"We have not told anyone yet."
"Your secret's safe with me." She turned her head away on the pillow. "But you must tell me something else. Marie, you see her?"
"Yes, of course. She resides there in Market Square, and she gave me Dr. Wiggins's medicine bag and instruments. At his instructions, evidentially."
"I have sent Fields, but she refuses to come and see me. One cannot blame her, under the circumstances."
"Well, she herself is much occupied."
Mrs. Sumner now turned her head to look at him, and her stare had such force that he sat down on the side of the bed. Highly inappropriate, Dr. Bradshaw would say, but she didn't seem to mind. And then her hand, her right hand, reached out and took hold of his wrist. "She is with child, is she?"
Leander nodded.
"Fields wasn't certain but suggested as much." Her hand moved down until her fingers entwined with his, dry and surprisingly firm. "Now, you must understand some things about this family. When I learned that Giles had died and been buried at sea, it was a shock, but after seeing him, feverish, with his leg amputated, I was somewhat prepared. But a week later word came that a ship bound for London had gone down in a storm a day out from Halifax, and that's when I collapsed. Samuel was aboard that ship. Stupid, abject Samuel. But it hit me with such force. At first I didn't understand why. But lying here these weeks, I came to realize that with Giles and Samuel gone, it would soon mean the end of this family. And I had such hopes for it. You may think me a devious, conniving old woman, but this desire was always behind my every thought and action. But now we may have a future, and it's up to Marie, whom I pushed out of this house." She held his hand tightly. "So you must watch over them, see that these children grow strong and well." He was perplexed, but she only stared at him. "You must promise me this."
"I will, of course."
"Thank you, Doctor." She let go of his hand and closed her eyes.
He got to his feet, picking up his hat and medicine bag, looked down at her once more, and left the room. Fields was waiting out in the hall, and he gave Leander the slightest bow before entering the bedroom and shutting the door behind him.
Leander descended the front stairs and found Benjamin standing in the vestibule, his hands clasped behind his back. "Must I address my former assistant as Doctor now?"
"That won't be necessary."
"It's that damned leather bag and such a fine leather hat-they're the only thing that separates you from the stable boy who's up to his knees in manure."
"True," Leander said, "though the hat belonged to my grandfather."
"I see, an heirloom to keep you warm through the coming long winter." Benjamin gestured toward the library down the hall. "He wants a word."
"Really?" Leander started down the hall, pausing to look back at Benjamin. "Rachel, how is she doing?"
Benjamin extended his hands in front of his stomach. "She thinks twins. Runs in the family, apparently. If I had only known-"
"What would you have done?"
"Given half measure?"
"You, sir, are incapable of doing so, in anything."
Benjamin gave a slight, mocking bow.
Leander continued on down the hall and knocked on the library door, and from within Mr. Sumner said, "Come in." The door creaked as it opened. The curtains were drawn and it was quite dark; Leander stepped inside and shut the door. He could barely see his former master, lying on the daybed. What little light was in the room seemed to be concentrated in the reflection off the wine bottle that stood on the floor by Mr. Sumner's hand. The room was stuffy, but the air was sweetened by the smell of Madeira.
"How is she?"
"Resting comfortably, sir."
"I wish I were." He pointed toward a chair by the desk. "Come, sit down. No formalities, understand? Besides, I'm too poor now."
Leander sat in the chair and placed his hat and bag on the floor by his feet.
"Wine?"
"No, no thank you."
"She's had an awful turn, you know. First Giles, and then Samuel. I suppose I've always been motivated by jealousy, first toward my younger brother-she always favored him, you know-so I thought-" he swept his arm above his head, as though presenting the room, lined with hundreds of volumes-"I thought this, a fine house, with gardens and stables and all, this might impress her. And then my own son, Samuel. She took to that overfed, worthless child as if he were her own. Out of sympathy, I would tell myself. But, still, it hurts. Sad, really. So much of what we do, what we become is the result of the first thing we desire in life: mother's love." He picked up the bottle of wine, raised it to his mouth, and drank. When he lowered the bottle, he held it out toward Leander. "You sure? I believe we once shared a bottle, didn't we?"
"Yes, one night out in the orchard."
"Right. Poisoned-I was convinced it was poisoned. Well, you survived that."
"Thank you, no."
Mr. Sumner held the bottle in his lap. "So, you're a professional man now, though it never much got in Giles's way. This is why I want to speak with you. The night he died aboard that ship, The Golden Hand. He told me something I know he wanted me to pass on to you. It's why you inherited that medicine bag of his, which was the only thing he really had to give to his son."
"Sir?"
"You heard me."
Mrs. Sumner had said them-you must watch over them. Leander scratched his cheek, repeatedly. "His son? I'm his son?"
"Your mother never let on?"
"No."
"You had no idea."
Leander took his hand away from his face and looked at it as though it might reveal something. "No, not exactly. But-but I suppose there were moments when I felt that there was something between them. I recall once he said something about my eyes resembling hers." He folded his hands in his lap and looked toward the window. A thin shaft of sunlight passed between the curtains, and a constellation of dust motes drifted in the air. "And the morning after Dr. Wiggins inspected your ship Miranda, I recall that when I told my mother about it, she seemed, I don't know, different, keenly aware in a way I didn't understand. I thought it had to do with the quarantine."
"Yes, well, they did the proper thing, those two, and kept their love in quarantine for all those years. A weaker man and woman ... but no matter now." Mr. Sumner raised the bottle to his mouth again and finished it off. "So, that makes you-it makes us related. You're my nephew, I believe."
"I suppose that is so."
"Which is why I must tell you that I cannot-you see, all these years Giles looked after Mother, and she insisted that I compensate him fairly, but now I'm afraid I won't be able to do this-"
"It's not necessary, sir."
"-but you see-" again he gestured with his arm, "most everything is taken, sold off. This furniture, my library, most of my ships, everything. And I still have creditors a-knocking, demanding their due. I don't have enough to square things with everyone, and eventually this house will go on the block." He lowered his arm. "Then where will I be?"
"Your mother said you have ships that will return in the spring."
"She believes that, does she? Good." Mr. Sumner turned on the daybed and placed his feet on the floor. He put the bottle down and rested his elbows on his thighs. "I must ask you, nephew, if you'll still continue to care for her-I can't deny her that."
"Of course I will, sir. I'll look in on her regularly."
"Good. Your compensation will be somewhat unusual, but I hope it will suffice."
Mr. Sumner got to his feet, rather unsteadily, and offered his hand. This was, Leander realized, intended as a compliment. They shook hands, and immediately Mr. Sumner sat down on the daybed, stretched out, and turned his head away. Leander picked up his hat and medicine bag and went to the door. Before going out, he looked back toward the daybed, but it was so dark he could barely see Mr. Sumner.
Benjamin was waiting out in the hall.
"He mentioned the matter of your compensation?"
Leander nodded.
"This way, then."
Benjamin led him down the hall and into the kitchen, which was empty except for the heavy old woman who had once given Leander a bowl of stew, and Rachel, who was large with child, tending to a pot hanging in the fireplace. She looked up uncertainly, and she offered Leander the faintest smile.
Benjamin led him out into the courtyard. "Delivered any babies yet?"
"Assisted."
"No trick to it, I understand. Though making them's more to my liking. It's the one thing I'm good at. My father says making sons is as easy as blowing a feather off your knee. Daughters, easier."
"I will be visiting Mrs. Sumner again soon, so perhaps I could have a look at Rachel?"
"We'd appreciate it, Doctor. And I have yet another favor to ask when you return."
They crossed the courtyard and entered the stable. It was cold inside, and the stalls were empty. Oddly, there was no noise, no activity; there had always been the sound of work being done-hammers, saws, the sigh of the bellows in the blacksmith's shop. Now there was only silence. At the back of the stable they came to the groom's office. The door was open, and Mr. Penrose was asleep in a chair, wrapped in a blanket before the small stove. His breathing was labored.
Benjamin touched Leander on the sleeve, and led him toward the back doors of the stable. "Between the Madame, Master Sumner, and my father, I don't know who's going to go first. I just want to see that he's comfortable."
"We'll see what we can do for him." Leander stopped and placed his bag on a bale of hay. He took out a bottle and gave it to Benjamin. "This should ease the congestion in his lungs."
Benjamin nodded as he put the bottle in his vest pocket. "He's been going downhill since the night that that Boston man died."
"Mr. Clapp."
"They fixed the scoundrel, though it almost killed my father."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't know?"
"The Boston man washed up on Joppa Flats, dead. Cedella and I were there. There are all sorts of stories-about the constables, about the mobs-but no one seems to know for certain what happened."
"Because no one really wants to know," Benjamin said. "I hear there was talk of taking action against some of the constables-perhaps even the high sheriff Thomas Poole-but there was no proof."
"But you know?"
Benjamin leaned a haunch on the bale of hay. "We were there-my father and me. There had been a mob roaming the streets, looking for Clapp and Samuel. They finally found Clapp, who was in the custody of the high sheriff and some of his constables. Word came that Samuel had escaped Newburyport, and this turned the mob for the worse. They demanded that Poole give up Clapp, and they threw a rope over a lantern post down by the wharves. Poole argued for law and order, but it was hopeless-even some of his own men were for a hanging then and there."
"I believe that," Leander said. "I saw them earlier, and they were out for blood."
"There was a great deal of confusion, a brawl, really. And my father-he was never one to keep out of the fray-he took a beating and ended up in a puddle. Caught a terrible chill, he did, and his breathing ain't been right since. But this Clapp, somehow during the fracas he got free. Runs out on the wharf, chased by this drunken mob-runs right off the end of the wharf and disappears into the river, and were they ever disappointed."
"And the next morning we found his body on Joppa flats," Leander said.
"So, it should be a lesson," Benjamin said, and then he smiled. "A lesson for men who think they can come north from Boston to take advantage of Newburyporters." Benjamin got to his feet and walked toward the back of the stable.
Leander picked up his leather bag and followed. The stalls were empty, the fleet of carriages gone. When they went out the stable door, Leander tugged down on the brim of his hat, shielding his eyes from the sun's glare. Then he looked across the paddock at one of Thomas Jefferson's stallions-harnessed and saddled, its white coat glistening in the light.
Benjamin walked over and took hold of the reins, rubbing the horse's nose with his free hand. "I trust this will be compensation enough?" he said. "Master had an agreement to sell both, but at the last minute he changed his mind. And now it's yours." Benjamin reached out and took the medicine bag.
Leander approached the horse, placed his foot in the stirrup, and pulled himself up and over into the creaking saddle. The horse turned its head until its eye could see him, and it snorted and shook its mane.
"There," Benjamin said as he began to tie the medicine bag to the saddle, "you two should get along splendidly."
"I believe so."
Stepping back, Benjamin said, "Well, be on your way now and do your rounds, and stop by again soon."
"Until then, Benjamin."
The stallion walked down the length of the paddock and through the open gate. Was a time when the gate would always have been closed, locked, and guarded by a sentry. Now there was little left to take from the Sumner house.
On High Street, Leander eased the reins and the horse quickened his gait, slowing when they turned down State Street. As they passed Wolfe Tavern, Roger Davenport was seated upon his stool in the doorway, arms folded. His eyes studied the fine white horse with genuine interest, but seemed to take little notice of the rider. A few doors down, an elderly couple were mending fishnet in the side yard. When they looked up from their work, the wife said, "There be the new doctor," and raising her arm in greeting she called, "Afternoon, sir!" By way of greeting, Leander touched the brim of his hat and continued down to Market Square, where a crowd had gathered to trade, while overhead seagulls wheeled in fall air tinged with the briny scent of the marshes.
Afterword.
MY WORK ON THIS BOOK REALLY BEGAN NEARLY FORTY YEARS ago in a dilapidated clapboard house on Tyng Street in Newburyport's North End. I had graduated from Boston College the year before and had no real notion of what I might do with my life, with one exception: I wanted to write stories. I realize now that a Federalist house built in the 1790s was the perfect place for me to start.
A man I knew had bought the house for less than twenty thousand dollars. He was looking for cheap labor and I was looking for a reason to get out of Boston. He knew that I had worked summers in college painting houses, so he offered me a deal I couldn't refuse: I could live in the enormous house rent-free and he would pay me four dollars an hour to help restore the place. He made this offer over beers on a Friday night, and to his surprise I arrived the following Monday with my mattress tied to the roof of my car. The drive north from Boston to Newburyport was thirty-eight miles, but the true distance seemed not a matter of miles but of centuries. When I entered the seaport at the mouth of the Merrimack, I was certain I had just traveled through a time warp and landed in the eighteenth century.
Over the next year or so, I came to know every inch of that house on Tyng Street. The restoration of Newburyport's houses and buildings was just beginning at that time. When I arrived in the spring of 1973, most of the brick storefronts along State Street and in Market Square were empty. It wasn't until the following winter that much of downtown was wrapped in scaffolding and the extensive restoration of the commercial district began, leading Newburyport into a remarkable period of growth and rejuvenation. On Tyng Street, I began by gutting the entire house, and more than any research conducted in the stacks at libraries and historical societies it was that job which led me to writing this novel nearly four decades later. When you gut a house by hand, your primary tools are the claw-hammer, cat's paw, crowbar, and sledge, all powered by sweat and muscle. The nails I pulled were often original square-cut nails that dated back to when the house was built. History had been chronicled throughout the house. Newspapers, books, a set of racing forms, and one diary (written by a man who had frequently been institutionalized) were discovered, along with the remains of dead animals, when plaster-and-lath walls and wide pine floorboards were ripped out. But the greatest curiosity was the wood itself which, when removed, revealed a personal historical record. Frequently, I would discover on the back of boards a carpenter's penciled jottings, measurements taken generations earlier. Most intriguing were the pieces of wood that had been signed and dated by someone who had worked on the house centuries before-and in one case the recorded date, scratched into a wall stud with a nail, pre-dated the house, indicating that some of the lumber had been salvaged from an earlier structure. Never have I felt a stronger connection to the past as when I held such pieces of wood in my hands.
I lived in Newburyport for most of the next decade, until I went to graduate school in the Midwest and ultimately found a job teaching in Michigan. Part of me has never really left Newburyport, and when I am able to return, I'm a shameless gawker: I take long walks and slow drives about town, gazing at the houses, marveling at their sheer substance and architectural integrity. There are few streets that don't have at least one house that I don't know well because I lived in it, worked on it, and often both. I moved frequently in those years, accompanied by my faithful white mutt who answered to Toby. I was always broke or nearly so, yet I knew then that my days in Newburyport were rich. It was a good place for a young writer to get blisters on his hands.
When it comes to acknowledgements for this book, my first thought is of Newburyporters-the folks I knew during the years I lived there, certainly; but it goes beyond my time, back to those people who signed their names to a piece of molding because they too saw and felt the uncommon nature of that city at the mouth of the Merrimack. They were building a community, one that has weathered the erosion of history remarkably well. Life was seldom easy, to be sure; but I believe that there, in those houses, we shared something that has become all too rare these days-a sense of belonging to that place; a love for the river, the salt marshes, the Plum Island dunes, and, of course, the Atlantic.
Those who are familiar with the history of Newburyport may recognize that some aspects of this story have been gleaned from the works of writers such as John J. Currier, Sarah Anna Emery, and John Marquand, as well as old issues of Newburyport newspapers, and that certain characters may at times bear some of the foibles, predilections, and eccentricities that are often associated with particular historical personages of some repute (to put it kindly).
Fiction is misrepresentation, though sometimes despite its artificial devices it manages to reveal some hard-won truth. I hope that at the very least this novel might shed a little light on Newburyport's past. Needless to say, my renderings of these characters, places, and events are the product of my own suspect imagination; any oversights, inaccuracies, or errors are solely my fault. If you can forgive them, I would be most grateful.
There are certain individuals who bear a great deal of responsibility for helping me complete this book, particularly as its final drafts were written, revised, and edited in the aftermath of my wife Patricia's death last year. This book, and the folks who assisted me with it, helped me get through all that, and to them I am forever indebted.
I'm most appreciative of how Claiborne Hancock and Jessica Case at Pegasus Books treat book-making as an act of faith; and how my agent Noah Lukeman continues to provide two things a writer needs: encouragement and sound advice.