The Rathbones (10 page)

But they had not taken their whale the last time. Though the ice in the bay had broken, the sea farther out, where the whale was coming, was rough that day and full of drifting ice, the wind blowing strong from the north. The men would not have willingly chosen such a day for the hunt, but they had no choice.

There were so few men by then. The village wives had produced only a few sons in the last generation, and one or two men were killed each year in the struggle with the whale. Four men remained. Only enough to crew one boat, and barely that. They needed six: four at the oars, a steersman at the tiller, a spearman in the bow. Moses, at eight the oldest of the handful of children in the village, was still too young. Boys were not usually allowed on the boat until they reached ten years. But he could handle an oar, he was strong and quick for his age, and he had begged until his father reluctantly agreed to take him. His father would be both spearman and first oar, and Moses would take fourth oar, in the stern. They would make do without a man at the tiller.

They rowed out soon after dawn. Moses matched the men stroke for stroke, his heart high. The water was rough enough in the bay; when the boat cleared the point and reached open sea the wind hit their faces like a wall of ice. If only there had been enough men on the boat when the whale breached, Moses’s father would have stood ready with his spear held high, as he had stood so many times before. Instead he was still at his oar, fighting along with the other men to keep the boat from sinking. If only there had been enough men, the whale would not have crashed down and Moses would not have seen its jaws close around his father before a great wave surged over the stern and swept Moses over the side. When he came up, choking, the boat was gone, and with it all the men. Nothing remained but
a swirl of splinters and an empty barrel, into which he climbed. He was alone on the icy sea, drifting for days until the man Amos spied him. Amos was heading home in his fishing smack when he noticed a crowd of gulls circling over a patch of open sea. Curious, he sailed closer and saw the barrel floating, a pair of small hands clutching its rim. He pulled Moses out of the sea and took him home.

Now Moses stood watching these new whaleboat crews begin to stroke across the sound toward the whales. They were capable enough sailors and strong oarsmen. But they would never know the sea or the whale as he did, as his father had. With their spears of metal and their ropes, they would never give the whale his due. And they were too few to man a whaleboat.

He would need to make his own crew.

The fishermen’s wives and daughters were on the dock that day, seeing their men off. A dozen or so stood, hands raised against the sun, talking quietly, watching the boats as they rowed out. Moses watched the wives. A few were dry and past their time. In one young woman a minnow-size infant curled, its mother as yet unaware. Moses felt it turn and bobble in its watery chamber: a boy. He eyed the girls who stood by their mothers in cotton dresses and laced boots, one carrying her doll. Moses felt their quivering masses of eggs and knew they would be ready to spawn in a year or two. He marked one girl and then another.

He looked out at the whales, so thick in the sea. He would need a ship, a sturdy brig with a fine suit of sails, manned by many sons. A ship full of sons.

The sperm’s blubber would warm the village all winter. His flukes and flippers and tongue would be boiled and eaten to sustain them. His skin would feed the fire that consumed him to make oil for their lamps, as it always had in Moses’s village. No part of his great body would be wasted. And when the whale was gone they would go out to take another from the bounty of sperm in the sound. With its warmer winter, this village would not need to wait through the long cold for
the ice to thaw before they could seek out their next whale. They would go out to meet him.

In a few more minutes the first boats would be within range of the nearest whales: three young sperm swimming smoothly together, the water bubbling along their flanks. The men called out, encouraging one another, feeling strong and ready to try their harpoons.

Moses saw what would happen.

When they were within a boat length of the nearest whale, the harpooners in the first boats would stand in the bows and throw, but no blade would reach its target. One might strike the whale’s side and glance off, others would miss altogether and plunge into the sea. Most of the boats would fall back, their rowers exhausted. One dory would keep on, its crew the best young fishermen of the town, the craft they rowed the fastest. Two of the whales would swim on and away; the third and slowest would soon be within reach. The headsman would shout at the rowers, urging them on. The harpooner would brace his leg against the thigh board, his arm well back, and when the headsman cried “Give it to him!” would throw his blade and strike, not well or deep, but enough to hold the line.

The whale would swim on, the shaft of the harpoon jutting from its side, the line trailing, first slack then twanging taut. The coiled line would race from its tub, smoking as the whale swam faster. The men would crouch low and hold on to the rim as the boat jerked forward and began to speed across the water toward open sea. The whale would sound, diving deep, and surface twice, three times, the line still holding, the boat bouncing behind, until the whale, exhausted, rose once more and the men closed in, plunging their lances again and again into its back, into its lungs. The boat would back off as the whale began to flurry, swimming in ever-tighter circles, striking the water with its flukes, spouting blood with each breath. At last the whale would slow, turn on its side, and go still.

Moses wouldn’t let the whale die that way. He knew what he would do.

He would swim out now, before the boats were within range of the whales; with his swift, powerful strokes, he would reach the boats in no time. He would step up into the first dory and the fishermen would fall back before him. He would stand straddle-legged on the edges of the bow, at the point of the boat, balancing easily, in his hand the spear he had made and that he now drew from his belt, a sharpened mussel shell lashed to a shaft carved from white driftwood.

He would leap from the bow onto the whale’s back, clutch its fin, and for a few moments cling there, green sea foaming over him, the whale swimming on. The whale would know him. The whale would turn its eye to meet his. His arm would dart out and strike deep. The whale wouldn’t die at the end of a line, plunging and thrashing. It wouldn’t die from a dozen jagged wounds, leaking its life slowly into the water, but in one thrust, one bright moment.

Moses would reach down and pull the shaft straight out. Blood would gush into the sea, then a watery pink stream. With his face close against the whale’s shining black skin he would sing its song, and the whale would hear.

The sun was fully up, the sound a blinding blue. A stiff wind churned the water.

Moses jumped from the tower, dove into the sea, and came up spouting. He stood in the low surf and reached down to scoop up sand and shells from the bottom, rubbing them over his chest and arms until the blood came. He dove again, surged up, and shot water high from his mouth. He began to swim toward the shining water where the whales were sounding.

{in which Hepzibah brims with her own small ocean}

1778

I
N THE HIGH
blue bed a small bronze man floated. So high did the bed rise in the little pine room, so deep did the man drift in sleep, that in the glow of the lantern Hepzibah could see only his feet at the end of the bed, wet and smelling of the sea.

Hepzibah hesitated. She wanted to turn back but didn’t know the way. The hall behind her was dark, and the boy who had brought her here was already gone. She had come directly from the dock to Rathbone House, cold and tired after the long ride across the sound on a choppy sea, hurried through the door and along the hall by the cabin boy, no offer of tea nor rest nor even a basin in which to wash before being brought to Moses Rathbone.

Hepzibah stood just inside the door, at the foot of the bed, listening. Faint moans and clicks came from above her, along with low, deep breaths. Lantern held high in one hand, she stepped up onto the frame, then knelt on the end of the bed that filled the little room. Her knees sank and wobbled. She struggled to keep her balance on the soft mattress, the light from her lantern swinging across the bed, around the walls. When she felt steady, she again raised her lantern and hung it on a peg on the wall, one of a row of pegs on which other things hung that caught the light: a string of shells, a curved tooth
on a necklace of braided hair. Through the mattress she felt the stiff shafts of the gull feathers with which it was stuffed. In the close space, the air reeked with guano and pine so sharp it burned her eyes. There were no windows. On all sides of the bed rose walls of split logs, lashed together with rawhide and shining with sap. Behind her she heard a soft click. Someone had closed and latched the door.

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, Hepzibah could see all of Moses, floating on his back in the middle of the bed. The circle of light from the lantern wavered over his skin, bronze-dark, scored with paler scars, over a darker knot at his center. She looked away. Though he was ashore, Moses’s body continued to roll as if still at sea, his arms twitching now in the motion of a half hitch, now as though he turned the wheel at the helm, his legs churning the blue blankets to whitecaps. Sun-bleached strands of his hair rode above the dark tangle that spread from his head. Hepzibah reached to touch his arm and his eyes sprang open. She started, lost her balance, and rolled to the center of the bed.

Moses checked the fresh wife over. He gripped her arms and sat her up straight. He turned her face toward the lantern to observe the sheen of her eyes, the pearl of her teeth. He lifted her hair and sniffed along her neck, then peeled her damp and heavy gown up to her waist and sniffed between her legs. He pulled a length of rope from a peg and wound it swiftly around Hepzibah’s hand and his own, murmured a few words and nodded in the direction of the sea, and returned the rope to its peg. When he pulled her face close, Hepzibah smelled his sea-fresh odor of brine and cool air. Wind-borne seeds and twigs, caught in his hair, scraped her skin. He pulled her body tight against his. She was just his size. They matched end to end. From his hard flesh she felt something stiffer searching between her legs. She closed her eyes. But Moses slowed and stopped. Soon the stiffness went, and his breath came long and low again.

Hepzibah tried not to move. She shivered under Moses as he grew heavy in sleep, tugging her clammy gown down to cover her legs. Slowly she slipped from under him. She was afraid to see those
bright-green eyes again, the green circles ringed in white, burned by the sun. She backed toward the top of the bed and slid her legs under the edge of a thick stack of blankets, among which were furs of bear and otter that added their own funk to the air.

Under the warm covers she began to drift. She thought of her own bed and wondered if her sisters had fallen asleep or were still sobbing, if her father was searching for her, if he would think to look so far from home. She felt a warm grip on her ankle and struggled from sleep to lift her head. Moses still slept beside her. Someone else’s hand grasped her ankle from below, far under the covers. Someone drew her down into the deep.

•  •

Hepzibah surfaced and gasped for breath, the air cold around her. She was moving, slung over someone’s shoulder, her face bouncing against a back, an arm tight around her knees. She struggled to right herself but her arms began to shake when she pushed against the back and the blood rushing to her head made her dizzy. From either side she heard faint snores and stirrings as they moved for what seemed many minutes, a straight path along a creaking wood floor. Then whoever carried her stopped at last and spilled her onto something soft. She landed on her back, her arms flung above her head. He leaned over her, edged in silver starlight. She couldn’t make out his features clearly: a thick hank of pale hair, a smooth cheek. His mouth was open. His breath smelled sweet. She felt cold air on her thighs, a sudden weight, then sharp pain between her legs, inside her. She heard a grunt above her, a cracked voice, then the stranger dropped down beside her. Hepzibah struggled to sit up, wanting to cry out, but found that she couldn’t. No sound would come from her throat. A strong, sinewy arm wrapped around her; a downy leg, with hair as soft as that of a child, pinned hers to the bed.