The Rathbones (40 page)

As the brides’ due dates drew near, Erastus called back a few of the crews of carpenters who had built the cottages to add a third story to Rathbone House. Above the Georgian red brick of the second story, in the ever-cooler autumn air, rose a top floor like a Greek temple, with fluted columns and capitals of the Doric order. Along its front, under the peaked cornice, a man perched on a scaffolding wielded chisel and mallet, carving a frieze of Poseidon. The sea god wielded his trident above the waves, his great scaly tail curling behind him, his Nereids leaping and gliding about him, though somewhat stiffly, being carved not from fluid marble but from sturdy oak by a Boston man renowned for his ship figureheads. His nymphs resembled tavern trollops more than a god’s handmaidens, Erastus thought, but he was pleased with the austere white of the painted wood. Erastus never knew that the original friezes on which his were modeled had been as brightly painted as any ship’s figurehead, and the temples within which they stood, too. Within the shining white walls, all along the perimeter, the carpenters began to frame out a series of rooms. As the work progressed, Erastus would stand at the top of the landing, turning in a circle, envisioning each of the small white rooms as it would look when finished, each with a crib, each crib with slats like thin white columns and soft new quilts stuffed with the down of young gulls.

Meantime, the six men were becoming impatient. Their contracts
with Erastus called for berths on the
Misistuck
, contracts to be fulfilled as soon as she returned to port. The agreements included a generous lay, enough gold to keep each man and his family—for a few of the men had wives and children waiting at home—comfortable for many years. But through three seasons no such ship appeared and no rumor of any, until a New Bedford brig finally passed with the news that the
Misistuck
had passed them six months earlier, not homeward bound but headed for the Azores, on the far side of the world.

In warm summer, the men all left, leaving behind six swollen brides in the cottages. In the seventh cottage the abandoned bride abided, intact.

At the beginning of the ninth month, the brides were moved to the main house. Since the third-floor nursery was not yet finished, all were installed in the room at the back of the first floor, that same room where all the Rathbone boys had swung in hammocks, watched over by the worn wives. Five more beds were moved into the room, and all were spread with newly loomed linens from Mouse Island. By the first bed, Conch and Crab were stationed, dressed in clean white cooks’ slops. Though the room, like all the others, was always clean and shipshape, Conch and Crab, excited about the new life on its way, had redoubled their efforts. The floors were swabbed and holystoned twice daily; the brides were offered every comfort, pressed with offers of fresh banty-hen eggs, of new white bread and warm milk.

As the time drew near, the brides’ attendants timed their contractions and tried to hold off those whose birth pangs didn’t coincide with the striking of the bell at noon. Bemus assisted, distracting one bride with a soothing chantey, calming another with sips of rum-laced tea. The team stood by ready to haul the line. When each squalling head breached its mother’s thighs, Conch hauled and heaved, then Crab neatly cut the cord and tied it in a square knot and duly noted down the time in the log. The brides all gave birth in a wave within two hours of one another, between one and three bells in the first dogwatch, on the last day of the year.

When they were finished, a weary Conch and Crab opened the door
and beckoned to Erastus, who had been waiting outside throughout the last watch. He walked slowly into the room, his heart racing, his hopes high for this infusion of new blood into tired Rathbone veins. He had long waited for this moment: the birth of a new generation of strong sons, sons who would reestablish the Rathbones’ mastery of the sperm and of the sea.

Conch and Crab stood aside, avoiding his eye. Erastus stepped close to the hammock in which the six infants lay, swabbed and swaddled. The infants did display a closer relationship to the sea than any Rathbone had in three generations, but not in the way that Erastus had hoped for. They looked as though they would have been more at home in the fluid with which they arrived than breathing the air. They gasped at each breath. Their limbs and features showed no symmetry, as though viewed through a fathom of water. They resembled more a spill of shell-less shellfish in a net than human infants. One boy’s flipper-like arms, waving feebly, might have served him well in the sea. The skin of one infant girl sparkled, scaly, and from her spine rose a vestigial fin.

Erastus stared at the hammock, now swaying in a breeze. His fingers fumbled at his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper; he opened it to look at the list of names he had chosen. He refolded it, put it back in his pocket, and left the room.

Conch and Crab fussed and fretted over the infants while the mothers, exhausted by their labor, lay sleeping. They fought over how to fold the diapers, deftly changing them in pinless fashion, plying the babies with bottles and tucking them snugly into their hammock. But in the same order in which they came into the world, within minutes of one another and on the same day they arrived, the babies all departed. Fourth-Oar and Bemus, whispering, returned them to the sea.

The carpenters were sent away. The unfinished third floor remained unfinished, lifting its white columns against the sky. The cottages were torn down. The brides, emptied, sailed back to the island in the west, to the caves and to the birds that had bred there each spring, birds with long red legs, with white plumage and glossy black throats.

{in which Mama and Papa measure no miles}

1841

T
HE MINISTER STOOD
in the crow’s nest of the
Argo
, one hand clutching the rail, the other pressing his Bible to his breast. Three sturdy men, Benadam’s friends, hoisted him there, placing his feet on the rope rungs, pushing him from behind. From time to time he dipped a hand in his frock-coat pocket to trade his Bible for a handkerchief to mop his brow, keeping one hand always on the railing and his eyes on some distant point of the horizon to avoid looking down.

The crow’s nest was decorated with swags of sea bladder, studded here and there with rosy starfish. A thick garland of braided seaweed spiraled around the mainmast. From each strand of rigging, bow to stern, flew all the cutter’s pennants, gaily flapping.

The minister opened his Bible, smoothing its damp pages with a shaking hand. He coughed and shifted his feet, and began to read, directing his voice out into the air.

Verity stood on the yard at the top of the mainmast, her arms wrapped around the thick pillar of pine. She wore a plain white gown of muslin, her hair in a loose braid down her back. Her gown, wet from salt spray, dried quickly in the sun. Below her the main topgallant sail swelled, bellied out and back with each fresh breeze, its
white blinding her. She closed her eyes and lay her face against the warm wood of the mast. She heard the ropes creaking. Seabirds dipped and lifted above the ship, calling.

Benadam balanced on the fore-topmast. He wore a red tricorne hat, his old coat of brown twill, new buck breeches, and boots polished to glass. The ship tilted in a sudden sharp gust; he balanced, needing no mast or line to stay him; he grinned and held his arms out to Verity.

She laughed and let go of the mainmast. She began to walk along the yard; it was wide enough, and if she began to lose her balance she had only to put out her hand to find a rope, there were so many. She kicked her slippers into the sea and tightrope-walked her way out. Her arms tilted back and forth, themselves yardarms, trying to balance; she didn’t, wouldn’t grasp a line. She moved easily, as though she were born to it.

The minister cleared his throat and began to read. Verity didn’t look into the distance, didn’t see the prismatic spout of a whale that was just passing out of view over the horizon. She saw only Benadam, and he only her, between them the distance of a few strides, the length of a yardarm, between them only a stretch of wood, no distance at all.

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