Diana Norman - A Catch of Consequence

The Anchor was South End and gave itself airs.

‘Never liked him,’ Makepeace said.

‘Sam Adams’ll be speechifyin’ at the Green Dragon tonight, I expect,’ announced Mistress Godwit, loftily.

‘And comin’ on to the Bunch of Grapes.’

‘Always ends up at the Roaring Meg.’

Honours even, the ladies separated.

Despite the ache in her back, but with Tantaquidgeon to carry her basket, Makepeace detoured home via Cornhill so that she might be taunted by fashions she couldn’t afford.

Here there was evidence of a new, less violent campaign against the government. At Wentworth’s, who specialized in the obligatory black cloth with which American grief swathed itself after the decease of a loved one, a sign had been pasted across the window: ‘Show frugality in mourning.’ The draper himself was regarding it.

She stopped. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘Funereals come from England, don’t they?’ he said. ‘The Sons say as English goods got to be embargoed.’

Makepeace had never heard the word but she got the gist. ‘Very patriotic of you.’

‘Wasn’t my idea,’ said Mr Wentworth, resentfully.

The Sons of Liberty had been harsher on Elizabeth Murray, importer of London petticoats, hats and tippets for fifteen successful years. One of her windows was broken, the other carried a crudely penned banner: ‘A Enimy to Her Country’.

Men on upturned boxes harangued crowds gathered under the shade of trees to listen. Barefoot urchins ran along the streets, sticking fliers on anything that stood still, or even didn’t. Makepeace watched one of them jump on the rear of a moving carriage to dab his paper nimbly on the back of a footman. As the boy leaped back into the dust, she caught him by the shirt and cuffed him.

‘And what d’you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m helpin’ Sam Adams.’

‘He’s doing well enough without you, varmint. You come on home.’ She took a flier from his hand. ‘What’s that say?’

Joshua sulked. ‘Says we’re goin’ to cut Master Oliver’s head off.’

‘It says “No importation” and if you kept to your books like I told you, you’d maybe know what it means.’

She was teaching Betty’s son to read; she worried for his literacy, though he’d gone beyond her in the art of drawing and she’d asked Sam Adams if there was someone he could be apprenticed to. So far he’d found no artist willing to take on a black pupil.

He trotted along beside her. ‘Don’t tell Mammy.’

‘I surely will.’ But as they approached the Roaring Meg she let him slip away from her to get to the taproom stairs and his room without passing through the kitchen.

‘Going to be a long, hot night, Bet. I don’t know what about the lobsters. Can the Sons eat and riot?’

‘Chowder,’ said Betty. ‘Quicker.’

‘How’s upstairs?’

‘Sleepin’.’

‘Ain’t you found out who he belongs to?’

‘Nope. Ain’t you?’

Maybe she could smuggle him to Government House – she had an image of Tantaquidgeon trundling a covered handcart through the streets by night – but information had Governor Bernard holed up, shaking, at Castle William along the coast.

‘Sons of Liberty meeting and an English drownder right across the hall. Ain’t I lucky?’

When she went up to her room, the drownder was still asleep. She washed and changed while crouching behind her clothes press in case he woke up during the process. Tying on her clean cap, she crossed to the bed to study his face. Wouldn’t set the world on fire, that was certain sure. Nose too long, skin too sallow, mouth turned down in almost a parody of melancholia. ‘Why?’ she complained. ‘ Why did thee never learn to swim?’

As she reached the door, a voice said: ‘Not a public school requirement, ma’am.’

She whirled round. He hadn’t moved, eyes still closed. She went back and prised one of his eyelids up. ‘You awake?’

‘I’m trying not to be. Where am I?’

‘The Roaring Meg. Tavern. Boston.’

‘And you are?’

‘Tavern-keeper. You foundered in the harbour and I pulled you out.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. How’d ye get there?’

There was a pause. ‘Odd, I can’t remember.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Oh God. Philip Dapifer. I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, madam, but might you postpone your questions to another time? It’s like being trepanned.’ He added querulously: ‘I am in considerable pain.’

‘You’re in considerable trouble,’ she told him. ‘And you get found here, so am I. See, what I’m going to do, I’m a-going to put my …’ She paused, she never knew how to describe Tantaquidgeon’s position in the household; better choose some status a wealthy Englishman would understand, ‘… my footman here so as nobody comes in and you don’t get out. You hear me?’

He groaned.

‘Hush up,’ she hissed. She’d heard the scrape of the front door. ‘No moaning. Not a squeak or my man’ll scalp you. Hear me?’

‘Oh God. Yes. ’

‘And quit your blaspheming.’ She left him and went to find Tantaquidgeon.

The Roaring Meg was a good tavern, popular with its regulars, especially those whose wives liked them to keep safe company. The long taproom was wainscoted and sanded, with a low, pargeted ceiling that years of pipe smoke had rendered the colour of old ivory. In winter, warmth was provided by two hearths, one at each gable end, in which Makepeace always kept a branch of balsam burning among other logs to mix its nose-clearing property with the smell of hams curing in a corner of one chimney and the whale oil of the tavern’s lamps, beeswax from the settles, ale, rum and flip.

This evening the door to the jetty stood ajar to encourage a draught between it and the open front door. With the sun’s heat blocked as it lowered behind the tavern, the jetty was in blue shade and set with benches for those who wished to contemplate the view.

Few did. The Meg’s customers were mostly from maritime trades and wanted relief from the task-mistress they served by day.

The room reflected the aversion. A grandmother clock stood in a nook, but there were no decorations on the walls, no sharks’ teeth, no whale skeletons, no floats nor fishnets – such things were for sightseers and inns safely tucked away in town. For the Meg’s customers the sea’s mementoes were on gravestones in the local churchyards; they needed no others.

‘Going rioting again?’ she asked, serving the early-comers.

‘Ain’t riotin’, Makepeace,’ Zeobab Fairlee said severely. ‘It’s called protestin’ agin bein’ – what is it Sam Adams says we are?’

‘Miserably burdened an’ oppressed with taxes,’ Jack Greenleaf told him.

‘Ain’t nobody more miserably burdened and oppressed’n me,’ Makepeace said. ‘A pound a year, a pound a year I pay King George in Stamp Tax for the privilege of serving you gents good ale, but I ain’t out there killing people for it.’

‘Terrify King George if you was, though,’ Fairlee said.

‘Who’s killin’ people?’ Sugar Bart stood in the doorway, his crutch under his armpit.

‘I heard as how George Piggott got tarred and feathered down South End last night,’ Makepeace said quickly.

‘Tarrin’ and featherin’ ain’t killin’, Makepeace,’ Zeobab said. ‘Just a gentle tap on the shoulder, tarrin’ is.’

‘I’d not’ve tarred that Tory-lover,’ Sugar Bart said, ‘I’d’ve strung the bastard from his eyelids ’n’ flayed him.’

He tip-tapped his way awkwardly across the floor to his chair by the grate, turned, balanced, kicked the chair into position and fell into it, his stump in its neatly folded and sewn breech-leg sticking into space. Nobody helped him.