“Why the hell didn’t Compton tell me?”
“Why would he, James? Why would he ever think you were even interested?”
“He bloody well should have realized I’d be interested. He should have told me, damn his eyes. Did you recognize anything about the man?”
“No. My father sent a servant to fetch Gordon, and he came out to the farm. He treated me as if I were a moron. I imagine he would have thought I was making up the whole incident if it hadn’t been for Mr. Fielding and all those other people. He told my father it was probably some man I’d beaten in a horse race. He then added that the provocation was great, for what man would tolerate being beaten by a girl?”
“Jessie, tell me about that damned man who was driving the wagon.”
“He was wearing a handkerchief over half his face. His eyes were dark, I do remember that, and he had very black bushy eyebrows. He was wearing an old black hat pulled down to those eyebrows. Work clothes. Nothing else, really.”
“You told this to Gordon?”
She nodded. “Allen Belmonde wanted to kill me? That’s impossible. There’s no reason. Besides, I’m not certain that the man was trying to kill me. Maybe he was after Compton. James, would you like to go walking in the garden?”
“What? Oh no, Jessie. I’ve got to speak to Compton.”
She gave him a forlorn look. “You don’t want to dance with me?”
“No. Dance with Giff or Marcus. Have you been the object of any other attacks, or was that the only time?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing.”
James rested his elbows on the stone railing that lined the balcony. “That makes sense, doesn’t it? If Allen was behind it, any attempts on your life would have stopped with his death. Think, Jessie. Why would Allen Belmonde want you dead?”
She just kept shaking her head. “I was good friends with Alice. Perhaps he didn’t approve of that, but that isn’t enough to push a man to murder, is it?”
“Belmonde was always a bloody ass.”
“That’s true. As to his wanting to murder me because I’d beaten him horse racing, I’ve beaten him for the past five years. There was nothing new in that.”
“Damnation, you must have done something to make him want you dead. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Perhaps Gordon’s informant was wrong. That seems the most likely conclusion.”
“Possibly. Come along inside now. I want to speak with Compton again. You can dance with any number of men who now find you quite toothsome, what with your bosom showing all white as new snow and those streamers of yours tempting a man to wind them around and around his finger until he’s pulled you right up to him and there’s your mouth, all soft and inviting.”
“Are you interested, James?” She had the nerve to bat her eyelashes at him. He leaned down and kissed her mouth, then lightly rubbed his thumbs over her eyebrows, smoothing them down. “Isn’t it odd that some of the ladies are giving you venomous looks?”
“I used to get pitying looks. I like venomous looks better. The Duchess is exquisite. Why don’t they give her venomous looks?”
“Because she’s English. She’s a countess. Everyone looks upon her as near-royalty. She’s exotic. You’re Jessie and you’re supposed to be a mess. Since you’re not, you’ve tilted everyone on his axis. Nobody likes to see change in another, particularly this kind of change.” He lightly rubbed his knuckles over the tops of her breasts. His eyes dilated.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said with a sigh, and tugged on one of her streamers. “My mother told me that my streamers made me look like a hussy.”
“Your mother should follow Glenda’s line of vision when she sights a man, if she wants to talk about a hussy. Now, let’s go back inside before my right hand starts wriggling down the front of your gown.”
30
THE DAY BEFORE they sailed for the Outer Banks, Jessie’s morning sickness abruptly stopped. “It’s gone,” she said blankly, looking toward the chamber pot she’d grown quite intimate with during the past weeks. “I feel wonderful.”
“Thank God,” James said. “You’re so skinny, I could lift you over my head with one hand. I want some meat on your bones.”
“I believe you will be granted your wish,” she said, laughed, and threw her arms around his back. “I’m so excited,” she said. “We’re going to find that treasure.”
James wasn’t so sure about that. Her memories of the four diaries were the memories of a child. Would she even remember now where her childhood self had buried them? Who was to say that someone hadn’t come across them in the intervening years? There had been several small hurricanes that had struck the Outer Banks, and innumerable storms. Naturally the beach had been flooded, probably the entire stretch of land from the sea to the sound. It was possible the sea had cut a new inlet through that area of beach, pulling the diaries and everything else out to sea.
The chances of finding the diaries were not very good. But no one would say that aloud.
That evening, with the entire group assembled, Jessie took the opportunity to tell them about Ocracoke. “I must be clear with all of you. You’re from England where everything is finished and neat and one knows exactly where to go to buy anything at all or procure something. But on the Outer Banks, there’s really nothing at all. The Outer Banks are barrier islands, protecting the mainland of North Carolina from the sea. Think of them as a sort of chain necklace. It’s savage, barren, and the village of Ocracoke barely compares to a small English village. There are about three hundred and fifty people living in the village now, most of them pilots and fishermen.”
“What do you mean, ‘pilots’?” Anthony asked, looking ever so much like his father with his blue eyes and black-as-midnight hair.
“Ocracoke Island is at the end of this long chain of islands. You come around the south end and into Ocracoke Inlet. That’s when ships hire local pilots. To sail across Pamlico Sound to the mainland is tricky. The currents and tides are nearly always contrary, and sandbars pop up where you least expect them. The one thing you can count on is change. Only the local pilots know where the new currents and shifts of sand are. To try it without them is foolhardy.
“Don’t picture Hyde Park. It’s more uncivilized than not. Since the barrier islands are constantly bombarded by the sea, the people who live their lives there are sturdy, strong, and incredibly resilient. I just wanted to warn you. It will be difficult. There won’t be anyone there waiting to help us. We will be able to hire perhaps a couple of men and maybe a woman to help in the house, but please understand this isn’t like going to Brighton to see the Regent’s Pavilion. The village bustles with life. There’s a Methodist church and there are several general shops that carry everything from thimbles to scrub boards, but nothing like you are used to. Everyone eats fish and the local fare is delicious—Anthony, you’ll love croaker, a silver fish that, fried in butter, makes you sing hallelujahs.”
“Don’t forget mullet, Jessie,” Badger said. “I already have several recipes for mullet.”
“And pigfish,” Spears added. “A very infelicitous name, but we must try it.”
“My very favorite is red drum,” Jessie said, licking her lips. “Let me get back to Ocracoke. Although you will miss many of the trappings of civilization, the sea is beautiful, the air sparkling clear, the sun will still be warm, and you can tell how the world was a thousand years ago. Even better, it isn’t storm season yet.”
Spears said, clearing his throat, “We’ve discussed this, Jessie, and we understand what it will be like. I have even spoken, as has Maggie, to this Compton Fielding about Ocracoke and its environs. He provided us with several treatises to study, which we did. We understand we will be voyaging to a place as distant from what we’ve already known as it would be to travel to the moon. We’ve all decided that a bit of the primitive in life adds flavor. We won’t fall apart not to find a charming bakery on Howard Street, an actual street in the village, Mr. Fielding told us.??
?
Badger added, “Thus, we’re bringing with us all the foodstuffs we’ll need for at least two weeks, particularly vegetables and fruit. His lordship can hunt the local small deer I’ve been told are abundant. Also, Olivia will come along to take care of Master Charles. Bess will come to assist me and see to the housekeeping. As James knows, Gypsom is coming along to see to the horses we hope to rent there and anything else that needs doing. You’ve nothing to worry about. We will contrive.”
Sampson said, “We have even discussed how to make a campfire—just in case the house we’re going to has become uninhabitable. We have rain gear. We are prepared.”
The Duchess cleared her throat and spoke in her serene, calm voice: “Maggie, Jessie, and I have even had very simple gowns made and purchased bonnets to protect ourselves from the seaside sun. We have stout boots. Anthony and his father will look like pictures of those strange men all garbed in buckskin with squirrel hats on their heads. I believe everyone has managed to see to everything.”
Jessie looked at her husband. “What have you done, James?”
“I’ve called upon your father to keep an eye on Marathon while we’re gone. Oslow isn’t pleased with me since he is always the one in charge during my absence, but your father begged me, so what could I do?”
“Actually,” Jessie said, clearing her throat, “Ocracoke isn’t all that uncivilized. There are roads—well, all right, perhaps more like rutted paths—and many houses, mostly clapboard and small, but people love it there. I hope all of you will like it as much as I did.”
They sailed aboard a small Baltimore clipper from the Paxton yard, all smooth decks, set low in the water, and faster than any vessel Jessie had ever been on before in her life. Capt. Markly blessed the still-calm water every morning, splaying his hands over the sea, and prayed for a continuance every night before he went to bed. He encouraged everyone to do the same. It was a ritual. Anthony was delighted with it. He practiced splaying his fingers just like Capt. Markly. His father remarked that the prayer must lose some of its efficacy because of the dirt beneath the supplicant’s fingernails.
It was a bright, sunny morning when he pointed out Teach’s Hole—where that infamous Blackbeard had careened his ship and spent several months on Ocracoke following his pardon from the Crown until he’d gotten so bored he’d begun to plunder ships again—and Springer’s Point just beyond it. “And there,” he said, pointing to a spot just higher than Springer’s Point, “is where they will build a lighthouse next year. So many ships and men are lost each year when a freak storm blows up. Anthony, did you pray this morning?”
“I even washed beneath my fingernails,” Anthony said proudly.
The warm weather continued. The air was rich with sea smells, the squawking of sea gulls and the half dozen cormorants that trailed off the bow all the way to Ocracoke. Capt. Markly brooded on the sheer number of cormorants, wondering aloud if it portented a bad storm, in which case he decided an additional afternoon prayer was in order. He worried until he discovered that Anthony was feeding them all the leftover bread from breakfast each morning. The six crew members snickered behind their hands, having heard the captain utter one afternoon prayer for the beneficence of cormorants.
They sailed between Ocracoke Island and Portsmouth Island and into Ocracoke Inlet three days after leaving Baltimore. Jessie told everyone that she’d seen maps showing a channel between Ocracoke Island and Hatteras Island, but there wasn’t one now because of a hurricane that had struck sometime in the seventeen hundreds.
The small village of Ocracoke was impressive to all the English passengers, who, if the truth be told, had expected nothing but broken-down tents and dilapidated wooden buildings weathered gray and molded by storms from the sea. Spears said to Jessie, “You led us a bit astray, Jessie. This is a thriving village. Just look at all those small fishing vessels. Look at all those well-mended nets.”
There were three wooden docks, all well built and sturdy. Buildings weren’t clustered together, rather they were stuck in their own little spots, weaving themselves in between live oaks and cedars, some of them reaching nearly to the shore of the inlet. Captain Markly told them that the inlet was deep, thus they could sail nearly to shore. It had been a fine retreat for the pirates, he said, and laughed. “No more of those blackguards around,” he assured the ladies. “Prayer and the English navy put them to rout.”
“Aye,” Anthony said, “it was Lieutenant Maynard who killed Blackbeard. He shot him and speared him dozens and dozens of times.”
“That is very nearly the truth,” Spears said, beaming down at his boy, a look, Marcus thought, that he earned far less than Anthony did these days.
“What a pity that there’s no more excitement,” Maggie said, and gave the captain a smile that curled the toes inside his boots. He wondered about staying here in Ocracoke with his passengers for the next several weeks rather than sailing on to Puerto Rico with a load of tobacco leaves. Duty occasionally depressed a man.
“Perhaps it is a bit unfinished, as Jessie told us,” Badger said, “but Mr. Spears is quite right. Just look at all the bustle. It’s alive here, not desolate.”
“There are several small stores,” Jessie said, pointing just down the dirt road. “A Mr. Gaskill owned the one my parents always used when I was a little girl.”
Mr. Gaskill still owned the small store that carried everything from thimbles to scrub boards, just as Jessie had told them, and even more, including buckets of oats for horses to new netting for the fishermen. “Why,” the grizzled old man said, beaming at Jessie, “ain’t ye Jessie Warfield? Aye, that’s who ye be. Sech a cute little girl ye was back then. Yer father all right?”
Other Ocracokers came into the store, and Jessie was soon surrounded by the Burruses, the Jacksons, the Fulchers, and the Styrons. All exclaimed at how grown-up she was. The locals eyed the English contingent, saying little directly to them.
Mr. Gaskill’s son, Timmy, hired out himself and his wagon to transport them and their goods to Oliver Warfield’s house, which lay on the ocean side of Ocracoke.
Theodore Burrus, a young man near Jessie’s age, nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw the Duchess and Maggie. He merely waved to Jessie, who had already garbed herself in practical trousers, boots, and a flannel shirt and leather vest. Jessie believed, though, that it was Spears who got the most unabashed stares. He looked like a royal personage leading his minions. His deportment was impeccable as were his black wool trousers and coat. His cravat was stark white. He looked magnificent.
One Ocracoker started to bow, then recovered himself in time and spat on the ground beside him.
“I’d rather have a horse,” Marcus said, eyeing the back of the wagon where all of them would pile in, like a collection of bundles.
“We will figure it out,” Spears said as his master climbed into the back of the wagon and took Charles from Sampson.
“It’s only a mile to my papa’s house,” Jessie said, as James whipped up the sweet-tempered gray mare, who was nearly groaning at pulling the weighty wagon. “On the ocean side. He wanted to be a bit separated from the rest of the villagers. It was his retreat from the world, he would say.” As they drove outside Ocracoke Village, the dirt road narrowed considerably. There’d been a recent rainstorm, for there were deep ruts filled with water.
“Now I feel as if I’ve been transported to another world,” the Duchess said, breathing in the salty air, looking up at the sea gulls, the terns, and the oystercatchers. “What is that, Jessie?”
“What? Oh, that’s a white ibis. See his red legs and red face? He won’t let us come much closer. There’s a swamp just beyond that mess of sea oats.”
“I’d never imagined such a place as this,” Maggie said, and pulled the bonnet lower on her forehead. “A lady could ruin her complexion very quickly here with all this bright sunlight and the salt spray.”
James pulled the horses to a halt in front of a weathered gray clapboard house, which looked the w
ay most of them had pictured all the houses in Ocracoke would look. There was a sign over the gate that could barely be read. “It looks so derelict,” Jessie said, looking at the buckling gray boards, the weeds that grew nearly to her waist. There were several broken windows. A stunted live oak grew in the front yard. “A Mr. and Mrs. Potter are the caretakers. Why is the grass so high? Why are there loose boards lying around?” Jessie said. “After I recovered from the fever, Papa never wanted to come back, but the Potters should have taken care of things. Papa has sent them money over the years for repairs and upkeep.”
“It appears,” Marcus said, shading his eyes from the bright overhead noon sun, “that the Potters have taken themselves off to other parts, your father’s money in their pockets.”
“But why didn’t anyone say anything about it to me?” Jessie said, nearly in tears.
“Enough dawdling,” Spears said, lightly stepping over loose boards that had fallen from a low-lying water tank. “We will consider the air invigorating, the house a challenge. We are prepared.”
Charles was crying but Anthony was running around, wanting to see everything at the same time. Spears finally called him to order, and to his father’s disgust, Anthony obeyed immediately.
The inside of the house made Jessie’s tears flow over. “It was so lived-in before. Now, just look at it. Everything is falling apart and it smells like mildew and other things I don’t really want to try to identify. Why didn’t any of them tell me what had happened? Surely they knew that the Potters had left. They had to have known. Why didn’t they tell me?”
“No matter,” Spears said, patting her arm. “Bess is ready to work, as we all are. Don’t worry. We will make inquiries tomorrow. There will be a sensible answer. Now, Jessie, you must rest.”