Bitter Eden (57 page)

"Yes, ma'am."

"You have one hour. That is precise. Should you be so much as one minute late, I shall consider that gross disobedience. I needn't tell you the consequence."

"No, ma'am. I know it well," he said quietly.

"Then as a guide to what you can expect, think in terms of twenty lashes for every minute's tardiness."

He went elatedly bewildered to complete building her fence. He was trained and like all good dogs had been rewarded. Her mention of the lashes had little meaning to him. He had been threatened too often to pay attention until he was actually on the triangles. He thought only of Rebecca and the self-assured way she assumed he was a brute with intelligence, as she said it. In a sense he admired it in her. At least she was clear in her thoughts; she didn't claim to want to rehabilitate him, nor did she feel called upon by some version of God to convert him to her brand of Christianity. He was her faithful dog and she would treat him accordingly.

On Saturday he struggled with the apprehensions of having to go to the business section of Hobart. Everything was strange to him, but by the time three quarters of his hour had passed, he knew which tavern Tom Baker frequented, and that he was due in port soon.

He returned to Rebecca's house, presenting himself to her at the precise time she'd designated.

Rebecca was delighted. In her eyes Peter had come to heel without a lead. She had given him rum; she had kept him from it. Drunk or sober, free or confined, he obeyed. The man had not appeared, even under the influence of drink or the temptations of

freedom. She knew what she possessed was an intelligent beast to work, watch, or serve for her on command.

Confident, she gave him more freedom. The door to his room was no longer locked, although he was to stay within its confines except when she designated. While she was at school in the mornings, he was given a list of jobs. She left him free to do them.

By the time Tom Baker arrived, Peter was sure, he'd be able to meet him.

Chapter 39

Tom Baker brought his Hudson Lady up the Derwent for re-rigging as he always did before making his return voyage. This had been a disappointing trip. It would not be profitable, and Tom worried about it to the point of considering giving up whaling. He had had too many unprofitable trips of late.

There was a time, not so many years ago, when he netted forty to fifty thousand dollars with the sale of sperm and whale oil. With the going market price of sixty-five and a half cents per pound for sperm and thirty-nine cents a gallon for whale oil, he needed no more than an average catch to make money on the voyage. But he entered Van Diemen's Land with only fifty barrels of sperm and nine hundred barrels of whale oil. He'd barely be able to pay off his men. He spat disgustedly. They were hardly worth their pay.

The worse his luck ran, the harder it was to get seamen worth the space they took aboard ship. Almost all his men were ignorant of the sea, which wasn't unusual on a whaler, but these were scrapings of the barrel. He'd had to wet-nurse them all the way. A

couple more trips like this and he'd be out of the whaling business anyway.

Hudson Lady needed work, and Tom's equipment was old, some of it needing to be replaced. He hadn't any idea where he'd get the money, nor did he know where he'd find the means to pay the mortgage on the ship. He was glum and preoccupied when he entered the Bowsprit Tavern.

He greeted old friends, then retreated to a corner table to mull over his plight. He ordered ale, looking up to exchange pleasantries as the owner carried his mug to the table, bringing a mug for himself. The tavern owner sat down; then, without beginning their usual bantering gossip, he leaned close to Tom, speaking in a low rasp. It was unexpected, but not surprising, when the man told him Peter Berean had been in looking for him.

For the next three nights Tom came to the Bowsprit to sit and wait and hope that Peter would return. Stephen's words, "I'll pay anything . . ." kept turning over in his mind. It could be the answer to all his problems. And bringing Peter home sooner than Stephen expected should be worth a little extra.

He was impatient and more than a little worried. One never knew when a convict would be free to move about without his master looking over his shoulder. Saturday night was the usual time for convicts to be given free hours, but that was not always the case. Tom estimated he could put off his leavetaking for two more days at most.

It was with the greatest exercise of control that Tom didn't get to his feet to greet the tall blond man who furtively entered the tavern and sidled along the wall, his eyes darting nervously over the occupants Tom remained seated, forcing himself to lean bad and look relaxed and commanding.

Peter methodically made his way to the back where Tom sat. The whaler studied him. Tom had recognized him the moment he had walked in. He was of a height with Stephen, and while their coloring was different, the markings of brothers were strong. Both men boasted the same high cheekbones, the strong jaw, the mouth given to sensitivity, the indelible stamps of a single family. Beyond that Tom saw no similarity. Instinctively Tom's hackles raised. Before he'd even met him, he didn't like Peter Berean. He had the stink of a convict, and Tom did not like the convicts. There was something not quite human about them. He finally made a motion with his hand, drawing Peter's attention.

Tom gave him no help, but made Peter stumble through his request to return home on Tom's ship. He eyed Tom suspiciously, not truly certain he spoke to the right man, and knowing what it would mean to him if this conversation were ever repeated to Rebecca or the commandant.

Tom sat back, enjoying Peter s discomfort. Occasionally he shot a stream of tobacco juice in the general direction of the spittoon. He couldn't think of a single reason why Stephen should want this man freed. While he admitted that in his way Stephen had an engagingly honest way of speaking, Peter was tightly restrained and suspicious. His eyes never once met Tom's directly, and Tom had never met an honest man afraid to look him in the eye. There was no trace of the man Stephen and Jack had described to him in Poughkeepsie.

Curtly, Peter asked, "When does the ship leave?"

Tom laughed through his nose. The bastard was a convict down to his bones. Tom could smell it in the fear on his sweat, feel it in the cold impersonal way Peter talked, hear it in the nervous quaver in his

voice. It eased his conscience about taking Stephen for more money than the trip was worth. This man would be a bundle of trouble to take back to New York.

Tom's jaw set hard; his eyes narrowed. There were no two ways about it: he didn't like convicts. Most of them deserved every bit of time they served. He didn't doubt this was true of Peter Berean. If he didn't need the money so damned bad, he'd leave the bastard to rot here where he belonged. His neighbors wouldn't thank him for bringing a murderer home to live right there on the Hudson. But he needed that money. "Be here at ten sharp Tuesday night," Tom finally said. "I'll take you to the ship. You're late and we sail without you."

• Peter nodded with a taut jerk of his head. "I'll be here."

"See you are. To my thinkin' you belong right where you are. I'll be plain spoken, Berean. I don't like the stink o' you. I'm doin' this for your brother. But don't get it in your head that I'm runnin' a cruise ship for you. You'll obey the rules of my ship—no brawlin', no drunkenness, and you'll work alongside of my crew."

Peter's response was another tight jerk of his head. Nervously he asked the time, then stood abruptly and left the tavern. He ran the distance to Rebecca's house seconds before he was*due in. She was waiting at the front door for him. "You're out of breath!"

"Yes, ma'am ... I didn't want to be late. I'm sorry."

"Then you were careless. Yv$ warned you such behavior will not be tolerated. Leave yourself time to get back here in orderly fashion. I won't have a convict of mine seen running through the streets! Did you

think you'd get away with it! Don't you know I learn of everything you do?"

She locked the door to his room that night and handed him the slip of paper he would take to the commandant the following morning for the customary disciplinary flogging. He thought he'd go mad. He stared at the door for hours on end calculating his chances of breaking through it quickly enough so Rebecca could not get help to stop him. The thickness of the door grew as the night hours waned, and the escape that was so near at hand began to slip away like all the things he believed in and dared to place hope in.

He moved to the corner of the room, enclosing himself between the two wooden walls. With the promise of release as near as the tavern, and Peter blocked from it by the cruel turn of a key in a locked door, he again longed for it all to end. It was not that he should die, but that the unendurable should cease.

Peter returned from the triangles late the next morning. As usual Rebecca seemed pleased. She gave him another one of her lectures, accepted his apology with a noncommittal face, and told him she had committed him to work that day on the penitentiary stone pile, which meant he would spend the day in chains breaking large pieces of stone into smaller pieces while standing in the hot sun. However, when he was told to go to his room that night, she left the door unlocked. At first Peter didn't believe it. He thought it just another of those phantoms of hope that drew him out only to crush him again. Then he cried, praying that it would be unlocked the following night as well. What good would it do for a door to be unlocked to him on a Monday if it were barred on the all-important Tuesday? It was with a deep bitter agony that he found himself compelled to hope that the door

would be open to him, while all his experience in prison made a cold despairing mockery of the naivete of belief in escape.

Tuesday night, just before he was to meet Tom, he tested the door. It was unlocked, and he slipped out of his room. He walked quietly through the kitchen into the main room of the house. Rebecca looked up from the copy book she held in her lap. Peter froze.

"You dare come out of your room!? Where do you think you're going? One trip to the triangles in a week isn't sufBcierft for you, Berean?" she said as she got up, striding angrily toward him. "Get backl I'll have you back in irons tomorrow!"

Peter stared at the front door not four yards from where he stood.

"Get back in there!" Rebecca commanded.

He glanced down at her, hardly aware of who she was. She was between him and the door, screaming commands that he had always obeyed mindlessly because she'd owned him. She flapped at him with the copy book, trying to back him into his room. The key hung on a chain at her waist. When the book proved ineffectual, she dropped it, standing back fearlessly as she studied the dazed, desperate look on Peter's face.

"What have you been drinking? Where'd you get it?"

Peter stared without seeing her.

She drew back her arm, her hand swinging full force as she slapped him. He grabbed her hand as she reached back to hit him again. Anger flowed from deep inside; his dark brown eyes burned like hot coals in his drawn face. "Damn you!" He pushed her back as he moved toward the door.

"You're out of your mind!"

His laughter was a hard brittle sound. "Even dogs turn, ma'am."

Rebecca stepped away from him, reappraising, feel-

ing both a sense of fear and the elated need to fight him until he was controlled. She glanced around, and finding no substantial weapon, she picked up the fire poker. Her eyes, bright with excitement, never left Peter as she stepped slowly to the side. Her lips drew back in a silent grimace. Gripping the poker with both hands, Rebecca lunged forward, thrusting it at him. She backed him toward his room. She began to laugh as he retreated through the kitchen. Awkwardly he dodged the poker, taking backward steps until he stood in the doorway to his room. The chain of keys at her waist jangled as she fumbled for the key to his room.

The front door was so close.

Rebecca found the key.

"No!" he said harshly. Tm leaving here. Let me go!"

She laughed, sure of herself. "You're going into that room. Move back and do it now. I'll see to you tomorrow. This is a night you'll never forget!"

He put his hand on the door, holding it flat against the wall. "Move out of my way."

She aimed the poker at his head. Peter blocked the blow, grabbing hold of Rebecca at the same time. He threw her sprawling onto the kitchen floor, then ran for the door.

Rebecca got to her feet. "You damned animal!" she cried, running after him and bringing the poker down across his unhealed back. He spun around grunting in pain, his hands reaching for his back. She came at him again, the poker glancing off his shoulder. He hit her with his upraised forearm as he whirled to avoid the next blow. Rebecca let out a terrible strangled cry and lay still on the floor. Peter went out the front door, running through the streets toward the tavern.

He was late.

Tom was gone.

Everyone in the tavern knew Peter meant trouble. He was wild-eyed, frantic in his insistence that Tom had to be there. One of the settlers tried to calm him by offering a glass of rum. Foolishly, he cajoled Peter, insistently thrusting the glass into his face. Peter grabbed the glass from the mans hand, its contents spewing over them both. He hurled the glass, shattering it against the wall; then, shoving the man into the table, he raced back into the night again. *

Tom's ship had just pulled free of its moorings. Peter ran down the street and along the quay. Alerted by the men in the tavern, guards appeared from everywhere. Peter dodged in and out among the packing crates and barrels. Warning shots were fired. Then, exposed to sight, Peter stepped up to the side of the dock. The guards shouted at him. He turned to stare at them, their guns leveled and ready. He looked back to the river, hesitating as he stared down into the dark rushing water that terrified him. Then he flung himself into its icy, rock-strewn depths.

Tom and the first mate of die Hudson Lady stood at the stern watching with interest the commotion on the dock. "Holy Jesus, it must be Berean. Crazy bastard. He'll never make it."