Kings of the Sea Read online

  The one exception to my dislike of the house was the corner of the enormous garden given over to a little copse of evergreen trees. Even in the winter I would sit happily on the stone bench someone had erected in the midst of the trees and commune with God, for in those days I needed Him more than ever before. I would talk out my problems and somehow they would seem to retreat for the time being. The silence and purity of that little comer of woods cleaned my soul and in some very real way made me feel pure once more.

  I spent most of my time in these woods, which were now riotous with spring, the sprightly crocus giving way to white narcissus, blue hyacinth, yellow jonquils, and golden daffodils. My true Father and I became as one, and I was quite content, far more so than in church, where most of the congregation rather looked up to Gideon and me, since so many of them were working-class people, and they had respect for one of their own who had made good.

  It wasn’t long before Gideon began acting somewhat strangely. I put it down to overwork, for the shipyard was thriving, and he was making a name for himself in shipping circles. Though he was unfailingly polite to me, I saw that he began to snap at the servants, and word came to me through our church that he was irritable in the yard as well, causing unrest among the journeymen riggers, caulkers, and the like. He thrashed about a good deal in his sleep, and several times I had to waken him from what was apparently a nasty nightmare. I wondered if the business was going badly despite all outward signs.

  One morning just as it was getting light, I heard him groan, as I thought piteously, and I hastened to light the lamp on my side of the bed. As the light struck his face, he started up with an oath and sprang out of bed, but not so fast that I couldn’t see a wet stain on the front of his nightshirt. I thought that his dream had made him wet himself like a small child, and I feared that the pressure of the yard might be turning his mind.

  Later on at breakfast he said, “Emily, I think it best that we have separate rooms.”

  I felt relieved, for from time to time I would waken in the night to find that he had thrown an arm around me or was curled against my back in a way that made me afraid he might begin his advances again. Especially now that he was so restless, it would be a comfort to have the bed to myself. “Of course, Gideon — whatever you say,” I replied evenly. “Which room do you want?”

  “I don’t care,” he answered crossly, as if there were something amiss with my reply. “Have Nellie get one ready today, would you, and move my things into it.”

  “Very well.” It would be just that much harder for him to insist upon physical relations. I was all too aware that more than the several months I had asked for had passed, along with the summer.

  “You realize that our anniversary is next month.” It was a statement rather than a question.

  “Of course I do.”

  “I’ll ask you again then, and no more.” He didn’t say what he was talking about, but he didn’t have to.

  “Very well. You know that it is my Christian duty to obey you in every circumstance.” He had been very patient with me, as I well knew, and I had no intention of actually refusing him.

  “Christian duty!” he shouted, incensed, and threw his napkin on the floor. He stamped out, not to return until the small hours of the morning, when I happened to waken briefly and hear him walk unsteadily past my door. He opened and closed doors all down the corridor until he found the room that had been made up for him.

  We gave a large party on the occasion of our anniversary, and invited, among others, Sally Culp. I was surprised that she came, for her husband, though he was only in his early forties, had suffered a stroke and was bedridden and partially paralyzed. The Poulsons were there, of course, and a number of Gideon’s business friends and their wives, plus some of the townspeople. Gideon made much of two surprise guests whom he didn’t want to identify beforehand, only that the table was to be set to include them.

  “But Gideon, how will I know where to seat them if I don’t know who they are?” I was exasperated with his childish scheme, and already beside myself looking forward to the awkward moment that would inevitably arrive with the departure of the guests. The long hiatus had made resumption of physical relations even harder to contemplate. I thought of his importunate caresses, and my skin crawled.

  “Treat them as guests of honor,” he suggested, laughing. “One on my right and one on yours.”

  It was the morning of the party that Gideon belatedly asked me to wear the green dress instead of the blue one, and I had to ask Charles to drive me to the shopping district to match a new green ribbon to put on the dress. I had him let me off on the corner nearest the store and asked him to pick me up in an hour, since I thought there might come to mind other things that would be useful for the party. I headed toward the shop that sold ribbons, encountering as I did so the apothecary shop with its large scales and glass jars full of colorful liquids in the window. On an impulse I went in.

  “What can I do for you today, Mrs. Hand?” Mr. Sneed asked, his square spectacles glinting in the light.

  I didn’t know how to ask. “What, uh, have you got for, er, pain?” I finally got out.

  “For ladies?” he asked delicately.

  “Er, yes.”

  He put several bottles and a pillbox on the counter, and I saw immediately that one of the bottles was the familiar brown one with the resplendent label. “The pills are of my own concoction,” he said proudly. “There’s ladies in town swear by them.”

  “Well, I have trouble swallowing pills,” I improvised. “Which of the liquids would you recommend?”

  “This one is for mild pain,” he said, holding up the blue bottle, “and this one’s for more severe cramps.”

  I blushed. “I’d better have the brown one then.”

  He tsked and shook his head sympathetically. “They do say that once a child’s come along, such things get better,” he offered chattily.

  I blushed again but cut him short before I found myself in an unseemly discussion of my monthly bleeding. What a horrid little man! I felt like a thief as I dropped the bottle into my handbag and went out the door, which gave a derisive tinkle from the little bell attached to it.

  That evening as I was almost ready, there was a quiet knock on my door. I opened it to find Gideon standing there grinning with his hands behind his back. For one awful moment I thought perhaps he was going to ask to have his way with me right now.

  “Which hand do you take?” he said and laughed.

  I smiled and pointed to the left one, which he brought out with a flat gift-wrapped box in it I took off the ribbon and paper and opened the box to find an emerald necklace and earrings in an antique setting lying in the red-velvet-lined container. I gasped, “How beautiful! But surely we can’t afford —”

  “Of course we can. Anyway, Poulson got them for me on his travels. I didn’t think you’d mind if I hadn’t picked them out myself — he’s got so much better taste, you know.”

  “Oh, Gideon, and I didn’t get you anything!” I was genuinely upset.

  His grin changed from one of simple good humor to a more complicated smile. “Ah, but you will, my love. You promised, remember?”

  “How could I forget?” We looked each other in the eye for several moments in silence, but I’m afraid with far different motives. Why had God been so cruel as to make men and women so different?

  Nearly everyone had arrived when the knocker sounded again and Gideon disappeared from the drawing room. As I looked away from Eleanor Poulson, I saw Gideon in the doorway flanked on either side by, of all people, Dr. and Mrs. Smedley, ghosts of the honeymoon past. I’m afraid I went pale, for Eleanor said quickly, “What’s the matter, Emily? Don’t you feel well?”

  “I’m fine,” I assured her, shaken to the very bottom of my being. What had possessed Gideon? I realized at the same time that his view of our honeymoon was far different from mine, beginning with the shameful episode of my bladder and becoming even worse with those unspeakable act
s Gideon committed among the sand dunes. I shuddered and closed my eyes briefly.

  “Darling, look who’s here!” Gideon called out gaily. He held up his hand for silence than and explained that we had met the good doctor and his wife on our honeymoon, and how fitting it was that they of all our friends should be here for our first anniversary. Everyone clapped and someone shouted the inevitable “Hear, hear!”

  “How are you, Emily?” Dr. Smedley said, shaking my hand. “You look very well indeed.”

  “Oh, Gideon has taken good care of me,” I answered cheerfully. “You two are looking well yourselves.”

  That night I did what I have never done before or since — I got shamefully drunk. We had a full-course meal, and there was a different wine with each course. Mrs. Simmons had laid on extra help, so every time a glass was emptied, it was immediately refilled. I can’t even remember what we ate, but I do remember chatting gaily with Dr. Smedley on my right and Dick Poulson on my left. I think Dick finally realized what was going on, because he told me in a low voice to go easy on the wine, but by that time it was too late. Of course, there were toasts of all kinds, and I drank to all of them, even the toasts to me. At last Gideon rose and lifted his glass in a salute.

  ‘To my beloved wife, Emily. May our future years be even better than the first one.”

  Everyone laughed and cheered, but Gideon and I knew exactly what that toast meant.

  At last everyone left, and I stumbled as I went up the stairs to bed. Gideon put a protective hand under my arm. ‘Tired, love?”

  I nodded helplessly, afraid to tell him what was really wrong with me. Somehow I got my clothes off and into my nightgown while he undressed in his room. As I lay thankfully down, however, the bed began to go around dizzily. Just as he came in, I tried to get up but had to settle for leaning over the side of the bed and vomiting all of those rich courses all over the bedroom carpet. I began to cry.

  Gideon stood for a moment frozen with shock, then hastened over to the water pitcher and doused a handkerchief in it. He came over and wiped my forehead and then around my mouth.

  “My poor little stricken deer,” he murmured. “I had no idea you’d had too much to drink. Here, rinse your mouth out.” He held the basin for me after he’d given me a glass of water. “Come on, we’d better both sleep in my room. I don’t think either of us is in any shape to clean up that mess tonight”

  “Oh no!” I said wildly, all control gone now. “Don’t touch me! Please, dear God, don’t let him touch me! I can’t stand it!” I became completely hysterical then and said some other things that I would just as soon forget.

  He sat on the bed immobile, looking at me with a face of stone. I realized even through my hysteria that he too had had quite a bit to drink when he pulled up his sleeve and looked at the stump at the end of his arm. “It’s the Wendigo,” he said inexplicably in despairing tones. “It won’t let me go.”

  Winter came early that year. There were gales all through October and a heavy November snow. December, however, turned surprisingly warm, making a nasty slush everywhere. Gideon and I went our separate ways like polite strangers. We had cauterized our hearts against each other, and I don’t know about him, but I felt as if I were made of ice inside, a solid column of frozen ice. We never touched each other except rarely and accidentally; nor, of course, did either of us ever refer to that night again.

  I involved myself more in parish duties, much to the delight of my father, who really hated visiting the sick and comforting the bereaved. I was puzzled now how I had ever been afraid of him, for he suddenly seemed merely crotchety instead of wrathful, and my mother told me he wasn’t sleeping well.

  Included in the rounds I made was the Culp house, and twice a week I spent several hours reading to the wreck that had been Chester Culp, red-faced clapper of backs. He was now pale, and one side of his face looked as if it had melted like candle wax. He drooled out of the side of his mouth that drooped forlornly, and peered at me with a heavy-lidded eye from which tears trickled. Sally, childless, had gone quite fat now, and whenever she was home when I arrived, she semed to be eating. Except that both sides of her face matched, she appeared to be little better off than Chester. I found myself feeling sorry for her. If only she hadn’t made that desperately wrong decision in turning down Gideon, we would none of us be as miserable as we were now. Just before Christmas, Chester had another stroke and mercifully succumbed.

  Gideon and I attended the funeral together, for all the world as if we were husband and wife. Somehow the grave had been dug in the frozen ground, and after Chester was lowered and my father said the familiar words, the clods of frozen earth sounded like rocks on the sleek varnished wood of the coffin. Sally stood dry-eyed in an unbecoming voluminous black dress, and I couldn’t help wondering if Gideon was thinking of her as she had been, a vivacious, laughing girl who delighted in flirting with boys and who had her heart set on a gallant captain of a ship at sea.

  Whatever he thought, or she either, they returned to their own separate misery, Sally shuffling along on her father’s arm and Gideon walking silently beside me. We all went to the house of Sally’s parents, where there was a veritable feast laid out on an elaborately decorated table, much of it offerings from friends and neighbors. I myself had sent over a veal aspic. We all stood about uncomfortably making small talk until we could gracefully take our leave.

  Later on I thought much on it, but couldn’t decide when the change started. However it began, by February Gideon was often coming in at two and three in the morning, and sometimes not at all. It was strange, I felt relieved that he had found someone else on whom to take out that dreadful urge with which men seemed to be cursed, and yet I felt anger and resentment at the same time. He made no move to leave the house permanently, however, and I decided that the best thing to do was to live with it as gracefully as I could. I thought of how we had once been able to talk, and wondered whom he was talking to now. Somehow I didn’t want to know.

  It was around this time that I began to get terrible headaches. I had never so much as had a headache before, and I didn’t know how to cope with them. At last I thought of the brown bottle I had bought from Mr. Sneed, and I determined to try some. It had been so long since I had even thought about it that I had a great deal of trouble remembering where I had put it My head felt as if it were splitting in two, and I measured out three tablespoonfuls and swallowed diem. After a moment I added a fourth.

  For those of you who have never been in excruciating pain and then felt it melt into a delicious sense of wellbeing, there is no way I can describe the sensuous relief with which that brown bottle provided me. I floated down the stairs and out the terrace door, down across the garden, and into my little wooded copse, where I got down on my knees to thank God for my deliverance. That was the first time that I actually communicated with the archangel whose name is Michael. He looked something like Gideon the day of the picnic, with flaming hair and a fiery sword. He told me that God was taking into account all of my trials, including this last one of pain, and that soon my sins of the body with Gideon would be wiped out as if they had never been and I would be in a state of grace once again. More, those who had transgressed against my natural innocence would suffer for it, were suffering already.

  Thus it was with little surprise that I watched my father that Sunday in church suddenly clutch his chest right there in the pulpit and fall with a crash to the floor. My mother gave a cry and rushed to him, along with a number of other members of the congregation. Gideon was regarding me with a shocked expression, and I realized that I was smiling, an ecstatic triumphant smile of thanksgiving to the Archangel Michael.

  Hastily I said, “He’s gone to heaven, don’t you see, Gideon? He has gone to his reward.” I thought of the night of the buggy whip, and I sincerely hoped he had.

  Gideon held my hand, the first time he had touched me with affection since the night of our anniversary. I found that I didn’t care. When Dr. Anderson shook his hea
d and got up off his knees from beside the stricken man, I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and sure enough, my father had dropped as dead as a stone in the middle of a sermon exhorting sinners to mend their ways. I had stopped smiling, but I still felt exultant.

  Upon our arrival home, Gideon told me to sit down and he would get me a glass of brandy. Instead, when he was out of the room, I slipped upstairs and got the friendly brown bottle down out of the hatbox where I had hidden it and took an enormous swallow. Worried, I saw that it was almost finished. Oh well, I would buy another from Mr. Sneed. I hastily hid it again as I heard Gideon coming up the stairs. I lay down on the bed and threw a hand over my eyes. When he handed me the brandy, I managed somehow to choke it down, but I certainly didn’t need it. That warm sense of well-being was already pervading my entire body, and Gideon shimmered into the Archangel Michael and then back to himself again. He was so beautiful, and it was so sad that he too had to be punished. I began to cry weakly.

  “There, there, my dear, it will come all right, you’ll see. Your father was not a young man, and there must have been little pain. Think how much luckier he was than Chester Culp.”

  I grabbed hold of Gideon’s good hand. “Repent, Gideon. Repent while there is still time, and mend your wicked ways.”

  He looked as if I had struck him, and his face went still. “Emily, I’ll not have you telling me about wickedness. It’s you who’ve driven me to it. You’ve got what you want now, a house and servants and a husband and security, and you don’t have to do a damned thing for it all. Be thankful I’m not vindictive, instead of preaching to me about my wicked ways.”

  I began to laugh and couldn’t stop, for I didn’t want and never had wanted the house and the servants, or the husband either, for that matter. If I’d only had sense enough to stay single, my mother and I might be charges on the parish, but we could live in the kind of small cozy house I’d always coveted and be quite happy doing what we could for the sick and bereaved to earn our keep.