“A short hoist and a long peak” was the Cape Cod saying. A story-and-a-half house presented a low profile to the ceaseless wind, which the windowless roof deflected. And though the upper rooms were small and low, they were all the warmer for their size. On the first floor, three rooms surrounded the chimney—a parlor to contain good furniture and family mementos, a master’s chamber, and a great room where the family cooked, ate, and spent most of its time.
As a family grew, the house could grow, with new wings to accommodate new arrivals. The most frugal or penurious might even begin with half a house and expand as fortune permitted, but Sam Hilyard was neither, and he built with the best materials, indulging in dentil molding along the fascia boards, a fanlight above the doorway, and elegant pine paneling around the fireplaces.
On a warm November afternoon, he was pegging pine planks in the great room. Salt making had ended for the season, so Scrooby Doone was helping Sam, while upstairs, Kwennit, Will, Barmy Burt, and Leyden Doone put down rough flooring.
The house echoed with the sound of hammering and chatter, and Sam laughed to imagine what flights of conversational fancy might be transporting Burt and Leyden. In the way that he attracted misfits, he had drawn the Doones into his circle. Scrooby, by far the more scrutable, seemed the happier for it. He was at the other end of the board, using a pinch bar to hold it in place. When Sam laughed, he laughed, though he could not have known why.
“Gettin’ married makes a man happy, don’t it?”
“Happier than a ship’s cat findin’ rats in the bilge.”
“I’m glad. I was a-scared of you at first.”
“So was your brother.”
“Yeah, but… yeah, but he’s stupid. I’d never hit you with a shovel.”
A drop of perspiration rolled from the tip of Sam’s nose and splattered onto the new board.
“Leyden believed all what he heard ’bout you, back in the Revolution. But I didn’t. I knew that if I ever worked for you, you’d treat me good.”
Sam did not notice the agitation creeping into Scrooby’s voice. His attention was on the peg in front of him, and his mind was on Hannah. He gave no more thought to Scrooby’s chatter than to the crying of the gulls.
“So… so, since you’re my boss now, I just want to say I’m sorry.”
Sam’s mallet drove the peg downward. “Mmm-hm? What for?”
“Tellin’ cousin Solomon what you was doin’ that night.”
“What night?”
“September the fourth, 1778.”
Sam stopped hammering and turned to the childlike old man at the other end of the floorboard.
“Solomon… he always said, ‘If you ever hear anythin’ ’bout the Hilyards, let me know.’ So… when I heard about you smugglin’ salt, so… I told him.”
“And what did he do?”
“He sent me and Leyden with a letter to the captain with the brass buttons. He said you was bad guys and you’d be caught. But I… I don’t think you’re a bad guy now, Sam, and I just wanted you to know that.”
Scrooby’s words mixed once more with the cry of the gulls.
vii.
Hannah had gone to Nova Scotia to settle affairs with her late husband’s family, and she had returned by way of Barnstable, so that she could visit her father. Then she headed for Jack’s Island.
The twenty-mile ride from Barnstable to the north parish of Harwich was never pleasant. Roads built upon sand were unstable, no matter how often they were rolled or covered with crushed shells. Cape Cod horses wore large shoes to support them, and the carriages went on wide wheels, because there were places where the road was no better than the beach.
Still, Hannah was thankful for the long journey from her father’s home, because she had much to consider after seeing him. It was near dusk when she reached the island. She found Sam sitting on the half-finished floor, a fire of wood scraps roaring on the hearth, a rum bottle at his side. “My father’s given me a choice.”
Sam kept his eyes on the fire. “Renounce him.”
“He said if marry I you, I’ll never have an interest in the business.”
“Do you love me, Hannah?”
“Of course.”
“Then prove it.”
“We agreed that until our marriage, you could satisfy your lust elsewhere.”
Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her down to his side. “My lust is not the issue… though you smell very good.”
“You smell like rum.”
“Rum clears my head.”
“What clouds it?”
“Love.”
“I don’t understand.”
Nor did Sam. He had counted on her to help him find his bearings, and she brought only more confusion. He threw his arms around her, as if she were a buoy.
“Sam—” She had come to find strength, and he asked her to be strong. His stubble scraped against her cheek. His arms surrounded her. His scent of rum and sweat, of tobacco and tar, comforted her in a way she could not define.
The effect of her body was no less upon him. The smoothness of her skin, the softness of her breasts, the sweet scent of vanilla, these conspired to draw him from his anger and point him north once more.
They remained like this for some time, and though their flesh knew the quickening that came to all lovers, they did not seek to satisfy it. The embrace was satisfaction in itself, taking them beyond desire, toward sustenance.
A chunk of wood tumbled from the firebox, spattering sparks across the floor. The wood was pushed back, the sparks extinguished. They found each other’s arms once more. Their silence enfolded them, except for the small sigh when he kissed her… and the greater sigh when her bared breasts touched his chest.
Sam Hilyard had rutted his way through the ports of America, the Indies, and Europe, and when he glanced at the shadow rocking on the wall, he thought once more of Kwennit’s term: the beast with two backs. Perhaps he and Hannah looked no more dignified than that, he with his ass in the air and his breeches at his ankles, she with her dress front unbuttoned and her skirts hiked up around her waist. But this was different. The spiritual pact they made in their embrace they sealed with the joining of their flesh.
It was a long time before they spoke, before the world once more invaded their small circle of warmth.
“Renounce him,” whispered Sam.
“He’s my father.”
“He informed the British of my father’s final voyage.”
Hannah sat up and pulled her dress across her breasts. “Where did you hear this? Why have you not spoken of it before?”
“Scrooby told me yesterday, by way of tellin’ me I’ve neither horns nor forked tail.”
“You believe the words of a man-child?”
“That was your father’s thinkin’ when he sent two halfwits to the
Somerset
.”
“You must let my father answer this charge.”
Sam put his arm around her. “We own this island. I hold stock in the
Nathan Hale
. We have each other.”
For Hannah, the glow of their love was fading like the warmth from a glass of wine. In its place was the heaviness that came when the wine wore away. “I cannot renounce my family, and if you believe this story—”
“I leap a wide river to reach you, Hannah. Let your father keep his property. We’ll begin a life together.”
Hannah stood, and as she collected herself, a reminder of their intimacy trickled onto her thigh. “I deserve part of what my father owns. And if I renounce him, there is no promise that your hatred for him will die.”
“I’ll kill my hatred”—Sam sipped his rum—“by takin’ his daughter in exchange for my father.”
“Is this how you see me? And what we just did, was it some kind of victory?”
“You misunderstand.”
The trickle on her thigh grew colder. She turned away and pressed one of her petticoats between her legs. “I’ll not be used as comeuppance for my father’s failings.”
He stood, hitched his breeches. “Renounce him.”
“You cannot love me too well if you know me no better than that.”
Sam drained the bottle and shattered it in the fireplace. The flames jumped angrily.
“Let my father answer this charge. I cannot live knowing you burn to kill him.” Hannah pulled on her shawl. “I’ll stay at Cap’n Jake’s.”
“I’ll finish the floor, in honor of what we done on it.”
That night Cap’n Jake brought Sam a note from Hannah:
Dear Sam,
You must trust me, and I must trust my father, you for the sake of our love, I for the sake of my blood. I do not wish to separate myself from you, yet there are times when a man must be alone, hearing nothing but the sounds of his own heart and unspoken voice. And it is these, more than the happy din of a noisy household, that will make him understand how much he needs the gentle things, a loving woman’s voice, the laughter of children. You and my father must speak, for we cannot marry under such conditions.
viii.
Solomon Bigelow came to Jack’s Island on a miserable rainy morning a few days later, but not to speak to Sam Hilyard. He came to take the Doone brothers and their flapping mouths back to Barnstable. For help, should they prove uncooperative, he brought his Negro driver Gamaliel and Thornton Brace, Barnstable blacksmith.
Hannah had hoped for reconciliation, but Solomon had neither time nor interest for that.
“Where are those fools?” he demanded of his daughter without so much as a greeting.
“At the windmill, with Cap’n Jake, grinding corn.”
Solomon turned back into the rain and ordered his driver to take him up the road to the mill.
Hannah called for him to wait, but he ignored her, so she threw on her shawl and went running to the new house, where Sam was pegging floorboards. She could not let her father leave the island without speaking to Sam, no matter the anger of either man.
While the pumping mills looked like delicate herons feeding on the marsh, the grinding mill near the causeway stood as solid and serene as the First Church itself, and nearly as revered. The arms turned in the relentless wind that Cape Codders had come to know as God’s breath. The wooden gears squeaked in the cap. The gears turned the great stones on the middle level of the mill. And the corn filled the bins on the first floor.
Solomon and his blacksmith found the Doones and Cap’n Jake working at the millstones. He had to shout over the noise. “They’ve learned all they need to here. I need ’em in Barnstable.”
“Ain’t we… ain’t we done good here?” said Scrooby.
“I don’t want to go.” Leyden gripped his shovel.
Brace grabbed him by the collar and he pulled away like a dog ducking a blow.
“I don’t want to go, either,” said Scrooby. “Cap’n Jake been good to us, and Aunt Sarah, she makes blueberry cobbler and—”
“Now, Scrooby,” said Cap’n Jake, “if Solomon says he needs you up in Barnstable—”
“Maybe he needs you to betray another patriot.” Sam Hilyard’s voice boomed up the stairwell as he came pounding from the grainbins to the grinding level. “Maybe someone’s runnin’ salt to Washington’s army!”
“This is private property, Hilyard,” said Solomon. “Get out.”
“I asked him to come!” Hannah rushed up after Sam, tripping on her shawl as she came.
“He has no business here!” Solomon’s voice sounded as harsh as the wooden gears. “Mr. Brace, throw him out.”
The blacksmith had no neck, arms like most men’s thighs, and a face like a barnacle-crusted hull. He suggested that Sam should move along. Sam ignored him.
Hannah put herself between the blacksmith and Sam. She shivered from fear and the cold rain that had soaked through her shawl and plastered her hair to her face in wet ringlets. All she wanted was time to reconcile her father and Sam, and herself to each of them.
All Sam wanted was the truth, because the truth would tear Solomon’s daughter away from him forever. “Scrooby Doone says you betrayed my father.”
“You believe them? They’re idiots.”
“Idiots?” cried Scrooby. “We ain’t idiots.”
“We is,” said Leyden, “but I’m smarter.”
“You ain’t ever.”
“Am so.”
Cap’n Jake grabbed their collars and pulled them back against the wall. “Shut up. This here’s serious stuff, more’n either of you understands.”
“Idiots,” repeated Solomon.
“The captain of the
Somerset
believed them,” Sam cried over the roar of the mill wheel. “And you believed that if they said where they’d gone, no one would believe them. But I believe Scrooby.”
Scrooby grinned and his Adam’s apple wagged up and down. “I was on that British ship, just like I said, Sam.”
“They’re idiots.”
“Scrooby, what did the captain look like?” asked Sam.
“A dark man, dark eyes, black brows… like a raccoon.”
“And he had brass buttons,” said Leyden. “Shiny buttons to see you face in. I liked the brass buttons.”
“Enough of this,” said Solomon.
“Yep. And Scrooby couldn’t find the letter, ’cause he’s stupid, but I had it in me hatband, just like Mr. Bigelow told me—”
“Quiet, both of you!” cried Solomon.
Hannah had heard her father described as an old gull, a sharp-eyed, grasping scavenger. Now, in his rain-soaked gray coat, with streaks of chalk running from his powdered hair down the sides of his face, he even
looked
like a gull.
His eyes met hers for an instant; then his head twitched away. “Brace, move my daughter aside, and give this impudent Hilyard rascal what he deserves.”
Sam gave the blacksmith no more than a glance. “Move and you’ll wear the mill wheel around your neck.”
“Send him down the stairs, Brace. ’Tis time he had his comeuppance.”
“My what?”
“Comeuppance! Your bloody grandmother’s favorite word. Take your own, for swindlin’ my daughter and screwin’ her as well, I’d wager!”
“Father!”
“
Comeuppance!
”
That voice, screaming over the roar of the mill, became a voice, screaming over the roar of the wind, screaming of comeuppance, and for a moment, Sam saw a burning cat.
And in that moment, Thornton Brace struck. A hand sank into Sam’s throat like a lobster claw. A fist crashed into his face, then again. And Sam’s knees went weak. Now Brace smiled. He might bully a small town with his bulk, but he had never fought in a dockside tavern brawl. So he let go of Sam’s throat and reached for Sam’s collar, to throw him down the stairs.