Chesapeake (89 page)

Late that afternoon Paul Steed rose from his bed, left Eden and drifted aimlessly down to the office, where to his surprise he found the man they called Uncle Herbert, a pompous, seemingly futile type, installed in his chair. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked with trembling authority.

‘I’ve come to run things,’ Herbert said.

‘What things?’

‘Paul, go back to your whore. And don’t you ever again allow Captain Turlock to set foot on Devon Island.’

‘Are you commanding me?’

‘Paul, get out of here. You are no longer in charge.’ Instinctively the two younger Steeds moved to positions behind their uncle, and the trio presented such a formidable wall of opposition that Paul could summon no strength to combat it.

‘You’ll not succeed …’ he began to bluster, but Herbert Steed left his desk, walked quietly to the former master and escorted him to the
door. ‘Go back to the girl, Paul. That’s to be your life from here on.’

Ejected from his office, he stumbled toward the Revenge, passing through a garden of remarkable beauty without seeing it. He entertained the vain hope that when he met Eden she would somehow inspire him to oppose this capture of his prerogatives, but when Tiberius opened the outer door, uttering his usual gracious words, ‘Do come in, Master Paul,’ he kicked it shut and stomped away.

He walked not to the wharf, where he was no longer welcome, but westward toward those wheat fields which had always been the most productive; generations ago the Steeds had learned that to produce tobacco, a field required years of rest now and then, or the alteration of crops rich in nitrogen, and these fields had been kept vital. As he wandered through them he felt pride that he had kept them still viable: Maybe the best fields in Maryland.

But when he reached the western end of the island he was astonished to discover that the fields seemed much shorter than they had been when he was a boy, but this was so improbable that he wondered if he were remembering properly. Shouting for the overseer, he was able to rouse no one, so he went to the edge of the land, kicking at the soil and inspecting the line where the waters of the bay touched the island, and as he was doing this he saw one of the slaves fishing. The man supposed the master had come to spy on him and started running, lest he be punished, but Paul cried, ‘Stop, Stop!’ and when the man ignored his shouts, Paul set out after him, but the slave was speedy in retreat, and Paul could not catch him.

So he resumed his solitary wandering and came upon that stand of pine in which he and his cousins had camped as children, listening to the thunder of the bay as the stars appeared: My God! So many trees have gone! And below him, in the waters of the Chesapeake, lay rotting pines.

Again he shouted for the overseer, and this time an older slave appeared. ‘Yassah, what you need, Mastah?’

‘This shore? Is it falling away?’

‘Yassah, every year, more ’n more.’

‘Those trees. There used to be a little forest, didn’t there?’

‘Yassah. I was boy, trees out to there.’ And he indicated a spot so far distant in the bay that Paul gasped.

‘Don’t you do anything about it?’

‘Nosah, nothin’ you can do.’

Paul dismissed the slave and continued his walk, witnessing always the encroachment of the bay, and it seemed that in his brief lifetime a valuable portion of the island had disappeared: I must do something about it. I must talk to the people who look after these fields.

When he returned to headquarters he found considerable excitement. Captain Turlock had sailed a small boat down the Choptank, bringing
Mrs. Steed to her home, but Herbert Steed had forestalled him at the landing, refusing him permission to come ashore. There had been a scuffle; the two younger Steeds had supported their uncle; and Turlock had struck one of them with his silver fist, throwing him into the creek before marching solemnly up the path to the big house, arriving there just as Paul returned from his western explorations.

‘Good afternoon, Paul,’ Turlock said.

The confused events of these past days were too much for Steed—his demotion, the falling away of the land, and now this arrogance—and he lashed out stupidly. ‘Damn you, I’ll thrash you …’

‘You’ll what?’ Turlock asked.

Steed made another lunge at him, then flailed his arms helplessly. The captain pushed him away twice, and when this did not halt the ridiculous attack, swung his left arm almost gently and with his silver fist pushed, rather than knocked, Paul to his knees. He was about to help the fallen man rise when he heard an ominous command from behind: ‘Stand where you are, Turlock.’

Still offering Paul help, he turned his head to see Herbert Steed standing on the gravel path, flanked by two nephews, one dripping, and all with guns. ‘What in hell?’

‘Off the property,’ Herbert Steed said quietly.

‘Put those guns down,’ Turlock snapped, turning his attention from Paul and allowing him to fall backward. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I know what I’m doing, Turlock. I’m counting to five, and if you’re still on that porch, I’m going to blow your guts out. Boys, get ready to fire.’

And he began to count: ‘One, two, three—’

‘Steed!’ Turlock bellowed. ‘You’re acting like a—’

Very calmly Herbert interrupted his count. ‘Do you think any jury would convict us? After that?’ And with a look of sickening disgust he pointed with his gun at Susan. ‘Four. Aim at his guts, boys.’

Before Herbert could utter the command to fire, Captain Turlock backed off the porch, looked contemptuously at the fallen husband and started slowly down the graveled path. He had gone only a few steps when Susan uttered a cry and started after him, but the three Refuge Steeds interposed with their guns. ‘You stay!’ Herbert commanded. ‘The circus is over.’

And he barred the way. When Turlock reached his sloop he got in and slowly moved it toward the creek, but three days later he was back, bringing with him the casks of salt Paul Steed had ordered. Herbert appeared at the wharf with the purchase money, but Turlock ignored him, allowing Mr. Goodbarn to handle that negotiation. ‘I’m going to the big house,’ Turlock said.

‘No, you’re not,’ Herbert Steed replied quietly.

‘I guess I am,’ Turlock said, and three of his sailors produced muskets to neutralize the men in the headquarters building. While they stood guard, Matt Turlock walked gravely up the path, noting the last daylilies as they withered on their brown-green stalks. At the door he knocked politely and informed Tiberius that he had come to pay his respects to Mrs. Steed.

Up to this moment Susan had been unaware of his arrival, but as his voice echoed through the hallway, she rushed from her upstairs room and ran down the flight of stairs, throwing herself into his arms. Her husband followed.

After embracing Susan, Turlock half pushed her away. ‘I’m sailing for Africa. It’ll be years before I return.’

‘Oh no!’ she cried, clinging to him again.

‘I must. We’ve hit the end of the road here, all of us.’

‘Matt, no!’ She grasped his arms, begging him not to go, but he was resolute. To Paul he said, ‘I’m sorry. I hope that in the future things will be better for all of us.’

Paul made no response, but Susan refused to accept this as the end of summer, the end of all she had so desperately dreamed of. ‘You can’t go, Matt,’ she pleaded. Then an alluring idea came to her. ‘I’ll go with you. Eden! Pack the bags!’ And she broke away from the two men and dashed upstairs, calling for her maid.

‘I must stop her,’ Matt said, and he bounded up the stairs after her, overtaking her in the bedroom as she began to pull down boxes and bring out her dresses. Eden, standing in a corner, watched the hullabaloo, slim and silent and unsmiling.

‘Susan!’ Matt said harshly. ‘It’s over. There’s no way you can board my ship.’

‘But I …’

‘Unthinkable.’ He brought her away from her frantic packing and held her by the shoulders. Ignoring Eden, he said tenderly, ‘Susan, you’ve been the most precious thing in my life.’

‘I must stay with you,’ she whispered. ‘There’s nothing in life, Matt. Nothing. These last three days …’ She shivered.

‘We begin over again, all of us.’

‘There can be no more beginning.’

‘You could help Paul regain control of the—’

‘Him?’ The withering scorn bespoke more than the end of summer, but Matt was obdurate. He started for the door, but she uttered such a pitiful cry that he had to stop. Then she threw herself at him, whimpering, ‘Matt, lift me up as you did that first day.’ Clutching his hand, she dragged him toward the bed and waited for him to put his arms about her as he had done so long ago.

Slowly he lifted her until her shoulders were on a level with the imbedded cannonballs. ‘Hold me long, as you did then,’ she pleaded, but he began to lower her. Frantically she clutched at him, failed to stop him, and found herself slipping down. Her feet were again on the floor; her life was over.

She made no protest as he left, but did listen as he said to Eden, ‘Look after her. She’s worth loving.’

With heavy step he stalked down the stairs, bowed to Paul Steed, and returned to his sloop. ‘Back to the
Ariel,
’ he told Mr. Goodbarn. ‘We sail in the morning.’ The sailors dropped their guns as Matt saluted the three Steeds watching from the office doorway.

The
Ariel
left Patamoke the next day at dawn, heading for London-Luanda-Belém. She had assembled commissions which would keep her at sea for four years, and as she sailed slowly down the river Captain Turlock looked for what he suspected might be the last time at the familiar sights, the beacons that had guided his life. Abeam lay the Paxmore yards where his clipper had been devised; how grieved he was that his association with these honest Quaker builders had been ruptured; no one tended to the welfare of ships as they did.

There was the family swamp; Cousin Lafe would be tracking deer through the tall grasses; herons would be fishing in the shallows. And on the rise stood Peace Cliff, that noble, quiet haven so different from the gaudy show of Devon. He remembered when George Paxmore’s mother had invited him to that telescope house and given him a book to take on his journeys during the war. ‘Thee doesn’t have to attend school to learn. A ship can be a school, too. But if thee doesn’t learn, thee dies young.’

He had decided not to look back at Rosalind’s Revenge, lest it haunt his dreams, but when Devon Island lay to port his eyes were lured to that stately house, and he saw what he feared he might see. On the widow’s walk, her blue dress standing out in the breeze, stood Susan, her face not discernible from this distance but her handsome figure unmistakable. For as long as the
Ariel
remained in contact with the island, Captain Turlock stared at that solitary figure. He would never know another like her; she had been the capstone of his desire, a woman of exceptional passion and love. Inadvertently he looked away for a moment in the direction of his cabin: God, how I wish she was waiting in there.

Shaking his head at the impossibility, he looked once more toward Devon—and she had disappeared! Disappointed, he shrugged his shoulders. I shouldn’t have thought she’d go down before we passed from sight.

She hadn’t. Learning that the
Ariel
would leave Patamoke at dawn,
she had slept fitfully, her left foot free of the light coverlet, always prepared to flee that horrid bed. At dawn she had risen and called for Eden to bring her the blue dress that Captain Turlock had commended at their first serious meeting. Eden, passing easily from maid to mistress to maid, sought out the fragile dress and helped Susan into it, then combed her hair and wove blue ribbons in, knowing that Mrs. Steed was preparing for a farewell rite.

Susan could eat no breakfast, and when the day was bright she went up to the roof, and sat there in the hot September sun looking eastward up the Choptank toward Patamoke. Lashed to the wicker chair, lest it blow away, was her small telescope in its waterproofed bag. Removing the glass, she studied the river; no bigger than a dot on a piece of paper was the
Ariel
when she first identified it. Then it expanded, with real sails and visible bulwarks. Now she could lay the telescope aside and watch the beautiful clipper, five sails aloft, as it breasted the island. She could not with her naked eye particularize among the moving figures, but with her telescope she saw Captain Turlock, the sun glistening now and then from his left hand. What a compelling man he was, that shock of red hair, the beard, the massive fist; he had told her during her last impassioned stay at his house in Patamoke that he was beginning to feel an older man: ‘When I was young I could have romped with you four days running, with no interruption for food.’

As he moved down the straits she remembered every word of encouragement he had ever spoken to her: ‘You’re like an inexhaustible spring at the edge of a desert.’

And there he went. The
Ariel
was leaving the strait now and entering the bay, but still some moving forms remained visible. ‘Oh God! Don’t take him away!’ she cried aloud.

‘He is away!’ a voice said behind her, and she turned to face her husband.

With a wild brush of his hand, Paul Steed swept the telescope out of her grasp and watched as it tumbled noisily down the sloping roof, clattering at last to the ground.

‘You whore!’ he said. ‘Crying your heart out for such a man.’ He pointed toward the departing slaver and said scornfully, ‘A great hero! A man who peddles human flesh.’

Humiliated by his sneering and outraged by the destruction of her telescope, she whipped about and lunged at him with no clear understanding of what she hoped to accomplish; she wanted vaguely to hurt him, to erase that sneering. Paul saw her make this motion, and whereas he had been afraid to confront either Matt Turlock or Uncle Herbert, he was willing to fight Susan. With a harsh blow of his two hands clasped, he knocked her toward the fence, where she toppled for a moment, lost her balance and started falling from the roof.

Fortunately, her right foot caught in the pickets, and this saved her. But when Paul saw her dangling there, her foot wedged, her head down toward the edge, he lost what little sense he had and yanked the foot loose. Holding it, he cried, ‘Go to Captain Turlock!’ and with a thrust he shoved her down the sloping roof, watching as she disappeared over the edge. Her screams began as she disappeared from sight and ended in a piercing shriek as she struck the ground.