Hester(12)
* * *
INGO WAS AT our cabin before dawn.
“The captain is fevered.” His face was impassive, but I knew by the way he’d ministered to the captain that he cared for him very much. “If he dies, it’s bad for your husband. Bad for all of us.”
Edward was nowhere to be seen and there was naught to do but attend to the captain myself. I’d had more than enough bad luck; I could not allow it to follow me to America. I recalled all that my mother had taught me about fevers, then soaked rags with cold water and rum and put the cool cloths at the captain’s neck, under his limp hot arms, and at the small of his back.
In the morning, whether by my medicine or a small miracle, his fever had broken and the captain was sitting up. There was a pile of maps spread on the tray across his lap, and the color had returned to his cheeks.
“Your husband told me you brought him luck, and it seems now that luck is mine.”
“My husband exaggerates,” I said. “But I’m glad you’re mending.”
It was then I noticed the captain’s white bed coat and pants decorated with a pattern of white cross-and backstitches unlike any I’d ever seen. There were palm trees and birds with beaks as long as their bodies, flowers bigger than the birds, swirls that looked like the wind itself, all done in white on white. It was crude but expressive work, with knots and welting of different depths giving the cloth the texture of a quilted landscape.
“You must have a woman who loves you.” I put a hand to the stitching. “That is lovely work.”
“It’s my own,” Captain Darling said. “I’ve been stitching sails since I was a lad, and it became habit. When my fingers are moving, my mind is free.” He paled and leaned back on his bed. “Sometimes the sea is so bright or mean I need white on white to soothe me.”
I spent the day sitting and stitching while he convalesced. From his cabin door I could see the steps that led to the belly of the ship, where I had been told Edward lay curled in his own sick.
“Ingo will see that Edward has everything he needs,” the captain said. “You needn’t worry.”
He ordered his men to bring up a white vest from the stores, and I stitched a new waistcoat for Edward while the captain mended his wardrobe and told me about his childhood in Bermuda.
“A life of filth drove me to the ships,” he said. I thought to tell him what I’d seen in the poorhouse, but kept silent. “At seventeen I sailed out with a trade ship that was soon engaged as a privateer in the second British-American war. In 1814 we stopped a Dutch ship carrying Africans in chains from going into port in Baltimore.” His eyes hooded. “It was the most wretched thing I’ve ever seen—Black men, women, and children in despair and agony.”
The captain’s fingers and needle stopped; it was clear the horror was still vivid in his mind. I fetched him some tea, which he drank in slow sips. Then he patted my hand and closed his eyes and soon drifted off to sleep.
I snuck off to find Edward right then, but Ingo planted himself in front of me on deck.
“He’s sick and in no condition to be seen by a lady,” Ingo said. I hoped it was the seasickness, but I feared Edward had fallen to the poppy again. I searched Ingo’s face, but he revealed nothing.
That very afternoon the wind died and the New Harmony’s sails went flat. While the crew kept a restless watch over the horizon, the captain continued his stories and I forced myself not to worry about Edward. Whatever happened, I had to keep myself in good form.
“After the war we went to Sumatra and brought back black pepper,” the captain said. “The profit was seven hundred times the price, and I earned almost enough to buy a vessel of my own. I spotted Ingo at a port in Jamaica throwing knots of heavy rope over the side of the ship like they were flower petals. The strongest and most honest man I ever met, white or Black.”
The captain’s love and admiration for Ingo was clear, just as Ingo’s was for him. When I thought of Ingo, I thought of a free man under a starry night and not of Africans in bondage.
That afternoon, when the captain asked what I hoped for in the New World, I told him what I’d never said aloud since my father told me it was impossible.
“I’d like to make a business of my needle in America,” I said.
I’d had many days to imagine it, and Pap’s gold coins had lit up my mind with possibility. I spoke of embroidery pattern-making and dressmaking; of designing ladies’ dresses and men’s jackets ornamented with brilliant colors and scenes.
“Silks and gold thread,” I said, dreaming. “Dyes from India and China, colors I have only seen in windows near the queen’s castle or in my imagination. If I could have those materials, I believe I might make a life for myself, Captain Darling.”
He gave me a faraway smile, then closed his eyes as if I’d wearied him. This made me feel ashamed to have spoken of myself and my dreams, and I slunk away and curled onto my cot, where I tried to remember the colors of home and wept when I could not conjure the River Clyde, the cottage where I was born, or my mother’s face.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Captain Darling was up directing his men. The wind returned, the sun was strong, and Ingo was shouting instructions as crewmen pulled the sails and tacked with the wind. I found a sheltered place to sit with my needle, and that’s where the captain presented me with a long, wrapped package.