Dominion (46 page)

When he stopped speaking of his farm and his children, she knew he was with her completely and intended to remain. No one could fault her that another woman had gotten to him first, but the two of them were together now and that was also meant to be. Nor could anyone reproach her treatment of him, it being such as any man would desire and covet in life.

All of this fortunate domestic routine was at last interrupted one day when an ancient sailor came into Caleum's shop with a set of finest china, which he offered for sale. As Caleum examined the wares, his customer looked at the name stenciled on the glass window and again at Caleum behind his counter.

“Strange name, Merian,” he said casually. “I once knew a fellow called that. Aye, I knew his entire family.”

“I would comment on your name too, friend,” Caleum remarked coolly, “but I do not know ye, so keep my mind and tongue to myself.”

“The son would have been around your age,” the stranger continued on, undaunted by the rebuke. “They lived near the quays in Providence, but were originally from a place called Stonehouses it was that I did visit on a journey once.”

“I will give ten shillings for the china,” Caleum offered, ignoring the rest the old man said and walking to his strongbox to get the money. As he went across the room, the sound of his wooden leg striking the floor resonated through the shop and was the only thing that could be heard, as the other man watched him silently. A curious thing about his leg: Either because of it or his growing status in the commercial life of the city, whenever men looked on it, even white men, they deferred to him almost instinctually. If it was a man of very high station, he would always make a little nod of the head, as if wishing to bow but being forbidden that ritual due to caste. In time Caleum had grown used to all this, until he seemed indifferent to anyone else's regard entirely, and they in turn lent him wide berth. Not so the stranger, who let the money remain on the counter and resumed speaking, looking Caleum directly in the eye and not allowing him respite or quarter from his old gaze.

“The man's given name was Purchase, and he was quite a fellow in his day, though I don't think anyone would much recognize it now. He stood near tall as that doorframe, and there wasn't a woman who ever met him who didn't fall squarely in love. Since the first time he knew her, he only had eyes for one, and it was she he gave his whole life to, though happiness was elusive for them.

“They had a little boy, whose name escapes me just now, and the father one day asked that I deliver the boy to his family's place down the coast. As he was my true friend, I obliged him.

“On the way there a storm met us off one of the capes, and I've never seen anything like the boy's lack of fear during that gale. Every man on board was white or gray, depending on his original self, but the boy stood at the edge of the railing staring right out into it. Someone said he spied a ghost ship, which were known to run off that coast, though no one I knew had ever seen one. Whatever the case, when he left the railing the storm abated and we reached land safely.

“He was just as impervious to fear when we set out overland to his people's house, which, when we reached it, was one of the most comfortable places on this earth I ever laid down my head.

“Purchase had a brother, called Magnus, who was almost as tall as he, and their father, who stood somewhere between the two. He was named Jasper Merian, I remember, he was a man in the old style and paid me in gold for delivering his son's boy safely to their door. All of
them had the same habit of paying for whatever they got in ready cash, and rarely an argument about the price.

“The other brother had a wife, Adelia, if my mind is still sound, and she was the kindest maid of the country I ever met. She doted on the boy, and I remember thinking, though I was only there a short while, his life was something blessed that he should be so loved by so many people, as I myself had none by then but my wife who loved me—and she died not long after that trip. In any case, those were the Merians I knew in my day. You would not happen to have heard of any of them?”

With each word the old man said and everything he described, Caleum felt a peeling away of the hardened membrane around his memory and recalled a little bit more with each word, until he could recognize the man before him. Rennton had changed very little since then, having turned gray and a bit more wrinkled, but otherwise being obviously the same—as some boys do not metamorphose so much from youth to manhood, so some men receive their true face early in life, which deviates very little from then until their last days.

Looking at him, Caleum remembered that journey they made together with a clarity that illuminated his interior mind like a fire, and he felt then like Adam the first time God called and he refused to answer his Maker, knowing himself finally to be naked.

“Aye. The man was called Rennton who carried me home.”

“I did not think you cared to remember,” Rennton said.

“How should I ever forget?” Caleum asked, regretful of his earlier arrogance toward the man. “Please, you must be my guest at dinner tonight,” he said. “It would be an honor for me.”

“Aye,” Rennton agreed, remembering the hospitality and good fellowship he had known from Merians in the past and extending to the son the bond of friendship and alliance he had shared with the father.

Caleum wanted to embrace the man who had saved him from orphanage and certain death as a boy, but fearing this would be too familiar, he took Rennton's hands in both of his and pumped them warmly. “We live above the shop here,” he told him. “Dinner will be at six, if that suits you.”

“I will be there promptly,” Rennton answered.

After he left, Caleum closed the shop and went upstairs to tell Elissa they would be having a guest for dinner, which for them was a rarity. In
his good mood he also suggested that she invite who she wanted, as they had not entertained a proper party since moving into their home together.

“Maybe your sister would like to come,” he said, knowing how her family shunned her since she began living with him.

“I do not think so, but I will send word to her,” she replied. “I had better hurry now before the markets close, if we are to make a dinner for so many.” She was elated as she left the house then, for she saw how jubilant he was and was in her turn glad to open their home to friends.

When Rennton arrived that evening, he saw Caleum had spared no expense on the meal and had even gone so far as to hire a group of musicians to entertain them. He thought then how much like the father the son had become. He was also was very stirred when Caleum stood to toast him, giving him credit for saving his life.

The house that evening was filled with Caleum's acquaintances from the city, who were all curious to ask questions about Caleum's life before, for it seemed he had just showed up among them with no ties to any place before that one. Elissa at first did not want to hear about Stonehouses and Caleum's family, and she herself was always careful not to wake the memory in him, but she was certain about their life together by then and let her curiosity draw her near to listen.

Rennton for his part was happy to answer what questions he could, but he was also curious to hear what had happened to Purchase's son since he last knew him.

“Tell me how you ended up here?” he asked finally, when the two of them were alone, sharing a glass of port in Caleum's study. “If I had a place like yours I would never venture forth from it, although your father did the same.”

“He was drawn out by love,” Caleum answered. “I left for duty and the war.”

“But you chose to stay here instead of returning?” Rennton asked.

“That is what happened,” Caleum said, for he could suddenly no longer remember his reason for staying. He looked across the room just then, and saw Elissa in the doorway, and knew again why he had remained so long. When he first came to her he was broken. Only he did not think he could tell Rennton such.

As Elissa watched him talking to his old friend, she saw both how much she did not know about him and that he was very far away in his
thoughts. She went over to him and tried with her touch to bring his mind back to where it had been before.

Caleum felt like a stranger in the house that evening, and everything around him seemed foreign. Although he knew the rooms and the things in them to be his own, he could only think how they were not the rooms he had grown up in or shared with Libbie and their children. How he was not at Stonehouses. He longed profoundly in that moment to be there. When she stroked his arm, he reciprocated her touch, but only lightly on the hand.

When Elissa turned and left, to attend to their other guests, Caleum asked Rennton when he was sailing out and what port he was calling on next.

“I am leaving in the morning, but I'm headed eastward,” the old mariner said to him, “but there is a frigate, called the
Enki,
docked off Wall, sailing for southernmost waters at the end of the week. If you are set on going there, the captain is a friend of mine, and he will get you to your home port safely. He is a peculiar man, though, and you must be careful not to upset him.”

Rennton had once made the same offer to Caleum's father, on an occasion when his wife had left him and he was despondent over it.

He could see the same sadness settled over Caleum now. It was not for him to say where a man belonged or not, but only in his power of friendship to help him get to where he wished to be.

They feasted throughout that night, and it felt to many like a wedding banquet, as it kept expanding until it encompassed the whole house, and the mood among the guests was merry. Elissa alone worried that it seemed like a good-bye feast.

She tried to block this from her thoughts, and when he came to her in bed that night she made no mention of her worries. He was as loving as he had ever been with her. Nor did he mention any other home, or a desire to go away—until she became calm again and no longer heeded her first fears.

He had determined to leave at the end of the week, however, and told himself that it would be best to spare her feelings, not wishing to draw out or increase her sadness. It was the best of noble reasons; however, as sometimes happens, the opposite is what occurred.

He harbored his intentions secret in his breast the entire week, going
about as if all were normal. When the day of the ship's sailing finally arrived, he woke up before sunrise, before Elissa had stirred, to leave from out the house undetected. He did not take anything of his life in that town with him, and nothing to remember her by or otherwise knot his memory. He carried instead the same little trunk he had hauled around with him for the last four years. Nor did he wear his fine clothes, but took from a corner in the bottom of the trunk his old coat with Libbie's embroidery inside.

The picture was faded almost entirely and the coat looked even shabbier than he remembered, but it is what he covered himself with as he set out for the docks, leaving all else behind, no matter how precious. His sword he had not seen since he left the battlefield at Saratoga, nor did he miss it, but he carried its memory still, as it was carved deep. And this was all he had in the world, but what was at Stonehouses.

It was still dark when he arrived on the wharf, and fog covered the entire southern tip of the island. He had forgotten the ship's berth and was forced to ask around for the
Enki
until he discovered her and made his way aboard.

“So you made it,” said the captain, when he saw him arrive.

Caleum, who had booked his passage earlier in the week, was the only one still missing from the passenger list, and the captain, having been so long in port, was anxious to sail. He had the second mate show Caleum to a tiny cabin and told his crew to be ready as soon as the fog lifted.

Caleum was guilty and heavy-hearted as he waited belowdecks for the ship to begin its journey. When it began to grow light out, he went up above to see why they had not yet sailed. The city was still shrouded in a ghost-white fog, and the captain, a very powerful-looking man with a face like a gigantic angry baby, refused to set out. He looked perturbed, and everyone hastened to get out of his way as he paced the deck.

Remembering what Rennton had told him, Caleum went to the other side of the ship, lest he raise the man's ire. It was about six in the morning, and he knew Elissa would awaken soon and discover his absence.

He hoped the gift of the house would ease her hurt and make her feel less poorly used. Though he knew he had caused her pain, but it was never his intent. It was only that God, He had other plans for him.

At seven o'clock they still had not left port, and Caleum knew Elissa was awake and about by then. He knew as well she would think he had
only gone out on errands, or else for a morning constitutional. Still, he feared she might somehow find him there and thwart his journey, and so hid himself below like a smuggler.

An hour later, as they continued to wait, he began to have second thoughts and wished profoundly that he could see Elissa one last time.

At eleven that morning the low cloud over the water finally burned away, and the captain weighed anchor. When they finally set out, all the passengers crowded to the railing, and looked either backward toward Manhattan—and what they were leaving behind—or else forward toward the open sea and the place they was going. Caleum looked first to one and then the other. Toward Elissa, who had loved him so dearly, and then to the destination he had been trying to reach for so long.

Elissa awoke with a start and sensed immediately that Caleum was not in bed where he was supposed to be. Although the emptiness of their room was the first thing she noticed, she did not make much of it. Instead, she dressed, then went down to the kitchen to prepare breakfast, thinking he had been called out early on business and was certain to have an appetite when he returned.