Arundel (23 page)

It was that night that Cap, happy at his success with the Sons and feeling amiably disposed toward all, slapped at Phoebe as she passed him with a hot rum punch, thinking to strike her toward the base of her spine or thereabouts, according to his playful custom. In some way she whirled so that Cap pitched forward, and the hot rum punch fell down the back of his neck, almost as though she had studied how to do it. If I had not held him by the slack of his breeches and given her time to run into the kitchen, I make no doubt he would have caught her and squeezed her to death in good-natured play.

That was my introduction to the Sons of Liberty. In the beginning they were the poorest and scurviest knaves that our village could boast, so that instead of being called Sons of Liberty, they were more often called Sons of something entirely different, when mentioned by respectable folk. Yet they were no different, travelers told me, from the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts and Connecticut and the rest of our colonies, and I have no doubt it could not have been otherwise, if they were to do the work they did.

Late that night Cap Huff came to my mattress in the kitchen, smelling powerfully of sweat and rum and his new boots, and asked me what I meant, that afternoon, when I spoke of the Frenchman that stole Mary. What Frenchman, he wanted to know, and who was Mary? I told him the whole tale, while he sat rubbing his bulbous knuckles in silence. When I had finished he got up and fell against the stove, upsetting some pots. He righted himself and scratched his neck thoughtfully.

“He was the one,” Cap said, “that talked of affection. What I said about Frenchmen to-day is said as a statesman. I can talk differently in my private capacity. When I’ve tended to this Liberty business, we’ll make a social call on Guerlac and stuff him up his own chimney.”

There were times when I thought I could, if I wished, raise a regiment to punish Guerlac for his sins.

XI

I
T
WAS
the next day that I unexpectedly had my first news of Mary and Guerlac. Cap Huff and I were in a corner of the gathering-room, and Phoebe was resanding the floor and wiping off the tables and benches, while Cap Huff soothed his tongue—swollen, he said, from unaccustomed speechifying—with a quart of my mother’s small beer to which a tot of Hollands had been added to give it body. Cap was telling me in his usual violent language of the times he had been thrown for no reason at all into the Portsmouth gaol, a disgustingly verminiferous gaol, too, he declared, when two fine gentlemen rode up from the beach on horses that gleamed sleekly in the morning sun.

They came into the gathering-room, handsome, tall young men in plum-colored coats, doeskin breeches and riding boots of Spanish leather, and bowed so politely to Cap and me that we became sour and doltish, as is the custom of our New England people when they encounter manners that seem somewhat overperfumed. One of them smiled sweetly and prayed we would inform him where he might encounter Monsieur the
propriétaire
of the inn. Thus we knew he was French.

Cap, hunched down over his beer, waved a huge paw in my direction. The Frenchman took a letter from his pocket and handed it to me. It was signed “Sam’l Adams,” and urged the recipient to reply freely to all questions asked by the bearer, Raoul de Berniers, since such replies would promote the interests of the colonies in America.

“Sir,” I said, when I had shown the letter to Cap Huff, who stared at it amazed-like, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, because of this letter of Sam Adams, who is the greatest man in all New England, and also because I had a friend, a Frenchman, who left me a gift I still have.”

“Truly!” said De Berniers, and smiled and bowed, having no way of knowing I spoke of the scar on my forehead.

“It may be,” I said, “you knew the gentleman—Henri Guerlac de Sabrevois, of the regiment of Béarn?”

“But certainly!” cried De Berniers. “It was our regiment, Béarn! De Sabrevois we knew well! Perhaps he will come again to this great country, so you may renew your friendship.” When De Berniers said this, I caught him looking drolly at his companion, whom he called Sharl, as if to say a friendship between De Sabrevois and this country bumpkin would be worth seeing.

“Your friend has been in France, then, these past six years?” I asked, not caring what he thought or how he looked, so I had news of Mary.

“No, poor fellow,” De Berniers said. “He was captured by the damned English, he and his sister. They were sent to Elizabeth Castle on the Island of Jersey as prisoners, they and some others, among them the good Abbé le Loutre, who was villainously treated, in spite of his holy orders.”

Now this Le Loutre was a hound of hell if ever there was one, a brutal man and a murderer, responsible for the death of hundreds of English in Acadia because of his fiendish persistence in sending Indians against them. When Cap Huff heard him called “the good Abbé” he sprang up in a rage, bawling “Good!” in violent tones of protest. Fortunately I could kick him hard on the shin, so he changed his cry to “Good God!” and sat down again, shaking his head as if in despair at the cruelty of mankind.

“I didn’t know,” I said, “that he had a sister!”

“Ah, yes!” said De Berniers, “and how Marie is beautiful, with golden hair and all the graces of an angel, but none of Henri’s coldness! Wholly charming, all white and gold: a beautiful flower, nodding and swaying in the sun; eh, Sharl?”

Sharl nodded vigorously. “A true lily of France!”

Cap, doubtless unnerved by this unexpected contact with fine gentlemen, choked on his small beer and was taken with a horrible, whooping fit of coughing, so that he lumbered hurriedly from the room. I would have liked to hug the thought of Mary, white and gold like a lily, to my breast; but something impelled me to look around. I looked straight into the face of Phoebe Marvin. She was jeering at me with her eyes so that I could have rubbed her face on the sanded floor and thought no shame of myself for doing it.

“Bring rum!” I shouted, banging the table with the flat of my hand. “French rum!”

When she brought it, Sharl smiled warmly at her, which was a surprise to me, for I would have thought her swarthy face and her thin, straight body possessed no attraction for any except the easily pleased folk who gather at our inn, and little enough for them.

De Berniers told me, over our glasses, that De Sabrevois had now been in France for three years, and that his opinion concerning the state of mind in the colonies regarding England was much sought at court. Therefore, said he, if feeling grew stronger against England, De Sabrevois might return to watch and to assist. “For,” said De Berniers, “he hates the English. The thought of them is poison to him.”

He asked me the feeling in our neighborhood toward England; and I told him as well as I could: that our people were discontented at all things, including England’s acts, and that they would not pay taxes to England, or pay the duties that England might think to collect. I told him there had been no talk of war against England; that no man in our neighborhood with good sense would think the colonies capable of fighting England’s mighty army and navy, but that there were more people without sense in our town than there were people with sense. Also that those without sense were the most reckless and daring; so that if the merchants declared against war the reckless, senseless folk might declare in favor of it to show their hatred of the merchants.

All this time Sharl was nodding and smiling at Phoebe, who stood out of my sight; and when they got up to go, Sharl, looking meaningly at Phoebe, said to me: “Sir, we have been much taken with the custom you call bundling. I regret we cannot remain here to enjoy its benefits.”

Now there may be parts of our colonies where bundling is widely practised; but it is frowned on in Arundel; so to pay Phoebe for her jeering glance, and maybe to save her the trouble of answering Sharl, I said quickly: “Sir, there’s no bundling here save with me.”

At this we all laughed understandingly, and I escorted the two Frenchmen to their horses. Cap Huff came around the corner of the house and bade them farewell in a voice so mealy that it aroused my suspicions. He expressed the hope he might some day see them at his home in Newburyport, which seemed to me strange, since he lived in Kittery.

When the Frenchmen had gone on toward Falmouth, Cap followed me into the gathering-room, saying he must be off to rejoin his Sons of Liberty. He drew a cambric handkerchief from his breeches, unknotted it, and took from it a number of gold pieces, which he pushed over to me.

“Here,” Cap said, “this is to pay for my lodging and for a little rum, now and then, for the Sons.”

I studied the coins. They were French louis, newly minted and beautiful. After a while I tossed them back.

“Now listen, Stevie,” Cap said, “these Frenchmen came over here to help us. That’s so, because Sam Adams said so in his letter. Well, ain’t it helping us if we use their money for the Sons of Liberty?”

“Where was it?”

“Clear ’way down in the bottom of their saddle bags. I only took a little out of each one. They got plenty left. They won’t miss it any more than they’ll miss this.” He reached inside his belt in back and dragged out a ruffled shirt. “I got this off of Sharl,” he added proudly.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t want their dirty money. I’ll take anything of Guerlac’s I can get, but nothing of theirs.”

Cap stared at me in disgust, then bawled hoarsely for Phoebe. She came in at once. “Look here, Phoebe,” Cap said, picking up the gold and handing it to her, “Stevie and I had an argument over this. You keep it till he’s ready to build a sloop or something; then buy into it. Then he’ll have it, only he won’t have it.”

Cap laughed his hoarse, bellowing laugh, stood up and hitched at his belt, rubbed his face briskly with his huge hands, and went swaggering out of the house, bawling his lewd song about old Benning Wentworth. We could hear him roaring it as he set off on his horse, and even until he got down into the dunes, where the southwest wind caught it and whirled it into fragments.

I felt little like looking at Phoebe when Cap was gone. After I had cleared my throat with some effort I told her I had meant nothing by what I said about bundling, but was irritated with her and Sharl, and so said the first thing that entered my noddle.

“I guess you know,” I told her, “how I feel about Mary. Some day I’ve got to find her; and my feelings being what they are, there’s times I could knock your jaw out of joint for looking at me the way you do.”

Phoebe nodded, chinking Cap’s gold pieces together. “Steven, I guess I don’t want to work here any more.”

“My land, Phoebe! I told you I didn’t mean anything!”

“I know, Steven, but it’s spring, and I don’t believe I can stand it unless I can have the sun and the water and all. Your ma’s taught me how to read and figure. I studied through the whole of the
British Mariner’s Guide,
Steven.”

Not knowing what she was driving at, I said my mother would miss her, as indeed I knew she would.

Phoebe chinked the gold pieces more rapidly. “Steven, I heard your ma speak about building a brig some day.” She hesitated; then shot her words at me so fast I was near graveled.

“I can sail a boat better than these thick-heads around here, Steven! I can cut a ledge closer than any fisherman on the cape. I know every bar and every reef ’twixt Porpus and the Nubble! I can learn ’em from Frenchman’s Bay to Sandy Hook in a week! I can sail circles around these people, Steven! Don’t wait for a brig! Get a sloop—and let me sail it! I’ll make it pay. I’ll make it pay so much you can get your brig twice as quick. I’ll sail it for nothing, Steven, if you’ll give me a little interest in it. If you do I’ll make money for you and myself, too. I can read and figure and navigate, Steven, and that’s a sight more than anyone around here can do, except old Coit that took a privateer out of York. If I can’t sail rings around old Coit I’ll kiss a pig! You can put in this gold of Cap’s, and I’ll watch Scammen build it, and there won’t be a sloop in Maine waters to touch it.”

Now this girl was one of the most importunate creatures I had ever encountered, but I couldn’t escape the fact that there was something in what she said. It was nigh impossible to get an able man to captain as small a vessel as a sloop, and be a trader into the bargain, and do it to show a profit, whereas Phoebe could sail a boat better than anybody I ever saw, and she was afraid of nothing and nobody. Furthermore, she could swim as well as Ranger, only faster; and as I well knew, she had a tongue in her head, which is no drawback to any person who follows the sea.