Banners Read online

Mary Pickersgill sighed with a parent’s timeless frustration. To her right, Grandmother Rebecca Flower Young tilted her large left ear toward the conversation, but made no comment other than to give her granddaughter a fleeting pinch of her lips.

  The group of five women sat in a circle with a large silk standard spread between them, their knees creating bumps in the blue field as they sewed appliqués upon it. Their small parlor and display area here in the front of the house was pleasantly appointed in a working-parlor kind of way, shelved with the family’s possessions, but also billowing with the orderly chaos of tools of their trade—skeins of yarn and cordage, tufted pincushions, black irons cast in many sizes and shapes, and mountains of colored fabric folded and stacked on shelves or teetering on the edges of furniture.

  “You have no brothers or uncles, nor even any sisters,” Mary said to her daughter. “You are my only surviving child. That means you must continue to survive on your own when I and your grandmother are gone.”

  “I’ll have a husband to take care of me,” the brown-haired girl told her with teenaged assurance. “My husband will be wealthy and we’ll live on a high hill. I’ll have children to do chores, and I will keep Grace and Lola with me.” She glanced declaratively at the two colored girls in their company. “I’m being courted even now. I’ll marry and we’ll all be better off for having a man in the family.”

  Mary noted Caroline’s pretentious certainty and said nothing. If Caroline accepted the responsibility of marrying, at least the frivolous girl would have some goal or other in life, for currently she had none. But then, when had there been a twelve-year-old girl with no frivolity?

  “Maybe your husband will be a sailor and be gone most of the time,” Grace Wisher warned. “A crutch will hold you up, but it will also hold you back. You must resolve to independence, girlie.”

  Caroline looked down at the part of the blue standard draped across her lap, to which she had been halfheartedly stitching an applique of a gold lion-rampant. “Independence is too much work.”

  Grandmother Rebecca shook her tiny head. Her voice was weak, cracked, forced, as blanched and fading as the woman herself. “Work is a blessing. You come from a respectable line of flag makers. I made the Grand Union flag for General Washington. He flew it over his garrison headquarters in Cambridge on the first day of 1776. In those days I made drum cases and uniform hats and flags.” She looked at Mary. “You were born that year, daughter. When your father went to his reward, I sewed for the military. My brother Benjamin was the Commissary General for—”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “Gran, we know—”

  “Sh!” Mary stung her daughter with that look they both knew. No matter how many times the grandmother wanted to relive her glories, the girls would listen and be amazed. And that was that.

  Caroline shrugged. “Good thing that flag was for General Washington himself and not the swampy city. Makes a better story.”

  The circle of women laughed and forgave her.

  “Bless his memory,” Gran Rebecca added.

  “I thought Betsy Ross made General Washington’s flags,” the other Negro girl said. Lola was a dutiful servant and cook, and had recognized long ago that she was better off in a household of women, sewing for a living, than many places a slave might be fated to live.

  “Betsy Ross wasn’t even her name,” old Gran declared. “Her name was Elizabeth Ashburn.”

  Then she dropped her needle. Her two white-knuckled hands flew up like confused birds, flustery at not having a needle and thread in them.

  “Don’t mind that, Gran!” Grace Wisher flashed her toothy smile, moon-bright against dark brown cheeks, and dived for that trailing yellow thread. “It’s right there! I see’r. Ope—slipped again.”

  While Grace rooted for the impudent needle, Mary settled back to her work.

  “Remember, girls,” she said, “a woman who acts helpless will be helpless.”

  As she spoke, a rapping came from the Queen Street door, and she was pretty glad to be interrupted. She would answer herself, since that was the door used by friends or more formal visitors. The side door, on Albemarle, was the business address. Grace usually answered that door.

  “Keep working, ladies.” Mary squirmed out from under the fabric on her knees, crossed the large-slatted floor into the hallway, turned a shoulder to the business entryway and went to the front door.

  The door swung open, and there stood Tom Boyle, unexpected and always welcome. “Oh, Captain, you’ve returned! Do come in.”

  Boyle felt gritty and unpresentable. He hadn’t even changed clothes yet. Upon greeting his family he had made the quickest polite escape and crossed the filthy street with the kind of hurrying that nobody wants to do. He wrinkled his nose at the odor of the street, grown unfamiliar to him after the fresh sea air. He never quite got used to the nauseating wine of manure and urine ground into a slurry by endless hooves and wagon wheels in this city of forty-six thousand crowded people. Baltimore had become the nation’s third largest city, and the port and harbor behind him were the reason.

  In these narrow streets, buildings were pressed right up against each other, often sharing walls, and pushed up to the edge of the street. Baltimore was filled with row houses with common walls to make use of the narrow lots, built to three and four stories. The handsome two-story brick house before him was one of the less common harbor homes that stood alone with its own four walls. Like all households, it was crammed with people—families, children, often several generations, relatives or not, young cousins shipped in from farms to learn a city trade or to be educated. These days, three out of four white men could read and write and calculate. Workers, hired hands, boarders, apprentices filled every lodging, changing daily as the population of Baltimore fluxed and grew and ships came in and again sailed out. They slept three and four to a bed, shared meals, and often shared fates. Cooking was almost constant. The average was six souls in each house. No one lived alone—almost like living on a ship.

  Boyle shook out of his ruminations as Mary Pickersgill held her dark blue skirts and white petticoat up from the manure and sludge, glancing down now and then to check. This motion caused her dark ringlets to bounce beneath the ruffled brim of her cap.

  “Morning, Mary. Might we speak briefly? Out here?”

  “Oh, I suppose.” Mary pulled the door shut behind her and stepped out, holding her skirts a little higher. “You were expecting to be gone another month, weren’t you?”

  Boyle couldn’t help but smile at Mary’s musical voice. The vivacious little woman was a crucible of joy and community spirit in Baltimore, hostess of many parties and lunches, a popular socialite with built-in kindness wrapped around the core of a survivor. She was always smiling, cheery, and had a lilting walk that made her brunette ringlets bounce. Nobody could be too dismal in the presence of those bounces. With her short frame and puffy skirt, chubby cheeks and the little white bonnet on top like a knob, she always reminded him of a ship’s bell, quiet and resolute, purposeful, and noisy when necessary.

  “I’m sorry to bring distress to your household,” he said directly. “Brace yourself, Mary.”

  She caught herself up and dropped back a step, realizing in her sharp mind the myriad fates that could traffic a merchant ship, much less a ship involved in running the British blockade.

  She touched her stout hand to her lips. “Victor …”

  He knew she couldn’t be fooled and quickly added, “… but he’s not dead.”

  She said nothing, while her eyes did the questioning.

  “A Crown brig caught us in the Caribbe,” Boyle explained. “They pressed two men. One was Victor.”

  “My soul,” she whispered. “My soul.”

  A visible shudder went through her compact body. Boyle waited as the news settled.

  After a long moment, Mary asked, “How did it happen?”

  “We spent seventeen hours out-maneuvering them in the fog. Winds were very light, which favored us, but the British c
aptain was like a little terrier on my heel. We almost got away, then up came this sand bar and we stuck fast. When he boarded us, he thought our cargo wasn’t worth his trouble to justify seizure, so he balanced his books by pressing a couple of men.”

  “How were they choosing?”

  “By names. English names.”

  “Like Pickersgill,” she murmured. “John was from England … my husband. And now the British may be our enemies once again.”

  Emotions choked her voice out.

  “The British never stopped being our enemies,” Boyle told her, “in their minds, at least. Victor was not originally chosen. You should know that he gave himself in place of a man with several children. Mighty courageous.”

  “But Tarkio is not an English name. Why would they choose him?”

  Boyle, being a captain, immediately plunged into the sad facts.

  “I chose him.”

  The flag maker gazed outward through the buildings and houses, as if looking at the harbor waters, though they were not visible from the corner of Queen and Albemarle.

  “The Royal Navy,” she quietly said. “We shall never see him again.”

  Tom Boyle didn’t argue or attempt false reassurances. Mary was right.

  He gave her time to digest the story. He kept back a few steps, careful of the space between them, resisting the urge to be closer for their moment of mutual grief. On the front stoop this way, such a sight would have been inappropriate and disrespectful to his wife.

  “I’m sorry that this should be visited upon you,” he said.

  “I know you are.”

  That done, Boyle drew a sailcloth pouch from his jacket pocket. “Here is Victor’s pay for the voyage. I know he would want to pay his rent as long as possible. He often spoke of his gladness at adding to your household income.”

  She looked at the pouch. “Doesn’t seem right.”

  Boyle closed her hand over the pouch. “It’s right.”

  She paused, her kind heart exploring. “Poor man, in the shackles of the British.”

  He nodded, unable to assure her, to lie to her, that Tarkio would survive the brutal life in the Royal Navy, never mind the war with Napoleon. If anyone could survive, it would be Tarkio, but starvation and scurvy visited even the most hale of men and Boyle had seen the condition of those British sailors on the Helen. Their captain too had been gaunt and sick.

  “Caroline is very young,” he attempted. “There is hope.”

  “Hope that Victor could return? Of course, you know better. I know what you mean—hope for other suitors for Caroline. A chance for her to marry, more support for our household as we grow older … I know what you mean. We were just talking about something like that.”

  She sank into herself a bit. There was no room between the house and the street to pace away, so she only turned away a bit while standing in place. Boyle felt as if he were spying on her.

  “I am my mother’s only living child,” she said quietly. “I don’t remember my father. I bore four babies, all girls. Pretty little girls with round faces; three died. My mother was widowed. I am widowed. Now my only living daughter is widowed before even becoming a wife.”

  As Boyle watched in silence, Mary gave in to a very rare moment of self-pity. All the weight of responsibility seemed to push down her little round shoulders.

  “A family of widows.”

  Mary shook off the pall of the moment and looked at Tom Boyle with clear, determined eyes.

  “I will not have a melancholy household,” she said. “We will keep up a good spirit before society.”

  “May I help in any way?”

  “You have been my friend unmoved, Captain. When I need your help, be assured I will knock on that door.” She nodded at the house across the street.

  “And we will answer.” He hesitated, trying not to rush her. “Have you a moment for business?”

  “Business?”

  “The rascal seized my flags. Can you imagine? He might as well have taken my eyes and ears.”

  For a moment she seemed taken aback, as if he were asking her to pick up her petticoats and chase after a British bandit and reclaim the stolen possessions. Then she said, “Oh, you need new flags. A complete set?”

  “He left me with a couple of swallowtails and a company ensign, but he seized all my signal flags. I can’t send a message but by pigeon or prayer!”

  Briefly soul-sick, Mary settled quickly back a bit. “Now, you’re not doing this because of Victor … I don’t need that kind of help, Captain.”

  Boyle raised his hands in a gesture. “No, they really took my flags! I need new ones or I’m as good as aground. Almost the whole country’s a sea coast.”

  As he watched, her round face moved out of heartache to the next thing. “Well, how soon do you need them?”

  He sputtered out some vague timetable and she explained that she had some newfangled dyes from India that would make brighter colors. Their conversation was glazed with business, but the undercurrent remained with Victor Tarkio, a dependable renter whose casual between-voyages courtship with Mary’s daughter had been succor to the Pickersgill household. Neither spoke of him again, but he was still there.

  Boyle always thought of Mary as a pioneer woman without a prairie, with model self-sufficiency and a sighing smile for every hardship, never dispirited for long. She would have done well in the wilderness out West, maybe Kentucky, married to some mountain man who mysteriously vanished or got chewed by a bear. She was the sort of woman every man secretly wanted, buttoned up and patient, devoted to his children, with boundless kindness, and who always bounced back to contentment somehow.

  Funny that her daughter had none of those qualities. For a fleeting bad-boy moment, he accidentally thought Victor might be better off with the British.

  He shook the naughty thought from his head and remembered that for Mary a future once clear had gone dark.

  For him, too. Just over there, spindled with sprits, was Baltimore Harbor, and within it Fell’s Point—a sailor’s lair if ever one had gurgled up at the water’s edge. The place never slept. An anthill of ships and men, lumber and chandleries, rope works and pubs, breweries, brothels and travelers’ bedrooms, Fell’s Point sizzled round the clock with commerce. That was why Mary was here with her flag-making business, why Boyle lived across the street, neighbored by hundreds more seafarers, looking for their next ships, and the dozens of large and small shops that served them. America had sailors, plenty of them, and sadly sometimes losing a few just didn’t matter to the industry. It was a good place for single women to ply almost any trade, and for single men to cobble out the future. Boyle’s next venture—or adventure—stood undisclosed for now.

  The small woman raised her chin and summoned a stronger voice. “Thank you, Tom, for your candor.”

  “Be comforted, Mary,” he said. “Your sacrifice helped my ship and a houseful of children who might otherwise have suffered without their father.”

  Mary Pickersgill pursed her lips and let out a long breath to steady herself, and to set her mind on what must come next. She nodded conclusively, setting him free of the burden he had brought to her doorstep.

  “Hm,” she uttered. “Life is a whirligig.”

  Free Trade and Sailor’s Rights

  KINGSTON TOWN, JAMAICA

  THE WORLD’S MOST INFAMOUS den of thieves spewed infamous odors long before the lookout shouted, “Land-ho!” Even out at sea on the bejeweled Caribbean, the scents of spiced rum, sun-rotted bananas, coffee, gutter urine, and horse manure swarmed around the ship. These were not the aromas of inviting islands, but the snarling stink of a crowded tropic port. The temptation of fresh limes and fresh water drew generations of British captains to this unfriendly landing, no more any other than the young beleaguered James Gordon and his ship-full of threats.

  Worse than approaching, of course, was sitting there made off to a warped skeleton of aging mismatched planks trunneled together into a dock. And the noise—intolerab
le. Squalling women, shouting street-hustlers, growling slave-drivers, barks and neighs and braying protests from unclean beasts, bosun’s mates bellowing up and down the wharf as cargoes were unloaded and others loaded in this horrific, uncivilized place. Through the long weeks defending the blockade of American ports, Gordon had longed for the relief of a landfall. Now he longed for the relief of the open water again as he failed to shield his mind from the savage commerce just outside his open stern ports. He sat in cabin in the only chair aboard the Helen, sweltering, filling out the ship’s log and trying to pretend he was somewhere else.

  “What a hole,” he grumbled.

  “Talking to yourself?” a voice interrupted. “First sign of lunacy.”

  “How dare you enter my cabin without knocking,” Gordon muttered without raising his head.

  Victor Tarkio approached with a tray of food just as smelly as the port outside.

  “I enter without knocking every day.”

  Gordon looked up and watched this creature of America as Tarkio poured the captain’s tea and arranged the meal he had brought on a rusty tray. Even deprived of life in the merchant marine, the American still had a bronzed complexion and random yellow streaks in his hair, which otherwise would be not so much lighter than Gordon’s. As a sailor, Tarkio wore no hat to blunt the sun’s rays as Gordon and the officers always did. He appeared as if he belonged here in this mad tropical nightmare, treading barefoot and unconcerned through these island tracts and eating too much fruit.

  “Am I a fool, Tarkio?” Gordon wondered, but it was not a real question.

  Tarkio did not look at him, but simply cut the captain’s bread as best he could with a dull butter knife. “Dunno. Are you?”

  “You have an insubordinate mouth.”

  “They why’d you ask?”

  “You will address me as ‘Captain.’”

  “I won’t. Already told you.”

  “You’ve been four months aboard the Helen and still you refuse to conform.”

  “You expected something else?”

  “I hate your accent.”