Bellewether

  “And so you were born here?”

  “Yeah. My mom,” he told me, “she’s a nurse, she got a job here at the hospital, and Dad tried not to travel too much with his work, and his mom helped look after us. My sister and me.”

  “Is she older or younger, your sister?”

  “Younger. She’s moved back up to my mom’s home community. So did my mom’s parents, when they retired. And Pete and my mom live in Rochester.”

  “Who’s Pete?”

  He smiled. “My stepdad.”

  I thought back and tried to keep everyone organized. “The one who hangs the new doors for your grandmother?”

  “He used to. Yeah.” He turned a corner, brought us back out onto the Belt Parkway with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in view. “My dad’s mom didn’t like Pete to begin with. Didn’t like him taking my dad’s place. But he’s a hard guy not to like. He kind of grew on her.”

  Sam’s stepfather, a carpenter, had met Sam’s mom when he had needed stitches in his hand and she was on shift at the hospital. They’d married two years later. As a teenager, Sam worked construction with Pete in the summers, and got interested in that, and earned his university degree in architecture before he decided he liked building structures better than designing them. And so he’d certified as a construction manager and started his own business.

  “Why in Millbank?”

  “I don’t know.” He gave it thought. “I guess it feels right. Of the places I feel I belong, Millbank’s the one that fits me best.”

  I wondered what that felt like, feeling you fit perfectly somewhere.

  “Besides,” he said, “Malaika keeps on finding projects for me.”

  We were on the bridge, now. Its high towers and suspension cables made me dizzy if I looked up, but the view was something else.

  It was a shame to leave it and cross onto Staten Island, but we made good time from there. We stopped for lunch near Princeton and arrived at the museum in New Jersey right on time, although I had the strong impression the director would have been a whole lot happier if we’d been late, or better yet, not come at all.

  He was a tall and well-dressed man who looked like someone who still carried proper handkerchiefs. And used them.

  His assistant, on the other hand, was just as she had sounded on the phone—young, nice, and ready to be helpful. She had the Spanish chair set out and waiting for us in the entry hall.

  It was a gorgeous piece. I’d also seen these called Campeche chairs, but I’d never seen one of this age before. Viewed from the side, its mahogany frame had been shaped like a smooth, rounded X that supported a long piece of dark brown tooled leather to form both the back and the seat, like an early recliner. The leather with age had acquired a lovely patina, and most of the brass tacks that held it in place seemed to still be there. Both the chair’s arms were intact, curved, and graceful, and worn at their edges from use, and the crest above the leather at the chair back had been carved to make a darkly gleaming seashell.

  I could see why the director here had not been keen to part with it, not even as a loan.

  Which made me wonder why he seemed so quick to help us wrap and load it in Sam’s truck. All I could think was that it must be us, and not the chair, he couldn’t wait to see the back of. Gingerly he shook Sam’s hand, then mine, and turned without so much as a goodbye. He’d nearly made it back to the front door of his museum building when his young assistant told us, “Don’t mind him. He might seem grumpy, but he’s actually relieved.”

  I saw him stop, and start to turn again towards us, and his eyes revealed a blend of disbelief and resignation.

  His assistant, smiling, friendly, remained unaware. “He was a little worried,” she confided, “that you’d ask him for the sword.”

  • • •

  It was like setting up for the best kind of show-and-tell. I’d laid everything out on the dining room table so all the trustees could see clearly.

  “So, let’s start with this,” I said, meaning the drawing, now protected and supported in its storage box. My cousin had authenticated it and given it a valuation that, together with the painting’s, had made Isaac Fisher very happy. “It says right here, clear as day, that this was by Benjamin’s sister—by Lydia Wilde—when the Bellewether was being overhauled in the last year of the Seven Years’ War. And it’s a documented fact that the Bellewether was indeed overhauled, after a pirate attack in the fall of 1759. So that all fits. Now this”—I showed them, holding up an open reference book with brightly coloured illustrations—“is the uniform the man here in this drawing’s wearing. See? Same leggings, everything. Which makes him from the Troupes de la Marine, a French Canadian. An officer. And this”—I held the button up, the one I’d found on site—“would be consistent with the buttons that his uniform would have.”

  I paused and looked around to make sure everyone was following. They were, though Sharon wore a frown.

  Her disapproval energized me. “So,” I said, “I think we can agree that a French officer was living here at the same time the legend says he was. And so was Lydia.”

  I let that sink in, waited for the nodding heads, before I carried on.

  I’d kept the sword in the long wooden storage box that the director from New Jersey had produced it in. He’d really loved it, and I knew that it had wounded him to have to show me, let alone to give in to my logical persuasion that it properly belonged in our collection, not his own. But to his credit, he had kept it in immaculate condition. When I opened the box now to show my trustees, the silver of the hilt gleamed in the room’s light and I heard the gasps. It satisfied me knowing the effect was what I’d hoped it would be.

  “Wow,” Tracy said.

  Harvey leaned in closer, looking at the words inscribed along the blade. “That’s French, right?”

  With a nod, I gave him the translation: “ ‘Draw me not without cause; sheathe me not without honour.’ Now, that’s a pretty common motto for those times. It shows up on a lot of swords, both French and Spanish, but bear with me, because this one has a name.” With gloved hands, carefully, I turned the sword so they could read it. “See there? ‘De Sabran.’ Now, in the inventory made by Captain Wilde’s wife, she wrote . . . Frank, can you just read the third to the last listing there, on page fourteen?”

  He cleared his throat dramatically. “ ‘My brother-in-law’s sword, with silver hilt, marked de Sabran.’ ”

  I said, “The first time that I read that, I assumed she meant the maker’s mark. But look, the maker’s mark is here, in this cartouche.” I showed them. “So then de Sabran would likely be the name of the sword’s owner.”

  Sharon interjected, “Likely. But not definitely.”

  “Joseph Wilde,” I said, “was Captain Wilde’s older brother. So, to Captain Wilde’s wife, he’d have been her brother-in-law, right? And he’s the one the legend says killed Lydia’s French officer.”

  Eve followed Sharon’s lead, though her voice lacked the same belligerence. “Well?”

  I took a breath. And played my ace.

  “This note,” I said, and set it down, “came with the sword when it was sold at auction in the 1800s.”

  Signed by Lawrence Wilde, the poet—and the grandson of our Captain Benjamin—the note read: This belonged to Joseph Wilde, who took it from the officer imprisoned at Snug Cove.

  Everybody read the note by turn, and Frank said, “I’ll be damned.”

  When Sharon looked about to argue, Harvey shut her down. “You said when she found proof, then we’d discuss it,” he reminded her. “And I’d say that’s pretty convincing proof.” Looking across at Malaika, he asked, “Can we have a new vote on it?”

  “Sure. Make a motion.”

  He made it with confidence. “I move we broaden our mandate to add in the story of Lydia Wilde and the French guy.”

  “I second,” said Don.

  With a faint smile, Malaika asked who was in favour, and only two hands stayed down—Sharon’s and
Eve’s.

  “Motion passed.”

  Frank leaned over and patted my shoulder and winked. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  • • •

  It was never going to be an easy holiday, this first year without Niels.

  I knew that going in, but I still tried. I did the things we’d always done. I went and bought a Christmas tree and strung the lights and decorated. I switched my car radio to the all-Christmas-carols station, watched the TV specials and the movies that we always watched, and tried, if not to find the feeling for myself, to conjure it for Rachel.

  She was having a hard time and sinking deeper into sadness; sleeping poorly, eating worse, and crying when I wasn’t supposed to see. If Gianni had been there it might have helped, but he and Mrs. Bonetti had gone down to Florida to gather with their family at her sister’s house. “Away from all this snow that’s coming,” Mrs. Bonetti had said with feeling when she’d dropped off a tin of her chocolate mostaccioli cookies. “You can take those with you when you go spend Christmas with your parents in Toronto. And next year, I’ll make you some nice braciole for your Christmas dinner.”

  Their house next door looked lonely with the lights off when I came home in the evenings. And I noticed, driving down the shore road, that there were no Christmas lights at Bridlemere. My grandmother must also have been gone, or else not in the mood for celebration.

  At the Wilde House, though, Malaika made us all draw names and do a Secret Santa gift exchange. “Nothing expensive,” she had warned. “And Willie, put your name in there. And you, too, Sam. You’re family.”

  I had hoped I might draw Sam’s name, but I drew Rosina’s, which was fine. I bought a pair of earrings for her, in the pink and yellow tones she liked. And while I didn’t know for certain, I suspected it was Lara who drew my name, because my gift was a scarf that looked an awful lot like those from the last shipment I had helped her to unpack the week before, at her boutique. But when we’d given all our gifts and I went back upstairs to work, I found a narrow gift bag on my desk, the tag marked Charley in a sure and slanting hand that looked familiar.

  Opening the door between my office and the old part of the house, I told Sam, “Hey.”

  He turned from where he’d gone back to his own work on the panelling.

  I held the gift bag up. “What’s this?”

  “Looks like a present.”

  “I already got my Secret Santa gift.”

  He shrugged and told me, “Santa does what Santa does.”

  The wine bottle inside the bag had an expensive label. “Santa shouldn’t have,” I said. “But thank you.”

  “Guess he thought you needed it.”

  I really liked his smile. I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on it—on him—until he, too, was gone; until he’d packed his truck and driven up to spend the holidays in Rochester, with his mother and stepfather. He’d stopped to pick up Bandit at our house before he left, and when I’d walked out on the porch with him he’d hugged me. Quick and casual, but it took all my self-control and concentration not to hug him back too hard or hold him longer than I should, when all I really wanted was to lean on him and tell him all my troubles.

  I could do that with my parents, I thought.

  I was looking forward to our time up in Toronto, lapsing back into the less demanding role of daughter, being able to pass off at least a piece of my responsibility to someone else. My mom would cut my sandwiches and talk with me while we washed dishes and my dad would have me help him with a jigsaw puzzle, and at nights I’d sleep in my old room. It would be restful. I might even get to read a book.

  And then a big low-pressure system started moving over the Atlantic, with the promise of becoming a nor’easter. And my phone rang.

  “No,” my mother said, “it’s just not worth the risk. They’re saying that it’s going to be bad, and we don’t want you driving in that.”

  “So we’ll fly.”

  But I had known she wouldn’t let that happen, either. Even if we could get tickets at a price we could afford, and even if the planes were flying, they would worry. And the last thing my dad needed, with his healing heart, was worry.

  “We can send the gifts,” she promised. “We can Skype.”

  “Not if the power’s out.” I heard the gloomy tone in my own voice and knew that it would make her feel bad, so I forced myself to sound more cheerful. “But you’re right. It’s fine.”

  It isn’t really Christmas anyway, I felt like adding.

  As it was, the forecasted nor’easter didn’t even come at Christmas. Tracking slowly up the coast it kept the weather just as miserable as Rachel’s mood, and finally slammed ashore on New Year’s Day. It struck with vengeance. I could feel the house shake under the relentless gusts of wind that rattled glass and shrieked at every window, blotting out the world behind a blinding swirl of snow so thick I thought we might be buried.

  We lost our electricity, and when the worst had passed and I could venture out to check the damage, I saw why.

  Two trees had been knocked down in the backyard. It was a miracle they’d fallen in the way they did, and not towards the house, but one had taken down the power lines. The other one had landed squarely on my brother’s shed and now the whole yard was a mess of branches, broken shingles, shattered siding, and scattered debris encased in ice and hardened snow that came up to my knees.

  I didn’t cry. Not then. I took one look at Rachel’s face when I came in, and knew I had to hold myself together so she wouldn’t fall apart. I tried to focus on the positive. “Your father never liked that shed,” I said. “At least now we can get a new one.”

  She tried to smile. I saw her make the effort. But it was too much. She turned and went upstairs and went into her room and got in bed and pulled the blankets up and stayed there.

  After spending all the next day on the phone in fruitless calls to our insurance company, I was strongly tempted to go join her. But instead, I took the wine that Sam had given me, and found myself a glass and, sitting at the kitchen table, hitched my chair close to my brother’s.

  “See?” I told him as I filled my glass. “Look how much fun you’re missing. You should be here.” Unexpectedly, my eyes filled. “You should be here,” I repeated, but the words this time came quietly and hurt my throat. I took a drink.

  The bottle was half empty by the time I fell asleep.

  • • •

  I woke up the next morning to a sky that promised sunshine, and a digital alarm clock that was blinking to announce we once again had electricity, which seemed enough encouragement to get up, pull on jeans and an old sweatshirt, and go down to brew a very badly needed cup of coffee.

  I was standing at the sink to fill the kettle, looking out the kitchen window, when I saw the dog bounce past, a joyful, flop-eared burst of movement in the drifted snow.

  I put the kettle down. Turned off the tap.

  Outside, the snow was deep enough to work itself between my boot tops and my jeans as I walked down the slope of our backyard. I felt it soaking through my socks. I didn’t mind.

  Sam straightened, having gathered up a load of splintered siding. “Morning.”

  He’d been working for a while already, I could tell. He’d cleared a section maybe six feet square, and worn a deep track through the snow from walking back and forth to where he’d parked his truck. It had a snowplow on the front. He’d cleared the driveway.

  Bandit deftly changed course and began to bound towards me, long ears sailing up with every stride.

  Sam said, “It’s going to take a few loads, but I’ll get some guys down here with chainsaws and we’ll get this cleared for you.”

  Thank you, I wanted to say, and I’m glad that you’re back, and I missed you. But I had a lump firmly wedged in my throat and the sun felt too bright in my eyes. It was making me blink. I just nodded.

  He moved past me, taking the armful of siding to throw with the rest in the back of his truck. By the time he returned I
was crouched in the snow, petting Bandit a little too fiercely. I’d found my voice.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Anytime. Hey, come and tell me what these are, though.” Guiding me cautiously through the debris, he stopped me at what would have been the shed door, pointing up to the one shelf that hadn’t been smashed. “Those look like they’re something.”

  I looked at the three olive-drab canvas bags. They were dusted with snow, but unharmed. “Yes,” I told him. “They are.”

  When we brought them inside the house, Rachel came down from her room. “What’s all that?”

  “All that,” I said, “is your grandfather’s kayak.” I opened the top of one canvas bag so she could see the wood pieces inside. “It’s a folding kayak. German-made. When I was little, Grandpa used to take me out in it a lot, but then it started leaking, and an oar broke, so it all got put away.”

  She frowned. She seemed to find it natural that Sam was in our living room, with Bandit. Bending down to scratch the beagle’s ears, she asked, “So how did we get it?”

  “Your dad was going to fix it.”

  Rachel stared down at the bags so long I wondered whether I’d made a mistake in bringing them inside—if maybe they were too much a reminder of the things my brother’s death had left unfinished. But at last she asked Sam, “If I wanted to do that, to fix it myself, could you help me? Show me how to use the tools?”

  I warned them, “There are no instructions. My dad lost them.”

  Sam looked from my face to Rachel’s and studied the bags on the floor. “That’s no problem,” he said. “We can figure it out.”

  Lydia

  The days grew shorter. Darkness fell late in the afternoon and when she went around to light the candles it was common to find Joseph with his pencil and his plans spread on the table in the keeping room, adjusting the dimensions of their work upon the Bellewether in answer to some new request from William.

  “For a man who owns four ships, he doesn’t know a thing about how they’re constructed,” Joseph told her. “What he asks for is impossible, unless I alter this as well.” He pointed to a section of the latest drawing. “And I can’t do that, unless . . .” He paused, and took the pencil up again and drew a fresh line as he sought a new solution to the problem.