“Where’s the lantern?” asked Hendrick.
“Here.” Lancey passed it. Her father’s face was a featureless blur. When he bent to shield the candle it was hard to detach his figure from the surrounding blackness.
Steel clicked on flint, clicked again to throw out a spray of blue and white sparks. The third try caught on the tinder, glowed orange, spread.
Lancey could hear her father’s breathing, saw it made visible as the tinder turned cherry red, puffed into flame. The tiny triangle of fire, poked into the lantern, swelled over the candle wick; the flame split in two as the tinder was removed.
Hendrick quenched the lighter, shut the lantern’s door. The candle’s beam, diffused by the lamp’s horn side-panels, gave his face a liverish tinge. He held the light over the side for a few moments, gaze searching the river.
Head turning, Lancey scanned the surface. There was nothing but the movement of the tide.
“Here, Lancey. Hang it.”
She took the lantern, draped if on the peg at the boat’s bow. There was small need for the marker on a fair night, but Hendrick was always careful. The light showed his net’s position to barge ferryman or sloop helmsman as well as other fishermen.
In silence, Lancey rowing and Hendrick casting, they went through the routine of placing the net. The white floats slapped on the water in regular cadence, bobbed behind them like blossoms of foam in a wake.
As they drifted, waiting for the flood, Lancey noted that they seemed to be alone on the river. The other fishermen had made their drifts by daylight. Her father had reported the results at the supper table. Shad in every net; Pardon Cash and Justin were high boat.
Hendrick loaded and lit his pipe, the short-stemmed clay that he used while fishing. He waited until it was drawing to his satisfaction, blew a gust of smoke, cleared his throat.
“Lancey.”
“Yes?” Lancey straightened, alert for an expected request. Unless something of note roused his interest Hendrick didn’t usually clutter his fishing with unnecessary talk.
“You met Dirck’s family? The van Zandts?”
“Why, yes, Pa,” said Lancey, surprised. He knew that already; while she told Hester about the party, her father had been a silent listener. “His mother and father. His brother.”
“It is an old Dutch family,” Hendrick said, “but no better than your mother’s.”
“Nor the Quists!”
“Maybe not. Maybe when the van Quists came to this country the van Zandts were like them. The Delanceys, too. Your mother’s branch, not the Tory one. But—”
“But, what, Pa?”
“Today is not the olden times.” Hendrick replaced his pipe, removed it without inhaling. “Lancey, do—do you like Dirck?”
“Don’t you?”
“Ah, sure, but that is not the same.”
“What are you trying to say, Pa?” Lancey was careful not to laugh. It has just occurred to Pa, she thought, that Dirck is interested in his daughter as a woman.
“You are a grown girl now,” Hendrick said slowly. “Your mother was no older when we wed.” The fisherman shifted his pipe from hand to hand, turned it in his fingers, gazed into the bowl as if seeking inspiration from the glowing tobacco. “I—I would not wish you hurt, Lancey.”
“Don’t worry, Pa,” said Lancey, with quick sympathy. She knew her father would never voice a fear for her virtue, but realized he might need reassurance.
“To marry, Lancey, is a serious matter. To marry above or below the place set by your birth makes all even harder. You are likely to—well, to become as a landed fish, gasping and flopping to get back where you belong.”
“I am not marrying anybody,” Lancey said. She was startled by Hendrick’s expression of her own feeling.
“I know this,” said Hendrick, unheeding, “because I did it. Your mother could have done better than a common sailor. Her family said so behind my back, but not always beyond my hearing.”
“But you were happy!”
“Aye.” A thoughtful nod added weight to the statement. “Against odds. But the odds are even greater for the girl who weds above her position. A man can fight back, win respect, acquire money, office, title by work or brains or chance. A woman—no.”
Lancey admitted, and resented, that her father was reiterating her own conclusions. It wasn’t fair that a girl could only improve her condition by a marriage resented for that very reason. At least it was true in the world she knew, among the established river gentry. In the frontier settlements west of the Hudson things might be different, but not even a long war of revolt had changed the iron-bound customs of the east-bank landed families.
“Pa,” she said, impatiently direct, “I told you not to worry. There is no need. Between Dirck van Zandt and me there is naught but friendship. Marriage has never been mentioned.” That much, she thought, is true.
“So.” Hendrick managed to make the word both satisfied and questioning.
“Are you afraid I might—lose my head?”
“Or your heart.”
“No, Pa. I have a good grip on both, and Dirck is not the man to shake it. When I wed it will be my own choice, and until that time I can wait.” Suddenly, she was angry; her speech sharpened. “God and Nicholas! Do you think me the sort that swoons at the first male that bows to me?”
“No, Lancey. But—”
“Dirck took me to his home. Jan Elmendorf got himself thrashed by Justin on my account. Neither happening was my idea, nor should I be held blame for them! I am not Jan’s girl, nor Dirck’s, nor Justin’s!”
“All right,” Hendrick said.
His tone mollified her. She saw that her father had restored pipe to mouth, was smoking. Her explanations, then, had calmed his fears. She felt a touch of sympathy for Hendrick; the emotion was a feminine mixture of superiority and pity. He would never know how close she had come to the very thing he dreaded. Even Dirck, though he might suspect, would never know.
“There’s the moon,” she said, “almost full.”
“It’s a nice night,” said Hendrick. He sounded contented, glad to accept her remark as the end of discussion.
Lancey smiled up at the lop-sided white disk that glowed so luminously. Men, she decided, were not difficult to handle once a girl learned the trick. They believed what they wanted to believe, especially when they had no concrete evidence to the contrary.
Of course, she added righteously, she had told her father nothing but the truth, if not quite the whole truth. His advice had not influenced her judgment; she had decided to avoid Dirck van Zandt before Hendrick spoke. It was strange that the occurrences of the same day definitely changed her relationships with Dirck and Jan Elmendorf.
Neither man was aware of her feelings. Dirck, grimly sheepish in front of Pardon and Justin, had hurried away as soon as they landed at the Quist pier; Jan had sailed again aboard the Lydia. She expected objections from both, was ready to over-ride them. Jan, in his stubbornness, might be the more difficult to dismiss. He had no Eunice Wynbridge to soothe his feelings, and his unwanted intentions were honorable. Fortunately he’d given her a perfect reason to be outraged. His scandal-feeding fight with Justin was unforgivable!
Idly watching the nearest float, Lancey turned her thoughts to Justin Pattison. Wet and miserable as she had been after the rescue from the river she’d been aware of Justin’s attitude.
Anger, she thought, recalling how Justin glowered at Dirck, is the man’s ruling passion. It was, strangely, his most attractive mood, a fact the girl found bewildering. When he was calmly cynical, or mocking she wanted to box his ears, but something within her responded to his wrath.
Even when it smoldered, Lancey decided, and didn’t flame into speech. His curt rudeness, his scowling disapproval had betrayed him. Justin could not have been more furious over their mishap if he owned and treasured the Argo himself.
Instinctively, she knew and cherished the reason. He liked her. Another man might worry when she risked injur
y, Justin raged. She was pleased by this, equally pleased because it was a silent admission that he no longer considered her to be Dirck’s paramour. His glare had been that of a rival.
Lancey complimented herself on a victory. In spite of a bad beginning, she had managed to win Justin’s interest and respect. His strange arrival, his service in the war, his intensity about political affairs, added to his attractiveness.
She must, she resolved, see more of him. From the way he talked Justin Pattison would understand why she resented the van Zandts and their calm assumption of superiority.
The white float, a pale cube on the moon-gilded silver of the river, bobbed and disappeared. Lancey blinked at the spreading ripples, waited until the buoy surfaced.
“Pa.”
“I saw it,” Hendrick said. “It ain’t the first one either.” He knocked the dottle from his pipe, strewed it over the boat’s side.
Lancey caught the under-current of excitement in her father’s calm tone. Their first drift after shad was already showing signs of a good catch. Her own feeling disturbed and puzzled her. It lacked the unalloyed glee of former years. She was glad the net was taking fish, happy for Hendrick’s sake, hoped to beat the other fishermen, but where was the zest that had made her pulse race?
“At that rate,” she said, whipping enthusiasm into her voice, “we’ll fill the boat.”
“Touch wood,” said Hendrick, tapping a finger on the gunwale. “Never count them till they’re landed.”
“Are they running big?” Lancey was doggedly following a familiar pattern of conversation. She didn’t want her father to guess her detachment. How anybody, especially his daughter, could be casual about the opening of a shad run would completely mystify Hendrick.
“Average. Calico and Tanner had some beauties.”
“They don’t sell. Anyway, not until their master’s people are all fed. But, thanks to me, the others will skim the cream off the trade.”
“Lancey, one day won’t make that much difference.” Hendrick was touched by her genuine distress. They had not discussed the delay enforced by her wetting. “Folks will not lose their appetite for shad in a single meal.”
“But everybody and his crony will be on the river tomorrow!” Lancey willingly took blame in order to sound convincing. It was easier than pretending that fishing excited her.
“The idlers, yes. Not the merchants, the innkeepers, the workers or the farmers. They will buy as they always do. You must not feel bad, Lancey. The bright sun today drove the shad deep, under the nets. You’ll see that we will do better in the night.”
“I hope so.”
“You’ll see. Let us eat now, while we wait.”
Unwrapping the parcel of food, Lancey was grateful that her father had substituted chewing for talk. She didn’t want to berate herself too much, but she still couldn’t explain her disinterest in an event that had always entranced her. She had fretted through a day of inaction; yearned to be on the water. Now she was here, and the shad were afishing, and her enjoyment was halfhearted.
Whatever has come over me, she asked herself, that has caused such a change? Instead of concentrating happily on the business of fishing, she was restless.
They ate in silence. The fare was simple; bread and cheese washed down with swigs of tea. They passed the stone crock between them as needed, found that its swathing of blanket strips had kept the tea hot. The drink was a luxury that Hester dispensed sparingly, but this night’s quart was in honor of the shad.
Lancey, in her vague depression, was surprised to find that she ate as well as ever. Night air and exercise had whetted her hunger; she devoured every morsel.
The tide changed as Hendrick finished his post-prandial pipe. As the net drifted back it seemed to draw Lancey’s indifference with it. She felt the old stirring of excitement, welcomed and nourished it.
“Pa,” she said, delighted at the lilt in her voice, “it’s time to take a look!” She settled an oar between tholepins with deft eagerness.
“Row to the west end,” Hendrick said, “and we’ll pull them in.” His grin showed in the moonlight, and he sounded younger. “I ain’t seen one of my own yet.”
“Ready or not,” cried Lancey, “here we come!” She started to row, pumping her spirits higher with each thrust and pull of the oars. Every stroke sent them closer to the bright moment of hazard that never failed to elate her. The harvesting of the net drew in success or failure, good catch or poor; it was the best part of fishing.
“Now, Lancey, we ain’t racing anybody.” In spite of his rebuke Hendrick was on his feet, ready to reach for the net.
Oh, yes, we are, thought Lancey, as she jockeyed the boat into position. They were racing their own ignorance. Until the net was in the box, and the shad counted they would not know! She had trained herself to wait with patience, but waiting was nearly finished.
“Steady her now,” said Hendrick.
“Steady it is.”
Watching the first yards of net, filmy and dripping, fold across the gunwale under Hendrick’s capable hands, Lancey wanted to shout with joy. This was the remembered tenterhook tenseness, the breathless anticipation. She hadn’t changed. She was a fisherman, after all.
Fisherman, she repeated silently. A girl elsewhere, and a woman at times, but a fisherman in this boat when the net was hauled aboard.
The sight of a shad, hanging in the coils of glinting web, swept away her last doubts.
Lancey knew it was shad. No other fish had the same glittering beauty. Night turned the green-metal of the back, the silver scales, into an incredible blue. It was the color of an exploding fireworks rocket, of a lamp shining through a pane of bull’s-eye glass. She didn’t need Hendrick’s gratified comment.
“There’s a handsome buck.”
“Two feet if he’s an inch!”
“I think not.”
“At least, Pa!”
“Well, a real pretty silverback, anyhow.”
The shad was still flopping on the bottom of the boat when another, gills caught, dangled from the net. After that they came aboard in a steady, flashing succession of blue-white splashes.
Rowing, while her father gathered net, and deftly untangled fish, Lancey tried to keep count. The growing pile of shad bounced and wriggled in an ever-changing confusion that made the task impossible. When Hendrick straightened, finished, the girl shipped her oars. On her knees, forearm deep in shad like a miser laying himself in silver treasure, Lancey counted again.
“Well, Lancey?”
“I make it—sixty-five, Pa.”
“Sixty-five.” Hendrick’s sigh expressed pleasure. “Not bad for an early night drift.” His twinkle acknowledged Lancey’s triumphant crow of laughter. “Not bad at all.”
He was, Lancey thought with tenderness, the best fisherman on the river, the best father anywhere. She waited, knowing from his manner that he had something more to say.
No lights showed from Poughkeepsie now, but the town atop the bluff was bathed in moonlight. It softened angles, turned window panes to squares of mica, linked separate houses with dark bars of shadow. The moon itself had more reality; the town seemed without substance, a place imagined, formed by fancy out of gray-blue smoke.
A gentle breeze rose from the river, danced along the moon’s track. Lancey took off her tricorne, shook her piled hair loose. It fell to her shoulders, and the wind stirred it.
“Pardon tallied fifty-three,” Hendrick said. “Nobody did better, Lancey.”
“Of course not. They can’t best us, Pa.”
She wondered, briefly, if Justin would be annoyed at their success. No true fisherman liked to be beaten by another boat. At least he would understand her pride in the catch. Dirck van Zandt, she recalled, caught shad for sport with hook and line. He probably couldn’t tell roe from buck.
Her earlier, depressing lack of enthusiasm was completely forgotten.
“Ten Bush,” said Hendrick slowly, “would have enjoyed this.”
&nb
sp; “Yes, Pa.”
Both voices were low. They needed no further words. It was the first time that a shad run had started without Ten Bush in the boat.
CHAPTER 15
JAYCOCK’S ORDINARY WAS THROBBING WITH NOISE. THE HEAVY rumble of men’s voices was punctuated by guffaws, tankards hammered on tables, cries for service. It was a jovial uproar that seemed to shake the whole building.
From where she stood, well back from the blaze in the wide kitchen fireplace, Lancey Quist could see into the inn’s common room. Under the swirling haze of tobacco smoke the tables were crowded. Amused, the girl wrinkled her nose as she sniffed air baked to warm staleness, sharp with the odor of fried fish. The brace of shad that sizzled over the flame were browned to an appetizing color, but their steam merely blended with the older scents of the kitchen.
Nell Bogardus, cheeks flushed to rosy wetness by the heat, shook the skillet, set it back in place. Wearily she brushed damp hair from her forehead, glanced at Lancey.
“Shad,” said Nell, with bitterness.
“It’s only this time of year, Nell.”
“Thank God for small favors.” Nell cocked her head, listening, as an unseen guest raised his voice in song.
Lancey laughed, recognizing the singer by the bawled words, and off-key tune.
Oh, the happy fisher’s life!
It is the best of any;
Tis full of pleasure, free from strife,
And ‘tie beloved by many.
“That’s Seth Row,” Lancey said. “He always sings that when his net is full.”
“It’s his gullet that’s full now,” said Nell, sourly. “Him and the rest. You’d think them blasted fish was real silver, the way those men take on about them!” She bent over the pan, turned the shad.
You couldn’t explain, Lancey thought, about a shad run. Either you had the feeling or you didn’t. It wasn’t just fuller nets meaning fuller purses. For a few weeks, a couple of months, life along the river was changed to something miraculous like the draft of fishes in the Bible. Most of the town’s males were infected by the same fever; she’d counted a score of boats on the river that afternoon, and the run was only a couple of days old.
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