The Rathbones (43 page)

{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 the 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.

At the end of the row of chairs, between Mama’s room and the door to the walk, sat Starboard on a stool, not dead after all. He bent over a small writing desk, on top of which stood an inkwell and an hourglass. He was making notes in an open ledger, his head wobbling
on its stalk. The door to the hatchway was cracked open. Starboard consulted his pocket watch, turned the glass, and jerked a thumb at the first man in the row. The coal miner stood, smoothed his suit coat, producing a faint puff of coal dust, and passed through the hatchway door, closing it behind him. The other men, prompted by Starboard, all moved down one chair.

After a few minutes a familiar sound began above. The sound of Mama walking back and forth, I had once thought, but now I knew it for what it was. By their reactions, I judged that the men had not expected to take part in a contest that evening. A few looked at each other, eyes wide and blinking; one glanced up at the ceiling with a puzzled expression, then his brow cleared as he recognized the source of the sound and he turned his gaze quickly down. The men must have expected a more formal interview. I glanced at Captain Avery; he was busily packing his pipe, stuffing it with tobacco until it spilled over.

The minutes passed. The sand sank in the glass and the rhythmic sounds from above continued. The woodsman consulted a note in his hands, first running a finger along the writing, then closing his eyes and mouthing the words. The farmer stroked a runtling sow that lay in his lap, its neck encircled by a ribbon. Captain Avery began to tap his foot and kept glancing back down the hall, toward the staircase. Now and again sand sifted down from cracks in the ceiling, where light from the walk also burned brightly.

The sounds above abruptly stopped. A minute later the coal miner slid out the hatchway door and hurried down the hall past the men, head lowered, continuing down the stair past where I crouched behind the column. I pressed back against the wall, but he didn’t look up as he passed. In a few moments I heard the front door quietly open and close. Starboard, having observed the miner closely as he passed, scratched vigorously in his ledger and turned the glass, though its sand had run only half through. He again jerked his thumb.

The woodsman stood, laying aside his ax and hiking his trousers, and strode through the hatchway. The sounds from above started
again. The runtling sow began to squeal loudly. The farmer cuffed it across one ear, at which it fell silent. The four men who remained, looking increasingly troubled, neglected to move down one seat. They attempted to train their gazes on the wall across from their seats or on the floor, avoiding their neighbors’ eyes. The sound above was less steady and forthright than it had been with the coal miner, and the waiting men looked alternately pleased or worried by the faltering sounds.

I waited on the landing with Crow, as the men waited below, trying to understand why Mama had arranged this gathering of suitors. Papa was still alive, as she well knew. Or maybe he had drowned that day when he swam after Mordecai and me, after all, and the figure I had seen on the sinking island was only a shadow, a shade come back from Hades.

I watched Starboard at his desk. When the sand had nearly run out I heard the rope ladder creaking behind the hatchway door. The second suitor, the woodsman, was descending. Starboard had by now laid his heavy head on his ledger and fallen asleep. The woodsman snatched up his ax and hurried away. When he had disappeared down the stairs I stood straight, smoothed my skirts, and walked down the hall, Crow firm and steady on my shoulder.

The four remaining suitors looked up. Captain Avery’s face went red and he jumped up, snatching off his hat.

“Miss Rathbone, I didn’t … I couldn’t …”

His face went slack and he looked down at his feet. He took a deep breath and looked up at me. “I always fancied her. Not that she ever talked to me, I only saw her now and again when I was visiting with Bemus. I thought that now, maybe …” He shrugged and smiled. He held a hand out toward me, then snatched it back.

“Sorry, miss.”

He put his hat back on, tipped it at me, and walked slowly off toward the stair. What had he called out from the boat?
Try not to think too poorly of her …
I stared after him.

When I looked back at the row of men, I found them all staring
at me. A few appeared to be confused, looking at the door where their competitors had entered, then back at me. Others seemed to be reconsidering their choice.

The two suitors nearest me stood. The cowboy put his large hat on the empty chair next to him, spit on his hands, and slicked back his hair. The farmer rose and offered me his pig.

Though I couldn’t, in the windowless hall, see where the tide stood on the pier, I could feel that it was on the wane. But I didn’t suffer like Mama from the ebb and flow of the sea. I felt strong and unafraid.

I smiled and curtseyed. Nodding to each as I walked by, I slipped through the hatchway.

{in which Mama’s bones will not break}

A
T FIRST
I was blinded. Every light in the house shone on the walk. Lanterns hung in clusters from the seams of the dome and from the spokes of the ship’s wheel; lamps stood on the floor all around and crowded on top of the trunk, their glow doubled and redoubled by the glass on all sides. Crow shifted to and fro on my shoulder, blinking, nudging his beak under my collar to try to cover his eyes. It was at first too bright to see anything clearly, but gradually, as my eyes adjusted, I could make out Mama’s silhouette. She wore what she always wore, an indigo gown and white collar, like those I was wearing, but the skirt of her gown was sodden and heavy with sand. The hem twinkled here and there with shards of crushed glass among the grains of sand. On the floor by her feet was the hourglass that had always stood in her room, broken. Her hair hung half loose down her back. She faced away from me, leaning against the side of the dome, her head turned to the sea.

She hadn’t heard me come up, and I waited, my heart thudding. I had no need of rehearsing my words, I had said them often enough to myself. They were the questions for which I had so long wanted answers. Why did Papa come, only to go away? Why did you abandon
your nephew? Why didn’t you love me? Even those questions fell away before the figure of my brother in the barrel.

In the hall below, one of the three still-waiting suitors cleared his throat. Mama turned toward the voice, her movements weary, her face blank. Then she saw me. I opened my mouth to accuse her.

“Mercy. Mercy.”

I have sometimes wondered whether I imagined the joy I saw in her eyes then, the welcome in her arms as she stretched them out toward me. I saw what I had so long thirsted for. I faulted myself, afterward. But in the end I think there are few who wouldn’t have, as I did, run into her arms.