Barkskins (34 page)

She sank rather quickly. One day she was well and busy, the next she was unable to rise from the bed. She complained of a headache, a twisting pain in her gut, her mind wandered, her thin arms thrust up toward the ceiling. She called for Bernard, forgetting he was in Davy Jones's locker. Mercy and Sarah and Patience attended her bedside, fetching cold compresses, urging the sick woman to sup a little broth—which she promptly vomited up.

“You will be well again in a day or so,” said Mercy. “It is an indisposition, nothing more.” But as the day wore on the patient became more silent, concentrated on drawing ragged, bubbled breaths. She confounded them by dying in the late afternoon. One moment she seemed no worse, the next she stopped breathing.

Mercy came out of the sickroom and put the kettle on. “She has just left us,” she said. “She is with God.”

“How can that be?” asked Jan, who sat with Nicolaus at the table. “I thought it was a fleeting illness.”

“Apparently not. We never know when He will take us.” She sighed, lowered her eyes, then looked at Nicolaus. “If you could order the coffin from Mr. Kent, Sarah and I will prepare her body. I think that rose silk dress she liked so well.” She did not cry; death was too familiar and demanded its rituals. Older women were deeply familiar with the events of passage. She took the basin of warm water and dry cloths into the death room. She might have preferred to wait some time before this task but Sarah and Patience had already stripped away the comforter and top sheet. To avoid handling the body more than was necessary Sarah suggested they cut her nightgown off. It was soiled with dark vomit in any case. Mercy thought this a criminal idea—it was a good nightgown and, once washed and bleached, someone could use it. So they unbuttoned the high-necked gown and drew it upward over the thin shoulders, over the head, pulling the stick-like arms from the sleeves, and tugging the garment higher over the knees, up the thin thighs, and—

Nicolaus would never forget the way the door of the sickroom flew open with the two women jammed in the opening. He and Jan had been sitting in mourning quiet, watching the flames in the fireplace.

“Nicolaus! Jan! Come into this room.” Nicolaus had never heard his wife speak in that shocked tone. The scarlet-faced women half-ran into the kitchen and let the men go in alone.

The thin and wasted body of an elderly man lay on the still sweat-damp sheet. It was Birgit, certainly it was Birgit, but Birgit was a man. Indubitably. The wispy hairs on the narrow chest and the male sexual organs, shrunken and withered but quite real, confounded them. Nicolaus's mind seethed. He thought not of Birgit but of Bernard. Why? Why? For forty years! And none of them had known.

He now wrenched his mind away from the still-shocking image engraved in his memory. It was in the past. Instead he thought of what was happening this very hour while he lay sick abed—Piet, Sedley and George Pickering Duke trying to bargain with some of the shrewdest, most ruthless men in the colonies, men noted for their rapacious ways. There was no help for it; if it killed him he had to go there.

Coughing, he called Mercy. “My clothes. I must go to that meeting.”

“You cannot. I forbid it. You are ill, dangerously ill.”

“Let me alone, Mercy. I must go, I tell you. Help me if you wish me to live. Bar me from this and I'll die of spite.”

She thought he could do that; the Dukes were nothing if not stubborn and willful. He caught Jan descending from his carriage in front of the Duke building.

•  •  •

Piet, George Pickering, Sedley and their invited guests sat around the oval mahogany table. The Wentworth brother-in-law's heavy mouth twitched and twitched with a small smile. The proposition was unusual: they would shower the Duke brothers and nephews with social invitations, they would encourage useful connections. They would make the Duke family known, not only in Boston society, but in England. In return they wanted free access to the Duke pineland holdings in the north country, for which, of course, they would pay a fair price. They would share equally the costs of getting the logs out of the forest and to the mills. George Pickering Duke thought it a good agreement as everyone knew that the way to gain advantages was through political and social connections, connections Duke & Sons had never enjoyed. Piet was a little concerned over the “free access” phrase. How free did these political men imagine such access might be? Sedley was in a cold sweat with visions of a thousand choppers cutting their pine, perhaps these very men presenting false accounts or smoothly saying that other men, unknown, had stolen the logs. Worse yet, once given this opening, they were in a position to tamper with the law and seize Duke forestlands. But before Piet could say “Done,” the door opened and the two aged Duke brothers, Jan and Nicolaus, came in. Nicolaus looked half dead, pasty-faced except for burning fever spots on his cheeks. He threw his black cane on the table, looked at the Wentworth brother-in-law and his cronies.

Piet explained the offer. The Wentworth brother-in-law, not liking the look of the old men, softened the offer a little by saying that they would only cut on mutually agreed-upon plots. The words “free access” were not spoken this time.

Nicolaus said, “Out.”

“Out,” repeated Jan. “Out now. The meeting is finished. We agree to nothing.”

“Thank God,” murmured Sedley, emboldened to pick up Nicolaus's cane as if he would use it on the political men if they made an intention to stay.

But as the men left they treated the elderly Dukes to looks of pure malevolence. The Dukes would never be invited to even the meanest dogfight after this.

•  •  •

It took an hour and more for them to convince Piet and George Pickering Duke that they had been saved from a perilous fate that would have ruined Duke & Sons.

Nicolaus said, “Piet, I know that your mother, Mercy, has long wanted to put us into a brighter social light, but Jan and I feel it would be best if this company now cultivated a quiet presence. We should be more stealthy in our operations and avoid partnership entanglements—try to keep everything in the family as much as we can—use straw men for land purchases. We do not want Duke and Sons trumpeted about as a great power or even as important. If we remain quiet, grey and invisible, we will have advantages over our competitors.” In fact, they were afraid that details of Birgit's death would leak into Boston gossip if the Duke women consorted with society in drawing rooms. Under the influence of a glass of sherry anything might be said.

Piet and George looked sulky, like chastised schoolboys. Sedley's red mouth was fixed in a wolfish grin. The old uncles left the room and went down the stairs. At the bottom Jan said, “We may have trouble from Piet and George.”

Nicolaus coughed. “I love my son Piet, but I put my money on Sedley.”

Nicolaus said, “We can't die now. We have to get Sedley in position.” But he began to cough again as though his end was at hand. Jan saw him home, where Mercy prodded him to the bed; she and the servant girls brought mustard plasters, syrups, hot bricks, cups of boiling chamomile tea and a beaker of imported malmsey. He
would
recover.

In the weeks that followed Sedley came every day to sit by his father's bedside and encourage his health. Jan came often and the three parleyed. Sedley's ideas, which he had long nurtured in secret, were expansive. He talked, the strong, highly colored face animated, his dark eyes glittering; a businessman's face, thought Nicolaus. High praise.

“We are too narrow in our holdings, Father, though it was a good move to get out of Carolina. We are concentrated in New England, which has become a hotbed of grasping men with shipping interests and many in their hire. But I believe the future in New England—in Boston—to be very constrained as long as England controls our destinies. We need banks, we need insurance, we need regulated markets, we need a set currency—skilled workmen are moving to Portsmouth, to Salem and other towns as business languishes in Boston. The population is dropping. England's hand squeezes us.”

“What would you have us do?” The sick man lay aslant stiff pillows.

“For the long plan I would wish us to look into the timber of the Ohio valley and north and west of there. There is a group of men in Virginia who are taking up much of that land. They have their eyes on the future. Forestland can be had for almost nothing. We should explore the region and see what might be valuable. We must, I feel, be more adventurous. Forests need consideration many years before they become money in the pocket.”

“You have the right attitude. Better than falling back on cozy local contacts with important men who will be unimportant tomorrow. What other ideas have you? I know you have been considering ways to strengthen the business.”

“I have. And you know, ever since I was a child I have heard that Duke and Sons thought it advantageous to own a shipyard. And yet when Grandfather Duquet disappeared so did the idea. I think the time has long passed for a bargain shipyard but I still feel we should act as soon as possible and acquire. That is my second idea. Think, one ship with a load of sawed planks to the French West Indies would pay for the vessel. And if that ship should return with a load of molasses or sugar—”

“Ah,” said Jan. “But who would manage this shipyard?”

“Uncle, I think George Pickering could make a success of it. He has often regretted that he was not able to go to sea as you two did when you were young. A maritime interest is there. His knowledge of English law might be an advantage. And he needs a controlling position of some sort.”

“And what of Piet?”

“I suggest he head Duke and Sons here in Boston. He will remain as the company figurehead. And I think Duke and Sons should consider shifting out of Boston. All is so muddled here, so lackadaisical and awry. Boston seems to me always in a lunatic mood, always suspicious that some entity is usurping its rights.”

“That may be a well-founded suspicion,” said Jan.

“Perhaps. But I think we will need a place with more vigorous businessmen, with less interference from England. Boston has ever been England's spaniel.”

Nicolaus coughed phlegmily and said, “Even spaniels will bite if provoked. And something I find extremely trying is the masts on British ships, masts that we cut from our forestlands. The vaunted English navy is constructed from New England timbers. Our pines and oaks come back to us, eh?” But he thought it would be better to leave Boston to its aloof cliques and fulminating gossip.

Jan nodded but did not want to get into this uneasy topic. “What place are you thinking of, Sedley?” Privately he thought it would be difficult. They had been in Boston for decades.

“New York. Or Philadelphia. Men there are inclined to take the longer sight of possibilities.”

Jan thought Sedley had considered well, up to a point.

“You have mentioned the advantages of a boy going to sea to build character and confidence. You have given thought to the future. And yet you do not mention the possibility of sending your own son, James, to sea. He is of an age when he might be enrolled as a midshipman.”

Sedley frowned. He habitually avoided the boy, who had been sent away to school as early as possible.

“You surprise me, Uncle. You, who forbade George to go to sea.”

“George Pickering was beguiled by hornpipes and wharf swagger. He wished to go as a sailor before the mast. I propose an aim rather higher. James is a bright and quick youngster who might well advance in a naval career before taking up his place in the business. It is important to bring on the young sons. And it will set an example for the other boys of the family. I have no doubt that we can make use of our maritime connections to secure him a midshipman's place on board a good ship.”

“I will think about it,” Sedley said, but he was already considering that to place James as a Royal Navy midshipman would be a step to the enemy's side, with the colonial feeling against England stronger every year. He would look into placing the boy on an American privateer.

“Do,” said Nicolaus.

A
month after Kuntaw's leaving in the year 1754, his wife, Malaan, sat in the weak autumn sunlight outside the English trading post when a whiteman they called Simon kicked her leg lightly and gestured for her to follow him. He said nothing and she said nothing, but he kept her in his room all winter. In the spring the man returned to England and she went with Richard Tarbox. Her son, Tonny Sel, grew up around the post running with the omnipresent dogs and scruffy knot of untended children. They made themselves a kind of wild den under the old canoes. Malaan showed only a fitful interest in Tonny or in the women from the Mi'kmaw village who came several times to coax her from the current white man who kept her, but she was furious when they tried to take Tonny away.

“He should be brought up by Mi'kmaw people,” said the women.

“And am I not a Mi'kmaw person? I will keep him here at the post. He will learn whiteman ways. Mi'kmaw ways not good now.” Too deep in private despair to bother with the child who did well enough on his own, she existed on a narrow ledge of life that was neither Mi'kmaw nor white, going with whichever man nodded at her or gave her food. She grew fat. She slept prodigiously, night and day, difficult to arouse, as though it was too painful to rise from submergence.

“Ah,” said one of the old women, “I remember when she was a girl, she was clever. She made fine quill embroidery.” No one knew what had changed her into the somnolent, distant woman. Some said she was sick with the whiteman whiskey disease, others said it was for love of Kuntaw and shame at his abandonment. They had all heard that Kuntaw was living with a whiteman woman in Maine. He had not come back and no one had gone to talk him back. Some said Malaan had divorced Kuntaw.