“I would be forever in his debt,” she sighed, “if you could convince him to sail with you to Africa.”
“I would be, too,” he said, adding with a grin, “though I suspect you’d be the more persuasive in that regard. He was quite taken by you during his visit here. But the chances are slim, regardless. I’m planning to be in Falmouth only a day or two, and for all I know, he’s away in some Far Eastern port beguiling some love-struck Malay girl with those outrageous good looks of his.”
Katherine walked over to the kitchen windows and flung them wide to let in every gasp of the sultry air. When she came back, she stood behind Richard and began gently massaging his shoulders.
“Well,” she said, “whether you see Agee or not, I hope you enjoy your cruise to Falmouth. And you needn’t worry about Lizzy and me whilst you’re gone. We have our own plans.”
He settled back gratefully into her soothing touch. “What sort of plans?”
Behind his back, she smiled impishly at her friend seated across the table. “Oh . . . nothing that a big, brawny sailor like you would find the least bit interesting.”
He reached across his chest and took her hand in his, all the while staring across the table at his cousin.
“What, Lizzy?”
Lizzy shrugged.
“What, Lizzy?” he repeated.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about, Richard,” Lizzy said, grinning. “Honestly, I don’t,” she giggled when his eyes narrowed in disbelief.
IT WAS AS BRILLIANT A September day as she could recall, a welcome reprieve from a vicious late summer storm that had lashed the area two days before. The cerulean sky was a perfect match for the unruffled waters of Hingham Bay lapping the shore all around them and a rich complement to the late-summer greens of the trees lining the peninsula’s stony shoreline. Ahead, brown stubbles of freshly cut hay lay atop fields rolling like swells on an open sea. World’s End, as the peninsula was called, was a part of Hingham set aside by the town’s Puritan forefathers as common property for freemen to use for planting or cutting timber, or as pasture for their livestock, much like the Common in Boston. Citizens of Hingham had once clustered their homes together for mutual safety and had been assigned planting lots a considerable distance away from their house lots in town. By the mid-1700s such common land was no longer necessary. Indian attacks had ceased to be a threat, and there was ample farmland south of town on private property. Nonetheless, the electorate of Hingham enacted legislation to maintain the integrity of World’s End for the pleasure of future generations.
Katherine nudged her bay hunter over to the right as she returned the wave of a broad-shouldered, fair-haired man tedding hay with a three-pronged pitchfork. “There’s your friend John Cushing,” she teased when she was close in beside the roan under Lizzy’s command. She realized the word “friend” was a stretch, since Lizzy had first met the young man only a week before and had said nary a word to him since except in greeting. “A handsome one, isn’t he?”
Lizzy, too, returned John’s wave, blushing when she realized it was meant for her, not Katherine. His eyes were hard upon her.
“Joy o’ the morning to ye, Miss Cutler,” he called out. “A fine day to be out riding.”
“It is indeed, Mr. Cushing,” she called to him. “What a shame to find you working so hard on such a day.”
“I’d gladly work a week’s worth,” he shouted back, “any morning I’d have the pleasure of watching you and Mrs. Cutler ride by.”
As they continued northward at a slow walk, Lizzy could not resist turning in her saddle to look back. He was still watching her. “Must be married, a man like that,” she sighed, facing forward again.
“Well, he’s not,” Katherine said. “He was engaged to a local girl named Mary Thaxter. Mary came down with a terrible sickness not two weeks before their wedding date. John was at her bedside when she died.”
“How ghastly. When did that happen?”
“Almost three years ago.”
“Three years? And he’s not had an interest . . . since?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
They rode down the slight incline of Pine Hill toward the sharper incline of Planter’s Hill, the highest point on World’s End. As they crossed a small field, Katherine asked: “What about you, Lizzy? Have you had an interest . . . since?”
Lizzy fixed her with a defiant stare. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that,” she said, adding with what Katherine interpreted as a rebuke, “I’m just surprised it took you so long.”
“I don’t mean to meddle, Lizzy,” Katherine said in apology. “But I can no longer sit by and say nothing. I care too much about you, and I want to help.” They were approaching the crest of Planter’s Hill. “Here, let’s slide off, shall we? We can walk to the top. Rest the horses a bit.”
Lizzy did not comment that the horses hardly needed a rest since they had walked most of the two miles from their starting point at the stables near Indian Hollow. She slid down from her saddle and straightened the knee-length cotton culottes she had borrowed from Katherine. Holding the reins in her right hand, she fell into step beside Katherine, her mount trailing behind.
“I’m sorry,” Lizzy said when she realized that Katherine was waiting for her to speak first. “I didn’t mean to take on like that.” She contemplated the ground as they walked along. When at last she spoke, her voice conveyed more gratitude than bitterness. “You have helped, Katherine. More than you realize. You and Richard and your family have been so very kind to me this entire summer. I have not felt such . . . peace . . . since . . . well, since the day I learned that Jamie had died.”
“That was almost eight years ago, Liz. And look at you. You’re still a beautiful young woman. You would make any man proud and happy; any child a wonderful mother. It’s what Jamie would want for you. I should know. He was my brother.”
“I know he would, Katherine. It’s not Jamie. It’s me. I feel . . . I feel that no man could ever measure up to him.”
Katherine touched Lizzy’s arm. “Your love for my brother has always been an inspiration to me,” she said. “But understand, Lizzy: no man needs to measure up to him. Jamie was who he was, and you loved him for that. You will always love him for that, regardless of who else may enter your life.”
Lizzy rounded on her. “That’s all well and good for you to say, Katherine. But ask yourself this: Were something to happen to Richard, would you remarry?”
Katherine had not expected the question, though she had considered the answer often enough. “No. I don’t think I could. Richard would always be in my heart, living there. But you can’t compare my situation with yours, Liz. I’ve been married to Richard for a long time. We’ve shared happiness I never thought existed. And he has given me two fine sons and a wonderful family. I would be content to live with the memories. But you don’t have those memories yet. God willing, you will have them some day.”
Lizzy shook her head in frustration. “What you don’t seem to understand,” she said, “is how unique your marriage is. I’ve never seen the like! I’ve watched Richard watching you, many times this summer, especially when you’re not aware that he is. I’ve seen the longing in his eyes. The longing, Katherine! Even after all those years, he’s mad for you. He’s a glutton for you. What I would give for that! The servants, the finery, the titles, the fancy parties: I’d give them all up, gladly, if only a worthy man would look at me that way!”
“A worthy man just did,” Katherine pointed southward, whence they had come. “And there are many others like John Cushing out there, if only you would give them a chance and not push them away.”
Lizzy’s startled expression collapsed into a long, forlorn sigh. “What good does it do me?” she said, tears welling up in her blue eyes. “Next week I must leave Hingham, a place I have come to love, and sail home to dreary old Fareham.”
At the crest of Planter’s Hill now, they looked down on the white clapboard houses of the village nestl
ed off to their left at the southern reaches of the harbor; ahead, the peninsula of Nantasket stretched out its long, bony arm along the limits of Hingham Bay. Farther northward, beyond Nantasket Beach, the white-crested waters of the Atlantic glistened in the morning sunlight as Katherine turned to Lizzy with a smile as warm and inviting as the day itself.
“That, my dearest friend, is what we have come here today to discuss.”
RICHARD HAD LONG FAVORED Falmouth as a sailing destination. The easternmost town of any consequence in the state of Massachusetts, it was situated on a stubby peninsula jutting out into the island-studded waters of Casco Bay. Its natural harbor afforded good anchorage, and the thick forests growing close to its rocky coastline emitted a heady scent of pine that blended appealingly with the pungent aromas of sea air, even at low tide. It was, Richard had often mused, a rugged land of simple tastes and pleasures where a man could go to bed at night looking forward to waking up the next morning and getting on with his life. The area had a special significance to him because it was the last place on earth his brother Will had walked. In October of 1775, a week before he was flogged to death aboard a king’s ship off Marblehead, Will had trudged angrily amid the ruins of a town recently reduced to matchwood by the Royal Navy as punishment for holding a British sea officer hostage earlier in the year.
Richard had worked his crew as hard as he dared during the threeday voyage. Every jack aboard was hand-picked from a pool of volunteers for this precursor to the cruise to North Africa, and Richard had tested them and the schooner at their limits. From Hingham, Falcon had sailed deliberately into the teeth of a howling nor’easter; throughout the night her crew had battled shrieking winds, ripping thunder, and wild flashes of lightning as they struggled up ratlines a-weather to set, douse, or double-reef the two topsails. Forward, sailors grabbed on to bowsprit and forestays to set one storm jib, douse it, then set another of different dimensions as the schooner bucked, plunged, and shivered. Amidships, her captain, rain streaming off his oilskins, made mental notes of which jib worked best with the shortened canvas aloft to maximize stability in the frothing seas.
Throughout that first night and well into the second day, Richard was everywhere about the schooner. This was his vessel, his command, and he would come to know every nook and cranny of her just as a man, over time, comes to know a lover. Whether spread-legged for balance at the helm, entwined in the standing rigging shouting encouragement or direction to topmen battling canvas on the yardarms, or deep in the hold searching for excessive seepage between the difficult-to-caulk garboard strakes, he remained visible, always, to his men, sharing their hardships with an almost reckless abandon. Nor was it all for show. These men might obey Richard as their employer, but they would not respect him as their captain unless and until he convinced them that he was a ship’s master in whom they could entrust their lives and fortunes. “First among equals” was how he had described the position of a Yankee sea captain to John Paul Jones, and he was determined to be perceived as exactly that aboard Falcon. That meant doing nothing rash or foolish. Throughout the second night, when the storm was at its peak, both gaff sails—normally set beneath the topmast yards—remained tightly furled. Even a reefed spread of canvas challenging so fierce a gale might send Falcon over onto her beam ends did the helmsman lose control of the tiller.
At daybreak on the third day, with the shriek of the wind easing to a mournful moan, off came the gaskets on the great fore-and-aft sails, and up the masts they went on their large wooden rings. Up, too, sprouted the schooner’s three regular foresails at the bow. Now on a broad reach with the wind on her quarter, Falcon had seven sails billowing, from her flying jib bent on near the end of the forty-foot jib boom, to the two topsails aloft, to the leech of the massive trapezoid sail on the mainmast, its boom extending a good ten feet beyond the stern. By the time Falcon was resting peacefully at anchor off Falmouth, Richard had determined that this was her fastest point of sail, faster even than a beam reach. Her crew logged her speed at more than fifteen knots at one point, a highly satisfactory result, especially when one factored in the weight of the reinforced planking on her deck and along her bulwarks and gunwales. Richard was more than satisfied. Benjamin Hallowell’s shipyard in Boston had done its job once again. It had produced a vessel not only of beauty, but of fluid grace and function that any sailor would be proud to call home.
With the sun now low on the horizon, Richard allowed his crew some much-needed time for recuperation. They would sail with the ebb tide the next afternoon. The cruise home, he had already decided, would be less demanding, whatever the conditions at sea. He had pushed the men hard on their outward voyage, and the storm had provided him with what he needed to know. The old adage—if your vessel has a flaw, a storm at sea will find it—had proven its reliability. Falcon needed a few modifications—he wanted to more evenly distribute her ballast, and he’d see her helm tightened and another coat of tar on the shrouds—but these were minor adjustments compared with the flaws a shakedown cruise often brought to light. By year’s end, he speculated, she’d be ready to put to sea.
A knock on the door of the after cabin brought him back to the present. “Enter,” Richard called out.
The door opened to admit a stocky, black-haired sailor. Like the other twenty-four members of Falcon’s crew, he had served his young country in the Revolutionary War. After his father died and left the family farm to his oldest brother, Abel Whiton had returned to the sea to make a living. Aboard Falcon he served triple duty as foremast topman, ship’s cook, and coxswain of the captain’s gig.
“Will ye be having supper aboard, Captain?” he asked.
“Yes, Whiton,” Richard replied, stifling a yawn. The previous day and night had strained his resources to the limit. “I’ll go ashore in the morning. Please wake me at six bells and have the gig called out.”
“Aye, Captain. And as ye’ll be eating aboard, I’ll be serving up a flounder Tom Gardner brought in not an hour ago. She’s a plump fish, sir. As plump a flounder as ever I’ve seen. He and the men want ye to have it.”
“Please thank Gardner for me,” Richard said, with feeling. It was no big matter, a fish. The sea was full of fish. Yet Richard was keenly aware of how unusual it was for common sailors to offer any sort of gift to their captain, especially a captain who had just put them through hell.
“I’ll do that, Captain. And sir? It’ll take me an hour to prepare your supper, so in the meantime, might ye snatch some shut-eye? If I may, sir, you’ve hardly slept a wink since we left Boston. The men are concerned.”
“Thank you, Whiton,” Richard said, smiling despite himself. A part of his mind wondered how John Paul Jones would have reacted to such a suggestion by a member of his crew. British sea captains held a somewhat different perspective on shipboard protocol than their American counterparts. “I think I’ll do that.”
“Very good, sir.”
As Whiton made his way forward to the galley he was surprised to see a stranger approaching, someone who had apparently made his own way below.
“May I help ye?” Whiton said, his senses alert. He did not recognize the tall, sinewy man, although he recognized a fellow sailor by the deep, leathery tan. The stranger’s shock of reddish-blond hair was streaked white in places and was tied back at his nape with a simple piece of cod-line. He was dressed in baggy white trousers and a blue cotton shirt that was rolled up to his elbows and open at the neck. When he brought a finger up to his clean-shaven chin, the muscles in his forearm rippled.
“It’s all right,” he assured Whiton in a deep voice. “I’m an old friend of your captain’s. I received permission t’ go below from that gray-haired fellow up there on anchor watch.”
“Mr. Tremaine? Well, if Mr. Tremaine gave you his permission . . . Mr. Cutler is aft, in his cabin. I should warn ye, sir, he’s done in. He may already be asleep.”
“I’ll take care not t’ scare him,” the visitor promised.
He walked softly aft a
nd listened at the door of the cabin a few moments before cracking it open and peering inside. Richard was seated at his desk, but he had turned his chair around and was facing aft with his feet up on the narrow, crimson-cushioned settee running athwartship afore the stern window. That window was open, and Richard appeared to be looking out to southwestward, toward the town of Cape Elizabeth, where a massive structure clearly defined as the base of a lighthouse stood on a far-off promontory known locally as “the Neck.”
The visitor cleared his throat. No response. He cleared it again, this time with more authority. Still no response.
He walked over to the settee and sat down opposite Richard, who, as Whiton had foretold, was fast asleep. For several moments the man sat quietly, gazing across at his friend as the manuscript pages of their history together unfolded before him in oft-read passages. They had last seen each other when Agreen Crabtree had unexpectedly dropped anchor off Hingham two years ago. Two years; yet here, today, that span of time seemed little more than the blink of an eye. So profound were his feelings that he was for a moment unable to speak. He managed to summon enough of himself to shout out, with all the outrage of a captain on his quarterdeck, “Good God! And t’ think I once thought t’ join up with this sorry outfit, where the captain sleeps all day while his crew fishes!” The result was gratifying.
Richard’s eyes flew open. He blinked once, twice, as if in the confusion of collecting his wits he was unable to comprehend either the rude manner in which he had been awakened or the apparition sitting before him with a silly grin on his face. Then his eyes focused and both men were on their feet, each first gripping the arms of the other, then throwing that aside and embracing with hard slaps on the back.
“Damnation, Agee, are you ever a sight for sore eyes!” Richard held his friend at arm’s length and inspected him. “How long have you been in Falmouth?”
“We call it Portland now, Richard,” Agreen replied with an enormous grin. “A couple o’ days, t’ answer your question. I was aboard my brigantine, workin’ away, bein’ the good servant that I am, when I noticed this fancy topmast schooner prancin’ about the harbor. As I’m watching her I’m thinkin’ her crew hasn’t a clue how t’ handle her proper; she’s bound to smash up there on the lee shore. So who else could be her captain if not my long-lost friend, Richard Cutler? And who else in his right mind would have the gall t’ paint such a beautiful hull yellow? So I rowed over.”
For Love of Country Page 7