This Golden Land (10 page)

     But what baffled Hannah most of all was a question stated on the first page of the notes, written six years ago: "What killed my beloved Louisa?"

     Hannah thought it a strange question since he had known Louisa's death was caused by childbed fever. In fact, it was that very fever that had driven him to six years of obsessive research. Or did the question have something to do with his final, cryptic words to Hannah as he was dying: "The truth about thy mother's death."

     Since her father's notes were undecipherable, Hannah had put the portfolio away and looked elsewhere for a way to quench the thirst that now budded within her. Dr. Applewhite had generously invited her to avail herself of his small collection of medical books, which she did so with enthusiasm. The tome in her lap was
Pathology & Medicine
by Sir William Upton, and already Hannah had learned things her father had never taught her.

     She looked up from her reading again. Hannah had never felt so distracted. As much as she desired to concentrate on satisfying her new curiosity about medicine and disease, she could not stop thinking about Neal Scott.
Especially at night as she lay in her bunk, achingly aware that the handsome American lay just on the other side of the thin wall. She would toss and turn as she pictured his muscular body—wearing what?—the breath would catch in her throat, she would perspire, and when she finally drifted off to sleep, it would be to find Mr. Scott in her dreams.

     Sir William Upton lay neglected in her lap as, once again, Hannah allowed her gaze to travel down to the activity on the main deck where she saw, in the sunlight, Neal's sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his muscular back.

     Neal was demonstrating to his new friends how he wanted the camera box to be mounted. He paused to mop his neck and looked up at Hannah sitting demurely in a deck chair, her lovely round head embraced in a dainty silk bonnet. She had been watching him, and now quickly looked away.

     He had not been able to stop thinking about her since the night they spent with Donny Ritchie. To sit with her in the salon, to stroll on the deck with her—each moment now took on a unique quality. He knew he could fall in love with her if he allowed himself to, but at the end of this voyage they would be going their separate ways.

     "Pardon me, sir, a word if you please?"

     Neal looked up to see the First Officer with a grave expression on his face. "What is it, Mister James?"

     "I will have to ask you to go below now, sir. There's a bit of rough weather headed this way."

     "Rough weather? How bad?"

     "Captain's expecting it will be as bad as it can get, sir. I suggest you secure those crates of yours. And if you can help the others in any way, I would appreciate it. Especially the young lady," Mister James added, nodding toward Hannah who was holding onto her bonnet as the wind tried to snatch it away.

     As Neal headed for the quarterdeck, sailors and deck hands were suddenly everywhere, running, shouting, climbing the rigging. Officers were ordering the immigrants to go below and, as Neal reached Hannah, he saw crewmen sealing the hatches to the steerage hold.

     The day grew dark, the wind brisk. Sailors had donned broad-rimmed hats and rubber Macintoshes as they wrestled with shrouds, lanyards and
buntlines. The Merriwethers had already gone to their cabin to secure their possessions and themselves. Neal helped Hannah down the companionway, as the sea was growing choppy and walking was a challenge. Hannah went to her cabin, while Neal addressed the task of making sure his crates were properly stowed.

     As the Merriwethers secured their trunk, the Reverend said, "My spare glasses! They must have fallen from my pocket up on deck. I'll be right back."

     "Caleb, no!" Abigail hurried after him, trying to grab his arm. "It's too dangerous."

     "If I break my glasses and don't have a spare set, I'll be of no use in Australia," he called back, gesturing for her to return to their cabin. But Abigail followed as her husband struggled up the steps of the companionway and, pushing up the hatch, emerged into a violent day.

     Deciding it would be reckless to search for his glasses, Caleb Merriwether started to close the hatch when he saw, sprawled on the deck, what looked like an unconscious sailor. Caleb could not be sure as the man was lying against a coil of ropes, seemed in fact to be just another coil. "My goodness," he said to Abigail, who was behind him, "is that a man?"

     "Caleb, please, come down!"

     The middle-aged missionary, whose hardest labor in recent years had been to weed his marigolds, took a quick measure of the scene—the low black clouds, the squall line driving toward the ship, the spray shooting up over the side—and made an instant decision.

     As he pulled himself topside, Abigail climbed after him, calling for him to come back. But the sailor would for certain be washed overboard, and no one else seemed to have noticed the fallen man. As Reverend Merriwether fought his way across the slippery deck, with the
Caprica
pitching and rolling, he prayed that the man was still alive. Had he fallen from a yardarm?

     At the companionway, with her hair flying in the wind, Abigail watched in horror as her husband stumbled to the stricken man, slip twice on the wet boards, and reach him as the ship gave a great lurch. She frantically searched for help, but the few sailors on deck were struggling with sheets and lines, and the roar of the wind drowned out her cries for help.

     Caleb fell two more times but he managed to seize the unconscious
man—whose forehead was bleeding—by the collar of his rain slicker and struggle back, pulling him along the sodden deck as the rain grew torrential and higher spray came over the sides.

     Abigail's eyes were wide with terror as she was certain that, at any moment, the two men would be washed over the side. And then, to her astonishment, Caleb was at the companionway, drenched and pale, but holding onto the unconscious sailor. Together, the missionaries lowered the man down and carried him back to their cabin, where they tied him to a bunk and then held onto each other as the storm hit.

     Working quickly in his own cabin, Neal tied the last of his boxes and equipment to the lower bunk, securing them with ropes given to him by Mr. Simms. Hannah appeared in the doorway. "Do you need help, Mr. Scott? I have but a trunk, and it is well secured."

     "You should not be here, Miss Conroy. These chemicals are very dangerous." He noticed that Hannah had removed her cumbersome crinoline so that her skirt hung straight down, giving her an alluring, more feminine shape.

     "You said they were flammable. If you extinguish the lantern . . .?"

     "They are more than flammable I'm afraid. The ether that is used in preparing the collodion can be explosive." Back in Boston, not far from Josiah Scott's law office, a photographer had been killed in his darkroom when a bottle of ether burst and the fumes were ignited by a candle. Stored properly and in a cool and stable place, such volatile photographer's solutions as potassium cyanide, ammonia and silver nitrate were not a hazard. But Neal had no idea how these liquids were going to react when tossed about in a storm.

     "Then all the more need for an extra pair of hands," Hannah said, and she picked up a length of rope to help him fasten it around a box labeled FRAGILE SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS. When all was secure, Neal tossed his jacket onto the upper bunk, and then a leather satchel. At that moment, the ship lurched and the satchel fell to the floor, snapping open, the contents spilling out. Hannah helped him retrieve the shaving brush, soap mug, handkerchiefs, combs. She picked up a small glass bottle and looked at it in the light from the lantern that swayed overhead. It was made of a lustrous emerald-green glass, shaped like a tear-drop with a long neck and sealed at
the mouth with red wax. The bottle was flattened, like a hip flask, but miniature—only two inches long—and it was suspended at the end of a beautiful gold chain, as if it were meant to be worn like a necklace.

     Snapping the satchel shut, Neal tossed it onto the upper bunk and said, "That's everything! Now Mr. Simms said we should be tied to our bunks. Let's go to your cabin and I will secure you with a—" He stopped when he saw what Hannah held in her palm.

     "This fell out of the bag," she said. "It's lovely."

     His face darkened. "Josiah Scott found it among the blankets that swaddled me in my cradle."

     "How extraordinary."

     "I believe it belonged to my mother, that she placed it in my blankets as a memento. I don't know what it is exactly. It probably contains the most expensive Parisian perfume money could buy."

     "Why would you say that?" Hannah said in surprise.

     "Over the years I have speculated about the owner of that bottle, what she must have been like, what her motives were to leave it with me while depositing me on a stranger's doorstep. I believe," Neal said as the ship gave another lurch and he reached out to steady himself, "my mother left that expensive little bottle with me as a symbol of her bloodline, to let me know that I did not come from humble folk but from what passes for aristocracy in America."

     "Mr. Scott," Hannah said. "This is not a perfume bottle."

     "It isn't? How do you know?"

     "Because I recognize it. This is a tear catcher."

     He frowned. "A what?"

     The ship rolled. Hannah put her hand on the wall. "A small bottle for holding tears that have been shed on special occasions. They can be tears of sadness or of joy."

     "I've never heard of such a thing."

     "They're mentioned in Psalms. When David prays to God, he says 'Put Thou my tears in a bottle.' It's an ancient custom that goes back centuries. Mourners collect their tears in bottles and give them to the person who has lost someone. Or you can give tears of joy as a gift."

     Hannah handed it to him. "They are very popular in England. Those mourning the loss of loved ones collect their tears in bottles with special stoppers that allowed the tears to evaporate. When the tears have evaporated, the mourning period has ended. But this particular bottle, you will notice, was stoppered so that the tears would not evaporate. Your mother meant for you to carry her tears with you throughout your life."

     He gave her a startled look. "Are you saying my mother's
tears
are in here?" He looked down at the emerald-glass, casting off shimmering green lights as the overhead lantern swayed.

     "Mr. Scott, she wanted you to know that she cried when she left you on Josiah Scott's doorstep."

     Neal stared at Hannah, and then at the tiny emerald bottle in his hand. He suddenly felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him. "Do you really think that's so?"

     She smiled. "I'm sure of it."

     "I . . . I had no idea. My God," he whispered. And suddenly there it was: the nameless emotion that had had him in a grip since the day he took Donny Ritchie's photograph. Mrs. Ritchie had pleaded with God to take
her
instead, and something had shot straight down to Neal's depths, to stir feelings so powerful and alien in him that they had frightened him. Now he knew. His own mother had abandoned him. She had not asked God to take her instead. She was a selfish woman who, unlike Agnes Ritchie, did not want her child, but discarded him without a worry. That was what had driven him to take the photographic portrait of a sick child. Not to calm a hysterical woman or quell a mutiny, but to satisfy something within himself, to reassure himself that not all mothers were as selfish as his own.

     But now . . . the perfume bottle was no longer the expensive bauble of a vain and selfish woman but a receptacle for her tears.

     The ship heaved at that moment, and Hannah fell against Neal. "We have to get you tied down," he said, pocketing the little glass and gold tear catcher. "And this lantern must be extinguished." He reached up and drew the lamp down, blowing out the flame, plunging them into darkness.

     The ship grew momentarily calm, but they imagined the forces of nature gathering and building above them. "We have to get you to your cabin,"
Neal said huskily, holding tightly to Hannah, not wanting to let go, unable to move. What on earth had happened just now, in these past minutes, in the confines of this small compartment? How had this young woman with gray eyes and a compassionate smile pulled scales from his eyes that he had not even known were there?

     His mother had left her tears with him.

     Strong emotions surged through him, rocking him as surely as the
Caprica
rocked him. His embrace tightened around Hannah. In the utter darkness of the cabin, his pressed his mouth against her hair.

     Hannah thought of the violent storm that was about to hit but she could not stop holding onto Neal. She held tightly to him. She could feel his warmth through the fabric of his shirt, the hard muscles. Without her crinoline, she could feel his legs against hers, a startlingly erotic sensation. She trembled. He drew her tightly to him.

     In the darkness, Neal brought his hand to her chin, lifted her face to his. When he bent to kiss her, the first line of rain was upon them, and then the first monster wave struck.

     Neal and Hannah were thrown off their feet. She cried out. He grappled for her in the dark, found her, pulled her to him.

     In the other cabins and steerage, where lanterns and candles had also been extinguished, the passengers rode out the storm in terror, as blind as moles as they heard the sickening groans and creaks of the ship's beleaguered timbers. Mrs. Merriwether held onto her husband, who prayed in a loud voice as the ship rocked violently. Dr. Applewhite plied himself with so much medicinal brandy that he was barely aware of the storm. And Captain Llewellyn, alone in his cabin where he had lashed himself into his bunk, decided that, all in all, he had had a good life at sea.

     When Neal heard a terrifying crash next door, he ran out and, fighting his way into the corridor that was so dark it was as if he were blind, he felt his way along the wall until his came to Hannah's door. He lost his footing and he realized in horror that the floor was wet. Water was coming from Hannah's cabin. Neal flung the door open and saw gray daylight.