Calvert County, Maryland.
October 31, 1684.

I.

Elizabeth Rousby looked up from her sewing when she heard the latch. A smile began in her eyes, and passed, almost like a shadow, over her face. She put down her husband’s cravat, onto which she was stitching a narrow border of white lace. “Christopher.” She stood up as he came in, and went to kiss him on the cheek. It had been drizzling all afternoon, and he smelled of wet skin, and wet wool. She stood back, to look at his face. “What is it?”

Christopher Rousby was a florid, slightly pudgy man in his forties, growing slightly jowly as he aged, and somewhat fussily dressed. His square-toed shoes had been shipped from London, and his brown velvet jacket and knee-breeches were well and precisely cut. The lace on his shirt cuffs and the polished buckles of his shoes were intended to draw the eye. He wore no wig, but his blond hair was pulled back into a neat tail, and tied with a brown velvet ribbon. A customs surveyor, he had told his wife on several occasions, must be a gentleman, and must feel the weight of his office, and the weight of his own authority, or he was likely to be stepped upon by those in the provincial government who placed their own interests, and their own private profit, above the law.

“What is it?” Elizabeth asked again.

Rousby shook his head and began to unbutton his coat. His fingers were neat and slender, the nails clean, and he wore a signet ring on the third finger of his right hand. He handed the coat to Elizabeth, who folded it over her arm as her husband turned his back to the fire, hands thrust in his pockets.

Elizabeth hung up his coat on its hook near the door, and went into the kitchen. Rousby heard the hinge of the sideboard, and the scrape of an earthenware jug against the kitchen table. Elizabeth returned to the parlor with two pewter cups of cider on a pewter tray. “Colonel Talbot spoke to you, I think.”

“Indeed.” Rousby sat down at the table opposite his wife. Elizabeth handed him a cup of cider, and the warmth of her fingers as he took the cup, and the smell of the liquor, distilled from the apples from their orchard, made Rousby feel suddenly tender toward his wife. He raised the cup. "Your health, my dear."

"And you." Elizabeth smiled. "And Col. Talbot?"

Rousby snorted. Col. Talbot was George Talbot, a cousin of Maryland’s proprietor, Lord Baltimore, and a member of the proprietary council that governed the colony. He stared at Rousby every time the customs surveyor came under his gaze. He stared, and licked his full lips, and smiled, a cool little smile that indicated perhaps, that Christopher Rousby was not worth the trouble after all.

“Does he spread talk about you?”

“No.” Rousby licked his lip in angry memory of Talbot’s own gesture, and shook his head. “Irish fool couldn’t start a rumor to save his life.”

“Hmm.” Elizabeth often looked sad when she was merely thoughtful. Many of their neighbors were still surprised when they caught one of her quickly passing smiles, or heard her laugh. The last of the sun coming through the window gleamed on a gold chain she wore around her neck. Her husband had given it to her when they married. On it was a small pendant in the form of a seashell, which a different man had given her, some months afterward. “Are you going to see Thomas Allen tonight?”

Aware that his wife, sweetly, quietly, was attempting to break his sour mood, Christopher smiled. The expression revealed, strangely, the neat regularity of his features. He was a handsome man, Christopher Rousby, in certain lights. He reached out to the neckline of Elizabeth’s dress to hook one finger around the chain that held the pendant, so that the little seashell swung in the fading light. “Are you going to see Nathaniel Wood?”

Elizabeth blushed. “I thought I might.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“No.”

“Soon, perhaps.”

“Yes.”

The Rousbys looked at one another across the polished table. They had been married for five years, and had shared a bed only once, the day of their wedding. Elizabeth, a widow, had known what to expect, both of sex and of Christopher Rousby. He had had to close his eyes, and this necessity had stung her a little, even though she had known why. She had known why before they married, because he had told her. “I respect your judgement, Elizabeth,” he had said when they were walking, outside, on the way home from his brother John’s house, where they had eaten supper. “Yes.” Elizbeth had taken his hand. “We understand one another?” he had asked. “Yes,” Elizabeth had said again. They had been married two weeks later. Elizabeth had met Nathaniel Wood soon after. The three had had dinner together, once, and Nathaniel Wood always gave Christopher a bemused look when he met him at the county court, or in St. Mary’s City. It had taken Nathaniel a little while to settle into the idea of being someone’s wife’s lover. But he was unfailingly polite to Christopher, and always shook his hand.

“My sweet Elizabeth,” Christopher said, and gave his wife’s fingers a little squeeze. “Or Nathaniel Wood’s Elizabeth, hm?”

“I can be both.”

“Indeed.”

Elizabeth got up to fetch the cravat. “Here,” she said, as she held it out. “The new lace you ordered came from Leiden on Mr. Addison’s last ship. Try it?”

II.

With the lace cravat wound gently around his shirt-collar and tied (Elizabeth knew how to tie a cravat with unsurpassed elegance; it was one of her many unexpected talents) so as to expose precisely the right amount of the Dutch lace, Rousby walked down to the landing, where his boat was waiting. It was a damp October afternoon, nearly evening. The path was slippery with rotting leaves, and the day’s drizzle hung in the air and beaded on the wool of his coat. His shoe-buckles gleamed. “Daniel!”

The Rousbys’ servant was waiting at the end of the landing, back against a piling, arms folded around his knees. He scrambled to his feet as Rousby approached. “The Quaker, Mr. Rousby?”

“Yes, Daniel.” Rousby clambered, a little awkwardly, into the boat, and sat down heavily on the seat. Daniel took the oars and rowed them out into the open water. The setting sun glowed through the fog, weirdly, so that for several minutes the boat was wrapped in a strange, lingering golden haze. And then it grew dark, and when Rousby turned, he could see the forecastle light of the Quaker through the darkness. The Quaker was a royal patrol boat, and the employment of its captain, Thomas Allen, was to catch the smugglers who shipped tobacco, and other goods, unlawfully between Maryland and Virginia, or Maryland and elsewhere, in violation of the Navigation Acts.

John Lloyd, the Quaker’s steward was on deck when Rousby reached the patrol boat, and gave him a hand over the railing. “Evening, Mr. Rousby.”

“Good evening, Mr. Lloyd.”

“Captain Allen’s in the cabin.”

Rousby thanked him, and went to meet John Allen. Allen was at the table in the main cabin, reading by the light of a lamp, and when Rousby knocked, and entered, he was already smiling. John Allen was a small, wiry man with a bristly unshaven face that changed shape when he smiled, becoming wide at the bottom and small and sharp around the eyes. He took Rousby’s hand and squeezed it between his palms. “How are you?”

“I’m well, John.”

“Business as usual?” Allen’s small gray eyes gleamed. He never laughed, merely looked as if he were about to. He had pale, almost white eyelashes, that stood out strangely against his weatherbeaten skin.

“Nicholas Badcock is lucky he is dead.” Nicholas Badcock was a fellow customs official who had threatened to explose the smuggling countenanced by Maryland’s government, but had died of typhoid before the matter could be resolved.

“The weather’s been strange.”

“Too much wind, aye.” The ship of Addison’s that had brought Elizabeth the lace had been nearly sixteen weeks crossing. The north Atlantic wind was tearing up and down the water in strange, shrieking currents a hundred miles out to sea. Nearer land, between the capes of the bay, the water was flat, and smooth, and reflected things unexpectedly. It was killing the tobacco, everyone said.

They had supper, bread and cold rabbit and cheese and some apples. Allen had a Dutch punch bowl, blue and white, and in it he mixed lime juice, sugar and rum. They drank out of small cups of green glass, in which a careless, or perhaps an experimentally-minded, glazier had left large bubbles, as if some great sea-creature creature lay invisible below the horizon of each cup, exhaling slowly.

Allen’s warm, knobby hand lay comfortably on Rousby’s thigh when there was a splash, and shouting, from outside.

“Damn him to hell, that—” Allen stood up, and Rousby was getting to his feet as well when the door slammed open, bringing with it a draft of cold, clammy air, and the smell of tobacco smoke.

“Good evening, Col. Talbot.” Allen looked the proprietor’s cousin up and down. George Talbot had been a dandy as a young man of eighteen or twenty. Now, at thirty-five, he was getting paunchy and pigeon-chested, and his blue velveteen suit did little to disguise this fact. His face, however, under the curled brim of his white-plumed hat, remained smooth, and his lower lip was a work of art, full and soft, with sharp little corners. Both golden brown eyes, under heavy black eyebrows, were fixed on Captain Allen, who merely looked back, with a sort of shrug. “Are you well?”

“Rousby.” Talbot had seen the customs surveyor. “Good evening.”

Rousby snorted and did not reply.

“Good evening, Rousby.”

Rousby met the man’s eyes. “Colonel Talbot.” Talbot held a military commission partly because he was the proprietor’s cousin, and partly because he obviously enjoyed uniforms.

“Something to eat, George?” Allen indicated the remains of the rabbit on the table, and the blue and white bowl of punch.

“It’s Friday, Allen.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. My mistake. Not even a little cheese?”

“Thank you, no.”

“You’re very welcome, of course.” Allen picked up his punch cup. “I’ve had commendation of you from Governor Dongan, up in New York.” He raised the cup. “Your health, sir.”

Rousby snorted again and went outside to smoke. The cabin door remained open, and when he turned, pipe in hand, to look into the small lighted space, he saw Allen hand Talbot a cup of punch. The wind cut across the deck of the Quaker, and across the water, Rousby could see lights in St. Mary’s City. The air smelled of rain, and salt, and a strange queer smell, as if the water had begun to rot, or thicken, that had begun to blow in from beyond the capes, whenever the storms worsened out at sea.


III.

“Your health, George.” Allen drank, and set the cup on the table. The ship rocked, softly, with the tide, and above them the lamp swung, slowly, on its chain. The evening was quiet.

“Your health, sir.” Talbot drank, and turned the cup upside down to see the underside. “Poor workmanship.”

“You think so?”

“I can get you better, if cups are what you want.” George Talbot tossed his hat onto the table and ran one hand through his curly dark hair. It was said that Madam Talbot had married him solely because of the beauty of his hair, and his lower lip. According to their neighbors, the two of them had shouting, glass-shattering fights, and shouting, glass-shattering marital relations, very frequently.  “I have a question for you, Allen.”

Allen poured himself another cup of punch and watched the light falling across the rings on Talbot’s right hand. Talbot’s nails were neatly cut, but dirty. He was wearing some sort of scent, that drifted about him when he moved.

Allen stretched, and scratched the back of his neck. “What’s that?”

Talbot sat down next to him on the bench, close enough that when he turned to face Allen, their knees touched. “Sailors smell good to me, Allen.” This close, the fine lines between Talbot’s eyes were visible. He had lost one front tooth in a fight a few years back.

Allen’s eyes sharpened, and he smiled, but he did not laugh. When Talbot gripped his face with one hand and kissed him, he pulled back. “Forbear, George. Please.”

“No?”

“I’m not a woman.”

“Neither is Rousby.”

Allen merely smiled again, and said nothing. Talbot placed one smooth-palmed hand on Allen’s chest, and shoved him gently. Allen pushed him away. “I find your compliments somewhat coarse, Colonel.”

Talbot shoved him again, a little harder. His mood had changed, abruptly, and Allen wondered if he wasn’t already drunk. “Do you know who I am?” He leaned in again, and kissed Allen a second time, biting his lip, hard, when the other man again pushed him away.

“Enough.” There was an edge in Allen’s voice now.

“Enough?” Talbot was breathing hard. “Enough?”

Allen leaned forward and gripped Talbot’s chin, so that he could run one thumb over that lower lip. He could smell the punch on Talbot’s breath. “Enough.”

Talbot struggled free. “I’ll fight you, then.” There was an edge to his voice different from change in Allen’s. Whatever he had come for, it wasn’t this.

Allen had to struggle not to laugh. “You’ll fight me?”

Talbot swallowed, and took another cup of punch. “We’ll go ashore. Now. I’ll fight you.”

Allen did laugh, this time.

Talbot, whose pupils were dilated and who, Allen now guessed, had had rather more to drink that evening than he had initially supposed, wet his lips. “I had heard you were a stern and hasty man, Allen.”

“Stern and hasty.”

“Indeed. I consider it a lie.” Talbot moved in for a third kiss, but Allen, who had decided he had had enough for one night of George Talbot, pushed him away rather roughly.

Talbot shook his head, as if his ears were ringing. “Lord Baltimore’s health,” he said suddenly, and dipped his cup in the punch bowl. “Lord Baltimore’s health.”

Allen refilled his own cup. “With all my heart. To Lord Baltimore’s health.”

“Lord Baltimore’s health,” Talbot said again, and drained his glass.

Allen gently took the glass from Talbot’s hand, and set it just beyond his reach.

“Do you know who I am?” Talbot again demanded, leaning forward. Allen could smell his sweat, and his unlaundered shirt, and feel, even from this distance, the warmth of his body.

“I know who you are, George.”

IV.

The wind picked up during the evening. It rushed from the southwest, across stands of swamp maples, and wet earth, and fields of stubble where the corn and tobacco had been cut. Gusts of wind as warm as breath passed over the Quaker’s furled sails. They lingered in the rigging, and slipped between the folds of the flag, a red cross on a white background, that hung from the ketch’s main mast. Later, the breeze turned, slowly, and cut from the north, and the smell of rain, and sleet, and the snow that was falling on New England hung in the air. Once, the wind rose to a sharp keening pitch and whistled through the gun-ports and the scuppers of the Quaker and then it dropped, leaving a strange heavy absence in the air, like the throb of a string just barely too deep to hear.

When he had finished his pipe, Rousby went back into the cabin. The ship’s surgeon, Edward Wade, and a servant of Allen’s, Robert, had come in. Robert was squeezing a cut lime into a second bowl of punch; he looked up as Rousby entered, and wiped his hands on the front of his pants. Allen raised his glass. “To Christopher Rousby, my very good friend, after your tobacco. Your health!”

Rousby did not reply. Wade, a cup of punch in his hand, squinted at him quizzically. The tide was turning, and underneath them the timbers of the boat groaned, softly, as the Quaker began to tug on her anchor. “It’s near nine,” Rousby said. “The wind has dropped, for now. I’ll go ashore.” He met Talbot’s eyes. “Will you go with me, Col. Talbot?”

Talbot drained another cup of punch. “I was to go to Major Lowell’s tonight.”

“Take my boat then,” Allen said. Talbot’s sloop had no boat. “If you get wet, you may catch cold.”

“No.” Talbot stood up. He was unsteady on his feet, and gripped the edge of the table. Robert put a hand out to steady him, but Talbot brushed him off, roughly. Robert backed away, drawing his arms close to his body. He had seen Talbot in a fight before, in town, and he had seen how such fights tended to start. Talbot shook his head. “No. I’ll lie here.”

Allen scratched the back of his neck, and then caught Rousby’s eye, as if to indicate the extent of the amusement to be had with George Talbot. Rousby, for his part, did not see the humor in any of it. “With all my heart, George,” Allen said. “I’ll tell the boy to get clean sheets and make up my bed for you. Will you sit?” This last was directed at Rousby.

“Sit, Christopher. Sit.” Wade held out a cup. “How is Elizabeth?”

Rousby sat down, but waved away the drink Wade offered. “She’s well.”

“Sweet woman, your wife.”

“Yes.”

Talbot watched this exchange, his eyes narrowed, and then sat down again, heavily, and leaned forward across the table to clap Rousby on the shoulder. “You whoreson, you dog, Rousby, give me your hand.” He groped for Rousby’s hand. Rousby could smell the punch on him, here in the closeness of the cabin. Talbot’s hand found his wrist, but Rousby shook him off.

“Not without better words, Colonel.”

Talbot laughed, and smacked Rousby’s shoulder. “You dog, Rousby, give me your hand. Don’t you know that I am your governor, and can do you a kindness?”

“I don’t value anything you can do to me.”

Again, Talbot’s mood shifted in an instant. He flushed, and swallowed, and then leaned forward, gripped the ends of Rousby’s cravat, tore it, and flung it to the floor.

Rousby said nothing. Robert, eyes on Talbot the entire time so as not to be kicked, or cuffed, or smacked across the head, knelt slowly and retrieved the cravat. He held it out to Rousby, who took it without looking at him. “Elizabeth sews well,” Wade observed.

“Mind the season, Ned.” Allen, like Robert, was watching Talbot, who was eyeing the customs surveyor and running his tongue back and forth over the gap where his missing tooth had been.

Rousby stood. “Good night, gentlemen.”

He had reached the door when he heard the scrape of a bench, as Talbot stood up. He smelled the colonel, his dirty shirt and the punch, and the smell of Madam Talbot in his hair, before he felt the grip on his right shoulder as Talbot wrenched him around. The golden brown eyes met his for an instant. “Dear Rousby.” Rousby felt the dagger before he saw it, a white hot slice into the right side of his breast, and he sank to his knees, gasping, and marvelling at the strange hotness of his own blood soaking through his shirt. The white linen twisted and clung to his skin. His heart pounded in his ears and the world went white.


V.

Elizabeth Rousby moaned softly, and bit her lip as Nathaniel Wood slid two fingers into her body. It was early yet, and although it was light, the household was still asleep. One thing she had never told Nate was that often, when they did this, what she thought of was not him, but Christopher and Thomas Allen. Sometimes, Christopher and George Talbot. The latter she was ashamed of, a little. Nathaniel had replaced his fingers with his mouth and Elizabeth was again biting her lip when they heard the sound of boots on the gravel walk outside, and three sharp raps, made perhaps with the head of a walking stick, on the door.

Nathaniel wiped his face with a corner of the sheet and Elizabeth raised herself on one elbow, pushing her hair from her face. They listened as the hired girl, Susan, opened the door, and they heard muffled voices, buzzing in the glass of the window. Then, Susan ran up the stairs and began to pound with the heel of her hand on the door of the bedroom. “Mrs. Rousby!”

Elizabeth dressed and followed Susan downstairs.

Sunrise had been coming later and later, and it was not only because of the waning year. Great banks of clouds drew together in the east, holding the night in over the Chesapeake.  Their outer edges reached toward Maryland's ocean coast, far enough that barques and sloops traveling north, to New York or Boston, passed under a half-completed arch of cloud, through sheets of light and chilly rain. The sun rose slowly. When the first light touched the water of the Patuxent River, there was a soft stirring in the air, as if somewhere far away, the wind was moving.

Elizabeth unlatched the door. The chilly air seeped through her dress as quickly as if she had stepped into the river. On the doorstep stood the county sheriff and the steward of the Quaker, John Lloyd, hats in hand. “Good morning, Mrs. Rousby.”

They completed the errand they had come on, but Elizabeth hardly heard them. She thought it must be a dream, this idle tale about Christopher and George Talbot and a newly-sharpened six shilling dagger, because as she looked past the sheriff, and the Quaker’s steward, toward the sun rising over the eastern shore, she could not take her eyes away from the climbing, curling tendrils of cloud, tinged with red, that were bleeding across the sky, quick as ink dropped in water.