The Rathbones

by Janice Clark

  Your daughter,

  Claudia Rathbone

  Lydia folded the letter and continued walking around the hall. She had been so happy to know that Claudia and her nieces were safely established at Miss Marylbone’s. She had watched them go one morning late in August. Bemus had taken them across to New London, to catch the ferry that would take them up to Boston. She had watched them step off the dock into the trim little cutter, handed down by Bemus, so lovely in their new gowns and hats, chattering, excited. She had longed to hear of their daily lives, but Claudia hadn’t written until now. Her daughter had always been an indifferent writer, impatient with grammar, but this letter sounded odd, and something about the hand was off … but surely she was imagining things. She had written Miss Marylbone to ask after the girls’ progress but had not yet received any reply. Perhaps Bemus could run up to the school in a cutter to inquire; but he wouldn’t be able to tell what was wrong. Lydia should go. She must go. But she had not left the grounds of Rathbone House since she arrived, nearly twenty years ago.

  With her sisters shut away in their rooms, mourning their sons and husbands, with neither daughter nor nieces as companion, there was little for her to do. To fill the time, Lydia began to take long daily walks in the garden, following the path of the maze, stopping to pick shells from the gurgling stream. She passed many hours on needlework for Claudia and her nieces. She had sent all the girls off with fine wardrobes for school, from a dressmaker in Providence: muslin and calico for everyday clothes, three silk gowns each for social occasions. Now she embroidered the collars and plackets of three fur-tipped pelisses to send for the winter to come. Lydia had herself for many years worn simple, unembellished muslin or wool gowns. The rich gowns she and her sisters had worn when they first came to Rathbone House had long been packed away and had, anyway, lost their sheen and grown threadbare.

  In November she began to dream a troubling dream, always the same. Claudia swimming along the narrow waterway of the maze, her arms tight along her sides, hair sleeked back, shift plastered to her small pointed breasts, rippling through the water like a seal. Her cousins swam in line behind her, jackknifing deftly around the sharp corners of the maze.

  Lydia began to sleep in the music room on the stiff settee, hoping that the dream would not follow her, but still it came each night. She woke in the dark to cries like an infant’s, wondering if they, too, were imagined, or if she had made the sounds herself. One night she thought she heard Claudia’s laugh. In the mornings she sometimes smelled nursery burgoo, which hadn’t been cooked in the house since her daughter was a baby. Her mouth watered at the scent of warm oats and brown sugar. She woke in the night and paced around the perimeter of the hall, looking out the windows that faced the sea as she passed them, watching the moon’s silvery track along the water, now smooth, now broken and glittering. Once, as she passed the door to the lower floor, she noticed that it was open a crack. Through the crack she glimpsed a round pale shape: a little head. She hurried to the door and jerked it open, but there was only the dark staircase leading down.

  One morning in January she woke again to crying sounds. She lay still. The sounds came again, not from her but from outside the music room. In the hall she waited, listening. The cries were coming from her bedroom, strong and clear. She leaned slowly into the room. In the corner by the window, in the fine crib that had for so long stood empty, lay four infants. The Rathbone men had crept up in the night, this time not to steal away babes but to give them back.

  Lydia moved closer. Four naked infants, arms and legs waving. At first glance they looked so much like her own children had that she caught her breath.

  Twin boys lay side by side. They looked like thinner, paler versions of her own sons, but something wasn’t right. She looked more closely. In each small, narrow face one eye was a little higher than the other; each jaw misaligned, as though the hand that formed it had been unsteady, had stretched it too long then tried to push it back, or formed it from stock that was too soft to hold its shape. The infants cried feebly, heads wobbling from side to side, eyes unfocused. A third little boy, though pale and narrow as the others, had regular features and lay with his eyes closed, breathing quietly.

  The fourth infant was a girl. A rosy little girl with a tuft of pale-bright hair, round-cheeked and perfect. She could have been Claudia at the same age. She looked straight up at Lydia with bright-green eyes and reached a fat fist toward her.

  Lydia put her hand to her throat and backed away, out of the room, looking all around for Bemus. She ran to the music room and pulled the bell cord, but there was no answer. She drew a deep breath and walked over to the door that led downstairs to the men’s quarters. She had never been in the rooms on the bottom floor. Once or twice she had found the door open and had stood by it, listening. She’d never had more than a passing interest in the men below. Now she tried to think of how many there were, what cousins, brothers, uncles of Bow-Oar lived below. Lydia knew that the last of the women had left five years ago when Moses died; she had asked Bemus. She wouldn’t have known that, besides four grizzled oldsters who survived, eight younger Rathbones remained downstairs: Humility’s four boys, fourteen, fifteen-year-old twins, and eighteen; Trial’s eldest, twenty and twenty-one; and Desire’s twins, twenty-five. She stood on the landing, looking down into the darkness. Cool, dank air rolled up. A spider crab ran across the toe of her slipper and scrabbled down the stairs.

  “Bemus?”

  Lydia crept down two more steps. There was a crack of light at the foot of the stair. Through the door came the sounds of men’s voices, the clank of cutlery. The door wafted open a few more inches. Through the crack she caught sight of a slice of long table lit by a hanging lantern that cast a warm light. She saw dark heads along either side, lowered over their plates. Platters of food steamed on the table. She smelled pork fat and oily fish, and the hot sweet odor of burgoo. On the back of one chair a crow perched. A man across the table tossed a gobbet of meat high and the crow caught it neatly, gulped, and rasped its beak against the chair. Lydia crept farther down the stair. A bright shape flitted across the dark. A slender white arm encircled a man’s neck. She heard Claudia’s high, bright laugh. Saw Claudia pulling the pins from her hair and shaking it out in a long stream of white, wrapping it around the man’s neck and hers. Claudia’s sea-green eyes looked up at Lydia.

  If Bemus had woken again, that night months ago, and looked up rather than down when he leaned out the window, he might have seen something after all. He didn’t consider that, besides that thin stuff that trickled through the golden wives, Rathbone blood coursed in the golden daughters’ veins. He didn’t dream that Claudia, Julia, and Sophia, at fourteen years, would slip out of their rooms and unlock the windows. That they would hike up their skirts, climb out, and clamber down the wall as nimbly as any Rathbone male on a mast. That they would willingly, eagerly, be passed from bunk to bunk, from boy to boy, from man to man. Neither Bemus nor the girls’ mothers knew that the golden daughters so descended every night, returning early each morning before the sun rose, climbing back into their golden beds, brimming with Rathbone seed.

  Lydia ran up the stairs, closed the door, and stood with her back to it. Someone knocked; she jumped and put her hand to her throat.

  “Ma’am? Just come for you,” came Bemus’s voice. A letter slid under the door.

  December 14, 1819

  DEAR MRS. RATHBONE,

  We are deeply grateful for the generosity of the Rathbone family. We do not understand, however, why you have not responded to our repeated inquiries. We regret to inform you that, unless we hear from you by the end of the month, we shall be forced to release the three places we have been holding, as there are so many young ladies on our waiting list.

  Kind regards,

  Miss Edith Marylbone

  From her bedroom the cries began again.

  Lydia walked slowly back to the crib. The little boys were asleep; the girl stared up at her. The infants had k
icked off the blankets in which they had been wrapped. The window was open and the room was now cold. Lydia started to pull the blankets up over them, then stopped. She left the blanket where it fell, halfway up their legs, and went out of the room.

  Bemus found Lydia on the beach the next morning. A golden gown eddied in the surf around her, its faded cloth restored to brightness by the sea.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ERASTUS AND VERITY

  {in which we meet Mama and her brother}

  1837

  WAIT FOR ME!”

  Verity was two rooms ahead of Erastus, though they had started out together only moments before. She looked back at him, laughing, and ran through three more rooms before darting aside and disappearing. Erastus, looking down as he ran, didn’t at first see where she had gone. When he looked up, the hall was empty. He slowed down and limped along the chain of rooms until he found her, lying facedown on a bed in a corner. She was propped on her elbows, swinging her legs up and down, scarcely breathing hard, watching him. He reached the bed, dropped down next to her, panting, and closed his eyes. Verity turned on her side, head on her outstretched arm, scowling.

  “That wasn’t even a hundred feet. You’re like an old sea cow.” Her scowl softened as Erastus lay there, still wheezing. He struggled to sit up, grimacing, reaching for his knees.

  “Lie back.”

  Verity pressed his knees gingerly, watching his expression, then began to massage his joints, first knees and ankles, then shoulders. When he was breathing evenly, she got up and went to the door, looking back along the chain of rooms. Morning sun, thin and sharp, slanted through the long row of windows and lit her hair to a white blaze. She wore one of Lydia’s old gowns, bronze silk shot through with gold thread, the worn elbows patched with darker silk from some other old gown.

  She stood, listening. There was no sign of Conch or Crab; they would soon realize where their brother and sister were and come looking for them. Surf boomed on the rocks below. Wind gusted seawater up and sprayed it through the windows and into the corridor. Verity looked the other way, toward the front of the house. A crow flew past the windows toward the sea, its shadow flickering along the corridor. Near the end of the hall, someone crossed from room to room: Steersman, a leeward twist to his torso, wearing an old middy and nothing below. He held up a lantern as he walked, calling out Six bells in a cracked voice, Six bells. No one slept in any of the beds. Out the window opposite, Verity saw old Fourth-Oar in the rigging of the Misistuck, inching along the yard toward the mainmast, gray pigtail wafting out behind him in the wind. She winced; Boatheader had fallen from the top yard a few months before. Now only Steersman, Fourth-Oar, and Bemus remained of the old Rathbones. Rathbone House was otherwise empty; Miriam and Priscilla had died a few years ago, one after the other. Never having recovered from their husbands’ deaths, they had barely noticed Lydia’s passing and finally faded away altogether. Where her mother was—who her mother was—Verity didn’t know, nor Erastus. Bemus would never say.

  Behind her, Verity heard Bemus’s shuffling step. He moved past her into the room, a stack of clean sheets on one arm. He began to strip the sheets from the bed across from Erastus.

  Verity went to her brother’s bed and lay next to him. She reached behind her head, pulled her hair up, and spread it over the pillow and all around her face, thick and pale. She began to fan herself with the bed curtain. Its heavy wool was patterned with fish, swimming in rhythmic streams across the cloth.

  “Watch. If I move it just so, I can make the marlin swallow the cod.”

  Erastus opened his eyes and smiled absently. He sat up and watched Bemus finish making one bed, then move to the next and begin to strip the sheets.

  “Bemus.”

  Bemus didn’t look up from his work.

  “Bemus.”

  “You know he can’t hear you, leave him alone.”

  “Oh, Mother …” Erastus called to Bemus.

  Verity sat up straight and stared hard at Erastus, frowning.

  “Well, he’s the closest we’ve got, isn’t he?” Erastus smiled slightly.

  He lay down again and pulled a narrow book with soft green covers from his waistcoat pocket. He flipped through, then ran a finger along one page.

  “Bemus, would you like to know what your name means in Greek? Here it is. ‘Bemus: foundation.’ A worthy name. Solid. Strong.”

  Verity rolled over and looked at him.

  “That’s not really his name, you know.”

  “What do you mean that’s not his name?”

  “It just sounds like that. His name is Beam Ends.”

  “Beam Ends?”

  “He told me, once, years ago. It’s because of the way he walks.”

  Erastus looked at her blankly.

  “Beam ends. When a ship lists, she tilts on her side. On her beam ends. His whale took part of his thigh, when he was fifteen. He said he used to walk straight enough before …” She looked at Erastus and her voice faltered.

  He closed his eyes and smiled.

  “Perhaps that should have been my name, too.”

  Verity stared down at her brother. Making herself smile, she grasped an end of the bed curtain and drew it across Erastus’s face. He brushed it away and she drew it across again.

  “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What do I always ask you to tell me? About Moses.”

  “Ask him to tell you.” He gestured at Bemus, who had just finished making the second bed. Bemus straightened up slowly, hand to his back. First looking vaguely around the room, he bent over and began to strip the bed again.

  “He won’t remember anymore. Please.”

  Erastus sniffed, frowning. “Aren’t you ever tired of those old stories?”

  “Just one more time.”

  He sighed and swung his legs carefully over the side of the bed, then sat looking out at the sea. His hair, as pale and long as Verity’s, was tied neatly back. He wore a thin white shirt and old buff breeches cinched in with a belt.

  “All right, if you must hear it.”

  Verity lay back on the bed, her hands behind her head. She could just see the edge of the sea out the windows, rough with whitecaps, deepest blue under a clear gray sky. She closed her eyes as Erastus began.

  “It was always Moses who spotted the whale, not the lookout in the tops but Moses, down on deck. All the men could see far enough, and most of them could sense the whales, knew when they were close, but none could see in the way that Moses could. He saw them swimming beneath the surface. He watched them rise slowly from the deep. He knew just where each whale would breech, how high his spout would blow. He knew how many sperm were in each pod, and which was heaviest with oil.

  “When they gave chase, the harpooners in other boats stood with a leg braced against the thigh board, but Moses jumped up on the bow, right up on the rim, balancing like it was dry land. His spear shot out so fast it set the line afire; the crew kept a bucket ready to douse the flame.”

  Erastus raised his arm and mimicked the thrust of a harpoon. Bemus caught the movement and turned from his sheets. His face brightened and he made his own weak thrust toward the sea.

  “He never missed his mark, no matter how far he threw. Just as Moses knew the whales, the whales knew Moses. When a sperm, fleeing from the boats, looked back and saw Moses standing up there on the bow, harpoon poised, it would stop in the water and wait for him, knowing it could never escape.”

  “How many spears did he need to kill the whale?”

  “One. Only one.”

  Verity was silent, her eyes bright.

  A door opened and closed at the far end of the corridor, loud in the echoing space.

  Verity hurried to the doorway and peeked around the corner. Two tall pale youths were walking toward her from the end of the hall. They wore faded sailors’ slops that rode high up their legs and arms. Their jaws preceded them, and their heads wobbled on thin stems as they walked. One held a pa
ir of Erastus’s boots and a polishing cloth. He saw Verity and began to hurry, holding the boots out toward her, his tongue working in his jaw but making no sound.

  Verity seized Erastus’s hand, pulled him up and out into the corridor, down to the end of the hall, and into Moses’s room. She latched the door behind them and stood with her back to it, Erastus panting beside her.

  There was a flurry of knocks on the door, then the footsteps moved off.

  Verity scrambled up the side of the bed and reached down to help Erastus up. They lay side by side on the high blue bed. The blankets were damp and smelled of mildew. She unlatched the porthole window and opened it, hinges creaking. There had been no window in the little pine room until a few years ago, when Verity asked Bemus to put it in, so that she could watch the sea from there. A soft breeze moved across the bed. On the pine walls, bleached and dull, the pegs were empty. In the rack above the head of the bed a harpoon rested.

  “You’d think they’d get tired of following us everywhere,” she said.

  “They’re just trying to help me pack.”

  Verity looked up at the ceiling. Watery reflections rippled across the pine, brightening and fading as the wind pushed clouds across the sun.

  Erastus reached to touch her hair.

  “Your hair is wet. Have you been swimming already this morning?”

  She moved away and pulled her hair around from her back to her breast. Her back was wet where her hair had been, a dark patch on the bronze silk.

  “Yes, but I want to go again. Come swim with me.”

  “How amusing you are today, Verity.”

  “I’m sorry. Truly I am,” she said. She leaned over and began to massage his legs again; he winced and turned away. She took up his hand and held it to her cheek.

  “The packet leaves at noon from New London. Fourth will be getting ready to go, and I can’t be late.”