Two. Here Be Dragons
Two
Here Be Dragons
HALF AN HOUR EARLIER
Beacon Hill, June 16, 1865
William Stevenson woke from the dream with a start. Something was amiss in his house.
He dashed into the hallway and pulled down the attic door latch, jumping back as the ladder tumbled toward him like a drawbridge. This had always made the room above feel even more separate and fortified from the rest of the house, more conducive to secret letter-writing to lonely old sea captains.
William scrambled up the rickety steps and poked his head through the door in the floor. Henrietta’s bed was awash in tousled sheets and Alice’s dowry chest sat at its foot, shut and secure. Swiveling his head, William peered across the floorboards at the opposite end of the room. Charlotte’s bed also looked slept in, but the dark patent-leather cabin trunk, the one stamped in gold leaf with her initials and bereft of travel tags, was gone.
William skipped the last two ladder steps in his hurry to get down, hitting the landing painfully hard in his moccasin slippers. He grabbed the banister with one hand to push off for extra speed—never in his fifty-five years had he descended so quickly the upper four floors of his house.
When he reached the back kitchen, William skidded to a stop. The smell of ham and popovers—his sweet Charlotte’s favorite—filled the air; his heart fluttered wildly. The cook and coachman stood in the center of the warm room, their heads close together in congress. For a second William wondered if there was something of an intimate nature between them, until he spotted the paper gripped in Samuel’s hand. The two servants broke apart guiltily but said nothing; Mrs. Pearson sank down at the kitchen table, head in both hands.
“What is it? Where are my girls? Oh, for God’s sake, will someone not tell me what is going on?”
Taking a tentative step forward, Samuel held out the note. “I was under strict orders, sir, not to give you this till after breakfast.” He coughed. “I took the misses to Long Wharf at dawn. They came to the back and asked me—swore me to secrecy they did—and I carried Miss Charlotte’s trunk to the ship—the China —and… well, I’m afraid, sir, I left them there.”
William collapsed into a chair at the other end of the table as he read the note, then stared up at both servants in despair. “What time does the boat depart?”
“Nine, sir, by all accounts.”
William jumped up. “Get the phaeton ready out front while I dress. Five minutes—you understand?” He stopped to pat the coachman’s shoulder reassuringly—since Alice’s death, both servants would carry out any of his daughters’ bidding. “And don’t worry, Samuel—I know you were only doing your duty.”
William drove the phaeton himself the short distance to State Street, then turned east in the direction of the old courthouse. A massive steamship could be seen half a mile ahead, berthed where State Street ended and Long Wharf began. William’s hands shook on the reins, his heart pounded all out of rhythm. Stopping the carriage before an attractive red-brick house, he scrambled down and rushed up the steps to bang repeatedly on the black front door. He didn’t stop banging until it finally swung open to reveal Thomas Nash still in his housecoat and slippers, one cheek lathered in soap.
“My God, William, what on earth? Is it the chief justice?”
“My girls are on the China —they made poor Samuel swear not to show me this until good and gone.”
Nash scanned the scrunched-up note taken from William’s trembling hand, then checked the grandfather clock in the foyer behind him. “That’s barely ten minutes from now.” He rubbed the soap off his face with the towel over his left arm. “Wait outside for me—I won’t be a minute.”
Returning to the carriage, William sat down on its dimpled leather seat for two, out of breath and exhausted. When Nash joined him just a few minutes later, only his hat was in his hands.
As William raced the horse down State Street at breakneck speed, he shouted to Nash all that had been happening in the Stevenson household of late. The more he cried out, the more Nash found himself reluctantly pulled into his friend’s orbit of fatherly worry: Someone must accompany them—someone must protect my girls. It had always been impossible to resist widower William Stevenson in court and in life, so utterly decent and without guile as he was. Nash had never met a more honorable man and knew, in that moment, that there was only one decent and honorable thing to do.
At the end of State Street was Long Wharf, the bustling center of Boston Harbor. William swerved the phaeton onto the pier, barely missing the water splashing below with the curve. He pulled the carriage to a sharp stop in front of the SS China and Nash jumped down to bound up the gangplank just as it began to rise. He presented himself, breathless, to one of the stewards, and pressed some coins in his hand. The young man looked to be no older than seventeen, and Nash felt his own age more than ever.
Grabbing on to the railing, he waved down at William as the ship horns and celebratory cheers of the passengers drowned out all other noise. “It’ll be all right!” Nash called to him as the gangplank pulled up. “I promise!” He waved his hat, having done all that he could to reassure the poor father, sitting alone in the carriage, one hand over his chest. Only then did Nash realize how he had failed to contemplate what any of this might mean for his own beating heart.
The ship began to move—the city of Boston receded—the horizon cleared ahead.
Henrietta and Charlotte Stevenson sat on the bottom bunk bed in their cabin, feeling sick to their stomachs even before the ship set sail. They had never, not once, disobeyed their father before.
“The first time we do, and we go and do this .”
“We were desperate.” Charlotte stood up and sighed. “You said yourself there was no other way. Imagine being stuck with one of our great-aunts or a complete stranger. I want to trot about and smell the sea air and do and see whatever I choose.”
“I still feel awful for Father. You he’ll forgive anything—but he’ll say that I should’ve known better.”
Charlotte gave her older sister a curious look. “Is that why you behave, truly?”
Henrietta smiled warily. “No. But it’s my excuse.”
“Well, I’m mightily glad to be of service to you, Harry!” At the sound of the ship horn, Charlotte rushed to the porthole of their first-class cabin. “We’re not moving yet.”
“You’ll know when we do. They say the trick is to stay in bed the first day.”
“I will do no such thing, seasick or not.” Charlotte stumbled. “Harry—it’s happening!” She steadied herself against the washstand as she spoke. “Let’s go up now, on deck! We haven’t seen a single soul yet—and we can wave goodbye to all of Boston!”
The main deck was full of first-class passengers celebrating their departure. Despite the morning hour, a small bar had been set up in the prow, and champagne poured freely while rivulets of tobacco juice ran across the deck. Henrietta and Charlotte purchased coffee instead from the dining saloon on their way to join the merry crowd.
“Oh Harry—no! It can’t be! Tell me that is not our father…”
Both women looked down over the railing at the sight of a very sad old man, alone on top of a black phaeton, waving his hat.
“Does he see us, do you think?” asked Henrietta, leaning over the railing. She and Charlotte tried calling down— Father! Father! —but there was no way he could hear them over all the noise. “No, we’re just one of many to him. Oh, poor Father.”
The slouched figure began to slowly recede as if time and space were moving backward, until disappearing from view altogether. Charlotte bit her lip to stop the tears as the SS China carried Harry and her away. Eventually they both stepped back from the railing, too conflicted to join in the merriment, and wandered along the port side of the deck.
“Oh no, not him now.” Charlotte pointed toward the man leaning with his back against the wheelhouse stairs, intently watching everyone who passed. For a second, she considered turning in the opposite direction, until realizing there would be no escaping Denham Scott while on ship.
“Ladies.” He tucked his notepad into his front jacket pocket and tipped his cap.
“Mr. Scott.” Henrietta crossed her arms.
“Fancy meeting you here after all,” Charlotte added in bitter reference to his assurances at Connie’s salon.
“I sail at the invitation of Sir Edward Cunard—a state cabin.”
“How luxurious, despite your meager stipend,” Charlotte replied. “At least steerage will be spared.”
Henrietta hushed Charlotte like a child, then pulled her along as Denham laughed after them.
“What bad luck running into him!” Charlotte exclaimed when they were far enough away, motioning about the crowded deck. “And with nowhere to hide.”
“There’s the ladies’ saloon—I hear men are excluded.”
“How ironic,” Charlotte replied with a relieved smile, thinking back on life in Boston, where it almost always worked the other way around.