the lines of breakers. The island in the bay’s shelter was a handsome crescent of rock and sand crowned with a proud ridge of dark pointed firs, and on this distant beach another fringe of smaller waves was breaking. The light was as clear as spring water, and the air was fresh with salt and the scent of thyme and juniper.
‘The Captain’s House,’ the woman at the lodging house in Pittsharbor had called it, although Sarah knew well enough that Robert Hanner was no retired sea-captain. Wherever and from whom his money had been stolen or extorted, it was not aboard a whaling ship, neither in the captain’s cabin nor the forecastle. Robert had completed only one thirteen-month voyage aboard the whaler out of Nantucket before signing himself off. Once she herself had made the long voyage home from South America, Sarah’s investigations at the shipping agents had revealed that much, if little else, about her one-time lover who was now her quarry.
After that there had been a long, weary time, which had yielded no information as to his whereabouts, and Sarah had come to understand that her task was beyond daunting. Robert Hanner had simply left Nantucket and vanished into the great continent of America, taking his name and his history, and Sarah Corder’s life and hopes with him.
Once the small notoriety surrounding the return of the young woman who had disguised herself as a sailor had died down, Sarah devoted herself to becoming invisible. It was not a difficult achievement. While her little store of money lasted she travelled the Massachusetts seaboard, staying wherever she could find a cheap bed, then moving on and always searching. Robert was a New Englander. Her belief and most fervent hope was that after all he would not have strayed too far from the familiar horizons of home. She scanned every face she passed in every street, eavesdropped on every conversation she could approach, read all the columns in each local newspaper. There was never any trace of him.
When her money was used up Sarah found employment as a scullery maid in the house of a Boston merchant. She slept in a curtained cubbyhole off the cavernous basement kitchen, and nursed her implacable resolve through the hard and monotonous days like a tender mother with a baby. Her meagre wages and few lonely hours off were all spent in searching the nameless crowds for Robert. When Boston yielded nothing of him she moved again, with a reference grudgingly supplied by the mistress of the house, to Portland and after a few months more to Rockport on Penobscot Bay. She allowed her instincts to guide her because she had no other inspiration. The daily sight of the sea was a reminder of what she had suffered aboard the Dolphin and served to firm her intentions, if any such reinforcement were necessary. Sarah had become a grim and melancholy version of the lost young woman to whom Matthias Plant had been drawn so tenderly.
At Rockport she found Robert Hanner. Or rather she stumbled across his name and whereabouts.
One evening, after she had completed her work, she was sitting beside the kitchen range with her weekly diet of the local newspapers. The light was dim and she hunched forward in her chair, turning the smudged columns of newsprint, frowning in concentration as she read. Turning to the Announcements section of the Advertiser of Eastern Maine the name she had sought for so long suddenly leapt out at her.
At Pittsharbor on 22 July,
to Robert and Charlotte Hanner,
the gift of a healthy daughter.
Sarah let the paper fall into her lap and stared at the fire within its iron cage. She saw her handsome lover in the red heart of it as clearly as on the day he had abandoned her. Robert had not even changed his name, so he did not believe he had anything to fear. There would be no forcing him to marry her; he was already married and a father.
The fire crimsoned one side of Sarah’s impassive face. The other cheek was as pale and cold as marble.
Within two days she had left the Rockport house and begun the journey north-eastwards to the fishing village of Pittsharbor. Part of the way she travelled with a local carrier who was transporting ironmongery for delivery to general storekeepers along the route. There were certain favours he required of her in return and these Sarah performed mechanically, as if her mind and heart were entirely disconnected from her body. The last fifteen miles she walked.
Two miles short of her destination she came to a rough inn and lodging house frequented by carriers and drovers, and the salesmen who brought commodities of all kinds to the remote communities of the area. Caring nothing for the speculative glances and bold invitations of her fellow guests, she took a room for the night and stayed within it until the middle of the following afternoon. If any one of the other travellers had been able to look in on her they would have seen her sitting motionless on the frowsy bed, hour after hour, her head bent in thought.
In the afternoon of the next day she emerged.
She called on the innkeeper’s wife for some bread and cheese, and ate a little of the food when it was brought to her. She also drank a glass of rum and water. The woman of the house was a coarse creature who showed a ready tendency to talk once Sarah had explained that she was searching for a distant relative of hers. As a Christian gentleman, Sarah whispered, he might be willing to help her in some trouble that had befallen her.
The woman knowingly pursed her lips. ‘And what might this gentleman’s name be?’
Sarah uttered it.
‘Why, yes. Captain Hanner, indeed. There ain’t a better man in Pittsharbor, I believe, although I don’t know him personal. Came up here two years ago, he did, from somewhere west. Married Charlotte Day within six month and built her a house on the bluff, out the other side of the harbour. Folk say he has a right nice little business started up, bringing ladies’ dress lengths and bits of finery up from Boston to please those as have the money for such stuff. I wouldn’t know a thing about that. Seems a strange manner o’work for a sea captain, although his wife’s father is a draper with a good old store over in Belfast. But there, you’ll know all this since he’s a relation o’yours.’
The woman studied her, hard-eyed and appraising.
‘How might I find the house?’ Sarah asked softly.
‘You take the Pittsharbor road and follow it on past the town and the harbour. You’ll see the headland and the place he’s built out there. Can’t miss it, if you keep within sight of the sea.’
Sarah paid for her food and lodging, and picked up the small carpet-bag containing her few belongings. She slipped her hand once into her deep pocket, making sure her ally was still at her side, then set out along the Pittsharbor road.
Once on the headland within sight of Robert Hanner’s house, Sarah waited impassively behind her screen of bushes until darkness fell. It was late September and the threat of ice already shivered the air. She saw the lamps lit in the windows of the house and stepped out of her shelter, leaving her carpet-bag behind her. She made her way silent-footed between the boxberry plants until she came close up to the house. Then, shadow-like, she melted into the deeper shadows beside the head-high pile of logs that had been providently stacked against the winter. She put her hand into her pocket and took out the long-bladed knife. The steel blinked its cold eye at her as she waited.
It was a weary interval before she heard the catch of the door undone and the creak of hinges. Sarah hefted the knife in her hand. She knew the weight and thrust of it too well from the work of stripping blubber off the stinking carcasses of whales.
Robert Hanner came out to the log-pile.
He was in his shirt-sleeves and with him came the scent of good food cooking and the warmth of a fireside. He bent to gather up the wood.
Sarah knew where to drive in the blade. She
