The Sacred River Read Online Free PDF Page B

over to face the side of the ship, tugging her blanket over her head. Lifting her cloak from the hook on the back of the door, Harriet picked up the dog and let herself out of the cabin.
    She walked past a line of numbered doors to a circular iron staircase, pulling herself up by the handrail. Pausing at the top to steady her breath, she glanced through the windows of the saloon cabin. At the far end, a circle of a dozen people were on their knees, their heads bowed. Harriet recognized Yael’s gray skirts spread on the floor like a puddle.
    The stairs up to the weather deck were grand and polished, made of wood. Stepping out to the rush and freshness of sea air, she gasped as the wind whipped back her hair and blew her cloak out behind her like a sail. The sky was immense, a soft silver bowl over her head with long fingers of pearly cloud on the horizon. All around, the sea glittered and rolled, looking grand and clean and alive.
    The deck was deserted apart from a couple sitting on a bench, and at the bow, just visible between the masts, a man setting up an easel. As Harriet put down the dog, the couple rose and walked toward her, arm in arm, the woman clutching a hat to her head with one hand. The height of the woman’s hat, the aigrette of iridescent turquoise feathers attached on one side, gave her the appearance of a gorgeous bird herself. She nodded at Harriet as she passed by.
    The sun emerged between the scudding clouds and Harriet became aware of her shadow in front of her on the scrubbed planks. Her own head, in a close-fitting winter bonnet, looked small, her body like a narrow giantess’s. Her brown tweed traveling skirt, chosen by Louisa at Marshall & Snelgrove for its warmth and durability, announced her as an invalid, unfashionable and unmarried, set apart from other women of her age. Everything about her carried the same message: her five feet and nine inches, which her brothers used to say made her look like an etiolated plant, shooting up in search of the light; her pale complexion and forced avoidance, often unsuccessfully, of the emotions that she seemed to feel more strongly than others.
    Raising her head, she took a gulp of salty air and began a tour of the deck. Passing by a row of upturned lifeboats, she noticed the man again. He stood at his easel, a little distance in front of her, black hair flying out behind him in the wind. She watched as he wiped a brush clean and began to load it with paint from the palette balanced on his forearm. An oily cloth fell to the deck at his feet and as the wind lifted it, Harriet’s dog sprang forward. Seizing the rag between his jaws, he began to worry it, shaking it as if it were alive, growling with all his might.
    Harriet laughed as she walked toward him. “Here, Dash. Give that back.”
    “Drop it, brute.”
    The painter aimed the tip of a laced, two-toned shoe at the dog.
    “Don’t kick him,” Harriet said, her voice half carried away by the wind. “Dash. Let go!”
    She knelt down and pulled the rag from the dog’s jaws, handed it to the painter.
    “You ought to keep it on a leash,” he said, taking the cloth and securing it underneath the palette.
    “Not it. Him,” Harriet said.
    The painter looked at her without interest. He was broad-faced and clean-shaven, his hair swept back over a low forehead. He wore a white shirt in an unevenly woven and unbleached fabric, the kind of cloth that Rosina might use to apply beeswax to furniture. No collar. A red scarf decorated with peacock feathers fluttered at his neck. Harriet had never seen a man dressed in clothes like his.
    She was staring, she realized, feeling the start of a blush. Turning away, she caught sight of the canvas clamped on the easel. The picture was barely begun; a few arcs of sea spray in shades of pewter and olive and charcoal flew upward into a naked canvas sky.
    Dash was shivering at her feet. Harriet gathered him under her arm and walked slowly back along the starboard side, past