The Charm School by Susan Wiggs

Eleven

Aboard at a ship’s helm,

A young steerman steering with care.

—Walt Whitman, Aboard at a Ship’s Helm

“Tell me about your family, Journey,” Isadora said.

Seated across from her at the galley table, he looked up from mending a shirt. The soft blue fabric lay draped over his bony knees, and a faraway expression clouded his gaze.

She didn’t have long to wonder where he had been in his daydream. He said, “I haven’t seen my Delilah or my babies in four years.”

Isadora felt each quiet, simple word like a velvet-gloved blow. She’d always known that slavery was an inhuman, unjust institution, but her conviction sprang from reading pamphlets and essays penned by educated men and women.

By contrast, Journey’s presence, his dignity, his quiet despair, illustrated the point with brutal clarity.

“Does it disturb you to talk about them?” she asked.

“Not any more than not talking about them.” He stabbed his needle into the seam of the shirt, a sturdy broadcloth garment commonly worn by all the crewmen.

Almost all, she reflected, shifting uncomfortably on the bench. Now that they had entered southern climes, she hadn’t suffered from the grippe in days. Yet her corset chafed more than ever. The soft broadcloth would feel wonderful.

Knowing her mother would call for smelling salts at the very thought of her daughter lowering her standards of dress, Isadora had removed one layer of petticoats. She felt wicked doing so, but much more comfortable. Each day, her attitude relaxed a little more. Her confidence grew a little stronger. It was a wonder, after so many years of trying to press herself into society’s mold, to suddenly suspect that the problem was with the mold, not with her.

Now, seventy-three miles north of the equator and a little east of St. Paul’s Rocks, she made up her mind to shed another layer or two.

“Then tell me about your family, do,” she urged Journey, feeling petty for dwelling on her own discomfort.

He went back to sewing, and his expression relaxed into the dreaminess she’d glimpsed earlier. “Delilah and me, we met at Sunday meeting. She was a sassy thing, always two steps from trouble. But nobody minded, ’cause she sang like a lark in church and had the face of an angel.”

He smiled, and Isadora wondered what it would be like to have a man smile that way at the thought of her. When he pictured Delilah as an angel, did he mean it literally, with a halo and wings, or was it the love in his heart that gilded her with a special aura?

She savored the fanciful thought. How singular it was to be a shipmate, she thought suddenly. How easy it was to get involved in their concerns. She found life under sail so absorbing that she ceased thinking about Chad Easterbrook for days on end. She’d added almost nothing to the letter she’d been composing to him, which she intended to send the next time they hailed a ship. Her reports to Abel were perfunctory. Aside from personally attacking her at every turn, Ryan’s behavior had been disgustingly exemplary.

“So you met in church,” she prompted Journey, eager for the rest of his story.

His polished, narrow face softened with memory. “Mr. Jared—that was Ryan’s father—always wanted me to marry up with a girl from Albion, but after I met Dee, I wouldn’t hear of it, even though I could only see her on Sundays—on account of her living at another place.”

Isadora understood what he wouldn’t say. Intermarriage among the slaves of the same plantation insured that a new generation of laborers would come along. The very idea was so outrageous that she could hardly comprehend it.

“So you were permitted to marry,” she ventured.

One corner of Journey’s mouth lifted. “Ma’am, one of these days you should ask Ryan how we were ‘permitted’ to marry.”

She didn’t ask Ryan anything these days. They were both being stubborn about staying out of each other’s way. She was determined that he would be first to breach the silence.

“We married up when I was sixteen. Dee was fifteen, near as we can tell.” He sewed swiftly, the needle stabbing into the fabric and emerging with a deft rhythm.

He spoke so casually that Isadora took a moment to realize that slaves weren’t told their birthdays. Of course, she thought. A birthday would humanize a slave, and the system depended on keeping them on the level of chattel or livestock.

“Then the girls came along—first Ruthie and then Celeste. Ruthie, she’s the prettiest baby in the whole wide world, and no mistake. Celeste, too, I reckon,” he hastened to add. “But I ain’t never seen Celeste. Ain’t never seen my baby girl.”

He pulled his large hand from beneath the fabric. A dark pearl of blood glistened on the tip of his finger. He put it briefly in his mouth, then removed it to say, “Excuse me, miss. Best go clean this up before I ruin the shirt.”

Ain’t never seen my baby girl.

His words haunted the galley like mournful ghosts. After he stepped outside, Isadora walked over to the table and picked up his work. The seam was perfect, with stitches so fine she could barely see them. She ran her hand over the fabric, and somehow she knew that Dee—a woman she didn’t know and would never meet—would give her very soul to mend this shirt.

When the Silver Swan lay-to a few miles north of the line, a full-moon calm settled over the bark. Yet the seas were rough with Atlantic combers that had been gathering muscle for thousands of miles, all the way from the coast of Africa. Lily and Fayette, who had enjoyed a few days of comfort, descended again in seasick misery to their cabin.

Isadora, Ryan observed from his splay-legged stance at the helm, seemed to be getting on better than ever. She spent a lot of time on deck or in the galley or chart room, absorbing knowledge and sailor lore like a sea sponge. She moved less awkwardly around the decks, having learned to steady herself with one hand on the rail or rigging.

She haunted him, appearing out of nowhere and pretending he wasn’t there. As they approached the equator, Ryan stood at the helm once again. He saw her making her way aft, clearly unaware of his proximity.

She paused to stoop down and scoop up the cat, draping it over one arm and stroking its fur. The new assurance in her movements and posture made a dramatic difference in the way she appeared. Her clothes were not so fussy and fine as those she’d worn in the Beacon Hill drawing room of her parents. Her short hair spilled untidily around her neck and shoulders.

Yet for all her dishevelment, she looked...different. She carried herself with a new posture and attitude. He found that he preferred a woman in tatters and bare feet who would look him square in the eye to a humble, perfectly groomed female who shrank timidly from the slightest slant of a glance.

He was annoyed at her for ignoring him, but at least he respected her.

At the moment she stood unguarded, pausing to lift her face to the summery sky filled with the lofty billows of high clouds. Lately she hadn’t bothered with bonnet or parasol and she seemed not to notice the effect the wind and sun were having. Her pale skin had taken on a honeyed hue; her hair bore streaks of gold. It was a look Ryan knew her strait-laced mother would term common.

Yet he had another word for it.

A high-pitched squeal pierced the air, startling both Isadora and Ryan. She dropped the cat, who scampered under a bumboat. Looking aft, Ryan spied the Doctor with the pig held under one arm, a broad, curved knife in his other hand.

“Heavenly days,” Isadora murmured, rushing past Ryan. “He’s going to slaughter Lydia.”

Ryan followed her. “Lydia? You call the pig Lydia?”

She ignored him. “Doctor! Oh, Doctor, please stop, do!” she called down the decks.

The cook turned. “What is it, miss?”

“You can’t—you mustn’t kill the pig.”

The Doctor glanced at Ryan. “Porker’s all fatted up. I figured it’s time. Skipper?”

Ryan looked at the snuffling, struggling creature under the cook’s arm. He looked at the horror and grief on Isadora’s face. “I suppose we could grant the beast a reprieve,” he said offhandedly. “We’re decently close to Rio, and stores are good.”

“But—”

“Leave go, Doctor. She grieved for three days over that last chicken you stewed. I can’t abide a whining woman.”

The next day Ryan spied Isadora shading her eyes to watch Click and Craven tarring the mainmast. The men swung in saddles, their bare legs and bare chests smudged with tar. They paused in their work to wave at her and, grinning, she waved back.

It wasn’t proper, Ryan thought, her seeing barechested men wherever she turned.

Ducking under a shroud, she didn’t notice him until she was almost upon him.

“Oh,” she said, “Captain Calhoun.”

“I thought I’d take a turn at the helm.” He spoke with elaborate indifference.

She eyed him nervously, as if she did not quite trust him—or herself with him. “I wanted to be topside when we cross the equator. Will you say when?”

He was ridiculously happy to oblige. Perhaps that was the virtue of Isadora. Perhaps that was why the crew indulged her whims. Her wide-eyed curiosity about everything relieved the monotony of the long days at sea.

“Mr. Datty, at the helm, sir,” he called to Timothy.

“Aye, sir.” The boy arrived with a sharp salute that amused Ryan.

He gave the helm to Timothy and his free hand to Isadora. She hesitated, eyeing his hand as if it were a venomous serpent.

“It’s made of flesh and blood like any other man’s,” he said lightly, hiding his annoyance. Color misted her cheeks, and he laughed. “Unless that’s precisely the problem.”

Almost defiantly, she put her hand in his. Hers felt...surprising. Yes, that was it. Women of her station were supposed to have soft, moist skin. Isadora, by contrast, had a sturdy grip and...calluses.

“You take your lessons in sail making and seamanship seriously, I gather,” he said, leading the way to a companion ladder and reaching to help her up.

“I take everything seriously, Captain.”

“I noticed. Why is that, Isadora?” They came to the bow of the ship and he turned to study her.

“I have no idea.”

“There!” Ryan said suddenly, shading his eyes. “There it is!”

“There what is?”

“The equator.” He took out his spyglass and handed it to her.

She closed one eye and peered through it. “What am I looking for?”

“The equator. Isn’t that what you came here to see?”

“See? But—”

“Keep looking.” Furtively, Ryan plucked a hair from his head. On the pretext of adjusting the focus, he held the hair crosswise over the lens. “Now can you see it? The equator?”

“Why, yes,” she crowed, clearly elated. “I do believe I can.” Her mouth curved into a smile that had a disquieting effect on him. “How fascinating. And isn’t that an elephant walking along the line?”

He took the spyglass from her and put it away. “I was fairly certain you wouldn’t fall for that.”

She regarded him with her usual prim disapproval, though her eyes still danced with humor. “I am not in the habit of ‘falling’ for things, Captain. I’ve no idea why you would attempt such a prank with me.”

“To see you smile. You don’t do it often enough, and you should.”

She regarded him somberly. “Why should I?”

“Because...” Ryan began to feel foolish. “Because I order you to, and I’m the captain.”

She rewarded him with a grin. “Then I suppose I have no choice.”

He grinned back. “No, ma’am, I don’t guess you do.” He leaned back against a timber head. “We’re about nine hundred miles out from Rio.”

“It sounds like an unbearably large number.” She shaded her eyes and gazed at the nothingness that surrounded them.

“The briny blue. As far as the eye can see. That’s why I like the crew to get along.”

“They seem to. Even Mr. Click has been quiet this past week. When do you think we’ll make Rio?”

“Within the week. There’s a premium of a hundred dollars a day for each day under average for the whole trip.” He reached up, running his hand along an awning. “This looks good. Is it new?”

“I doused it with salt water,” she said, meeting his puzzled gaze. “Luigi says it prevents mildew.”

“So it does,” Ryan said, and though they spoke of mundane matters, he felt a beat of emotion that had nothing to do with awnings or deadlines or anything but the woman standing with him on his ship.

This was new to him. She was new to him. In the past he’d been drawn to women whose beauty outweighed their brains, whose idle chatter rang louder than their common sense—in short, women who didn’t make him see himself for what he was—a spoiled, shallow young man who hadn’t grasped the importance of social conscience until it was too late. He used to prefer women who didn’t challenge him to be more than he was. But not anymore. He wasn’t certain exactly when or why it had happened, but at some point he had started to feel something soft and new for Isadora Peabody.

“Look,” he said, nervous with the sensations churning in his gut, “I realize we haven’t been getting on—”

“Not for lack of my trying.”

He gritted his teeth to stifle a retort. “Don’t ruin my graciousness by being infuriating.”

“I was not—”

“Only because I’m stopping you. Now, hush up and listen. I was angry about the way you made yourself a part of this enterprise. You used your connections with Abel Easterbrook to your advantage.”

“It’s no more than men of commerce do.”

“Damn it,” he burst out, “you are the hardest person to offer an apology to.”

She flinched at his language. “Is that what this is? An apology?”

“Yes, damn it,” he shouted.

“Well, it’s not working.”

“Not for lack of my trying,” he said, mimicking her.

“Steady there, miss,” Chips cautioned Isadora. “Keep one hand in the rigging no matter what, and make sure your feet stay balanced in the ratlines.”

Though she had climbed only a few feet off the deck, Isadora felt vulnerable, particularly when the ship crested a swell and listed a little. Yet despite her uncertainty, she felt proud and excited. The Isadora who had left Boston Harbor would never have dared to climb a ship’s rigging. But since the men of the Swan had decided to teach her the ways of the sea, she had dared a hundred new things and her confidence grew every day.

“What the devil—?” Ryan Calhoun hurried over, a scowl on his face. “Damn it, Chips, you can’t let the lady go aloft.”

“It’s not his fault, Captain,” Isadora said hastily. “I insisted. I heard a rumor that Cape Frio is near and I wanted to see it.”

The truth was, she wanted to see everything. For her, the voyage had grown and burgeoned into a journey of self-discovery. She had no idea what she would find at the end. All she knew was that she felt more at home aboard this ship than she ever had in the middle of her own life in blessedly distant Boston.

“Come down from there this instant,” Ryan said, his voice harsh with command. He stood leaning against the capstan, looking unconsciously appealing as well as commanding.

Isadora couldn’t stop the wave of warmth that engulfed her. Though he couldn’t know it, he had everything to do with her newfound sense of belonging. The way she looked or spoke or comported herself mattered not at all to Ryan Calhoun. He treated her no better and no worse than his crew of seamen. Thanks to him, she’d learned to endure a flash of male temper, to understand teasing and joking, to see humor in situations that used to appall the old Isadora.

The amusing part was that he seemed to have no idea how good this was for her. She smiled bravely down at him. Climbing the spanker rigging had seemed such a grand idea when she’d first thought of it. Chips scrambled around like a monkey, making it look so simple. Yet now that she had begun her ascent, she began to regret it.

“Don’t make me order you down,” Ryan said furiously.

She quickly made up her mind. Pride demanded that she stay her course.

Since crossing the equator several days earlier, they had gone back to avoiding one another. Let him save his roguish charm for girls with empty heads and full bosoms. Isadora was not about to be taken in by him.

“I’m going to continue, Mr. Pole,” she said to Chips.

The ship’s carpenter sent Ryan a helpless look. “Opposite hand and foot every time, miss, there’s the way. Opposite hand and foot.”

“Damn it, I’ll keelhaul you, Pole,” Ryan shouted. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“You won’t.” Chips failed to suppress a grin. “I have to help the lady. It’s her first time, you know.”

Isadora tried not to smile as she grasped the rigging in one hand and raised her opposite foot to the next ratline. Her blowing skirts made the going awkward, and it was immodest in the extreme to climb in this manner, but she couldn’t help herself. She hungered for a sight of the wild, exotic land they had sailed so fast and so far to find.

“I can see your drawers,” Ryan Calhoun called loudly.

She nearly let go. Only a keen sense of self-preservation kept her hanging on. “A gentleman would not look. And he certainly wouldn’t make a comment.”

“Who would ever mistake me for a gentleman?”

The rigging bowed out in the opposite direction and Isadora realized he was climbing, too. In three quick hauls, he had hoisted himself into the ratlines and was facing her through the web of rope.

“Since you insist on making this climb,” he said, “I’ll do it with you so I can save you if you start to fall.”

“If I start to fall,” she said ruefully, “there’ll be no saving me.” She nearly laughed at the expression on his face. “Don’t worry. I do not plan to fall. And you really don’t have to climb with me.”

“You’d rather have me stand on deck below you, looking up your skirts with the rest of them?”

Her hands gripped the line with a vengeance. “I shall not answer that insolent question.” Without further ado, she continued upward, as she had seen the seamen do so often. The climb was harder than it looked, for the loose ropes tended to bow this way and that with the sway of the ship.

She tried her best to ignore Ryan Calhoun. When they were halfway up the topmast, Isadora made the mistake of looking down.

“Dear God,” she whispered.

“It’s a long way down, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly.

She ignored him. The deck appeared tiny, dotted with doll-size crates and hatches and coils. Due to the slant of the ship, she knew if she climbed any farther, she’d be out over open water.

The wind whistled through her hair and the sun warmed her face. Lord, but it was hot. Sweat soaked her in places she dared not mention, and a blister had formed on the palm of her right hand.

This was a terrible, foolish idea. Why had she wanted to climb the rigging today?

“A bit higher,” Ryan urged her, his voice insolent and teasing. “Up here, where the ratlines are set too close together, we call this the ladies’ ladder. You’d think it was made for you.”

She hated that he could see her fright. Setting her sights aloft, she continued to climb. The blister on her hand burst and then stung with sweat and grime from the rope. Far below, the sea resembled blue marble, veined in purest white, intimidating as a snake pit as it foamed and seethed around the ship.

Oh, please,she thought helplessly. Let me survive this and I’ll never try anything adventurous again.

Her gaze tracked the arrow-straight wake of the Swan, then found the horizon to the south. What she saw gave her such a jolt that she nearly let go of the rigging.

“Steady there,” Ryan said, climbing up beside her. “You’re finally getting a good view of Brazil.”

“It’s astonishing,” she said, forgetting to be mad at him. “The mountains are so beautiful—they look as though they’re draped in green velvet.”

“There’s Corcovado, and the tallest ones are called ‘Dedos de Deus,’” Ryan said, indicating a row of five sharp peaks nudging the shoreline. The rich emerald green, set against the clear blue sky, created a picture so intense that Isadora’s eyes smarted.

“The Fingers of God,” she translated.

“The nearest mountain town is Petropolis. In the summer, every carioca worth his salt moves up there for cooler weather and to get away from the yellow jack.”

She shuddered. “The yellow fever, you mean.” It was a terrible killer, she’d read, particularly virulent among Yankees who had no resistance to the disease. “It’s hard to imagine such a plague on a land so beautiful.”

She kept her gaze on the horizon, enthralled with the view, until her hands trembled with the effort of holding herself aloft. “Captain,” she said suddenly. “Look there—to the northeast.”

He glanced back over his shoulder and studied the sky. The distant clouds had a peculiar bruised quality. A yellowish caste tinged the light coming from that quadrant, and as she held on, Isadora noticed the heaviness of the seas. “There’s a storm coming, isn’t there?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. A squall.”

A shriek swirled up from the deck. “What in the name of heaven are you doing?”

Startled, Isadora lost her hold on the rigging. For a split second she hung weightless, flying free, doomed. Then, with a joint-twisting jolt, she stopped falling. Ryan had reached through the rigging and held her by the wrists, the cords in his neck standing out with the strain.

“I suggest,” he said between his teeth, “that you grab hold of the ropes. Now.”

She obeyed mechanically, her hands quicker than her mind. Another blister, this one on her left hand, burst as she took hold of the rigging.

“Get down from there this instant,” Lily called, her voice strident with fear. “Both of you.”

“Thank you,” Isadora said, staring with gratitude and incredulity at Ryan. “Truly, you saved my life.”

“I don’t appreciate having to save lives,” he grumbled, starting to climb down. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

Something in his voice gave her pause. With an unaccustomed prickle in her throat, she climbed down, groping carefully with each foot and then following it with the opposite hand. Her palms stung, but she didn’t care. The sensation of falling, and then of having Ryan catch her, had been extraordinary. Mere fright didn’t begin to cover it.

“Did you get hurt?” he asked.

“No.” She sent him a tremulous smile. “I’ve never scared anyone before. Not in that way, I mean.”

“Then in what way?”

She fixed her eyes on each successive rung of the rigging and spoke from a place she had always kept private. “I suppose I was quite frightening to the young men who were sent to dance with me at parties.”

He gave a derisive snort. “Then those young men were more yellow than greasy dogs.”

She didn’t want platitudes from him; she didn’t expect sympathy. “They never knew what to say to me, nor I to them, so it was awkward all around. As I said, frightening.” She felt her foot strike the planks of the deck and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Land sakes, child,” Lily scolded fiercely. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed.”

“And would have been if you’d shrieked a mite louder, Mama,” Ryan said.

“I couldn’t help myself. I generally shriek when a disaster is at hand.”

“No harm done.” Isadora felt suddenly as awkward as she had with the reluctant suitors of Boston. High in the rigging, looking across the vast sea at a land of such mystical beauty, she had felt like a different person. Now, with the solid oak deck swaying beneath her feet, she was herself again—ungainly, tongue-tied Isadora. She’d bared too much of herself up there. Ryan knew things she’d never told another soul.

Without daring to look at him, she said, “I’m afraid I’ve got some blisters. I’d best tend to them in the galley.”

She hurried away, but the wind carried Lily’s voice: “I know you weren’t happy with this arrangement, Ryan, but must you try to get rid of her by throwing her overboard?”