The Rathbones by Janice Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

THREE

M OUSE I SLAND
    {in which the wives of Moses make Mercy over}
    M ORDECAI GROANED, DROPPING a suitcase to throw an arm across his face as we ran down the lawn toward the sea. I glanced back but saw only the open door, the house rearing up behind us. Crow, scouting ahead, circled back and flew just above us, his wings casting a shadow over our faces as we ran. He shrieked and banked sharply to the right, toward the cliff where the lawn dropped away to the surf. I followed, pulling at the tail of Mordecai’s coat.
    “No, this way, we must go to the harbor.” Mordecai took his arm away from his eyes to pull me the other way, then put it back, moaning.
    I spotted an opening in the green, the stair of tumbled boulders that led to the beach. I tossed my bags down and leapt from rock to rock to the sand.
    Mordecai sat huddled on the grass at the top of the boulders, wincing. The sunlight must hurt his eyes, I realized. I’d never seen him outside before. I untied my cloak and threw it up to him. He wrapped it around his face and hugged his knees, rocking.
    The blue skiff lay on the beach, overturned in dune grass. The paint was wind-scoured, the oarlocks rusty, and it had never been tested in open sea. But it seemed sound, and there was no other choice. Isquatted, reached both hands under the side of the hull, and heaved it over. The oars tumbled out. A crowd of pink crabs scuttled from the seaweed that had drifted underneath. I tossed my bags and the oars into the skiff and hurried to the stern. Digging the toes of my boots into the sand, I started pushing the boat toward the water.
    Mordecai groped his way down the rocks, my cloak still draped over his face, and helped me push through the surf. When the skiff started to float I hopped in. He pushed us farther out, then climbed in and lowered himself onto the seat in the stern, wedging his suitcases between the benches, and doubling his long legs up like a crane to fit. The boat was far too small for him. I sat in the bow, set the oars in the shafts, and began to row. Mordecai leaned over and tucked his head between his knees, breathing hard.
    My heart began to slow as the oars steadied. Crow hunched on my shoulder, canting his head at the gulls overhead, hopping with a squawk each time I finished pulling a stroke and leaned forward again. My skiff moved well against scant wind, through a low chop of waves. The dawn fog lifted from the surface as I rowed, a layer of warm light taking its place, as though it rose from the sea.
    “Let me row.” Mordecai tried to hoist himself up and fell back again, panting. His breathing was so labored from so brief an effort that I wondered if he had ever run before this day. He raised one arm again, across his eyes. When had he last seen the sun?
    At first when I looked up over the water between us and the shore, only the top of the house showed above the cliff face. As I rowed, the lower floors slowly tilted into view. The widow’s walk, still in shadow, crowned the roof, pricked with lightning rods and topped with weathervanes of maritime form: a merman, a manatee, a compass rose. Under the walk, the white columns of the unfinished third floor stood against a pale wash of sky. To the west, between two pediments, Mordecai’s attic sloped; then the red brick of the second floor, its multipaned windows topped with keystones. Below the second story were the heavy timbers of the bottom floor, squat and dark, with small grated windows low to the ground. Now and then Iglanced up at the house as I rowed. Though the hill on which it stood grew indistinct as the distance increased, the house itself seemed to me no smaller. A few other houses, none as large as ours, were hidden among the trees west of the high ground on which Rathbone House stood; once inhabited by competitors to my family in the whaling trade, they had long stood empty.
    By now we were about half a mile from the house. To the east lay the harbor I had not seen in many years,