Lighthouse keeper, p.1
Lighthouse Keeper, page 1
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
ELIZA LENTZSKI
CONTENTS
Series by Eliza Lentzski
Standalone Novels
Historian’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
6. Joana Maria Pascoal
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
32. Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright © 2024 Eliza Lentzski
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or real persons, living or dead, other than those in the public domain, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, re-sold, or transmitted electronically or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
“The Light-Keeper” by Robert Louis Stevenson in the Epigraph is in the public domain.
ISBN: 9798883200556
Imprint: Independently published
SERIES BY ELIZA LENTZSKI
Don’t Call Me Hero Series
Don’t Call Me Hero
Damaged Goods
Cold Blooded Lover
One Little Secret
Grave Mistake
Stolen Hearts
Winter Jacket Series
Winter Jacket
Winter Jacket 2: New Beginnings
Winter Jacket 3: Finding Home
Winter Jacket 4: All In
Hunter
STANDALONE NOVELS
Lighthouse Keeper
Sour Grapes
The Woman in 3B
Sunscreen & Coconuts
The Final Rose
Bittersweet Homecoming
Fragmented
Apophis: A Love Story for the End of the World
Second Chances
Date Night
Love, Lust, & Other Mistakes
Diary of a Human
Works as E.L. Blaisdell
Drained: The Lucid (with Nica Curt)
To C
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
One of the historian’s tasks is to separate fact from fiction. And in the case of historical fiction, we authors have an opportunity to correct misunderstandings about a time period, event, or even a group of people. This sapphic novel takes place in 1874, a complex moment in American history: an overlapping of the Reconstruction Era, the Gilded Age, as well as the Victorian Era.
Today, the Victorians have a reputation for prudishness, moral rigidity, and an emphasis on modesty and decorum. However, when we delve deeper into the social, cultural, and historical context of the time, it becomes evident that the Victorian Era was more sexual than conventional stereotypes might suggest.
Despite the prevailing notion of the Victorian Era being reserved and conservative, many authors of the time period explored sexual themes in their literary works. Several explicitly dealt with sexual desire and even alluded to homoeroticism. These works hinted at the undercurrents of desire that existed beneath the gilded surface of Victorian society. Victorian art also incorporated erotic themes. Prominent artists produced paintings and poetry that explored themes of desire, longing, and sensuality.
The Victorian Era also saw the proliferation of underground erotica. Books and illustrations with explicit content were often published discreetly or circulated among small, private circles. These works provided an outlet for the more explicit sexual desires of the time, which may have been repressed in the public sphere.
The time period witnessed an increase in interest and discussion surrounding sexual health. Medical texts of the time explored topics related to human sexuality, contraception, and STIs. While these texts were often clinical in nature and judged based on a specific morality, they nonetheless acknowledged the existence of sexual activities.
The era was also marked by the presence of a thriving underground world of commercialized sex. While sex work was officially condemned, it was also widespread, with brothels and sex workers operating openly in many cities. This dual existence of moral condemnation and sexual commerce highlights the complexity of Victorian attitudes towards sex.
In relation to the LGBTQ+ community, the late 19th century was a challenging time for an emerging queer consciousness. It was a period characterized by rigid societal norms, conservative values, and limited legal protections for those who did not conform to heterosexual and cisgender expectations. Despite these challenges, pockets of LGBTQ+ culture and resistance began to take shape.
The prevailing Victorian Era values emphasized strict gender roles and heteronormativity, which meant that non-conforming individuals had to be extremely discreet about their identities and relationships. Many queer people lived in the shadows, often creating hidden networks and coded languages to communicate and connect with others who shared their experiences.
Larger cities, particularly New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans, became magnets for LGBTQ+ individuals. Urban areas offered a degree of anonymity and a higher likelihood of encountering like-minded people. In these cities, underground bars, clubs, and meeting places began to emerge as unofficial safe havens for queer communities.
While our understanding of transgender and gender-diverse identities in the late 19th century is limited, there were instances of individuals who lived outside the gender binary. Many transgender and gender-diverse people navigated their identities with great courage and resilience, often hidden from public view. Despite numerous challenges, queer people found ways to build supportive communities.
Friendship networks, artistic circles, and social clubs provided spaces where LGBTQ+ individuals could find acceptance and camaraderie. These early experiences of resilience and resistance would eventually contribute to the broader LGBTQ+ rights movement in the 20th century, leading to greater visibility, acceptance, and legal protections for queer individuals.
While the Victorian Era is commonly remembered today for its prudishness and moralism, it was in reality a period marked by a paradoxical relationship with sexuality. Beneath the veneer of strict societal norms and conservative values, there existed a rich undercurrent of sexual curiosity, expression, and desire. The era’s literature, art, fashion, and underground subcultures all suggest that the Victorian Era was, in reality, much more sexual and complex than what is often portrayed in historical stereotypes.
“The Light-Keeper”
I
The brilliant kernel of the night,
The flaming lightroom circles me:
I sit within a blaze of light
Held high above the dusky sea.
Far off the surf doth break and roar
Along bleak miles of moonlit shore,
Where through the tides the tumbling wave
Falls in an avalanche of foam
And drives its churned waters home
Up many an undercliff and cave.
The clear bell chimes: the clockworks strain,
The turning lenses flash and pass,
Frame turning within glittering frame
With frosty gleam of moving glass:
Unseen by me, each dusky hour
The sea-waves welter up the tower
Or in the ebb subside again;
And ever and anon all night,
Drawn from afar by charm of light,
A sea-bird beats against the pan.
And lastly when dawn ends the night
And belts the semi-orb of sea,
The tall, pale pharos in the light
Looks white and spectral as may be.
The early ebb is out: the green
Straight belt of seaweed now is seen,
That round the basement of the tower
Marks out the interspace of tide;
And watching men are heavy-eyed,
And sleepless lips are dry and sour.
The night is over like a dream:
The sea-birds cry and dip themselves:
And in the early sunlight, steam
The newly bared and dripping shelves,
Around whose verge the glassy wave
With lisping wash is heard to lave;
While, on the white tower lifted high,
The circling lenses flash and pass
With yellow light in faded glass
And sickly shine against the sky.
II
As the steady lenses circle
With a frosty gleam of glass;
And the clear bell chimes,
And the oil brims over the lip of the burner,
Quiet and still at his desk,
The lonely Light-Keeper
Holds his vigil.
Lured from afar,
The bewildered seagull beats
Dully against the lantern;
From the desk where he reads,
Lifts not his eyes to see
The chill blind circle of night
Watching him through the panes.
This is his country’s guardian,
The outmost sentry of peace.
This is the man
Who gives up that is lovely in living
For the means to live.
Poetry cunningly gilds
The life of the Light-Keeper,
Held on high in the blackness
In the burning kernel of night,
The seaman sees and blesses him,
The Poet, deep in a sonnet,
Numbers his inky fingers
Fitly to praise him.
Only we behold him,
Sitting, patient and stolid,
Martyr to a salary.
— ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 1870
PROLOGUE
PROVINCETOWN, MASS — OCTOBER 1874
Lizzy Darby closed her eyes. A fine sea spray caressed her face as the dory dipped up and down with each new choppy wave. The ocean wore an air of restlessness that afternoon, yet Lizzy, in her twenty-four years, had weathered far greater tempests.
A fierce, capricious wind swirled around their small vessel, prompting her to pull her woolen cloak closer, a shield against both the elements and the impending chill. Her fingers held fast to the basket of provisions, guarding them from the whims of the sea. They were not too distant from the mainland, the safety of home within reach, but her parents’ general store had always thrived on prudence, and waste was an extravagance they could ill afford.
Her father skillfully guided the dory through the briny expanse. They traveled without speaking; the long wooden oars dipped silently into the slate-blue waters that surrounded Cape Cod. Their stopping point—Wood End Lighthouse—seemed to fall in and out of view, but Lizzy knew that they were the ones moving, not the earth itself. The narrow v-shaped stern sank forward as the dory crested each new wave, causing the lighthouse to periodically vanish from view until they rose above the waves, only to descend once more.
Lizzy had once been susceptible to seasickness, but the countless journeys over the years had hardened her to its effects. The errand was shorter these days, too. Wood End had recently been constructed to warn ships’ captains of the shoals and sandbars that lurked just below the white-gray foam. A second, older lighthouse, Long Point, was far more isolated along the same shoreline, but it had been abandoned not long ago in favor of Wood End.
An act of Congress in 1826 had earmarked four acres of land at the extreme tip of Long Point for the establishment of a lighthouse to guide mariners into the busy harbor of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The original lighthouse—the Long Point light—had doubled as a school house. But the lighthouse had deteriorated over the years until residents feared a strong storm might destroy it.
The square, pyramidal tower of Wood End had been constructed to replace the original lighthouse along the sandy curl of shoreline that stretched into the Atlantic. Its distinctive red light flashed every fifteen seconds from a height of forty-five feet above sea level.
Lizzy’s bond with the ocean had always been one-sided—an unrequited love affair. Its unpredictability had been that which ritually drew her to the craggy shorelines of her hometown. The sea spoke of possibilities, and yet Lizzy had never traveled beyond Provincetown. It wasn’t unusual for a young, unattached woman whose parents were of the middling sort to be untraveled, however. Until the railroad had come to Provincetown the previous year, only fishermen and whalers experienced life beyond their insular existence.
Provincetown was bound by the sea, cut off from the world by the vastness of the ocean. Not a single road led in or out of the town. The only way to travel by land was to first head north, traversing a series of tall, rolling sand dunes, and to then follow a thin strip of beach along the northern shoreline which was occasionally washed away by storms. Provincetown might as well have been an island for all it relied on the sea.
The completion of the fourteen-mile railroad extension had heralded a new era, with two inaugural trains carrying state dignitaries to Provincetown for a day-long celebration the year before. Lizzy and her friends had each dressed in their finest holiday attire for the occasion, reveling in the speeches, food, and an evening of dancing.
It had been Lizzy’s happiest memory since the Mary Celeste had been recovered off the shores of the Azores Islands. The evening of frivolity that accompanied the railroad extension had been a brief reprieve from Lizzy’s prolonged sorrow when all souls aboard the Mary Celeste had gone missing.
“Look lively.” Her father’s gruff warning shook Lizzy from her trance. Her eyes reopened and she focused on the rapidly approaching shoreline.
Lizzy rose to her feet and anticipated the moment when the flat bottom of the two-person dory slid along wet sand. She hopped free from the boat with her leather boots landing solidly on packed earth. She reached back for the wicker basket that held the weekly provisions for the lighthouse keeper, Mr. Thomas Howe.
“Be quick about it,” her father instructed. His gray-blue eyes scanned the somber sky. “Something’s blowing in.”
Lizzy nodded. She had no desire to dally. The sky had a foreboding look to it and daylight was precious at the end of the earth. She hefted the basket in her gloved hands and began the short march to Wood End.
Lizzy puffed out her cheeks. It was a short but strenuous trip from the shoreline to the solitary lighthouse. The temperatures had chilled with the season, but not enough that the sandy dunes were frozen solid. Her boots continually sank into soft sand and threatened to tangle in long sea grass that stretched out like grasping fingers.
The fist-clenched forearm of Cape Cod was a wilderness of sand. Shallow sand bars surrounded the narrow strip of land. Prior to the lighthouse’s construction, ships had run aground, cracking open their bows, willing crew members and cargo into the icy sea. By the time rescue boats could reach the wreckage, there was no one left alive to rescue.
Lizzy hiked up her long skirt and petticoat to hasten the voyage, unconcerned by who might see her knee-length stockings. There was no use worrying about modesty and propriety out here. By the time she reached the lighthouse, she could feel the perspiration beaded on her forehead.
Lizzy dropped the wicker basket into soft sand and rearranged her many layers before knocking on the lighthouse door. There was no guarantee that Mr. Howe would hear her knock—he could have been high above sea level on the lighthouse’s black ironwork platform—but if so, he would have at least seen the dory’s approach.
She and her father tried to make the supply trip every week at the same time, weather and tide permitting, so he knew when to anticipate their arrival. As the proprietors of the local general store, Lizzy’s family had been tasked with supplying the new lighthouse and its devoted keeper just as they had when he was stationed at the original lantern at Long Point.
Lizzy knocked on the closed door again. A rumble disturbed the air around her and she lifted her eyes to the sky. The sun had long disappeared behind a thick bank of clouds. She frowned at the dark gray that had overtaken the light blue hues.
“Mr. Howe!” she yelled through the closed door.
Lizzy looked back in the direction of the open sea where her father would be waiting with the dory. She could always leave the basket behind and pick it up when next they made a delivery. But Mr. Howe was getting on in years. The lighthouse keeper was older than her father—older than any living person with whom she was acquainted, in fact. The food delivery was only part of the obligation to visit.
Lizzy raised her closed hand again. The heavy wooden door swung open on its metal hinges before her fist could strike a second time.
A dark silhouette filled the narrow doorway. The interior of the lighthouse was dark, and Lizzy squinted to make out the individual’s face.
A slip of a figure, a delicately built young man, stared out at Lizzy from the shadowy door frame. He wore his wool cap low on his forehead; the wide brim obscured his features even more. His rough-spun linen shirt was untucked in the front and his corduroy pants were stuffed into great, tall boots. Suspenders seemed to be the only apparatus keeping his pants aloft narrow hips. The garment hung loose on his lanky figure. The skin around his exposed wrists was tan despite the late season; he must have been Portuguese, from one of the Azores, Lizzy decided, not native-born like herself.
