The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel (16 page)

In the afternoon, a line of American soldiers waits by the wharf with the British prisoners in chains behind. A large rowboat approaches from the channel, carrying four dressed officers and six fishermen. When they pull up along the short pier, all guns are raised. Colonel Easton steps aside with one of the officers for a conference. John watches their hands, moving first with the stiffness of gentility and then with agitation. It is clear to everyone that there is no woman in the rowboat.

Easton orders the soldiers to step back. He nudges the British men forward, and William Dennis removes their chains while the fishermen are relieved of their ropes. The two parties shuffle past each other. No guns are lowered until the rowboat is halfway back to the channel and the anchored ships.

“They are keeping two pilots,” Easton says, “to guide them out of the harbor. They will be released once the ships are in open water.”

“They’re leaving, then?”

“When they leave, they have promised to return the pilots.”

“There was a woman,” William says.

Easton takes a few steps away from the wharf, then turns back. He pulls his saber and digs the point of it into the boards of the pier. “They can’t find the woman.”

William looks at John, and John looks at his shoes, his head throbbing.

“There is a chance she escaped.”

“No one saw?” One of the soldiers turns to look at the fishermen, who are still rubbing their wrists by the water.

“One man, who does not have a reputation for sobriety, says he saw her climb off the ship,” Easton says.

“Climb
off?”

“There is no reason to believe the British have harmed her. She may have escaped. They may send her back with the pilots. We cannot afford to make too many demands.”

Some of the soldiers walk down to the water to hear the fishermen’s stories of capture before Easton orders them back to camp. They do not understand what sort of a battle this is that has no end to it, where women can vanish like witches and there is nothing to defend. The two rivers that Beaufort sits between, the North and the Newport, have never made these men any richer. Easton has told them if the British take Beaufort, they will have New Bern and then the interior, but even the men who have not seen fighting know that this is a dying war. They are weary, homesick. The soldiers march back to camp in formation, their legs not reaching so high as they once did. The fishermen filter back to their homes, where wives are grateful and indignant.

Once the clouds drift away and the light begins to fade, the Beaufort regiment settles in for an evening of idleness. In a canvas tent, one soldier deals cards by candlelight. Two men stand beneath a pine and share a pipe. William lies on his cot with his hands covering his face. John walks into the woods. Unfollowed, he continues into town. He sneaks into a merchant’s house and buys bread and cheese and potatoes from the housewife, who is happy to be paid for the theft. At the wharf, he unties a skiff and with shallow strokes he rows into the channel, resting every minute, as if he were just a sculling pelican and not an American soldier.

The drunken fisherman, who could not have been drunk after six days of imprisonment, told John the woman had climbed off the prow of the third ship when it was pointing south, straight out to sea. Then she was drowned or beached somewhere, John said. The man had winked at him.

The channel is flanked by two scrubby sandbars that stand between Beaufort and the larger banks on the farther edge of the sound. John makes for Shark Shoal, the western patch of land. He pulls far enough along the bank to be out of range of the British ships, which are dark and still in the channel. It takes him half an hour to drag the skiff across the shoals. Even a small boat is not willingly pulled through wet sand. Every few steps, he whistles, but there is no reply. He scans the eastern and southern shores, but only fish skeletons interrupt the smoothness of sand. On the other side of the shoals, he can see the outlines of Bogue Island. If her body isn’t there, he’ll row across to Shackleford Banks, pick the sand apart, and then circle back to Bird Island. Then he will come home and in the morning begin again.

It is past midnight, and Helen is asleep. She holds in her hand a few stalks of half-eaten sea oats. She spent the day following the narrow shadow of the fort’s wall as it moved around its circle, crouching in its shade. At noon, the sun inescapable, she had crawled out for sustenance. She dug up a clump of beach grass, cutting at the roots with her teeth, before she noticed the hulk of the British ships in the channel behind her. She crawled back to the fort and washed the sand out of her mouth with the remaining water in her flask. She saw phantoms crawling in the dunes. Tomorrow she will try to find her way home. After she sleeps.

When she wakes, it is still dark. Her mouth is hot with thirst. A dew has settled on her skirts, and a man is wrapped around her. His hands cross on her belly, and she feels them with her fingers.

Her scream comes out as a hoarse gasp. He reaches for her mouth to cover it, and when she is still, he runs his fingertips across her lips, once, and untangles himself. He crouches on the far side of the fort and waits for her to speak.

She cannot speak. There is a man whom she loves who is not her father, and God who carried her here is waiting to guide her out again, but she cannot recall an image of home to help him. God is crouching, waiting for her. There is not enough liquid in her to weep, so her eyes sting instead. The men will find her, take her, tie her up, and all she wants is home—not home: a coffer for her faith. She is not the one escaping; it is God who draws her on, who tells her that a little-practiced love is no love at all. He crouches there, too distant to touch, and asks her to spill her heart—that jar she carries, to let it soak into the unseen corners. Her lungs grow and brighten.

God uncaps a canteen and holds it out for her. She crawls to it and drinks.

Day arrives and the ships are firing on Beaufort. John feeds moistened bread to Helen, who wakes and sleeps. He can see smoke to the north rising above the dune, beyond which the town is hidden. Small curls, not yet a conflagration. He rests her head on his coat and walks to the shore. An American sloop burns in the harbor. He doesn’t know where she’ll be safe, but the fort cannot keep them much longer. They need more water.

In the afternoon, she wakes from a nap and watches a sandpiper peck its way toward the fort, stopping to nuzzle in the ground or scratch its beak in its feathered side. When it sees her, it tilts its head and stays motionless.

“How do you feel?” John’s voice sends the bird hopping and then fluttering out of view.

She turns toward him and cannot understand what is happening on this island. “When did you arrive?”

“In the night. You swam from the ship.”

“I was here for a day, and you weren’t here.”

“I didn’t know where you were.”

He is sitting so far away from her. “My father?”

“We never knew that it was you. They sent word of the attack, but he can’t come into the town. He thinks you’re safe.” A boom from the harbor makes her stand, but when the sun hits her face, she weaves and crumples to the ground again. John stays where he is. “We need to leave.”

“You can’t be here. Alone, with me,” she says.

“I have a boat. We’ll leave tonight, if the firing stops.” He pulls a few small potatoes from his bag and holds them out to her on an open palm.

“My potatoes,” she says. “You found them.”

By dusk she is almost herself again. John’s canteen is empty and only a heel of bread remains in his sack. They drag the boat back across the dune to the shore, where it will look no more formed than driftwood in this haze of light. They sit down on the sand in the boat’s shadow and wait for the tide to lick up to them. She reaches for his hand. It’s warm and dry, and she remembers for the first time his fingers on her mouth. She cannot bear the thought of leaving this island, the kindling fort. There is nothing she is not afraid of.

“You wrote so little,” she says.

“You wrote of farming,” he says.

She will go with him anywhere.

He places her palm on his chest until her breathing matches his. The last tinge of gold in the sky evaporates, and the spindles of smoke from town now blend into the darkness.

They launch the boat, row around the back of the sleeping British ships to Bird Island Shoal, pull the boat across sand, and row to the far edge of town, east of the wharf, where they drag the boat into the marshes at the base of Long Ridge. The journey has taken several hours, and when they make it to the main house, up the stairs, and through the door that William Dennis had forced open, Helen falls to the floor of the hall.

John lifts her and she tells him to go away. He searches the house until he finds a bedroom that faces the sea. He lays her down gently and waits. Her eyes are closed. He reaches to take off her shoes, but she has none. The bottoms of her stockings are shredded and dark with mud. He cannot take off a woman’s stockings. She tells him to go away. She puts out her hand into the darkness. He takes it in both of his, as if it were all of her. He kisses it. She sits up and reaches out her other hand and when he moves closer she wraps it around his neck. She finds his mouth and holds it in hers and will not let it go.

When he lowers her body back to bed and rubs his thumb across her cheekbone, she reminds him to come back for her. He has been missing from his regiment for two nights and a day, and if they whip him for desertion, then he will be back very soon. She smiles and he folds the blanket over her.

On his way back to camp, he stops at the neighboring slave cabins on Cogdell’s land. A man sits on one of the porches, eating a slice of white cake. He is shirtless, and from the man’s lantern John can see the glistening of blood on his back. A needless guilt washes over him. John asks for Moses’s cabin, and the man points down the row.

He knocks quietly. After a few moments, Moll cracks the door. Seeing John, she sidles out and closes the door behind her. She motions toward the rice field behind the cabins, and they begin to walk. “You found her?” she asks.

“She’s back at Long Ridge. Can you stop in to see her?”

“I’ll go in the morning. There’s no work now; we’ve all been waiting.”

“There was a man beaten.” He turns to look down the row of cabins at the single light on the porch.

“Tried to run away. Went north instead of south, ran right into the soldiers’ camp. They try to hold on to what order is left.” Her arms are crossed against her chest. “Aunt Caty stole him some dessert from the kitchen.” As they shift their feet in the hard dirt between the cabins and the sunken rice furrows, a chorus of tree frogs erupts nearby. “You better go. I’ll look in on her.”

He puts his hand on her shoulder and thanks her.

“I’m almost sorry you two didn’t run off after all. I think it might’ve been just the thing for her.”

“It seems this town won’t let people go,” he says. He walks her back to her cabin. When he passes the man on the porch, John nods. The man has finished the cake and is licking his fingers.

In camp again, he slides onto his cot next to William Dennis, whose eyelids flicker. He could have told them she was dead. He could have asked her to marry him. They could have rowed to Wilmington. He presses his lips together and remembers as he falls asleep.

On Friday, April 12, Colonel Easton receives a letter from Governor Burke, warning him that three ships carrying two hundred and fifty British soldiers were sailing to Beaufort after being told the town possessed a large quantity of military supplies for the Continental Army. There is some confusion when one of the captains calls out to the men, “Three more ships coming!” but the letter is clearly dated April 3, and has simply arrived too late. With the extent of Beaufort’s military supplies covered by a single tarpaulin in this makeshift camp, Easton feels some of the sting of irony. He ignores John’s reappearance, and when William Dennis tells him John fetched the woman prisoner back, he chooses to believe him. Two other soldiers have already vanished without any likelihood of return. It is hard for a colonel to keep his men camped out in a field at the far edge of a siege.

The cannon fire continues on Saturday through a slow rain. On Sunday, Easton and his captains gather in the home of Mr. Foushee to meet with the town councilmen. Mrs. Foushee, the former Miss Kingston, pulls John aside to help her arrange meat tarts on a tray.

“She’s doing well,” Mrs. Foushee says, plucking the little pies from a basket on the sideboard. “Would you taste one? Here. She’s had a few sneezes, but nothing for concern. Won’t tell me what happened, only that she swam for shore and you rescued her.”

“Her father’s been told of her safety?”

“Do they need more salt? I could sprinkle some over. Yes, and she’s got a letter from him too. He’s in New Bern, waiting for them to let in townsfolk. You needn’t finish it—here, you must be worn and worried. She thinks very highly of you, I can say that. Go sit with the men. I merely wanted to meet you proper. And to thank you.”

He carries a tray back with him and passes it among the soldiers. Men are discussing options, both for victory and surrender, and any details are obscured by the language of pride. It is a wounding thing to live under siege. John cannot follow the conversation. He leans into the corner of the room, resting his shoulders against the walls, the back of his head grateful for support. He can no longer allow time to carry him, can no longer avoid making decisions, or circumvent his affections. His happiness is now dependent. When his mind is at rest, it rests on her. The room, crowded with regiment men and merchants, captains and fishermen, only reminds him of her stillness, her damp hand in his, the stockings in disarray. Their voices melt to her voice, hoarse. The conversation surges, heads shake, and he sees her limbs trembling in the darkened fort. There is soft applause and a general pressing of hands, and some of the faces are smiling. Will he have to present himself to her father? What material hopes can he possibly offer in wartime? Another cousin of his has a home here, and no heirs, but those are his only prospects. Easton is scribbling instructions on paper and the soldiers are standing, stretching, arranging for their exit. He could still die in this battle, and she would be alone again. Mrs. Foushee squeezes his elbow and smiles at him as he falls into the line of leaving men. They are outside again, and the evening is cool from the rains. She will be by herself tonight in a large house; even his legs ache for her.