The Sea is a Thief (15 page)

Beau was caught up short.  “She is nothing to me, sister, nothing.”  

“Then let this be, Beau!  Let the Bagwells concern themselves with it!”  She swept past him into the house, all her strength absorbed in keeping herself from bursting into tears in front of her brother.

Anna would lie for many hours on her bed that day, weeping to herself.

What will be taken from me now?

  

Each day she passed girls with fathers, fathers whom God had allowed to remain upon the earth beside their daughters.  Such was not her life.  She had been asked to accept it, and she had made her peace with it.  

Each day she saw young people in love, married people and courting couples, fondness and devotion glowing in their faces as they turned to one another.  She yearned to look into such a face.  She had resigned herself to waiting patiently, fearing that it should never appear.  Her solace lay with the sea, the wild ponies, and the birds of the air.  She would be content to ride, and to draw with Elizabeth.  She would pay no heed to the opinions of Chincoteaguers, who thought her odd and avoided her.  Her hope was in the future.  

That future had seemed so close.  She had reached out it to it with the full length of her arms and was about to touch it with her fingertips.  

What will be taken from me?

Mary brought food to her, and sat by her bed to console her, though she did not know the source of her sorrow.  Anna could not speak to her.  What protection had she found in her mother's love?  From what had it shielded her?  

Finally, as the thin moon rose, she fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep. Outside, the basket of eggs lay forgotten on the ground.  Mary retrieved the basket the next morning, emptied by the night-foraging creatures of the marsh.  

What was not closely guarded was gone.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Visitor

 

Love comes at a price. It peels away the covering that wraps our hearts.  The covering protects us as the wood of a young tree is protected: outside is the rough bark, then the softer inner bark.  Beneath that lies the sapwood, where the tree's lifeblood flows.  Finally, deeply hidden, is the precious heartwood, strong and enduring.  

Children shield themselves with laughter and foolishness, cast off as they grow.  Beneath that is joy.  If joy is ripped away, as it should not rightly be, or worn away, as it commonly is, there is hope.  It is a thin layer: resilient, but subject to drought.  If it should wither and die there remains the sanctuary of work, where we retreat for strength when we must persevere or perish.  

Joy passed from Anna Daisey's life the night John Grinnald brought her father home.  As she sat with her father, pale and still, it slipped from around her like sand pulled from underfoot by a strong surf.

Hope remained.  Though she was young, she knew her own mind unusually well. If God wished to send her blessings, she was prepared.  If He did not, she was also prepared.  In any case she had her mother, her home, and her work.  She would persevere.  

She had taken Sam Dreher for such a blessing.  As days passed and Sam did not return, her worst fears were confirmed.  He had been a mirage, a shimmering of heat over the sand, washed from the air by a sudden shower.  Real things remained—things that she could touch.  She held tightly to them, and they comforted her.  The skiff was hers again.  She was grateful to him for that at least.  She rowed out into the creeks of the marsh and drew for hours.   

 

One morning as the sun began to rise she covered herself in a woolen shawl and stepped into her rubber boots.  She wrapped a piece of cornbread in a cloth and set out to launch the skiff for Assateague.  She would go to the big pool where the snow geese had begun to gather.  She hurried against the chill, head bowed.  Rowing would warm her.  She opened the doors of the shed.

Out of the shadows stepped Sam Dreher.  He was smiling.  

Her surprise was displaced in an instant by anger.  “Mr. Dreher,” she cried out.  “Please leave at once.”  

The smile fell from his face. “Anna!”

“You no longer have any place here.”

“Anna, I--”

“
No place, Mr. Dreher, believe me!”
 

His shoulders fell. His face was a mask of bewilderment.  “Ethan told me you received my note.”

“I did, Mr. Dreher.  I have it in a drawer, if it is of some use to you. It is surely of no use to me.  I will retrieve it for you.”  She spun on her heel and turned towards the house, pulling the shawl more tightly around her shoulders.  

He pursued her. “No, Anna!  No!  Did you not understand my intentions?”

She whirled about to face him, her face pale and hard as marble, her chest heaving with each breath.  “No, I admit that I did not at the time, Mr. Dreher, but afterwards I understood them very well.  Now please leave me.”  Her hands gripped the shawl as if to tear it.  

Sam felt the earth dropping from beneath him.  As if by its own will, his hand reached out to her.  Slowly he laid it on Anna's arm.  She did not move away from him.  She did not know why she did not.  

He had no words.  He had only hope that she would stay.  
Please, God,
he thought. “Anna Daisey,” he said, finally, his voice unsure.  “I have come here only to be with you.”

She did shake his hand away, then, and turned to face the sunrise. “And you are most unwelcome.”

“I would never have left you alone, with all my heart.”

She glared at him. “You take me to be a very foolish girl, Mr. Dreher.  A girl whose trust is to be scorned, a girl who can be cast aside for a handful of lace, or a meal at the Atlantic Hotel!”  Her eyes were like flint.  “Do not deceive yourself, Mr. Dreher.”  

It was as if she were offering him some Sphinx-like riddle, a puzzle of words that he must solve or perish.  There was no sense in it.  He could hardly deny a charge he could not begin to understand.  He knew her to be fair, and above all, kind; her anger could spring only from deep conviction.

“Anna,” he said.  “There is no deception in me.”  

She was motionless.

“If I am deceiving you, if I have ever deceived you, you need not ask me again to leave.”

She walked quickly into the shed.  He followed.    

“When I wrote to you, I wanted to say more.  I did not dare.”

Her voice was almost a whisper. “You did not write to me about Nancy Bagwell.”

“No, Anna, nothing could be written that would be understood by someone who might happen to see the note.  Someone from the ship, or from here in the town, who might betray us. I have been less than honest with everyone but you and Ethan. We have spent these days together without anyone's knowledge or consent.  No one may know of it.  That was the reason I could say so little.”

“And you could say nothing of Nancy Bagwell?”

He was puzzled still.  

“The Bagwells requested that I work in their home.  There was nothing to be said.  The work lasted for days, Anna.  I could not leave them to come here.”

She smoldered.  “They were pleasant days, then?  In her company?”

Like the prow of a huge and menacing ship emerging from a thick fog, her meaning began to take shape in his mind.  “Be patient with me, please, Anna.  I can only tell you truthfully that her company was unpleasant but unavoidable.”  He described his days at the Bagwells, the inescapable presence of Nancy, and his unwilling partnership in her conversations.

His words rang true.  This was the Nancy that Anna knew, in every detail.  

“And your dinner?”

“We did not have dinner together.”

“At the Atlantic Hotel.  Your meal with her.”

“She dined with her parents at the Atlantic Hotel, a number of days ago.  I was on my way back to my ship, but they detained me to discuss my work.”

“She was not with her parents, Mr. Dreher, but with you.”

His thoughts raced back to the day he had walked with them to the hotel.  He had been in the building only briefly.  Arinthia Bagwell had insisted that he accompany them.  They entered the hotel together.  He left alone.  
What in the name of heaven.....
 

He remembered Nancy Bagwell's smile.  

He had lingered only a few minutes there.  Edmund Bagwell was speaking with someone in the hotel office.  At Bagwell's request, he sat at the table in the dining room with Nancy, very much ill at ease.  She smiled at him with such satisfaction, as if smiling at some private joke.  He was about to ask why when her mother and father entered the room.   He thought that the room was empty save for two of them.  
Unseen eyes must have observed them.
 

He could only tell her plainly what had occurred, in the desperate hope that she would see the truth in it.  Slowly, step by step, he did, as carefully as if fitting two planks together.

She listened.

He finished.  A heavy silence fell upon them.

“I have caused you great pain, Anna.  I did not want to risk discovery by trying to come here, or by writing to you again.  What I did has caused the very separation I feared so much.  I cannot hope that you will forgive me.”  He hung his head, feeling only despair.  

She rushed to him and fell against his chest, sobs shaking her body.  He embraced her tightly, his arms enclosing her, his hands cradling her head as her tears fell onto his jacket.  Her sobbing made him ache.

At last she fell silent.  Her breathing slowed.  She held the shawl to her damp eyes and then looked full into his face.  

“I knew you better than that, Sam Dreher,” she said.  “The fault is mine.  I knew you better.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her, the stillness all around them, the chill air forgotten.  He was a blessing to her once again, and she a blessing to him; a gift, carelessly misplaced, then found again, and all the more joyfully given.  They held each other, not moving or thinking.  Each would have been content if life had ended, or continued on for eternity, exactly as it was.  At last they broke their kiss, embracing each other, arms entwined.

Sam spoke, finally.  “Where were you bound for so early today, Anna?”  She looked into his eyes.  

“Assateague.”  

“May I...” She did not allow him even to finish his question.  

“Let us be underway quickly, while no one is about.”  A few steps took them to the creek where the sneak skiff was moored. He knelt amidships and settled the oars into their locks. Anna perched behind the cockpit, knees tucked under the coaming. “I'll show you the way,” she said. Sam wrapped his fingers around the grips of the oars. His long arms and powerful back flexed the blades as they pushed off from the dark mud of the bank.  

Sam's long servitude as the Bagwells' personal carpenter was complete. The family as a whole was satisfied with his work, though Nancy was felt cheated in a strange way.  Captain Sharpe was exceptionally happy.  

Sam was free, at least for now.   

The future was a cipher, full of dangers.  For today at least, he could be with Anna Daisey. They had today, by God's grace and good fortune, and they would hold on to it until the setting sun ripped it from their fingers.  He had so nearly lost her through his own wretched judgment. He had been so careful not to leave any trail—not to send another note, not to sign his name, not to provide any detail of what had detained him so long.  It was no wonder that she had misunderstood his intentions so horribly.  How could she have felt otherwise?  In his zeal to preserve the treasure he had found, he had very nearly destroyed it.  He would not endanger it again, whatever the consequences might be. He rowed as a free man, unencumbered by concern for anything but Anna's heart.   The blades of his oars skimmed the dark water.  They flew towards the Assateague channel.

 

The farmers of Chincoteague rose early to tend their herds and fields, and the fishermen just as early to set out their nets.  So did the birds and animals who hunted the waterways.  Anna and Sam navigated a labyrinth of narrow creeks and broad ponds on their way to the channel, all connected, each filling and draining with the tides.  The water teemed with all the life that is born in the brackish places between the mainland and the open sea.  The marsh was a nursery for every color of tiny fish.  Tight schools of silver, green and blue darted about the shallows.  On tidal flats, smooth grey clams the size of a fist buried themselves in the muck, feeding on the unseen creatures within it.  Out in deeper water grew the delicate, rough-shelled oysters, indistinguishable at first glance from the rocky shoals to which they fastened themselves.  Everywhere scuttled the busy crabs.  Tiny black fiddler crabs clung to the salt-crusted stalks of cordgrass, their oversized yellow claws on display for potential mates.  Hungry blue crabs patrolled ceaselessly for a meal, while their smaller cousins molted and grew in the rich estuaries all around them.

For the island birds it was an unending banquet, a table set long ago by the Almighty and replenished without fail.  They were drawn to the marsh by the lure of food, and the marsh did not disappoint.  No corner of the islands was free of its contingent of birds; they were a part of its landscape.  Some soared the skies, wings tilting in the salty breeze.  Some floated serenely on the surface of the water.  Others plied the shallows on tall, skeletal legs.   Anna had known them all since she could walk, introduced to each variety by her father.  She had drawn each feathered creature in every part of its life. They accompanied her from the earliest days of spring until the harsh breath of winter turned the marsh to ice.  

For Sam, they were all new.  

Not long after they set out, she asked him to stop and gather grasses from the bank.  She used them to transform the skiff's appearance so that it melted into its surroundings.  She fastened milkweed and flowering vines to the oarlocks, and covered the gunwales with bunches of cordgrass and cattail as the market gunners did.  Sam was astonished at how invisible they had become.  Low to the water, disguised as she was, the skiff became a part of the marsh.  Anna brought out the little hand paddles, carried in the hull.  Lying prone, arms extended, a hunter could use them to move like fog along the surface of the water, concealed and silent.