The Valentine Legacy (Legacy 3)

They sailed aboard a small Baltimore clipper from the Paxton yard, all smooth decks, set low in the water, and faster than any vessel Jessie had ever been on before in her life. Capt. Markly blessed the still-calm water every morning, splaying his hands over the sea, and prayed for a continuance every night before he went to bed. He encouraged everyone to do the same. It was a ritual. Anthony was delighted with it. He practiced splaying his fingers just like Capt. Markly. His father remarked that the prayer must lose some of its efficacy because of the dirt beneath the supplicant’s fingernails.

It was a bright, sunny morning when he pointed out Teach’s Hole—where that infamous Blackbeard had careened his ship and spent several months on Ocracoke following his pardon from the Crown until he’d gotten so bored he’d begun to plunder ships again—and Springer’s Point just beyond it. “And there,” he said, pointing to a spot just higher than Springer’s Point, “is where they will build a lighthouse next year. So many ships and men are lost each year when a freak storm blows up. Anthony, did you pray this morning?”

“I even washed beneath my fingernails,” Anthony said proudly.

The warm weather continued. The air was rich with sea smells, the squawking of sea gulls and the half dozen cormorants that trailed off the bow all the way to Ocracoke. Capt. Markly brooded on the sheer number of cormorants, wondering aloud if it portented a bad storm, in which case he decided an additional afternoon prayer was in order. He worried until he discovered that Anthony was feeding them all the leftover bread from breakfast each morning. The six crew members snickered behind their hands, having heard the captain utter one afternoon prayer for the beneficence of cormorants.

They sailed between Ocracoke Island and Portsmouth Island and into Ocracoke Inlet three days after leaving Baltimore. Jessie told everyone that she’d seen maps showing a channel between Ocracoke Island and Hatteras Island, but there wasn’t one now because of a hurricane that had struck sometime in the seventeen hundreds.

The small village of Ocracoke was impressive to all the English passengers, who, if the truth be told, had expected nothing but broken-down tents and dilapidated wooden buildings weathered gray and molded by storms from the sea. Spears said to Jessie, “You led us a bit astray, Jessie. This is a thriving village. Just look at all those small fishing vessels. Look at all those well-mended nets.”

There were three wooden docks, all well built and sturdy. Buildings weren’t clustered together, rather they were stuck in their own little spots, weaving themselves in between live oaks and cedars, some of them reaching nearly to the shore of the inlet. Captain Markly told them that the inlet was deep, thus they could sail nearly to shore. It had been a fine retreat for the pirates, he said, and laughed. “No more of those blackguards around,” he assured the ladies. “Prayer and the English navy put them to rout.”

“Aye,” Anthony said, “it was Lieutenant Maynard who killed Blackbeard. He shot him and speared him dozens and dozens of times.”

“That is very nearly the truth,” Spears said, beaming down at his boy, a look, Marcus thought, that he earned far less than Anthony did these days.

“What a pity that there’s no more excitement,” Maggie said, and gave the captain a smile that curled the toes inside his boots. He wondered about staying here in Ocracoke with his passengers for the next several weeks rather than sailing on to Puerto Rico with a load of tobacco leaves. Duty occasionally depressed a man.

“Perhaps it is a bit unfinished, as Jessie told us,” Badger said, “but Mr. Spears is quite right. Just look at all the bustle. It’s alive here, not desolate.”

“There are several small stores,” Jessie said, pointing just down the dirt road. “A Mr. Gaskill owned the one my parents always used when I was a little girl.”

Mr. Gaskill still owned the small store that carried everything from thimbles to scrub boards, just as Jessie had told them, and even more, including buckets of oats for horses to new netting for the fishermen. “Why,” the grizzled old man said, beaming at Jessie, “ain’t ye Jessie Warfield? Aye, that’s who ye be. Sech a cute little girl ye was back then. Yer father all right?”

Other Ocracokers came into the store, and Jessie was soon surrounded by the Burruses, the Jacksons, the Fulchers, and the Styrons. All exclaimed at how grown-up she was. The locals eyed the English contingent, saying little directly to them.

Mr. Gaskill’s son, Timmy, hired out himself and his wagon to transport them and their goods to Oliver Warfield’s house, which lay on the ocean side of Ocracoke.

Theodore Burrus, a young man near Jessie’s age, nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw the Duchess and Maggie. He merely waved to Jessie, who had already garbed herself in practical trousers, boots, and a flannel shirt and leather vest. Jessie believed, though, that it was Spears who got the most unabashed stares. He looked like a royal personage leading his minions. His deportment was impeccable as were his black wool trousers and coat. His cravat was stark white. He looked magnificent.

One Ocracoker started to bow, then recovered himself in time and spat on the ground beside him.

“I’d rather have a horse,” Marcus said, eyeing the back of the wagon where all of them would pile in, like a collection of bundles.

“We will figure it out,” Spears said as his master climbed into the back of the wagon and took Charles from Sampson.

“It’s only a mile to my papa’s house,” Jessie said, as James whipped up the sweet-tempered gray mare, who was nearly groaning at pulling the weighty wagon. “On the ocean side. He wanted to be a bit separated from the rest of the villagers. It was his retreat from the world, he would say.” As they drove outside Ocracoke Village, the dirt road narrowed considerably. There’d been a recent rainstorm, for there were deep ruts filled with water.

“Now I feel as if I’ve been transported to another world,” the Duchess said, breathing in the salty air, looking up at the sea gulls, the terns, and the oystercatchers. “What is that, Jessie?”

“What? Oh, that’s a white ibis. See his red legs and red face? He won’t let us come much closer. There’s a swamp just beyond that mess of sea oats.”

“I’d never imagined such a place as this,” Maggie said, and pulled the bonnet lower on her forehead. “A lady could ruin her complexion very quickly here with all this bright sunlight and the salt spray.”

James pulled the horses to a halt in front of a weathered gray clapboard house, which looked the w

ay most of them had pictured all the houses in Ocracoke would look. There was a sign over the gate that could barely be read. “It looks so derelict,” Jessie said, looking at the buckling gray boards, the weeds that grew nearly to her waist. There were several broken windows. A stunted live oak grew in the front yard. “A Mr. and Mrs. Potter are the caretakers. Why is the grass so high? Why are there loose boards lying around?” Jessie said. “After I recovered from the fever, Papa never wanted to come back, but the Potters should have taken care of things. Papa has sent them money over the years for repairs and upkeep.”

“It appears,” Marcus said, shading his eyes from the bright overhead noon sun, “that the Potters have taken themselves off to other parts, your father’s money in their pockets.”

“But why didn’t anyone say anything about it to me?” Jessie said, nearly in tears.

“Enough dawdling,” Spears said, lightly stepping over loose boards that had fallen from a low-lying water tank. “We will consider the air invigorating, the house a challenge. We are prepared.”

Charles was crying but Anthony was running around, wanting to see everything at the same time. Spears finally called him to order, and to his father’s disgust, Anthony obeyed immediately.

The inside of the house made Jessie’s tears flow over. “It was so lived-in before. Now, just look at it. Everything is falling apart and it smells like mildew and other things I don’t really want to try to identify. Why didn’t any of them tell me what had happened? Surely they knew that the Potters had left. They had to have known. Why didn’t they tell me?”