Annapolis, page 27
“Aye, sir.” Jason unshouldered his club, then called to Reuben Marshall and Badmouth Ben, “Bring your muskets, lads.”
And they were off, down the path to the river, sprinting the whole half mile. And all the while, Jason was planning to disappear somewhere between the other side of the river and the beach.
At the fording place, Jason was fifty paces ahead. He splattered through the water, and as he scrambled up the other bank, the Typees struck. He was not surprised. In a way, he welcomed them, because they would give him his chance.
They came at him with ferocious shouts and flying war clubs, which he met with shouts and war club of his own. He growled the same growls, scowled the same furious scowls.
Then Badmouth Ben and Reuben Marshall arrived, swinging their muskets and sending the Typees scattering.
“Keep running!” Jason told them. “I’ll cover the rear.” He turned and faced back up the path.
“Lieutenant,” cried Badmouth Ben, “you can’t cover the rear when there ain’t no friggin’ rear. They’re all around us. Come on.”
As if to prove Badmouth’s point, a stone came whistling from the trees and hit Reuben Marshall square in the forehead. He went down as though he’d been shot. “My brain! My brain! My brain’s been squashed!”
Now more stones came whistling around them, and Badmouth Ben kicked his mate in the flanks. “Get up, you bloody squint. Get up. You ain’t hurt. You ain’t—”
“My brain been squashed! I can’t think no more. I can’t think!” He took his hands from his face.
And for all his badmouth eloquence, all that Badmouth Ben could say was “Holy Jesus,” over and over, at the sight of the dent in Reuben Marshall’s forehead, right above the nose, two inches wide and two inches deep.
Jason had chosen these two because he thought they wouldn’t fold in a fight. Now they were both losing their nerve, and Jason knew he would have to lead them out or they’d never get word to the beach. So, with Ben’s help, he dragged Reuben Marshall down the path, past the place where the fallen breadfruit lay, past the thicket where his canoe was hidden, past his chance to disappear.
ON THE BEACH, a strange tension hung in the air.
Gideon Browne was organizing reinforcements from the Essex Jr. while the natives drew themselves into tribal groups. At the sight of three men staggering from the woods, Gideon’s first sickening thought was that Porter had been overwhelmed.
Then he heard Jason calling, “Ammunition! More ammunition!”
“It’s coming!” Gideon pointed to the cutter rowing in from the ship.
“See to Marshall!” shouted Jason. “I’m going back.”
“Wait!” Gideon ran to the edge of the thicket. “Wait for the rest of us.”
“I’m going back.” Jason looked at the feathered Happahs and Taeehs, who were crowding around Marshall. “I’ll show them we’re not afraid to face the Typees.”
And before Gideon could stop him, Jason was running back up the path, out of the sunlight on the beach, toward the oblivion he had convinced himself was his only refuge.
“HE AIN’T LIEUTENANT Bloody Discipline no more,” said Badmouth Ben as they watched Jason disappear. “He don’t even fight like it. He fights like one of these tattoo-assed savages.”
UNDER THE CANOPY of trees, there was an unearthly quiet, made even stranger by the sound of musket fire and shouting in the distance. Jason came quickly to the hidden path, to the fallen breadfruit, to the palm fronds covering the canoe.
He moved the fronds aside to make sure that no one had found his supplies—coconuts, dried pork, plantains, a small cistern of water. He should not have been surprised that most of the food was gone, eaten by animals. Nor should he have been surprised when he turned and looked into the face of Gideon Browne.
“If Porter thinks the Typees have taken you, he won’t rest until they free you. If he thinks you’ve deserted, he won’t rest until he hangs you.”
“That’s fine. Now get away.” Jason raised his club.
“And if the Typees find you, they may eat you.”
“Fair punishment for someone who’s bitten Eve’s apple.”
“This is no Eden, Jason. And Piteenee is no Eve.”
Jason cocked the club as if he would strike. He looked as resolute, and as frightened, as he had that day when he went to the Anacostia bank to duel three men. He even felt the rats clawing at his gut. He had not felt them in any fight since, but fighting his oldest beliefs was worse than war with any enemy.
“You’re supposed to be leading reinforcements, Jason. That’s your duty.”
“I did my duty. I brought word from Porter. Say I was ambushed and disappeared. Then save Porter, and we’ll both be covered in glory.”
In the distance, a volley echoed back from the Typee wall, and sporadic firing drew closer. It sounded as if Porter had decided on a fighting retreat with low ammunition and no reinforcements.
And Jason decided to run. Toward what, he did not know. But Gideon caught him around the legs, bringing him down into a tangle of bushes and underbrush and sending the war club flying. It was an even match, except that Gideon was closer to the club, and as they struggled, he managed to get his hands on it, stagger to his knees, wobble to his feet.
Jason kicked Gideon away, started to run, saw the club in Gideon’s hands, then saw it swinging at him.…
IN MADISONVILLE THAT night, Porter doubled the guard. There would be no mixing with the natives, no spies telling the Typees where and how the Americans would come the next time.
“If we don’t punish them,” said Porter to the officers assembled, “our position is untenable. Even our alliance with the eighty-eighth son of Oataia won’t help us.”
“The Typees are proud warriors, sir,” said Gideon when Porter asked for opinions.
“And?” Porter’s tone said that asking for opinions was merely a formality.
“If we’re only to be here another two weeks, perhaps we can let them be, especially since we trust Gattanewa and the tribes on this side of the island.”
“We must humiliate them,” said Porter with the calm fury of a man who had been humiliated himself, “or the last two weeks will be hell. And the men we leave behind will never be safe.”
At this, Jason looked up. He had been sitting in the shadows, his chin on his chest, his skull throbbing from his own war club, his mind throbbing over all that had happened on that twisting path. Gideon had carried him to the beach, a soldier struck unconscious on his way back to the fight.
Porter glanced briefly at Jason and went on. “I can’t leave prizes without a garrison guarding them. I won’t leave a garrison unless we dominate the island.”
“Who will command this garrison, sir?” asked Jason.
“A lieutenant.”
“Given my, uh, close relationship with—”
“No begging, Stafford,” snapped Porter. “Leave the decision to me.”
Then he told them his plan to bring the Typees to heel.
Gideon Browne knew that they would make a terrible mess.
Jason resolved that he would do as he was ordered, mess or not, to impress Porter and improve his chances of staying on the island.
Jason did not go back to the ship, however, but to the breadfruit tree where Piteenee was waiting.
She wore her dress demurely above her breasts, a certain sign that she was unhappy. “I am ready to go to you, and you are still here?”
He put his hands on her arms. “I can stay without deserting.”
“Opotee let you stay with Piteenee?” She smiled in the darkness, and he thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. “Stay forever?”
“For a long time. If I do my duty. And do it well.”
“Then do it.” And she began to unbutton his breeches.
From the shadows, Gideon watched it all, but not to satisfy any base desire. Men and women could be seen like this all over the island, at any time of the day or night. He watched to make certain that his suspicion was valid. And it was: no matter what Jason said, he could not be trusted until the Essex left.
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, the Americans moved.
This time, there were two hundred sailors, with only Mouina and a few scouts to lead them. This time, they marched silently so as not to alarm the friendlies or alert the Typees, and they marched hard to gain the top of the ridge in the center of the island, from which they would strike the Typee valley.
Below them, fires flickered, drums beat, and Typees chanted.
“What are they saying?” Porter asked Jason, who had learned much of the language from Piteenee.
“They’re rejoicing,” Jason answered. “Celebrating their victory over us.”
“Premature,” said Porter, looking back at his men.
“And they’re asking their gods for rain, so that our muskets won’t work.”
“Well timed,” said Gideon, looking up at the clouds.
The Americans spent a miserable night hunkered down on the ridge, keeping their weapons dry in a driving rain. But by dawn, the rain had stopped and the clouds had lifted enough that they could gaze out on the valley of the Typees.
Gideon Browne called it the heart of Eden.
From the wall where the Typees had stopped the Americans, the valley ran inland some nine verdant miles, to a ribbon of white water fluttering from the island’s highest ridge. As the water reached the valley floor, sunlight and earth light turned it to blue, and the slope of the earth drew it back toward the sea. Neat villages slept on either side, coconut and breadfruit groves surrounded them, and the sense of peace was as tangible as Porter’s silence.
Trancelike, he stood staring at the scene below, while above, knives of sunlight sliced through the clouds.
Finally Jason said, “The men are ready, Captain, and the Happahs and Taeehs have come up to join in the attack.”
Porter whispered, “I did not want this.”
“We could make another offer of peace,” said Gideon.
“First, show them we can make war.”
Before they attacked, Porter ordered a volley from the top of the ridge, so that the Typees might send their women and children to safety. And after he had overwhelmed the first village, he made an offer of peace, which was rejected. These would be the only two expressions of charity that day. The rest was war.
Village after village fell to the Americans, and every village was burned. And the Taeehs and Happahs plundered them all, even as the flames jumped. And what they could not plunder, they killed. Coconut palms, banana trees, breadfruits—all stripped of their bark and left to pour out their sap like blood.
In the afternoon, the Typee capital was taken. Porter led his men over the corpses of the dead defenders and into a grand square surrounded by structures of thatch and palm logs. He pronounced it the most beautiful village on the island. Then he ordered it burned.
Gideon suggested that they might spare the Typee gods, who stood in carved effigy around the square.
Porter turned, a look of self-loathing on his face. “This is survival, Mr. Browne. There’s nothing noble in what we do. But it must be done.”
“As you say, sir. To protect our prizes.” Gideon could not keep the sarcasm from his voice, but in the rising roar of the flames, Porter did not hear.
A few hours later, Jason’s party reached the waterfall and stopped to drink.
Then Gideon arrived, and without stripping off his coat or pulling off his boots, he waded straight into the pool at the base of the fall.
“It won’t work,” shouted Jason. “You can’t cleanse yourself of this with water.”
“It’s a bloody damn business, killing men who are protecting their homes.”
“See it as they do.” Jason pointed toward Taeehs plundering a village a short distance down the trail. “The Typees called them cowards. They had to fight or be dishonored, and everyone would have preyed on them… even here.”
Gideon looked up at the majestic waterfall. “Even here.”
“You said it yesterday: this is no Eden.”
xiii
Rebecca’s Revenge
The cold had come down in late October.
By the first week of November, fires burned on Annapolis hearths from morning till night. People said it would be a terrible winter.
Rebecca Parrish could not remember such an early snow, but she found it appropriate on the day that she went to Stafford’s Fine Folly. It had been snowing the night she went there to make her promise.
The slave who answered the door summoned her into the front sitting room, and a few moments later, Antonia appeared.
“Good afternoon,” said Rebecca. “I had not expected you to be home.”
“I no longer have my teaching. So I’ve taken over the running of the house.”
“A harder job than you’d think.” Rebecca was wearing a black cape and a funereal brown dress. “I’ve come to visit your mother.”
“All the way from the Patuxent?”
“We’ve been friends and enemies and friends again over many years. Now we’re united in our disappointment for you and Samuel.”
Antonia looked into the intelligent eyes and tobacco-leaf face, dried sixty-three seasons. “You’ll get over it.”
“But will your mother?”
“The doctors monitor her infection. But—”
“Are there signs of laudable pus?”
“Of what?”
Rebecca held up her mangled hand. “I have had to learn much in the way of medicine. When the pus appears, it means the wound is healing. ‘Laudable pus’ is the correct medical term.”
Antonia could not imagine those two words linked. “The wound reddened. Her fever rose. The doctor said she had developed an infection. He said nothing about… laudable pus.”
“Perhaps you should find another doctor.”
Antonia led Rebecca down the hallway, past the great room where the promise had been made, up the grand staircase to the second floor.
The smell of sickness, like a dog’s foul breath, permeated the hallway.
In Mother Sara’s room, the smell worsened, but all of the windows were closed tight and a big fire was roaring.
“We’re keeping the room hot,” said Antonia, “to break the fever.”
Mother Sara was dozing. Her breathing was labored. Her skin was flushed from the fever.
Antonia put her hand on her mother’s forehead. “Still hot.”
“Don’t wake her,” said Rebecca gently. “I’ll just sit with her for a time.”
Antonia looked from one woman to the other, remembering their enmity. At least that had faded during her long and now fruitless courtship with Samuel.
“You may leave us, Antonia.” Rebecca took a pinch of tobacco from the box that Big Tom had given her forty years before. “You must have much to do, and we have much to talk about… your mother and I.”
“Remember, she’s not… not always… The fever has…”
“She’s not out of her head?” Rebecca did not want that. She wanted Sara to know who was talking to her.
“Not entirely.” Antonia took the washbasin from beside the bed and placed it on the floor at the foot of a chair. “For the tobacco… sit here.”
And Rebecca was alone, listening to Mother Sara’s breathing.
She imagined what nights must have been in this bedchamber, when Sara and Black Jed were young, full of themselves. She imagined them dressing on the night of the party that she had ruined for them. She remembered fondly.
Mother Sara made a sound, a soft moan, and stirred.
Rebecca said her name.
“Jed… Jed…”
Rebecca said her name again.
Sara opened her eyes. “The other children, Jed… They… they mustn’t know… mustn’t know about Charlton’s mistakes.”
“He has made so many,” said Rebecca, drawing closer.
“So many… so many…” Sara’s eyes were rheumy and unfocused.
“His debts have grown,” whispered Rebecca. “Spent too much on horses, lost too much. Giving him control of the house—that will be your finest folly.”
Sara tried to focus on the face above her.
“I know what you did in your will.” Rebecca saw the flicker of understanding and leaned closer. “Do you remember my promise, my promise to take your pillow from under your head?”
“Promise…”
Rebecca reached under Sara’s head, sank her fingers into the down feathers, and pulled. The flesh of Sara’s cheek stretched. Her hair was dragged all to one side and her head turned, so that when the pillow was finally in Rebecca’s hands, Sara was looking directly at the wall, moaning incoherently.
Rebecca gently turned Sara’s head back, gently smoothed her hair, gently fluffed the one pillow still beneath her head. Then she held the other pillow before Sara’s face, making sure that Sara could see it. “My promise. Kept.”
And a sad sound escaped from Mother Sara, a long, low moaning “Nooooo,” which was all that Rebecca had hoped for.
With the pillow stuffed under her heavy overcoat, Rebecca went downstairs, thinking about Biblical quotations: “Revenge is mine, saith the Lord.” She bade the servants say good-bye to Miss Antonia, and walked out into the gently falling snow.
xiv
Jason’s Last Temptation
“Some in the wider world will censure us for what we did to the Typees,” said Porter a week later, over dinner with his officers.
“We did no more than was necessary, sir,” said Jason, showing his best face, still hoping he would be left behind.
“I took no pride in it and expect no glory from it.” Porter poured Madeira all around. “Fortunately, this voyage is far from over.”
“Plenty of chances for glory yet, sir”—Lieutenant Downes sat sideways so he could stretch his splinted leg—“thanks to that British squadron looking for us.”
“Why not go west?” asked Gideon. “Avoid the British altogether.” Then he glanced at Porter and said, less confidently, “Don’t you agree, sir?”
“For someone who fought beside Decatur and Eaton and Isaac Hull,” said Porter, “you have some strange notions.”
