He had done moderately well on the examination, then stalled for years as a “passed midshipman.” But the Napoleonic Wars had lofted him swiftly over a lieutenancy to post captain. And there he stayed until, in his fifty-first year, a letter arrived from his Boston cousin Freegrace Duke, asking if he would consider a director’s seat on the Board of Duke & Sons to fill the vacancy left by the death of his father, Sedley.
That his father had died was a shock to James. He had heard no news from him nor of him for many years. He had never had a letter, nor a remembrance, never a visit. He thought that if Sedley had left him anything in his will it would be an insultingly paltry sum, as a single shilling, or a savage castigation for causing the death of his first wife, James’s mother; he had always known why his father hated him.
As the days passed he considered the idea of sitting on the Board of the family timber company. Little had ever come to James from the Dukes beyond a yearly allowance of fifty pounds. If he accepted, he would have to make concessions, would have to revert to being an American. He would bring a touch of English distinction to the no doubt squalid Board meetings of Duke & Sons — likely the reason they invited him to join them. He could imagine those meetings, a scarred oaken table with half a dozen backwoodsmen slouched around it on pine benches, tankards of rum-laced home-brewed beer, tipsy ribaldries, for he had no illusions that the Dukes were models of moral behavior.
Before he could draft his cool note of refusal, a letter arrived from a Boston law office signed by the attorney Hugh Trumbull. It was late December, the days short and dark, the worst of the English year. Advocate Trumbull begged James’s attendance at Trumbull & Tendrill as soon as he might manage the journey in order to hear something to his advantage; enclosed was a draft for one hundred pounds (drawn on Duke & Sons) for his passage to Boston. So rarely had the words “something to your advantage” come to him that he decided on the minute to accept Freegrace’s offer and remove permanently to Boston. “Advantage” meant more than a single shilling! He made his arrangements and booked passage for Boston.
• • •
The Western Blessing was crowded with German immigrants journeying to Pennsylvania to found a utopia and these people quarreled incessantly with each other about the details of the earthly paradise to come. To keep free of them James Duke stayed in his cabin during the day, coming out only to take the wintery air or to dine and drink with Captain Euclid Gunn, who was even older than himself but of an equal rank. Over a roast chicken they raked through sea acquaintances held in common. They spoke of retired and disabled friends as the level sank in the decanter. “Captain Richard Moore, one of the most ablest seamen I ever knew, is forced to open a herring stall in Bristol. You are a fortunate man, Captain Duke, to be connected to a wealthy family. Some of us depart from the sea to live out sad lives ashore selling fish or driving a goods cart. I myself have no expectations of a rich sinecure but hope I will go to Davy Jones afore I wheel a barrow of mussels.”
“Shocked to hear that Dick Moore has come to such a pass. But, Captain Gunn, I am sure that a happier future awaits you than clam mongering. Do you not have a reputation for fashioning small attractive tables?”
“It is only my amusement, you know, never to make a living from it.”
“You might try — everyone admires small tables — as that one,” he said and he pointed to an example of the captain’s handiwork, an ebon side table inlaid with a ship in full sail cut from walrus-tusk ivory. “Any mariner’s family would be happy to possess such a handsome article of furnishing.”
“You must have it when you disembark! I will make another, but you shall take this one as a memento of your years at sea and this voyage. I insist. Look, it has a secret drawer where you may keep your love letters, heh.”
• • •
Once a week other choice guests joined the captain’s table, and once a female, Mistress Posey Brandon, a dark-haired lady of considerable stature, quite overtopping the gentlemen at the table, but sitting silent for the most part unless pressed to speak. She was traveling home after a long visit with a relative, to rejoin her husband, Winthrop Brandon, a Presbyterian preacher who had made his name with a book of virtuous precepts. Another passenger, Thomas Gort, showed her excessive attention. James understood why Gort fawned; she had great onyx-dark eyes fringed by thick lashes. But Gort made too much of her. When Mrs. Brandon said she had visited Madame Tussaud’s exhibition, at the Lyceum Theatre, of wax curiosities of crime Gort begged for repulsive details. The lady demurred, saying she had averted her eyes before many of the exhibits.
“I do not see how a member of the gentler sex, even a German or French lady, could have fastened on such an unpleasant mode of expression,” she said and cut at her meat. “I understand she first gained her skill in making wax flowers for family funeral wreaths.” After that she said nothing more.
• • •
The days of tilting horizon passed slowly. As they neared the continent they saw increasing dozens of ships, wooden leviathans rope-strung like musical instruments, shimmering with raw salt. Boston harbor was so jammed they anchored a twenty-minute row from the docks.
James located his trunk, a scuffed brown affair, on the deck. He did not see the promised inlaid table with the boxes and bundles to go ashore and found Captain Gunn on the bridge.
“I thought I would thank you again for the table,” he said.
It seemed to him Captain Gunn showed a coolness. “Ah,” he remarked.
“Sir, I look forward to enjoying it in my new quarters.”
“Ah.”
“Shall I fetch it on deck myself?”
“Ha! You, Woodrow!” He bellowed at a sailor. “Fetch the small table in my cabin to the deck for this gentleman.” There was undoubtedly a sneer embedded in the word gentleman. James Duke guessed that Captain Gunn was in his true self a parsimonious man made momentarily generous by Madeira.
• • •
He was crowded into the tender with two dozen passengers, Bostonians from their accents. In their anxiety to get on shore they were very restive, passing bundles back and forth. A portly matron stood up to receive a small trunk. The weight surprised her and she swayed, tried to hold it, then fell with a shriek into the wintery harbor. Gasping, she clutched at the gunwale, and her weight dislodged two more passengers. Captain Duke stretched out his hand to a terrified man and in slow but inexorable motion the tender rose on its side and sent ten or twelve more people bellowing and clawing over the side. Gasping (for he could not swim), James Duke thrashed his arms, trying for the gunwale. His hand touched it, though he could barely feel it, then he went under again as the heavy woman wrapped one arm around him. He escaped his captor and with an atavistic swimming motion burst upward into the sweet air. Something clenched his hair and dragged him to the side of the tender, something got hold of the back of his coat collar and hauled relentlessly. He came up over the gunwale, crashed into the bottom of the boat and looked up at his savior — a woman wearing a black bonnet and staring at him with lustrous, intensely black eyes — Mistress Brandon, who had exhibited the strength of two men.