The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (35 page)

BOOK: The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles
8.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

From behind the bowsprit, he peered over the sea at limitless darkness. Slowly he craned his head back. There, at least, was light. Endless stars, thousands upon thousands, dusting the huge arch of heaven and shifting slowly in his vision with the schooner’s pitch and roll—

The name. He should do something about the name.

He’d toyed with possibilities, found nothing satisfactory. What if they did sight land tomor—today? Who would he be?

All at once, under the immense canopy of tiny silvered lights, he felt small. Smaller even than on Quarry Hill, the night he and Marie fled from Tonbridge. The vastness of the sky, the sweep of black ocean seemed to press in on him; reduce his size; his hope; his courage—

She was gone. He was alone.

He was
alone.

And out there somewhere beyond the carved figurehead—a buxom, bare-titted mermaid with painted wooden eyes—an alien country waited—

Suddenly he was almost dizzy with fear.

And why not? Nothing existed any longer to which he could cling. The books he’d read, the kindness of people such as Mr. Fox and the Sholtos and Hoskins, the encouragement of Dr. Franklin—all that was meaningless. Cut away as if it had never been. Lost and gone far behind the ship’s faintly phosphorescent wake.

He felt smaller and more forlorn by the moment. He knew nothing of the realities of day-to-day living in these colonies toward which the schooner raced on the night wind. He knew nothing but words and more words—and all of those nearly forgotten. Part of another life, it seemed now. The life of someone who was a total stranger.

Nothing from the past applied to his new situation in this new world. No one could be relied upon because there
was
no one—except himself. Survive alone among these Americans? He who was doubly foreign? Not even able to claim the soil of Britain as his own? The whole of creation, sea of stars and sea of darkness, seemed to laugh with wind and wave at his incredible presumption—

Then, reacting to the fear, he felt ashamed.

He had withstood severe tests up till now. He could withstand more.

He lifted his head. He fought the dread born of the future’s uncertainty. He repeated to himself what he had repeated before—

I will survive.

It helped—a little. But the stars and the dark remained vast and forbidding.

Well, by Christ,
he thought,
I can be a man outwardly, at least. Never let them see the way I really feel—

Phillipe knew only smatterings of the Bible. But he was acquainted with the tale of Adam. As he brooded at the bowsprit, his mind fashioned an encouraging little conceit, to help put down the fear—

He was like a man being born in the fashion of Adam, new-sprung into the strangeness of a creation whose details he couldn’t possibly guess. All right—he would take control of that creation as befitted a man, not a boy. He
would,
by God—

But who will I be?

The problem kept him awake the rest of the night. Kept his mind occupied, at least—

But deep down, he was still afraid.

x

Just before sunset of that same day, an outcry from the crow’s-nest signaled land on the horizon. Caleb’s older hands had been right.

He stood at the port rail in the stiff wind as Gropius howled inflammatory curses in Dutch and English about the new mess boy malingering again, even while the regular mess boy still lolled in his bunk.

He ignored the oaths, peering at the greenish-black line, still so very thin and far away, that separated the sky of the mellow summer evening and the white-crested Atlantic. Gulls wheeled and shrieked high above the topmen working aloft.

He held the rail tightly, fairly tasting the salt wind. He felt not only a tingling anticipation, but a coldness in his hands and in his soul. The fear—

At least he had a name now. He’d settled on it during the forenoon watch.

With every tie of consequence severed, his name was his only link to his past existence. And it was a tenuous link at that. But he needed something that belonged to both worlds. Something to help carry him through the gigantic transition rushing to meet him. An old box, a sword, a self-consciously jutting chin and a feigned expression of resolve were not enough.

He had decided to Americanize his given name to Philip. And, to remember at least part of his origins, he had shortened his father’s hereditary title to Kent. Philip Kent. He would no longer think of himself, or be called, by any other name. He had already told Captain Caleb.

Thus, self-christened, a new man watched his new homeland rising under the orange-tinted clouds in the west, and wondered what lay ahead for him as
Eclipse
bore into the Nantasket Roads under full canvas.

Book Three
Liberty Tree
CHAPTER I
The Secret Room
i

D
URING THE NIGHT,
ECLIPSE
anchored two miles from the glimmer of Boston light. Before daybreak a pilot came aboard. He took the helm from Caleb and maneuvered the trading vessel through the narrow channel and past the islands dotting the harbor to a berth at Long Wharf.

The early haze of a summer’s day promised intense heat. It blurred the hills and the rooftops of the town and the parapets of Castle William, the island fortress out in the harbor. But nothing could blur Philip Kent’s sense of anticipation as the lines were snubbed tight and the plank dropped.

Anchored ships lined one side of the teeming pier, ramshackle commercial establishments the other. Philip took a tight hold on casket and sword, about to descend into the confusion of the quay. A hand gripped his shoulder.

“Lad, do y’know where you’ll be going now?” Captain Caleb’s face was patterned by changing light and shadow as men aloft furled sails between the deck and the sun.

Philip shook his head. “No, sir.”

Caleb rolled his tongue in his cheek thoughtfully. “Might have been better after all had you bound yourself to me. With no certain destination—”

“Captain, that makes the possibilities all the more numerous and excit—” He flushed and, despite his best efforts, couldn’t conceal a little anger in his voice: “You’re laughing at me.”

Caleb nodded, and his smile broadened. “No offense meant, Philip. It’s just that there’s been such a change in you—I’ll be flogged if you aren’t beginning to sound English already. A few months among these folk and they’ll never take you for a Frenchman.”

“Because I’m not,” Philip replied, embarrassed by his display of temper. Buoyed by the noise and spectacle along the pier, he said eagerly, “I’m like you now. A citizen of the Americas.”

“But perhaps we should talk a few minutes about where you could go—

“Thank you, Captain, no. I’ll get along very well.”

“So you’re determined Mr. Philip Kent will be completely his own man?”

“Completely.”

“Although our Mr. Kent is but how old?”

“Strictly speaking, Captain—a couple of days.”

“That’s right. In a new country, the fact that he’s lived eighteen years—”

“Nineteen.”

“—doesn’t count for much. But this might. Our new gentleman of the Americas lacks even a basic knowledge of the town’s geography.”

“I’ll find my way, sir, don’t worry.”

Caleb’s face said he knew further attempts at persuasion were useless. “You’re not only sounding like an Englishman—you’re acting like a hard-headed Yankee! Well—” Caleb held out his dark, weathered hand. “Good luck and Godspeed.”

Trying to ignore the look of concern that came unbidden into the captain’s eyes, Philip shook hands. Then he turned and hurried down the gangway.

Swift movement was necessary. The longer he lingered aboard
Eclipse,
the more he would be forced to acknowledge that Caleb spoke the truth. He was absolutely alone, with no experience to guide him.

But then he reminded himself that, night before last, he’d vowed to turn his solitary condition from a disadvantage to an opportunity to begin anew. Risks and all. So be it. He
was
nineteen years old, and strong, and feeling fit. The sun warmed the back of his neck pleasantly as he pushed and shoved his way up Long Wharf, his entire store of worldly possessions tucked under his arms. Beneath the soles of his boots, the rickety boards that represented his new-found home felt more reassuringly solid every moment.

ii

But by nightfall, he began to think that heeding Captain Caleb’s suggestion might have been prudent.

The onslaught of hunger sent him scavenging through a litter heap behind a waterfront tavern. He discovered half a dozen oyster shells, each with a tiny bit of meat clinging to the inside. Scraped loose carefully with his grimy fingernail, the gobbets of oyster served as his first sumptuous meal in his new country.
An event to remember,
he thought ruefully as he pocketed one of the shells and stole away from the crowded tavern.

He trudged down an alleyway hot with twilight shadow.
Oysters from a garbage pile. Something to remember indeed, when I’ve my own house one day, and silver for fifty guests

and a mantel over which I can hammer pegs to hold Gil’s sword in a place of honor.

The shining vision soon produced negative ones. Bitter memories of the past flooded his mind. Images of Marie, Roger Amberly, the murderous one-eyed man, Alicia. He put them aside as best he could, while thunder rolled over the lamp-lit town. A summer rainstorm was brewing in black clouds that massed above the chimney pots in the northeast.

Not knowing the name of a single thoroughfare or what his position was in relation to the place he’d landed that morning, Philip Kent slept the night in a haystack.

He found the haystack in the tiny yard behind a home on one of Boston’s winding streets. On the other side of the warm, fragrant hay, penned pigs squealed miserably in the downpour. He burrowed deep into the stack, one hand curled around the oyster shell he’d kept from the litter heap. He’d discovered the shell had a sharp edge. Almost as keen as that of a knife. A handy weapon, especially for a stranger in a new city—

He awoke well before dawn. He was thoroughly soaked and shaking with the start of a fever.

iii

By midmorning he found his way back to Long Wharf. He had made up his mind to admit his error of launching out hastily on his own, and he planned to seek words of counsel from Captain Caleb.

But the few sailors left aboard
Eclipse
reported that the ship’s master had already issued instructions about disposition of the cargo to the mate, Soaper, and departed for his mother’s home in Maine.

Grumbling Gropius, looking more than a little hung over from his first night on shore, gave Philip a hunk of weevil-infested bread and a cup of rum before the latter once more turned his unsteady step up the wharf to the town.

He studied passing faces. Some were coarse, some prosperous-looking. Some appeared beneath tricornered military hats. But soon, all began to blur in front of his feverish eyes.

His forehead streamed with sweat. His rain-dampened clothes clung to his body, smelling sour. But he kept on—

And trudged Boston for two days and two nights.

He stole garbage where he could; slept where he could; and, despite the illness that left him weak and short of breath, managed to fix a fair approximation of Boston’s geography in his head.

At one taproom where he inquired for work, any kind of work, only to be turned down by the landlord’s obese, mustached daughter, he paused long enough to ask about the size of the city.

The fat girl picked something out of her hair and regarded it with curiosity as she said, “Why, the
Gazette
reports we’re fifteen thousand souls now. Too damned many of ’em lobsterbacks.”

“Lobster what?”

“Redcoats. British soldiers.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Funny question for you to ask. ’Specially when you want work one minute and look ready to faint away the next. Where do you hail from? You’ve an odd way of speaking. Like a French mounseer who came here once—”

Too tired to engage in explanations, Philip left.

As he wandered, he began to be more conscious of those lobsterbacks she’d referred to. King George’s soldiers wore splendid scarlet coats and white or fawn trousers. Each coat had its own distinctive color for lapel facings and cuffs—buff and yellow and blue and many more.

He’d noticed the soldiers before, of course. But paying closer attention, he saw how some of them moved along the streets with a certain air of authority that drew glares and snide remarks from many an ordinary citizen—although other Bostonians, usually better-dressed ones, treated the troops with politeness, even cordiality.

And the troops were everywhere, from the elm-dotted greensward of an open area identified to him as the Common, to the shade of a huge old oak tree, the largest of several in Hanover Square, where he watched a group of officers rip down some announcement nailed to the trunk. He saw redcoats from the North End to the double-arched town gate leading to the Neck.

The Neck was a long, narrow strip of land connecting the city with the countryside around it. It was no more than yards across at its narrowest point just outside the imposing brick gate. With the Dorchester Heights across the water to the east and the Charles River on the west, Boston resembled a sort of swollen thumb stuck up from the mainland—and linked to it only by the Neck.

The city’s tolling church bells reminded Philip of London. But Boston had its own bustling style and distinct aromas. Predominantly fishy. But spiced by the pigs and cows kept in those small back yards, by rum distilleries and reeking outhouses and, near the waterfront, by shipyards and ropewalks that smelled fiercely of pitch.

Ill, Philip lost track of the days. Perhaps two more went by. Perhaps three. He grew filthy and hungry beyond belief. As a result, he found himself more and more the object of suspicious stares from well-dressed pedestrians and gentry on horseback. His inquiries about work—here at a smokehouse, there at a brewery—brought replies that were increasingly curt as his physical appearance worsened. His eyes took on the slightly unfocused glare typical of fever, which didn’t help his cause either.

Other books

Underwater by Maayan Nahmani
Jacked by Kirk Dougal
Sicilian Dreams by J. P. Kennedy
Hook 'Em Snotty by Gary Paulsen
Sunshine and Shadows by Pamela Browning
Eating Stone by Ellen Meloy
Wild by Lincoln Crisler