The Passions of Emma (8 page)
Tears burned in Emma’s eyes as she watched her mother leave the drawing room, stiff-backed in the armor of her whalebone. But it was the sight of her sister’s pale, anguished face that tore at her heart.
“Oh, Maddie, I’m so sorry.” She knelt beside Maddie’s chair and took up her hands. They were cold and shaking, and she chaffed them with her own. “Mama’s furious with me, and in her uncanny way she knows just the thing to make me feel utterly wretched about it and that’s to take it out on you.”
“Why, shame on you, Emmaline Tremayne, you’re flushing again,” Maddie drawled. “It will not do.”
Maddie was smiling, but Emma saw the tightness of her sister’s throat as she swallowed. The brightness of tears held back in her eyes.
Maddie’s gaze fell to her lap. She pulled her hands free and then plucked at the fringed rug that covered her legs. “Emma, will you be a darling and prevail upon one of the servants to carry me up to my room. I very much wish to be alone for a while.”
“Oh, Maddie. Shouldn’t we—”
“No, we shouldn’t. I don’t want to talk about him, because there’s nothing to be said. I suppose now that he’s home our paths must cross eventually. Whereupon he’ll see that I’ve become a cripple, and then that will be the end of that.”
Emma couldn’t bear to stay in the house a moment longer than it took to see Maddie comfortably settled in bed with a glass of warm milk and her favorite book of poetry. Emma was determined to go for a walk if only to subject her cheeks to the ravages of the cold and the wind until they were redder than a pair of peeled tomatoes.
Her half boots crunched on the winter-brittle grass. The coming night was already casting its black shadows over the dying day. The low dense clouds promised more rain.
When she got to the edge of the lawn she turned and looked back. Her slave-trader ancestor, the first William Tremayne, had built what he called his “plantation house” in 1685, in the square and stolid style of his day. But his pirate, whaler, and merchant heirs had embellished it with wings and bays, towers and cupolas, coves and cornices. Over two hundred years’ worth of hot summer sea breezes, fall hurricanes, and winter snowstorms had weathered its shingled walls to a delicate silver gray, the color of the birches that gave the house its name.
Most days, The Birches looked enchanted, with its steeply gabled roofs, and its piazzas spread all around it like the skirts of a curtseying debutante. But on this day the house appeared to be cowering under the heavy sky. A sullen fortress of rules and duties and reproaches, of must-dos and must-nots.
Gaslight flickered in her sister’s window and then went out. She had known that as soon as she left the room, Maddie would take the bottle of chloral hydrate out of the drawer in the bedside table. Their uncle, who was a doctor, had prescribed it for the pain in the girl’s back and hips. But Maddie had confessed once that she drank it
more for the pain in her heart. “It brings me such sweet and gentle dreams,” she’d said.
more for the pain in her heart. “It brings me such sweet and gentle dreams,” she’d said.
Oh, Maddie . . .
Emma turned her back on the house and entered the forest of birches, following the old Indian trail that ran along a broken stone wall down to the bay. The bare white branches dripped water onto her uncovered head. The leaf mold on the path gave off a melancholy smell, like forgotten old love letters. The world had been stripped of its color; it was all white and black and gray.
She thought of how this stone wall, these white birches, had born witness to the whole of her life. They knew the entirety of who she was, and yet to her ownself she was a mystery. She felt as if she’d always been holding a part of herself back, saving it, and she had a terrible fear she would end up saving it forever. That she would die with whole parts of herself unused.
When she stepped out of the trees onto the beach, the wind came whipping up off the bay with a lacing of rain that stung her face. She lowered her head and so didn’t see the man standing on the dock until she was almost upon it.
The dock was part of a boathouse that thrust out into the tossing waves. It was where Emma’s slender little racing sloop, the
Icarus
, was spending these early days of spring, awaiting the first sail of the season. Emma could hear the muffled creak of the boat’s masthead, the slap of water against her hull. Willie’s boat had been kept there as well, but his slip was empty now.
Icarus
, was spending these early days of spring, awaiting the first sail of the season. Emma could hear the muffled creak of the boat’s masthead, the slap of water against her hull. Willie’s boat had been kept there as well, but his slip was empty now.
And that man, that rough and swaggering Irishman from the hunt, stood at the very end of the dock. Her dock.
He must have seen her coming before she saw him, for he was facing her, his back to the wind and water. In the failing light she couldn’t see his face, but his very presence stopped her in midstep on the beach.
A seabird wheeled and cried overhead. The foamy waves made hiccuping sounds as they washed over barnacled rocks and speckled pebbles. The wind tore at her hair, pulling it free of its pins. Her hair
swirled around her head, a wet shroud that smothered and blinded her. They both stood unmoving and they might have been the only two people on earth.
swirled around her head, a wet shroud that smothered and blinded her. They both stood unmoving and they might have been the only two people on earth.
She broke the spell by reaching up to capture her hair. She wrapped its thickness around her wrist so that she could see him better. “You were going to steal my sloop,” she accused, although she had no proof of it, beyond that he was in a place where he should never have been.
“Ah,
Dhia
,” he said in his ruined voice, and the sound of it was like the pull of a dull saw through wet wood. “‘Steal,’ you say. Such a harsh word, that.”
Dhia
,” he said in his ruined voice, and the sound of it was like the pull of a dull saw through wet wood. “‘Steal,’ you say. Such a harsh word, that.”
She suspected he was exaggerating his brogue, flaunting his Irishness. Just as he was flaunting the great size of him. He stood dark and tall against the gray water, with his shoulders thrown back and his legs splayed wide, absorbing easily the roll of the dock’s weathered boards on the waves. His black wool pea coat flared darkly in the wind.
He made her think of pirate skiffs slinking over moonless waters, of cloth-muffled oars and the black, silent shadows of dangerous men.
“This is private property you’re on,” she said. Her own voice sounded rusty, as if she hadn’t used it in a hundred years. “The whole of Poppasquash Point belongs to us Tremaynes, and you’ve no business setting so much as a foot on it.”
He threw his head back dramatically, his eyes beseeching the wet slate sky above. “God save us all. The next thing she’ll be telling me is that the Great Folk own the very air I’m breathing.”
He startled her by moving suddenly, so fast it seemed he was off the dock and coming at her before she even had time to think about running.
The closer he came, the larger and more frightening he seemed, and yet she still didn’t run. He came right up to her until only a hand’s space separated them.
Her head fell back as she looked up at him. There was something
striking about his face, even with the scars and the bent nose, or perhaps because of them. He had brave but somehow broken eyes, and they were beautiful. The color of bottle glass that has been polished by the sea and glazed by the sun.
striking about his face, even with the scars and the bent nose, or perhaps because of them. He had brave but somehow broken eyes, and they were beautiful. The color of bottle glass that has been polished by the sea and glazed by the sun.
He stared down into her upturned face, and she waited with her heart pounding louder than the surf in her ears for him to do God knew what. But instead he simply stepped around her, passing by her so closely she thought the sleeve of his coat might have brushed her cheek.
She didn’t watch him go. Indeed, she walked away from him, in the opposite direction. She pretended to be fascinated with the beards of wet green moss that wrapped around the pilings of the dock, while she listened for the scrape of his boots on the white sand. When all she could hear was the roar and the pulse of the sea and the wind, she turned around.
And she saw that he had stopped and was looking back at her. She felt a rushing well up inside her, then. Of excitement and fear, and of expectations only half-imagined. She whirled, turning her back to him, and drew in a deep breath, tasting the brine.
When she looked around again, he was gone. But she could still see where their tracks in the sand had come together and then walked away from each other.
It grew dark and became quite cold, and yet she waited there on the beach until the tide had come in far enough to wash their footprints all away.
I
t was a blue, wind-booming day. The first day of May.
t was a blue, wind-booming day. The first day of May.
Emma took the
Icarus
out onto the water for the first time that spring. And when the wind caught the mainsail, bellying it out with a great snap, Emma Tremayne threw back her head and laughed.
Icarus
out onto the water for the first time that spring. And when the wind caught the mainsail, bellying it out with a great snap, Emma Tremayne threw back her head and laughed.
She felt as wide and free as the sky.
She squinted out into the dazzle where the water met the last fraying tatters of morning fog. The sun was just up and the world glowed rosy, like the hollow of a conch shell.
She trimmed the sails and the sloop heeled deeper, the bow slicing through white lips of waves, foamy wake spilling from the stern. She kept one hand on the tiller, while the other held aloft a parasol. She braced her feet against the coaming and turned her face to the salt spray. And lost herself to the strange rushing silence of a fast boat under sail.
Bristol girls learned how to sail almost as soon as they could walk. The Tremaynes had always met their fates and made their fortunes off the sea and boats; it was in their blood. Mama would never have allowed her to go sailing alone otherwise, if it weren’t such a venerated Tremayne tradition. It was the only time Emma felt truly free—in her little racing sloop, running with the wind.
Even so, she had to dress properly, in a yachting costume fashioned by Monsieur Worth. She was required to wear a hat, of
course, and carry along a parasol so that her face wouldn’t become flushed, or, horror of all horrors,
sun-browned.
course, and carry along a parasol so that her face wouldn’t become flushed, or, horror of all horrors,
sun-browned.
Today, she stayed on a close tack far out into the bay, sailing around the end of Poppasquash Point and the lighthouse on Hog Island so that when she brought the boat about she would be on a long, steady beat toward the town and the harbor. It would take hours but she didn’t care. On the water, time was without limits or horizons. The world was only sun and sea and wind.
She had never ventured out of the bay and into the ocean, although she’d often imagined herself doing so. Once, she’d looked up in an atlas where she would land if she sailed due east from Bristol. It was a seaport in Portugal called Viana do Castelo.
She liked to imagine such a place when she was sailing. To imagine red-tile roofs and crooked cobblestoned streets, a sunwashed harbor and rolling hills of olive trees and grape vines. But although she longed for it, she knew she would never sail there. It wasn’t the danger and the loneliness of the wide-open sea that frightened her. It was its infinite possibilities.
When she finally came about, the sun was dancing high in the sky, throwing lacy collars of light on the water. The bones of the town were stark on the horizon, trees and roofs etched against the sky.
She chose Saint Michael’s belfry to sight by, as many a homebound Bristol sailor had done before her. Saint Michael’s, where every Tremayne born in the last two hundred years had been baptized and buried. Except for those, like her brother, who had been swallowed up by the sea.
The wind filled every corner of her sails. The boat cut and dipped through the waves, drawing closer to the shore. She passed some men in a skiff who were taking up eels with long forks. She could see the mansions on Hope Street now, and the arched roof of the railroad station. And the cotton mill, with its high, narrow windows and its chimneys spewing white steam-smoke.
The mill stood right at the harbor’s edge and had its own wharf
with piers that stuck out like comb teeth into the water. Emma let the mainsail fall slack and glided up to a barnacle-crusted piling. The rushing silence of the wind spilled into a clash of noise: the jib fluttering, a seagull crying, a man singing as he raked for clams. The loud, vibrating hum that was the constant whir of hundreds of spindles inside the mill.
with piers that stuck out like comb teeth into the water. Emma let the mainsail fall slack and glided up to a barnacle-crusted piling. The rushing silence of the wind spilled into a clash of noise: the jib fluttering, a seagull crying, a man singing as he raked for clams. The loud, vibrating hum that was the constant whir of hundreds of spindles inside the mill.
She tied up her sloop, making the mooring lines fast to the deck cleats with quick, efficient hitches. Yet she didn’t climb ashore—not just yet.
For so long, for all of her life, things had always just happened to Emma Tremayne, without her seeking, sometimes without her understanding, and often without her caring. So it had taken some while before she had fully understood what it was she wanted to do. And longer still for her to find the courage to see it through.
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