The undetermined Fisher brother—who still looked like Frank to me, from this distance—had by now cast off his lines and was easing his little boat expertly out of its slip. It was hardly the size of boat I’d have imagined a millionaire owning.
“Now, Harvey,” Malaika went on, “is all flash. Guess which boat here is his?”
That was easy. I pointed it out. “That one.” The only one that demanded you see it, admire it, and pay it attention. It wasn’t a sailboat at all but a motor yacht, pointed and sleek with a narrow black stripe that sliced hard through its shimmering reflection in the water of the harbour and set all the smaller boats’ reflections wavering and trembling.
The Fisher brother’s boat seemed unimpressed. Sail up, it tilted slightly without slowing down, still nosing its way purposefully towards the open water.
I could see, just beyond it, the curve of Snug Cove and the rise of the shore where the Wilde House sat waiting for me in the woods. And even though Malaika was my boss, I knew I couldn’t sit here on a break forever. Lunch had ended half an hour ago. I needed to get back to work.
But I sat five more minutes, enjoying the sunlight and breeze and the bright sky above, watching that one small sailboat head out. It had no cares or worries, no meetings to keep, no brave faces to wear, and no pledges to honour. It moved fast and freely, so fast that soon I could see only the speck of the boat and the white slash of sail reaching up and I envied it, riding the blue of the water and leaning with confidence into the wind.
Lydia
She saw the sails at sunrise.
She’d been sent up to the field to fetch the mare, although perhaps “sent” was too strong a word. Her father had done nothing more than ask her if she’d go, because the mare would not come willingly to any of the men but led them all a tiring chase, whereas for Lydia she came directly, took the halter quietly, and let herself be led downhill as meekly as a lamb.
To Lydia, it was a welcome chore. These first days of October had been busy ones that kept her in the garden cutting squash to dry and harvesting the beans for seed and digging her potatoes. There’d been pies to bake and pickles to be scalded—she had left the last to Violet, who made pickles best of any she had tasted—but the garden on its own had wanted more hours in the day than she could give it, and the digging left her shoulders sore, so it had been a great relief to start this day by simply walking up along the orchard wall into the upper field to find the mare.
Her father had a mind to go to Hempstead to Aunt Hannah’s, and the mare would take him there and back more swiftly than the waggon team. She was a grey, a four-year-old with something of a filly’s mischief glinting in her eyes as she stopped grazing, raised her fine head, and watched Lydia approach.
“There’d be no point,” was Lydia’s advice. “I’ve neither will nor energy to chase you so you’d have to play the game alone, which would be little fun.”
The mare flicked one ear in acknowledgement of this and gave in gracefully, and although she did not step forward, she at least stood still and did not run. Lydia wasn’t entirely sure herself why the mare favoured her, but they had shared this rapport from the very first day that her father had brought the mare home as a yearling. Just as a horse could sense a nervous rider or a cruel one, it appeared that the mare could sense Lydia already carried a full share of troubles and did not need more. Whatever the reason, the mare bent her head to the halter and made no complaint and submitted herself to be led.
Not that Lydia was in a rush to be leading her anywhere just at the moment. The day, being only begun, was still peaceful; the chill of the air making mist of her breath as the sun ventured up from its bed into view, sending pink and gold streaks spreading over the eastern sky.
Here on the upland where the land had been well cleared, she had a view not only of the bay but of the wider Sound, and of the ships that came and went continually between New York’s harbour and the sea.
Benjamin had come here often as a boy to chase his dreams of grand adventure, studying the passing ships so that he could, like Joseph, know the types of vessels by their varied shapes and rigging, be they brigs or sloops or bilanders or snows. He’d watched them for so long that he could name most of the New York ships on sight, amazing Lydia, who only recognized her brother William’s four: the Bellewether, the Honest John, the Katharine, and the Fox.
Of these, her favourite was the Bellewether, because although the smallest of them all it was the prettiest and swiftest.
“She will run before all others,” had been William’s explanation of the sloop’s name. “Like the sheep we bell to lead the flock.”
“You’ve spelled it wrong,” their mother had said mildly as she’d read the brave name painted on the hull. “It is spelled ‘bellwether,’ without the second e.”
“But ‘belle’ is French for ‘beautiful,’ and she is surely that,” had been his answer.
And she was. Built to outrun the privateers that prowled the trade routes, she had turned the tables on them many times and carried her fair share of captured ships as prizes into New York’s harbour, but the true prizes for Lydia had been the letters carried from Jamaica from her brother Daniel, and the gifts and parcels that he regularly sent, which, since their mother’s death, had been one of the few bright things their family could look forward to. The sight of the Bellewether’s sails sweeping past in the Sound was a sight that, on most days, brought Lydia joy.
But this morning, the sight of sails sliding below her and into the bay brought a darker confusion.
Those sails were the Bellewether’s, but they’d been set strangely. In this uncertain light, moving through shadows and mist on the dark water close to the shore, she appeared to have no more than half a mast, less of her rigging, and dangerous, jagged holes scarring her deck.
Lydia, who had been stroking the mare’s warm neck, stilled her hand. And then she moved it and took a firm hold of the mare’s tangled mane, and in one scrambling motion she hauled herself up, clinging to the mare’s withers and urging her into a quick walk at first, then a run, down the slope of the field, racing home with a warning.
Because on the heels of the Bellewether, gliding now into the bay, sailed a second ship—larger and darker and trailing the wounded sloop’s wake like a predator.
? ? ?
The men who came ashore to them were Spanish.
Her father, from her warning, was already dressed and waiting just outside the open kitchen door. He’d given up his plans for Hempstead and instead told Benjamin to ride the mare around the bottom of the bay through Millbank and up to Mr. Fisher’s at Cross Harbor so that Mr. Fisher, in his turn, could have word sent to William in New York. “He needs to know his ship has been brought back in this condition.”
They’d had a better view now of the Bellewether between the trees as she’d gone past to drop her anchor in the cove below them, and it seemed a miracle that she was still afloat. She’d had her tall mast snapped in two and was missing two-thirds of her bowsprit, her sails and hull damaged, her rigging much shattered.
“I’ll ride into New York myself,” had been Benjamin’s answer.
“No. Leave Mr. Fisher to send someone. I’ll need you back here.”
There’d been, as usual when Father used that tone, no point in arguing, so Benjamin had done as he was told. As too had Lydia, when she’d been told to keep back in the kitchen out of sight, with Violet.