The Promise Keeper: Sea Heroes of Duxbury Read online

  Over a steady rumble of thunder, Johnny gave thanks for the meal. The snow came down faster as the meal progressed. A wind had begun to howl around the circular tower. It was time to check the brightness of the lamps.

  Johnny complimented Lud as he rose from the table. “And when you return home, thank your mother again for me. This has to be one of the finest meals I have ever eaten.”

  While his assistant keeper cleaned up the dishes, Johnny began yet another climb to the lantern room.

  He carried a lantern to light his way, wearily planting one foot after another up the iron treads. The heaviness of his steps echoed in the stone enclosure, and as one stair led to yet another, fatigue began to weigh him down like a yoke borne across his shoulders. He could have asked Lud to check the lamps, but having manned the light all through this harsh stretch, he felt he must complete this last task. And yet the end was not in sight. The snow had returned and with it a lightning storm. Just this one last climb. Then Johnny decided he would turn his duties over to Lud and get the sleep he so desperately needed.

  He paused on the landing opening to his sleeping quarters. Holding his lantern high, he stepped through the opened doorway and let his gaze drift past the room’s small window to the thick snowflakes falling softly outside.

  The thunderous rumblings had since stopped, and Johnny thought then what a peaceful sight.

  He turned to resume his climb, when from behind came a flood of light. It engulfed him, blindingly brilliant in its intensity. It filled the room, the landing and steep stairwell, chasing away any reminder of nightfall.

  From overhead came a blast like the discharge of a cannon. The explosion vibrated into his very bones. Beneath him, the floor shook to the sound of shattering glass and the snap and crack of splintering wood.

  A current of white fluid fire shot down the handrail of the stairwell. It melted the iron as it made its winding descent. His skin prickled at the intense heat. Sparks flew, burning tiny holes into his clothing. Brilliant light burned his eyes and his nostrils filled with the odor of sulfur. The entire wooden structure crumbled around him. Johnny dropped the lantern.

  He thought he heard the crash as it landed, but his feet no longer touched the floor. His body was thrust backward, hurtling through the cold wintry air along with the broken planks and timber fragments that had comprised the walls of his sleeping chamber.

  In that swift moment, Johnny understood his life was over. He cried out to God for forgiveness of his sins, but his screams were absorbed by the mighty blast of thunder that followed, booming with such horrifying, violent impact, Johnny heard it echo inside his skull.

  Oddly, he thought of Salty. He’d never see his friend again. He was grateful to have visited with Captain Moon and Iris one last time. A part of him sensed Lady Moon urging him to once again be a guardian to her daughter, and now Johnny couldn’t help feeling he had failed her. Forgive me.

  Then something struck his head with intense, blinding pain and he knew no more.

  Chapter 9

  Her scream shattered the newly restored quiet of Nook House.

  Iris had been gazing out an upstairs window, peacefully watching the falling snow melt into the surf below. Surrounded by a thick mist beneath overcast skies, Pilgrim Light had stood, sure and stalwart, casting its guardian light over Duxbury Bay. It made for a comforting sight, she had reflected, when suddenly the heavens opened to a horrific bolt of lightning that struck the lantern room with a fiery explosion.

  Her scream dwindled to a whimper. Grief weakened her at the knees, and Iris gripped the window’s ledge for support. She was no stranger to grief. Grief had brought her to this room in the first place.

  This evening, the Vulture’s owner had sent a tandem team of his strongest horses hitched to a wagon. They were to transport the barque’s crew to a boarding house on Washington Street, where they would reside until their strength was restored, and they were able to begin the process of pulling the wrecked vessel off the rocks to determine if she could be salvaged. While Father and Hetty saw the last of them off, Iris had retreated to the second floor bedroom her parents once shared.

  With Father abandoning the room intact, Iris was left to either dispose of or claim her mother’s possessions for herself, one by one, little by little, moving Mama’s articles out and thereby bearing the heartache of her loss in increments. The first time, she had taken the miniature from the fireplace mantel and the following week a quilted bonnet from the bottom of the armoire to wear on her walks. And so it went. She’d wear Mama’s topaz earrings to meeting one Sunday and her mother’s scarlet silk cloak the next.

  This evening she had come for another of Mama’s possessions.

  She had lit a lantern and moved to the thick, carved chest at the foot of the bed. She turned the key in its lock until she heard a click then pushed open the heavy lid. Reaching inside, she sought a touch of soft wool.

  The bedroom door had opened wider with a yawning creak. Iris startled. A pair of eyes gleamed from the dark hall. Snow entered and padded up to her, nuzzling her neck with a cold, wet nose.

  As Iris had wiped the cold clamminess from her skin, Snow proceeded to bury her head inside the chest, snuffling its contents. Iris smiled at the comical scene and had given the Labrador a nudge so she might pull forth the shawl her mother once crocheted in yarn spun of the Whitney farm’s Merino ewes, died to match the yellow and green colors of Nook House.

  She’d been standing at the window with Snow, wrapped in the shawl, when it happened.

  Iris could hardly believe what she was seeing. She was sickened by it. The beautiful, white lighthouse that had lured her to the captain’s walk every morning for a year was no more. She shuddered to think what had become of her cousin and Keeper Mayne, for she held little hope for their fates as she watched the flames consume what was left of the tower. Smoke and fire rose out of the forest of Clark’s Island.

  A tear slipped down her cheek. The pain of her mother’s loss revived afresh in her heart, and now she could be facing yet another loss. Would heartache shadow her forever? What was it about Keeper Mayne that made her feel she had lost a dear friend? What was happening to their lives? In such a moment of shock and sorrow it was hard not to question, did God still love her?

  *

  The Earl of Treybarwick was waiting when the wagon arrived to collect the Vulture’s crew. Gregory plodded across the snowy farmyard as stealthily as he was able and slipped in amongst them for the ride to town. It had been simple, really. Most still suffered the ills of having nearly frozen to death to notice he had not been present inside the house. Any who might have heeded his sudden appearance grew distracted by some new commotion about a lightning strike off shore.

  Lightning. Thunder. Fire and brimstone. They were all a trifling compared to the fury that raged within him, Lord Treybarwick. His fingers dug into the traveling satchel pressed to his chest. He clutched it not for warmth, but for the reassurance the pistol case inside afforded him. In the dank, dark cellar of this rustic American manor, he’d gotten the answers he’d come for. Alas, they were not the words he had traveled an ocean to hear.

  To say he felt stricken would be to greatly understate his present mindset. Grief like a sword pierced his gut, and there it agonizingly twisted and turned as though he was being drawn and quartered. Of course, physically, he’d been spared the worst of the shipwreck, having spent the duration of his ordeal by the warmth of the galley fire, while he was plied with more cups of bitter American coffee than any English gentry should be forced to endure.

  Gregory well imagined he looked as white-faced as the wretches seated beside him.

  His Eleanor was dead.

  Dead!?

  It seemed inconceivable, and yet had it not been for that traitorous seaman who’d come to his Cornish country home, quite by surprise, looking to spill his secret for money, Gregory might never have learned what became of her. All Cornwall thought she’d drowned in that tempestuous river behind
his country estate.

  The seaman had gotten his due, of course. He wouldn’t have come at all, he’d explained, but he needed money. For his family. An Englishman by birth, he’d made a career serving on American merchant vessels, but now he was desperate. He’d been injured, rendering him unable to find suitable employment. Gregory had listened to his guilty ramblings and given him his coin. All he’d asked, in fact. No quibbling. He even let the weathered creature bask in his newfound wealth for a while, sharing with him his best port, his finest cigars. Gregory thanked him and eased his conscience by assuring that leathery old fellow the secret would go no further than his drawing room.

  He’d left the estate a happy man. How unfortunate that he’d been robbed and killed shortly after his departure.

  Oh, he’d gotten his due. Indeed, he had.

  “I’ve been a fool,” he had cried. “I should have gone to Captain Moon. He would have helped me. And now God is punishing me for betraying him.”

  “If by God, you mean me,’ Gregory had responded before shooting him dead, “then you are correct.”

  To think. All of that distasteful business. Traveling across an ocean alone, with not even a manservant to attend him, only to discover Eleanor had died while he was on his way to reclaiming her.

  And yet, for one glorious moment, he had savored the sweet thrill of victory. No sooner had he been removed from that doomed barque, when there she stood, waiting for him in her favorite silk cloak. But how could that be? She looked as young and fresh and lovely as she had on her coming out, when Eleanor had taken London by storm nearly a quarter of a century ago.

  “Young man, can you help me?” Gregory had cried out to the servant he’d followed to the back of the house. “That woman you were with on the bluff. Tell me. Who is she? She looks like someone I once knew.”

  The lad humbled before him, looking uncertain and confused. “My lady?” he’d replied in a weak voice. “She is my lady, but she is not … she is not Lady Moon.” He had fretted his lower lip and wrung his ungloved hands, red from the cold. “Lady Moon was my friend. She liked my shells. The shells I found for her. The prettiest shells I could find. I miss her, my lady. She was kind to me.”

  Tears had welled in his brown eyes, eyes which took on the round softness of a whelp’s. Indeed, with his limp hair falling into his eyes, Gregory was reminded of his own fox hound.

  “She’s gone forever,” the lad whimpered. “She won’t ever come back. Iris told me so.”

  For all the rather hale appearance he made, clearly the lad was of a weak mind. Gregory hoped to use it to his advantage. “Iris, you say? And was Iris the girl in the cloak? And if so, then where has Lady Moon gone?”

  Gregory received the news with more volatile emotion than when he’d first discovered Eleanor had disappeared with her nurse. She was dead and had left behind a daughter who resembled her greatly. The fact he had come so close to finding her, but would never see Eleanor again was too much for his mind to process. His body absorbed the discovery with severe trembling and an overwhelming sense of loss.

  With a gasp, the halfwit Peter watched him shiver uncontrollably, watched the blood drain from his face, but Gregory refused to take refuge inside the house. So Peter had escorted him into the cellar, where he banked a fire in the great chimney and roasted him a sausage on a stick, while Gregory changed into the driest clothing he could find in his satchel.

  Before Peter departed, for he had been sent to collect bricks to be warmed in the hearth, Gregory told him, “I would like to be your friend. Would you let me be your friend, Peter? I promise to come back and see you again, but you must promise me something. You must promise you will not tell anyone you’ve seen me. Can I trust you to keep a secret?”

  The young man hung his head in distress, shaking it as he stared into the fire that cast a warm glow over his effeminate features. “A s-secret?” He followed with mournful sounds of uncertainty and confusion. “Sometimes. For a little while.”

  “Yes, Peter, a little while. I will announce my identity to Captain Moon at the proper time, I promise you that. But for now, isn’t it enough that I once knew and loved Lady Moon as you did, and I believe she would want you to help me?”

  Later that evening, in that corner of town called Sodom, named for its wealth of drinking establishments, Gregory sat by the fire with a bowl of the tavern’s famous fish chowder served with large, soft crackers. Naturally, as a stranger, he drew stares from the locals. Under a pretense of hating to eat alone, he invited some to join him in a glass.

  It proved easy to loosen their tongues, for all the talk in Duxbury Town was of the doomed Vulture and the successful rescue of those aboard, led by Captain Ezra Moon. The townsmen were eager to talk to one who could relay the events firsthand. Captain Moon was a much-loved figure in the community, and they raised their tankards to his bravery. Gregory joined them and then quietly expressed his deepest sympathies for the grieving captain who he’d heard had lost his beloved wife.

  Ah … therein lay quite the tale, they said, and with another free round, the thirsty New Englanders told it. From as far across town as the old ordinary on Tremont Street, stories still circulated of the day Ezra Moon brought a mysterious bride home to the Nook. A feckless, brazen, American sea captain, he had pirated a titled lady off Cornwall’s rocky shores in the dead of night with naught but the clothes on her back and her nurse. Their love affair was as legendary as Lady Moon’s beauty, and they loathed to be separated, one from the other. And so, his lady had sailed with him.

  Their conversation faded into an annoying hum of coarse New England dialects as Gregory fell deep in thought. No doubt the young Captain Moon had thought himself quite clever. It would have been impossible to track down an English noblewoman who constantly sailed the seas on an American vessel. The mystery of what had become of Eleanor, the puzzle of how she’d managed to escape him, had been tormenting Gregory for nearly a quarter century. And now, to learn of her whereabouts, only to discover she was out of his reach and gone forevermore, maddened him beyond reason.

  There was nothing for Lord Treybarwick here in Duxbury.

  Nothing except revenge.

  Chapter 10

  In the darkness of a new day yet to dawn, Iris awaited word with Hetty in Nook House’s sitting room. They sat wrapped in their shawls, each lost in silent prayers for Lud and Keeper Mayne. Snow lay on the Brussels carpet before the fire, her large white head resting upon her front paws with her eyes focused intently upon them.

  The silence was maddening. There was no sound but for the ticking of the mantle clock and the crackle and hiss of the embers as they died on the grate.

  Only the day before, Iris had adorned the room’s yellow cream walls with swags of bay leaf garlands in celebration of the Christmas season. Peter had attached them to the cornice moldings under her discerning eye, making certain they hung evenly. The decoration lent no holiday cheer today.

  No sooner had the Nook rescuers settled down to some well-deserved quiet after a tense, exhausting day, when they were called to another heroic mission across the bay.

  Her father had launched out with a party of twelve, fearing the worst.

  No beacon guided their way to the western shores of Clark’s Island. Duxbury Bay lay in darkness for the first night in over a year, its waters visible only beneath the watch lights of those vessels anchored along the coast. Pilgrim Light was no more. All that remained to indicate its location was the smoke rising above the tops of the forest trees.

  Iris grew impatient for news and straightened against the rounded back of the room’s salmon pink Hepplewhite sofa.

  Snow’s ears pricked and she jumped to her feet, alert. Iris heard nothing to alarm the dog, but the Labrador barked out a warning.

  “Make haste, my Iris,” said Hetty patting her hand. “They’ll be here soon.”

  Hetty rose from the sofa and followed Snow out of the room with Iris trailing behind. As they approached the keeping room at the ba
ck of the house, the air warmed from the fire burning in the hearth.

  Iris entered to find Snow already standing sentry at the door and Hetty peering through the leaded, diamond-paned window, but there was nothing to see, nothing to hear. Only darkness and quiet. Iris seated herself on a bench at the long worktable to wait, and it wasn’t until several minutes later when Snow started scratching at the door. A commotion could be heard from without over her excited barking.

  Hetty unlatched the heavy batten door. Father and his men stumbled in from the cold, carrying the still, lifeless body of Keeper Mayne. They passed by her as they headed for the borning room. Iris looked down into the keeper’s ghostly countenance, his handsome features peaceful in death, and burst into tears.

  Great heaving sobs overtook her. She’d known him only days but felt a strange kinship toward him. Johnny. Something about his presence carried the familiarity of an old friend even though Iris scarcely knew the man.

  Father took one look at her shaking shoulders, tears trailing down her cheeks, and said, “He lives. At first, we thought surely he must be dead, and perhaps he should have died given the way we found him. But no, Johnny is alive. I’m no doctor, but he is merely unconscious, I would wager. And not a scratch on him, as far as we can tell. ’Tis a miracle.”

  “Quickly lads, set him down upon the bed where I can get a good look at him,” Hetty said as she scurried on ahead into the room. “Gently now.”

  Iris watched her father, Benjamin Bliss and Seth Thomas lower Keeper Mayne to the goose-feather mattress. She wiped away a fresh tear. He looked unharmed.

  Hetty stepped forward to remove his boots, but Father offered, “Allow me.”