came but two cantankerous old men. As I stood there, people began to stream from the central door, the women and girls clad in dismal, excoriated dresses that made us Presbyterians seem almost flamboyant. Even the children wore drab coats and grave little faces. I observed them against the red bricks, the steeple-less roof, the plain shuttered windows, and I felt repelled. I’d heard they sat in silence, waiting for someone to utter his most inward intimacies with God out loud for everyone to hear. It sounded terrifying to me.
Notwithstanding the Quakers, those days were very much like the moments I’d floated in the ocean at Long Branch beneath the white flag. A vitality inhabited those weeks, almost like a second heart beating in my chest. I’d found I could manage quite well on my own. Had it not been for Father’s death, I might have been happy.
When November arrived, however, I knew I couldn’t remain any longer. Winter was coming. The sea would become treacherous. I packed my trunk.
The ship was a cutter, which gave me hope of reaching Charleston in ten days. I’d booked first-class passage, but my stateroom was dark and cramped with nothing but a wallmere closet and a two-foot berth. As often as possible, I hazarded above deck to feel the cold, bracing winds, huddling with the other passengers on the lee side.
On the third morning, I woke near dawn and dressed quickly, not bothering to braid my hair. The stale, suffocating room felt like a sepulcher, and I surfaced above deck with my carrot hair flying, expecting to be alone, yet there was another already at the rail. Pulling up the hood of my cloak, I sought a spot away from him.
A tiny, white ball of moon was still in the sky, clinging to the last bit of night. Below it a thin line of blue light ran the length of the horizon. I watched it grow.
“How are thee?” a man’s voice said, using the formal Quaker greeting I’d often heard in Philadelphia.
As I turned to him, strands of my hair slipped from the hood and whipped wildly about my face. “. . . I’m fine, sir.”
He had a dramatic cleft in his chin and piercing brown eyes over which his brows slanted upward like the slopes of a tiny hill. He wore simple breeches with silver knee buckles, a dark coat, and a three-cornered hat. A lock of hair, dark as coal, tossed on his forehead. I guessed him to be some years older than I, perhaps ten or more. I’d seen him on deck before, and on the first night, in the ship’s dining quarters with his wife and eight children, six boys, two girls. I’d thought then how tired she looked.
“My name is Israel Morris,” he said.
Later, I would wonder if the Fates had placed me there, if they’d been the ones who’d kept me lingering in Philadelphia for three months until this particular ship sailed, though of course, we Presbyterians believed it was God who arranged propitious encounters like these, not mythological women with spindles, threads, and shears.
The mainsails were snapping and wheezing, making a great racket. I told him my name, and then we stood for a moment, gazing at the rising brightness, at the seabirds suddenly making soaring arcs in the sky. He told me his wife, Rebecca, was quarantined in their cabin tending their youngest two, who’d become sick with dysentery. He was a broker, a commission merchant, and though he was modest, I could tell he’d been prosperous at it.
In turn, I told him about the sojourn I’d made with my father and his unexpected death. The words slid fluidly off my tongue, with only an occasional stammer. I could only attribute it to the sweep and flow of water around us.
“Please, accept my sympathies,” he said. “It must have been difficult, caring for your father alone. Could your husband not travel with you?”
“My husband? Oh, Mr. Morris, I’m not married.”
His face flushed.
Wanting to ease the moment, I said, “I assure you, it’s not a matter that concerns me much.”
He laughed and asked about my family, about our life in Charleston. When I told him about the house on East Bay and the plantation in the upcountry, his lively expression died away. “You own slaves then?”
“. . . My family does, yes. But I, myself, don’t condone it.”