Last Pages. Oscar Mandel

had lost a leg fighting the British at the Battle of Blenheim, but not without making the enemy pay dearly for that destroyed limb. “Our antipathy for the English has roots, you see!” she exclaimed. And later, at an appropriate moment: “Does not your heart beat to take up arms again, but this time in the interest of Liberty?” However, the Colonel only replied “Oh, yes,” with the voice of a man giving assent to a vague, remotely interesting philosophical proposition. Still, it was a beginning.

      The Colonel, as promised, made arrangements for the ladies to meet with other good families of Nantucket. This was not hard to do. A Marquise walking about town silked in pink and blue, and alongside her a lovely girl with touches of yellow and green, aroused enormous interest high and low on the island. The Quaker women stared, some muttering about whores and Babylon, others sighing forgiveness. Their husbands averted their eyes, or pretended to. The Presbyterian ladies, on their side, would not admit that they were surprised and outmatched in elegance; the Marquise, as far as they were concerned, was one of their own, though, of course, a Papist.

      Thus the two women were happily received the day after for coffee in the home of the Starbucks, where the Rotch and Folger couple were also present. Clearly, they were all Whigs, but they seemed bent, the men on business, the women on Boston fashions. Interrogated about what was worn in France, Aimée had to confess her complete ignorance; she was dressed in old things from New York. Mr. Starbuck was a grandfather; Mr. Rotch limped; Mr. Folger was barrel-bellied; evidently, Tom Gage need not fear them. By contrast, the two Mayhews stood splendid among them, and (she thought) fearsome.

      Still, the conversation could not help turning to the recent fighting around Boston, but listen as she did to undertones and implications, Aimée could find no hint of an intention to volunteer for battle on the Mayhew side, nor of some pertinent knowledge on the side of their friends. She was to find out, in the end, that the Mayhews had punctiliously kept their plans to themselves.

      The Starbuck parlor prided itself on a spinet. When it was discovered that Madeleine could play and sing, the young woman gave them Handel’s “There in myrtle shades reclined” with such sweetness that the tears swelled in the Colonel’s eyes. Nicholas was deaf to music, but his eyes showed that he was alive to other charms a young woman can spread.

      6

      THE SUN SHONE the next day unperturbed by a few playful cloudlets strewn about the blue sky. Nicholas demanded that he be allowed to drive the French visitors around the island, as had been proposed the day of their arrival. But Aimée had other thoughts. An opportunity of “launching” Madeleine at one of the suspects—obviously attracted to the girl—was too good to neglect. Accordingly, she pleaded fatigue and a mild headache, and the two young people, expressing half-insincere regrets, set off by themselves in Young Nick’s carriage, she sitting beside him on the driver’s seat.

      Young Nick showed the girl meadows and ponds, gardens and well-tended farmlands, a couple of windmills, the old villages of Sesachacha and Siasconset (where they lunched), sheep and cows in abundance, and from a hillock, in the limpid distance, beyond the harbor’s lighthouse, two whaling-boats a-sailing. Nicholas gestured toward the east, toward Europe. “They have cathedrals, we have cod, they have palaces, we have peat,” he said smiling and chuckling. Madeleine, on her side, was happy to breathe an air freed from the odor of whale oil which only visitors noticed, reminding them of the main source of the island’s wealth, and happy in the company of the young man, who spoke with modest pride of the Mayhew family, to which the island had been deeded in 1641.

      At Siasconset, they met with four Redcoats who were digging with picks and shovels at the foot of a windmill. Madeleine wanted to know what they were looking for. “Ammunition,” said Nicholas, “not buried doubloons!” Of course, he was urged to elaborate, and he did so imitating Sergeant Cuff’s speech and manners. “The other day, it may have been a week ago, Sergeant Cuff found me slaking my morning thirst in Swain’s tap room. ‘Young Nick,’ a says, ‘you and your uncle must help a fellow soldier. I know y’are kith and kin with the natives here, but then again y’ave travelled, y’ave fought for your King, y’ave killed your share of Frenchmen from the Carolines to Quebec. Now comes the time again to show whether there’s blood or muck in your veins.’” Nicholas’ imitation of Cuff made Madeleine laugh, and he continued: “That’s a mighty diplomatic speech, Sergeant Cuff,” says I. Says he, and you must excuse the language, ‘True by God’s gut—I’m brushing your fur a bit, but I’ve heard about you, Nick. Before you took to sailing the seas you was an ensign at Montreal—you wasn’t shaving yet—and you fought the savages near Niagara Falls when General Amherst was commanding.’ And he adds, ‘I can name you the officers of every regiment that’s been raised since the French wars began in the year fifty-four.’ ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘that’s all water long ago under the bridge. What’s on your mind, Sergeant?’ He leans forward and whispers, ‘Look you, my friend: sure as my mother bore me, I know there’s powder, flints and bullets stowed away in a dozen holes up and down the island. And they’re not meant for shooting whales, says Sergeant Cuff.’ That ‘says Sergeant Cuff,’ by the way, was Sergeant Cuff saying it, not I saying it to you. The Sergeant likes to conclude his remarks with ‘says Sergeant Cuff.’”

      “Well,” asked Madeleine, “was he right? What did you say to him?”

      “I said, ‘Why should anyone be hiding ammunition? Our island is defenceless. Three of your frigates could level every house upon it, and never a man living on the mainland would lift a finger to help us.’”

      “You answered his question with a question. That was clever of you.”

      “And it was clever of you to notice.”

      “Well, I am a noticer. How did the Sergeant respond?”

      “Forcefully. ‘You tell this to the whaling crews, young Nick—do—they need to hear it. Because all the same they’re making cartridges, and there’s many a cache under a windmill or a meeting-house that could tell a tale on my side.’ And that, my dear Madeleine, is what these men are looking for. I had to promise the Sergeant that as loyal sons of Britain my uncle and I would make discreet inquiries and report to him.”

      “And you did?” asked Madeleine mischievously.

      “Enough about politics!” cried the young man as he made Old Moses trot away from the scene. “Your life interests me far more.” And he questioned her closely—he was, in fact, truly interested—about her life in Montreal and New York. Madeleine spoke much of schoolfriends and of the towns; she mentioned that she was immersing herself in the French classics in order not to forget her first language; but asked about the Tourville family, she only laughed and said, “For such high matters, you must query my mother,” and then added, taking refuge in a generalization, “One can be noble yet poor.” Nicholas took the liberty of squeezing her hand. All the same, “Not Indian-poor” he mused, thinking of Aimée’s silks and brocades.

      7

      THAT EVENING, Amée questioned Madeleine closely about her excursion with Nicholas. What had she found out? Had he hinted at work to be done by the Mayhew pair on the mainland? No, no hint. That his heart was with the Patriots, of that there was no doubt, but Gage was not interested in their hearts. Madeleine could report on no sign of a projected flight from the island. Aware of her daughter’s own Whiggish sympathies, Aimée was not altogether sure that the girl would have mentioned hints and signs. Obvious moves she could hardly, in good conscience, have concealed from her mother, but she might have decided not to hear a word or two uttered by the young man. In the end, Aimée could trust only herself.

      By the next day, summer clouds had gathered over Nantucket. A great storm was churning over sea and land. In the early afternoon, heavy raindrops were making the Redcoats watching Sherburne and Madaket harbors uncomfortable. Aimée contrived to be drenched very near the Mayhews’ house and asked for refuge with a hundred apologies. She was received with pleasure. The housekeeper Priscilla lit a fire and prepared a collation. Aimée looked around for signs of imminent escape and saw not a single open portmanteau standing guiltily in a corner. In the midst of a thundering storm, she was drinking the chocolate and eating the cake of a well-ordered,