The Ghost of the Mary Celeste Read online

  The captain’s wife saw none of this. With the first breach of the bulwarks she was knocked off her feet and hurled facedown onto the deck, where, like a pin before a ball in a ten-pin alley, she was summarily rolled into the scuppers. She landed on her back with her left leg twisted beneath her. Above all the noise, the shouts of the officers, the shriek of steel rending wood, the roar of the steamer’s engine, she heard the pop of her ankle as the tendons gave and the small bone cracked. She lifted herself on one elbow but fell back, covering her eyes with her hands, for she saw that the mainmast was tilted and sailors were sliding off the yards into the sea like turkeys in a morning mist. Why did she think of turkeys? She had seen them once, just at dawn, raining from the maple trees on the lawn outside her bedroom window, awkward and calamitous, complaining in their harsh, croaking voices.

  The captain, believing his wife to be still in the cabin, made his way to the stern, shouting orders as he went. He clambered across the wreckage of crates, casks, shards of broken glass, lumber, rope. Above him he could hear the panicked sailors on the steamer deck, but he couldn’t see them. He pushed his way past what he recognized as a section of the deckhouse and his heart misgave him, but then he spotted something blue flapping in the scuppers. It was his wife’s woolen cloak. He called her name and she cried out for his aid. In a moment he was kneeling beside her, pulling her into his arms, pressing her cheek to his breast. “My ankle is broken,” she said. “I don’t think I can stand on it.” The captain rose, drawing her with him. “Lean on me,” he said. “We’ve got to get you in one of the boats.”

  From the forecastle, men swarmed onto the deck, rushing this way and that in response to orders from the officers. Not many minutes had passed since the call of “Sail-ho,” but time stretched now with an arbitrary elasticity—there seemed to be a great deal of it—and it was with a sense of agonized relief that every ear greeted the cessation of the steamer engine’s monotonous drone. Again an eerie silence came upon the sea. The steamer had gouged the Early Dawn’s hull down to the waterline and she was taking on water above and below. As the sea rose and fell, both ships were pushed and pulled deeper and deeper in a fatal embrace from which there was no escape.

  Just that moment of silence, harshly punctuated by the mate shouting the order to abandon the ship, and then the men were scurrying, hauling water kegs and sacks of pilot bread to the ship’s boats, making harried trips back to the forecastle to grab a pipe, a loved one’s picture, a good luck charm. The first boat released from the cradle swung outboard on its davits, as the ship shuddered and the deck shifted. The captain’s wife, leaning on her husband’s arm and hobbling toward the stern, took heart at the practiced industry around her. The panic of the collision was over and now the business of the sailor tribe, whose god was the sea, was to accept the verdict of their deity and prepare their ship for sacrifice. “There are enough boats for us all,” her husband reassured her. “You’ll be on the first one.”

  “I want to stay with you,” she protested.

  “That’s not possible, darling.”

  Determined to plead her case, she looked up at him and their eyes met. His confidence—in himself, in his command, in his crew, in her—banished her fear and buoyed her up so resolutely that she gave up her suit. “I know,” she said.

  Two sailors, steadying the boat and handing down oars to two others standing in the bow and stern, hailed their approach. “This way for your missus, sir. All comforts provided,” one said boldly, but in a manner so cheerful amid the wreckage of all their hopes, that the captain’s wife laughed and her husband smiled. As she made ready to be handed into the boat, she comforted herself with the thought that her darling son, her Natie, was safe at home.

  From above, on the steamer deck, the shouts of the men escalated, followed abruptly by the ominous, distinctive sound, low and threatening at first, like a rumble from the earth’s core, then rising in pitch: the outraged complaint of a wounded tree tearing itself apart. All eyes turned to the mainmast, which was slowly folding, its yards cracking like sticks on the deck below. The captain’s wife turned to her husband, but as she did the sky tilted, the deck rose up beneath her feet, the boat she was poised to enter shifted toward the sea, and a flood of water rushed in upon her, knocking her to her knees. She heard her husband call her name, but she couldn’t see him, she couldn’t see anything. The cold water lifted her up, up, over the bulwarks and then dashed her down with such force that her cloak was torn from her shoulders and her legs flew up before her as if she had been dropped from a tower.

  She struggled, holding her breath and pulling her limbs into her body, but two forces were ranged against her—the ever-downward pressure of gravity and the relentless pull of the deep. As she was carried down she had no conscious thoughts, only her visceral mind fought for life. She opened her eyes, looking for light, but there was only cold and soundless darkness.

  The storm advanced upon the shipwreck, first caressing it with a delicate spray, a tentative swell, a distant thunderclap. The sailors in the boat, now suspended at an angle, the bow lower than the stern, clung to the manropes for dear life. The captain had been washed into the sea with his wife, and two sailors on the deck were occupied cutting life rings from the taffrail and throwing them over the lee side. Others readied a second boat, their eyes wildly scanning the water for any sign of their lost commander. “He’s there,” cried the mate, pointing to the chop beneath the broken mast. And it was true; the captain had surfaced. He turned round in place, desperate to find his wife. “Do you see her?” he shouted to the men gathered above. A well-aimed preserver hit the water just beyond him, but he ignored it. “Save yourself, man,” the mate called back. But the captain, a skillful swimmer, continued treading water, turning in place, straining to see through the rain and the rising sea. “She’s there,” he cried, striking out toward the bow. He made out something there, something darker than the sea.

  The mate hung over the rail, thinking, Don’t be a fool, but then he too spotted the dark thing floating and the captain approaching it, cutting through the water with powerful strokes. He had reached it, he grasped it, and a cry escaped him as he gathered it into his arms. It was his wife’s blue cloak.

  Again he treaded, turning in place. She must be near. Another life ring flopped into the sea close to the steamer’s hull. In desperation, the captain dived beneath the surface. She must be there, between the two ships. He could see nothing. It was futile, but how was he to give up? He dived again, swimming with froglike strokes beneath the surface.

  On the Early Dawn, the sailors in the boat had succeeded in cutting through the tackle and one cried out, “She’s going!” as the small craft plummeted into the waves. The captain, rising up to take a breath, felt a blow across his shoulders that knocked the remaining air out of his lungs and pushed him cruelly back down. When he tried to rise again, something solid blocked his way. There was no air left in his lungs; he could feel his eyes bulging with the effort not to breathe. He sensed a light behind him and turned toward it. Then, with what terror and sadness he understood that he was looking down, that it was his wife, her pale face raised to his, her hair streaming like spilled ink over her shoulders, her arms opened wide, rising toward him from the depths, coming to meet him, to take him with her, having preceded him, only moments before, entirely out of this life.

  My sister has dreams she thinks are visions. In the dead of night she sees our cousin Maria wandering and wailing outside her bedroom window. Her hair and skirts are dripping seawater, and she cries out, “Help me, help me. I’ve come home. I’m cold, I’m hungry.”

  “She wants to come inside,” Hannah told me.

  “She’s with God,” I said. “Why would she want to be here?”

  “She wants Natie,” she replied. “She’s come back for her little son.”

  Little he is and not well. His mother may have him soon enough. He has hardly grown these eight months. His skin is like milk, and his dark eyes set in da
rk circles, his downturned mouth, his fits of sobbing, as if he knows his parents drowned and he was left among the bereaved; all these trouble our hearts. His grandmother is stalwart. In her view God knows what must be and what must not be and it is ours to bear it with faith in His wisdom. But she must be suffering, for Maria was her only daughter and dear to her. No one could make my aunt laugh like Maria.

  Maria was named for my aunt’s sister, who died in childbirth and so did the child, leaving my uncle, Captain Nathan, a widower, first to mourn his loss with his sister-in-law and then to marry her. When their daughter was born there was no question that she would be named for the wife and sister whose untimely death had brought them together. Now of their six children they have lost two, both at sea. The first, Nathan, named for his father, was taken by fever on a brig off the coast of Galveston, his body committed to the Gulf of Mexico; the second, Maria, was swept overboard with her husband, Captain Joseph Gibbs, when their vessel was struck by a steamer as they sailed out from Cape Fear. That was eight months ago.

  Our families, the Cobbs and the Briggs, are intimately, even intricately, connected. For a time, when Captain Nathan’s shore business failed, my aunt and her children lived in our house while he went back to sea to recover his fortune. My mother was fond of her sister-in-law and it was her idea that we should pull together as a tribe. Those were happy times; with two mothers and so many children in the rectory we slept three to a bed. Briggs children called my mother Mother Cobb and Cobb children called the Briggs mother Mother Briggs. Hannah hardly remembers those days. She was just a toddler when Captain Nathan, having recovered his losses, built their big house, with its piazza and terrace, and the trellises of roses so lush and fragrant all summer long that it came to be called Rose Cottage.

  When our mother died, Hannah formed an attachment to Maria Briggs, who returned her affection with great kindness. Since Maria’s death, Hannah has devoted herself to the orphaned babe, which activity both my father and Mother Briggs encouraged, as they thought it would be a comfort to Hannah, and so she spends several nights a week at Rose Cottage, helping Mother Briggs and sleeping in the poor orphan’s room at night. But Hannah takes the baby’s frailty for a judgment against her caregiving. His fretfulness keeps her from both sleep and reason.

  My uncle has written to the constables in all the shore towns where the remains of his daughter and her husband might have washed up, but to no avail. They have been swallowed by the sea. If we could lay them to rest, with a service and a stone, Hannah might recover her good sense, but as it is, she’s convinced herself their souls are yet adrift.

  This morning Hannah had a conversation with Father in his study, which left them both tight-lipped and grim. I was working on the sleeves of a dress when she came into the parlor and threw herself down on the sofa in a huff.

  “That didn’t go well, I take it,” I said.

  “He doesn’t believe a word I say,” she replied.

  I ran the needle round the curve of the cuff, raised the pressure foot, and cut the thread. “Well, how could he, dear?” I asked. “He’s committed to believing otherwise.”

  “I don’t see why. Jesus raised the dead.”

  “Oh my. Did you tell Father that?”

  “I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Jesus did it only once and anyway I’m not Jesus.”

  “Those are good points,” I observed.

  “No, they’re not. What Jesus did just proves the dead can return. He didn’t have to do it more than once to make the case. And I’m not trying to raise the dead. That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”

  “Surely you understand why such talk is disturbing to him.”

  “I can’t help that. I can’t pretend I don’t know what I know or see what I see.”

  I studied her a moment, considering her argument and her character. She’s always had a dreamy side. As a child she talked to trees and made up stories. She wrote sweet poems about the dew being dropped from the drinking cups of fairies, or enchanted woods where elves had tea parties using mushrooms for tables. It was charming, my sister the fabulist, and I encouraged her in her fantasies because she worked them out so prettily and it gave her such pleasure. She struck me as fairylike herself, with her dark hair and light eyes, her slender limbs, the liveliness of her step, as if she could scarce bear to touch the ground. She is of a capricious temperament, and now this loss of our dear cousin has lifted a latch that was never tightly fastened and a dark wind has swept in, carrying all before it.

  She sat up on the sofa, resting her elbows on her knees, her forehead on her hands, the picture of despondency. “Do you believe me, Sallie?” she said.

  “What does it matter?” I asked.

  She lifted her face from her hands and fixed me with a look of puzzlement.

  “Supposing it is true,” I said. “What does it matter who believes you? What can anyone do about it?”

  “You mean I should just give Natie up to her?”

  This response made me impatient. “You knew Maria, dearest,” I said. “Who knew her better? Was she ever cruel? Did she ever hurt anyone?”

  “She was lively and clever,” Hannah said at once. “And she was fearless. She wasn’t afraid of anything.”

  “Then who is this woman you see weeping and complaining? How can that be Maria?”

  As I spoke I had a clear image of Maria in my mind. She was on the lawn at Rose Cottage, whispering some drollery into her young husband’s ear, her arm linked through his, leaning into him, raised up on her toes, for he was several inches taller than she was. And then the light in which memory bathed this moment of sweet intimacy went out, and I saw that my sister was sweeping tears from her eyes with her fingertips. I held out my arms to her and she lurched across the floor, collapsing at my feet. “I miss her so,” she sobbed, clutching my waist, hiding her face in my skirt. I stroked her hair back from her throbbing temples, muttering soothing words, letting her have what she has sorely needed these long, lonely months: a good cry. “It’s all right,” I said. But even as I spoke, I felt a stab of fear that nothing would be all right for my poor sister anytime soon.

  After Hannah returned to Rose Cottage, Father emerged from his study, his eyes darting about the room nervously, as if in expectation of a swarm of insects.

  “She’s gone,” I said. I’d finished the sleeves and was kneeling over the pattern on the floor, cutting out the bodice.

  He approached and took the chair at my sewing machine. “Advise me, Sarah,” he said. “I’m at a loss with all this spookism your sister has manufactured.” I had pins in my mouth and when I sat up, Father laughed. “What a dangerous enterprise sewing is,” he observed. “Aren’t you afraid you might swallow one of those?”

  I removed the pins solemnly, planting them in the cushion. “I need another hand,” I said.

  “So you do,” he agreed. “But you’ve looked to yourself and utilized what you do have, which is the mark of a resourceful and industrious nature.”

  I smiled. Industry is Father’s cardinal virtue. His name could be the Reverend Industry Cobb. It would suit him well.

  “If only your sister had your temperament,” he concluded.

  “She’s grieving,” I said. “She’s young. She’s only thirteen. And she worshipped Maria.”

  “You think she’ll get over this maudlin fantasy, that time will cure her?”

  “I don’t know that, but I hope it will.”

  “She’s not steady,” Father said.

  “She says you don’t believe a word she says.”

  “Nor do I,” he confirmed. “Do you?”

  “I believe she believes she has seen Maria.”

  “I could insist that she stay home,” he suggested.

  “And leave Natie? She would pine for him.”

  Father clutched his beard, considering my argument. “It’s this insalubrious craze for talking to spirits: it’s loose in the world. The next thing we know ol
d Abigal Spicer over in Mattapoisett will set herself up as a table-knocker.”

  “Abigal does talk to people who aren’t there,” I agreed.

  Father gazed at me, bemused by the world and its ways. “So your view is that I should do nothing.”

  “If Natie thrives, life will bring Hannah back to life.”

  “And if he perishes?”

  “Then she will always believe Maria has taken him, and she will come home.”

  Father nodded. “Women’s counsel is always patience.”

  “We could wish more men would take it,” I said, turning back to my pattern.

  Father rose from his chair and went out, his mind more at ease, but mine was less settled. I was thinking about ghosts. Who doesn’t whisper a confidence at the grave of the beloved when the wind rustles the trees and lifts the petals of the roses planted there? What draws the bereaved to seek the departed still in this world? Is it hope, I wondered, or is it fear?