Diana Norman - A Catch of Consequence

HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2002

Copyright © Diana Norman 2001

Diana Norman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007105441

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007404551

Version: 2016-02-09

To my cousin, Aeron

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Book One: Boston

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Book Two: London

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Book Three: Newcastle

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Keep Reading

About the Author

Author’s Note

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

The woman feathering her boat round the bend of the Charles River into Massachusetts Bay that early morning on August 15 1765 was about to save someone’s life and change her own.

Later on, in rare retrospective moments, she would ask herself: ‘What if I hadn’t?’ A useless question, suggesting there’d been a decision – and she made no decision; Makepeace Burke could no more watch a fellow-creature drown without trying to help it than she could stop the wind blowing.

That’s not to imply that Makepeace was a gentle woman. She wasn’t; she just hated waste, and unnecessary death was wasteful.

If her boat was dirty, she was clean in a scrubbed sort of way, or as clean as you can be when you’ve been hauling in lobster-pots since before dawn. A virgin who, by 1765 American standards, was like her boat in being ancient. At twenty-four years old, she should have been married with children but she’d been both unfortunate and picky.

The gangly figure in faded brown cotton, her skirt pinned up washerwoman style, a leather cap tied tightly under her chin to hide her hair giving her the look of an insect, propelled her boat with the professionalism of a sea-dog. Bobbing along in the sunlight, from far off she resembled a curiously shaped bit of wrack, a piece off a figurehead, something saltily wooden, astray on the glistening water.

About to have her life changed.

To Makepeace Burke, emerging into the great harbour’s North End, the damage that she saw had been done to her waterfront overnight was change enough. Some of the damage was old and caused by the English: empty warehouses, wharves sprouting weed. Boats that had once been proud, respected smugglers delivering cheap sugar to willing Bostonian customers lay demasted and upended on the hards, killed by the newly efficient, newly incorruptible British Customs and Excise. Only sugar from the English West Indies, the expensive English West Indies, could be imported now – and that was unloaded further down.

But last night, in protest against the English and their shite Stamp Tax and Navigations Acts, Boston had gone on the rampage and done damage in return. Hadn’t they, by Hokey! Even from this distance, she could see the depredations to the Custom House. The bonfires were dying down but the smitch of burning was everywhere, even out here on the water. Papers that had drifted off the bonfires spewed along the quay. And the new warehouse Stamp Master Oliver was having built was now no more than a pile of broken timbers. Serve the old bugger right.

Makepeace Burke disapproved of rioting – not good for trade – but she disapproved of the Stamp Tax, which had been the cause of last night’s mayhem, a mighty sight more. The tax fell heavily on taverns and she was a tavern-keeper.

The August heat had been near suffocating for a month, like a volcano grumbling under the town in sympathy with the discontent of its inhabitants. Last night – what triggered it nobody knew – the cone blew off and out rushed lava of white-heat fury against unemployment, the government, its colonial representatives, its damn taxes and interference, its press gangs and its assumption that Bostonians were going to take all these things lying down.

Customs officials, known English-loving Tories, lawmen: all had been hunted through the streets by Sons of Liberty smeared with war-paint and howling like Mohawks, bless ’em. The British garrison had too few soldiers to put down a ladies’ sewing circle, let alone an outbreak of these proportions. The town had been streaked with flame and pounded with the beat of drums until it seemed that light was noise and noise was light.

If that was riot, Lord knew what revolution’d be. Well, maybe it was revolution. Sam Adams was preaching something suspiciously along the lines of it being time Americans threw off the English yoke. Didn’t put it like that but every good Bostonian knew what he meant.

Customers had run into the Roaring Meg to pass on the latest news, down a glass of celebratory flip and rush off again to join in. ‘Don’t you go outside, now, ’Peace,’ Zeobab Fairlee’d said. ‘The Sons is lickered up. Got at a few cellars. No place for a respectable female in them streets tonight.’

So she’d stayed with her tavern in case they tried to get at her liquor stock – Sons of Liberty or no Sons of Liberty, she wasn’t in the business of free drinks – but, come the revolution, she’d get her father’s musket down from the roof and march against the British with the best of ’em. She’d give ’em taxes.

She liked these lovely mornings, collecting lobster-pots. Peaceful. Hot already. Further out, towards the islands, gulls floated against a sky like blue enamel. Two tundra swans passed low over her head as the squadron came from inland, enormous wings held bowed and still, outstretched feet ready to furrow the water, heavy as pieces of masonry hurtling through the air. They were settling, fluting to each other, their size dwarfing the rafts of snow geese and oldsquaws further out.

More peaceful than ever this morning. Usually, down at the business end of the harbour, angular heron-like cranes dipped and straightened with bulging nets in their bills as they emptied incoming merchantmen and filled the holds of those getting ready to set out. Men with bales on their heads were to be seen filing up some gangplanks and down others, looking at a distance like infestations of marcher ants. Sails were taken in, others hoisted, all flapping like pinioned birds; greetings, commands, farewells – sounds of human busyness floating across the water.