The Rathbones

by Janice Clark

  I left the panting array of sea creatures, regretfully, and walked east along the beach toward the house. A long beam of light from the walk marked my path. When I arrived at my little cove I thought for a moment that my old skiff had returned from its ocean grave, but as I drew near I saw that in its former place was an overturned boat, a long craft pointed at both ends: a whaleboat. Whatever name had once been painted on its stern was worn away to a shadow. I touched its seaweed-slimed hull and found it wet. I climbed up my boulder stair and crossed the lawn, my own breath now coming short and my heart beating hard.

  I didn’t know what I would say to Mama. I didn’t want to think about it too much and lose my nerve. I would find my words when I found her.

  The house was dark and silent as I entered. I stopped just inside the door and lit a lantern that stood on the hall table. Even here, at the bottom of the house, the glare of the widow’s walk intruded from above. The air smelled stale, brackish. I didn’t linger below but started up the wide stair.

  As I climbed, I passed the portraits that hung along the stair. There were the waxy profiles, now better known to me: first Moses Rathbone with his tangle of hair, then Bow-Oar in his top hat; Lydia’s handsome young Absalom and unlucky Erastus. As I moved up the narrowing spiral I might have been climbing up the throat of a sperm, the house was so hollow and damp. I thought of that picture in Mama’s room, tucked in her mirror, its image of the drowned world that lay at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe all of that land had once been green mountains and thick forests, and the sea had risen to reclaim it. Or it had all sunk, like Arcady.

  I had not been gone long enough to account for the changes I saw around me. Mold and mildew once restricted to the foundation had crept high into the house, here repatterning wallpaper, there splashing wood as though with mud. The plaster on the walls was damp and cracked, and in places looked encrusted with barnacles. I reached the top of the stair, turned, and headed toward the front of the house.

  When I neared Mama’s room a dark shape on the floor outside flickered in the glow of my lantern; Larboard lay curled on the floor in his faded blue linen, gently snoring. Starboard, I thought, must have finally shriveled away while I was gone. I had never seen one outside Mama’s door without the other. I passed on tiptoe and came to the hatchway of the walk, then stopped there, listening. At that hour Mama was always to be heard pacing back and forth above. Maybe she has only paused, I thought, and waited, but all remained quiet. I eased open the hatchway and leaned in to look. Light flared and guttered on the sides of the well; I heard from above the faint hiss of burning oil, but still no other sound. I closed the door and peered around the corner, into the dark behind the hatchway.

  I stood in the hall, at a loss. Where could she be? Crow, still and sullen before, now paced back and forth across my shoulders, catching his claws in my braids, pulling my hair from my scalp, until in exasperation I caught him up and threw him, squawking, into the air. He flapped for a moment above me, then flew off, back down the hall.

  The door to Mama’s room was slightly ajar. I stepped carefully over the sleeping Larboard, slid through, and closed the door gently behind me. Looking around, I saw with fresh eyes the room’s familiar details, edged in white by the moon. At one end the tall spindle bed, its hangings woven in the pattern of a fleet under full sail, the pale ships bobbing in a faint breeze from the window. In the middle of the room the long black table with the boat of bone at its center. The straight-backed chair by the fire. The basket of bones, no longer filled with ribs but scattered with a few gray teeth and splintered jawbones. Mama’s plain pine wardrobe still stood tall in the corner, its door ajar. I opened it and ran my hands over the dark indigo gowns that hung there. I put my face among them, smelling cedar and salt, cold cinders from the fire.

  I looked down at my own gown, its vivid green darkened by the surf I had struggled through. It now rode high above my ankles. I peeled the sodden fabric away from my skin and stepped out of it, then drew one of Mama’s gowns over my head. I ran a hand across the soft, warm wool, and thought of that day when I had tried one of her gowns, and she had sliced the buttons away. That gown had fit me precisely across the shoulders and through the bodice, as this one did, but where before the skirt had pooled on the floor, it now hovered an inch above. I had grown. From Mama’s dresser I picked up the mirror whose frame she had carved from the spinal disk of a sperm and, moving the lantern close, looked at myself.

  I might have been looking at Mama but for my color. Never as fair as hers, my skin had browned to bronze these weeks past. My hair was streaked by sun and salt nearly as light as hers, if you didn’t part it to look beneath. I unbraided it and brushed it out. It coiled around my neck. Crow flew in at the door, back from his brief exile, and landed on my shoulder. He cawed at his image in the mirror and began to preen his tail feathers.

  From a hook in the wardrobe I took one of Mama’s wide white collars, boiled and bleached, starched and pressed, and tied it around my neck, where it made a stiff sail smelling of lye. I laced the front of the gown as tightly as I could, but a narrow gap remained where my shift showed. If I had worn Mama’s corset, the edges of the gown would have met. The chair by the window where her corset stood sentinel each night was empty but for a single long sliver of white. I picked it up; a stay from the corset. Mama had removed one more bone.

  I moved my lantern to the dresser, where a little chest of ebony wood stood open, its interior glittering in the moonlight. The chest was full of jewels that Papa had sent in the crates those past ten years. I grasped a handful, held them up, and turned them in the light—bracelets of amber and coral; carved jade rings of every shade of green from pale as milk to nearly black; a long string of enormous pearls. She had never worn any of them, only the necklace of three bones strung on a silver chain.

  I returned the jewels and closed the chest, putting up a hand to restrain Crow from plunging in a greedy beak and carrying a gem away. I felt Gideon’s woven bracelet on my wrist, now so tight that I wouldn’t have been able to tug it off if I’d tried, and remembered how the crows had brought it to me that night. Why shouldn’t Crow have a jewel of his own? I opened the chest again and selected a little bracelet of faceted black jasper that looked handsome against his blue-black wing and offered it to him. He canted his head and regarded me warily, then snatched it in his beak and flew off. I stood looking into the chest, considering, then lifted the heavy strand of pearls high into the moonlight. The lustrous spheres graduated in size, the central pearl as large as a plover’s egg.

  I lifted the strand over my head and looped it around my neck, and looked in the mirror. The moon entered into each pearl, taking up the gleam of my teeth, the sheen of my eyes. I turned from side to side in the mirror. I looked out at the sea, at the bright path the moon made along the water to me. I lowered the pearls, clicking, into the box and shut it.

  When I turned to leave, something caught my eye on the long black table; among the broken pieces of scrimshaw was one round, whole object. Though I had never actually seen it before, I recognized it by its description, something Mama once said while she was carving. “For your papa I chose a section of sternum and modeled a compass that always points to me.” He carried it with him on his travels, she said, keeping it always in his pocket. I picked it up and stroked the smooth ivory of the case. It looked to have been fashioned from castoff pieces of other devices: the glass face, its edge beveled, was from a barometer; the dial once a watch face; the needle pulled from a clock, too large for the case. Its point rasped against the glass, quivered, and pointed west. I tilted the compass in my hand; the needle held at west, trembling, then shot around to east by northeast. I doubted that Papa had ever carried this compass anywhere. I put it back down, looking up at the boat of bone; it was nearly complete. Mama had planked it while I was gone, so that what had been only an outline was filled with the long, curved sperm ribs that had filled the basket on the hearth, fitted together and honed into a smooth white
hull.

  Crow flew in from the hall and dropped down to hover behind me, his wings whooshing loudly in the quiet room. He nipped at my hands and pulled at the strings of the collar, flying out the door and back again, urging me away.

  I walked down to the second floor, stopping now and again to look into the drawers and cupboards, many of which stood open. They had been emptied of their meager cargos of rope ends and candle stubs, the contents of others spilled on the floor. From one bin that had been left ajar, seeds were sifting in a thin stream. Crow hopped down from my shoulder to stand with an open beak under the stream, swallowing. I leaned into one of the golden rooms. The circle of light from my lantern should have set the room ablaze; instead only a weak and wavering gleam greeted me. The gold walls had tarnished. Crow, having finished gorging himself on the stream of seeds, flew on.

  I knew where Crow would lead me. We descended to the bottom floor. As we rounded the newel post at the bottom of the stair and I saw the little black door to the storeroom, tucked under the stairs, I began to feel seasick, as I never felt afloat.

  I opened the door slowly and peered in. The storeroom, long and low, was filled with rows of iron-strapped barrels full of once-fresh water, faintly damp in the dark, readied for some voyage and forgotten. The brackish smell that I had noticed on first entering the house, ever stronger as I had walked, was overwhelming here. I was instantly back in the boat, seeing again what I’d seen then. Something that Mordecai wanted to hide from me. Mama dragging something white.

  Crow flew to the barrel at the end of the nearest row. He circled its rim, scrawking softly and fixing a bright eye on mine. His claws clacked loud against the barrel’s lid.

  It was easy for me to weave, once I started, to see what Mordecai had seen.

  Mama’s white collar, its strings loosened by Crow’s tugs, drifted down and it all flooded in.

  She didn’t look dim or hazy but unnaturally bright, like dry beach stones plunged in a jar of water, their parched grays returned to vivid hues, their soft outlines suddenly sharp. There she was, walking slowly along the row, in her indigo gown with its great blooms of mildew, her tread heavy, the something white dragging behind her, between her legs. She was breathing hard, pulling someone whose legs trailed between hers. I moved closer, until I was just next to her. There, lolling on her arm, was my own face. No. It was the face of my brother.

  She stopped and stood next to the barrel at the end of the row, the one on which Crow had been walking. Crow was gone, the lid of the barrel was off, and the brackish smell was coming from inside—not a scent but a great sour wave of brine that filled the little room. My stomach lurched and I turned away. Behind me I heard Mama grunt, heard the barrel heave and slosh. I didn’t want to look. I turned around.

  Mama had stuffed my brother into the barrel, folding him to fit. I stood beside her and looked in over the edge. His hands and feet pointed up at me, his face turned up to mine. I didn’t understand why he was so white. He looked frozen. As if he’d been doused with powder, dredged in flour. I moved closer. The barrel was full of brine. He was encrusted with salt. The white crystals sparkled, his skin and hair dark beneath the glitter. His eyes were open, green glazed with white. I touched his cheek. His body swayed and bobbed, his hands signaled stiffly.

  I jumped back and threw an arm over my eyes, my skin burning as though I, too, bobbed in salt.

  I sank down on the floor, pulling my knees up to hide my face. When I opened them she was gone. My eyes stung less; the vivid colors returned to dull. The floor was dry, but the smell of brine still hung thick in the air. Crow was back, circling the rim of the barrel as before.

  Now I remembered what Mordecai had said, back on the island, his head cradled on Circe’s lap. About my brother. About Mama making him a bed in a barrel.

  I stood up and nudged Crow off the barrel. I tried to pry off the lid with my hands but it wouldn’t yield. I thought there must be a tool to lift these lids somewhere in the storeroom; I looked all around and spied an old marlinspike, rusted but stout, leaning against a barrel across the room. I hurried there and back, and began to pry the rim of the barrel lid, the wood squeaking and groaning as I worked my way around. At last the lid popped off and clattered on the floor. I moved slowly closer and looked in. The barrel was dry and empty. I leaned in with my lantern and breathed deep; a strong waft of salt. Close to the top a rough line of white ran all around, marking where a tide of brine had reached. In the white crust a hair curled, dark at its root, white where it met salt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SEVEN SUITORS REDUX

  {in which Mercy selects her own suitor}

  I WOKE HOURS LATER when the moon looked in at me. I had gone up to my little room after opening the barrel and lay down to rest for a moment. The room had seemed so small, as did my bed; when I lay down my feet hung over the end. I couldn’t remember when I had last slept, other than drifting in and out while stranded in the weeds. I felt drained, my head hollowed out. A wind pushed against the wavery panes of my window and the cold light of the moon faltered across my blanket. I sat up, rubbing my numbed feet.

  He was in the way, you see. Of her … recreations.

  I thought of the sailors who would come to Rathbone House with crates from Papa. They came hurrying up our walkway, shouldering those heavy crates, eager to make their deliveries. They left much later, often late in the evening, not bowed down but stepping jauntily, as often as not whistling a cheerful tune. Mama had looked, if not happy, less sorrowful on the mornings after those visits, a mood which I attributed at the time to the arrival of the crate, not its carrier. On such mornings she could be found in the laundry, standing over Larboard as he stirred a big kettle of boiling water and lye and bleach, head bobbing on its thin stem, tossing in her collars. Later she watched Starboard as he starched the collars, then pressed them smooth with a flat iron.

  Other memories came nudging back. The time she had sliced the buttons from my gown, scribing my skin with a long pink line, a line that I now saw might have easily split me from throat to belly. The time she had so coolly regarded her own blood welling up from her wound when she had cut herself. How she had not even looked at me when I hung spinning in the air from my father’s fist that night on the walk.

  Someone knocked, far below, a sound odd enough in itself, since we never had visitors, and doubly odd at that late hour. I leaned and pressed my face close against the window. I could just see down to the front door. Two men, strangers, stood on the porch in the moonlight. They stood awkwardly side by side, not looking at each other, waiting for someone to answer. Though the moonlight was not strong enough to let me read their expressions, I could tell from their stiff stances that they weren’t pleased to be in each other’s company. It was too dark for me to see much, only enough to know that they weren’t seamen. One wore a broad-brimmed hat and heavy boots, which he stamped on the porch against the cold. The other wore dungarees with straps whose brass clasps caught the light. There was a sound of gravel crunching and the men on the porch both turned to see a third arrive, walking along the path that curved around the back of the house from the inland road, a man wearing a suit of city clothes and a black derby hat. I knew why he was here, and the others. Mama’s corset was one bone lighter. Another year had passed since Papa had left. It was the tenth anniversary of his disappearance. The men were here for Mama, to compete for her hand. And, though she was still beautiful, they were here for the gold.

  They were all mistaken: Papa was not dead. But he was to me. There was only a man named Benadam Gale, who from time to time came to the house to sail his wife across the walk and return the same night to a greater sea.

  I woke Crow, who was still asleep on a bedpost, nudging him onto my shoulder, and slipped out into the hallway. At the top of the stairs I stopped and listened. I heard two, three pairs of footsteps, climbing from below. I continued as quietly as I could, restraining Crow, who flapped his wings and threatened to launch off and down t
he stairs, with a firm hand. Through the knocking, which continued at intervals, I heard another sound, toward the end of the hall: chair legs scraping, polite coughs. I stopped about twenty feet away, from where, peering around a column, I could clearly see the end of the hall, with the door to Mama’s room to one side and the hatchway straight ahead, well lit by a line of sconces on either wall. A row of chairs had been arranged there, backs to one wall, and on them sat five men. A sixth arrived and sat as I watched. One chair, the one farthest from Mama’s room, stood vacant.

  None of these men had come by sea, or if they had they must have come as passengers. Though Rathbone House had seen few visitors these ten years past, word had clearly gone abroad of the fortune that languished in Naiwayonk. I crouched close enough to know that these men smelled not of the sea but of forest and field and plain: a loamy farmer with hay still clinging to his limbs; a woodsman whose heavy boots were fringed with mud and leaves. Another man’s face, though well scrubbed and rosy, had a black tinge beneath that spoke of coal. Besides the merchant in the derby, there was a man in shop clerk’s garb and one wearing wide trousers of leather, turning a large felted hat in his hands, who looked as if he must hail from the western territories.

  My eye went back to the fourth chair, to the man dressed like a shop clerk. He had taken a pipe from his pocket and was packing it with tobacco. The gesture was so familiar. He raised his head to light the pipe, and I saw that it was the captain. Captain Avery, in a fine new bowler hat and a wool suit, courting Mama. My mouth fell open.