September 1814
Abigail Pratt Bentley slept until nine o’clock. She couldn’t remember when the patter of rain and the rumble of distant thunder had lulled her to sleep, but she knew she had not heard her father’s carriage return during the night. She wrapped herself in a Chinese silk robe and gazed down at the city, which rolled up from the waterfront to the base of Pemberton Hill. The rain had stopped, and the clouds were straggling off toward the North Shore like an army in retreat. Behind them, the sky was a deep September blue.
Abigail walked quickly down the hallway to the master bedroom. At first, she thought her father hadn’t come home. His door was open and the coverlet was pulled tight across the bed.
“I expect my breakfast in five minutes.” His face covered in lather, Pratt sat in the sun by the east window while Wilson stropped a straight-edge razor.
Abigail was relieved to see him sitting there and annoyed at her own needless concern. Wilson had been shaving him in that spot for nearly forty years, and the bed was always made before Pratt sat down. She was worrying about him too much.
“I must talk with you, Father,” she said firmly.
“Then talk.”
Wilson applied the razor to the left side of Pratt’s face.
Abigail could hear the scraping halfway across the room. “i’d prefer to talk alone.”
Wilson stopped shaving and looked at Abigail like an offended child. “I been in this house longer than you, girl, and not one word have I repeated of anything I ever heard.”
“Keep shaving and keep quiet,” Pratt turned to his daughter. “What do you want?”
Abigail hesitated. “I’m sorry, Wilson.”
The old servant grunted but did not look at her.
She turned her attention once more to her father. “I would like to know where you were last night.”
Pratt’s eyes grew small and angry behind the lather. “I told you, Abigail, we were fishing.”
Wilson stopped shaving and took a step back.
“It was raining last night,” she said.
“Rain is a concept that fish do not understand.”
“I don’t believe you’ve been fishing, and neither does Franconia. When she discovered that you and Horace were not in your rooms last night, she thought that her world had come to an end.”
Pratt stood angrily, threw down the towel wrapped around him, and stalked to the south windows, which looked onto the garden behind the house. “And this morning, Franconia is where she can be found every morning—out there, picking fruit for my breakfast.”
The garden rose in tiers toward the top of Pemberton Hill. It was not as exotic as some of the neighboring gardens, but it was filled with flowering plants, shade trees, and toward the top, fruit trees and berry bushes. Clad in a loose-flowing white dress and straw sun hat, Franconia Hampshire Pratt wandered the upper reaches of the property. She was humming a Renaissance air and choosing the ripest blackberries for her basket.
“Does she seem upset to you?” asked Pratt angrily.
Abigail picked up the towel and put it around his shoulders. Her touch always settled him. “Franconia and I were both upset last night, Father. I couldn’t sleep at all for worry.”
“There’s no need for you to worry about me, Abbey.”
“But I do.”
“Long before you were born, I was riding out at all hours to conduct my business. I don’t intend to change my methods at age sixty-four simply because my daughter wants to act like my mother.”
Abigail’s voice began to rise with her anger. “When my James died and I returned to your house, I understood that I was to become the mistress of the household.”
“And you are,” Pratt spoke softly.
“The mistress of the house takes an active interest in the comings and goings of her family. You’d never tell Mother the story you’ve been telling me and expect her to believe it.”
“Your mother would never have asked.”
“I would like the truth, Father, for my own peace of mind,” she said firmly.
Pratt paused for a moment and smiled paternally. “Abigail, you’re very bright and you have a fine grasp of most business matters, but unlike your mother you don’t understand that in the business world men must be about in the middle of the night without explanation.”
“While dragging their grandsons along with them?”
“The boy is my successor, Abigail. He must learn all there is to know. Now stop worrying.” Pratt returned to the chair by the window, and Wilson began to shave him again.
Suddenly, Abigail felt like a little girl asking her father for an indulgence he did not intend to grant.
The master bedroom was masculine territory. It had not been wise for her to confront him there. It contained a canopied bed, a dresser, a mahogany chest of drawers, a wardrobe, two large chairs, and a desk overlooking the garden, and still it seemed massive. Dark browns and whites prevailed. There were no curtains on the windows and little evidence of a woman’s hand. Abigail’s mother had slept in the adjoining room for the last twelve years of her life.
Abigail would not be so pliable. “You still haven’t told me where you go each night.”
Pratt slammed his hand on the arm of the chair and jumped up once more, almost losing his nose to Wilson’s razor in the process. “If we are no longer a trusting family, so be it.”
“Father, it is you who do not trust me.”
“You expect too much, Abigail. You may be the mistress of the house, but I am master of the business, and I do not like interference. We will be going out again tonight, and tomorrow night, and perhaps the night after that. We are conducting important business with a most reclusive gentleman at his home on the Neck. If you wish to follow us, go right ahead, but I will not look upon your actions with favor, and your appearance, however furtive, will endanger our negotiations.” Pratt wiped the remaining lather from his face, then Wilson helped him into his cutaway and pinned up the left sleeve. “I trust that I have satisfied your curiosity. I will now take breakfast, then walk to my office.” Pratt left the room.
Abigail did not move. She had gotten her answer, but she had been made to feel that she was prying into areas that were not her concern. She had tried to assert herself in her father’s house, and he had turned her aside with the belittlement and indignant display that he had mastered so long ago.
As he cleaned up, Wilson studied her out of the corner of his eye. He had been watching Abigail struggle with herself and her father since she moved back to Pemberton Hill. “He still thinks of you as his little girl, you know.”
“Yes. That’s our problem.”
“No it ain’t. He still treats Jason like a little boy, and Jason puts up no fuss at all. But you, you’re just an apple that fell too close to the tree.”
At sunset, Dexter Lovell dropped anchor in five fathoms of water just off Thompson’s Island. He was in Boston Harbor. Four miles to the west, he saw the copper dome of the new state house, and he imagined Horace Taylor Pratt just sitting down to dinner in his home on Pemberton Hill. On the horizon to the east, he saw the sails of H.M.S. Shannon reflecting the rose-colored light, and he knew there were three more British warships just below the line.
Lovell congratulated himself on his good sense. Instead of navigating the northwest hypotenuse from Provincetown to Boston, which would have taken him into the teeth of the British squadron, he had tacked eighteen miles west across Cape Cod Bay, which the British did not usually patrol. When he reached the white bluffs of Manomet Point, he headed north, clinging to the coast until he was well past Nantasket Roads and within the safety of Boston Harbor.
Now, Dexter Lovell’s journey was almost over. In a few hours, he would turn the tea set over to Horace Taylor Pratt and spend the rest of his life as a man of property. He would be glad for a hot meal and a warm bed, but was unhappy that the adventure had ended. He hadn’t felt as young in years. He was standing up straight, filling his lungs with fresh air, and walking on sea legs long unused. His age-yellowed complexion had turned brown in the sun. He took a bottle of port from the deck box and called to Jeff Grew.
“It’s time you ’n’ me drink to the end of a long voyage,” said Lovell. “You’ve done a good job.” He took a slug of wine and handed the bottle to Grew.
The black bared his teeth. He was smiling, but his eyes were wary. He drank deep, all the time watching Lovell over the upturned bottle.
This was the moment Lovell had chosen to kill Jeff Grew. He no longer needed the black, and two quick shots into Grew’s gut would be the end of him. It had been easy to kill the Dawsons, and Lovell thought it would be easy to kill this nigger, with his cocky ways and his leering smile and the machete that he sharpened so carefully each day. It wasn’t.
The rain which had fallen softly on Boston the night before had attacked Cape Cod Bay with a violent thunderstorm that united Lovell and Grew against a common enemy. At the height of the squall, a powerful gust had torn loose the staysails. Without them, Lovell had to fight to keep the small sloop on course. She was taking on water, and if she swung broadside into the wind, a single wave could send her to the bottom. With a splicing awl in his hand and a knife between his teeth, Grew crawled out onto the bowsprit, which dug like a rapier into the chest of every wave. The sea crashed over him and nearly pulled him off the ship, but he held on. He secured the sail and saved the Reckless, and Dexter Lovell knew he would not be able to shoot Jeff Grew.
The storm cleared Grew’s head, and he changed his mind about killing Lovell. He couldn’t sail the Reckless to Jamaica himself, and even if people in Boston treated blacks like free men, he knew that a Jamaican with a strongbox on his shoulder would look suspicious anywhere. By morning, he had decided to stay with Lovell and keep his hand close to his machete. He trusted no white man. He knew only one. Best to keep him alive.
The black emptied the port into his belly and tossed the bottle over the side. “Dat sure be tasty, Dexter Lovell, and I glad to see you drinkin’ some of it with me. I been lately wonderin’ if you don’t like me or somethin’.”
Lovell managed to smile. “I don’t, but you showed real balls last night. You saved us both. You’ll be treated fair when we get that tea set ashore.”
“I don’t expect nothin’ else.”
The two thieves took final measure of one another. They had traveled five hundred miles on a tiny ship, but neither could guess what the other was thinking. They felt no friendship, no trust. Only the most grudging respect. A tea set and fear and a thread of decency held them together. It was a very fragile bond.
Grew offered a large paw to Lovell. They shook hands, and Grew closed his around Lovell’s like a vise. Lovell felt his fingers and knuckles squashing together, but he showed no pain. Grew was giving him one last glimpse of physical strength, and Lovell would not be intimidated. He squeezed back as hard as he could, just enough to neutralize the pressure from Grew’s hand. Finally, as if on signal, both men let go, and Dexter Lovell wished he had the stomach to kill Jeff Grew.
Three hours later, the Reckless was washed in the glow of the full moon. The rowboat was pulling gently on the rope which tethered it to the sloop. The two smugglers were sitting in their private corners of the boat. Lovell perched above the cargo hold which contained the Golden Eagle. Grew nestled in the stern with a bottle of rum and his machete. The tide was turning. It was time to go ashore.
Lovell took an ax from Jack Dawson’s deck box and went below. In the cabin, a windowless hole beneath the waterline, Lovell picked a spot on the bulkhead and swung the ax. Ten, twelve times the ax bit into the side. A thirteenth and water began to trickle into the cabin.
“What in hell you doin’?” Jeff Grew jumped down the ladder.
Lovell swung again and cut through the side of the Reckless.
“Jesus Christ, man. You gone crazy?”
“Not at all, my dark friend, but we’ll ’ave no more thoughts of sailin’ this ’ere sloop to Jamaica and no evidence of the Reckless.”
“You sinkin’ us?”
“Bow, stern, and midships. These smuggler sloops is built to sink fast, but I can’t find no stern sea cock. That’s why I’m swingin’ the ax.”
Three inches of water already covered the cabin deck, and countless empty bottles, the last remnants of Jack Dawson, were floating about in the wash like toys in a bathtub. Then, above the sound of flowing water, Lovell and Grew heard the squealing noise of fright. Rats appeared everywhere, scuttling across the beams, crawling onto tables and chairs, and swimming toward the two men as though they were trees in a flood.
Grew felt something at his foot. He slashed with his machete and sliced a rat in half. He swung the machete again and again, and the water around his feet turned red. He felt something soft and warm slithering across his neck. He plucked it from his ear and flung it against the wall. He was terrified.
“Stop killin’ rats and get the tea set out of the ’old,” commanded Lovell.
Grew bounded out of the cabin with Lovell a few steps behind. The black pulled back the grate on the cargo hold and leaped down. Lovell ran to the bow and descended into the small forward hold. He found the bow sea cock, swung at it once or twice with the side of the ax, then pulled up. Salt water bubbled into the compartment.
Back on deck, he saw the strongbox appearing from the hold. He took it from Grew’s shoulder and pushed it to the side. He peered into the hold, which was eight feet deep, and saw the black face gleaming with sweat. He realized how easily he could close the gate and leave Jeff Grew to drown on the Reckless. He reached for it, but his hand stopped and he heard his own voice. “In the middle of the ’old, you’ll find the midship sea cock. Open it and get the ’ell out.”
“I ain’t openin’ nothin’, Dexter. Dere’s rats in here. I’m comin’ out.”
Lovell slammed the grate shut.
Grew screamed and swung his machete against the wooden latticework above him. “Goddam you, Dexter Lovell!”
“Open the sea cock, or I’ll leave you down there for good.”
Reluctantly, Grew retreated into the darkness. A moment later, Lovell heard the rush of water into the hold.
“Now let me out,” screamed Jeff Grew.
Lovell watched the water swirl. He heard the rats screech as they were flushed from their hiding places. He saw the black’s eyes grew wide with fright.
“You ain’t gonna leave me here, Dexter Lovell. You can’t!”
Lovell stood slowly. Perhaps he could. He stepped back from the grate, as if to test his own resolve.
Grew cursed the white man. Black hands appeared at the holes in the grate. They pulled violently, helplessly against it, then slipped away. Grew splashed back into the water, now ankle-deep in the hold. He bellowed for Lovell to let him out, then screamed. The rats were clinging to him.
Lovell took another step back and tried not to listen.
“Help me, damn you, Dexter Lovell!”
Lovell grabbed the strongbox by both handles and started to drag it toward the rowboat. If he could endure the black man’s wail just a little longer, it would be silenced forever.
“I curse you, Dexter Lovell. I curse with all the bad voodoo I know!”
Just a little longer, a little longer.
“Help me, please, Dexter Lovell. Don’t be lettin’ me die!”
Lovell couldn’t do it. He damned whatever shreds of conscience he still had and opened the grate. “I wouldn’t leave you there, you crazy black fool. The rowboat slipped loose, and I ’ad to secure it. You don’t want us drownin’ because we sank our ship out from under us and didn’t ’ave no rowboat.”
Half-crazy with fear, Grew climbed out of the hold and slashed at the rats still clinging to his pants. Then he turned the machete to Lovell. Every muscle in his body was quivering. “I oughta be killin’ you, Dexter Lovell!”
Lovell didn’t budge. “And leave yourself alone in a sinkin’ ship in Boston ’arbor? Don’t be a fool, nigger. I’m your only friend. I just proved it by lettin’ you out of that ’old. Now let’s get goin’.”
The Reckless was filling with water and sinking on an even keel. The deck would soon be awash. There was no time for argument. Lovell and Grew loaded the strongbox into the rowboat and pushed off. A few minutes later the mast slipped straight into the water and the sloop was gone. All that remained were a few rats still swimming for their lives.
“Drown, you dirty buggers,” whispered Jeff Grew.
“I never seen such a big, strong man so scared of a few rats.”
“I hate dem fuckers, Dexter.” Grew shuddered. “And I hate you for leavin’ me in dat hold so long.”
“Just keep at the oars, Jefferson, my boy.” Lovell’s voice was gentle. From his days in a whaleboat, he knew well the soothing effects of rowing on panicked men.
“I hate dem fuckers.”
“I can’t say as I love ’em myself.”
“Nobody love ’em, but you try livin’ sometime down in Jamaica, in one of dem little huts where dey keep slaves. You be a little boy, four, maybe five years old, sleepin’ all peaceful and nice…” Grew’s voice cracked. He swung the oars four or five times through the water, then continued. “… and wake up when your momma scream because your little brother be dead from the typhoid beside you, and the rats is eatin’ at his face. And den you scream, ’cause dey runnin’ on your legs and tinkin’ ’bout eatin’ you, too. You don’t never forget dem rats, or what white men put you in dat hole, or how much you wants to get out. Never.” When he was finished, the muscles in Jeff Grew’s jaw were taut, his teeth were clenched tight, and there was hatred deep in his eyes.
Dexter Lovell feared that he had struck a dangerous spring in Jeff Grew’s past. “You don’t ever ’ave to go back. Just keep rowin’ for another hour or two, and I’ll see you’re set for life.”
Grew shipped his oars and glared at Lovell. “You be another white man, Dexter. No different than any other.”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
“Like I said in Chesapeake Bay, you can’t trust no one.” He dipped the oars once more.
The tide and Jeff Grew’s muscle carried them quickly through the outer harbor.
In the bright moonlight, Lovell could see the masts and yardarms of the Boston fleet growing like a winter forest along the waterfront. Behind them rose the dark mass of Beacon Hill; beneath them shone the lights of Boston. Lovell had spent the best years of his life in Boston, and now the city appeared to him as in a dream of shadow and darkness and scattered splashes of light. He hoped that the dream would grow brighter.
“Which wharf you want me aimin’ for?” asked Grew.
“None. Swing north and around the city. We’re meetin’ my friends on the other side.”
“Dis place an island?”
“Just about.”
Horace Taylor Pratt stood on Gravelly Point and waited for the splash of Lovell’s oars in the Easterly Channel. It would be tonight, or not at all.
“That drive gets longer every night,” said Wilson, sipping blackberry brandy from his flask. “Why couldn’t Lovell show up at the waterfront, like any other smuggler?”
“The waterfront isn’t deserted,” said young Horace.
“Quite so,” added Pratt.
A half hour later, Grew rowed through the channel between Boston and Charlestown, then under Craigie’s Bridge. Fifty yards ahead, the brightly lit West Boston Bridge.
“Another mile and a ’alf or so, and we’re there.” Lovell’s voice vibrated with excitement.
And Jeff Grew’s heart pounded. As he rowed toward the West Boston Bridge, he studied Lovell’s face for some hint of what awaited him. Would this white man still try to kill him, this white man who drank with him, then locked him in a hold filled with rats, this white man who spoke so gently and always kept a hand near his gun? Or would this white man keep his word?
A voice deep inside Jeff Grew began to chant, Kill him, kill him, kill him now. He tried not to listen, but the voice grew louder. He concentrated on rowing and fixed his eyes on Lovell.
Suddenly, Lovell’s face began to change. His forehead and cheekbones burned bright, like gold. His eyes disappeared beneath black scars that fell to his chin. His cheeks sank to blackness beneath the gold. Jeff Grew saw bad voodoo. He had seen it before, in Jamaica. The witch-doctor’s mask of evil. He dropped his oars. The boat drifted into the darkness under the bridge, and the mask was gone.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” asked Lovell.
Slowly, Grew picked up the oars and pulled the boat back into the light. The mask appeared again and the voices chanted, Kill him, kill him, kill him now. But Grew kept rowing. He knew that the lanterns on the bridge were playing tricks on him. Or maybe they were trying to warn him.
He rowed another twenty-five yards before he looked over his shoulder into the Back Bay. But for the moon and the West Boston Bridge, all was darkness. Grew didn’t like it. “Where we goin’, Dexter? I don’t see no wharves, no city. I can’t even see no houses.”
“Row another thirty or forty yards, then turn ninety degrees starboard.”
“Dere’s nothin’ but black out dere, Dexter.”
“Just keep rowin’.”
Kill him, kill him, kill him now. Don’t let this white man deceive you. The voice was becoming insistent.
The rowboat dug into the mud twice before Lovell found the mouth of the Easterly Channel. The Back Bay was covered in water at high tide, but many areas of it were not navigable. Lovell would try to stay in the channel all the way to Gravelly Point.
He reached under his seat and produced a red lantern. After several tries with flint and stone, he lit the wick and held the lantern above his head. The small cube of darkness around the boat glowed deep red.
Kill him, kill him, kill him now. Grew kept rowing.
“I see it, Grandfather.” At first, young Horace’s voice was uncertain. The light was only a pinprick in the distance.
“The lantern?” said Pratt from the carriage.
The boy put his grandfather’s spyglass to his eye. He could make out two men in a rowboat about a mile away, and one of them was holding a red lantern aloft. “Yes, sir. It’s them.”
Pratt and Wilson were beside him in an instant.
“He’s done it,” said Pratt softly, his voice filled with admiration. “The old bastard’s done it.”
“I’ll have to say I’m surprised,” added Wilson.
“Horace, get the lantern out of the boat and bring it here.”
In the moonlight, Lovell could see nothing but the dark outline of Gravelly Point. In the glow of the red lantern, Jeff Grew saw the face of a demon.
“Pull steady, Jefferson. The channel flows south for about a quarter mile, then swings sou’west. Tonight we sleep in beds,” said Lovell triumphantly. “And if you want, we’ll get you a fine white woman to stroke your dick.”
Grew continued to row. The rhythm of the oars as they clanked in the oarlocks lent cadence to the words now pounding in his head.
A light gleamed on Gravelly Point, now about three quarters of a mile away. Lovell squinted into the blackness. If it was Pratt, he would signal.
Young Horace held the lantern, and Wilson passed his hat back and forth in front of it.
“They’ve seen us,” said Lovell.
Grew looked over his shoulder and saw the spot of light blinking like an eye in the blackness. Kill him, kill him, kill him now. The white men are waiting to kill you.
Lovell blew out the red lantern.
Kill him. Now. Grew dropped the oars and reached for his machete.
“He’s seen us,” said young Horace excitedly.
“Then put our your lantern. He can navigate in the dark.”
The first scream of rage took several seconds to travel across the Back Bay. It was followed instantly by an animal cry of pain, then a gunshot.
Dexter Lovell’s left sleeve was covered in blood.
Jeff Grew felt a hole in his chest. There was another hole, much larger, where the ball had torn through his back. The shot had knocked him off his feet, and he lay in the bow, wedged between the strongbox and the gunwales. Kill him. You must kill him. Grew spat blood and struggled to his feet in the rocking boat.
Lovell grabbed for the second pistol. He thought he had it out of his belt when he realized that his arm was still hanging by his side. Nerve, muscle, and most of the bone were severed, and Grew’s machete was swinging at him again. Lovell ducked. The machete glanced off the side of his head. A flap of scalp dropped open, and Lovell’s right ear came away on the edge of the blade.
Water slopped over the gunwales on both sides of the boat. Grew swung the machete at Lovell’s throat. He stumbled and fell on top of the white man. Lovell grabbed the loaded gun with his right hand, jammed it against Grew’s stomach, and fired. Grew snapped to his feet. He staggered. He tried to swing the machete. He fell backward, and the boat capsized.
Dexter Lovell plunged through the cold velvet blackness. He thought he was dead. His body spun through space, then his head broke the surface and he gulped for air. He felt something flailing about in the water nearby. It grabbed him by the leg and pulled him under. He kicked loose and burst to the surface once more.
Jeff Grew appeared a few feet away. He was screaming something at Lovell, but Lovell did not understand him. Grew was chanting in Mandinka, “Kill him. Kill him. Kill him now,” over and over until water choked him and he sank once more.
Lovell tried to fight, but his left arm would not respond. His head went under. He struggled violently to bring it to the surface. Then the seaman’s instincts took over. He kicked his shoes off and treaded water.
“Damn it!” screamed Pratt.
“Grandfather, what’s happening?”
Pratt had been watching the shadows through his spyglass. Horace and Wilson could hear the struggle echoing across the water.
“The fools are killing each other.”
Dexter Lovell grabbed the side of the overturned boat. Then he realized that the tea set was gone. He looked about frantically, hoping that, by some miracle, iron would float. He put his head into the water and tried to see the bottom. Blood poured from the wound in his scalp and the deep slice in his shoulder, but he felt no pain.
He let go of the boat and dove. His brain sent signals to both arms; only his right responded. He touched bottom at six feet. He grabbed a handful of mud and tried to drag himself along in the blackness. His hand hit metal. The strongbox was settled in the ooze directly beneath the boat. He clutched at the handle with his right hand and tried to lift. Too heavy.
His lungs screamed for air, but he would not let go. He would not leave the strongbox.
Air, more air. Go up and take a breath, then dive.
You’ll never find the tea set again if you leave it now. Hold on and pull. Too heavy. Use your other arm. But my other arm is hanging off. No it isn’t. Try to lift it.
Somewhere in the blackness, a familiar voice was speaking to him. Yes, lift it, Dexter. The box is light. You’re young and strong.
I need air or my lungs will explode.
It’s all right, Dexter. You can breathe. Yes, dear. Breathe.
The world grew bright. Dexter Lovell stood on the stern of the Gay Head. The sky was blue, the breeze fresh and fair. On the wharf, his dear Beatrice was waving. He jumped from the ship. They embraced. In the last hallucinations of a drowning man, Dexter Lovell found what he was searching for.
Pratt saw a body appear on the surface. He watched through his spyglass until he was certain that both men were dead. He gave the glass to his grandson. “The poor fool came so close.”
“What the hell happened?” asked Wilson.
“I don’t know.”
Young Horace took the glass from his eye. He had hoped to see real dead men floating out there. He saw only a few indistinct shapes. “What will we do now?”
Pratt did not hesitate or allow himself a moment of grief at Lovell’s death. He pivoted on his cane and walked back to the carriage. “We’ll let the tide take care of Lovell and his friend, and then we’ll figure out a way to get that tea set out of the Easterly Channel.”