Cape Cod (57 page)

And Sam butted him square in the breastbone.

Brace’s eyes opened wide, and like a great bellows, he began to gasp. He got down one gulp of air, then another. Then Sam’s foot drove his balls into his body, and Sam’s fist drove his body down the stairs.

Solomon screamed for Gamaliel, who stood outside the mill near the carriage. But standing between Gamaliel and the door was Charlie Kwennit, harpoon handle in his hands. Charlie asked the slave why a red man and a black man should bother with white men’s arguments, and the slave had no answer but to stand where he was in the pouring rain.

Solomon called again for his slave. Then the gull became a crab, scuttling sideways toward the stairs, never taking his eyes from Sam, who studied him now as the osprey studied the creatures on the tide flat, coldly, without passion.

Then Sam pulled his knife.

“Sam! Stop!” Hannah threw her arms around Sam, but he shoved her aside. Her shawl slipped from a shoulder, tangling her foot and causing her to stumble against the wheel casing. She felt the rumble grinding into the pit of her stomach and up her spine. She whispered the word “please,” but above the roar, she knew he did not hear. The osprey consumed its prey to survive. Sam would consume the object of his hatred.

Then something above him caught his attention. Hannah’s eyes followed his gaze into the cap of the mill, where the wind shaft turned the brake wheel, engaging the wallower gear to turn the spindle shaft that spun the stone. She did not know what he had seen in the works, but now he looked again at Hannah. His gaze had grown cold enough to make her shiver, yet she smiled, as if to calm him. And he reached toward her. So she offered her hand. And he ripped the shawl from her shoulder.

In a single motion, he flung the shawl upward, into the gears. Then he drove his knife into the end of it and grabbed Solomon. The old man kicked and screamed and swore his imprecations, but Sam lifted him into the air and neatly spliced the collar of his coat to the shawl.

It looked as if Solomon had been hanged, but instead of dropping toward the floor, he was rising toward an end far more gruesome than a simple snapped neck.

“Cut me down!” Solomon flailed his limbs like a newborn. “Hannah! Cap’n Jake! Leyden! Scrooby!”

“I can’t help. I’m a idiot!” Scrooby brought a finger to the side of his head and stirred. “Ooohhh.”

“Shut up!” said Leyden.

Sam stood by the brake and watched Solomon rising toward the gears. “Did you kill my grandmother and betray my father?”

Solomon mustered whatever he had in his terror-dry mouth and spit it into Sam’s eye. Sam smashed a backhand across his face.

“Stop it!” screamed Hannah.

“Tell the truth, and them gears won’t crush you.”

Solomon craned his neck to see how close he was to the mill cap. Then he grabbed madly at the knife in his collar.

Hannah rushed for the brake, and Sam flung her back. “Stay away!” he commanded. “If you ever hope to have me, hear the truth right now.”

“Stop this, or I never hope to want you!”

“Let me down!” screamed Solomon.

“This is killin’, plain and simple,” cried Cap’n Jake.

Yet the wooden gears squeaked, the shawl wound ’round them like yarn on a bobbin. And Solomon rose.

“Did you kill my grandmother? Did you tar and feather her and set fire to her cat?”

It may have been that Solomon saw the cat before him or heard the gears, grinding closer and closer, or realized the enormity of his guilt. But he screamed in a voice that sounded to Sam like that terrified black cat, screamed until there was no air left in his lungs, screamed until the roar of the mill could not be heard, and he passed out.

For a time, nothing moved, but for the limp body of Solomon Bigelow, rising in little jerks like a figure in a German clockwork. Then Hannah shivered. Sam took a step toward her.

And Leyden Doone stepped from the shadows and hit Sam Hilyard over the head with his shovel.

“What did you do that for?” Scrooby asked.

“I hate cats, too. I set fire to a few meself.”

ix.

Three days later, Sam Hilyard accepted command of a merchantman called the
Parnassus
. He and his crew of friends, augmented by twenty more, sailed for China.

What hope was there that Hannah would have him, after the fury she had seen in him? How could they live as man and wife when their parents had been such enemies? He would always love her, but until her father was gone and her ambition for Sam equaled her ambition for her father’s property, they could have no future. He set these thoughts down in a letter, which he put on a Boston-bound ship in Valparaíso.

While at anchor with the other foreign vessels at Whampoa, he received Hannah’s answer. It came on a vessel captained by Eldredge Dickerson, who deferred Sam’s invitation to visit until after Sam had read the letter.

There was good reason for this. Hannah had taken the surname Dickerson and was now with child. She said she forgave Sam, “but with your departure, I felt compelled to marry Eldredge. He is a good and honorable man, as you are, but untouched by the furies. Yours have caused the invaliding of my father and may one day bring you to greater grief. Learn to fear God, and someday will you find love.”

Sam and Eldredge dined that night. With a brave smile, Sam toasted Eldredge’s health, his bride, and his baby. Afterward, he stood at the stern of the
Parnassus
and stared at the alien landscape of China. On the distant hills, Chinese lords and coolies drank their tea. Along Whampoa Reach, the leaves of the poplars quivered in the moonlight breeze. He was far from home and would have to find his bearings on his own….

He did not see Hannah again for thirteen years.

x.

By October 1807, three new towns had appeared on Cape Cod. Merchant shipping and fishing had brought prosperity, which brought larger populations and more contentiousness. So Eastham’s south parish had become Orleans, Dennis had been born of Yarmouth, and the north parish of Harwich had broken away to become Brewster. Not that Sam Hilyard cared whether Jack’s Island was in Harwich or Brewster. He visited Cape Cod at Christmas and Easter, if he happened to be in New England, but he was now a man of the world.

His crew called him Hard Sam Hilyard. Shipowners called him money in the bank. The Chinese who had seen him fight the Macao pirates called him Huoyan Jinqang, Determined Fury. And beneath his cutaway, he wore a white waistcoat of Chinese silk, on which two luxuriantly embroidered black dragons breathed fire.

With a few extra pounds around his bedragonned belly, he considered himself the finest, if least godly, figure of a man ever to stand before the First Church in Brewster. At the door of the church stood the finest figure of a girl he had ever seen. Her yellow dress and bonnet brought out her brown eyes in a way that caused Sam to stop and tip his hat.

She nodded, then saw the dragons on his waistcoat, which caused her expression to change from mere politeness to recognition, then caused her to call her mother.

Hannah Bigelow Dickerson stepped from the shade of the portico. “Why Sam, we hoped we’d see you here today.”

Sam’s brother Will, who had long since left the sea, was taking a wife, Mary Burr by name, the eighth daughter of a salt-caked old Brewster fisherman, and Sam was the best man. “When Will said he’d invited his neighbors, I thought he meant the Doones.”

“He did.” Hannah gestured to a pair of old men who were sitting in a back row. One of them held a shovel around which he had tied a ribbon.

Sam laughed at the Doones and swallowed back the consternation he felt at the sight of Hannah. But he recovered sufficiently to give her daughter Dorothy a courtly bow and European kiss upon the back of the hand, causing the girl to blush mightily.

“You grow even more skilled.” Hannah laughed.

Yes, he thought, more skilled, but still alone when he returned to Boston after years at sea. “Your lovely daughter favors you in all save her black hair.”

For a moment, Hannah seemed at a loss. Then she extended her hand for him to kiss. “New England ladies are seldom greeted so graciously.”

He brought the hand to his lips and held it there, inhaling the vanilla scent he remembered from so long ago. “Your skin is very white. Eldredge has seen to it that the sun didn’t leave you looking like an old fisherwoman.”

She withdrew her hand. “I’ve seen to that myself, though our company always takes an interest in vessels mastered by my husband. In fact, he is at sea even now.”

“The dragons,” said Dorothy, “my father says they’re called Determination and Fury.”

“Determined Fury is my Chinese name. Huoyan Jinqang.”

As if she could not help herself, the girl reached out and touched the orange silk circle floating above the dragons. “Is that the sun?”

“My Chinese mistress says the fireball is love. The dragons breathing flames, they are the lovers.”

“Sam! My daughter is a lady.”

“So I see. As much a lady as her mother.”

Just then Hannah’s brother Elkanah came up the steps. He had grown to resemble his father even more as he grayed, which caused Sam to dislike him even more. He was followed by two young men who resembled him enough to be his sons, though Elkanah did not bother to introduce them.

He gave Sam a limp handshake. “ ’Tis a great day for the Hilyards, marrying into a good family like the Burrs.”

“ ’Tis a great day for the Burrs,” answered Sam.

“I suppose, now that your Jack’s Island caretaker marries, you’ll look to sell that property.” Elkanah smiled, something that Sam did not remember Solomon doing.

“Yes,” offered Hannah, “my brother would like to buy it, just as he has bought my half of the island. My husband and I believe in ships, but Elkanah believes in land.”

“Come, Sam,” said Elkanah. “Unite the island once more under the Bigelow name. For a fair price.”

“I have the deed right here.” Sam extracted from his pocket an envelope, which he passed in front of Elkanah’s nose. “My wedding gift to my brother, that he and Mary may fill the island with Hilyards. I can’t think of better comeuppance for the Bigelows.”

Elkanah’s cloying smile faded. “You, sir, are a son of a bitch.”

“And proud of it.” Sam tipped his hat to Hannah and bowed to young Dorothy. “You must forgive your elders their foolishness. May your generation be not so burdened.”

Dear Huoyan Jinqang,

I cannot say that it was a pleasure to see you again, for your old anger still burns. You brought comeuppance to my father and the Royal Navy. Let that be enough. You must by now have forgotten how sweet the air smells on warm June mornings, how pretty our Cape Cod daughters look in their Sunday pews. Let the past fade. Let us enjoy each other’s table talk once more. Eldredge returns within a fortnight, and we would consider it an honor if you would sup with us.

Dearest Hannah,

Forgive me my ancient anger, but when I learned I could never have you, I saw no reason to curb it. As that philosopher, Captain Ourry of the
Somerset
, once said, hate keeps a man alive.

I thank you for invitation. I would gladly bank my rage to dine with you, your lovely daughter, and as honorable a man as Eldredge Dickerson. However, my new ship stands ready.

She is a Baltimore clipper with raked bow to cut the water and hermaphrodite rig for speed in the lightest wind. I’ve painted her hull black and given her a red dragon for a figurehead, as that is her name,
Dragon
. She is not the biggest China trader, at one hundred forty feet, but she’ll be among the fastest and her tea the freshest.

I leave my brother on Jack’s Island and am off. Will was never cut for the sea. He is a gentle man who can happily live the life of handlines and hoes that suits most Cape Codders. They till their corn patches when the sea is rough, they keep cattle because the marsh hay is free, and they hearken to windy ministers who promise something better beyond the bar.

I have other ambitions and will sail on, warmed by the sight of you and your beautiful daughter. For your sakes will I try to strike the word “comeuppance” from my brain.

xi.

But he could not. And a year later, with time on his hands, curiosity overcame him.

England and France were once more at each other’s throats, this time attempting to garrotte each other with naval blockades. Napoleon had decreed the British Isles off limits to neutral shipping. The British had decreed all ports from the Elbe to Brest interdicted. So ships were forever liable to seizure by someone.

To protect American sailors and vessels, Thomas Jefferson declared an Embargo Act prohibiting all but coastwise trade. New Englanders likened this to an eagle playing at ostrich. Shipmasters hurried to clear before the navy closed their ports, and those caught at sea made for European cities rather than sail home to unload their cargoes and step down their masts.

Sam cleared for England. He felt no loyalty to the English, but his experiences during the Reign of Terror had left him suspicious of the French. And he had taken more than his ounce of flesh for what the Royal Navy had done to his father. Now he rather liked the English, especially the young women with whom he strolled arm in arm along the Thames. Delivering comeuppance, he decided, could clear the mind.

So, while waiting to reach agreement with an English trading house for a tea run, he dredged up a name from the past, a name given him by Dr. William Thayer, and sent a letter to Squire Bellamy of Hertfordshire. Much to his surprise, the squire invited him for a weekend.

The journey to Bellamy’s home took the better part of a day, north out of the teeming, twisted streets of London, past the factories and foundries where this latest war would ultimately be won, and into the farmlands of Hertfordshire. On distant hilltops, sheep grazed and horses gamboled and hired men earned their pay. Across the fields, a dozen riders in red coats rode after their hounds. The sun was bright, the breeze fresh and fair. English life unfolded according to a master plan that ordered the world in neat concentric circles, radiating from the miseries of London to the serenity of Hertfordshire, and within these circles were smaller circles that organized the shires around seats of privilege and power like Moseby Hall.