The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel (14 page)

“Are you scared of the open sound, miss?” In the breeze, his white beard tosses like puffs of cotton grass.

She smiles and shakes her head. “Not with you beside me.”

In his role as gallant, the oysterman has avoided the hard work of rowing. The younger men in the boat take the oars and head south to the inlet where the ships are still and waiting. The sun hovers directly above them. Helen should’ve sent word to Mrs. Randolph so she wouldn’t keep dinner waiting, but thoughtlessness is an adventure in itself. She buries her guilt beneath her fear of the ocean. The oysterman tells her stories of merhorses and Rahabs, and by the time they pull along the larger ships, her stomach is sore from laughing. A man throws a ladder down for them to climb, and the younger men go first to help guide the sailors to shore. Helen is reaching for the rope when she hears shouts on deck.

She pauses, but there’s nowhere for her to go. She is on a small boat in the sound with one hand on a rope ladder. The faces of two men appear over the side of the ship. After a brief look of confusion, they yell at her to board. She looks back at the oysterman, who is rubbing his hands across his shirt and shaking his head at her. Looking up again, she sees that one of the men is now pointing a musket at her. Where is John? Have they locked him up? The climb up the ladder is as undignified and brave an act as she has ever done, and she experiences it at the speed of syrup. The rope in her hands is bristly and warm, and the water that rocks up the side of the ship wets her ankles. Voices come at her from above and below. None of them are pleased. She is conscious of the wind sifting through her skirts, and the old man still left in the boat who will be able to see her legs. Halfway up, the fear blossoms into anticipation; if this is John’s boat, John who was once a privateer, of course there would be men with guns. This is nothing but a theatrical gesture of his attachment. The hope lasts only a rung, and then she wishes she had brought pen and paper to bid her father farewell. She can read the name on the ship’s prow, the
Peacock
, and decides this is not a dangerous name. At the very least, this is not a Spanish ship. The hull above water looks parched, stripped of paint. There are too many birds circling the ships, as though the sailors had been throwing out their bad meat, sure now of fresh provisions. They are still at war; of course. She reaches one arm over the edge of the deck, and a young man in red offers her his hand. She accepts, as demurely as she would at a dance, and she is heaved on board and ushered at gunpoint to the main mast, where her companions are being tied hand and foot with ropes.

B
y all accounts, the war is over. The British lost at Yorktown in the fall. There have been skirmishes in the Caribbean, where it is still warm enough to spark men’s blood, but on the continent the winter has cooled the armies’ spirits. Only the Indians continue to fight. Generals are talking to generals, and accords are being drafted. King George’s party has been replaced in Parliament, and everyone is for peace, from the mothers to the sons. The Americans are already looking hungrily westward. Grass is starting to grow over the graves of men who went to war and never returned.

In the General Assembly, Asa listens to the other representatives discuss plans for their districts: monuments, a local postal service, canals. Some are nervous about the loss of Britain’s oversight and hope for a muscular constitution; others are glad to begin governance with no long history to cloud the country’s logic. They will sit down and decide what must be true and leave out the rest, simple. Asa is lost in daydreams.

He has never had much to fear from a war. The worst danger he ever faced was as a boy, just sixteen; a fleet of Spanish privateers landed in Beaufort’s harbor and spent a summer stealing boats and raiding the town. For several years, the Spanish had been using Cape Lookout as a base to raid passing ships. The town built a magazine in case of attack and filled it with powder and shot. In the summer, boys at play took turns guarding it. But in 1747, after the Spanish had emptied the harbor of Beaufort’s fishing fleet and come back again for its silver and the fresh meat from cattle and pigs that could not be gotten at sea, the magazine became necessary. As soon as it was necessary, it was captured.

Asa is old enough now to remember that summer only in patches. He must have been afraid, but he can only recall excitement. Major Ward, who was then very young and brave, called the soldiers and the farmers and the blacksmiths to arms; a hundred of them fought the Spanish back to their ships, killing a handful and, uncertain what to do with the bodies, burying them with some measure of respect in the town cemetery, for they were Christian after all. Afterward the governor gave them money to build a fort on Bogue Island, which they started and never finished, because there had been peace ever since.

Had Asa carried a gun? No, and though he’s listened to the stories of men who shot at the rumps of the retreating Spanish, he hasn’t felt the heft of a weapon in his own hand. Not when a weapon was needed, at least. He isn’t jealous of those farmers who chased the Spanish pirates out of their harbor, nor does he wish to carry a gun in the current fight. He has chosen to build things, to piece together opportunities that jumble in the wake of wars, and to nurture a family that will outlast any glory of his own. He must have been afraid when the Spanish landed. But his father forbade him to join the farmers and his mother kept him away from the shore, so now he doesn’t remember the fear. This is what parents do: shape the emotions that will color memory.

Now he is no longer a young man. His daughter is grown and wise, and she is entering a peaceful world. The legislators drone on. Asa takes pride in his role as public servant. He is pulling order from chaos, and when he returns to Beaufort, he will take credit for his daughter’s fearless eyes. When he dies, she too will remember him as a faint but pleasant echo. He might even let her convince him of heaven. The war has ended, and the General Assembly is enjoying the warmth of April in Hillsborough.

But the British are not done fighting.

A courier arrives in the encampment at New Bern with a letter detailing the British treachery in Beaufort. Colonel Easton asks him how much time has passed, and the man looks at the star-speckled sky and says, “Some hours.” The men are on their feet, pulling coats on and tying powder horns to musket straps. With an advance of cavalry and the rest scrambling horses and carts from the town, they will arrive in stages during the night. Easton tells them the British have blocked the port and prisoners have been taken. They will advance from the north and gather on the outskirts of town for orders. John understands that Easton is buying time. His own mind tumbles over itself. There are paths leading north and west from Long Ridge; Moll will know them, can take them to safety. Moll, who may or may not love her mistress. He has not seen Beaufort in nearly two years, years that have been lost to petty battles and days of marching. Since being stationed in New Bern, he has nightly imagined his escape, the road that would carry him south through the marshes to Beaufort and Helen. Two years have never passed so slowly. And now, when he and the army are on her very doorstep, she’s in danger.

The night tunnels on. His borrowed horse is a plow-puller and sweats and heaves when asked to gallop. John slows him through the thicker forests, lets him drink at creeks, and then kicks him on the marshes, where he will pick up the scent of two dozen other panting horses. He has not had a letter from her since the fall, and then the writing was so small and cramped that he could not make out half the words. She told him endlessly of farming chores, of how the resin runs in warm weather and starts to thicken and halt with the frost. He skimmed the pages first, looking for softer words, before giving up and starting from the beginning, picking out the names of weeds and slaves. William Dennis may have been able to help, having had the same teacher guide his writing hand, but John could not appeal to his knowledge of Miss Kingston and the way she looped a long
S
. And yet the letter with instructions on sap farming is growing thin in his breast pocket and he has not begun to feel fear on his own behalf.

He can see the thinning trees on the outskirts of town. They make skeleton shapes in the blackness of midnight. Easton is standing beside his horse and a few men are pouring water from their canteens for their mounts, whose mouths are gray with foam. John’s horse trembles, the muscles in his back shivering against John’s legs. The men will first confirm that the town is still in American hands, and then spread out along the coastline to prevent the British from landing. The courier’s letter said they had taken pilots, though of course the pilots could refuse to guide them in. John considers the fishermen he knows in Beaufort.

John asks for the eastern strip of coast. “Dennis is on that segment,” Easton says. He asks to accompany him, and Easton tells him to sort it amongst themselves. The advance messenger returns with a report from the councilmen, who have gathered in the town hall and are drafting different versions of panic.

“The British are still on the ships, sir. They’re in the inlet beyond Bird Island Shoal.”

“The prisoners?”

The messenger looks at the piece of paper in his fist. “They haven’t confirmed the names. For some of the wives, a man’s absence isn’t so odd, so none are willing to say one way or the other. At least two boats of fishermen. One said he saw a woman go with them.”

“The British don’t take female prisoners,” Easton says.

“They wouldn’t have known she was coming, sir.”

John and William walk their horses into town, where windows are lit and faces shift behind curtains. The masts of the ships jut from the horizon like dead stalks, the sails wilting around them, breathing in the night wind. Even the gulls are quiet.

“She wouldn’t have any reason to be by the docks,” William says.

John rubs the reins in his hand. A few men, unarmed, have gathered on Front Street to watch the ships. The two soldiers turn left along the water and head for the turpentine plantation.

“Her father would have told the councilmen. They would already know she was missing. It must be one of the pilots’ wives.” William mounts his horse. “I’ll ride ahead.”

What can John do but let him go? His heart is yearning out of his chest, is as hungry for her as a magnet for its pole. His claim on her, unlike William’s, is unspoken. They have promised nothing, and what else can feed affection? He sees her hands reaching, in the darkness of fear, for William Dennis. Her palm on his cheek, the tips of her fingers curling his hair.

John’s horse stops by a clump of cordgrass. In the quiet just before dawn, the horse’s teeth against the grass sound like an army marching. John sits on the curb of the road with the reins loose in his hand. Around him, the sky dips into a final blackness before the violet bleeds through. He is still sitting there when William Dennis rides up from the east, his knees digging into the side of his mount even after he has pulled it to a halt.

“There’s no one at the house.” The horse frets beneath him. “No one there.”

“Did you find Moll?”

“Moll? There’s no one at her house.”

John climbs back on his horse and jerks its head toward the road. He rides to Mrs. Randolph’s without telling William where he’s going, without asking himself what her absence means. His only thought is for the time passing.

Mrs. Randolph hasn’t seen her, will ask Moll, the father is traveling. The ships have not moved in the harbor. Two of her children are in the front room crying. Their hearth has only embers.

Mrs. Randolph is pressing bread into the soldiers’ hands when they hear the musket fire from the shore. The men mount their horses outside but are stopped by another soldier riding north.

“They’ve snuck ashore in rowboats,” he says. “We’re pulling back to where we first gathered.” Another round of shots.

“The prisoners?” William asks.

“On the ships, or dead. We’re pulling back. They came in by the marsh just east of town. Wasn’t a soul to stop them. Easton’s calling for reinforcements from New Bern, though they couldn’t get here till afternoon.”

“So we’re leaving the citizens without defense?” John should have been patrolling the eastern shore.

“They’re not after folk here. Just the port. Cut supplies off to men inland. They’ve held Charles Town for two years, and they’re not stringing ladies up.” The man canters ahead and then wheels his horse around. “But they’ll shoot us dead on sight.”

In their first encampment, in the stand of skeletal pines just north of town, Easton has a map out on the ground. The penciled image of Beaufort—the order of the town grid surrounded by the undulations of bog and swamp and sound—is lit by a soldier’s lantern. The colonel circles the town battery, a line of four six-pounder cannon pointing out to sea, and the magazine, which houses a barrel of powder and a few extra guns. Hardly worth a siege, but they are the only clear things that require defending. Easton guesses that the battery is already in British hands, so he orders six men to the magazine before the British find it, and another two men to ride to New Bern and ask for troops from the west. These games seem absurd when the British have mostly been vanquished. The most the colonel can do is prevent the next man’s death. Easton warns his small militia, standing cold in the spring dawn, to study their own preservation. “We will bring the prisoners home,” he says, “but we will not risk any blood beyond what’s demanded.”

Within the walls of the magazine, a brick house no larger than an outbuilding, John sits and studies the barrel of powder. It stands in a shadowed corner of the room. The men have boarded up the one window, so only a few slants of the day’s light reach the floor. When John is not watching the barrel, he wonders why there is a window at all in a powder magazine. It must have been a house first, a one-room house, the house of a bachelor. If Helen were in this room. But there are five other men, shuffling in the tight space, alternating between jovial rudeness and fear. The only softness in the room is the round keg, whose iron hoops curve like women’s ribs.