The Promise Keeper: Sea Heroes of Duxbury Page 12

  “A nightmare, sir,” said Johnny, releasing Iris as he struggled to rise. “Forgive my outburst. I don’t know what came over me.”

  Iris fluffed the pillows behind him. “There is nothing to forgive.”

  “An empty stomach is many times the cause for restless sleep,” her father offered. “I daresay you need something to fortify you, Johnny. Are you feeling well enough to eat?”

  “Aye, I’m famished.”

  “I am pleased to hear it. I shall have Alice bring you a tray.”

  “No, sir. I would prefer to get up and join the family, if I may. I’ve had quite enough of this bed.”

  Iris removed herself to the keeping room to prepare the tea. A few moments later Father escorted Johnny with especial care to his own Winsor rocker then settled him in and tucked the blanket around his lap.

  Who was Keeper Mayne to inspire such devotion in her father? What history did they all share? The questions nagged at her, and Iris knew she would not be able to hold her tongue much longer.

  Snow positioned herself at Johnny’s side, alert and watchful as though she understood the man could not see and had high hopes of his spilling a morsel or two of breakfast.

  “Here is your tea, Johnny,” Iris said, ready with a cup the moment her father stepped away.

  He held out his hands blindly, and she guided them around the steaming cup — strong, weathered hands, yet slender and well-formed as though possessed of a certain dexterity, like a shipwright’s or draftsman’s. “Careful, it is hot,” she said, waiting as he took a sip.

  “Ah, that is very good.”

  Hetty took the teacup from Johnny and handed him a bowl of kedgeree, an old West Country dish of smoked haddock, rice and chopped hard-boiled egg. She instructed him on how to hold his spoon low on the handle for the most control in directing food into his mouth.

  Iris retreated to a seat at the long keeping room table with her father, knowing Johnny would not appreciate an audience to his ungraceful efforts of learning to eat blind.

  Nibbling one corner of a buttered slice of toasted brown bread, she watched her father tuck heartily into his own breakfast.

  She set down her toast and wiped the dry crumbs from her fingers. “I had a dream yesterday, Father.”

  He was enjoying a mouthful of kedgeree, when he washed it down with a large slurp of tea. “I hope it was a pleasant dream.”

  “No, it was a most frightening, awful dream. I dreamed I was drowning. I thought I would surely die. I screamed for help and the name I called, strangely, was Johnny. Later, when I woke, I remembered something. I remembered the imaginary friend I had as a child. His name was also Johnny, though now I am beginning to realize he was never quite imaginary after all, was he, Father? It is the dream of every child to one day see her imaginary friend come to life and here is mine, sitting in this very room sharing a meal with us.”

  Hetty nearly choked on a mouthful. She quickly reached for her tea cup.

  Iris had captured her father’s interest, his gaze sharpening until the only thing holding his attention was her and her alone.

  “You surprise me with your exceptional memory, Daughter. You were so very young and yet you say you remember Johnny? Well, I suppose you would. You were so fond of him. I signed him on as a green lad to be my ship’s boy, and he sailed with us throughout the years you and your mother lived with me aboard ship. It is true. Johnny did indeed save you from drowning.”

  Iris’s breath caught in her amazement. “Oh, Johnny, you saved my life. We were childhood friends. Why did you not remind me of our friendship? Why did not anyone alert me during the entire year he was keeping Pilgrim Light?”

  “Allow me to continue, Daughter.” Father raised his hand, a plea to cease with her questions. Iris stole a glance at Johnny, who sat silently, head high and cocked in the direction of their voices. She found it impossible to read his expression with the bandage covering half his face, until his lips curved in a slight, bittersweet smile.

  Iris gave her father her full attention, anxious to hear what he would say next.

  “I found Johnny to be a bright and agile lad, quick to learn, and with the years, I came to rely on him far more perhaps than should be expected of such a youth. Your mother took fondly to him, and after you were born, Johnny would ofttimes sit with you while he carved. He had an amazing talent for carving and made you some beautiful wooden toys. He’d talk to you and entertain you, so that by the time you learned to walk, it was all we could do to stop you from following his every move. As you grew, he looked out for you, taught you what he knew of ships and sailing, and you became more and more enamored of him.”

  Father rubbed his knuckles over his short white beard. “One bright, fine day, your mother brought you up to the main deck with her to enjoy the sunshine. You were but three years old. Hetty had taken to her bed with a sudden touch of the headache.”

  He glanced over at the old Cornishwoman. Hetty shook her head woefully, causing the side lappets of her white linen bonnet to sway. “And I never forgave myself for it neither.”

  Father patted her small, blue-veined hand and continued. “Eleanor later explained she’d turned her back for only a moment to address a passenger traveling with us, when you went over the rails. She heard the splash, realized you were nowhere to be seen and screamed. Johnny, who must’ve been about twelve, was sitting on a mizzenmast spar. He dove in immediately after you. The commotion sent everyone on deck running to the rails, and no sooner had they peered over the side than Johnny had you on his shoulders, shouting for a line to be dropped.”

  Her father cleared his throat and stared with disinterest at the food he’d been so enjoying moments before.

  Iris noted a thickness in his voice when he next spoke. “After that voyage, Eleanor refused to sail with me any longer. She was too afraid for your safety. We agreed it wise she remained home with you. Besides, it wasn’t fair to Johnny, who had his regular ship duties and his studies and was so young himself, to be burdened with the additional responsibility of being guardian and playmate to you. Eleanor had quite the time with you, Daughter, trying to appease your disappointment at not being able to see your friend. So you began to pretend he was still with you. He became your imaginary friend, and your mama allowed it until you grew older.”

  As he lifted his gaze, Iris witnessed a pang of bereavement in his grayish green eyes. Father was such a noble, hale fellow that it pained her to see him wounded by memories she’d resurrected.

  He glanced from her to Johnny and said, “Johnny shipped with my crew for a few more years, and when he was old enough, I convinced him to get a proper education. Figurehead carving had become quite a high folk art, so Johnny left the sea to study art and anatomy in a Philadelphia sculpture school. He eventually settled in Truro and grew to be a successful and much-sought-after carver. As an artisan, he received the highest of commissions.”

  A father bragging about his own son could not have spoken with more pride in his voice, Iris thought.

  “But Father, you could have taken me out to Clark’s Island to reunite with Johnny. At the very least, he should have been invited to our home.”

  “Your father was respecting my wishes,” said Johnny. “When I arrived in Duxbury, I neither sought nor desired society. My intent was to keep my past and personal life private.”

  “But surely we are more to you than society! What happened to you, Johnny, that you should choose to isolate yourself that way?”

  “That, Daughter, is our keeper’s business. I warned you Jonathan Mayne was a man who guarded his privacy, and we shall continue to respect that.”

  Now that she’d come face-to-face with the object of her curiosity and had him living under her roof where she could freely observe him, now she’d learned they shared a history, Iris found Jonathan Mayne to be an even greater enigma than when she hadn’t known a thing about him.

  After breakfast, the Ladies Charitable Sewing Society gathered once more before year’s end
to sew their keeper a dress shirt for church.

  They worked in the sitting room, at the large, round table which had been dressed with white linen and the silver tea service. The inviting smell of chestnuts roasting in the keeping room drifted in to mingle with the wood smoke from their own crackling fire and scents of steaming tea and festive evergreen in swags of bay leaf decorating the walls.

  The curtains were drawn wide, but only a dusky morning’s light shone through the panes. Working by the additional illumination of the oil lamps, the ladies stitched on a bleached white linen fabric donated by Father, while Iris remained employed in a separate project of her own.

  The morning progressed in companionable silence, broken only by the sharp clicking of Iris’s bone knitting needles and the occasional rattle of a teacup being returned to its saucer. Her skein of brick red yarn had shrunk with each passing hour, as Iris remained lost in thought.

  Questions nagged at her with no one to answer them, because Father persisted in remaining as unforthcoming about Johnny as Johnny was himself. He’d been sent to prison, that much she knew, but why? And once released, why had he given up a successful carving career to man Pilgrim Light?

  “What are you knitting, Iris? It looks much too large to be another mitten.”

  Aunt Mary’s bold, husky voice dispelled Iris’s woolgathering and she startled to awareness, while all around the sewing circle hands stilled, and she became the focus of attention.

  “That is because it is not a mitten, Aunt.” Father’s younger sister was an exceptionally talented needle worker and, like many young ladies of the times, had completed her first sampler at six years of age. It was Aunt Mary who was assigned the task of stitching the collar with its intricate neck gussets. It was she who first taught both Iris and her mother to knit.

  Iris displayed her work — a bell-shaped watch cap of deep brick red she had been working on since yesterday, and which was very nearly complete but for a few finishing stitches and the button she would sew on top. “It is another Monmouth cap for our keeper. To replace the one lost in the fire.”

  “I do believe I prefer that deep red color more than the green, as lovely as the first cap was,” said the widow Mrs. Lewis, who, with her reddish blond curls, was the only Society member present, besides Iris, whose hair did not yet show signs of gray. The majority of the sewing circle were considerably older than Iris’s twenty-one years, but she was fond of their society for their calming effect on her grieving, restless spirit.

  Just then the shelf clock on the mantle chimed eleven a.m., and a husky bellow of “Grog O!” was heard from without, signaling break time for Father and his small crew of shipbuilders.

  Iris harkened to the commotion as they stumbled in from the cold to the warm keeping room at the back of the house. She recognized the heavy thump of her father’s footsteps progressing down the hallway. He seemed to be headed for the sitting room, and someone with a much lighter step walked with him.

  Iris watched the entry for her father’s appearance. A moment later he filled the doorway.

  “Morning, ladies, and greetings of the season.” His booming captain’s voice rent the quiet.

  The ladies twittered, not immune to Father’s engaging presence. “Captain Moon,” they called and exchanged pleasantries, raising such a noisy chatter as to abruptly terminate the quiet serenity of Iris’s sewing circle.

  Father had always been regarded as something of a romantic figure on the Nook. The dashing, young sea captain who had attracted the attentions of many a Duxbury beauty, yet none had ever claimed his heart. He yearned for one across an ocean, as if his heart were meant for only one woman, a mysterious lady no one knew anything about.

  Then one day he sailed home with her as his bride. Eleanor Moon arrived with naught but an endearing love for Father and her English nursemaid. Father’s devotion had made Mama the envy of every Duxbury matron, and they remained sympathetic to the grief that lingered behind his smile, still fresh even after a year.

  Snow, meanwhile, loped inside with muddy paws, smelling of dead fish and wood shavings. She waddled from matron to squeamish matron, tail wagging, and gave them each a good sniff, but none would heed her begging until she reached Iris. Iris quickly slipped her a piece of cheese before Hetty shooed the Labrador from the tea table with a sharp scolding.

  Father called his dog to him. “I leave you now to share some hot grog and roasted chestnuts with my men, but not without escorting a late member to your gathering. She rode up on her horse just as we were breaking from our work.”

  He stepped aside to allow a young woman passage into the sitting room, so petite all sight of her had been obscured by Father’s heft. It was Iris’s firm friend, Tuppence Hart.

  Iris set aside her knitting and rose to receive her latest guest. “I’m so very pleased you could join us, Tuppence.”

  Sable brown hair framed a doe-eyed girlish face, flushed from the cold. “I had hoped to arrive sooner,” Tuppence said, “but Grandma Rachael wished me to accompany her to Ford’s store to purchase baking ingredients.”

  “And how is your grandmother?” Father asked. The handsome shoemaker’s widow was renowned for her fruitcakes and pies. It was she who most Duxbury couples commissioned to bake their wedding cakes.

  Iris’s sympathies were with dear Tuppence, a sweet country girl, who was currently enduring a heartbreak. It was courageous and unselfish of Tuppence to come, when the next fruitcake she was to help Grandma Rachael prepare would be for the wedding of Tuppence’s secret love, engaged to marry Mrs. Seabury’s daughter.

  Iris would do her best to steer conversation away from talk of the upcoming nuptials.

  “She is quite well, thank you, Captain,” Tuppence said, “and sends her regards with one of her Christmas fruitcakes.”

  Father’s gray eyes widened. “I am sure that cake was meant for the hardworking ladies of the sewing circle, but I don’t suppose an old sea captain might beg a taste.”

  A wave of heat flowed into Iris’s cheeks. Father was as pitiful as Snow, groveling for a treat.

  “Of course.” Tuppence stood only as tall as Father’s robust midsection and had to peer up for her grin to reach him. “There is plenty enough to share with the ladies and your men. Grandma wished especially to offer a treat to our poor keeper. We have all heard the tragic news. But you may be first to sample the fruitcake, Captain Moon. I insist.”

  Tuppence handed Iris her cloth-wrapped bundle, weighty and fragrant with a delicate rum aroma, and Iris excused herself to prepare a tray. Father followed and Snow trailed him, forming a procession down the hallway. As they approached the keeping room, the air hummed with robust male voices and husky laughter. The handful of shipyard workers her father employed were gathered inside, smelling of tar and sawdust. Some warmed themselves before the eight-foot-wide hearth, while others sat on benches at the long worktable. All quaffed mugs of grog and munched on roasted chestnuts and dried apples.

  Johnny was once again seated in her father’s rocker. Dark unruly hair spilled over his bandage. On his raffish face, she actually saw a smile. Not his usual wry grin, but genuine heartfelt amusement as he listened to the shipbuilders’ talk of vessels and tales of the sea, quaffing hot grog alongside them.

  “Come to join us, Iris?” he asked as she moved to the long worktable where Alice was preparing grog.

  His question took her aback. “How did you know I had arrived?”

  “I recognized the swish of your skirts.”

  Iris found this implausible and gave him a hard stare. “You recognized the swish of my skirts, you say?” She dismissed him with a sniff, as she unwrapped the dense, moist fruitcake. “Why did you not think it was Alice, who is standing not five feet from you, or even Hetty? They wear skirts, same as I.”

  “Because, Iris, when you walk, your skirt swishes just so.”

  The men roared with laughter, making Iris blush, and yet she felt delighted to find Johnny in such good spirits. She narrowed her ey
es at the firm, unyielding set of his lips. What was he thinking behind that bandage? Oh, how she wished she could penetrate those bindings to reveal his hidden thoughts. Why had he given up a successful career as a figurehead carver? Who was the woman he claimed had been the love of his life?

  “No more grog for our keeper, Alice,” her father called good-naturedly. “I believe that single cup has gone straight to his head.”

  “I’ll have a mug of hot grog for you ready in a moment, Captain Moon,” Alice said. To a teaspoon of molasses and lemon juice, she added a gill of rum then filled the mug with strong, hot tea.

  “What have you there, Miss Iris?” inquired Seth Thomas. Seated directly across the table from where she’d begun slicing up the cake, the young adzeman’s eyes widened greedily.

  “’Tis a Christmas fruitcake baked by the widow Rachael Hart.”

  The room fell silent and the other fellows gathered round.

  “Remember, Daughter, Tuppence said I was to have the first slice. And don’t you be frugal with it either.”

  “I won’t, Father.”

  “Would you like me to serve that for you, Iris?” Alice asked, grinding a bit of nutmeg on top of her father’s grog.

  “No, thank you, Alice. I can do it.” Iris took the cake platter and her father’s mug and served him before proceeding to the fellows around the room. “There’s plenty for all, but you mustn’t be greedy. One piece each,” she warned them. “I still need to serve my guests in the sitting room.”

  She reached Johnny, and taking his hand, gently placed a slice of cake in his rough palm. He raised it beneath his nose for a sniff then lifted his face to hers with a smile. “Thank you, Iris.”

  For a moment, she wondered crazily if he could see her, because something in his smile intimated he could peer into her soul. Warmth flowed down into her belly like a chug of steaming grog. Fond impressions of the present connected with her childhood devotion of the past to confirm what Iris already knew in her heart. Her Johnny could never do anyone a wrong.