The Navigator—Chapter 2
Whatever was about to happen, Perk told himself he’d survived two days of worse.
He hefted his seabag, then fell in behind the other passengers at the rail, watching Marblehead heave into view.
He felt the heaviness of the air. The birds flying low over the water. A hard nor’easter would hit by Tuesday, complicating the Oneida’s departure from New York.
But that was too far out to plan. He had the weekend to survive first.
Letters chased sailors across oceans like gulls after fish scraps, often years behind, but the one Perk picked up at Grinnell’s office in New York hadn’t come from either Mother or Patience. It had taken him more than a minute to recognize his father’s handwriting after so many years.
“Be glad of seeing you,” Father had written. A note succinct enough to be cryptic.
For almost two weeks he’d tried to ignore the letter, to put his head down and take the tongue-lashing from Grinnell for being so late to market that the tea he brought had to be sold at cut rates.
Each day, he’d resolved not to take Father’s bait. He’d been wary enough to avoid Marblehead for ten years and saw no need to alter course now.
Yet each night, lying awake in his bunk, he’d change his mind. Was there trouble? Could Mother be ill—or worse? The most disturbing question was whether his reticence to go home was practical or represented a streak of cowardice remaining in him.
Finally, when it was nearly too late, he’d cursed the blue devils and bought a ferry ticket. Then run around town buying gifts like a lunatic. Not from the Pearl Street hucksters, either, but the real things from Stewart’s on Broadway. Two porcelain teacups, a lacquer box, and a jade necklace—at prices five times what they would have cost him in Canton.
Finally, he’d asked Grinnell for every cent remaining on his account. If there was trouble with Father, likely it would take Spanish dollars to solve.
As the steamer rounded The Neck, Perk found Marblehead both shockingly familiar and surprisingly different.
In the crescent-shaped harbor, the fishing schooners still rocked gently on their moorings. He took in their beamy black hulls and pinched sterns, each representing not only a family but a fishing ground, passed down for generations.
But where the harbor of his memory had felt as massive as the sea itself, after crossing oceans, he now saw nothing more than a pewter-tinted pond. Barely a cable’s length across. A mere three fathoms deep. Had he really ever been that young? That naïve?
He was happy to see that the row houses were still built right up to the sand, still topped with widows’ walks. The shore was also dotted as ever with the same brightly painted dories of his past, practically calling out to be let off their leashes.
Perk scanned them on the sand—green hull with white trim, green hull with red interior, gray hull with blue gunwales. Blue hull with yellow gunwales and a star at the bow. Old Man Doyle’s boat.
He forced down one memory in that dory with a grimace, and focused instead on his first experience aboard: the beginning of his love for the sea.
Henry the Goat had taken Perk out in the Doyle boat when they were both ten. They’d rowed that open fifteen-footer out to the center of the harbor, stowed the oars, added the spritsail, and let the wind do all the work.
It had been a revelation.
Invisible power, harnessed. Captured. Directed at will.
So little he’d known about watercraft back then. Nothing but the ropes that held them. Now his practiced eye saw the vessels in front of him were built with flatter bottoms than the Gloucester boats. More stable thwarts than Swampscotts.
Pride filled Perk’s chest before he noticed it coming.
Marblehead not only built the finest dories, it built the finest sailors. The best navigators. Everyone knew that. Salem could keep its deeper harbors and fancier manners, Boston, its grander State House and learned societies, New York, its wealthier shipyards and counting houses.
Marblehead had the better men. Fiercely independent. Practical. Straightforward.
It was Marblehead privateers the Brits had been most afraid of during the revolution. Marblehead sailors who’d formed the backbone of Washington’s navy. Marblehead oarsmen who’d rowed his army across the Delaware.
For ten years, Perk had forced himself to think only of the next bell. The next day. The next leg. Avoiding everything that stunk of the past. But in coming home, Perk could finally see just how high he’d climbed from that beaten-down, lovesick, sixteen-year-old greenhorn he’d once been.
Father could be damned for all he’d scoffed at Perk’s seafaring dreams. He certainly couldn’t ignore the results now. His son commanded a tea trader. One of the youngest captains in the fleet. The man would never praise, and certainly wouldn’t apologize, but maybe Perk’s achievements would warrant at least a slap on the back.
That alone would make the ferry trip worth the sleepless night trying to ignore the boiler’s endless chuffing, the vibration that kept trying to shake his bones apart, and the stink from the furnace.
The steamer thrashed through the last half mile to Parrock’s Landing. Was Father watching him? Mother? He swallowed a sudden fear that she’d passed. Father would have said so, wouldn’t he?
The familiar odors of tar, brine, and rotting seaweed hit Perk the same as every other harbor from Liverpool to Canton, but this time with the unmistakable Marblehead additions of dead cod and caustic lime.
He scanned the small crowd, biting back the impulse to follow every flash of dark hair.
Thank God, Mother was the first he spotted, though only by her stately posture.
When had her hair turned gray?
At her arm was a young woman he barely recognized as Patience. She’d been nine when he left. Now nineteen.
Next to her, Father. Bareheaded in the bite of winter. Arms locked across his chest like a fortress wall. Smaller than the giant of Perk’s memories, though.
One quick move and Perk could lift him clear off his feet if need be. He’d been a son of a bitch once, but that was before Perk had learned to strike a blow, avoid a knife, disarm a pistol in the cold, wet, dark—moves as natural now as breathing.
What threat was one old man next to all that?
Father sat at a desk. Shuffled papers. Bitched about taxes. Cut Mother down while her careful columns of numbers kept his business afloat time and again.
He’d let the old man speak first. Get the lay of the land. Stand stock still—
Mother’s wave caught him off guard. His hand lifted before he could stop it, hanging there like a loose halyard. He swallowed the lump in his throat.
The gulls still wheeled, but the wharves had shrunk. Parrock’s Landing had seemed so enormous when El—
No.
Perk grimaced. Brought his hand back to the rail. Gripped it hard enough to snap.
Father was enough to face. That girl was nothing but a ghost to him now.
The deckhand placed the gangway, the other passengers scattered, and Perk tried to settle his face into a neutral greeting as he stepped onto the landing. Mother was beaming, though, and her face drew the grin right out of him.
She hauled him close, and he found himself wrapped in her arms.
A full embrace.
He’d entirely forgotten such affection, and the feeling knocked him off-balance. The smell of Mother’s lavender soap filled his lungs, and the memories flooded back. Watching her work at the washtub. The wet slap of clothing keeping time as she spun her tales. How Father’s shirt had wrestled an octopus in the harbor. The runaway socks that joined the circus. The pillowcase that held the dreams of a sleeping giant.
The memories had him reeling.
Was he the captain who’d weathered typhoons, or the boy who’d hidden behind her skirts?
Patience clung to his side like a barnacle, her face pressed into his shoulder.
“I’ve missed ye both—” The words escaped before he could clamp down on them. Thank God he blinked back the sting in his eyes.
“—so glad to see you home safe, son—” Mother was saying.
“—barely recognize you—” Patience’s voice held the tone of awe he realized he’d been secretly hoping to find by coming home.
He sank into their embrace, muscles going slack as Mother’s forehead pressed against his temple and Patience squeezed his ribs.
For a decade, he’d been worked to the bone. Frozen. Poked. Slapped. Punched for mirth and malice. Drenched. Scalded. Cracked on the head with belaying pins. He’d felt the bite of challenge plenty, and the surge of triumph occasionally. He’d known respect, lately, in the way men straightened their spines when he passed. A few times, even felt the soft press of a woman’s flesh.
But this—
This was different. This was love. Boundless as the deep.
His body had forgotten its weight.
He forced down the lump in his throat and peeled himself free before losing himself entirely. “Let’s have a look at ye,” he said. A survival tactic.
He traced the worry lines that had become etched on Mother’s forehead, then the wet gleam in Patience’s eyes. She’d grown taller than Mother, nearly reaching his chin now. And her middle had thickened—
His tongue fell dead in his mouth. “Is that—”
Her cheeks bloomed pink above her grin. “It is indeed, brother,” she said. “Your niece or nephew will join us this spring.”
Little Patience. All his memories of her included skinned knees and sneaking extra feed to the chickens. He cursed the oceans that swallowed letters whole.
“You remember Daniel Pierce?” Mother said. “The boot maker’s boy. They were married last summer.”
“Wonderful.” He sounded more wooden than he intended, tried desperately to regain his balance. “Congratulations, Little P. Truly.”
A flash of blue dress caught his eye, and his gut clenched. But no. Wrong girl.
It took that long for Perk to realize Father hadn’t said a word.
He’d hefted Perk’s seabag, though. That was different. Maybe he was extending an olive branch. Perk had to repeat his thanks twice to Father’s good ear before he got a curt nod in return.
The woman in the blue dress stood next to Father, her skirt as beamy as a Thames coal barge. Her brittle smile tugged at his memory. Familiar face. Not unattractive. Not pleasant, either. Why was she there? And what in heaven’s name was she doing out without a coat in January?
Mother’s voice cut through the awkwardness. “Perkins, you remember Miss Bartlett, of course.”
His arm shot out on instinct, muscles performing courtesies his mind had forgotten. “Miss Bartlett.” His voice stiffened into the formal cadence he used with merchants and diplomats. “How nice to see you.”
Both her hands wrapped around his, as suffocating as they were delicate. Euphemia, he remembered, working his hand free.
“It was your father’s idea to invite Miss Bartlett along,” Mother said, jaw set tight as a monkey’s fist. When Perk found her eyes, the pointed glare she flashed him—their old warning when Father was in a black mood—made it clear she disagreed with the choice.
“What a surprise,” Perk forced out through gritted teeth. “Aye. Pleasant. Indeed.” He clamped his jaw shut, or else he would have stammered his way into next week.
Father strode toward the house, leaving Perk little choice but to follow.
The old wharf timbers groaned with the cold. Father might’ve been pushing fifty or more, but he still moved like a wharf rat, forcing Perk to match his pace as he hit the cobblestones.
Perk tried to avoid looking south, but he couldn’t help a glimpse between the salt houses at the ropewalk. That unmistakable structure, longer than a city block and barely wide enough to shelter a cart.
The barn-red paint had weathered away to naked planks, and visible holes said the roof needed major repairs, but his throat still tightened with memories. The building had been the bane of Perk’s existence since he was seven and Father first belted the iron hooks to his waist, loaded them with hemp fibers, and commanded him to run backward along the covered ditch.
From that day till he was sixteen, dawn to dusk, Perk’s legs had known nothing but retreat, choking on the fiber dust, palms bleeding, shoulders screaming, feeding strands out as Father spun at the wheel at the far end to twist them into rope. The binding forces were brutal. Yarns into strands, strands into hawsers, hawsers into cables—each twist adding tension, each rotation storing more power to snap back with deadly force if something broke.
One moment of carelessness, and those spinning ropes had once taken a man’s arm clean off.
“Tell me of China, Perk.” Patience bumped his elbow, eager, curious. Before he could plant his feet proper, she fired more questions. “If they eat with sticks, how do they manage soup? And is it truly the men who wear their hair in braids, rather than the women?”
“Dear,” Euphemia broke in. “A virtuous woman encourages others to speak first.”
Patience’s shoulders tightened. Her steps grew stiff.
“One braid,” Perk answered, grabbing Patience’s arm and pulling her away from the sanctimonious blue cow. “It’s called a queue.”
The street seemed both familiar and warped now, like the twisting lanes had shrunk. “They eat well with their sticks, but they use a sort of spoon for soup. It looks a mite like a skiff with a handle.”
The snow-covered roofs were lined with icicle teeth. The wooden sign for Marblehead Oil & Candle creaked as it swung in the wind.
He’d beat Ellen—five rocks to two—at hitting it from the corner before Old One Eye had come out, mad as a hornet, and they’d made a run for it.
He suppressed a grin, but it only took the one lapse for memories to ambush him from every corner. Ellen beating him at chess. Ellen acting as lookout while he climbed Mr. Johnson’s apple tree. Ellen making the treasure map to their secret cave by Outer Point Rock. Ellen’s lie that poisoned them all.
“Are you alright, brother?” Patience asked. “Or is it your intention to break my arm in two?”
Perk loosened his grip on her elbow and tried to laugh his mood away, but the darkness of spite had returned.
* * *
Too soon, they arrived at the house. He recalled it being painted a stormy blue, but now only peeling flecks of color clung to the windowsill like snow and there was a visible sag to the roofline. The knots grew in his belly. The ropewalk hadn’t been the only thing left to decay.
He was glad he’d brought the money for Mother. It was clear she needed it, and he cursed himself for not visiting sooner to see to her welfare.
All this time, he’d pictured their lives fixed in place, but change had crept in, quiet as a neap tide. Even the front door had shrunk. He had to fold his head down to clear the lintel.
The smell of fresh bread hit him full in the face, and he glimpsed the crisp linen napkins, precisely placed around five plates. Mother had set a place for Euphemia.
Perk’s cap found its way to his hands, and he held it there, feeling the familiar worn brim between his fingers.
Patience crossed to the hearth, her skirts dusting the floorboards as she prodded the fire. “I’ve read they paint eyes on their ships in China.”
Euphemia squeezed in behind him. “Where on earth would you read something like that?” she asked.
“Aye,” Perk said. “One eye, each side of the bow.”
He could have said more, but the room felt closer than he remembered. Tight with bodies. Father carelessly heaved his bag into the corner and Perk cringed, praying the straw would cushion the teacups.
He attempted to stand as tall as he did aboard, defiantly commanding two dozen men, but hit his head immediately on the beams. The old room forced his body into its old frame—shoulders hunched, spine curled. So he sunk into the nearest chair, instead.
Mother pressed a warm mug into Perk’s calloused hands, the steam carrying the bite of cinnamon and sweet tang of apple that brought a smile—until she fixed him with a serious look.
“What he’s about to ask of you,” she hissed in her warning voice, “you must refuse.”
The familiar register of her lowered voice, below Father’s hearing, struck Perk.
“Is it money?” Perk whispered back. “I’ve brought—”
But Mother was shaking her head. “Keep your money. There is a plan. Trust me.”
Now Perk knew he was in trouble.
“Euphemia’s healthy as a ripe peach.” Father’s first words startled him, bursting out like a barked command.
The silence demanded a response. “Is that right?” Perk asked, shouting to overcome Father’s near deafness. “How wonderful for her.”
“Knows her Bible right the way through.”
“I—” The words caught in this throat like a fouled line, and he struggled for land graces. “My compliments on the accomplishment, Miss Bartlett.”
The room grew close. Hot, suddenly.
“Keeps a tidy house, I’m told,” Father nodded encouragingly to Euphemia.
“Your presence in Marblehead is nothing short of a divine blessing, Captain Creesy.” Euphemia spoke as if reading a speech. “My spirits soar to behold you again.”
“My—” Perk mouth snapped shut. Gut clenched tight as a fist.
What in damnation was going on here?
“You’ve been away for years on end, son,” Father shouted. With his voice always raised, his tone was impossible to read. “Too long. And it’s far past time to start a family.”
There was a cross swell that Perk was struggling to read. Behind Father and Euphemia’s view, Patience shook her head no. A look of concern as plain on her face as it had been on mother’s.
“The good pastor and I have reached an alliance.” Father continued, “Tomorrow, the Bartlett and Creesy families will be united. He will make a substantial investment in Creesy & Son Cordage when you will marry his daughter.”
Perk’s hand was at his belt before he realized why. Before he remembered, there was no knife there to defend himself with.
He’d walked straight into a trap.
“No,” he said, sharp as a marlinspike.
There were a lot more things Perk wanted to say. Not a single one was appropriate for mixed company. He barely kept from spitting.
“All due respect to Miss Bartlett,” he added through gritted teeth, “But I’ve earned the right to make my own decisions, Father.”
No chance he’d marry that coatless shrew who spoke down her nose at Patience, however much her spirits may soar. But he was furious that the visit he’d hoped for was already ruined before they’d even broken bread.
The steamer wouldn’t return until Monday, but maybe he could return to New York sooner by land. He tried to puzzle through a plan, but each step added complication and confusion. Take Sunday’s stage to Boston. Monday rail to Providence. Tuesday he could get as far as Stonington. Wednesday a boat back to Manhattan.
Confound it. That did him no good.
The tug would pull the Oneida out of her berth Tuesday morning at eleven sharp, timed to make the tide—with or without him. Grinnell had made it plenty clear to Perk that he was replaceable if he failed to return on time.
Only Monday’s steamer—direct but for a short stop in Boston—would get him back in time. He’d have to tough it out here in this old house with its peeling paint and sagging roof.
Then an awful thought occurred to Perk.
He glanced around the parlor. The silver candlesticks were gone. A darker patch of wallpaper showed where the gilt mirror had once hung over the fireplace. There was no rug under his boots. It wasn’t a small amount of money that Father needed.
A substantial investment, he’d said Bartlett planned to make.
That meant the business was sinking.
Mother had said there was a plan, but always tried to spare Perk from his Father’s worst impulses by taking his wrath on herself. He couldn’t let her do that to him now, as a grown man.
How much could Father owe? Five hundred dollars? A thousand?
Perk felt the small lump in the inner pocket of his vest—everything he owned in the world—a few half eagles, pieces of eight, and a note from the Second Bank of the United States. Barely more than fifty dollars.
He’d get a bonus if he could find a way to beat the fleet next season, but if things were as dire as he suspected, he’d still never be able to rescue them in time.
Would Mother lose the house? End up in a hovel beyond the Barnegat tanneries without firewood most of the winter? Scrubbing other women’s laundry, hands bleeding and raw, begging for scraps of bread?
Oh, hell, Perk thought.
He could never let Mother starve. He tried to work past his revulsion at Euphemia. How much would it matter, a marriage in name only? It galled him to lose an inch to his father, but surely he could bear it for Mother’s sake.
He tried to think of it as a business contract. He lived at sea. It was a rare captain’s wife who joined her husband on a voyage or two. One or two even made a life of it. But there was precious little danger Euphemia would ever step aboard the Oneida.
It was a reasonable trade for Mother’s safety.
Patience was shaking her head even more vehemently, as if she knew what he was thinking. He avoided her, trying to work out the excuses he could come up with for staying away from a wife. Storms. Delayed shipments. Repairs. If he sent silks, would Euphemia be satisfied? He imagined she just might.
“Bartlett had one reasonable condition of his investment.” Father continued, glaring at Perk as if readying for a fight. “His son-in-law is to run the ropewalk.”
Perk tried to recall the Bartlett family. Who was his son-in-law?
Then the weight of it dropped like an anchor.
Perk. Perk was to be Bartlett’s son-in-law. He was intended to run the ropewalk.
To never return to the sea.
“No.” Perk said. A familiar anger rose in his throat, mixed with a new, vicious urge for survival. “By God’s hooks, no!”
“You’d see your mother in the almshouse, would you?” Father shouted, “Send her to an early grave? Is that the kind of man you’ve become? Too high and mighty to honor his father?”
“No.” Perk said, jaw clenched, losing track of which conversational thread he was fighting.
At sea, Perk’s hands knew every line. Feet knew every plank. He could set a breathing wall of sails in perfect unison, balancing jib and spanker against the wind’s push. At sea, he led a floating island. Twenty-two souls who followed his every command across the treacherous oceans.
On land, Perk would be stuck under his father’s thumb, slowly but inexorably reverting to that broken sixteen-year-old boy he’d once been—as if not a single moment had passed since then.
“It’s a well-achieved match,” Father said, “To a worthy and virtuous woman.”
Perk read the emphasis, purposely meant to cut Ellen down. His hands clenched until the knuckles whitened, wanting to grab Father by his cravat.
“No,” he said, but his voice was softer.
“And a return finally to the business that’s always been your birthright. Give it time. You’ll thank me.”
Perk’s chest thrummed like a line pulled three turns too taut. You’ll thank me is what Father told all his clients just before he set about cheating them.
Mother had told Perk to say no, but how could he leave her destitute?
“No,” he whispered, but even he couldn’t even hear himself this time.
He retrieved his bag from the corner and set it on his knee long enough to retrieve the jade pendant and hand it wordlessly to Patience. To set the teacups on the dining table for Mother. To leave Father’s lacquer box on the side table. To stare at Euphemia, her mouth set in a very unvirtuous ‘O’ of confusion.
“Tomorrow Pastor Bartlett will conduct your marriage ceremony in the church at nine,” Father said. “With a small family meal to follow at his house. I’m told Mrs. Bartlett is preparing a lamb feast.”
The floorboards pitched beneath Perk’s feet.
He tried to come up with more words, but his voice failed utterly. Finally, he turned and ducked out the door, on his way to find a tavern.
“Half-past nine,” Father called out behind him, and his shout echoed down both sides of the winding street. “Your childish games with boats end today.”
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