September 1814
Horace Taylor Pratt III placed a glass-bottomed box on the surface of the water and peered down at the floor of the Back Bay.
“See anything, boy?” asked Wilson.
“It’s still too dark.”
“Well, as near as I can figure, this is where they flipped over.”
Heavy clouds smoldered above Boston and turned the sky ashen gray. It was Sunday morning, a half hour before dawn.
Dexter Lovell and Jeff Grew had killed each other on Friday night. The next morning, Grew’s body was washed up on the Neck. It was stripped of purse and personal belongings and would be buried in Potter’s Field. Lovell’s body had not been found. The tides had hauled it back to the harbor and thrown it up on one of the islands, where crabs would pick it clean within a few days. The treasure they had died for was still sitting in the mud at the bottom of the Easterly Channel.
Horace Taylor Pratt stood on the edge of Gravelly Point and peered through a spyglass. They had perhaps three hours to find the tea set. After that, Sunday boaters would begin crisscrossing the Charles River Basin, and two men salvaging a strongbox would certainly attract attention. The strongbox itself, if left beneath the few feet of water that covered it at low tide, might easily be seen from a passing dory and hauled up by some cobbler on holiday.
They were lucky that no one had noticed the strongbox at low tide yesterday, thought Pratt. They had to find it today.
Again, he squinted through the spyglass. Wilson was still circling. Pratt wished that he were out there with them, but an old man with one arm wasn’t much good in a rowboat. Best to stay on shore. Wilson was as reliable as the tides, and Pratt had every confidence in young Horace.
He stepped away from the glass, which stood on a tripod, and he began to pace the bank as though he were waiting for one of his ships from China. He figured that the tea set would fetch twenty thousand dollars in England. His ships had brought greater profits, but he had invested thousands on their voyages. He had ventured almost nothing on the Golden Eagle, and now that Lovell was dead, he would pocket almost everything it earned. He congratulated himself on his good judgment. He had picked a valuable tea set to steal and an accomplice obliging enough to drown before he took his share of the money.
Of course, Pratt told himself, he would never have engineered the theft of another tea set, no matter how valuable. He was an honest man. Pragmatic and opportunistic, but honest nonetheless. As he paced, he poked holes in the mud with his cane and repeated to himself his justification. He had protested the creation of the tea set from public treasure, and his livelihood had been threatened by the Presidents to whom it was given. He was simply declaring a private war on the stupidity of his peers and political leaders and saving his business in the process.
In the back of his head, Pratt heard his father—Calvinist, sailmaker, honest man—disapprove of such reasoning. Jason Pratt the elder had raised his sons to believe that a man deserved nothing for which he didn’t work. Horace Taylor Pratt had always tried to embrace his father’s teachings, especially when negotiating salaries with underpaid super-cargoes or confronting representatives of Boston charities. But the world was very different from the days when Jason Pratt set up a sailmaking establishment on North Street and worked day and night to build his business, his reputation, and a comfortable life for his family. This was the nineteenth century. Life in the business world was difficult enough without war and blockade further complicating it. A businessman had to be careful. He took his profits where he found them and speculated when the odds were in his favor. After all, John Calvin himself had encouraged such prudence and praised commerce as a righteous path for all men.
The rowboat stopped cutting on the gray fabric of the Back Bay. Pratt stepped to the telescope again. He saw Wilson throw a sackful of bricks into the water.
They’ve found it, thought Pratt. A few more minutes and we’ll have it in the safe on Merchants Row. A few more days and Hannaford’s agents, as trustworthy as old Henry himself, will arrive from Halifax to take the tea set on its way to England.
Wilson watched the sack of bricks sink into the mud. It made a good anchor. From the length of the rope connected to it, he guessed that the water was about six feet deep. The tide was high and would be turning.
“No trouble at all, son,” he said.
Young Horace was stripped to his underbreeches and trembling with excitement. He picked up the rope harness he had fashioned to lift the tea set and started to slip into the water.
“Why don’t you try liftin’ her without the harness, boy? Might be the damn thing’s as light as a feather and we won’t have to waste no time foolin’ with a lot of knots.”
The boy looked at the black chunk of iron sitting in the mud below the boat. “The box is quite large, Wilson. I’m sure it’s too heavy.”
“You can’t ever tell how big a thing is by lookin’ through the water at it. Water plays tricks on the eyes. If it ain’t all that heavy, the air in your lungs’ll pull it up like a beer belch poppin’ outa your gut. Soon as you get close enough, I’ll take it off your shoulder, and we’ll get the hell outa here.”
Young Horace placed his hands defiantly on his hips. He intended to use his harness.
Wilson raised his hand. “If you can’t lift it, we’ll use the damn harness.”
Horace turned and dove. As soon as he broke the water, adrenaline flooded through him and he forgot his anger. He was diving for sunken treasure. He was living an adventure that most boys only read about. Kicking down through six feet of murky water, he barely felt the cold or the sting of the salt in his eyes. He reached the strongbox in a few short strokes.
Wilson is right, he thought. It isn’t as large as it looks, but it’s settled into three or four inches of mud.
He slipped his hand through one of the grips and pulled. The strongbox didn’t budge. He grabbed it with both hands, steadied himself by digging his feet into the ooze on the bottom, and tugged again. Nothing. Until the mud let go, the buoyancy of the water couldn’t help him. He needed the harness.
Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven… he’s been under for nearly a minute, thought Pratt. He must need air by now. The boy’s head appeared within the telescope circle of Pratt’s vision. The old man realized that he had been holding his breath for nearly a minute.
“It’s stuck in the mud and too heavy to move.” The boy managed to sound triumphant as he caught his breath. “Give me the harness.”
Wilson flung him the coil of rope.
The boy gulped down a few drafts of air and dove again.
Nothing worse than a fifteen-year-old kid who goes to a fancy school, thought Wilson.
The day before, Wilson had noticed the boy weaving ropes together and asked him what he was doing.
“I’m figuring out a way to get that tea set into the boat.”
“What’s to figure?”
“Suction.”
“What’s that?”
“You remember the Henrietta? She ran aground off Gloucester last fall.”
“Master Johnson explained to the class that she was stuck because of suction. One thing is held tight to another because there’s fluid in the space between them.”
“So what?”
“To get the Henrietta loose, they didn’t just pull on her like dunderheads. They pried up different sections of the ship and let little air pockets get in underneath her. Then they used the air pockets like rollers and pulled her right out of the mud.”
“Sonny, it ain’t a ship. It’s a steel box two feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep. It probably weighs sixty or seventy pounds.”
“The same physical principles apply to everything.” The boy held up the harness. It looked like a large noose with four hangman’s knots arranged to form the corners of a rectangle. Two long pieces of rope passed through each noose, one for adjusting the width of the rectangle, the other for the length. Horace would place the noose around the strongbox, tighten the knots at each corner, then return the long pieces of rope to the surface. By placing tension on each of the ropes individually, they could pull the corners loose and bring the tea set to the surface.
Wilson was unimpressed. “What does your grandfather say to all this foolishness?”
“My grandfather respects the opinions of educated men. He told me to make the harness in case we need it.”
“Well, I guess we’ll be needin’ it. I think your grandfather must be gettin’ soft. All he needs to do is hire a longshoreman and send him out there at low tide, when the water in the channel is just a few feet deep. A big fella could wade back with the strongbox on his shoulder.”
A day later, Wilson still felt the contempt with which the boy had regarded him.
“You apparently do not realize that my grandfather wants to involve as few outsiders as possible in the recovery of the tea set. Consider yourself fortunate that you’re trusted enough to be included.”
Samuel Wilson had no patience with such disrespect. He grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet. “I know it’s hard for a boy who don’t have no daddy teachin’ him right from wrong. Granddads is mighty lax in that area. So right now, I’m startin’ to teach you a few manners.” He clenched what few teeth he had and brought his face close to the boy’s. “If you ever talk to me like that again, I’ll wallop the daylights out of you, and I don’t give a damn who your grandfather is. Now apologize, and we’ll forget it.”
“I’m… I’m sorry.” The boy sounded sincere, or at least sincerely frightened.
“Sir.”
“Sir,” the boy grunted, and Wilson let him go.
Now, an uneasy truce prevailed. The family servant was giving orders to the grandson of the patriarch, who resented orders from anyone.
Wilson gazed over the side. The boy’s white body seemed to glow through the murk, and the strands of rope swirled around him like a tangle of roots beneath a water lily. Gracefully, he collected two strands and fitted them to a corner of the strong box. He put the ropes in his mouth and sprang to the surface.
He caught his breath and handed the ropes to Wilson. “Lash them to the oarlock.” Before Wilson could speak, Horace filled his lungs with air and dove again.
For the next ten minutes, Horace struggled with the harness, but he could not secure it. As he broke the surface a fifth time for air, Wilson caught him by the hair.
“Into the boat,” commanded Wilson. “We’ll have no more games.”
The boy tried to pull his head out of Wilson’s grasp, but Wilson held tight.
“Let go of my hair,” demanded the boy.
“Into the boat.”
Horace grabbed Wilson’s arm with one hand and tried to tread water with the other. “Let me go!”
“Time for a little rest, sonny.” Wilson started to pull him out of the water.
Horace grabbed Wilson’s arm with both hands and struggled free. For a moment, his head slipped below the surface. He swallowed several great gulps of salt water and began to choke.
Through his telescope, Pratt was watching the scene, but he couldn’t tell what was happening. He squinted hard and cursed his old man’s eyes. Then he saw the boy’s body emerge from the water and, with Wilson’s help, climb into the boat.
Young Horace collapsed in the stern. He was coughing up water like the town pump.
“Spit it all up, Horry, my boy,” said Wilson. “There’s better things in the is world to be drinkin’ than muddy water from the Back Bay.” He took his flask from his pocket and offered it to the boy.
Horace stopped gasping long enough to refuse.
“Suit yourself.” Wilson tilted his head back and emptied half the flask.
Wilson pulled on the set of ropes wrapped around the oarlock. The harness, which had not been secured, slipped off the strongbox and floated to the surface. He held it up for Pratt’s telescope. Pratt understood the meaning when Wilson made a gesture of disgust and flung the harness into the bow of the boat. Pratt removed his hat to wave them in but changed his mind. If the boy was too weak, Wilson would know enough to bring him ashore.
Young Horace had finished coughing and sat shivering beneath a blanket in the stern. Wilson was pulling up the anchor rope in the bow.
“I told you, I’ll be all right, Wilson,” said the boy. “Drop the anchor, and I’ll try again.”
“I’m just checkin’ the depth.” He let the rope slide through his fingers and watched the bag of bricks hit bottom. “Still a bit over six feet. About as deep as it ever gets. What’s your height?”
“Five foot three.”
“Tall for your age. Kids is growin’ bigger all the time. Too bad you ain’t about a foot taller.” Wilson took a fresh coil of rope from under the bow seat and flipped it into the boy’s stomach. “First, get your breath, then go down there and tie it to the handles on that strongbox.”
The boy threw the rope back at Wilson and reached for the harness. “I’ll do it my way. The harness was working perfectly.”
A slap cracked across his face and knocked him into his seat. “I’ll teach you to respect your elders, whether your granddad’s watchin’ or not. Now we don’t have no time to waste with foolish contraptions like that harness.”
“It’s not a foolish contraption,” said Horace, stroking his cheek.
“And we don’t have no time to waste arguin’. Because if you take a look over toward the bridge, you’ll see a rowboat headin’ up the Charles. Prob’ly fishermen. And upstream, there’s two sailboats skippin’ down from Cambridge. Harvard boys out for a nice Sunday on the river. And here we sit, in full view of all of them, tryin’ to raise the strongbox your granddad lately stole from President Jemmy Madison himself. Now in you go.”
Horace didn’t budge. The excitement of diving for treasure was gone. He was cold, frightened—although he wouldn’t admit it—and angry. He had never been struck by an adult before, and his pride was stinging more than his cheek. He glared at Wilson. “I intend to tell my grandfather that you raised your hand against me.”
“You tell him anything you want, but he made me captain of this here rowboat, and I’ll take no more of your backtalk.”
“You’ll get no more talk of any kind.” Horace pulled the blanket tightly around himself and stared out at the sailboats. He wasn’t moving.
Wilson leaned close to him. “It’s all right, Horace.” he said softly. “Most boys tryin’ to be men acts more like boys than men. A few years from now, you’ll be a man with a little bit of boy left in you. Then I’ll rightfully expect you to act like a man.” He fitted the oars and prepared to leave.
Horace threw off his blanket, stood angrily, and snatched the rope from Wilson’s seat. “I promise you two things, sir—the tea set within ten minutes, and your job by this afternoon.” He dove, purposely rocking the boat and splashing water all over Wilson.
This time, the chill of the water aggravated his anger. Adolescent fury, aimed at Wilson and anything else that irritated him, rolled off Horace in waves. The cold was one more persecution. His dive brought him straight to the bottom. He grabbed one of the handles on the strongbox. He passed the rope through it twice, snapped the rope across the top of the strongbox, and pulled it through the other handle.
Wilson watched from above. He saw the boy’s anger reflected in his uncontrolled, jerking movements. Horace’s whole body was pouting. He was a child forced to perform an unpleasant task. The footman tugged on the rope, signaling for the boy to surface.
Horace paid no attention. The air in his lungs was getting thin, but his anger was unabated. Wilson was stupid and primitive. Horace would follow his orders to the letter but take no blame if they failed to raise the tea set before low tide.
The boy needed slack to make a knot in the second handle. He pulled gently. Nothing played out from the rowboat. He focused all his anger in the rope. He pulled at it violently and two feet uncoiled into the water. He jammed the rope through the handle, then jammed it again. The second time, his hand slipped completely through the handle, and he tore the skin off his knuckles. He pulled up. The hand didn’t move. With his left hand, he grabbed his right wrist and tried to pull free, but his right hand was wedged tight. Two twists of thick rope lashed him to the strongbox.
He felt a stream of bubbles escape from his nostrils and roll across his cheek. He had been holding his breath for nearly two minutes. He could not hold it much longer.
Seen from the surface, his movements did not seem unusual. Wilson thought the boy was still angry at the rope. Then Horace turned over and looked up. The terror in his eyes would cut through Samuel Wilson every night to the end of his life. The old servant froze. He could do nothing.
The black bulk of the rowboat almost on top of him. The horrified face peering down from behind the mirror. A hand breaking through the mirror and reaching for him. These were the last things that Horace Taylor Pratt III remembered. He reached for the hand. He called aloud for help. Three obese bubbles carried his cry wobbling to the surface. Salt water rushed in to fill his lungs, and his body rolled back toward the bottom.
Wilson saw the bubbles break on top of the water. He knew he was too late, but he had to do something. He thought the body was tangled. He cut the ropes leading to the strongbox, but the body didn’t swim free. For ten minutes he struggled. Finally, he was able to grab the boy by the leg and pull. The body was limp, the muscles relaxed; the hand slipped loose from the grip of the strongbox. Wilson hauled the body to the surface and laid the heir to the Pratt empire in the bow of the rowboat.
The panic had drained out of him. He felt numb, mechanical. His mind disconnected from his body. Shock was already protecting him. Samuel Wilson left the tea set in the mud and made for Gravelly Point.
Three quarters of a mile away, a figure draped in black stood on the shore. Across the waters of the Back Bay rolled a long, loud, wordless cry of pain.
The clouds burned off by noon, and the warm sun of late summer washed down on the garden behind Horace Taylor Pratt’s home. As Pratt grew older, he enjoyed the garden more and more. It was one of the few areas of his city that hadn’t changed. He could sit in his room, look out across the flowers and trees and vines, and see the world as it looked forty years before, when his son Horace was a boy and their lives were before them.
He sat there now in the deepest despair of his life. He had no thoughts of a golden past, no hopes for the future. All hope for Horace Taylor Pratt lay in the cool, damp basement of Wilbur Hennison’s mortuary, and the facts of the boy’s death, altered to disguise the purpose of his plunge into the Back Bay, had been duly recorded in the constable’s office on Summer Street.
The soft sound of a woman’s singing drifted into Pratt’s room. Franconia sat beneath the grape arbor at the top of the hill, her voice entwined in “A Summer’s Day.”
“Who will tell her that her Horace is dead?” Abigail stood behind her father. She held her hand gently on his shoulder, but her voice was soaked in recrimination.
“I have endured more pain in a single day than most men know in a lifetime. I cannot sustain more.”
Abigail nervously ran her hands down the sides of her dress, smoothing wrinkles that weren’t there. She left her father and appeared a moment later in the garden below. Slowly, reluctantly, she climbed the hill, past the petunias and salvia which had bloomed all summer, past the chrysan-themums which would soon burst forth, past the blackberry bushes, to the arbor.
“ ‘It fell on a summer’s day,/While sweet Bessie sleeping lay/In her bower, on her bed,/Light with curtain shadowed…’ ”
Pratt could see splashes of pastel pink and yellow through the coat of leaves around the arbor. When Franconia stopped singing, he leaned forward to listen. Except for the screeching of two blue jays, the hillside was silent. A minute, then two, then five. He wondered if Abigail had not been able to tell Franconia. He worried that he would have to tell her himself.
Franconia began to sing once more. “ ‘Jamie came. She him spies,/Op’ning half her heavy eyes.’ ” Her voice quivered. “First a soft kiss he doth take./She lay still and would not wake./Then his hands learned to wood./She dream’t not what…’ ” Another voice rose out of Franconia, at first blending with her song, then choking it in a mother’s primeval wail for her dead child.
Pratt couldn’t listen. He closed the window and locked the bedroom door, sealing himself from the world. He studied the face reflected in the mirror above the dresser. The brow still arched proudly. The mouth was still firm and unyielding. The jaw jutted forward like the prow of the Gay Head. But nothing else remained of his youth.
“I keep no glass in my room, Horace, because it encourages pride, a wanton love of one’s own mortal image. Pride is a sin, my boy, and all good men must avoid anything that will bring a stain upon their soul.” Pratt’s father spoke to him again across sixty years. “Go forth into the world. Conduct business, make goods, teach, or minister, but always remember that what you do is for God, not yourself. When you do only for yourself, you cannot call yourself a Christian.” The voice was gone.
Pratt did not take his eyes from the image before him. It spoke to him, or he to it. “Horace Taylor Pratt, you are an evil man. You have spent your life in the prideful pursuit of earthly things. Now you have nothing. Your world is crumbling around you, and your greed has killed what you most loved. You are an evil man.”
He was still staring at the mirror half an hour later.
Abigail pounded on the door. “Father, are you all right?”
“I breathe.”
“Please open the door, Father. Gardiner Greene is here to see you.”
“He is here as a friend. He’s here to comfort you.”
“Let him comfort my daughter-in-law. No man can bring me relief.”
“He has given a potion to Franconia. She is asleep. Please let us in.”
Pratt opened the door and placed his cane across the space. Despair was no longer etched in his face. He seemed intense, determined. “Good afternoon, Gardiner.”
Gardiner Greene was a neighbor and an old family friend. His garden on Pemberton Hill was one of the most beautiful spots in Boston. He had the kind face of a man who enjoyed working with the soil, and Pratt couldn’t stand him. “Hello, Horace.”
“Can we come in, Father?” asked Abigail.
“I’m going to be busy for quite a while, my dear. Send Wilson to me right away.”
“Wilson is…”
“Drunk?”
“No, Father. He put the carriage away, unhitched the team and fed the horses, and sat down in the carriage. He has not moved or spoken since.”
Pratt did not react. “When he is free, send him to my room.”
“Is there anything we can do for you, Father?”
Pratt opened the door wide enough to allow Abigail inside, then slammed it on Greene. “The funeral service is to be held at Park Street Church tomorrow. I want the Reverend Mr. Whitehead to preside.”
“Yes, Father.”
“The boy is to be buried in the family plot, next to his father’s monument.”
“Yes.”
“Now, take down my Bible for me and leave me in peace.”
The Pratt family Bible was an enormous leatherbound King James edition published in 1700. It contained the names and birth dates of every Pratt from Richard, born in London in 1626, to Elihu, Jason Pratt’s three-year-old son. Pratt asked for quill and ink. He clumsily wrote “September 9, 1814” next to the name and birth date of Horace Taylor Pratt III. He studied the line for a moment, as though trying to comprehend its finality.
Abigail placed her hand on his brow. She stroked his hair gently. She could not remember the last time she had seen him reading the Bible. “The Good Book will help you, Father. It will give you strength.”
He grunted. “Nothing will give me strength now. I’m looking for reasons.”
“The Bible will give you what you seek.” Her voice was soothing.
“You need not encourage me falsely. I expect to find no balm of Gilead between these pages.”
She decided there was nothing more she could do. She moved toward the door.
“Abigail.” The sharpness in his voice caused her to turn abruptly. “I do not wish to be interrupted for any reason. You may bring me nourishment at five o’clock, and my lamp is to be lit at six. When I ring my bell, I expect to see you or Wilson. Otherwise, Jason is the only person who may visit me, and I will see him only at the dinner hour. And keep that damned Greene away from me.”
Ordinarily, she was infuriated when her father spoke to her like the captain of a ship delivering orders to his cabin boy, but she remained pleasant. She did not wish to upset the equanimity which, at least in appearance, had reasserted itself against his grief. “Is there anything else, Father?”
He shook his head.
She closed the door behind her. In the hallway, she stopped. She could hear her father’s voice. She placed her ear against the door. Pratt was reading aloud. “ ‘Genesis, Book I. In the beginning…’ ”
On September 13, Abigail sat down at her writing desk and unlocked the drawer that contained her diary. She had been keeping a diary since her husband James had gone to sea in 1811. On the day he left, she had promised him that she would keep a record of her daily life, so that he might share it with her when he returned. But James Bentley had been lost at sea. After his death, the diary had become Abigail’s closest companion. She began to write.
It has been three days since Young Horace was buried, and Father remains in his room reading the Bible. He has not ventured out, even to pay his last respects to his grandson. When I asked if he would attend Horace’s funeral, he said he was preparing for the boy’s resurrection and others could bury him. Father has always been willing to quote Calvin, Christ, or the Bible when it was to his benefit, but I have never known him to be a deeply religious man.
He eats little or nothing, taking only water and a little fruit in the morning, bread and wine at midday, and broth in the evening. When I try to make him eat more, he tells me that if he weren’t so old, he would fast completely.
His behavior has been most unusual. I am worried.
By far the most worrisome episode occurred today. Our dear brother Jason came to offer his comfort and condolences. When he descended from Father’s room, he wore an expression of supreme smugness that was most unusual. For the first time in his life, he resembled a Pratt. He looked like Father after the return of a schooner from China.
Filled with trepidation, I asked him why he seemed so happy on such a black day. He told me, with great fanfare in voice and demeanor, that Father had put him in charge of the company’s operations until further notice. A second tragedy in four days.
After he left, I went straight to Father’s room and asked why he had made such an ill-considered decision. In response, Father began to read aloud from Exodus. I asked again, and he read more loudly. Eventually, his stubbornness overcame my persistence. I left as the Red Sea destroyed Pharaoh’s army.
Now I sit here watching night advance westward from the ocean, and I wonder what the future holds for family and company. Father seems to be in a deep trance. Brother Jason, who has long awaited his ascension to the presidency of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile, but done little to warrant it, is now empowered to make decisions affecting us all. Franconia, I’m afraid to say, is more daft than ever. She spends all her time in the garden, where she sings and picks berries with her “Little Horry.” She talks to him as though he were three or four years old and still close by her side. It’s pitiful. I take some of the blame for her grief. Had I kept tighter rein on Father, the boy would be here today. And poor Wilson! He has not spoken, except to say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am,” since the accident. At least he is doing his chores again. But his eyes are blank. The life has gone out of him.
In the face of all this, it is difficult for me to know what to do. I expect that I now shall inherit fifty percent of the company, since Horace’s death has eliminated one strand of Pratt lineage and freed thirty percent of the company, to be split between Jason and me. Upon Father’s death, I will have legitimate power within the company. Until then, I must try to force my opinions upon Jason and manipulate him toward ends that I favor.
This war will end soon enough. With Napoleon defeated, England can concentrate its enormous military powers on us. We have no further need to fight the British over our right, as a neutral nation, to trade with whatever country we choose. And our fond belief that we could conquer Canada has long since been dashed.
So, peace will come, and there will be a rebirth in the shipping industry greater than any we have ever seen. Our warehouses are piled high with goods which have been sitting for two years, awaiting shipment to Europe. Our people, long deprived of the luxuries of the Continent, will be waiting breathlessly for the first American ships to return with European goods.
If we can hold out just a little longer, I’m certain we’ll be the richest family in New England by next Christmas.
But until Father regains himself, Jason must be carefully watched. I don’t expect that he will attempt to do anything foolhardy. He has never taken the initiative in anything. But the smile I saw on his face today give me pause. When the weak man takes power, his weakness may led him to act unwisely where the strong man would do nothing. I must be vigilant, lest Jason decide to act and throw our money into textile mills.
It would be so much easier if I were a man!
Jason Pratt did not act for two weeks. While his father remained at home finishing the Bible and moving on to Paradise Lost, Jason sat each morning in the upstairs office on the corner of State Street and Merchants Row and tried to decide how best to use the income from the Pratt investments earning money. The Pratts controlled a granite quarry, a foundry on the Merrimack River, and tobacco lands in Connecticut. They were not on the verge of collapse, as his father led him to believe. The foundry was turning out cannonballs as quickly as the American Navy fired them, and Pratt was charging an exorbitant rate per pound. Moreover, Pratt ships had plied the Peninsula trade throughout 1813. The Pratts had been losing money since the extension of the British blockade in early 1814, but with good management, they would survive.
The Merchants Bank still held mortgages on the Pegasus and the Alicia Howell, two Indiamen that Pratt had built just before the war at the enormous cost of twenty-five thousand dollars per vessel. While most shippers held shares in several ships and shared their risks with others, Pratt believed that the most powerful businessman owned his ships and relied upon no one. Ships formed the lifeline of New England, he said, and the man who controlled them and the blood pumped through them would never be poor. He was always willing to advance loans to small businessmen, simply to keep them in his debt, and he was never afraid to gamble his assets on a mortgage, especially if he could commission Melville Morton, one of the best ship-builders in America, to construct a pair of beauties like the Pegasus and the Alicia Howell. Now, the businessmen were folding and defaulting on their loans, while Pratt Shipping and Mercantile barely made the payments on its idle ships and drained liquid assets in the process. It was clear to Jason that something had to go.
The Pratts held a standing offer from Thomas Handasyd Perkins, one of their oldest competitors in the China trade, to purchase the Pegasus and the Alicia Howell for thirty-five thousand dollars. Horace Taylor Pratt laughed at the offer, but Jason was inclined to listen. Although they would take a loss on the ships, he could pay off the mortgages and have ten thousand dollars left over, with which to buy into Francis Cabot Lowell’s mill.
Jason Pratt believed that textile manufacturing would one day replace shipping as New England’s prime industry. For years, he had overseen Pratt operations on Long Wharf, and hundreds of miles of English textiles had been unloaded. He knew the market existed in America, and he had confidence in the ingenuity of men like Lowell, who had managed, in his travels across England, to learn enough about English looms that he could rebuild one in Boston from memory.
Ten shares of preferred stock in Lowell’s Boston Manufacturing Company would give Pratt Shipping and Mercantile one of the largest holdings in the organization. For a week, Jason tried to persuade himself to do it.
“Of course you should do it,” said his wife one night before they went to sleep.
Sarah Lowell Pratt, a cousin of Francis Cabot Lowell, was small and petite, with delicate features and a voice that sounded like a rusty well wheel, even when she whispered. “After years of treating you like a little boy, your father has given you the chance to show that you have the same initiative and intelligence that your brother had. Take the chance.”
“But what if the mill fails and the British lift the blockade next week? The Pegasus leaves harbor with a full hold and Perkins makes the profits. Father would be infuriated.”
Sarah rolled toward the window and gazed out at the ocean, just visible from their Fort Hill home. “I sometimes believe I married a coward.”
“Don’t say that.” His voice was feeble.
She rolled toward him again. “Then act aggressively. If not for yourself, for me and for your sons. Aren’t Artemus and Elihu as bright as little Horace ever was, and in no way as spoiled? Don’t they deserve affection and respect from their paternal grandfather? Make their grandfather recognize their father’s brilliance. For once, act like a man.”
“You’re always ready to attack me, aren’t you?” His voice was soft but filled with malice.
“You invite it,” she rasped. “Act strong, and the world is yours. Otherwise, not even your wife can consider you a man.” She rolled away from him again and curled into a ball.
The next morning, Jason Pratt dressed in his finest velveteen cutaway and silk cravat. At the office, he dictated a note to Thomas Handasyd Perkins: “Am considering seriously your offer to purchase the Pegasus. I must confer before the decision is made, but you shall have an answer the day after tomorrow.” Then he called for his father’s carriage and rode up the Charles River to Lowell’s mill in Waltham.
Fancis Cabot Lowell, up to his arms in grease, was supervising the installation of a new loom. He was short and bald, with a broad forehead, receding chin, and supercilious gaze. He did not welcome interruptions. “Yes, what is it, Pratt?” His high-pitched voice matched his appearance.
Jason ignored Lowell’s curtness. He smiled. “I’ve come to discuss the subscription you offered me. I’m prepared to put up ten thousand dollars.”
Lowell stopped working. “If your father was not quite so stupid, if he had acted when we first made the offer, the stock would be yours. However, the ten original investors exercised their options on the second offering, and there are no more shares available. Perhaps in a few years.”
Jason tried to hide his disappointment. “If my father is so stupid, why did you invite us to join the company in the first place?”
“Because of my relationship to your wife.” Lowell returned to work.
Jason Pratt could think of no rejoinder. He rode back to Merchants Row, went into his father’s office, put his hands on the seat of the leather armchair in the corner of the room, and sat on them.
Abigail Pratt Bentley opened her diary that evening, after a horseback ride down the Neck.
My worst fears were almost realized today, and I was powerless to stop the perpetrator. For two weeks, I have watched Jason, and he has done nothing. Today, he sent for Wilson, and I was immediately suspicious. When Wilson returned, he told me—he has begun to speak, thank God, but only when spoken to—that he had taken my brother to the Waltham mill.
I dressed and went directly to the office, where I learned, to my relief, that my brother had failed. He looked quite despondent. May he remain despondent until Father returns!
When I interrupted Father’s reading to tell him what his son had done, he seemed unperturbed. “Jason must learn to face crisis,” he said. “Wisdom is gained only through error.”
With those words, so uncharacteristic of the Horace Taylor Pratt in whose home I was raised, I close this entry.
One October morning a few weeks later, Horace Taylor Pratt ended his retreat. He had Wilson dress him in his best breeches and black frock, then he rang for Abigail. When she entered, he was standing in front of the east windows, in a corona of bright sunshine.
“Today, I return to my worldly labors.” His voice was stronger and more confident than Abigail had heard it in years.
She smiled. “I feared that you would never again move from this room. You’ve been here a long time.”
“Forty days, to be exact. Forty days seeking answers, like Jesus in the desert.”
Abigail said nothing. She could always respond to his cynicism. She wasn’t prepared for piety.
“You look at me as though I were mad,” he said evenly. “I assure you I am not. Nor do I intend to don sackcloth and ashes and prostrate myself before the pulpit of the Park Street Church. I shall pursue my life and career as I have always done, because I am no hypocrite.” He paused. “And in the eyes of man, I am past redemption.”
“Father, don’t be so dramatic.”
“The Lord will save me if he so desires. I acknowledge my sins. I repent of them. But I know that it is my nature to commit them again.”
“You talk as though you were a murderer.” Abigail laughed gently and started toward her father.
She froze halfway across the room.
The sun glared in over Pratt’s shoulders. His features were indistinguishable. He seemed suddenly like an apparition. “I am more than a murderer, Abigail. I am Satan.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or call for Wilson. She detected no change in voice or expression, and his shadow did not move from the window. She decided that any reaction was worse than none.
Pratt flipped open the copy of Paradise Lost on the table beside him. He read the blank verse with a powerful voice. “ ‘Satan with thoughts inflam’d of highest design,/Puts on swift wings, and toward the Gates of Hell/Explores his solitary flight; sometimes/He scours the right-hand coast, sometimes the left,/Now shaves with level wing the Deep, then soars/Up to the fiery concave tow’ring high./As when far off at Sea a Fleet descri’d/Hangs in the clouds, by Equinoctial Winds/Close sailing from Bengala or the Isles/Of Ternate and Tidore, whence Merchants bring/Their spicy drugs: they on the trading Flood/Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape/Ply stemming nightly toward the Pole. So seem’d/Far off the flying Fiend.’ ”
Pratt closed the book. “Milton compares Satan to a merchant shipper, and this merchant shipper sees himself in Milton’s Satan.”
“It’s only a poem, Father.”
“It carries truth, Abigail. I am Satan. I am proud, acquisitive, vengeful. I answer to no one, and I have fought every day of my life to advance my own interests against the Molochs, Belials, and Mammons of my world, against the Appletons, Cabots, and Perkinses who have been my competitors for forty years. I have gloated when I won. I have schemed revenge when I lost.”
He stepped away from the windows and put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “And I have led my innocent children into sin, as Satan led Adam and Eve.”
“You have given us nothing but love.” Abigail threw her arms around him and held tightly, like a mother comforting her child.
Gently, he pulled away. “I doubt that Franconia would agree with you. I invested her husband and son with the same drives that infect me, and they’re both dead.”
“My brother was lost at sea, and so was my husband,” blurted Abigail. “It is in the nature of men to endanger themselves in the pursuit of riches.”
“And apparently, it is the nature of grandfathers to endanger their grandsons, if it be profitable.” Pratt’s voice was losing its strength.
Abigail stepped back slowly. “Then the boy was not trapping crabs when he slipped into the channel and took cramp?”
“Blueclaws have not been found in that area since I was a boy,” said Pratt softly. “I devised that story to protect the real purpose of our nightly trips to Gravelly Point.”
Instinctively, Abigail sat down on the edge of the bed.
Slowly, softly, Pratt unraveled the story of the tea set, from its presentation in 1789 until young Horace’s death. When he finished, Abigail did not move or speak for several minutes. She simply stared at her father’s face, which now seemed serene, composed.
She stood slowly and walked to the fireplace at the end of the bedroom. A model of the Alicia Howell, made for Pratt by the shipbuilder himself, rested on the mantelpiece. The large mirror hanging above it reflected the length of the room and the dark figure at the other end.
“I cannot believe,” she said, just loudly enough for his reflection to hear, “that one of the most important merchants in America, one of the lions of the China trade, one of the symbols of Federalist opposition in Massachusetts, would indulge himself in such a scheme and involve his grandson, as well.”
“Satan must follow his nature, Abigail. I must answer my instinct to survive.”
“By stealing a national treasure?”
“The nation and its leaders wronged me, Abigail. They wronged every merchant in Massachusetts. Satan is vengeful. I sought revenge.” He stated his position as though it required no further explanation.
She could not argue with such logic. “Where is the treasure now?” she asked weakly.
“Still sunk deep in the mud of the Back Bay. This morning, I rowed out with Wilson. We saw it there, where we left it forty days ago. I thought someone would have noticed it by now, but the water is murky, and the currents have covered it with a thin coating of silt. I am pleased that no one has found it.”
“No!” She turned on him. Out of pity, she had restrained her anger for weeks. Now it poured out of her. “You will not go out there again. You have no more grandsons to waste. Use the business brain that made you a rich and respected man. Save your company before your son destroys it. For the sake of us all, leave that strongbox where it is and return—”
He raised his hand to silence her. “Save yourself, Abigail. I agree with you. The tea set will remain where it is.”
“You’ve been lying to me for months. Why should I believe you now?”
“Other than Wilson, you are the only person alive who knows the story.”
Abigail turned back to the mirror. She replaced a few strands of hair and composed herself. “I have your solemn word on this matter?”
“I am returning to my office to confront our problems.” He paused to separate his thoughts. “And I am making you the custodian of our family secret.”
“It is a secret better forgotten.”
Pratt’s black eyes flashed fire, and he advanced on his daughter. She watched him walk toward her, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see his reflection growing in the mirror. When he stood beside her, he surrounded her.
“Would you forget twenty thousand dollars? Twenty that will one day be a hundred, then two, then a million?”
“We will all be long dead before anything made by Paul Revere is worth a million dollars.” She could not help but sound cynical.
“But our children will live on.”
“I am a childless widow. I am now the sister-in-law of a childless widow.”
“You are also a Pratt!” he exploded. “You have a duty to your blood. You have a responsibility to the ages.”
“Rubbage.” She tried to walk away, but he blocked her path with his arm.
He spoke softly now, but his voice was strung tight, like a mainsail shroud in a stiff breeze. “I have led my children into sin. I have led them to death. But I leave them a promise of redemption. I leave it in your hands.” He pulled a large envelope from his breast pocket. “Contained herein are quotes from Paradise Lost. Studied carefully, they will reveal the exact nature and location of the treasure.” He held out the envelope.
She didn’t want it. She did not want to partake of the madness she saw in his eyes. But she did not wish to upset him further. She had no choice. She took the envelope and started to open it.
He snatched it back. “It is not to be opened until you deem it absolutely necessary. You may never need to open it.”
“What harm can there be in reading your little puzzles?”
“They are not puzzles. They are the promise of Christ.” His face flushed, and he fanned himself with the envelope.
“Your apoplexy, Father.”
“Damn my apoplexy.” He crossed the room and sat down. After a moment to catch his breath, he spoke. “You may open the envelope and read the quotes, but no one else is to see them until after I am dead. Perhaps no one will see them until after you are dead, until after Artemus and Elihu and their children are dead, until well into the twentieth century.” He gazed out the window for a moment, as though he were trying to imagine what his hillside would look like in a hundred years.
“If I am to be the custodian of your wishes, a duty I do not happily accept, you must explain yourself fully. Why are these lines to remain secret?”
He looked at her like a minister lecturing in Sunday School. “Because, Abigail, redemption is earned only through suffering. If we never face a crisis that threatens to destroy us, we will have no need for the Golden Eagle, and we will have no right to it. But it is there, always.”
She waited, expecting more, but he was finished. He had spent so long with his new beliefs that he felt no further explanation was necessary. He gazed out at the garden again.
She crossed the room and stood in front of him. She would end this foolishness right now. “Why is it there always?”
“Dammit, girl!” Pratt slammed his hand on the arm of the chair and leaped to his feet. “I raised you to be as smart as your brothers. Why must you be so damn obtuse? The tea set is our second chance. Pray God that we never need it. But if He decides that the death of my son and my grandson is not enough payment for my transgressions, if He decides to visit the sins of the father upon future generations, He has at least left us the promise that His Son brings to all mankind. If He takes our fortune, He leaves us hidden treasure upon which to build again. If He rends us with familial strife, He leaves us the quotations. Distributed one each to disputing brothers or cousins, the quotations will bring us together again.”
“In greed to find the tea set.”
“Do not be disrespectful.”
“I am simply being truthful.”
Pratt approached his daughter and put his hand on her shoulder. “Abigail, we are living an allegory. Birth, death, resurrection. But within our story, everything has two faces, dual meanings, and it is up to us to find the face of goodness and hope. I am Satan, but I am also God the Father, who has given his grandson for future generations. The tea set is the symbol of my greatest sin, my greed, but it is also the promise of resurrection, bought by my grandson with his life. My descendants are mankind. They will be good and bad. We must always hope that they will build their fortunes by God’s light, but we must be ready to forgive them if they fail.”
Abigail knew now that her father was mad. “Why have you made me the guardian of this secret?”
“Because you are the most trustworthy of my descendants, and you are a woman. You will never be plunged into the maelstrom of business life. You will always be apart from our worldly struggles and able to judge our needs in detachment.”
“When you die, Father, I shall take active control of the stock you leave me. I do not intend to shrink away from the world.”
“To that, I have two responses. First, I do not plan to die for many years. There is too much undone. Second, the thirty percent I have promised you is the thirty percent you will get. I am giving young Horace’s share to Jason. I will settle any disputes between you and your brother before they start. I will teach Jason all that I can, and when I die, he will take my place at the head of the company. He is, after all, my son.”
“And I am your daughter.” Abigail felt the rage welling from deep within her. He wanted her to exchange her fair piece of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile for an envelope of worthless quotations. She refused. “I am entitled to the same privileges as my brother. I will not settle for less.”
“You are entitled to what I give you. Jason has produced two heirs. You have none. The responsibility I have given to you is as great as any I give my son.” He forced the envelope into her hand and headed for the door.
“Father!”
He kept walking. “I’m late for work. My final word has been given. Reject that envelope and you reject me.”
Abigail marched back to the fireplace. She looked at the coals still glowing on the grate. She looked at the envelope.
It is now midnight. Father and Wilson have ridden off to the Back Bay for the third night in a row. Each night, they dump dirt and gravel onto the strongbox, further obscuring it from view. Father says he will bury it under three or four feet of mud so that no one will see it.
What a picture they must make by the full moon! A one-armed madman and his near-mute servant scooping dirt into the water.
Of course, Father is careful about his madness. He has exposed it to no one but me, as though he wished to relieve himself of it by transferring it onto his daughter. I am its only victim.
He has robbed me of my birthright. He has given my brother ultimate control of the company. He has left me with nothing but his vision for the future. I do not want it. If I could, I would destroy that envelope of quotations and leave this house tonight. Forever.
But I know that if I am to have any impact on the destiny of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile, I must remain within the family.
So I will stay. I will carry the burden of responsibility I owe to Franconia, whose son might be alive if I had been more diligent; to this house, which my mother loved so well; and to the man whose seed gave me life.
I will protect the secret unless it becomes advantageous for me to use it on my own behalf.