The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles Read online

  “Don’t! I know how I must look. I can feel the filth of my body. Come close to me.”

  On his knees, he crawled to the side of the bunk. He found her hand. It felt almost boneless. And feverishly hot.

  “Phillipe—listen to me. I will never see this America of yours.”

  He wanted to cry then, unashamed tears. But he could not. It was a measure of how much he had changed in two years.

  Instead, he stroked her hand, tried to speak in a comforting way:

  “Yes you will. If you’ll only eat. Help yourself to live!”

  “To what purpose? Your father is dead. So is everything I held out as a hope for you. But—I know you made the best choice—the new country—that’s what I have been trying to find strength to say before it grew too late.”

  The limp, fevered fingers fluttered over his face, found his mouth to still his words. She whispered on:

  “I hated what’s become of us, Phillipe. I hated how it all went wrong because of that accursed family. Worst of all, for a time, I—I hated you for refusing to keep struggling against them. But hating my own flesh—that is a sin. A mortal sin. Only—lately, on this wretched ship, did it come to me that you were right and I was wrong. We had no way to win against them. I should have seen that from—”

  She stopped, stricken by a harsh cough.

  “—from the first time we entered their house. But the blame is on them, not you. That’s—what I have wanted to tell you. To forgive you for—for a crime you never committed—”

  “Mama, Mama, what’s this talk of crime? We did what was necessary.”

  “Because I forced us to go to England, where we didn’t belong.”

  “In America, common people are not so helpless. There are no hereditary lords to oppress them—”

  “And that’s why you are right to make a fresh beginning. You have the youth—the heart for it. I do not. I followed the wrong hope. Saw it—saw it die away. There’s nothing left for me—”

  “There is, Mama. Life! Please, for God’s sake listen. We can be happy again, if you’ll only fight this awful defeat that’s taken you—”

  “I no longer have the strength—or the will I—can barely make my tongue work even now, when I must. I—made you swear an oath. A wicked, hopeless oath and I know it. You must forget that. I only beg you for a promise—”

  “Anything, Mama, if you’ll just try to help yourself—”

  He realized she wasn’t listening. Her voice grew softer, the words more slurred, almost inaudible against the crack of a great canvas sheet wind-whipped somewhere high above.

  “—the greatest crime, Phillipe, is still the one of which I spoke in Auvergne. So if you can’t take your rightful place in England because of them, at least—at least promise me that in this new land, you’ll strive to be a man of position, a—man of wealth. Then someday, perhaps, you can return to England and repay them—”

  She cried out stridently:

  “Repay them, God damn their arrogant souls—!”

  The last word broke off with a sharp exhalation of pain.

  “Mama?”

  He leaned forward, slid his hand across her cheek, felt her raging fever. Something lost and sad within him said, God have mercy on this poor woman. She still has the same dream. The words have changed. But not the dream itself.

  Because he loved her, and because it cost him nothing, he said, “I promise.”

  The waves beat thunderously.

  “Mama? Mama, I said I promise—”

  Her hand slipped into his, pressed his fingers weakly. She had heard.

  She started murmuring in French again. The indecipherable words became a fragment of a melody. She was humming an old, romantic air.

  Several times more he tried to break through her delirium. She hummed and laughed, sudden little gasps of delight. Where was she? On the stage in Paris again? With James Amberly? Walking in some chateau of dreams where she was complete mistress, uncowed, unafraid? Her absolution of his guilt poured relief through him suddenly—

  He stayed with her most of the night, although he knew it was pointless. She no longer recognized him. She wasn’t even aware of his presence.

  Inevitably, he thought back over the months that had passed since she first drew the casket from behind the statue of the Madonna. It struck him that, in a larger sense, she might have been right all along. The greatest crime could very well be that of allowing yourself to be humbled into poverty and obscurity.

  At the same time, as she understood, events had forced a change in his perspective on the question. He no longer harbored any hope of gaining his inheritance. Nor of striking back at the Amberlys.

  He had the hatred for it; the desire. That would never completely leave him. But there were certain practical limitations now. He was sailing toward an unseen shore that would hold more new challenges than he could possibly imagine. And opportunity, too.

  Perhaps his mother was only wrong in the means she had chosen to avoid commission of what she considered man’s most heinous crime. Through the wearying hours in which he leaned against her bunk and listened to the heartbreaking sounds of delirium—her feverish laughter; snatches of singing—he concluded with a certain coldness that the dream itself might be the right dream after all.

  Wealth, status—that was what he wanted from the new land. He would find them. By God he would.

  For himself. And for her. Nothing else mattered now. Nothing.

  Phillipe Charboneau passed the next twenty hours in the cabin, with little sleep and no thought of food. At the end of that time, the woman of Auvergne was dead.

  iv

  Captain Will Caleb asked Phillipe about Marie’s religious persuasion. He replied with no apology that she had been a beautiful and excellent actress in her youth in Paris—and therefore excluded from her Catholic faith. Captain Caleb said that while he was a Congregationalist, all people were equal in the Maker’s eyes. That belief was one reason his own grandfather had fled the English midlands for America. He promised he would try to find an appropriate text for the burial.

  v

  The late May morning sparkled. Eclipse lay becalmed in the bright, windless weather. Fore and aft, to port and to starboard, the Atlantic resembled green glass.

  Captain Caleb had turned out his entire crew. His master of sail had supervised the sewing of Marie’s body inside a canvas shroud. Just before the last seam was closed, Phillipe returned from below deck. Caleb stepped to his side, white hair gleaming in the noon sunshine.

  “Is that what you wish to bury with her?” the captain inquired.

  “Yes, I remembered it at the last minute. I think she’d want—”

  Suddenly something checked him. He was silent a moment. Then:

  “On second thought, I believe I’ll keep it. I have nothing else but these few personal letters to remember her by.”

  And he tucked the leather-bound casket with its long-dulled brass corner plates under his left arm.

  vi

  “Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me.”

  Captain Caleb’s resonant voice rolled out across the deck between the ranks of the assembled crew. They were clear-eyed, healthy-looking men, colonials every one, except for Gropius, who had not as yet removed his woolen cap. A glare from mate Soaper took care of that.

  Phillipe stood beside Caleb at the head of two lines of men. The lines faced inward. Between, the shroud was being carefully lifted by four other sailors.

  “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.”

  Phillipe felt the beginnings of tears sting his eyes. He glanced from the shroud rising toward the rail to the hard faces of the New England sailors. They were profane men; he’d heard them curse often enough as they clambered aloft in foul weather. They were ignorant men as well; most of them could neither read nor write. Yet in the presence of death they seemed to bear themselves with a certain dignity Phillipe had never seen
in England. Could this subtle difference come from breathing what Dr. Franklin had called “the less stifling air?” If so, then Phillipe knew he had indeed made the right choice.

  “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know—”

  All at once, the pages of St. John from which Captain Caleb was reading began to snap and flutter. The rice paper whipped over, causing Caleb to lose his place. He riffled back to find the verse. Phillipe noticed the quick shifting of the seamen’s eyes. Mate Soaper actually glanced aloft, where the canvas had begun to flap faintly in the new breeze.

  “Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest—and how can we know the way?”

  Phillipe watched as the shroud was lifted high above the rail, slowly tilted forward by rope-galled, tar-blacked hands of surpassing tenderness. Caleb raised his voice a little as the Testament pages snapped again:

  “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Amen.”

  The quartet of seamen released their burden. The shroud fell out of sight. Phillipe heard the splash as it struck the shimmering water. He closed his eyes, praying that his mother would at last find peace on her own unseen shore.

  A touch on his shoulder broke the melancholy moment. He raised his head, opened his eyes. Captain Caleb was looking at him with a strange expression on his weatherbeaten face.

  “I think a sip of Providence rum might go well,” he said gently.

  Phillipe followed him below without question. Soaper barked orders and men began to race aloft to prepare for the fair wind’s rising.

  vii

  All sorrow seemed burned out of him as he sat in Caleb’s cabin, sipping the strong, sweet rum. The captain contented himself with one of his biscuits.

  The casket rested on the table between them. That, and Gil’s sword, were the only items of consequence with which he and his mother had begun their journey, the only ones with which he would end this phase of it.

  No richer and no poorer, he thought. But wiser? God in heaven, let us devoutly hope so.

  Concentrating on his biscuit, Caleb asked, “What was the trouble that forced an obviously sick woman to undertake this voyage?”

  With no hesitation, Phillipe told him.

  He even showed Caleb the letter from James Amberly. After he had finished the narrative, he replaced the letter and closed the casket, saying, “But all that’s over.”

  “Not quite.”

  Phillipe glanced up sharply.

  “That girl of whom you spoke—you said something about her thinking of leaving England, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see—”

  “To come with you to America? Where she had relatives?”

  “It was only a passing mention, Captain Caleb.”

  “The point is, lad, the thirteen colonies remain a part of the British Empire. You may not be entirely out of danger yet. Through the girl whom your half-brother is marrying—through her family connections in Philadelphia—the long arm of private or even public justice could reach out eventually. The chance isn’t a likely one, I’ll admit. But since you were sorely used in England and want to begin with as much in your favor as possible—the Almighty can testify that landing penniless in America, while not unusual, presents huge difficulties—I’d suggest one final separation from that ugly past you described. You have abandoned any hope of claiming part of your father’s fortune. Then why not start as a new man entirely? Take a new name? One which would never give you away?”

  For the first time in days, Phillipe Charboneau almost smiled. The suggestion was both surprising and exactly right.

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said. “The idea’s excellent. I’ll do it.”

  “Help yourself to the rum,” Caleb said as he rose to leave the cabin. “But tell no one that the master of this ship allowed you more than a single cup or I’ll have a mutiny. I must be up to the helm—I think we’ve seen the last of the calm that put us behind schedule. With any luck we can run straight to Boston now. Oh, and one thing more.” He paused at the door. “To lose the woman who gives you life in this world is no easy thing. My mother’s eighty-seven. Healthy and peppery up in Maine. I hope when she passes I can behave as you did today. You took it as a man.”

  viii

  That night, alone in the stench-ridden cabin for the first time, Phillipe was glad Captain Will Caleb couldn’t see him.

  He was unable to force himself to lie in the bunk. He took his customary place on the decking instead. He had lost track of time. He heard the ship’s bell clang four bells. But of what watch, he didn’t know.

  He tried to fix his attention on something other than his mother’s absence. On the schooner’s creaking; on the soft, constant roar of breaking water just beyond the hull planks and the huge rib of rock elm that intruded into one corner of the cubicle. He tried and tried—

  Useless.

  Unbearable anguish built within him. He heard footfalls in the gangway outside, held back the low, half-uttered cry. The invisible walker hesitated, then moved on.

  Just in time.

  He wept as he had never wept in his life. Wracking sobs. They lasted five minutes. Ten—

  And then he was empty of the capacity to weep any longer. His belly hurt. Something had burned to ash in the center of his being. Burned—and was now forever gone.

  Phillipe leaned his forehead on the edge of the bunk and closed his eyes. But no sleep would come all that long, long night.

  ix

  Near the end of the mid-watch on the morning of the sixth day of July, 1772, Phillipe stumbled up from the berth deck for a breath of air. The ship’s bell rang seven times, telling him that in half an hour it would be four A.M. At least he’d learned the system of bells and watches on the voyage, if nothing else.

  Stepping out on the deserted deck, he walked toward the bow, away from the men standing watch at the helm, shadow-figures against the quarterdeck’s hanging lanterns.

  He knew why he’d wakened abruptly from a restless slumber. It was because of the talk the evening before. They should be sighting land soon, the old hands predicted. Perhaps tomorrow—

  But it was already tomorrow, wasn’t it?

  From behind the bowsprit, he peered over the sea at limitless darkness. Slowly he craned his head back. There, at least, was light. Endless stars, thousands upon thousands, dusting the huge arch of heaven and shifting slowly in his vision with the schooner’s pitch and roll—

  The name. He should do something about the name.

  He’d toyed with possibilities, found nothing satisfactory. What if they did sight land tomor—today? Who would he be?

  All at once, under the immense canopy of tiny silvered lights, he felt small. Smaller even than on Quarry Hill, the night he and Marie fled from Tonbridge. The vastness of the sky, the sweep of black ocean seemed to press in on him; reduce his size; his hope; his courage—

  She was gone. He was alone.

  He was alone.

  And out there somewhere beyond the carved figurehead—a buxom, bare-titted mermaid with painted wooden eyes—an alien country waited—

  Suddenly he was almost dizzy with fear.

  And why not? Nothing existed any longer to which he could cling. The books he’d read, the kindness of people such as Mr. Fox and the Sholtos and Hoskins, the encouragement of Dr. Franklin—all that was meaningless. Cut away as if it had never been. Lost and gone far behind the ship’s faintly phosphorescent wake.

  He felt smaller and more forlorn by the moment. He knew nothing of the realities of day-to-day living in these colonies toward which the schooner raced on the night wind. He knew nothing but words and more words—and all of those nearly forgotten. Part of another life, it seemed now. The life of someone who was a total stranger.

  Nothing from the past applied to his
new situation in this new world. No one could be relied upon because there was no one—except himself. Survive alone among these Americans? He who was doubly foreign? Not even able to claim the soil of Britain as his own? The whole of creation, sea of stars and sea of darkness, seemed to laugh with wind and wave at his incredible presumption—

  Then, reacting to the fear, he felt ashamed.

  He had withstood severe tests up till now. He could withstand more.

  He lifted his head. He fought the dread born of the future’s uncertainty. He repeated to himself what he had repeated before—

  I will survive.

  It helped—a little. But the stars and the dark remained vast and forbidding.

  Well, by Christ, he thought, I can be a man outwardly, at least. Never let them see the way I really feel—

  Phillipe knew only smatterings of the Bible. But he was acquainted with the tale of Adam. As he brooded at the bowsprit, his mind fashioned an encouraging little conceit, to help put down the fear—

  He was like a man being born in the fashion of Adam, new-sprung into the strangeness of a creation whose details he couldn’t possibly guess. All right—he would take control of that creation as befitted a man, not a boy. He would, by God—

  But who will I be?

  The problem kept him awake the rest of the night. Kept his mind occupied, at least—

  But deep down, he was still afraid.

  x

  Just before sunset of that same day, an outcry from the crow’s-nest signaled land on the horizon. Caleb’s older hands had been right.

  He stood at the port rail in the stiff wind as Gropius howled inflammatory curses in Dutch and English about the new mess boy malingering again, even while the regular mess boy still lolled in his bunk.

  He ignored the oaths, peering at the greenish-black line, still so very thin and far away, that separated the sky of the mellow summer evening and the white-crested Atlantic. Gulls wheeled and shrieked high above the topmen working aloft.