Chapter 25 #2
“But can he be trusted? If he sees Ramsay—if he suspects something amiss—what will he do? Will he stand by his brother? Keep his mouth shut?”
“Has a reward been offered for your capture?”
“My dear, there is always a bounty on the head of a—” He glances to the hearth, at Beulah’s back as she spoons porridge into her bowl. “Of a man like Captain Ramsay.”
Hephzibah rises from the board and gathers the dishes. “Then I imagine Enoch Winthrop will certainly want to claim it.”
Hephzibah first met Silas Winthrop’s brother at her sister’s wedding, which was held in the front room of her aunt’s house in Newport in the middle of April.
The weather had swung back to winter that morning and a cold, noisy drizzle drummed on the roof.
Beulah was so nervous, Hephzibah clasped her hand throughout the service to hold her steady while this man they hardly knew, this small scarred shrunken stranger of sixty-four hard years, stood on the other side of her sister, not yet eighteen, and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet like a horse, she thought, about to be turned out for a gallop.
On the other side of Silas Winthrop stood his younger brother, fifty-six years old and almost as wizened as his sibling.
Hephzibah didn’t pay him any mind, at first. She was too busy trying to keep her sister from fainting.
On Hephzibah’s other side stood her Aunt Martha, with whom she and Beulah had lived since their mother and father were killed in a raid on Block Island by a fleet of French privateers, fifteen years earlier.
Aunt Martha smiled and hummed to herself as the minister droned on.
No nerves for Aunt Martha! She had disposed of both nieces in a single coup—a neat piece of nuptial negotiation if there ever was one, but Martha had always driven a hard bargain.
It was why she and Uncle Clovis already owned a house and a thriving chandlery, whereas Beulah and Hephzibah had inherited only a few moldering books and a small flock of chickens from their unfortunate parents.
Beulah’s blooming face and extraordinary ripe figure were her dowry, and they had purchased her a respectable husband with decent property, who was moreover willing to provide bed and board for the older sister as well, provided she worked like a dog and didn’t eat too much meat.
Who was Hephzibah to complain?
After the ceremony, the Winthrop party set sail for the island that bore their name.
Beulah vomited up the little food she had been able to swallow that morning and promptly fell asleep.
Hephzibah found a seat next to her sister’s green face and watched the wake foam out behind them.
The chickens gabbled in their wooden coop.
Enoch dropped to the deck beside her and patted her knee.
“Now then,” he said, “here we are. Family, nice and snug.”
“Yes, sir,” Hephzibah replied.
“Faith, he’s a lucky man, my brother, to have found himself such a jolly bedfellow, at his time of life. He’ll relish his good fortune tonight, I don’t doubt. What do you think, sister?”
“Beulah will make him a good wife, I’m sure.”
He gave her knee another pat. “Does the sea trouble you at all, sister?”
“Not so much as it does poor Beulah.”
“You’re made of sturdier stuff, aren’t you? Built to withstand a little more rigor, eh? A little hard use?”
Hephzibah didn’t quite understand what the words meant, but she took his meaning.
“On the contrary, sir. I don’t take hard usage from anybody, not if I can help it.”
He laughed. “Ah, well, that’s all to the good. Should you like to be married yourself, sister?”
“I don’t look to marry,” Hephzibah said. “So long as my sister needs me, I should rather live with her.”
“Ah, but what if my brother’s health should fail him? If he should die, God forbid? For you know his property goes to me. I daresay you should change your mind quick enough, if you was to find yourself without a home, and your sister too.”
At the time, it didn’t occur to Hephzibah to point out that her sister might have a child—that all Enoch’s expectations would come to nothing if Beulah bore her new husband an heir.
She did not want to think of this whey-faced man abed with her sister, putting his hands on her sister, getting a child on her sister—if you pressed her on a subject so delicate, she would have avoided answering at all.
Within hours, of course, Hephzibah would lie in her new bed in the Winthrop attic, next to the hams that hung from the rafters, and listen to her sister whimper from the bedroom directly beneath her—hear the cajoling murmurs of her brother-in-law—feel the thump and the scud of the sturdy marital bedframe commence through the floorboards.
Still, in her ignorance, she couldn’t have formed a picture of that scene in her head had she wanted to—which she did not—and when, a few months later, her sister confided hints of her interesting condition to Hephzibah, she had felt nothing so much as shock.
A baby! Well, of course. How stupid of Hephzibah, not to think of it.
But Enoch had already calculated this probability, she came to realize.
And Enoch liked neither his odds nor the women who had come to the island and usurped them.
Enoch arrived just after noon, bearing a small cask of ale, as Beulah and Hephzibah readied dinner.
“Why, what brings you here, brother?” asks Beulah, flushing.
“I was invited to dinner,” he says. “Did you not hear of it?”
Beulah glares at Hephzibah. “You might have told me.”
“I didn’t—”
“Lord, not Hephzibah, sister. Your cousin. I met him out walking, by the east meadow.”
“Oh,” Beulah says faintly. “I hadn’t realized—that is—”
“Gave me a turn, I’ll admit. I didn’t remember you had a cousin. Must not have attended you. And such a strapping, well-grown cousin as that! Took the hint at once when I said I should like to know him better. Being family, as we are. Invited me to dinner directly.”
Beulah drops her spoon.
“Cousin James is so clever,” says Hephzibah. “And to surprise us like this too. Enoch, would you be so kind as to bring down a ham from the attic?”
Captain Ramsay and the doctor walk in, dusted with snow, just as Hephzibah lays the stewed squash on the table next to the ham. Silas, dressed and shaved, sits at the head. Beulah at his right side, eyeing the cheese.
“Why, there you are, cousin,” Silas says.
Ramsay swings the cloak from his shoulders and hangs it on the hook. Hephzibah knows better than to try to help him.
Enoch rises from his chair at Silas’s left side. “Cousin James. Now here I was beginning to fear you’d met with an accident, and instead it seems you’ve met with a friend, ha ha.”
Dr. Elliott sweeps off his own cloak and makes a bow. “Your servant, sir. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. My name is Elliott. Ramsay tells me you’re the brother of our host.”
“Dr. Elliott accompanies me on a scientific survey of the coast,” says Ramsay—the longest sentence Hephzibah has yet heard from him, delivered in a fine elegant voice from which all the piratical edges have been sanded away.
“I do apologize for the delay—we were much engaged in observing the unusual tidal currents surrounding the island.”
Enoch settles himself in his seat and lifts his knife to spear a slice of ham from the platter in the middle of the table.
“Oh, we don’t stand on ceremony here—just the two families, brother to brother.
If it’s tides you’re after, I can tell you anything you want to know.
I’ve plied these waters since I was a boy.
Nothing escapes me that sails this channel, Mr. Ramsay. ”
By the time Enoch leaves, the sky has turned to charcoal and the snow falls heavily. Hephzibah trudges through the blur of flakes to the pasture, where Sally and the heifer wait by the gate.
“Come along, then.” She slings the rope around Sally’s neck.
When she reaches the barn, a lantern already casts a low flickering light on the walls.
“You should be resting, not playing at swords,” she says to Ramsay. “Your wounds will open, and where will we be?”
“This brother-in-law. Has he always been such a scrub?”
Hephzibah draws the rope over Sally’s head and reaches for the pitchfork. “He thought he had a clear title to the entire island. Now Silas is married, and Beulah expects a child.”
“I see.” He takes the pitchfork from Hephzibah’s hand and hoists it to the hay loft. Hay spills around them. The cows hurry forward into the mess. “Elliott tells me your sister’s husband will not last long.”
She hesitates. “He said the same to me.”
“And you and your sister? What becomes of you?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t anywhere else to go. I suppose we’ll sell the farm to Enoch.”
Ramsay leans the pitchfork against the wall and turns to face her. Sally stands at her side, head down in the hay. “He won’t like that. He thought it was his. He won’t give you a fair price.”
She shrugs.
Ramsay looks down at his shoe, where the speckled hen pecks at a leather toe. “When my men return for me, I’ll see you’re well paid for your trouble. Enough to give you an independence. You won’t have to live under the thumb of that damned fool.”
“And if your men don’t return for you, Mr. Ramsay? What then?”
He walks to the barrel of dried corn, pries open the lid, and pulls out a handful of meal, which he scatters to the chickens in the corner where the coop abuts. In an instant, the hens gather and madly peck, a bloodcurdling frenzy of stabbing beaks and flapping indignant wings, do or die.
At last Ramsay turns. His right sleeve hangs limp between the second and third buttons of his coat. His teeth are clenched—his wounds must be hurting him, she thinks.
“I will make you a hundredfold return on your service,” Ramsay says. “You have my word.”