The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

It is getting harder to find seasoned seamen than in Uncle N’s day. The first mate is experienced but in poor health. The second mate is only nineteen, although willing and honest. I have not yet found a man as capable of navigation as I am myself.

Nathaniel gripped his mouth. His chest expanded with a long breath.

George, seated beside him, looked up, and Josephine noted his resemblance to Simeon as well as the difference. His face was the unmarked template of his father’s—square forehead, thin nose—but its expression was habitually worried rather than keen; whereas Simeon had been lanky, athletic, George was stocky. He sat on the edge of his chair gripping his hands, his jaw thrust forward to keep tears from falling. Upon arrival, he had suffered their embraces, unable to speak or look into anyone’s eyes. Later, he’d stared at the floor, pressed his face to windows. Had chosen a seat next to his great-uncle. White-faced, he did not look across at his mother or his sisters.

Josephine sat in the middle of the chesterfield sofa. Maud, curled on her side, buried her face in her mother’s lap. Lucy sat on the other side, as silent as Josephine, who had become stunned, numb, her eyes turning from George to people picking at the plates of food on their laps, to Mr. Dougan kneeling before the Franklin stove with tears on his cheeks, to Flora setting down a bowl of biscuits—feeling as if she were a stranger, watching people she did not know, wondering at their grief.

Nathaniel opened the travel-worn envelope from Ocracoke Island and withdrew its letter. His eyes flickered down the page. He had followed Simeon’s progress as cabin boy, second mate, first mate, captain—avidly, as if encouraging a second son. Nathaniel and Azuba’s own son, Bennett—born in Antwerp after a nearly disastrous voyage—had declined a life at sea for a career in law.

He laid down the letter and stared at the pulse of flame behind the stove’s window.

“He would not have mistaken Ocracoke Light for Hatteras Light,” Nathaniel said. “I daresay he…”

Azuba leaned forward, abruptly; caught Nathaniel’s eye. Her face, like his, was weathered, darkened both from the sun’s brilliance as it beat down upon their clifftop house and the refracted glare of the seas upon which, once, they had travelled together.

He checked himself.

“He was at sea far longer than he had expected to be, Josephine. There is no doubt that he ran into storm after storm. In that latitude, winds would have forced him into the Gulf Stream, which runs northeastwards, contrary to his direction. He may have taken sick. Or one of the women might have needed him and his medicine box. No doctor on board, of course. Just for one fatal watch, he might have had no choice but to allow someone else to navigate.”

He came across to the sofa and went down on one knee. He laid a hand on Maud’s head, the other on Josephine’s hand.

“The seas off the Outer Banks are shoal-ridden, Josephine. And the winter storms are worse than anything you could possibly imagine.”

His hand tightened on hers. She looked into his eyes, so close to her own.

“Think of it like this, my dear. I am certain that he had no choice in the matter. He would have died doing his utmost to save his ship and all the lives on board.”

With a straitened crew, no choice but to catch some sleep…Was what Nathaniel had been about to say, Josephine thought, detecting a beat of censure. Was he thrown from his bed tangled in blankets as the ship slewed violently into sand? Was his first thought fury at himself?

She pictured Simeon lifting Sailor to his chest, standing at the rail. His last words, perhaps.

Go. Good dog.

—

The mare stood with head low, rain making rivulets in her thick coat, percussive against the carriage’s leather roof. Mr. Dougan stowed satchels and hat boxes. Three days had passed since the arrival of the letter. Simeon’s distraught parents planned to meet her at the station. Together, they would travel by train to North Carolina, where they would fetch Sailor, collect Simeon’s possessions, visit the cemetery and give instructions as to the gravestone.

Josephine, tearfully, bid Lucy, Maud and George goodbye.

She watched the house diminish behind her. The mare high-stepped down the lane, broke into a trot on the street.

Earlier, she had gone into the kitchen to speak to her servants. She did not know how long they would be living under her roof, but this, along with many other issues, she could not consider in full. Grief balanced bewilderment at the incomprehensible fact that she could never chastise Simeon for his foolhardy decision. You could have told that woman you had no crew, she could have found another ship. And other things, things that she would not have said, even if given the chance. How Simeon’s erect, carefree bearing, the smile lines beside his mouth and his teasing eyes would have overridden any misgivings the woman may have had; how she would have ignored her own instincts, trusting the captain.

Just as Josephine had—in all things.

—

The maids and Ellen ransacked the house, looking for a will.

“She remembered him saying something,” Mary said, now, in the attic. “Under something.”

Ellen was on her knees turning over the contents of a trunk.

“Why he’d put it in here, now? In with this lot of stuff.”

She pressed her temples with the heels of her hands.

“Floorboard, more likely,” Mary said. “My father had a floorboard where he kept his whiskey. Me mam never knew but I did.”

“Think how many boards there are in this house,” Margaret murmured.

Flora, tugging out drawers of a dusty bureau, could not speak. All the weeping had unlocked her own grief, returned her to the rain of England, pattering on the thatch, trickling down the windowpane, on the day when Ma’s screams stopped and the midwife came out of the little bedroom and told Flora and Enid that they had a baby brother, but he was