Brookland (44 page)

Abiah had packed a plentiful lunch of bread, cheese, ham, and a purple-stained cloth full of blueberries, which Prue placed on the barrel to keep its juice off her dress. She could not remember a meal that had tasted so delicious, and she wondered if this was because they were out on the water. As she ate, she thought of her father, eating whatever sailors ate at sea—oatmeal and stale biscuits, she supposed. Ben had fresh water in his leather wineskin, warm from the sun and faintly tinged with grape.

“Perhaps we might skip Albany,” Prue said to him, “and keep on the boat a week or two.”

“You've caught it of me,” he said. “The
wanderlust
.”

Prue slapped at his leg, and Pearl wrote, O! O!
Not Dom
^ne
Syrtis!

“I believe I caught it of my father,” Prue told him. “He was a merchant sailor, before any of us was born.”

Ben nodded. “I always had an inkling of that, with him.” He squinted at Prue in the noonday light and added, “Mine was born and died in Brookland. I wonder if I'll do the same.”

'Tis not the same if you wander off North
^wds
& return with a coon Cap
, Pearl wrote.

“No, I suppose not,” he said. “But it's hardly a life of adventure to measure Mr. Whitcombe's holdings so he can build for a new tenant.”

“If we succeed,” Prue said, “we shall need someone to oversee the daily works of the bridge, you know”

“Is that an invitation?” he asked.

Prue shrugged her shoulders, constricted in the bothersome dress.
“Someone needs to see the voussoirs are built according to plan. I shall do as much as I can, but will perforce wish to keep a hand in the distillery, too.”

Ben walked to the other side of the boat and back. “Prudence Winship, do you offer me employ?”

She couldn't tell if laughter lurked behind his sTem expression, though it often did. “If you'll take it.”

A smile did emerge, as if through a scrim of clouds. “Well, dammit, you're a bit late, woman,” he said, and walked off toward the bow.

Pearl's narrow face sparkled with curiosity, but she did not inquire.

“Hush,” Prue said to her. To Ben she called out, “We cannot have a stranger.” There was, she supposed, no guarantee they would need anyone at all.

The river widened just then into a lovely inland sea, with rolling hills to both sides, the trees showing the first faint tinge of yellow though they would not turn in Brooklyn for another few weeks. The water itself took on a bluer cast, and to the west were two pleasure boats, bearing a party in good clothing who seemed out to enjoy the weather.

Ben came back. “The
Tappan Zee
,” he said flatly. “I'll look after your bridgeworks.”

Prue beamed at him. Pearl was watching her with some interest.

“How could I go chasing down property lines while I knew there was a task of such magnitude up the way?” He reached for Prue's hand and stroked the backs of her fingers with his papery thumb. Pearl was no idiot; she obviously knew what was in the air. As Ben sat down beside Prue, he folded her arm into the crook of his own. Pearl had her lips pursed tight, as if it was all she could do to keep herself from inquiring about Ben.

They arrived in Mount Pleasant in good order in the afTemoon. A man representing the local taverns was there with four empty mule carts to sign for the gin; and when this had been accomplished, Ben hired a wagon for the baggage and a boy to keep watch over the model bridge, as it was too large to transport easily from the docks. Ben, Prue, and Pearl walked to the crossroads, where they secured places at the inn. Ben suggested he might leave them in the women's quarters to wash and nap, but Pearl wanted to explore this new town.

“What's t'explore?” Ben asked as the servants carried the boxes upstairs. “You've seen the whole place.”

I've never been so far as Bushwick
, Pearl wrote. So of course they agreed.

They spent the afTemoon as pleasantly as if they'd magically arrived in London or France without the dangers and discomforts of the crossing. Mount Pleasant may have been little more than a port, but the houses were built of fieldstone, and Pearl and Prue delighted to compare them with those at home. If the women of the town wore wide skirts such as had not been seen in Brooklyn in a decade, these had since become a marvel to look upon. Mrs. Andressen, the wife of the inn's owner, was as friendly as Mrs. Loosely, and Prue suddenly understood this was a characteristic an innkeeper sought in a wife, not some happy accident of Annetje Loosely's birth. Mrs. Andressen gave them a fine supper of salmon in pastry accompanied by their local asparagus—nowhere near as good as Brooklyn's, though Prue could not tell her obliging hostess the ghoulish reason why—and her home-brewed ale. Pearl retired early to the bed the sisters would share, but Ben and Prue sat up with Mrs. Andressen, talking of their journey and the personages who passed through her inn.

When it came time to sleep, Ben took a small oil lamp up the pie-shaped steps, and kissed Prue on each cheek before giving her the lamp and retiring to his room, from which a man down on business from Kingston could already be heard snoring. Pearl was asleep, crowding herself up against the wall in the small bed. She had left her note case open on the blanket beside her. Prue placed the smoking lamp on the night-stand and saw her sister had written,
We all know what you do with him, P. Why do'n't you fr Heaven's Sake marry him? It'd be much simpler
.

Prue was startled by this bluntness, and half wanted to awaken Pearl, but could not bring herself to do so when she slept so peacefully. How long had Pearl known, Prue wondered, and how could she be so matter-of-fact in her assessment of the situation? The drawings had shown Prue how incorrectly she'd rated her sister's powers of observation; the note did so again. Prue did not, however, know what to do with this sentiment but to undress, blow out the lamp, and ease herself into bed around her sister, whose hair smelled of the lavender water in which she'd bathed it and the sunshine on the boat. Her words flopped around Prue's mind like so many fish in a bucket; but after what seemed hours of watching the flickering streetlamp cast shadows across the wall, Prue fell asleep.

Pearl must have climbed stealthily over her in the morning, for she
was dressed and writing at the desk when Prue woke. “Good morning,” Prue said.

Pearl rested her pen and leaned over to tap her page from the night before.

Prue had not forgotten about the note all the time she slept. “It's too early for such questions,” she said.

Why not marry 'im? Father'd jump for Happiness in his Grave
.

“I'm not confident of that. And we've been far too busy with the bridge to plan to wed. When we return home, I'm sure. It's more complicated than you know. Besides which, I'm not certain I think any of this your business.”

Why've you snuck round with im all this Time? Nor Tem nor I should have judg'd you harshly, you know. 'Tis only what's natural
.

Prue felt a flare of anger over this. Ben was private—her love for him was private—and she did not want her sister poking at it with words. The bridge was enough to think about at present.

I see I've fluster'dyou
, Pearl wrote. She looked toward the ceiling as if in appeal to Heaven, then turned back to take up her pen.

Her calm piqued Prue even more. “To whom are you writing?” she demanded.

Pearl continued to the end of the page, signed her name with a flourish, blotted it with their father's blotter, its handle shaped like a lion, and folded her letter to seal. Then she scribbled an address on its front. When she'd blotted this, she tucked it into her belt, seal-side out.
I'm going for the Post
, she wrote on her silver pad.
See you at Brekfast
. She went down the steep stairs.

Ben was nearly done eating and Pearl just served by the time Prue could master herself enough to go down. The fellow from Kingston might have snored through the night, but his refreshing slumber gave him a stentorian voice with which to tell Ben about the fishing and hunting in the region. He had great, woolly muttonchop whiskers such as were uncommon in Brooklyn, and Prue took a certain unkind pleasure in watching him chew. Pearl made a favorable impression on him; he gestured toward her with his elbow as he cut his steak, and said to Ben, “Lovely sister you've got, sir.”

Ben smiled and said, “She's not mine, but thank you.”

The fellow shook his head as he chewed, and glanced at both women's hands to determine, Prue supposed, if either of them was Ben's wife. “Is she for sale, then? I've long fancied a wife who wouldn't talk back to me.”

Ben said, “Oh, bless you, but she does talk back,” while Pearl wrote,
Devi11 take you, Sir
, held it up to their companion with her left hand, and continued on with her breakfast. Mr. Kingston kept chewing but blushed into his whiskers and hair. As soon as his plate was clear, he excused himself. Ben reached across the table for Pearl's fork hand. “Minx,” he said, and her fork clattered to her earthen plate. Prue thought,
Indeed
.

They traveled upriver to Saugerties in the company of bolts of muslin much larger than their rolled-up river view. Prue was glad not to be sharing a boat with Mr. Kingston, though sorry not to visit his city. Prue had heard it had been trammeled during the late war, and much besieged by Indians, but rebuilt with vigor. Saugerties also proved to her liking, but it was the river itself enchanted her. She had read, in the travels of Europeans come to view the fledgling American nation, that the beauty of the North River rivaled that of the Rhine; but living, as she did, by the edge of a grubby (if quite useful) tidal straits, she'd always imagined the continentals had inexplicable ideas of the picturesque. Now she saw what had long been obvious to everyone who'd traveled farther than from Red Hook to the Wallabout: that the East River wasn't much to look at. Her cliffs were gray as the underworld; the Hudson's soared up from the valley and were shot through with rust and white. Behind them, to the west, stretched the jagged peaks of the Catskills, whose trees were beginning to turn color. Pearl and Prue stood side by side at the gunwale, not speaking about the topic of interest to both of them, and entranced by the magnificent scenery streaming by. When Prue began to fret either over the magnitude of her errand or about her sister, the beauty around her soothed her spirit.

Prue had known of the brisk whaling trade out of Hudson, but still thought it miraculous to sail up an inland river and spy those great ships, provisioned for a year and more in the one direction, and heavy laden with whale oil in the other. Prue remarked the mighty port as they passed it, but did not then know she would one day wish to have noted it in greater detail.

When they moored at Albany, Prue thought the city looked as if it
had burst forth like a crop of weed. Much of it appeared so recently built the cedar shakes still glowed; but it did have a permanent, roofed market, which promised abundance even when, as on that Wednesday, it sat empty.

“If you require anything,” Ben said as he again oversaw the loading of their possessions onto a wagon, “we'd best fetch it now. The assembly's session begins early in the morning.
Marrons?
Sugared violets?”

Pearl's eyes still went wide as coins for sweets, as they had when she'd been little and had ogled the jars on Mrs. Tilley's counter.
I'd love some Marrons
, she wrote.

Once again Ben arranged a man to guard the model bridge, and to transport it to the Stadt Haus in the morning. He had a preference for a Mrs. Finley's establishment—a private house in which the owner let rooms because she'd been widowed. The place had a cheerful aspect, with rough blue linen curtains blowing through the open windows, and boxes of dark chrysanthemums out front. Mrs. Finley herself leaned out the top of her Dutch door to greet the cart as it arrived. The ribbons hung askew from her cap. “Is't rooms ye'll be wanting?” she asked, as if, Prue thought, they might have come in search of lumber.

“Two, for two nights, Mrs. E,” Ben said as he jumped down from the cart.

“Ah, Mr. Horsfield! Lovely to see you ‘gain,” she said. Her face was broad, and rendered broader by the frill of her cap. She had a comical air, hanging over the door.

“Thank you, Mrs. Finley.”

“An' I see you've brought your, what—your sisters?”

Ben helped them down from the cart. “My future wife, and her sister. Miss Winship and Miss Pearl.”

Mrs. Finley tapped her middle finger against her teeth. Prue thought she looked displeased to find them not his relations. “As in the gin?” she asked.

“We make the gin,” Prue said. “In Brookland. I am Prudence Winship; this is Pearl.”

“Winship Daughters gin, yes,” Mrs. Finley said. Pearl beamed, as if it was delightful to be mistaken for Tem. “Drink it all the time. Never thought there'd be actual daughters behind it, mind.”

“Do you purchase from Elisha Green?” Prue asked. “He is a customer
of long standing. We hope to meet him, if our other business allows.”

“Heavens, yes, Elisha Green. He's on up the road, I can show you the way.”

Ben unpacked Prue's traveling desk in the yard and penned a quick note to Mr. Willemsen to inform him of their arrival and whereabouts. The driver was dispatched with an extra penny in payment for delivering the note.

Mrs. Finley showed Pearl and Prue to a room whose windows were open wide to the breeze and whose plump down quilt was folded back at the foot of the bed. While Ben went out to find the promised sweets, Pearl and Prue unpacked, still not talking about what was between them. Prue was doubly uncomfortable, as she had begun to grow nervous about the presentation before the assembly. On his return, Ben proffered the
marrons
, then led the sisters out for a walk, to see the neat houses with fenced yards. Albany, it seemed, had been built on a plan, unlike Brooklyn, upon whose landscape the homesteads might have been blown in and dropped by violent weather. They found Elisha Green's establishment by happenstance, and stopped in for fish and chips and a sort of gin toddy in which he specialized. Prue thought the sun tarried longer in the sky than it did in Brooklyn, though she knew this was more the product of her leisure to look upward than the truth.