The Hearth and Eagle (16 page)

“You
coming
to the Inn, tonight?” she asked quickly. She felt herself flush and tried to look indifferent.

The yellow eyes shifted and rested on her. “I might.” He took his boot off the stanchion, and walked up the gangplank onto the
Diana.

Lord, thought Hesper, if he should get wind of anything he’d turn us in sure. For the reward, if not just for deviltry. But Johnnie’ll know what to do.

She gathered her cloak around her and hurried down the wharf and along State Street. The Cubbys’ house was in the middle of the block; she glanced at it and saw a slender black figure standing on the roof behind the railings. The white face was turned towards the sea, and even at that distance gave an impression of stillness and patient waiting. Hesper felt a thrill of horror. Had Leah taken to standing in the “scuttle” again, as she used to, day in, day out during her madness, watching for her drowned husband’s ship? Hesper hurried faster, but the eerie fear subsided before common sense. Leah’s madness was over long ago. Surely she had merely climbed to the scuttle to look for Nat on the wharf so that she might know when he started home.

Hesper turned down Washington Street and now her progress was impeded by traffic on the narrow sidewalk. Old seamen, past sailing, were wandering uptown to bask in the sun on the steps of the Town House, or on chairs outside the firehouses, and shawled women carrying wicker baskets were market bound to the shops around Mechanic Square. Two of these, Mrs. Cloutman and Mrs. Devereux, stopped Hesper to ask her if her ma was going to provide the cakes for the church supper at the Old North on Wednesday.

“I don’t know, I guess so—” said Hesper distractedly. “I’ll remind her.” But the women didn’t yet let her pass. “What you doin’ out o’ school, Hes?” said Mrs. Cloutman, eyeing the girl’s flushed haste.

“Errands for Ma. Going to be terrible busy tonight.”

“Humph,” said Mrs. Cloutman, unsatisfied, but Hes Honeywood wasn’t the kind to be up to mischief. Big homely girl, and a good student at the Academy she knew through her own daughter.

Hesper escaped, but only for a block when Cap’n Knight came bearing down on her. She bobbed her head and stood aside for him to pass, as all children must for a sea captain, but this skipper, whose ship was not sailing for the spring fare, was in no hurry.

“Mar-rnin’, child—” he said. “Be’nt ye Hes Honeywood?” He rested on his briar-thorn stick, his fringe-bearded face turned towards her amiably.

“Yes, sir—” she tried to edge around him but he lifted his stick and held her back. “Gr-reat stroppin’ gur-rl ye’ve gr-rown to. Oi moind when ye was no bigger’n a minnow tumblin’ about the wharves. Ye favor the Dollibers, Oi see, wi’ all thot carrot hair.”

“Yes, sir—” repeated Hesper. “Please, I must be off—”

“Sweethort-rt waitin’ fur ye?—Ye’d best drap hobnails in the tallow pot, n’ see if he loves ye true, lass. Aye, well—shove off if ye must.” The captain lowered his stick. “'Tis a stavin’ spring mar-rnin’. Oi can’t blame ye.”

Oh dear—thought Hesper, hurrying past the Old North and up the hill on Orne Street. It’s getting so late—suppose Johnnie isn’t home any more, suppose he’s gone out in his dory.

The Peach house was set back from the street in the old section of the town called Barnegat, perched on the cliff that overlooked Little Harbor. It was a small house and quite new, being built only thirty years ago, but already its clapboards had weathered to a buff-toned silver like the older houses.

Johnnie’s mother, Tamsen Peach, opened the door to Hesper. Mrs. Peach had a baby at her breast, a weanling tugging on her skirt, and the five-year-old twins scrambled on the rush-strewn kitchen floor behind her. Johnnie was the oldest of nine living children. Not a large family for Marblehead.

“Well, Hessie—” said Mrs. Peach, her kind rosy face breaking into a smile. “ ’Tis donkey’s years sense Oi’ve set eyes on ye. Come in an set. Oi’m bakin’ the sable cake for Johnnie’s sea chest.”

“Where
is
Johnnie—” said Hesper so anxiously that his mother gave her a startled look. “I mean, Ma—” no that wasn’t right, why would Ma summon Johnnie—“I wanted to say good-bye to him,” she finished, lamely, since Johnnie had sailed for many a fare when she hadn’t seen him at all.

A smile twitched at the mother’s mouth. So many girls after Johnnie, and he’d scant use for them.

“Well, ye may, then,” she said. “He’s out back in the shoe shop.”

Hesper thanked her and went outdoors. The Peaches’ shoe shop stood in the back yard between the privy and the shed. It was a small wooden shack lighted by two windows and warmed by a pot-bellied stove, as were all the hundred other backyard shoe shops in Marblehead. Here the men worked during the winters and at other times when they might be in port, skiving and lasting and sewing and finishing shoes for delivery to the manufactories, the uppers having been earlier stitched and bound by the women in their kitchens during moments snatched from cookery and baby care.

Hesper heard the sound of tapping and men’s voices inside, and she hesitated at the door. The shoe shops were male sanctums like ships, where women intruded only with haste and apology. Then she heard Johnnie’s easy laugh, and she knocked.

“Come in, then—” called the gruff voice of Johnnie’s father, Lem.

Hesper opened the door, and paused choked by the thick air. Smoke poured from the cracks of the pot-bellied stove where they were burning scraps of shoe leather, and it poured too from the four men’s white clay pipes. The warming glue pot on the stove exhaled its own stench, and the visible air that swirled around the three cordwainers’ heads was white with chalk dust.

“Why ’tis Hessie Honeywood—” said Johnnie, who had been lounging on a stool, smoking and reading the
Essex County Gazette
to the shoemakers.

Lem Peach looked up from his last. “Well—come in, gur-rl, an’ shet the door, ye’re makin’ a domned draft.” He coughed long and hard, ejecting the blood-specked spittle against the stove. His face was pinched and his thin shoulders were peaked in the shoemakers’ stoop.

“Will ye set down?” said Johnnie, laughing a little, and pointing to the stool he had vacated. “It’s rare we have a visit from a lady.”

Hesper smiled timidly and shook her head, her heart beat fast as it always did at the sight of Johnnie—his close cropped dark hair, the thick muscles of his neck rising careless and easy from the open red flannel shirt, and his blunt white teeth grinning at her.

She glanced at Lem Peach, hunched on the cobbler’s bench, and at the other two cordwainers, Barnegat men whom she did not know. “Might I speak with you a bit—” she said to Johnnie—“Are you busy?”

His father snorted. “He’s not that! He’s no hand for shoemakin’, gr-reat clumsy loon. He’s good for naught but the sea.” Lem drew his sparse brows into a scowl, but a baby would have heard the pride in his voice. “Afor-re ye go out, Johnnie—hand me me long-stick and a cup o’ grog. Can’t stop work for a minute if we’re to deliver all these pairs to Porterman’s on time.” He took a pull from the tin cup of grog and handed it to the man on the next bench. “I mislike that Porterman,” he added gloomily—“hulkin’ penny-pinchin’ furriner from Danvers, nor do I like his foreman neither, ever a-huffin’ and a-dingin’ at us to horry up with the consignment. We be free men here in Marblehead, not nigger slaves.”

“Right you are, Pa—” said Johnnie, puffing on his pipe. “Don’t you let ’em boss you, cordwainers’ve always been their own masters, slow or fast as they willed, and where’d the manufacturers be without you—tell me that?”

The three men grunted, Lem coughed, polishing a gleaming chalk-white sole with his mahogany long-stick. “And the bostard talks of lower wages too. As it is, we barely keep body and soul together at three dollars the case.” He picked up a pigskin bristle and waxed his thread.

“Johnnie—” whispered Hesper, fearing this talk of prices and Porterman, whoever he might be, might go on forever.

“Oh aye, aye, lass,” said Johnnie kindly, putting his pipe in his pocket. “Mustn’t keep a lady waitin’.” He made a bow, and stood aside for her to precede him into the sunlight.

“Well, Hes—what’s on your mind?” He glanced with amusement at her worried face and twitched the long auburn pigtail that swung down her back. “You been filchin’ your ma’s pasties again? Or come to think on it, why be’nt you in school? ’Tis very wrong to play hookey.”

“Oh, Johnnie, I’m not. I’m not a child any more. It’s a grave matter. We mustn’t be overheard.”

He chuckled. “You don’t say. Well, come up Burial Hill then, the gravestones’ll not listen.”

He shambled along beside her but his rolling seaman’s gait was fast, and long as her legs were she had to trot to keep up with him. Much courting took place at night on Burial Hill among the old graves, and more than courting too, but this April morning there was no one in sight.

They climbed the sharp hill to the highest spot by the Seaman’s monument. It commemorated many a drowned seaman, and Johnnie’s uncle and Hesper’s two brothers among them, but neither of the young people glanced at it. Johnnie, squinting out to sea, immediately forgot Hesper. There was one of the new clipper ships beating to windward off Little Misery, Salem bound, she’d be. He shaded his eyes with his hand until he was sure of her. She was the
Flying Cloud,
for he saw the angel figurehead plain under the bowsprit. Then her master’d be Cap’n Josh Cressy of Marblehead. A pretty enough craft but over-flimsy and tender, a toy for feverish transporting of landlubbers. She’d never stand up in even a half-gale off the Banks, he thought, jealous for the old
Diana
whose masts he could see swaying gently above the shed on Appleton’s Wharf in the harbor below.

“Johnnie—” cried Hesper tugging at his arm. "
Please
listen to me.”

He lowered his head, and patted the hand on his arm. “Sorry, Hes. Out with it.” He threw himself down on the bank, and pulling a grass blade began to chew.

“Johnnie, you
are
abolitionist, aren’t you?” she cried, abandoning all subtle approaches.

He sat up straight, his indulgent gaze sharpened to surprise. “I am. You’ve not got me out here to start political argument?”

“No, but Ma wants your help, tonight. There’s two—two packages being delivered at the Inn, and we’ve to hide them.”

He stared at her and gave a long whistle. “The Underground?” She nodded and he drew his brows together. “Where are they to go, after?”

“Canada. There’s to be a brig off Cat Island, waiting. Lucky it’s the dark of the moon.”

“To be sure. They’re allowin’ for that. They always plan well.”

“Then you’ve done this before?”

He smiled and spat on the grass. “It’s often best not to question if you don’t want to hear lies. Now tell me all you know about this thing.”

“I know
all
about it—” she said hotly. “Ma and I are doing it together. Pa wouldn’t.”

“So? Well, get on with it.”

She had his full attention at last, and he listened gravely, nodding sometimes as she told all that had happened that morning, and her mother’s plans. “But—” she added as she finished the account, “I’m afeared of Nat Cubby, he’ll be at the Inn tonight.”

“Oh, he’s all right,” Johnnie said. But he wasn’t so sure. There wasn’t the old free understanding between them. Nat was a bit like a cat, you never knew which way he’d jump, except it’d be to his own advantage. But Nat was smart at anything he’d turn his hand to. Johnnie didn’t begrudge him the mate’s berth, he’d worked hard for it, he’d be a good mate, maybe, if he didn’t get one of his savage vindictive notions when no man could make him see reason. “All the same—” he said out loud, “ ’twould be best he knew nothing of this matter tonight. Run along Hessie—get Peg-Leg like your ma said, and find a fiddler. I’ll go ready my dory for her trip. Peg-Leg’U have to help me row. Tide’ll be racin’ in against us, and there’s wind makin’.” He squinted at the sky.

“Yes, Johnnie—” she said, turning slowly to go. Johnnie had taken over, masterful and sure, as she knew he would, but this hadn’t brought him any closer to her. He hadn’t looked at her once, to really see her. And why should he, she thought bitterly. I’m not so much to look at. Why didn’t I take time to put on my good dress and pin my hair up?

An inkling of the girl’s dejection reached Johnnie, and he thought she was frightened of the dangerous project tonight. “Hes—” he said, chuckling, “d’you mind the time we stowed away on the
Balance
to fetch the salt?”

“Oh, yes—” she breathed.

“You were a plucky one, got the makin’ of a seaman too, shouldn’t wonder.” Her eyes shone, dazzled by this highest praise, and then Johnnie spoiled it. “It’s mortal shame you’re only a girl.”

She put her lips tight together, and walked away. Johnnie, after a moment’s surprise, forgot about her and started down the hill towards Little Harbor and his new dory.

Hesper continued in the other direction along Beacon Street to Dolliber’s Cove, and Peg-Leg’s neat cottage. She was startled to find her uncle wrapped in a red blanket and lying propped up on a bench in his yard. Peg-Leg for all the strapped-on wooden stump that served him for left leg and despite his increasing plumpness was nimble as a jack rabbit. He still went out dory fishing in the bay, and he was a great gardener. From May to September his little yard bloomed with daffodils, or cinnamon roses, moss pinks or asters.

“Why, Peg-Leg...” cried Hesper pushing open the gate, and hurrying up to the red cocoon on the bench—“Whatever’s the matter?”

The round face above the fringe of sandy beard surveyed her sourly. “Where’s yore manners, chit? Yore Grandsir Dolliber hear ye callin’ me thot, he’d guv ye a stroppin’, he would. Susan’d ought to raise ye better.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Noah,” said Hesper, rightly deducing great stress from this unusual cantankerousness. Half the town had nicknames everybody used, and Peg-Leg never minded his. “Ma wanted to see you at the Inn, right away.”

“Well—she won’t then. Nor see me at all, lessen she comes here. Oi’m thot kinked up wi’ t’ rheumatiz, Oi wouldn’t budge fur Old Nick hisself.”

“I’m sorry—” said Hesper again. So Peg-Leg wouldn’t be any use to Johnnie tonight; who then could he get to help him? Well, he’d make another plan, Johnnie was never at a loss, but—a blinding and thrilling idea struck her. She straightened her strong young shoulders. If only she could persuade him....