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Chapter Three
One month earlier, January 1850
Helen tilted her head back to behold the inky, glittering sky above. Her gloved hands gripped the handrail, her legs shifting to compensate for the vessel’s jaunty movements. Like the sixty or so crew members aboard, she knew that falling from the wickedly fast clipper into the frigid Atlantic would mean certain death.
For some, humility could be found under the night sky, studded with uncountable stars, conveying the insignificance of a single individual. For others, submission to nature happened most readily aboard a ship likeAlacrity, subject to the whims of waves and wind.
As a woman, Helen didn’t need reminders of human frailty to know her place in the world; she couldn’t remember a time in her twenty-five years that she wasn’t caring for herself and others.
“Out here praying to the sea for our safe passage?” Elijah’s voice boomed from behind her.
The wind carried away Helen’s small laugh.
Her brother knew that, unlike the crew, she harbored no superstitious beliefs about gaining favor with the sea. It wasn’t an adversary or a friend. It simply existed, and she was too practical to plead for cooperation from a body of water for whom people held no significance at all.
Helen respected the waves. In fact, she admired them. Whatever would it feel like to exert such force? To hold the power instead of being at the mercy of others?
“Finished with today’s log, Captain Miller?” she yelled back over the wind, knowing what her brother had been working on after the evening meal.
“Yes. However diligent the log, the English will seek whatever fault they can with our crack passage. By God, we’re still set on the fastest known crossing by sail!”
She smiled, then turned her face into the same beneficial, icy winds that aided their speed this night. Her compliments would wait for later, when her voice wouldn’t have to compete with the layers of incessant sounds from nature and ship.
For a few minutes, they stood together wordlessly on the poop deck at the stern, right above Elijah’s quarters. At the front of the ship,Alacrity’spointed bow sliced through the water as she carried them toward England. Waves broke rhythmically against the sleek hull below them; the ensemble of thousands of pieces of lumber joined into one groaned as it flew across the ocean. Above them, miles of hemp rigging creaked, canvas snapped, and iron chains and fittings tinkled.
She clutched the taffrail tighter when a gust pushed at her with greater force. Strands of her dark coppery hair escaped from their pins, making her close her eyes as they whipped across her face.
When her limbs trembled from both the cold and the effort of maintaining a safe stance, she took Elijah’s arm, protected by his thick wool coat, and they made their way to the hatch. He reached into the foot-high mahogany coaming that prevented water from entering the interior of the ship and lifted the heavy cover made of three-inch-thick panels.
Helen carefully descended the inclined ladder, sighing with relief when she stepped off the last tread. Her brother followed, closing the hatch behind him. The relative quiet was welcome, allowing her to be heard without yelling.
“Since you’re not keen on flogging your crew, I have an idea for punishment, to be used only in the most serious cases of dereliction.”
For the first time in years, she recognized a mix of brotherly suspicion and amusement glinting in his eyes. “What’s that?”
“The offending sailor must spend an hour climbing up and down the ship’s ladders—wearing my skirts. If he doesn’t trip and break his neck, he’ll be sure to avoid further mischief!”
“Come, now. I need to keep them in line, but I’ll leave it to the sea to scare them to death!”
Laughing, they made their way to Elijah’s starboard cabin, appointed with bird’s-eye maple wall panels and gothic arches, all framed by pilasters that looked like gilt, flattened columns. The carpenters at Gray & Co. Shipyard, her late husband’s family firm, had applied their craft with as much exquisite expertise as the naval architects had in designing the ship.
Nonetheless, she didn’t luxuriate as her boots sank into the plush carpet patterned in gold and burgundy, just as she didn’t relish being aboard. However essentialAlacritywas to her plan, the ship was a wound. Even if her hopes were realized thanks to the vessel, she didn’t know what her life would bring afterwards. She simply needed to follow her plan and arrive on the other side.
Helen caught Elijah eyeing her knowingly as she watched the toe of her boot test the carpet’s give. He had to realize the awkwardness of her presence on board. She cleared her throat and handed her gloves and thick cape to him, then turned to one of the multiple immense mirrors, designed to give the cabin a larger feel.
The image in the glass could have been a lady fixing her hair in a grand house back in Boston after a windy day. Smiling minutely, she admitted her observation wasn’t quite true. The spark in her eyes gave her away; if nothing else, it always did. Even married into a respectable family, she never passed as demure for long.
Elijah settled into the impressive forest-green sofa, built in a semicircle to fit the ship’s elliptical transom. When she finished with her hair, she joined Elijah on the sofa, groaning with gratitude as she gave her limbs a rest.
I feel as tired as he looks.
His eyes—the same Miller blue as hers—were downcast. He stroked the velvet on the sofa with such sadness she knew he was thinking of Robbie.
He swallowed. “If the Grays had known who was commissioningAlacrity, they would never have built her.”
She nodded. After everything had been known and Robbie was dead, his family cursed the ship but had no choice except to fulfill their contract. Sleek clipper ships had captured America’s imagination, and competition was fierce amongst shipbuilders to design and craft the new style of merchant ship. The Grays’s ambitions meant they couldn’t risk their reputation by breaching their contract or supplying an inferior vessel.
Her smile was sad. “I imagine it will add insult to injury if news of our success reaches them.”
