The Island of Doves (9 page)

“Unitarian by birth, actually. Presbyterian by employment.” He gave her a sheepish smile.

“Well, many sisters have found that it can be difficult to predict how people of Catholic faith will be received in mixed company. Though they do not hide who they are, they see no reason to invite inquiry and disdain. Many prefer to wear a simple bonnet while traveling.”

“That seems a sensible tactic, Sister.”

Susannah shook her head, constructing her tale as they spoke. “There I must correct you. I was not born into this faith but am considering it as a way of life. My name will change only if I decide to take the vows.”

Alfred smiled gently. “Change the name you will not tell me, you mean?”

All at once Susannah realized she had been talking to this man for too long. He seemed harmless enough, but she knew better than anyone not to underestimate Edward’s reach. They were scarcely out of Buffalo and she had already been careless. “Sir, I must be going now.”

“Oh, please don’t go. I do apologize if I gave offense. It’s only that I’ve enjoyed talking with you, and this journey is a long one. If I do not know your name, how will I find you again?”

“Good day, Mr. Corliss.”

She hurried back down to the steerage deck without looking back and tried not to panic. She would have to stay away from the main deck now if she hoped not to encounter Mr. Corliss again, but then how would she find the elusive Father Milani?

In the late morning they encountered one of the storms for which Lake Erie was famous. A woman came down into the sleeping quarters to report that the sky had grown suddenly dark and the captain had spotted lightning in the distance. The crew was forced to drop anchor and wait out the weather. The steamer lurched from side to side and many of the passengers felt the effects of seasickness. Another smell to add to the overpowering stench of the steerage deck.

Susannah didn’t suffer from the waves, but she was hungry. When the storm passed and the boat began to move once more, she went upstairs despite her fears of being seen. She walked the perimeter of the steamboat, asking around for the priest, and once again she was surprised by the ferocity of the winds that whipped across the deck.

A colored man wearing a deckhand’s tarred hat passed her on the right. He carried a bucket of water and a wooden cup and scouted embers in the after-dinner hours, when men stood smoking pipes and cigars all over the boat. Fire appeared to be a constant threat.

“Excuse me,” Susannah said to him. “I’m looking for someone—maybe you could help me.”

The man turned back. “Name, please?”

“He is a Catholic priest,” she said for the third time that day. “Father Milani.”

The deckhand shook his head. “Apologies, miss, but . . .” He thought for a moment. “Well, now, they
is
a man who be calling hisself a priest, but from what I seen he only a priest in the Church o’ Rye.”

Susannah gave him a confused look, then followed the direction in which his finger pointed, to a heap of brown wool slumped next to the paddle wheel housing in the center of the deck. “There?”

“Yes’m. Like I say, I don’t know who he really is, but he say he a priest. He take his drink
awfully
hard.”

Susannah nodded her thanks and the deckhand continued on, stopping every ten feet or so to splash a fresh cup of water on a smoldering plank. Susannah approached the brown heap. On closer inspection, the back of a man’s head was visible, his hair bushy and dark. He snored loudly beneath his cloak.

“Excuse me,” Susannah said, crouching down and touching his shoulder. He did not stir. “Excuse me,” she said louder, shaking him. “Are you Father Milani?”

The man groaned, then rolled over and pried his eyes open. Susannah swallowed her surprise. She had expected a bloated old man, but the priest was slight, with a lively complexion despite his current state. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

“Perhaps,” he said with one eye closed. “Who are you?”

“Father,” she said, the address sounding strange for a man so young. “I am Susannah Dove.”

He shrugged. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Dove. Now, if you don’t mind . . .” He rolled back over into the dark corner of the wheel housing and pulled the cloak over his head to block out the light.

“Father, are you ill?” she asked, though she knew exactly what the trouble was. Even if the deckhand hadn’t mentioned it, the priest reeked of liquor.

He groaned again. “How can I help you, Miss Dove?”

“Father, Sister Mary Genevieve instructed me to find you on this boat. Yesterday, in fact, I looked all over for you, but was . . . unsuccessful.”

“Madonna!”
Father Milani sat up, casting off his cloak. He was very thin, with lanky arms and legs, and beneath the cloak he wore a black frock coat made for a much heavier man. It hung on him. “Miss Dove, please forgive me. I have failed the sister and you. It will not happen again.”

“I thought,” she said, “that you were on this boat to escort me to Mackinac. But perhaps I misunderstood.”

The priest blanched. He blinked his pale green eyes a few times. The left one was marred with a spot of brown in the iris, and both of them were bloodshot. “Do you think you need a doctor?” she asked.

Father Milani gave her a solemn look, then shook his head. “I believe I had some spoiled meat for supper last evening. But I am feeling much better now.” He rubbed his eyes, then stood. “How have you found your journey so far, Miss Dove?”

“Well,” she said, “I find myself fairly hungry at the moment, Father. As you may know, I have no money for food.”

“Madonna!”
he exclaimed again quietly. “Then we shall address that presently. Follow me.” Father Milani wrapped the cloak around his shoulders with a flourish and descended the stairs to the stateroom in the center of the boat. He walked at a good clip, his long stride nearly leaving Susannah behind, and as he moved the cloak’s generous fabric billowed out behind him.

As they approached the oak doors with cut crystal handles, an usher stepped toward the priest, glancing back at Susannah. “May I see your tickets, sir?” He had the weary look of having turned away this particular priest before.

“I don’t want you to be ashamed, my son, when you finally learn that I am indeed who I say I am, Father Giovanni Milani, born in Italy, lately of Manhattan City and more lately Mackinac Island. This holy woman here is Sister Susannah Dove. We are en route to do God’s work in the heathen interior, and we have dispensation to take our meals in this stateroom on account of Captain Crowell’s deep generosity.”

The usher shook his head. “That so.” He glanced between the priest and Susannah, seeming to note her soiled dress. “Well, then you won’t mind my summoning him to confirm your status. I can hardly afford to take your word for it twice. Wait here, please.”

The usher strode out of sight and Father Milani reached for the door. Susannah put her hand on his arm. “I can’t go in there,” she said. “Someone might recognize me.”

Father Milani nodded. “Go to the door on the other side and wait for me.”

“Is that true what you said, about the captain providing your meals?” she asked.

“Real cosmic truth, my dear,” he said as he swung the door open with considerable effort, “is a matter of infinite mystery.”

Susannah went to the other end of the stateroom and watched through the window as Father Milani moved among the tables covered in white linen, crystal, and silver. Stewards made efficient rounds with wine. One pushed a cart with a platter heaped with bread and a steaming silver coffeepot. She had walked among fine things like these at Hawkshill just two days before without paying them any heed, but now her attention was rapt.

Father Milani moved slowly, nodding his solemn priestly approval to the finely dressed men and women the stewards served. On a table near the window was a pound cake iced with sugar and heaped with strawberry preserves. With the cloak shrouding his arms, Father Milani moved his hand at waist level in a gesture of blessing as he worked his way among the tables.

He nodded one final time, then made the sign of the cross and joined Susannah back out on the deck. “Follow me, Miss Dove. And hush while you do it.” They walked halfway around the exterior of the stateroom, back toward the entrance, and Susannah noticed that the usher had returned with the captain. The captain spoke harshly to him, then glanced around, clearly looking for Milani.

Milani pivoted on his right foot and Susannah followed. They took the stairs up to the hurricane deck and strode to a windy corner empty of other passengers. Father Milani removed his cloak and laid it carefully on the deck to reveal several rows of bulging pockets. He motioned for Susannah to sit on the deck and pulled out a few slices of bread, then a glistening slice of beef, and handed them to her. Her eyes wide, she pressed the beef between the bread, then opened her mouth to take a bite.

“One moment, Sister.” She closed her mouth and paused in deference to the priest, embarrassed that she had forgotten to pray. From an especially large pocket, he plucked a dinner plate and a setting of silver, then arranged them on the bird-dropping-mottled plank at her feet.

“We are not animals, are we?”

Susannah’s eyes widened and a laugh leapt from her lungs. She tried to press it back in with her hand, but it kept coming, filling up her chest and tumbling out. The priest began to laugh too, high and shrill, and the peculiar sound only made her laugh harder. Her eyes spilled over and she cut into the food with the silver knife, its handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and shoveled the still-warm beef into her mouth.

•   •   •

T
hat night Father Milani retired to the men’s quarters belowdecks and Susannah lay in her hard berth sleeping fitfully, dreaming of the clanking silverware in the stateroom. Then the dream shifted, and she was standing on the hurricane deck, bracing herself against the pitch of the lake. She glanced to the lookout perch at the top of the wide ladder beside the stacks, and there was Edward, appraising the lake in all directions. A wave washed over the deck in her dream and she shot up and gasped in the dark room full of sleeping passengers. It took a moment for the terror to subside—she felt sure he had found her—but finally she convinced herself that it had been just a dream. Edward was back in Buffalo, at least for now, and Susannah was still on the boat, moving farther away from him day by day.

Seven days passed, a tedious sentence of waiting. She met the priest once a day for food. Twice he was so late that she feared he had gotten too drunk and fallen overboard, but eventually he always came and passed her the stolen meals wrapped in a napkin. He was not allowed to stay with her in the women’s quarters, and both of them agreed it was best that she stay out of sight, so she spent much of the time alone in her berth. One of the women near her was unraveling a moth-eaten sweater, then winding the yarn into skeins and knitting squares to be sewn together into a blanket. Susannah gestured with her hands an offer to help—the woman did not speak English—and she nodded happily, producing a second pair of needles for the task. Still, the time passed slowly.

A few times, when she couldn’t bear the stench of her quarters, Susannah allowed herself a brief escape up the stairs to the main deck. They were fortunate not to encounter another large storm, but they were forced to stop twice to take in wood. The first time she watched as the ship stopped near a sandy beach and a dozen men spent five hours flinging logs from a smaller boat into the wood hold. Two days later they stopped again. One of the women told her she had heard that the first load of wood turned out to be too green. And so another day was lost to delay. Finally, on the ninth morning, a noise woke Susannah with a start and she glanced at the rectangle of light coming down the staircase. She tried to identify what it was that had startled her out of her dream, then realized it was not a noise but the absence of noise. After so many hours on the boat she had become accustomed to the fidgeting and coughing of the boiler, the incessant rush of water beneath the paddle wheels. But now everything was still. She sat up on her berth and listened as the bolts that held it suspended from the ceiling creaked with her movement.

The steerage deck was mostly empty, and Susannah wondered how long she had slept. She stood and smoothed her dirty hair back as best she could—she had found enough water for washing up only twice since the trip began. The sister’s black gown certainly had been an appropriate choice. Susannah knew the elbows and the hem were soiled, but it didn’t show. She wrapped the borrowed blanket over her shoulders and climbed the stairs into the fresh morning air.

Gulls circled in the sky and as Susannah ascended, she saw that the boat had docked. A deckhand was emptying a cask of kitchen remains into the water, fish heads and other scraps, and the birds were in a frenzy over it. She glanced at the shore. A handful of motley buildings, some little more than shacks, lined the docks, just as they did in Buffalo’s port. She had a feeling that maybe no place near the water was any different from the next.

Beyond the anonymity of the port, distinctive features of the city came into view. Against the sky, church spires and towers were illuminated in the morning sun like a celestial city. The
Thomas Jefferson
was docked in a strait between Lake Erie and a much smaller body of water, the narrow entrance to which was clogged with the chaotic traffic of canoes and sailing vessels. The small lake opened to Lake Huron. This was Detroit.

The deck was as busy as a Manhattan City street. A few children darted between the other passengers, chasing a ball. Others stood at the gunwale, leaning out, calling to the people on the dock. The deckhands slid a gangway into place and the crowd on the deck shifted toward it. They shouldered bundles and packs. Tired women leaned against the arms of the men they had come with or the arms of the men they had acquired on the boat.

Not everyone was bound for Detroit, however, and some passengers held their children back by the shoulders to keep them out of the way. Susannah stood among them and watched the scene, hugging the thin blanket against her arms. It was then that she saw a man ten feet away from her, dabbing his forehead with a crisp white handkerchief. Her fingers clenched in recognition before the syllables of his name could form in her mind: Wendell Beals! Edward’s loyal employee had been on the boat with her since Buffalo. She felt a cold terror wash down her back.