Chapter 15 A Ship in Frost
A SHIP IN FROST
EMMA
Halfway across the Thames, the tents and booths were left behind. Frozen stillness stretched. I felt like a sailor becalmed on a whitened sea. Ahead, the silhouette of a lone ship grew, low-slung and long with a single bare mast.
The ice was stupendously cold and solid.
We walked briskly along a trail of straw trod into the ice.
Mules or small horses had made this trek before us; their sharp-shod hooves had cut toothed crescents in both directions.
Patches of yellowish mist brought a tinny bitterness to my nose while the sky churned toward the burnished copper of yesterday’s strange weather.
The light diminished, brightening three twinkling lanterns on the ship.
Tones flitted through the air, then connected into a tune.
A man’s trained voice sang. A pennywhistle played a measure of a jig.
“Knightley!” hailed a voice from aboard the ship. It was fifty feet long, one of the broad, squat freighters that glide the wide rivers. A frosted hawser angled from the bow and vanished into the rigid ice.
Harriet hurried up the steep gangplank and cried, “Permission to come aboard!” Mr. Knightley chuckled behind me, and I recognized the words from a pirate novel she and I read last summer.
I was on the ice and too low to see the deck, but I heard jovial greetings.
A man’s head and nautical hat came into view over the railing, then Harriet vanished.
I made my way up, bracing my boots on nailed cross strips. The gunwale rose eight feet above the ice, and the gangplank was a mere eighteen inches wide. While I inched up, I puzzled over the height of exposed hull. It seemed excessive.
I reached the top and stepped onto a large, upright barrel placed as a receiving platform.
The ship had a flat deck and a twenty-foot mast with furled sails.
A dozen two-foot-square bales of cloth were pushed haphazardly against the sides.
Three gentlemen in evening dress stood with Harriet, already in conversation, while two sailors grinned up at me.
One was the sailor with the naval hat, his merry chestnut eyes sparkling in a weather-carved face. The other was a lad too young to shave.
“Why is it so high?” I asked.
“We were hoisted by the freeze,” the older man said, his voice Irish atop an American twang.
His uniform was cut like a navy officer but sewn of workaday browns and tans.
“Good thing, too, for that was the fastest freeze I’ve ever seen.
I’d rather have my ship spat out like a cherry pit than crushed like a walnut.
” He doffed his hat skyward; I still stood on the barrel.
“Captain Olaudah Freeman, at your service. Welcome aboard the Hearty Meal.”
I laughed. “Is that the name of your ship?”
“And why not? What’s better than a hearty meal, save a pint of grog, and my crew does not need reminders in that regard. May I help you down, ma’am?”
“I will assist her,” Mr. Knightley said behind me on the ramp. Deftly, he jumped to the deck and offered his hand, bare despite the cold.
I handed down my fur muff, then eyed the three-foot drop to the deck and the heavy coat around my ankles. “I think a hand will not suffice.” Mr. Knightley raised a second hand, but he seemed uncertain where to put it. We looked at each other, at an impasse.
Captain Freeman snorted and gave Mr. Knightley a jovial shove. “Grab her, ya fool.” I tipped forward, Mr. Knightley’s hands caught my waist, and I arrived safely on the deck.
“That worked nicely,” I said cheerfully, looking up at Mr. Knightley’s long-lashed eyes. He nodded and gestured to precede him. We joined the small party of Harriet and the three gentlemen, who I learned were musicians.
“This is Knightley’s lark,” one explained. “He is always inventing strange concerts.”
“I call it the Frost Fete,” Mr. Knightley said. “It is friendly music in a rare setting, not a concert.”
“Are more people coming?” Harriet asked.
“A few musicians,” Mr. Knightley answered. “Not many. Captain Freeman welcomed company while standing watch, but we must not impose. Musicians are a rowdy lot, far worse than sailors.” There was laughter at that, and good-natured barbs between the professions.
The young sailor lit a brazier, more for heating tea and wine than warmth.
The air was milder onboard, as if the chill clung to the river’s surface.
I learned that the Hearty Meal had a crew of four, but the others had gone to enjoy the Frost Fair, and that the deck was usually piled high with bales of wool and linen, but most had been carted away to improve the balance when the ice thawed.
Another musician clambered up the gangplank, then a married couple, the woman a singer and the man hauling two instruments.
Mr. Knightley claimed his cherrywood violin case with effusive thanks.
Harriet and the other lady began chatting, and our gathering was abruptly festive, like the parties we used to have on the grassy hilltops of Highbury.
My memory of friends in the sun, and how long ago that had been, summoned a happiness that was uncomfortably keen, like beautiful music that brings a tear to the eye.
I drifted apart from the others, trailing laced fingers over cold bales of wool until I stood alone in the bow.
The frozen river spread around me, unmoving and antiseptic, the white turning silver in the fading light.
The air was fiercely clean. Here, the idea of illness—of the miasma hurting those I loved—seemed a child’s fancy.
Perhaps I should become a sailor or an arctic explorer.
A forested point drew my eye, the land wilder than the rest of the London shore. Chathford House. I whispered, “Can you hear me?” but I did not have Lizzy’s tie to the dragon. The answer was breeze and the happy chatter behind me.
Still, I could sense scarlet in that distance, like how I sensed a binding. The feeling stirred the strength trapped within me—the strength I had borrowed. Or stolen. Was that why I was so calm? So… healed?
“Do I disturb you?” came Mr. Knightley’s voice.
“No,” I said, without turning.
He leaned on the rail beside me, ungloved and unhatted, clad in a charcoal tailcoat, his shoulders square to the distant lights of the Frost Fair. “What were you thinking of?”
“Mr. Darcy,” I answered. In a way, it was true, and it was a nicely confounding response.
Sure enough, there was a long silence before Mr. Knightley spoke again. “Has Mary seen your coat?”
Now I was confounded. I turned to him. “Mary Bennet?”
He nodded. His hand left the rail, and I felt his finger graze my collar. “She disapproves of fur.”
“I expect this rabbit was eaten, so the poor creature had no use for its fur.”
He chuckled. “That argument will not convince Mary.”
“You know her well,” I said and found I was not eager to hear further intimacies of Miss Bennet.
“She is a good friend,” he said. “I admire her. She is a genius.”
“I have never met a person proclaimed a genius.” That emerged too pointedly, so I said more gently, “Not sincerely, at least.”
“I knew another genius, so I know something of genius and the world. I insist on proclaiming her. She composes music before its time, but she is ignored outside of ladies’ salons. I fear her work will be forgotten, as brilliance from unexpected sources often is.”
“That is sad,” I said, and meant it. I forced a playful tone. “I am glad she has an admirer.”
“It is not a romantic admiration. Her heart is elsewhere.”
Discussing romance felt like flirtation, and it left me off balance, as if our frozen ship had swayed.
Perhaps I was starved for the little rituals that pass between men and women.
Or out of practice. I hugged my padded arms and turned back to Chathford House, but it had vanished in the spreading night.
“What a strange conversation we are having.”
“Have I made you uncomfortable?”
“Not at all. I say whatever is on my mind. You may, as well. Now I am wondering why Mary Bennet dislikes me. I do not recall her seeing my furry coat.”
“She is jealous. Georgiana is intrigued by you.”
I chuckled. “I do not believe that. Georgiana must have scores of friends. I think you are protecting Miss Bennet. I know she disapproves of my assistance for Harriet.” Mr. Knightley stirred, but he remained silent. “Do you disapprove?”
“May I ask what you intend for Miss Smith?”
His tone was neutral, but a protective heat rose in my chest. “Harriet must marry a gentleman. She is a lady. Her status must be secured and irreproachable.”
“What if she chooses an easier path to happiness? With her status unclear, she risks humiliation—”
“You speak of my dear friend, sir,” I said coldly.
“Your pardon.” He bowed. “I will leave you.”
“No,” I said quickly. “That is, not on my account. May we speak of something else?”
He nodded, but no other topics came to mind, and he was silent. I watched the night. Finally, I said, “You know the Darcys well.”
“I met the Darcys when I returned from my studies in Germany. I was to perform Herr Beethoven’s ninth sonata at a musical soiree, but the pianist refused to accompany me.”
“Refused?”
Mr. Knightley extended his arm into the deepening night, fingers flared. His dark skin was vivid against the white river ice. “He had not known I was the ‘mulatto violinist’ and refused to participate in a coarse stunt.”
I spun to him so fast that my hem swatted the gunwale. “That is unutterably rude! Did you call him out?”
“If I called out every man who insulted my skin, I would be dead or hanged.”
“Well, I am very angry with that man!” Mr. Knightley bowed in acknowledgement. Less heatedly, I asked, “How were the Darcys involved?”