Deluded Your Sailors (13 page)

—Say it again.

—I believe you.

He giggled. —Then I didn't make it up. Do you remember, Nichole? Here. Hold the knife. Hold my hand; I'm so cold. Hold it. Warm me. Are you afraid of heights?

—No. I'm afraid of falling.

This made Winslow laugh so hard he nearly collapsed, unable to breathe. Eventually he settled, and a strange strength infused his grip. —Leap the chasms? Not sure I can still fly. Not sure I still remember.

Squeezing Winslow's hand back, Nichole could think of only one thing to say. —Leap.

Wings fluttered beneath his thin skin as Winslow shifted in the chair.—We'd better start with the letters old Captain Wright kept. Poor Captain Wright, slow madness there. You look like him, you know. What else have we got? Dissenters' New World offspring, and then that ledger Lewis found – yes, I know all about John Wesley Morgan Cannard, the failed divinity student. I watched his hair streak white as though comets cut paths there. Time's light tricks me. And of course he'd no inkling where once I stood.

ACTS OF FEVER

I ain't gotta tear
I ain't gotta light
I ain't gotta time or a place
I wish for tomorrow
But its truths are all bound
To the never-ending escape

Blair Harvey, ‘Bury My Body in the Pines,'
GutterBeGutted
, 2006.

9) WINDROSE
M
ARCH
14, 1745 (
OLD STYLE
), S
ALEM
, M
ASSACHUSETTS
.

—Cocksure ingenuity sails more cargoes than timidity and fear, and capital, sir, gushes out my hands like hard-drove rainwater. Rarely do I dry out. A man earns my respect. I give it not freely. Yet we must be civil with one another, for civility is good business.

Old words. Comfortable as a favourite waistcoat – and this morning mumbled at the hearth as Salem merchant Newman Head, belly and shoulders rounded, cursed the fog and stoked the fire. Then he adjusted his wig, the scalp hair beneath gone patchy and gull-grey. Smoke wafted past the grate and obscured the stones and the one small poppet leaning there before dissipating over the white tiles of the floor. Wood, once, that floor, young Newman kneeling to holystone it smooth for his infants' hands and feet. Now, as the flames rose, brilliant white tiles glowed into Newman's dim eyes. Trinkets of other lands – his clay teapots and nesting boxes, paintings, rugs, cups, India ink that smelled of camphor and patchouli, a tiny compass set within gold-inlaid filigree – declared him successful. Light streamed through many large windows and helped fade the portrait of his dead wife. The poppet sat posed, expectant. Bones creaking, Head reached for the little doll, remembering the origin. He'd sewn it, decades ago, cutting the form out of a flour sack, then stuffing the sack with barley and tea. He'd given it to his daughter, Rachel. She, in turn, had given it to her daughter.

Janet's poppet now.

Tell me not of patience under God, Peabody. I call the Angel of
Death a thief!

The old serving-woman quietly placed breakfast on the large table, and Head pretended not to hear her. Once she left the room, he walked over to his plate, chose some meat from it, and decided to pick up his coffee. He would sit in the armchair by the fire, rather than alone and small at his table. A square of grey linen distracted him. Hardly a napkin – not like the beautiful ones Rachel had embroidered with windroses – and hardly fit to place on the brilliant white table cloth. No: touch told him paper, a sealed letter, damp and stained. Addressed to... no matter. It had fallen to his table and therefore must be meant for his eyes.

Later, his daughter gently shook his shoulder. —Did you not sleep last night, Father?

Head watched Rachel stoke the fire and wondered how long he'd been dozing. Somehow he'd voyaged from table to armchair, still holding the letter. Ink blurred between his fingers.

He'd slept badly for much of his life. Insomnia helped him keep watch at sea, and as a young father. He'd check on his infants throughout the nights, passing them to his wife for suckling. Persons, he'd tell himself, little persons in the dark, their futures a mystery, the night sky contained in one little pupil. He once argued with his friend Reverend Thomas Peabody, burying a third, that infants were proof of the damp and sometimes filthy grandeur of grace. Peabody hardly knew what to say to that, so he'd smiled. Head always loosened his children's swaddling clothes; the sight of their tiny bodies bound straight deeply unsettled him. Quarrels with his wife whenever he untied infant Rachel from her standing stool and permitted her to crawl as she pleased:
Our daughter on all fours
as a beast? Newman Head, what folly is this?
Rachel had permitted her Janet to crawl, too. Rachel had swaddled her infants tightly, as her mother-in-law insisted. Of Rachel's three babies so far, only Janet had survived longer than a few weeks – very like her mother.

Strands of Rachel's hair escaped the pins.

Not white, surely, not yet.

—Father?

Head straightened his back and passed his daughter the letter. —Pick the stitching for me, gosling.

Shifting some more, Head thought of his former business partner, and onetime friend, Jericho Gosse. His memory got stuck: an afternoon in 1733 when Gosse explained Head's reluctance to discuss a sloop called
Kittiwayke
with the Royal Navy's Captain Cleasby.
See, I got no reason to lie and deceive you gentlemen. He
does.

Rachel opened the envelope.—Tis from someone in Newfoundland, one John Cannard. ‘Lately of Cannard and Son Bristol Atlantic Shipping, now residing after shipwrack in 1719 in Port au Mal, Newfoundland.'

—I care not for artificial mystery, gosling.

—
‘Sir: in 1734,
Kittiwayke
wracked herself off Port au Mal' –

—
Kittiwayke
's come home at last. Give over that letter. At once.

—Father, do not grasp so. Smoke – what burns?

Scent guiding him, Head shoved his daughter aside. A spark had jumped the grate and scorched the dry poppet's face, and a tiny flame took hold. Head quickly mashed the doll against his chest, burning a hole in his waistcoat. Then he sat back down, holding the poppet out at arm's length to inspect for damage.

—Janet's dolly. Once yours, gosling. Blackmarkt now. A revenant.

Rachel wanted to take the poppet and hide it permanently, even destroy it –
ha, bury it?
– but felt she would be cruel to do so. She placed it on the shelf near the compass. —Tis only a doll.

No, Peabody, I shall not guard my words! Tell me not of patience
under God, sir. I call the Angel of Death a thief! I should know, I
should know.

Rachel forced her eyes back to the letter.—‘Owner of
Kittiwayke
, Salem, Massachusetts,
in re
the late Captain Finn
et
cetera
' – who brought this to you?

—Gosling, please, just read it.

—
‘From John Morgan Cannard, lately of Cannard and Son Bristol Atlantic Shipping, now residing after shipwrack in 1719 in Port au Mal, Newfoundland. November 2, 1744. Sir: in 1734, a sloop out of Salem, called
Kittiwayke
, wracked herself upon the pointed rocks off Port au Mal, precisely where my own vessel ran foul, these rocks named by the inhabitants The Fire Rocks, or sunkers.
Kittiwayke
was trying to elude
Dauntless
, a Royal Navy frigate. Pray, sir, what know you of Captain Finn, variously called by the Christian names Kit or Matt, and the sloop
Kittiwayke
?

I can tell you how Captain Finn fared on board
Dauntless
not long after the wrack. At the time, I received stern enquiries from Captain Cleasby of
Dauntless
regarding the history and proclivities of Captain Finn, enquiries which, naturally enough, Cleasby found me unable to satisfy. These events being old and distant, I no longer dread the return of Cleasby,
Dauntless
or any other Naval spectre. Therefore, I beg you: share with me any knowledge of Captain Finn you may possess, for I sleep but little, and my long memory, so incomplete, troubles me. Understand that my own enquiries come prodded by neither malice nor justice but simple curiosity. Grateful and indebted for whatever lines you may throw my way, I remain, your humble servant, John Cannard.' Father, you've gone the colour of old linen.

—This will ruin me.

—All involved lie bony dead. Father, you must not get excited.

—Think on it, and use that ingenuity God saw fit to grace you with. That braying ass Cleasby put in here at Salem, he and that redheaded Lieutenant Kelly – aye, no names slip my knots. No good may come of this.

—Cannard insists he seeks no kind of justice –

Newman Head spat the word. —Justice? For Matt Finn? See now, tis plain writ: Matt Finn died on board
Dauntless
. Such knowledge galls worse than none at all. Better Finn drowned. Done in, I know it, by Cleasby's hand, or perhaps his boot –

—Oh, settle yourself. Captain Cleasby and Lieutenant Kelly were men of dim moral sight but hardly murderers. I am certain –

—Certain?

—
Certain
, Father, that Cleasby and Kelly treated Finn with every due courtesy. Finn was likely injured, cut or broken in the wrack, and that injury led to his death. You must answer this Mr Cannard. Dictate to me. For with your eyes –

—Sauce me not, woman.

—No sauce but cold meat. Whom may you trust, Father, with such correspondence? Your secretary? Should I run down to the dock and fetch a ropewalker? Surely he'd say naught of molasses and the past. I shall use the India ink.

—Indeed, you shall not. Iron-gall is good enough for this.

The first quill broke. Rachel took up another.

March 14
^th
, 1745. From Newman Head, Merchant, Salem, Massachusetts. To John Cannard, lately of Bristol, residing now in Port au Mal, Newfoundland.

Sir: I knew both Captain Finn and Captain Cleasby. Captain Matthew Finn, for so we in Salem knew him, sometimes also Kit Finn, being a Christopher as well as a Matthew, stands in my memory as a fine and capable captain who offended none, at least, none who matter. I welcomed him as a guest at my table, and I am most irritated to read in your blunt missive of Finn's death. You might have done me the truth more kindly, sir.

I often hired Captain Finn, as did a cartel of my fellow merchants. Finn's death exposes a great loss of seamanship and good sense. But as I may not question the wind, so I may not question the decisions of our Maker. Ownership of
Kittiwayke
broke down thusly: I at thirty percent, and Captain Finn at forty percent. The rest we freighted out. The late and childless Jericho Gosse was
Kittiwayke'
s first majority-owner. He designed her, too, and oversaw her construction. Gosse would charge harder and higher rates to ship cargo on
Kittiwayke
, claiming
Kittiwayke
's fine construction and lead bum justified the increases. I hardly dispute that Gosse designed strong and tidy vessels, that being his only success beyond emptying pitchers.

My heart, sir, bends like damp timber to think of
Kittiwayke
wrecked on the rocks and of Captain Finn so sore pressed. I beg you, sir, to tell me what you know.

10) THE RELICS
F
ROM
J
OHN
C
ANNARD
'
S LEDGER
, O
CTOBER
10, 1760 (
OLD STYLE
), P
ORT AU
M
AL
.

...tired; so, trapped on this pinned chart as the corrections made in another man's hand be trapped between two coursing lines of mould, like clews, one larboard and one starboard; so, trapped, I draw my finger lightly over the coast of Massachusetts, of the bays round Salem (for so this chart be titled, Waters of Salem) and stir up gales as I once stirred coffee, thoughtlessly, in Bristol with Runciman – another country, and me another man. And which stranger, then, marked the first corrections to this chart?