The Rathbones

by Janice Clark

  “Try not to think too poorly of her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The captain sighed and looked out across the water, toward Naiwayonk.

  “Perhaps it’s time you knew about the rest …”

  I pulled Crow close to me and stroked his feathers, and felt his strong pulse of warmth in the ever-colder air. He struggled from under my hand and launched off and away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE WHITE CHILDREN

  {in which Lydia again fails to understand}

  1819

  LYDIA LOOKED UP at the clock, then returned to her letter. She had already read the response from Miss Marylbone’s Academy earlier that morning, but she reread it with satisfaction and relief. The school’s answer to her first inquiry had not been encouraging.

  March 3, 1819

  DEAR MRS. RATHBONE,

  Thank you for your inquiry regarding your daughter, Claudia Rathbone, and your nieces, Julia and Sophia Rathbone. At present we anticipate few openings for the autumn for our freshman class, and we must fill those from our extensive waiting list. Moreover, we regret that we are not familiar with the Rathbone family. We are certain you will understand and, indeed, acclaim our practice of scrutinizing the background of any young lady we invite to join the daughters of New England’s preeminent families. Have you, perhaps, relations in the Boston area with whom we may be acquainted and who might provide references on your behalf?

  Regards,

  Miss Edith Marylbone

  Lydia folded and unfolded a corner of the letter. She had no relations in Boston who could satisfy Miss Marylbone’s curiosity. Her mother, even if she had answered her letters, would have been able to offer little additional claim to social standing of an ilk that would satisfy Miss Marylbone. Lydia had occasional news of the Starks from Bemus, who had it from some merchant who visited the archipelago from time to time. Though the Starks’ wealth continued to grow with their thriving maritime trade, they had climbed no higher in society’s ranks, having squandered their most valuable social currency on the sale of herself and her sisters, who might well have married into the very preeminent Boston families that would have impressed Miss Marylbone. The Starks had, with their growing wealth, lured a few young ladies of good family to marry Lydia’s brothers, but the offspring of those unions were so alarmingly unattractive that their grandparents and aunts, one of whom did in fact live in Boston, were reluctant to present them in society, let alone invite them home for the holidays.

  So Lydia had spoken to Bemus, and a cutter had sailed up to Boston with a heavy satchel, returning a day later with Miss Marylbone’s reply.

  April 9, 1819

  MY DEAR MRS. RATHBONE,

  I am delighted to inform you that three places in the freshman class have unexpectedly become available, with a fine suite of rooms in the dormitory. I have taken the liberty of reserving the rooms for the Misses Rathbone. I look forward to personally welcoming the daughters of your distinguished family in September.

  Kindest regards,

  Miss Edith Marylbone

  Lydia was relieved to have the girls’ future finally settled. The three girls—her own Claudia, Miriam’s Sophia, and Priscilla’s Julia—had been without a tutor since early the previous winter. She had considered advertising for a new teacher, but the last one had been such a disappointment. Few tutors of good credentials were willing to leave positions elsewhere to accept a situation in a private home, especially one so far removed from the more stimulating life of the towns and cities. Mr. Phipps, a bachelor of late middle years with excellent credentials, had arrived at Rathbone House in the late spring. Previously a master in a boy’s boarding school to the north, he had answered Lydia’s advertisement and accepted her offer in the happy expectation of light duties with biddable young ladies (after the rigors of many years of teaching willful young men) and anticipating healthful walks along the shore. Lydia ordered books and instruments for the girls’ studies and had Bemus ready one of the golden parlors as a schoolroom. Mr. Phipps would teach French in the mornings, mathematics and music in the afternoon.

  Mr. Phipps was installed in a comfortable room at the north end of the house, far from the women’s quarters and the schoolroom, all of which were near the great hall at the south end. The tutor thought it pleasingly courteous of Bemus to stand outside his door each morning, waiting to accompany him to the schoolroom. For his morning walks on the beach, he could have easily found his own way outside, but Bemus accompanied him downstairs and out of the house, and was always waiting on the front steps when he returned.

  Lydia was at breakfast one morning a few weeks after the tutor’s arrival, listening with pleasure to the sounds from the schoolroom: the girls’ light voices conjugating French verbs, the tutor’s deep, grave voice praising and correcting. She was surprised to hear his step, much quicker than his usual measured tread, coming down the hall. He rushed into the dining room, breathing hard, face flushed, tie askew.

  “I … regret that I find this position unsuitable.”

  From the schoolroom came a burst of laughter.

  “Kindly accept my resignation, effective immediately.”

  Lydia sat back in her chair, staring.

  “But Mr. Phipps. Whatever is the matter? Are the girls not applying themselves? Are they not progressing in their studies?”

  The tutor guffawed. He tugged at his collar and ran shaking hands through his hair.

  “Ha! Yes, yes, they are certainly progressing.” Mr. Phipps looked wildly at Lydia. “Prodigies, madam. Prodigies!” he yelped. He turned on his heel and half walked, half ran down the hall to the door to the stair, and stood knocking until Bemus came up to let him out. Mr. Phipps left then and there, leaving his trunk and books behind him.

  Lydia couldn’t account for his sudden departure. When she asked Claudia and her nieces about it, they only smiled secretively and shrugged.

  So Lydia had decided to send the girls to school in the autumn, though she would have liked to keep them close a little longer. Having taught them reading and writing before the tutor ever came to stay, she took up as best she could where Mr. Phipps had left off, working through her rusty French grammar and watching over the girls at the spinet. But as winter moved into spring the nieces applied themselves to their lessons less and less, arriving late, fidgety and sullen. Between lessons she could hear them running up and down the halls. Once she had caught them with a crow that had somehow gotten inside; they had tied a string to its tail and were chasing it through the house, the bird flapping and screeching just ahead of them, trying to get away.

  It was time for them to acquire the polish that Miss Marylbone’s would provide, time for them to meet daughters of the families into which they would marry.

  Besides, Lydia disliked having a man, however respectable, live in such close proximity to her daughter and nieces, especially with Bow-Oar gone. He had been dead for more than a year, Second-Oar and Third-Oar longer. There were, of course, the handful of Rathbone men still living on the first floor. They cooked the women’s meals and laundered their clothes, though it was still only Bemus who was permitted on the second floor, to dust and polish and otherwise take care of Lydia’s housekeeping needs. Lydia’s daughter and nieces took no notice of the men downstairs.

  Or so Lydia had thought. Lately she was not so sure. As she passed the schoolroom one day, Lydia had glanced in and seen the girls all leaning out the window, calling to someone below. She pushed between them and looked out.

  Two ships rode anchor along the dock. Lydia seldom looked in that direction and observed little when she did. She would not have noticed that, though the Sassacus was swept and swabbed daily, its canvas was worn thin, its racks of harpoons rusted. The Misistuck, though, wore a good suit of sails and her rigging was in trim: The only Rathbone ship still in service, she would leave the next spring on a voyage to the Arctic. Since Bow-Oar had died, the Misistuck had been captained by Steersman, one of the last of the old
Rathbones. The Paquatauoq was moored in a cove to the west and hadn’t sailed since a few years before Moses died.

  Lydia did notice two young men on the near end of the dock, one slowly coiling a rope over his arm, the other stretching a spear across his shoulders. Both stood grinning up at the window until they saw Lydia, at which they hurried away down the dock.

  “Aunt Lydia, who was that?” asked Julia. “He’s so handsome!”

  “I claim the one with the curly hair!” Claudia laughed, shouldering her cousin aside.

  Lydia stiffened and put her hands to her hips.

  “You’ll have nothing to do with either of them, any of you! They’re just dockhands, not fit for any niece or daughter of mine!”

  “Oh, Aunt Lydia.” Sophia rolled her eyes and frowned. Claudia shrugged, and the three girls ran giggling out of the room.

  Lydia sighed. Now it was April, and though her daughter and nieces were a handful, she was sad to think they would be off to school in just a few months. The girls were all on her shoulders. Julia and Sophia were always with Claudia, hardly ever visiting their own mothers. She didn’t really blame her nieces; Priscilla and Miriam had never recovered from the disappearance of their sons nearly three years ago. Every night since Absalom, Ezekiel, Jeroboam, and their five younger brothers had sailed away, Priscilla and Miriam had sat by the windows in their rooms, staring out to sea. After their husbands died—soon after the sons were gone—Priscilla and Miriam kept to their rooms all the time. Lydia tried giving them busywork, simple tasks to keep their minds from darker thoughts: mending the seam on a shift or darning stockings. But the shift would be returned with long, wandering stitches; the white stockings darned with rough red wool. Or the tasks would not be completed at all, the needles having dropped, forgotten, from her sisters’ hands. It had fallen to Lydia to watch over the three girls.

  She glanced again at the clock, then stood and began to pace back and forth.

  Unlike the schoolroom, which was crowded with furniture and books for the girls’ studies, the music room, where Lydia spent most of her day, was sparsely furnished. A spinet stood near the windows, a harp by the hearth; the settee on which Lydia reclined and a small tea table were the only other furniture. The curtains were faded and in places threadbare, the petit point on the settee frayed, though its wood was polished to a high luster. The golden walls still glowed, untarnished, cool north light from the windows reflecting off the gold to bathe Lydia in soft light as she walked. She finally heard her daughter’s light step in the hall.

  “Claudia, dear, where have you been? I’ve been calling you this hour past, it’s time for your practice. Where are Julia and Sophia?”

  Claudia sidled into the music room. At fourteen, she was even lovelier than her mother had been at that age. Her hair had a fine living spring, her movements a supple grace. She wore a simple Empire frock of white muslin. Her hair, palest gold, nearly white, was clasped in a thick coil at the back of her head.

  “They’re still at breakfast, Mother.”

  Lydia stood and sleeked down a loose strand of hair on her daughter’s head. She watched Claudia sit at the spinet and begin to flip through the sheet music, then picked up her embroidery frame and bent to her needle. She was stitching a pillow cover for Claudia’s new room at school, a pattern of asters against a field of ivy.

  Claudia plunked out a few notes but didn’t begin her scales; instead she twirled on the stool, holding her legs straight out. Lydia looked up.

  “Darling, please …”

  Claudia ignored her and started to spin faster. Her hair sprang from its coil and streamed out in a bright circle as she spun. When the stool slowed, she put a slippered foot down and pushed off strongly to spin faster.

  Lydia stared. That movement, that particular angle of Claudia’s leg, her smile as she spun, all so like Absalom. Claudia, Lydia realized, was now nearly the same age Absalom had been when he disappeared.

  “Please stop that this instant.”

  Claudia slowed down and came to a stop facing the keys. She began to pick out a song. Lydia half listened, holding up two strands of embroidery floss to the light to choose from. She didn’t recognize the melody.

  “What is that you’re playing?”

  Claudia paused before replying. “It’s Haydn, Mother. Mr. Phipps taught me.”

  Lydia listened for a few more bars. She was not familiar with Haydn—his music had not been in vogue when she was learning to play. But the music didn’t in any case sound like any of the composers she had learned as a girl. The melody was simple and repetitive; it reminded her of the songs she sometimes heard the men singing out on the docks while they were working.

  The melody slowed and stopped. As Claudia began to spin again, a strong odor billowed into the room. The hem of her frock stood stiffly out into the air in a circle, wet and heavy. It smelled of salt and low tide.

  Lydia stared.

  “Love, where have you been?”

  “Only in the garden, Mother.”

  When the girls were younger, Lydia had often watched them splashing in the watery maze behind the house. After the shrubberies died, the men of the house had lined the maze with smooth stones from the shore, so that when the sea rose up each spring it traveled along a neat waterway. The girls were forbidden to play on the beach. Their movements were restricted to the gardens, which were surrounded by a high hedge that was tough enough to withstand the sea.

  “What have you been doing to get your skirt into such a state?”

  Claudia slowed and stopped. She turned back to the spinet and plinked at the keys; the song again, now slower.

  “Catching tadpoles, Mother.”

  “Darling. At your age? Really.”

  Claudia looked around to meet Lydia’s gaze.

  Bow-Oar’s eyes stared up at her. When had her daughter’s eyes changed from aqua to bright green? Claudia’s irises had expanded so that only a sliver of brilliant white now showed to either side, where Bow-Oar’s eyes had been green through and through. Lydia could still see them now, staring up at her from the whaleboat that first day. The note fluttering down, Will you be mine?

  She had not thought about Bow-Oar in so long; she had tried not to think of him. Now she felt again that same surge she had felt the first time she lay with him and had felt for all her years with her husband, every night until he died. It had always felt like drowning, her body first floating, then pulled deeper into wave after wave, sinking, the weight of the water on her, lungs ready to burst, wanting to open her mouth and take in a great draft until all went black.

  The blood came into her face; she put her hands up against her hot cheeks. Claudia’s eyes were still on her, and she was smiling. She turned back to the keys and began playing the same strange melody, singing:

  “This bone once in a sperm whale’s jaw did rest

  Now ’tis intended for a woman’s breast.”

  Pain shot through Lydia’s finger. She had pricked it on her needle. She sucked her finger to soothe it, tasting blood. She looked down at her embroidery. Her asters looked like starfish; the curling ivy like strands of seaweed.

  • •

  Bemus woke in the dark one cool night in April, sure he had heard something. He lay still, listening, but all was quiet. His hammock bumped against the door with a soft thud. Maybe it had been a draft that had woken him. He was accustomed to such drafts, having slept at the head of the stairs since the day Bow-Oar and his brothers brought the golden wives to Rathbone House. The dogwatch was for a time taken by a withered bosun, until he was found peering through the keyhole in an attitude that showed him less withered than Bemus had supposed. So Bemus kept all the night watches now. Though the golden wives and their daughters slept behind the door, Bemus had never felt any stirring, having been unmanned in an encounter with a sperm in his youth.

  He heard the sound again, this time more clearly: a click, then a soft bumping sound, from outside. He had checked the locks not an hour ago, as he did
each night, and all had been secure. It had been many years since any man had tried to climb up to the golden rooms; the last to try broke both legs on the rocks below when Bemus pushed him off the wall. He sighed and heaved himself up from his hammock, peering out the window and down into the dark.

  The door to the barracks was at the bottom of the stair; a second door, on the landing halfway down, led outside to the gardens at the back of the house. No one was on either stair or landing, and there was no movement at either door. He leaned out a window and looked down. There were no ropes, no spikes, no evidence at all of someone trying to climb. He waited, holding his breath to better hear those soft bumps, but heard only the dry rasp of cicadas, faintly, from the distant pines, above the shore and well inland.

  Bemus climbed back into his hammock. He drifted, half asleep. He still heard the cicadas, now louder, and with them the soft swishing of the pines. As a boy, he had been as stirred by females as any Rathbone, but now when he dreamed it was not girls he conjured, it was always the woods and shore of his boyhood. He and his brothers used to play in the pine wood that marched thick right to the edge of the dunes, in the time before the trees were cleared. They’d spent hours chasing hares through the trees; hiding among the rocks to watch foxes as they slunk in and out of the dappled light in the woods. Climbing the tall pines to watch for the whales, seeing them rise one by one, blowing. His neck began to ache; he must remember to ask Bow-Oar for a cot to replace the hammock. His hip had begun complaining in damp weather. It’s remembering the clench of my whale’s jaw, he thought. But no, he had forgotten again that Bow-Oar was gone. He closed the window, lay down heavily, and was soon deep in sleep.

  The sounds outside began again.

  • •

  October 9, 1819, Boston

  DEAR MOTHER,

  I am happy at the school. Julia and Sofia also are happy at the school. The teachers are very nice with us. We are studying French and also the mathematicks. We will stay here for the holidays because we need to do more study.