Chapter 4 #2
March arrived. Sap ran in the maple trees, and it was time for sugaring off.
The Almanack advised its readers: “Make your own sugar, and send not to the Indies for it. Feast not on the toil, pain, and misery of the wretched.” With that grim proverb in mind Merry threw herself energetically into the maple sugaring, and after a day spent hefting sap buckets she strolled happily into the hallway with the joyous fragrance of boiling maple syrup following her from the kitchens.
Glancing toward the whatnot, she saw the Richmond paper.
In a mood of innocent contentment she lifted it.
The front-page story heading jumped out at her from the sober news sheet.
In the headline was Rand Morgan and his ship, the Black Joke.
The Black Joke, it seemed, had taken the American merchant ship Morning Star.
Once aboard, the pirates had “made carnage of the hold, carrying off ruinous quantities of spirituous liquor, drunk as much as they could hold, and wastefully bathed themselves in the Surplus. The Captain’s psalm book was villainously used for ‘target practice,’ and the trunk of a Boston merchant was invaded and costly clothing cast upon the deck for the guffawing wretches to make peacocks of themselves in.
Further, the First Mate’s spectacles were taken from him and put upon a pig.
A cargo worth forty thousand dollars in gold was seized as well as a goodly amount of medicines.
All the meanwhile the fifer from the Morning Star was forced to play a hornpipe until he dropped from exhaustion and was carried aboard the pirates’ ship to be conscripted into their own crew.
Also aboard were three women, and of their use at the hands of the pirates this editor prefers to say nothing. ”
Merry found Aunt April in the green drawing room, peering down in a dazzled way at a sheet of superfine stationery. Another confusing bill from the mantua-maker, thought Merry. Without looking at the letter she kissed her aunt on the cheek and said, “Good evening, Aunt April.”
April looked startled, as though she’d been woken from a catnap, and folded the paper in her hand so hastily that Merry had a fleeting impression of secrecy.
“Merry Patricia! My, but you can come quietly into a room. You look tired, dear. I’ll ring up the tea.”
The words were said in a flustered, rather disjointed voice that made Merry think that perhaps the bill had been high because of the blockade and her aunt was afraid she’d have to apply to Merry’s father for extra funds this quarter.
Wondering why her aunt didn’t tell her about it, Merry said, “No, thank you, Aunt April. I had a cup of milk in the kitchen on the way in.”
“Did you? Well, I’m glad. You look tired to me. All this maple sugar making—I don’t think it’s been good for you. You’ve never been very strong.”
As long as Merry could remember, her aunt had been saying that to her. She had always accepted it before. Now she asked, “Why do you say that I’m not strong?”
“Why, I mean merely that you’re not robust. One can see looking at you that your bones are delicate, and… Merry Patricia, what’s going on in that little head of yours? You don’t look well to me, not a bit well.”
Merry sat down. “It’s just that—Aunt April, have you read the evening paper?”
“I’ve skimmed it, of course, but I haven’t delved—oh.
Ah, ha. You saw that dreadful story, did you, about the pirates?
Why they find it necessary to put things like that in the public press so young people can be exposed to that kind of degraded story is more than I can imagine!
No wonder you don’t look well. I felt ill myself after reading it.
Horrible. Put the whole thing right out of your mind. ”
But bright in Merry’s mind was Morgan, black-eyed, the emerald glowing on his chest, and Cat with the long hair and cruel hands…
and Devon. Had Devon taken one of the women and held her delicately, talking in a gentle, quiet voice as he had with Merry, hypnotizing her with his comforting, and then plundering her defenseless mouth with his lips?
It was the kind of thing that an editor might prefer not to mention.
Merry watched her aunt go to her lap desk and lock away the stationery sheet.
When her aunt had turned back to her, Merry asked her, “Aunt April, why wouldn’t the newspaper say what happened to the women? ”
She could have sworn her aunt blushed. “I think they said too much as it was! I can’t think that your father would want you to read things about pirates and women.”
“Why not?” Seven months ago Merry would have hardly been able to frame the question to herself, much less ask it of her aunt. It was an unbearable thing, this being desperate to know. She looked everywhere in the room but at her aunt. “What do pirates do to women?”
As it happened, Aunt April was as embarrassed as Merry.
She went to peer miserably out the window, as if she was afraid someone was hiding outside listening, and swallowed with difficulty, as though she had an infected throat.
“One would suppose—that is—” Another swallow.
“One imagines that the pirates had their way with them.”
Before she lost her nerve, Merry asked, “Which way is that?”
“A perfectly normal question for a young lady at your stage in life,” said Aunt April with the nervous certainty of one trying to remain calm in the face of all hell breaking loose. She made a great play of arranging the new window curtains, the color running high over her cheekbones.
A wayward and rather poignant thought occurred to Merry. “Don’t you know either?”
“I was never married, Merry Patricia, and my mother died before she had ever an occasion to tell me.…”
It came to Merry suddenly where she had learned that meekly apologetic voice that had so amused the pirate. She felt her lips twitch upward into a grin. “But you must have gathered some idea.”
“Some idea perhaps, but it’s hardly anything that I’d care to…”
A giggle sprang from Merry’s grin, and she shook an accusing finger. “If you think I’m to be put off with stalling, Aunt April, then…”
“Oh, very well. If you will hear it. I warn you, though, it’s only the merest scrap that I chanced to overhear my mother telling my sister.
I daresay this is going to sound quite peculiar but”—April stared fixedly at one of the low shrubs in front of the house—“it seems that a man—climbs on top of a woman—”
Surprise brought Merry to her feet. “On top of?”
“There! There, you see? I’ve made a poor job of it.” The window curtains crumpled under Aunt April’s fretting fingers. “You’d probably have been better off if I’d said nothing! That’s all I know. First they like to kiss, and then climb on.”
Merry sat down again and concentrated her gaze on the wall covering’s vanilla dots. When she could control the quivering of her lips, she said, “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I quite agree with you, dearest. But how many of the things that men do make sense? Take fox hunting, or prizefights, or making war, for that matter.” She added dismally, “Men have drives.”
“Do women have them too?”
“I doubt that it could be the same. Can you imagine a group of women turning outlaw, attacking ships, and forcing their will on men? Do you know what I think? A lady would do best to marry a rich man who could afford to keep a mistress and so would have less energy left for his wife.”
“Oh, Aunt!” Merry laughed, launching herself from her chair to take her aunt’s hands from the curtains and plant a cheerful kiss on each one.
“Then from this day forth I will take special care to encourage only my wealthy beaux.” Striking a coquettish pose, Merry fluttered her lashes at an invisible gentleman, placed, if he had been there, where he must have been tripping backward over the tea table.
“Dear Major Moneybags,” she said grandly, sweeping a full court curtsy, “I shall agree to your obliging proposal on the one condition that you will keep yourself a woman and climb on her more often than you will on me!”
Aunt April smothered a smile. “Such nonsense. We aren’t discussing this with the proper gravity, and I don’t know what people would think if they were to hear us.
Really, sometimes I fear that we get a little batty, living here like this, two women alone.
” A strange look came over her features.
She went to her lap desk and thoughtfully stroked her hand in a wavy pattern across its highly polished surface. “We don’t get out enough.”
Through the ages women had been making the same kind of statement, but Merry had never, never expected to hear it from her aunt!
Aunt April, who hated to travel, who detested American social life.
With disbelieving senses Merry heard her aunt ask, “Merry Patricia, would you like to come with me on a trip to New York?”