The Crossing Page 10

  “A Pinkerton man!” Ettie said with delight. “Oh, my! I have always in my secret self wanted to be a Pinkerton man — or woman!” Ettie had long been fascinated by Allan Pinkerton, who had founded the detective agency decades before. She could hardly believe it when she found out that her uncles had known him. Known the man who, as Bark and God said, had developed “modern detective techniques” and had served during the Civil War as a spy for the Union. He had worked for the abolitionist movement long before the war. He was part spy, part scientist, and a true patriot, although he had been born in Scotland. What a life!

  “Your secret self?” Hannah asked, and smiled. “I thought May and I were the only ones with secret selves.”

  A grave expression slid across Ettie’s face. It was as if she had suddenly aged. The soft contours of her face seemed to become instantly chiseled. Her gray eyes that moments before glinted were suddenly solemn. “You have just one secret self. You have no idea how many I have.”

  At that moment the bell on the clock tower of the library began to toll. The spots of colored light shimmered with the vibrations of the glass in the rose window as the chimes rang out.

  IT HAD BEEN over fifteen years since the last time Nat Lawrence climbed the granite steps to the Revenue Cutter Service on Cutter Station Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. He doubted if Lieutenant Ramsey was still the officer in charge of records. But someone would be there, and he needed to review all the papers and documentation of the shipwreck of the HMS Resolute. There were absolutely no survivors. It would take a miracle if three babies, Walter and Laurentia’s triplets, could have survived. Laurentia was mer, but she could drown. Particularly if she had not been swimming for a long period of time, and perhaps she hadn’t, since she had just given birth. She would have had to keep her true nature a secret on the ship. Wouldn’t do for the sailors to know that their captain had married a mer creature. At a certain age the transitions between land and water became more difficult. Laurentia and her sister, Avalonia, had told them this. For Avalonia, in her cave on Barra Head in the Outer Hebrides, it was easy for her to keep swimming. In that sparsely populated area the people were accustomed to mer folk and paid them little heed, no more than they would a seal that swam ashore to sun on the rocks. The mer kept to themselves for the most part, but they sometimes came to town to buy cloth or soda bread or cakes. Funny how the mer folk loved their cakes.

  On occasion an island boy or girl would fall in love with a mer. It was not totally uncommon and had happened more than once through the years. If mer and island folk intermarried, they at least usually stayed about the Hebrides. So for these mer folk, there were no problems, and they never suffered the ills that might plague those who had moved so far away as to be deprived of swimming entirely.

  On Barra Head and the other islands no one had to make that terrible decision when they came to that age where if they could not swim they would drown. Laurentia was so sure it would be fine for her. So she became a sea captain’s wife, and it was fine until that terrible storm.

  “Can I help you, sir?” a clerk asked as Nathaniel Lawrence approached the high desk.

  “Yes, I would like to speak to the registrar of records if possible. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here. I trust Lieutenant Ramsey is no longer in charge.”

  “Oh, no, sir. He died going on five years ago. Lieutenant Philipps is our registrar now. Right through that door at the end of the hall.”

  “Thank you.” Nathaniel Lawrence nodded and began walking toward the pebbled glass at the end of the long hall. So many times he had done this in the years immediately following the shipwreck, combing the records for any clue as to the possible survival of his brother and his brother’s wife. He was certain it would be fruitless.

  “Lieutenant Philipps, I believe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have come to inquire about a shipwreck of some years ago.”

  “And what might be the name of the vessel?”

  “The HMS Resolute, sunk off —”

  “Of course, off Nantucket Shoals in 1883. Now, here’s the odd thing. Would you believe, according to our log book here, the first inquiry came about seventeen years ago, shortly after the ship went down? A lighthouse keeper up the coast of Maine by the name of Edgar Plum sent a letter, followed by a few more from interested relatives, and then nothing until this month when three requests came in. One from a May Plum, presumed to be a relative of Edgar Plum, and the other by a Pinkerton man. Indeed, are you from the Pinkerton Agency?”

  “Oh, no. But my brother was the captain of the Resolute. But you say just this month you’ve gotten these inquiries?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you say this Edgar Plum keeps the light?”

  “The light on Egg Rock off Bar Harbor in Frenchman’s Bay.”

  “And he has a relative named May?”

  “Yes. I can’t remember why, but something made me think she was a daughter.”

  “A daughter,” Nat Lawrence whispered. Why would a “presumed relative,” the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, be making inquiries into the wreck of the Resolute after all these years? What possible connection could there be? Unless this May Plum was indeed one of the triplet daughters. It might really be possible that two were still alive! Nat Lawrence could hardly contain himself.

  “Thank you! Thank you so much!” He turned to leave.

  “You don’t want me to pull the records for you? I mean, that’s what I’m here for, to help folks.”

  “Oh, you have! You have indeed. Helped me greatly, but I want to catch the coastal steamer before it’s too late.”

  “Well, if you skip lively you can catch the Laconia. She’s a bit of a pokey thing, but she’ll get you up to Boston in time to get the Prouty up to Maine.

  LUCY COULD HEAR the crowds outside the prison. “Baby killer! Baby killer!” The cold November air was shredded with the jeers of the crowds that had come from as far as Kennebunk to see the hanging of Edna Barlow. An executioner had been sent up from Portland. Lucy had never seen Edna Barlow since they had brought her to the Thomaston jail ten days earlier. She had been kept in an isolated cell far down another corridor. But she could hear her ranting and raving throughout the nights. It was a wonder the woman had a throat left. There was a part of Lucy that almost envied her. It would be over for Edna Barlow. She would be done with this world. They had not yet removed her from her cell, but they would soon. The execution was scheduled for eight o’clock this morning. The people had begun to gather hours before.

  She could hear Otis Greenlaw’s voice in her corridor. “Lucy Snow! Lucy Snow!” he called out harshly. No! No! Not now, I’m not ready. I take it all back. Had they decided to execute her right now as well? Save the hangman a trip from Portland. She curled up on the cot and grasped her knees.

  “Up you go, girl! Up you go.” She did not move. “What’s wrong with you? I need to introduce you to your new guard. Just temporary while I go about this here hanging. You know, as constable I have to be there and sign with the coroner when they cut her down. Now, don’t give me no trouble here. Not like that lunatic. Make nice. Come on over and meet Silas Gibbons. Come on, deah.”

  “Dear,” he calls me “dear.” The judge called me “dear” minutes after he sentenced me to death. What is wrong with this world?

  Lucy rose and walked shakily over to the bars. “Silas, this here is Miss Lucy Snow.”

  “A-yuh.” Silas was a toothless old man with rheumy eyes.

  “Silas used to work here. Long time ago with my own father. “

  “A-yuh.”

  “Silas, I want you to know that Miss Lucy has been a model prisoner. Not like that other one.”

  “She done be a harlot, that other one, a baby-killing harlot.” He had a Bible braced under his arm. Opening it, he began to read. Although his eyes never seemed to fall on the page, the words just spewed forth.

  “ ‘Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Hav
e you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there.” ’ ” He raised the Bible and shook it. “Jeremiah!” he announced.

  “Silas here does love his Bible.”

  And Silas loved his harlots as well, or at least the passages about them. He followed the Jeremiah reading with one from Leviticus: “ ‘Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot, so that the land will not fall to harlotry and the land become full of lewdness.’ ” His eyes began to sparkle dangerously. Lucy backed away and turned to her cot, where she crawled under the thin cover and pulled it over her head.

  Between the din of the crowds jeering and the rage of this old man spewing his vitriol, she felt as if she had descended into a dark and wolfish woods ready to be torn apart by rabid beasts. The bedlam soon reached a crescendo and then there was a sudden silence. She did not have to see what was happening. She could imagine it — the hangman, with his hood, placing the rope around Edna Barlow’s neck and then seconds later, out of the vault of silence, a clank as the square of floor dropped away. A deafening roar erupted. But by this time Lucy had lost consciousness.

  It had taken Nathaniel Lawrence nearly two days to make the journey to Egg Rock, off Bar Harbor. On this blustery morning he leaned into the biting northeast wind as he made his way up the path to the lighthouse. He rapped hard on the door, for the wind was howling. It took almost five minutes before he heard the turn of the lock. A grizzled man opened the door.

  “What brings you to the rock out in dirty weather like this?”

  Nathaniel Lawrence stood in the frame of the lighthouse door. Water spilled off the brim of his sou’wester hat and foul weather cape. “May? May Plum? I’m looking for her.”

  “She be in Cambridge.”

  “Cambridge!” Nathaniel gasped in disbelief.

  “A-yuh. She went down ’bout three weeks ago.”

  “B-b-but I came all …” His voice dwindled.

  “Come in heah, no use standing out in the rain.” The lighthouse keeper’s accent was thick as the fog that had rolled in with the stormy weather. “I got some chowder. You come up on the Prouty this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Gar Plum had started to lead his guest toward the kitchen. “You can put your gear on the hook next to mine. These November nor’easters come with more rain than wind. Still must have been a rough trip up on the Prouty.

  “That it was. Then I got a ride out with the mail boat. That was wet. Here’s your mail, by the way. I take it you’re Edgar Plum. I’m Nathaniel Lawrence.”

  “Lawrence?” Gar stopped in his tracks and slowly turned around and fixed his eyes on the man who was now peeling off his foul weather rubber cape.

  “Yes, sir, Lawrence — Nathaniel Lawrence.”

  Gar’s shoulders sunk. “So you found us.”

  “I — I — I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You come lookin’ for your niece.” Nathaniel Lawrence seemed to sway a bit. “Steady there.” Gar reached forward and, taking his arm in a firm grip, led Nathaniel Lawrence to a chair at the kitchen table.

  “So May Plum is not your daughter?”

  “I believe you know that,” Gar said as he placed a mug of steaming fish chowder in front of his guest. There was a groan from a room just off the kitchen. “Oh, that be my wife, Zeeba. She ain’t in a good way. Be back in a second. Time to give her the medicine.”

  While Gar was gone, Nathaniel looked about the modest dwelling. It was neat as a pin. The kerosene lamps glowed — their glass chimneys wiped clean, the brass fuel tank at the bases polished to a dazzling brightness. The cast iron Atlantic Princess wood-burning stove, oiled and gleaming, threw off a powerful heat. Outside the wind had picked up, and through two small windows he could catch the sweep of the light from the top of the tower. He judged it to be an interval of five seconds between each of the two flashes followed by a ten-second gap. Each lighthouse along the New England coast had its own characteristic sequence, or “signature.” The Nantucket Shoals light station’s signature was two flashes at an interval of two seconds, followed by an eight-second gap. He rested his chin in his hand as he reimagined for the thousandth time his brother watching for that flash. But who knew what had happened. The mast could have broken, or the rudder, and all control of the ship lost, and then those shoals were just a graveyard waiting for them.

  Gar returned. He had a newspaper tucked under his arm, which he set gently on the table. “No, May ain’t my daughter, nor this one — Lucy Snow.” It was the same photograph that Nathaniel had seen in the New York Times. “And there be a third one, you know.”

  “A third!”

  “A-yuh. That be Hannah.”

  Nathaniel Lawrence was completely perplexed. “But how? How did they survive? How did you come to find them?”

  Gar chuckled softly, as if reliving a wonderful moment, and then turned serious. “I only found one, now. Don’t be mistaken. I just found May. Out on Simon’s Ledge, drifting in a sea chest while I be gill-netting out there.”

  And so Edgar Plum began to tell the story of when he had encountered May on that fateful day nearly eighteen years ago. When he concluded, there was another groan from the back room. Gar cocked his head. “Don’t worry none about her. She be all right. Just can’t give her any more the laudanum, not till this evening.”

  Nathaniel Lawrence looked toward the back room. It all seemed so bizarre. He was trying to fit the pieces together — the grizzled man, the sick and moaning woman in the back room, and somewhere this mer child called May, who was no longer really a child but a young woman. “So you and your wife raised May.”

  “I raised May,” Gar said with an edge in his voice that did not escape Nathaniel. He arched an eyebrow but did not ask the question, though Gar seemed to know what he wanted to ask. “Zeeba didn’t take to her.” He was startled by Edgar Plum’s tone.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said.” Gar shrugged his shoulders. “I come in here with this beautiful baby girl with curls the color of a summer sunset — bright golden red — and she calls her an ‘interruption.’ ”

  “An ‘interruption’? I don’t understand.”

  “An interruption to her illnesses. Zeeba’s occupation was being sick.” He laughed harshly. “Now she really is sick. Had a stroke a few months back. But she never did cotton to May.” Gar paused and rubbed his hands over his eyes. “May’s the dearest thing in the world. She is all the world to me, but I sense that you know that she is … is different. She and her sisters are different.”

  “She is mer, as was her mother,” Nathaniel said softly. “How long have you known? Since she was a baby?”

  “Not really for sure. I tried to keep her from the water. I sensed it. I didn’t want her to swim away. But I found out for sure about a year or so ago. She still tried to hide it from me. But when this happened with Lucy, well, it all came out.”

  “But my question is, how did these three girls finally find one another? You only found May.”

  “They found each other here in Bar Harbor. It was fate that brought them together. That is all I can think of.”

  Or, thought Nathaniel, the Laws of Salt.

  “How can we help them, Doctor Lawrence? They are bound and determined to save Lucy. She no more murdered that duke than the man in the moon. These girls, all they got is each other, really. Well, May has a beau, and so does Lucy.

  “And the other one, Hannah, does, too. But those fellows ain’t mer, least not Hugh or Phin. Who knows if love can stand such a challenge. They need each other. If Lucy’s hangs, I — I …” — his voice faltered — “I don’t know what will happen.”

  LUCY HAD NOT moved since the hanging of Edna Barlow. She lay very still on the cot. Her skin felt cracked. She was too weak to lift her head from the pillow to sip the mug of water that Otis Greenlaw had set on the small table. She was weak, but she wasn’t in any pain. She just felt as if her body was shutti
ng down, slowly, inexorably. And though her internal organs might be failing, she had a strangely heightened sense of consciousness. She knew that she was dying, and it did not seem to bother her. She felt peaceful, almost as if she was slipping into the sea. It was the same sensation she had the first time she had felt the water swirl up over her knees as she sat on the sloping ledge of Otter Cove the night she had crossed over. This is just another crossing, she thought. She played over and over again the memory of that evening when she first swam. How her petticoat had swirled around her like the petals of a flower as she dared herself to let go … just let go … just let go … and then feeling the curl and the pull of the tide, the soft rushing noise of the water.

  “Whatcha goin’ to do, Grampa, if she dies before you can hang her?” Otis Greenlaw’s grandson Joey was standing beside him, peering through the bars. He had a pencil and paper in his hand. He was going to write another school report on the prisoner. His teacher had said he might grow up and become a journalist. He needed to write the end of this story, and if she just plain died, well, that would be really boring.

  “Maybe I should call a doctor,” Otis said. “But you know that costs the county, and spending that kind of money on a murderer … I mean, to save someone who’s going to die anyway seems wasteful.” He paused and peered through the bars at Lucy. “Tell you one thing. I would have been out of here lickety-split to get a doctor for that baby killer Edna Barlow. If anyone deserved to feel every strand of the hangman’s noose cutting into her throat it’s Edna Barlow.”

  “A-yuh,” Joey said, and nodded his head like a wise old man.

  In East Boston, at pier 5, far from the prison in Thomaston, where Lucy Snow lay unconscious, the Hawley family prepared to board the Leonidas with their twenty-two steamer trunks and retinue of five servants. Horace and Edwina Hawley had made the journey from Boston to the Continent more than a dozen times during the course of their marriage. It was always an orderly transition over which Mr. Marston presided as crisply as a general at a field exercise. The skies were clear, the water in the harbor hardly ruffled in the lightest of breezes. But, thought Ettie, is this in fact the calm before the storm? She carefully observed Lila as the family prepared to walk up the gangplank to the first class deck of the Leonidas. It was a gleaming ocean liner, and on this dim November morning it appeared as if flocks of colorful birds had suddenly landed on the gangplank. More feathers on this gangplank, Ettie thought as she scanned the multitude of fashionable hats, than on all the birds in Boston. “Revolting!” Ettie murmured to herself.