Chapter 20 #3
Jon knew enough French to understand and to thank him. As the French officer walked away, Jon stood at the water’s edge and let the wind take salt to his lips. Behind him Bobby laughed once, hugging Joshua, a single sudden noise that broke like a bell.
Thorndike clapped Jon on the shoulder, so hard it hurt. “We did it, sir!”
Curtis, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, smiled as if he had not smiled for a year. “We are saved, Captain. You kept us alive for this day and I am once again forever in your debt.”
“A strange day to be borne home,” Jon said softly, thinking of Eunice, of Salem’s roofs, of the girls whose laughter he could already hear in his imagination, “but a glorious one. Providence has shown us mercy.”
Bobby pressed close, his voice hoarse. “We’ll soon be home, Captain.”
Jon placed a hand on Bobby’s shoulder and felt the tired weight of the months lift a degree.
“By God’s grace,” he answered, “we shall.” Then, before the last of the landing boats scuttled to the quay, Jon took a last look at the French standard flying from the fort, the tricolor above a Dutch pennant, and sent a prayer on the salt wind, a fierce thanks for the hand the Dutch had offered in the dark and for the French guns that came with the dawn.
Haraden house, Salem, January 1782
THE HARBOR LAY iron-gray beneath a lowering sky, the tide creaking in the ice along the wharf pilings. Gulls wheeled soundless over the frozen flats. Inside the house, the fire burned low, its glow touching the flickering candles and the folded linen on the sideboard.
Eunice sat near the window with her mending, though she had stitched the same seam twice without seeing it.
Hannah had just come from the kitchen where she said Martha was kneading bread.
“Up to her elbows in flour!” And Polly was humming to her doll on the rug before the hearth.
The day had that winter stillness when sound seemed to travel farther than sight.
Silas came in from the cold, stamping the snow from his boots. “No new post from Boston,” he said, unwrapping his scarf. “But a French brig was sighted off Marblehead this mornin’. Could be bringin’ prisoners north. There’s talk one of them might be from Salem—”
He stopped mid-sentence at a sudden knock at the door.
Martha wiped her hands on her apron. “This hour? Who’d be callin’ now?”
Eunice rose, her heart already hammering. There was something in the rhythm of the knock—firm, deliberate, with the faintest hesitation between strokes.
She opened the door.
For a long minute, she could only stare.
Snow drifted in the entryway around a man in a salt-stained coat, the seams of it mended in a dozen places.
His breath clouded in the cold air, his boots creaked once on the threshold.
He stood straight though his shoulders showed the weary set of long labor.
The dark blue eyes were the same but his face was thinner, the skin drawn fine over the bones, and the lines around his eyes had deepened.
His hair was just beginning to show gray at the temples, and his hands…
she saw them tremble once before he steadied them.
“Eunice,” he said softly. His voice—hoarse, uncertain, achingly familiar—broke the stillness like a wave. It was the first time he had ever spoken her given name, and it was sweet on his lips.
Her breath left her. “Jon—”
Then she was in his arms, and the months of fear fell away in a rush.
He held her as if anchoring himself to land again, his face pressed into her hair.
The smell of the sea still clung to him, salt, tar, and smoke, but beneath it was the faint scent of clean linen, proof that he had been cared for on the voyage home.
Hannah and Polly ran to their father to be added to his embrace and, for a moment, it was all tears and arms and the warmth of living breath. “My girls,” he said, his eyes tearing up as he looked upon his daughters. “You’ve grown a foot.”
Polly clutched his leg. “Papa! Papa!”
Martha came from the kitchen. “Merciful heavens,” she whispered, half-laughing, half-crying. “Captain Haraden, we gave you up for a ghost.”
Silas stepped forward, wordless, and gripped Jon’s arm. “We thought you were lost, sir. But Mrs. Mason never gave up.”
“I nearly was lost,” Jon said. “But the French took the island. Bouillé’s men freed us. I came north aboard their transport. Landed at Boston two days ago. I could not wait another hour.”
Eunice drew back enough to look at him. He’d been gone more than a year. The new gray in his hair, the hollow under his cheekbones, the weary gentleness in his eyes, each told its own tale. “You’re home,” she whispered. “You’re truly home.”
He brushed his thumb over her cheek, damp with tears. “By the grace of God, your prayers and a French cannon, yes.”
“Enough!” said Silas, his voice rough with feeling. “Let the man come in out of the cold before he freezes where he stands. Martha’ll have my hide if he turns to ice in her doorway.”
“Of course,” said Eunice, suddenly realizing he was standing in the cold. “Come sit by the fire.”
Jon stepped into the parlor. Eunice took his coat, and he dropped into his chair next to the hearth. Martha pressed a mug of hot cider into his hands. “You’d best sit before you fall down,” she said. “You look like you’ve been carved out of whalebone.”
He took the cup between his hands with a shaky laugh. “Feels near to it. But I’ll mend.”
Eunice drew up a chair next to him and touched his hand lightly where the skin was thin over the veins and then saw the marks where shackles had been. “You’ve come through much, love. Rest now. You’re safe.”
He looked around the familiar room, the flickering firelight, the smell of bread rising from the kitchen, the children’s soft voices at his feet. Something in his face eased. “Aye,” he said quietly, his gaze finding hers again. “Home at last.”