If the Tide Turns

by Rachel Rueckert

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance

Synopsis

Set during the Golden Age of Pirates and the shadowy aftermath of the Salem witch trials, this vivid literary debut is inspired by the captivating true story of real-life pirate Samuel Bellamy, combining high seas adventure, star-crossed longing, surprisingly timely questions about social justice and freedom, and the emotionally satisfying tale of one strong-willed young woman determined to choose her own path…

1715, Eastham, Massachusetts: As the daughter of a wealthy family, Maria Brown has a secure future mapped out for her, yet it is not the future she wants. Young, headstrong, and restless, Maria has no desire to marry the aging, mean-spirited John Hallett, regardless of his fortune and her parents’ wishes. As for what Maria does want—only one person has ever even asked her that question.

Samuel Bellamy, an orphaned sailor searching for work, meets Maria by chance, enthralling her with talk of far-flung places and blasphemous ideals. But neither is free from the social order into which they were born. When Sam is banished from Maria’s parents’ home after asking for her hand, he vows to return a wealthy man, and Maria promises to keep the faith until then.

Sam is drawn into piracy and discovers a brotherhood more equal and fulfilling than any on land, despite its dangers. Beguiled by the chance to both fight for justice and make a fortune to bring home to Maria, Sam is torn between duty to his crew and his desire to return. Separated by more than just the ocean, time slips by as Sam and Maria cling to their love for each other. Maria is determined to stay strong in her conviction in Sam, but as rumors swirl and her position in Eastham turns perilous, Maria is forced into an impossible decision.
In parallel journeys—deeply individual, though inseparably bound—Sam and Maria must confront the questions: What are the limits of change and the price of true freedom? And where does treasure really lie? 

Release date: March 26, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

Maria broke for air as a wave crested. She let out an unrestrained laugh as the ocean tumbled into her shoulders, pushing her through the surf until her knees pressed into the soft shore.

“How did I do this time?” Maria shouted above the roar to her younger sister, Elizabeth, who sat reading on the empty beach.

Elizabeth’s eyes flicked up, then back to her novel. “As well as usual.”

Which wasn’t great, Maria knew. She never waded in deeper than her ribs. But not knowing how to swim hadn’t halted her attempts to improve.

Maria scrambled to her feet, shaking out a shiver and scraping away sand. She wrung water from her linen shift, then her braid. Her throat burned with traces of sea. Despite the goose bumps, she glowed with delight. She buried the wet shift inside her basket, then quickly changed into a clean dress.

“I’m missing something in the arm movement,” Maria said after drying off. She held out her arms, trying to mimic what she’d seen the fishermen at the docks do when they dove to cut a snagged line. Why were they allowed this joy while she was not? She finished dressing and then stared at the bonnet in her hands. She hated the dreadful thing, but over her seventeen years of existence, she’d learned resistance was futile. She sighed, then tied the bonnet on, tucking the damp coil of cornsilk hair away from view.

“There has to be a way to keep water out of my nose.”

“Mmm,” Elizabeth said.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Elizabeth turned a page. “Imagine what Mama would say if she found out you were at this again.”

Maria didn’t have to imagine. She knew exactly what Mama would say, having been caught before. A few months back, Maria and Elizabeth had both lost privileges of going out, meaning Elizabeth hadn’t been able to see her friend, Lydia, for a week.

Maria felt a pang of regret, softened only by knowing that Elizabeth craved these moments away as much as Maria did, a chance to sit with her questionable reading material without prying eyes.

“It would be a shame to spend a life by the sea and never properly venture into it,” Maria said. She had always felt so. Such wild vastness, possibility and danger. Adventure and misadventure. Everything she shouldn’t feel drawn to as a girl.

But it wasn’t “proper” for her to venture into it at all.

“You’ll be an eligible lady soon,” Elizabeth said without looking up, but Maria heard the sorrow in that familiar reproach. Elizabeth herself might not recognize the base note of sadness, that subtle dissonance, but Maria did. She felt a small, invisible stirring—nothing more. Maria could never explain how she knew these unspoken, unseeable things. She’d tried before, as a child, borrowing language from church. “Whisperings of the spirit,” she’d called them, until Mama had warned that God would never send Maria visions. Instead, Maria was instructed to stay clear of Satan’s grip, of even the appearance of evil.

Whatever the feeling’s name, it was the same tiny pang Maria got whenever she could sense an oncoming storm by the look of a lone cloud or a breeze from the north. Or what she felt after a dream about one of the cows falling ill, only to discover later that the stable lad found traces of red during the daily milking.

Or that unspoken tension Maria noticed between Elizabeth and Lydia whenever Reverend Treat spoke of “unchaste behavior” on Sundays. Maria did not have to look long at her sister to observe her flushed, freckled cheeks when the famous Cotton Mather visited Cape Cod last summer—that cleft-chinned man who’d written about the Salem witch trials two decades ago. The celebrity preacher had delivered a fiery sermon about two Plymouth women prosecuted for “lewd behavior with each other upon a bed.”

But perhaps it was all in Maria’s overactive imagination. Elizabeth, though a year younger, was better behaved than Maria. More God-fearing and upright.

“We should return,” Maria said, retrieving her gathering basket. “I told Mercy we’d meet her by the huckleberries.”

Elizabeth glanced at the sun.

“Ready?” Maria said, offering her hand.

Elizabeth sighed, reluctant to part with her story, whatever worlds she escaped into whenever the two of them stole time away from chores—the never-ending mending, washing, animal-tending, cooking, and cleaning. Preparing, always, around the harvest.

Elizabeth snapped her book closed, and Maria hoisted her up.

“There you are!” came a high voice behind the pitch pines.

Maria and Elizabeth swung around in unison, Elizabeth hiding the novel behind her.

“Mercy,” Maria said with feigned calm. “I told you to wait for us in the meadow.”

Mercy grinned, purple staining the corners of her mouth. “I finished picking early. Did you get the rosemary for the cod?”

Maria and Elizabeth nodded, then stole a glance as little Mercy trotted off, blazing a path for them to follow.

“That was close.”

“Too close,” Elizabeth whispered. She surveyed Maria, making sure her wet hair was properly covered.

Maria gave her a gentle push. “Race you.” Then the two of them picked up their skirts and baskets to sprint after their little sister.

Sea grass whipped at their ankles as Maria walloped with delight, kicking up earth with her boots. A blue heron flew off when they neared, receding into the flawless sky. For a moment, Maria was transported. She could remember Constance chasing her like this, teasing her with taunts as Maria cawed like a bird, always out of reach like the Nauset wind.

One minute Constance was there, carefree, scampering through the golden marsh meadows. The next, severe, grown, then gone. As respectable and cross as Mama. How many years had passed since she’d seen her older sister? Marriage changed people in the worst ways.

I’ll never be like that, Maria thought as she ran, then pushed the words away.

When they neared the cedar-shingled house, the three girls came to a stop and caught their breath.

“Who’s that with Papa?” Mercy asked with a wrinkled nose.

Papa stood in the doorway, shaking hands with an older gentleman in a velvet waistcoat and a tight cravat.

“Girls,” called Papa with a grin when he saw them. “Come. There’s someone joining us for supper whom I’d like you to meet.”

“More pudding, Mr. Hallett?” Mama offered, passing a pewter bowl. Hallett sat across from Papa, who was seated at the head of the table. Papa hunched over his plate and would not look up from his heap of potatoes until he was through, his normal habit, no matter who was at supper. Tonight might have resembled any other evening, but Maria knew better. They all did. Mama’s heightened pitch only confirmed it.

“No, Mrs. Brown, I thank you,” Hallett said, holding up a hand. He patted his graying beard with a large cotton napkin. His powdered wig, twice as thick as Papa’s, covered his shoulders. “My compliments on the meal.”

“My daughters,” Mama said, gesturing toward Maria, Elizabeth, and Mercy while Maria pretended not to notice. She had no intention of saying anything. If she opened her mouth, she feared she’d say something wrong—something truthful. Despite her seventeen years, Mama still resorted to the rod.

Was anyone going to mention that, before today, Mr. Hallett was Papa’s biggest farming rival?

No. Only she would dare to mention the year Hallett refused to share corn seed, sabotaging Papa’s crop season. Or that the two had refused to speak to each other since. Everyone else seemed content to sit here and pretend, as if lying wasn’t a sin.

Mama then singled out Maria. “She picked the freshest cod of the catch, a real eye for it by now,” Mama added. “An excellent cook.”

A stretch. Adequate was how Mama usually described her cooking.

“Delicious indeed,” said Hallett without inflection as he picked a bone from his teeth. “Tell me, Mr. Brown,” he said, turning to Papa as if the rest of them were not there. “Do you add fish to your fertilizer?”

Just be a body, here in this chair, Maria told herself, already tasting the salt of the sea. Your mind can go anywhere. She went over her swim technique from the morning, puzzling out what she might do differently next time.

A swift kick under the table made Maria wince, yanking her back. Elizabeth coughed and shot her a stern look. Maria must have been making the wrong face.

“As I was saying,” Mr. Hallett continued, “these funds I donated should secure a much larger meetinghouse. Reverend Treat was most grateful, most eager, when I shared my plan.”

“How fortunate for the community,” Papa said.

“May I have more?” Mercy asked, legs swinging under her chair.

“Wait to be offered or addressed before speaking, child,” Mama said.

“Perhaps the vigor of youth is no great evil,” droned Hallett. “I could use a bit more energy these days myself.”

Papa grunted in acknowledgment. His gaze caught Maria’s disgust, and she detected a sympathetic smile. A mischievous kitten, he’d always called her—“always with the look of a cat stalking a bird.”

Then Papa returned to his meal, changing the subject. “It’s always a pleasure to host a guest and give thanks for our blessings. As we read in Isaiah, ‘If ye consent and obey, ye shall eat the good things of the land.’ ”

Maria did not join the muttering of agreements, nor in the praise when Hallett mentioned the other great “improvements” he aspired to make to Eastham.

Papa’s bay-blue eyes crinkled as he placed his hands on the round of his stomach. The buttons strained along his brown waistcoat. “Is the pie ready, my dear? I’m eager to discuss the grain crop with Mr. Hallett before the night is over. Thievery, this raise in seed price, is it not? With topsoil turning to sand before our eyes?” His gaze narrowed. “And once we dismiss the women, I’d like your opinion on a political matter—property rights and these proposed town ‘divisions,’ if you understand my meaning.”

Hell had to be real, Maria considered as she stabbed at a carrot.

Fallen angels.

Ghastly demons.

Horrid imps disguised as dogs.

All of them, every devil from the Invisible World, sent here to punish her at the kitchen table, forcing her to endure this charade.

Sam clenched his fists as his captain finished reading the list of names.

“Jones. Johnson. Smith. Taylor. Watson.”

The mass of sailors on the main deck stared ahead, wringing their caps in their hands, willing for the list to go on longer.

“The rest of you will be dismissed from service once we reach Cape Cod,” the captain ended with a cough, pocketing the parchment in his coat and making a retreat to his quarters.

Sam shouldn’t have been surprised. They’d been anticipating something like this now that the war over Spain’s new king had ended. But somehow that didn’t remove the sting. He had no other skills, no other chances to make his way in the world.

A few listeners emitted groans and wails of despair, but nothing louder.

“And what of the rest of us, sir?” Sam said, forcing the captain to stop in his perfectly polished boots.

His reddened, puckered skin contrasted with the false white of his powdered wig. “That’s your problem now, Bellamy. I can’t control the terms of the British Navy any more than I can control you.”

Sam held his tongue until the rat of a man escaped into his hole, hiding from the faces of the men. Rumor had it that he pissed in a silver chamber pot, feeling himself too good to use the “heads” in the bow of the ship like the rest of them.

“Let it go, Bellamy,” one sailor whispered with sour breath to Sam as everyone slouched back to their posts. “You’ll only make it worse.”

“Can it be worse?” Sam replied. How long could he watch these emaciated young men haunt the decks, groveling like fearful dogs?

How long could he, himself, be that dog? Kicked time and time again, begging for a scrap of meat and a chance to survive?

But for all his indignation, Sam gritted his teeth and returned to work the lines. His hotheaded speeches did tend to make things worse for himself and others. He could still feel the cuts on his back, the ones from his latest whipping from the lieutenant’s cato’-nine-tails—all because Sam had taken one good look at the bucket of slop shared between him and six other sailors, felt the weevils crawling through the crumbling hardtack in his hand, and decided to take his concerns up with the captain.

The topsail of the mizzenmast fluttered, and Sam moved to take in the slack. The feel of the rough rope along his callused palms, the sound of the wooden yard knocking against the sail, the texture of the fish-scented planks beneath his bare feet, all felt as natural to him as his own pulse. He’d been doing this long enough—snatched from the docks and made a cabin boy when he was eight years old. None of his superiors, other than Lieutenant Evans, had shown a shred of human decency in the dozen years since.

After tying off a brace line, Sam gazed out at the watery horizon, where he knew they’d encounter land and the reality of mass unemployment the next day. He’d secure lodging with Aunt Lamb in Eastham again, assuming she still ran the Higgins Tavern. He’d find another commission, another way. He always did.

Sam closed his eyes, letting a breeze run along his sun-chapped cheeks and through his black hair. The lungs of nature. The invisible force that governs all souls at sea. That wind began in some faraway corner Sam had never been, going somewhere that no human—regardless of their wealth or status—could predict.

He needed to find another way to live. To truly live. In a way that his father and so many others had never had the chance.

“Back to work, Bellamy,” came an order from the quarterdeck. The bark tore Sam from his stupor as he returned to the lines, shame curdling in his gut. That constant gnaw of fear, he knew, was as much second nature to him as any ship. But something deep in him shouted otherwise.

Father, what would you think of me now?

“The sea seems strange today,” Maria said, abandoning her potato peelings to stand at the window. Low tide. Swells tinged with yellow-green.

This early in the day?

She ran a thumb down a pane. Too clean. No trace of fog, no salt grit between her fingers—not even a speck of soot from yesterday’s cooking fire.

“Four more potatoes should suffice for supper,” Elizabeth said, examining the half-filled pot on the floor between them.

Elizabeth was ignoring her again, she suspected, hoping Maria wouldn’t bring up the inevitable. But Maria felt determined for a distraction, anything to dispel the dread pooling in her stomach and the “best behavior” cloud that had hung over the house since Mr. Hallett’s visit.

It was only business, Maria reasoned when the memory seized her. Papa minimizing his growing risks. Mama hadn’t mentioned the unexpected guest again.

“What do you say to an outing?” Maria said. She squinted at the large blue blur beyond the dunes across the main road. The sound was just out of earshot. “The vegetables can soak for an hour.”

The only response was the scrape of a knife.

“All right,” Maria countered, “no swimming this time. Just a trip to the docks. Before we light the wood. Aren’t you ready to trade for a new book?”

“You know that answer,” Elizabeth said with perfect calmness, tossing an onion wedge into the iron pot.

“Last chance,” Maria said, unfastening her apron and hanging it on a nail near the stone chimney with her bonnet. She swatted corn flour from her dress and unpinned the crown of braid wrapped around her head, letting the golden strands fall to her waist in rivulets. She wouldn’t be out long, she reasoned. “We do need oysters,” Maria added with a lilt.

Elizabeth groaned, but scrambled up from the stool, wiping her hands on her long, dark skirt. “Fine. But we have to be back before—”

A creak of the door stopped the sisters in their steps.

“Mama,” Maria said, frozen where she stood.

“The Turners’ baby came quicker than expected.” Mama returned her midwifery bag to the shelf and scanned the modest room, her gaze lingering on the abandoned work, the apron on the nail, then on Maria’s loose hair.

“Leaving chores unfinished again,” she said. A flinty statement, not a question.

“Yes, Mama,” Maria said, staring at the ground.

“To get some oysters,” Elizabeth added, and Maria appreciated the gesture. “We could use something beyond the taste of pease porridge, especially with Papa’s long hours overseeing the fields.”

Mama managed a rare smile, lines edging the features of her regal face beneath her white linen cap. “A wonderful idea,” she said.

The sisters exchanged a look.

“It is?” asked Maria.

“Yes, but let’s do better. Fresh mackerel.” Her emerald eyes mirrored her daughters’, but without the youthful humor—a quality Maria could almost remember in her, before the accident. Mama’s gaze settled on Maria. “Mr. Hallett is coming to dine with us again tonight. You would do well to appear respectable, like the well-bred woman that you are, Goody.”

Maria set her jaw. She hated it when the family called her by that silly, honorific name. “I’m hardly a woman yet, Mama.”

“Maybe it’s time you acted like one. You’d benefit from a firmer hand.” Mama snatched Maria’s bonnet from the wall and handed it to her. “Lord knows we did our best. Your father was too soft to send you away to work like other willful children in the town, but we did try to cure your spirit of pride and disobedience.”

Maria’s fingers tightened around the cap. “Constance wasn’t married until twenty-three.”

“She was half as beautiful.” Her eyes raked over Maria. “You’ll wear your mantua, the navy one your father was kind enough to purchase for you in Boston. Elizabeth, your gray petticoat will do. We aren’t struggling farmers or worldly women like some others in these parts.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “But that dress is only for special occasions.”

Again, Maria felt that familiar pang, this time in the form of an undeniable uneasiness. It welled up from the pit of her chest.

No, Maria thought.

No no no no no ...

As soon as the sisters had passed the town center and were out of sight from the Atwoods’ and the Youngs’ cottages, Maria let out an animal scream.

“Mr. Hallett is a horse breeder,” Elizabeth offered, pushing wisps of copper hair away from her face. “You like horses.”

“Not anymore.” Never mind how many times she’d drawn out her chores in the barn to talk to Ruby or Snip, spoiling them with apples.

“He might be better than the poor Reynolds boy who tried to court you last summer.”

Maria spun around and glared at Elizabeth. No comforts would erase the fact that Mr. Hallett was a childless, crusty widower—three times her age—sitting on greedy acres of corn while posing as a great blessing to the community.

“I am not marrying him,” Maria said. “I’m not marrying anyone. I’ve barely lived.” Her voice broke, shocked by a truth she’d never dared to utter aloud, one she didn’t totally realize in its full dimension until the words were out. Maria threw herself on the hot sand. Her empty basket lay at her side.

Elizabeth looked around, confirmed there were no witnesses to this public display of emotion, then sat beside her.

“I’ve never been to Boston,” Maria muttered. “I’ve never seen a moose. I’ve never kissed a boy. I don’t even know how to properly swim yet.”

If Elizabeth felt scandalized, she hid it well. She took Maria’s hand. “It’s just another supper. I’m sure you can talk to Mama. Well, maybe Papa,” she reconsidered. “Papa is reasonable. He will consider your heart’s preference, as he did for Constance.”

Maria felt the stirring, a feeling laced with bitterness. Her mother was right: She was no Constance, in more ways than just looks, so she would enjoy no such privileges. She would not escape this one. Not this time.

“You’d have more freedom, if that’s what you want, as a married woman.”

A wind stirred Maria’s skirts around her ankles, but she didn’t bother to push down her gray dress. She could imagine what Papa would say. What everyone always said: “Marriage is ordained of God, a sacred duty.” And maybe it was, a heightened “blessing” with an extra degree of urgency if it happened to come with a respected man of means. Maria knew little of the world, but she knew this much: Money and God governed it all, including her beloved town of Eastham.

But it was also true that she was old enough now, older than many women before her. Maria loathed the thought of disappointing people, despite her proclivity to do just that. Whatever Mama might say, Maria didn’t enjoy being difficult.

She had expected marriage all her life. So why did she feel so unprepared? So repelled?

Was love a p referen ce? A need?

A liability?

Stung by a thought, Maria sat bolt upright. Her eyes narrowed to slits: the pier, the boats.

The water.

She unfastened her boots, removed her fine stockings, and tore off her bonnet.

“Maria?” Elizabeth asked with audible concern.

But Maria was already standing, brushing the sand from her skirts, and running. Running and running toward the horizon. It was all Elizabeth could do to gather both of their baskets and scramble after her, shouting her name.

“Goody Brown!” one fishmonger hollered.

“Is that the Brown girls?”

“Fine clams in stock for your ma.”

Maria ignored all the usual calls as she ran along the dock, out of view from the faces—those faces she knew so well, the faces that made Eastham vibrant. Fishers. Sailors. Lobstermen. Traders. Whalers. Maria did not have her sister’s patience for books. Instead, she’d come here to sell her lauded weavings while listening to tales of far-flung places filled with quests or unrequited love, stealing any chance she could to learn more about the bigger world around her. Ideas. Politics. Lewd gossip. Snatches of other languages. Ocean-warped newspapers. Anything.

But not today.

She halted at the top of the dock and frowned. Amid the bustle of the day’s business, no one took serious notice—not to inquire about her weavings, not even to scold her for her loose hair. But maybe that was for the best. Had she really meant for them to see this petty rebellion? Or to endure the less-than-petty consequences?

You’re afraid of what they think. You’ll always be afraid of what they think.

The soles of her feet burned against the sun-worn wood. A gull circled overhead.

“What . . .” Elizabeth said, breathless and panting as she caught up, “was . . . that?”

“You buy the mackerel for Mr. Hallett. I’m going for a swim.”

“But, Goody—”

“Please, I asked you not to call me that anymore.”

Sea lapped against the pier. Elizabeth blanched. She looked down at the dark, shifting water, then back at Maria.

“I’ll go with you, watch after you. Somewhere shallower, near the shore and out of sight. If you just wait.”

“I don’t have any more time to wait.” Nothing would ever be the same after tonight, Maria reasoned. She had to try.

“But your dress!”

“If anyone notices, say I fell. Throw me a rope if you must.”

Before Elizabeth could reach out to stop her, Maria jumped.

A shock of cold. Maria always welcomed that brisk, initial lightning to her system. She closed her eyes, feeling the salt and dark sweep across every inch of skin. The noise, the echoes of waves and rocks and fish and an unseen world. Then, slowly, she pulled her arm up and broke the surface. Took a deep breath.

“Maria!”

She could hear her sister’s voice, but the faraway quality remained. She continued moving, arms rotating like a windmill, her legs scissoring away from the pier. Twenty feet away, then thirty. Farther. Skirts dragging heavier than her shift, which she usually wore when practicing her swimming.

I’m doing it, she thought, swinging her pointed toes below to see if she could touch bottom.

But there was no bottom.

She swallowed her nerves, letting the feeling of aliveness fill her, propelling herself as she swam for the beach. Her strong limbs pushing her forward.

Or so she thought.

As her arms fanned around her, her dress grew heavier. Her chest tightened. It took more and more effort to crack the surface for air. She kicked, now frantic.

Maria tried to turn her body, to see where Elizabeth stood somewhere on the dock. To grab the rope. But the sea pulled at her, tugging at her skirts, making her forget which way was up or down, forward or away, dangerous or safe.

She coughed, salt rushing into her mouth, eyes blinded with the sting of ocean.

“Elizabeth!” she tried, unable to see or hear.

Kicking, flailing, swatting at the crush of water.

This is not swimming.

Is it living?

Hope draining, movements slowing. Darkness swirling.

Minutes, maybe seconds later, someone reached around Maria’s waist, pulling her up tow. . .