That night, after Finch was asleep, Zee slipped the key out of his desk and unlocked the door to the room on the second floor, the room that had once been the master bedroom. After Finch had moved permanently downstairs, this had become her mother’s room. It was the room where Zee had heard most of Maureen’s stories. It was also the room where Maureen had died.
Zee didn’t linger. Instead she looked around to find what she’d come for, the half-finished story her mother had been working on for so long and had never been able to complete. As soon as she found it, she switched off the light and took the loose handwritten pages back downstairs, locking the door behind her. She didn’t put the key back in Finch’s desk but in the kitchen drawer, where she could access it more easily. Then she poured the rest of the bottle of last night’s wine into a glass, glanced out the kitchen window at the dark water of the harbor and the even darker and starless night sky. She closed the windows in the kitchen against the rain that was on the way, took a seat at the kitchen table, and began to read.
14
THE ONCE-BY MAUREEN AMPHITRITE DOHERTY FINCH
Once upon a time, Salem was a great world trading port. Hundreds of her ships sailed out of these waters, and there were thousands here who made their living from the sea. There were pepper millionaires and those whose ships made the far runs to China and Sumatra and other ports, trading the lowly New England cod, magically turning it into other treasures, first into molasses from the West Indies and later into such luxuries as French brandy, salt from Cádiz, Valencia oranges, and wine from Madeira.
Arlis Browne was an ambitious young seaman who had worked himself up the ladder in the whaling fleet of Nantucket. He had once been, if not exactly handsome, then clearly striking in a rough-and-tumble kind of way, and he had caught the eye of many a young girl in Nantucket. For the most part, the islanders did their best to keep their daughters away from him, for they could see that under his flashing white teeth lurked a sharper set of canines. But when Arlis Browne turned his gaze in the direction of a local merchant’s daughter, the man was so happy to have a suitor for his only child (who was not a beauty and had no other prospects) that he did not look closely at the seaman, and most certainly never checked his teeth.
The merchant died less than a year later, leaving his daughter and all his worldly goods to Arlis. A few months after that, the daughter died, some say under mysterious circumstances. Arlis sold the house and the shop and left Nantucket before any fingers could point in his direction. He had heard about Salem’s pepper millionaires, for many of the whalers were leaving the whaling fleet to make their fortunes on the wealthy merchant vessels that sailed from that famous port. With his newfound money, Arlis Browne intended to purchase his own ship and to turn his meager fortune into a grand one.
But Arlis Browne had no idea of the kind of riches he was to encounter in Salem. The merchant vessels were much larger and fancier than the ships he was accustomed to, and they were owned mostly by the old shipping families: the Crowninshields, the Derbys, and the Peabodys, or by the new partnerships and trading companies established by their heirs.
Salem’s was an aristocracy of wealth and power controlled by a handful of families for their own enrichment. So when Arlis Browne approached the shipowners with his meager offer of purchase, he was nearly laughed out of town, a slight that didn’t sit well with the prideful seaman and one he would not soon forget.
Having nowhere near the fortune needed to purchase a ship, Arlis Browne turned to the thing he knew second best: supplying the goods and services that sailors needed when they were in port.
Thus the disappointed seaman bought himself a decent if not grand house on Turner Street near one of the more than ninety wharfs that lined the bustling Salem waterfront. The house that Arlis Browne bought was not nearly as grand as the one he had sold in Nantucket, and its acquisition left him in a lower social position than the one he had abandoned, a fact that embittered him profoundly. Still, he was resourceful, and more determined than ever to succeed.
Through his harsh travels, Arlis Browne had lost some of the striking appearance that had heretofore attracted the ladies of Nantucket. In the more worldly port of Salem, his weathered face did not turn many heads. Nevertheless, he wasn’t discouraged. He knew well what he was entitled to, and he was determined to get it in any way he could. One day soon he would have power, and he would have money, and when he had enough of both, he would also have the prettiest girl in Salem as his own.
Arlis Browne hired a housekeeper, a Haitian woman, once a slave, who had been picked up in port by one of the Salem captains after her husband was freed from slavery by the British and then impressed into service in the British navy, leaving the woman alone and defenseless. She had become the captain’s mistress while on board ship, and when he grew tired of her, she was used by some of the crew as well, with the promise of release once she reached the city of Salem.
With his new housekeeper in charge, a woman who had developed the crusty, no-nonsense edge of the damaged survivor, Arlis Browne set about making money by renting rooms to sailors, providing beds and enough hard liquor that his Turner Street address became the most popular rooming house in all the port. Still ruthlessly opportunistic, he booked onto one of the ships owned by the very people who had laughed at his offer of purchase, embarking on journeys that often lasted more than a year. Coming back to port only long enough to bank his money and return to sea. Over time, he amassed a considerable fortune.
Arlis Browne’s fifth trip as first mate was a long and difficult voyage, first to Sumatra, then on to Java. When the ship arrived in Salem once again, the captain was gone and First Mate Arlis Browne had taken over the ship. No one ever knew what happened to the captain. There had been a brief inquiry into the matter, but the fact was that the ship came back with such enormous bounty, its best haul in history, that its owner quickly let his ledger sheet override his suspicions. And since jobs on a merchant ship were lucrative and hard to come by, sailors were unlikely to stick their necks out as witnesses, least of all for a dead man. With no one coming forward, the inquiry was brought to a swift close, the missing captain listed as lost at sea. The very next day, the ship’s owner hired Arlis Browne permanently as his new captain.
Having secured the position as captain, Arlis turned his attention from commerce to courtship. And just as he had in business, Arlis Browne schemed, plotted, and eventually succeeded.
Her name was Zylphia. She was a girl he’d met in town, not higher in station than he-he had learned his lesson about that-but achingly beautiful, with titian hair that sparkled red in the sunlight. She was so beautiful that her father had received many offers of marriage for the girl but had held off, hoping to snare one of the merchant-ship owners and thus secure his own fortune. But he’d been waiting for quite a while, and all the merchant owners who would pay for such a beauty were already married off to the daughters of the other prominent shipping families. And so when the offer came from Captain Browne, Zylphia’s father accepted it gladly. She was nearly nineteen, with no other prospects in sight. This was the best that could be done. No dowry needed to be offered-in fact, the reverse was true. Her beauty commanded a price in itself, the securing of the father’s future and enough money for him to retire.