The Movement of Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

surrounded hers. He’d trimmed his beard and hair, eliminating the boulder-colored grey swoop that usually impaired his vision. Someone had mended the hole in the shoulder of his jacket with tidy stitches, and Hannah squinted at them, wondering who could have sewn them; the only needle she’d touched in months was the one she’d used to repair the crosshair.
“I was looking for thee,” he said. “Dr. Hall wished to say hello.” “I’m sorry I missed him.” Hannah turned, expecting to see her old mentor and teacher.
“Thee shall have another chance— I’ve invited him to supper tomorrow evening.”
“Oh. Very well. I hope there’s enough of the roast left over. I suppose I could do a chowder if someone has clams.” They began moving through the crowd, walking easily in step.
“Ever practical,” he said. “We’ll make it enough. He has simple taste. I’m sure a home-cooked meal from thee will warm him sufficiently, even if it be stone soup.”
“It may taste thus,” she said, only half joking. Among the many things Hannah wished her mother had lived to pass along was her renowned ability to cook. Ann Gardner Price had died when Hannah and Edward were only three years old, and Hannah had found it difficult in the years since to learn much about her beyond her cooking, though Miss Norris, the senior librarian and Ann’s former classmate, had once said something startling: “Thy mother was a force to be reckoned with,” she’d intoned, lowering her voice as if she were committing treason. “She was never settled in matters of Discipline. Thy father indulged her, some said, though in my opinion there’s aught a man can do about a wife with ideas.” “What sort of ideas?” Hannah had asked, remaining perfectly still for fear that Miss Norris might stop speaking.
“Ah, well. She didn’t much like keeping house, outside of the garden and the kitchen. She had a difficult time with all things plain, though she grew up in the Discipline, too. And she wasn’t the quiet type. Questions, questions, questions—that was thy mother. Like a child in that way, she was. In any case, the past is past, and thee can be glad to take after thy father. Not a hint of impertinence in thee, I’m glad to see. One wishes the same could be said about thy brother. But boys, there’s no sense in them but what a woman knocks in.”
Hannah and Nathaniel reached their row. The assembly began to settle as the Prices parted. Nathaniel dipped to the left while Hannah took her place on the right, with the women.
There was no need to look to know who was present. In the front, facing the room, Dr. Hall took his place with the other elders. At their feet sat the Starbuck and Folger clans, along with the rest of the original families, descendents of the first Friends who’d made landfall upon Nantucket two hundred years earlier and never left.
Behind them, the Coffeys and their kin occupied two more benches, along with other families whose fortunes grew greater each evening as people up and down the eastern coast from Penobscot to Atlanta read and sang and prayed by lamps filled with right whale oil.
Farther back were the families whose fortunes depended upon those of the people in front: the mapmakers and milliners, importers and outfitters. Without the captains and shipowners and their families, they would be out of work, as would Hannah and her father. His job at the Bank was to ensure that the banknotes from New York and Rhode Island and Connecticut were exchanged for local notes the owners could deposit into their accounts on Federal Street. As their accounts grew, so would Nathaniel’s—but he’d only been in the position for nine months, and Hannah had yet to see any increase in their finances.
She wondered if they ever would. For the first time in history, more whaling vessels were shipping from New Bedford than Nantucket. Her fishery still held its own—and proudly—but the economic winds were blowing west. There were