m sure she can tell you more about it.”
The reporter looked doubtful, but I walked him to the convent where we asked to see Sister Carolina. While we waited, I tried to calm his nerves. I asked him a few innocuous questions about himself, and gradually he relaxed with me. He told me he had been a fatherless boy who had made his way laboring on a farm and selling rabbit skins for twenty cents apiece. Like many journalists, he had begun as a printer’s devil and became adept at “listening at keyholes,” as he put it.
I smiled at this, and Harris shyly smiled back. I decided I liked him.
“A good reporter … is a death hunter,” he said. “Nothing, nothing seizes a reader’s attention like death, and mysterious death … well, there’s nothing like mysterious death for a good story.”
“And that explains why you have come three hundred miles to see me, instead of telegraphing—which you could have done much more easily?”
“In part,” he replied. “In part.”
I gave him an inquisitive look.
Harris looked up and away as if talking to an audience in the air. “I hoped the war would have mowed down the old prejudices like weeds.” His stammer had subsided almost completely. “But now the same old evils are blossoming again …
with vengeance.”
I was impressed with his fluency and, at the same time, depressed by the scene he painted. “Then you came in part for a story you could print, but also in part to he
lp this man James. I gather he is now in some peril.”
“Serious peril. I thought you might have … information? That would help?”
My mind seized up. The fragments of information I had—how to explain them when I didn’t even know myself what to make of them? What might the luckless servant James have to do with this murky trans-Atlantic mystery, if anything at all? And what was my duty to the poor man? I cursed Holmes for leaving me alone like this.
Fortunately, just then Sister Carolina appeared. “We’ll pose that question to her,” I said, relieved that I had more time to think.
Introductions were made. Sister Carolina still looked waxy and wobbly from our voyage, and Harris—well, he could have been a fugitive fleeing the law, he was so skittish. One leg bounced rhythmically, his eyes vibrated, he twisted one hand round another.
I explained to Sister why Mr. Harris had come.
“James? The Tarletons’ James?” A livid light came into her eyes, as if she were surfacing a memory not quite solid but illuminating. “I should have known, I should have known!” Her face tightened with fury.
“What do you mean, Sister?” I asked.
“It’s in their nature, that’s what I mean. The blacks! The Yankees tried to get us to bend the knee to the most degraded of mankind, to bring them up to our level—and you see the consequence? Buckshot in the back!”
I glanced at Harris, who was now agitated to the point of speechlessness.
“That skinny boy James!” she went on. “He always was insolent, sneaking and prying and listening in on his betters. The Tarletons raised him up by hand to serve their own sons, gave him food and clothes and the gospel and clean straw to sleep on. And how did the ungrateful swine repay their generosity?”
“Apparently nothing is proven. There are allegations …” I tried to calm her.
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