Widow's Walk

Day after day, I climbed the steps to the cupola on the roof to watch for my husband’s ship. I hated that Charles had had to go back to the sea; only last year he had retired from the long trading voyages. With the profit of thirty years as captain, he had purchased his favorite ship and another of similar design, and a large warehouse. Thus settled in business, he had our present home built to his specification: red brick, with the servants’ quarters and kitchen on the ground floor, and dining hall and study above. On the top floor were the bedrooms, ours and two smaller rooms for our sons, Henry and William, all surmounted by a low-ceilinged attic. A trapdoor brought down a stairway to the roof, where the cupola, surrounded by a railing, stood – a captain’s walk, he called it, so that he might watch for his ships’ comings and goings. He had seen them in one of the southern colonies and determined that he should be the first merchant he knew to have one on his own home. His ships were called Salem Town and Colonial Bull – the latter a reference to his favorite tavern, the Bull’s Horns, which he also owned a half-stake in and where he always took his crews for dinner upon arriving safe in harbor and again before setting sail. I confess the ships looked the same as any other in the harbor to me, save that I recognized the officers aboard when they docked, but Charles could see a mast barely peeping over the horizon and know whether it was his own or another’s. He would watch as she approached the wharf to see that the proper number of men were on deck – there always being a risk of illness or accident at sea – and once she was tied up, he would hurry downstairs and across the square to supervise the unloading of cargo. There were usually contracts for most of the goods to be sold on to shops, but there were always some goods that someone was trying to move quickly, and Charles’s captains were savvy in what might or might not be worth finding room aboard for.

Alas, when the Bull was being readied for her most recent voyage, her captain, Robert Storr, had leaned over the rail to catch a rope and plunged into the water. He was immediately pulled out by two men on the dock, but the fall had been caused by a sudden apoplexy and he was already dead. It was a disaster, with the ship due to sail in two days and contracts for the delivery of rum and other goods in Bristol and London. Unable to find another worthy captain available on such short notice, Charles had taken it on himself to sail with the ship. In his absence, I attended Captain Storr’s funeral with my eldest son, promising that I would send a basket of food round for the unfortunate Mrs. Storr and her young children. In fact, I had done so weekly since, the basket carried by one of the kitchen boys and accompanied by my ladies’ maid, should Mrs. Storr have need of her services for the afternoon. I had also called on her two or three times myself, but found it grew harder as she grieved no less and was beginning to trouble me as the Bull’s return was now quite overdue. It was more than I could bear, to be in that house and have no relief from my own worry as well.

Even considering that the route would take her past the southern colonies, picking up additional cargo along the way, before crossing the Atlantic and heading north again toward England, the ship should have been back within perhaps three months, even if they made a further stop in France to take on a cargo of wine, as they sometimes did. Three or four barrels would be sold to the better establishments in Boston, but some would be reserved for the Bull’s Horns and a smaller portion for our own table. It had now been more than four months, however, and was getting late in the season for the return voyage. It was unthinkable that, if he had merely been delayed in one port or another, that he should not have sent a letter, although this itself could also be delayed or lost.

Worse than the not knowing, however, were the dreams that had started some two months after Colonial Bull had left port.

While I had often dreamed of the past – when Charles and I were courting, or things the children had done when they were small – or of abstractions, such as walking across fields of flowers that didn’t quite exist, I had never before dreamed of my husband’s life at sea, no matter how long he had been gone. Even during the year that his ship had to put in for repairs in Bristol so he signed on as first mate on the East Indiaman Johanna, her penultimate voyage to Surat before she sank off the coast of Africa, I had received his letter stating that he might be gone six or eight months longer than planned and sharing his excitement for something beyond the routine crossing between the colonies and England. His share of that voyage – gold, rare silks, and a few gemstones – enabled him to buy his own ship when he returned to England that summer, and he arrived home in the rechristened Salem Town, after the place to which we had recently moved from Salem Village. No, these dreams were very different from the ordinary ones I’d had before: so vivid, I could taste the salt in the air and wake up parched, with the shouts of the deck hands still ringing in my ears. I’d never been aboard a ship at sea and the men were using all sorts of words that I didn’t recognize referring to the various ropes, masts, and sails. Perhaps I’d heard them when I’d taken an occasional walk through, because Charles did insist that I inspect each of his ships, even when he was a captain working for someone else, though they didn’t register at the time as I was merely there to give my blessing.

It was a week or thereabouts after the dreams began that they changed abruptly. No longer a pleasant, sunny day with breeze gently filling the sails, the sky was so deeply green that it was nearly black, and the waves grew choppy, with occasional swells that made the ship nearly disappear as she went up and over them. I woke up chilled and yet sweating, not sure if I had shouted Charles’s name aloud or only in my head. On the third night, I knew I shouted aloud, for I awoke to the crash of Henry and William near taking my bedroom door off its hinges in a rush to rescue me from a supposed intruder. I could not find the words to tell them what I had seen that had left me so shaken. As Bull was tossed about by the seething ocean, I had heard one of the men cry out that there was something wrong with the rudder. Even though I was no sailor I knew that the rudder was used to steer the ship, which I saw then turned broadside as the next wave plucked her up and threw her over. Men tried to catch themselves in her rigging with the hope that some air might be trapped in the hold as she capsized, or else threw themselves clear to avoid injury as the great hulk bore down on them. I saw Charles holding tightly to the wheel, the most secure thing to hang on to I supposed, for of course as the captain he was still fighting to right her even though all hope was lost. He then tried to swim free of the wreckage, I was sure to see how many of his men were still living and to discover how best they might ride out the storm, when another wave rolled the ship again and a spar struck him in the head. Tossed like a rag doll, his eyes were open but unseeing and his jaw hung as limp as his limbs. Grey hair floated like seaweed above his head.

“Don’t worry, Mother, it was just a dream,” said Henry. William agreed, “It’s just that Father having to go back to sea was a wrench in the plans, but it will all be all right.” If that were so, how was it that I could taste the salt water, feel it filling my lungs? I could not explain it to them. I took a candle from William’s hand and walked past the boys, took the hooked rod from the hallway, and opened the trap door. I mounted the stairs to the captain’s walk and looked out over the ocean. The waning gibbous moon shone on the water, revealing slight ripples lapping against the docks across the street and swells no higher than my knee stretching out to the horizon. All was quiet and peaceful, and so I went back to bed and slept soundly through the rest of the night.

The following night, however, the dream was back, and worse. Still I saw the wave roll the ship over, still I saw the men fall as if from the sky. But this time, when the errant spar struck Charles’s head, he was already dead, and I could see that fish and other sea-creatures had been at his flesh. His eyes were gone, as were most of his lips. Part of an ear was missing. His clothes were ragged, and his fingertips turned black. A bit of his scalp floated up, wafting back and forth in the current. I sat up, disoriented. No, it was my own hair gone wild, my night bonnet having come off. It was not salt water I tasted on my upper lip but sweat. No ragged clothing but sheets and blanket heaped in the middle of the bed, gathered in my arms. Was it waves crashing or blood pounding in my head? I took the candle and went up to the roof but again the waters were quiet as far as the eye could see.

Each night from then on, the damage done to poor Charles was even worse. There was less and less ragged flesh and I saw fish and worms darting between his bones. His head was just a skull with a few strands of hair still somehow attached. He would turn and try to speak to me, but without lips and tongue I could not understand his words. If there had been such a storm, we should have heard news of it by now, but there was no word. When we heard of the Battle of Barfleur, I knew he could not have made an extra stop in France, but perhaps he had gone to the Netherlands, for cloth or ceramics? I never saw such things though, only the terrible wreckage, over and over. I watched during the day as other ships came and went as usual and received no word of our own.

One day as I was coming downstairs from the roof, I heard William’s voice from the study. “… sure she hasn’t heard about Jamaica?” What was this? Jamaica?

Henry replied, “She can’t have. We only heard yesterday, and she hasn’t left the house in weeks. Besides, she says all of her dreams are of a storm on the open sea, but we know there was an earthquake in Port Royal just before the wave hit. Besides, why would Father have been in that place? He doesn’t deal in raw sugar – or slaves.”

“Still,” William paused, “if the neighbors hear her screaming in the middle of the night and find that she’s dreaming of things she can’t really know about, she might end up being burnt as a witch.”

“Idiot.” Henry, the elder, always having to talk sense into his brother. He would set this right. “They’re hanging the witches, not burning them.” What?

“Pardon me, Henry, but that does not make me feel better about this. Hanging or burnt, I prefer that our mother not be executed as a witch! I’m not sure how much more I can take.”

I flattened myself against the wall in the upper staircase to avoid William seeing me as he stormed out of the house. I knew he would just take his horse for a short ride through town and return once he had calmed down, still in plenty of time for dinner, but now I worried that he might confide his fears to someone outside the house. Could the neighbors hear when I woke up shouting? I thought not, as I always kept the shutters closed to keep out moonlight as well as the night air, being mindful of disease as well as preferring my room as dark as possible for sleeping. Would the servants talk? Likely not – we employed a family: a cook, her husband as the men’s valet, their two sons helping in the kitchen and stable, and the cook’s niece as my ladies’ maid – and they would all be aware that if one gossiped, it might lead to all of them losing their positions. Still, the dreams had been going on for weeks, and William was right, how much more could any of us take?

After the last dream when Charles’s flesh had all been worn away and his bones scattered on the ocean floor, I thought that might be the end of it, but the next night I dreamed that a hand reached out and pulled a piece of wood from the water. It was a small section of planking, with the name Colonial Bull painted on it. What could this mean? Had she been found? When would news finally reach us? The following day I was about to walk into the hall for luncheon when I heard Henry and William talking again.

“I was speaking with the captain of Anachreon today. He said they found one of Bull’s boats adrift off Carolina.”

“Yes? Was Father there?”

“No, there were four men in it, but he didn’t recognize any of them. And they were all dead, so he couldn’t find out what happened. He said by the look of them they’d run out of fresh water, as they’d managed to salvage a net that they could have caught fish to eat with. He couldn’t tell how long they might have been dead or how far they might have drifted, but he thought Bull must have sunk, else why would only four men set out and the boat so ill-equipped?”

I heard Henry let out a long, slow breath. “We can’t tell Mother. It will kill her.” Ah, too late Henry, too late. I turned around and went quietly up the stairs, and up again to the roof. How much of my dreams had been accurate? I wondered. I only saw a piece of the boat recovered, but William said that Anachreon had found an entire launch with bodies. Had Charles in fact been knocked dead in the water or only drowned? I found myself hoping the former as it would have been quicker for him, but also, I had felt my lungs burning as I breathed salt water and feared it had been the latter. I wished I could never sleep again; I did not want to know what the next dream might show me. I came down again for dinner, then went back to the roof again. I did not go to bed that whole night, and though I found myself nodding a few times, each time I would get up and pace around the cupola until I was fully awake again. In the morning, both of my sons came and sat with me separately, saying nothing. After luncheon I took a brief nap in my bedroom, then went back to my watch. I managed to successfully avoid sleeping deeply enough to dream for over a week, but then came a night when I could manage it no longer and fell asleep on my bench in the rooftop cupola.

Again, I was caught in the storm, saw Charles fall from the deck as the ship overturned and the spar struck him in the head. He floated, dazed, for a moment, then looked up and saw me. He reached out toward me, and I moved to take his hand, but felt it close around my throat instead. Why, Charles? But there was no answer. His lips moved as soundlessly as ever. Henry and William found me, cold and stiff, the next morning.

That was nearly two hundred years ago. They still build houses with captains’ walks, but now they are called widows’ walks. Each night I still wait on the roof of my former home, hoping that the wreck of the Colonial Bull will be found, and when I finally know where my beloved Charles sleeps, I will be able to go to my own rest.