A Catch of Consequence Read online

  ‘How’d ye do it, Sam? How’d ye get Mouse out?’

  Aaron took his hat, Betty came tilting from the kitchen with his food, Makepeace tied a napkin tenderly round his neck—though Lord knew his shirt-front was hardly worth saving—and, less willingly, offered the same service to Mackintosh. As she did it, she saw one of his hands had a grubby bandage that disappeared up his sleeve and seeped blood. ‘You hurt, Mr Mackintosh?’

  ‘Rat bit me.’ It was a squeak. Large as he was, Andrew Mackintosh’s voice was so high that when he spoke cats looked up with interest.

  An English rat, she thought. Her drownder hadn’t gone down without a fight.

  The room was silent, waiting for Adams’s answer.

  ‘Told ’em,’ he said, spraying lobscouse, ‘I told the sheriff if Andrew wasn’t released, there’d be general pillage and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.’

  ‘That’d do it, Sam,’ somebody called out.

  ‘It did.’ He stood and clambered up on his chair to see and be seen. ‘That did it, all right, didn’t it, General Mackintosh?’ He looked around. ‘Yes, there must be no more North End versus South End. We’re an army now, my Liberty boys, a disciplined army. By displaying ourselves on the streets like regular troops, we’ll show those black-hearted conspirators at Government House—’

  ‘ ’Scuse me, Sam.’ It was Sugar Bart, struggling up on his crutch. ‘Seems to me you’re talkin’ strategics.’

  ‘Yes, Bart, I am.’

  ‘Then I reckon as how you should do it upstairs so’s we shan’t be overheard.’ The man was looking straight at Aaron.

  Sam Adams regarded the packed taproom. ‘Looks like there’s too many of us for the meeting-room, Bart.’

  ‘And it’ll be hot,’ Makepeace put in desperately. Visions of the Englishman moaning, a passing hand lifting the latch of her door to find that it was bolted from the inside . . .

  ‘Maybe,’ Sugar Bart said, not taking his eyes off Aaron, ‘but there’s some as don’t seem so bent on liberty as the rest of us.’

  Now Sam got the implication. He crossed to Aaron and put his arm round the young man’s shoulders. ‘I’ve known this lad since he was in small clothes and a good lad he is. We’re all good patriots here, ain’t we, boys?’

  The room was silent.

  It was Aaron, with a grace even his sister hadn’t suspected, who resolved the situation. ‘We’re all patriots right enough, Sam, but this one’s going to bed early.’ He bowed to Sam, to Sugar Bart, to the company, and went upstairs.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ Bart said, ‘but how d’we know he ain’t listenin’ through the floorboards?’

  Makepeace was in front of him. ‘You take that back, Bart Stubbs, or you heave your carcase out of this tavern and stay out.’

  ‘I ain’t sayin’ anything against you, Makepeace Burke, but your brother ain’t one of us and you know it. Is he, Mouse?’

  The appeal to his ally was a mistake; Mackintosh was a newcomer not au fait with the personal interrelationships of the Roaring Meg and its neighbours; indeed would have been resented by those very neighbours if he’d pretended that he was. Wisely, he kept silent.

  Bart, finding himself isolated, surrendered and began the process of sitting down again. ‘I ain’t sayin’ anythin’ about anybody be-trayin’ anybody, I’m just saying we got to be careful.’

  ‘Not about my brother, you don’t.’

  Sam Adams stepped between them. ‘We are going to be careful, gentlemen, careful we don’t quarrel among ourselves and spoil this happy day when Liberty arose from her long slumber . . .’

  While he calmed the room down, Makepeace went angrily back to her barrels and resumed serving. Wish as I could betray you, you one-legged crap-hound.

  She wondered if she could solicit Sam’s help in the matter of the Englishman. Obviously, he was in ignorance of the assault on the man by his new ‘general’. Wouldn’t countenance violence, would Sam.

  With that in mind, in between dashes to the kitchen, she listened carefully to what Bart had called the ‘strategics’. Sam and Andrew Mackintosh were playing the company between them.

  Sam’s rhetoric was careful, reiterating the need for caution in case the British government reacted by sending an army to quell its American colony.

  ‘No,’ agreed Mackintosh, ‘we ain’t ready for war agin’ the redcoats.’ And then: ‘Not yet,’ an addendum which brought a howl of approval.

  Sam: ‘On the other hand, we can achieve the act’s repeal peacefully through the embargo on British goods.’

  Mackintosh: ‘Peacefully break the windows of them as disobeys.’

  Sam: ‘See that Crown officials, stamp-holders, customs officers are made aware of our discontent.’

  ‘Break their windows an’ all,’ Mackintosh said. ‘Keep ’em awake at nights with our drummin’.’

  In other words, thought Makepeace, Sam was going to play pretty to the British and let Mackintosh and his mobs stir the pot.

  Even had there been an opportunity for her to have a secret word with Adams, she decided, in view of these ‘strategics’, that it would be unwise. He was advocating reason yet allowing Mackintosh to inflame his audience for another night of rioting. Maybe he was out for revolution but, whether he was or wasn’t, he’d got a tiger by the tail; even if he’d be prepared to understand why she sheltered a representative of British tyranny, his tiger sure wouldn’t. Word would inevitably get out. Broken windows, lost custom: that’d be the least of it. Did they tar and feather women? She didn’t know.

  She didn’t, she realized, know what men were capable of when they got into this state. She was watching the customers of years, ordinary decent grumblers, become unrecognizable with focused hatred.

  For the first time, she wished Sam Adams would leave. She nearly said to him: Ain’t you got other taverns to go speechifyin’ in? But it appeared that he had anyway. She saw him and Mackintosh to the door, curtsied, received a kiss of thanks from Adams, a grunt from his companion and watched them go with relief.

  But it was as if they’d lit a fuse that gave them just time to get out before it reached the gunpowder. Makepeace turned back to a taproom that, without the restraint of Sam Adams’s presence, was exploding.

  Was that old Zeobab climbing up on a table? ‘Let’s drub ’em, boys,’ he was shouting. ‘Let’s scrag them sugar-suckers.’ An exhortation causing stool-legs to be broken off for weapons, perfectly good pipes to be smashed against the grate like Russian toast glasses, and rousing Jake Mallum into trying to grab her for a kiss.

  And Tantaquidgeon, her chucker-out, was upstairs.

  Makepeace cooled Mallum’s passion by bringing her knee up into his unmentionables, yelled for Betty and, with her cook, managed to snatch back two stool-legs with which to belabour heads and generally restore order. Betty lifted Zeobab off the table and planted him firmly on the jetty.

  Makepeace went to the door, holding it wide: ‘Git to your rampage, gents,’ she called, ‘but not here.’

  She saw them out, some shamefaced and apologizing, most not even saying goodnight as they rushed past her to begin another night of liberty-wreaking. Already flames flared on Beacon Hill and Boston was beginning to reverberate with the beat of drums.

  Sugar Bart was in front of her. ‘That redskin were healthy enough earlier,’ he said. ‘Saw him with you in town. Where’s he gone?’

  Sure as eggs, he knew she’d seen what he and the others had done to the man on Fish Quay this morning and found Tantaquidgeon’s unusual absence from her side suspicious. He couldn’t think she’d betray him but he knew something was up.

  She loathed the man; he frightened her. ‘You ain’t welcome at the Meg any more, Mr Stubbs,’ she told him stiffly, ‘not after what you said about Aaron.’

  He rubbed his chin, staring straight into her eyes. ‘The Sons is at war now,’ he said. ‘Know what they do to informers in war, Makepeace Burke?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you still ain’t welcome
.’

  She watched him hop away, ravenlike, into the darkness, then quickly bolted every shutter and door.

  Chapter Three

  TANTAQUIDGEON opened the door at her rap; he’d been in darkness, she realized, she’d forgotten to leave him a rushlight, and Betty, who didn’t believe in fresh air for her patients, had closed the shutters. She opened them. The room was an oven that, from the smell of it, had been cooking Tantaquidgeon and vomit. ‘Dammit, what’d you let him do that for?’

  The Englishman had been sick on his pillow, his head nestled in it. He was still asleep.

  She pushed Tantaquidgeon from the room, fetched a basin of water and a cloth, dragged the pillow from under, propped the Englishman’s head while she sponged his hair and face clean, and found a fresh pillow. He slept all through, with no care for the extra washing he was giving her, let alone that someone—she—must now sit up with him all night in case he be sick again and choke on it.

  Her eyes pricked with tears of fatigue and self-pity. Night was precious, an escape from seventeen daily hours on a treadmill of work. ‘And now you,’ she said to the bed. ‘Ain’t I lucky?’

  The wharves were quiet tonight—the rioting was centred on the middle of the town and its noise reached her room reduced and compacted, like the buzzing of an exceptionally angry hive.

  She lit a lamp—the oil in it was insufficient but damned if she’d pour in more; he was costing her enough already—put out the rushlight, snatched up her bible and sat on a stool beside the bed, opening the book at Matthew 25 for some encouragement from the Mount of Olives.

  ‘For I was hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick’—all over your pillow—‘and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.’

  As always, it calmed her. She fell asleep.

  She woke up in darkness to find the top half of her body slewed on the bed, her head resting sideways on something hard. It came to her that she had been asleep across the drownder’s body, her cheek against his knee. Knee? Christ have mercy. She jumped up as if on springs.

  ‘Pity,’ a voice said, sadly, ‘I was enjoying that.’

  Shocked, disgusted, Makepeace walked to the window. Her cheeks were hot with embarrassment, so was her ear where it had lain on his . . .

  A view of the jetty’s mooring post down below, sheeny in the moonlight, did little to restore her composure, but for her own sake she must pretend she didn’t realize what his pleasure had consisted of. Her fault for lying on it. Sick as he was, he was a man. ‘Still in Boston, am I?’ the voice asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Still your tavern?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And to whom am I indebted for my delivery from Boston’s waters?’

  ‘Name’s Makepeace Burke.’

  ‘Thank you again, Miss Burke.’

  His voice was a pleasing tenor and, despite his questions, suggested an intimacy she found unsettling, as if he’d met her before. Her answers came like a crow’s caw in contrast.

  ‘It’s been a curious day, Miss Burke . . . has it been a day?’

  ‘Fished you out early this morning.’

  ‘Difficult to distinguish fact from dreams. Did I at some point gather that my presence in your hostelry is a cause for concern?’

  She said: ‘English ain’t welcome here.’

  ‘Ah.’

  She was ready for him now. She turned round, went back to the bed and sat on the stool, leaning forward and positioning the lamp so that she could see him. ‘How’d you come to fall in the harbour?’

  ‘I was set on, belaboured and, presumably, thrown in while unconscious.’ He squinted in order to read her frown carefully. ‘Or did I imagine it?’

  He was no fool. ‘You imagined it,’ she said. There was no point in pit-patting around. ‘That’s my price for pulling you out.’

  ‘Ah.’ He thought about it for a minute. ‘Do the imaginary ruffians who hypothetically threw me in know that you pulled me out?’

  ‘Not ruffians,’ she said, ‘patriots. Like me. No, they don’t.’

  ‘And would not rejoice that you did?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘they wouldn’t.’

  ‘Presumably they are not aware that I am at this moment, ah, in residence in . . . what’s the name of your tavern?’

  ‘The Roaring Meg,’ she said. ‘No, they ain’t.’ She added: ‘And mustn’t.’

  ‘Why did you pull me out, Miss Burke?’

  She frowned again, surprised at the question. ‘You was drowning.’

  ‘I see.’

  Awake, his eyes, which were brown, took away from the plainness of his face. She saw they were studying both her room and her person. A rectangular attic of lumpy whitewashed plaster cushioned between oak stanchions, bare floorboards supporting a chest, a three-legged washstand with a canvas bowl, a candlestick, a set of drawers on which were placed a small but select pile of books. A sparse woman of twenty-four years.

  Makepeace saw no reason to be ashamed of either, both were homely, clean, serviceable and free of fleas. Indeed, in that she had the bedroom to herself and didn’t share it with siblings or servants, here was Puritan luxury but, for sure, this man would prefer his rooms painted. Like his women.

  He was silent for a minute, then said plaintively: ‘I’ve got a hellish imaginary headache.’

  Makepeace lit a rushlight from the lamp and went downstairs to the kitchen. The inn was silent except for the rip of Betty’s snores and the occasional creak as beams contracted from a barely perceptible cooling of the air. Aaron’s room was quiet—he’d slept through the ruckus before closing time; he’d sleep through the Last Trump. There was neither sign nor sound of Tantaquidgeon; he chose odd corners for a bed. Come to that, she’d never caught him asleep at all, as if some memory of the forest made it necessary for him to be seen only with his eyes open.

  She poured a dose of physick into a beaker, ladled still-warm chowder into a bowl and pumped up a jug of water. Before she went back upstairs, she made sure no tendril of hair escaped her cap and smoothed down her apron.

  She slipped an arm under the Englishman’s neck to lift his head for his dosing. ‘Betty’s Specific against pain and bruises,’ she told him when he made a face. ‘Also kills worms.’

  He swallowed. ‘I don’t wonder.’

  She gave him some water, then the chowder, spooning it into his mouth for him.

  ‘You’ve got children,’ he said.

  ‘Ain’t married yet,’ she said. ‘You got childer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Used to feed my brother like this when he was little,’ she said. ‘Our ma died when he was born.’

  ‘Where is your brother now?’

  ‘Works in marine insurance,’ she told him. ‘He’s educated.’

  ‘Who set my collarbone? You?’

  ‘Betty.’

  ‘A large black lady?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And was there, or did I dream him, an even larger, red gentleman?’

  ‘Tantaquidgeon.’

  ‘His pomade is . . . unusual.’

  She grinned. ‘Bear’s grease.’

  The lamp guttered and went out and Dapifer was left with the memory of an astonishing smile. Her arm was instantly withdrawn from his neck and he heard the stool scrape back. She was retreating, as if physical contact with him was improper in the dark.

  He saw her go to the window, her head in its dreadful cap outlined against the moonlight, like a carapace. He recalled from the kaleidoscope of the day’s feverish images that she had equally astonishing hair.

  Out of habit, he began a seduction. He sighed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it was a saint in that boat. She had a halo round her head—like an autumn bonfire. I distinctly remember a saint rescuing me from the harbour.’

  Instead of going into a flutter, she snapped: ‘Don’t I wish it had been.’

  So much for seductio
n.

  He said gravely: ‘It appears, Makepeace Burke, that I overindulged last night. With great carelessness I stumbled into a ditch thereby breaking my collarbone.’ Well, he owed her—not merely for his life, which was hardly worth the asking price—but because, just then, she’d made him want to laugh, something he’d not been inclined to do for a long time.

  ‘That’s what you’ll tell ’em?’

  ‘Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, who is my host in this town, will be so informed. The matter will proceed no further.’

  ‘Swear on the Book?’ She turned swiftly, picked up her bible and placed it on the counterpane.

  He took it, swore, then, since it seemed expected, kissed its battered leather.

  She was holding out her hand. Moonlight showed wet on the palm. God, she’d spat on it. He held out his good hand and they shook on it, making him wince.

  She went to the door, carrying the dirty plate and spoons. ‘Go to sleep now,’ she said.

  He heard the stairs creak as she went down them.

  Resisting the pain in his head, his shoulder, everywhere, he tried to take stock. No need for oaths on the bible; if Mistress Burke thought he was about to broadcast the ridiculous position he found himself in she was much mistaken. He didn’t know which was the more embarrassing: Sir Philip Dapifer thrown into Boston harbour by colonial bullies or Sir Philip Dapifer fished out again, like a halibut, by a tavern wench. He imagined the laughter if they heard of it at Almack’s. Another humiliation, his least and latest, for the delectation of London society.

  A waterfront? At night? In a town already in turmoil? What had he been thinking of, walking it, exposing himself to such risk?

  What he always thought of, he supposed: two entwined naked bodies, one of them his wife’s, the other—its arse bobbing up and down like a ball bounced by an invisible hand—his friend’s.

  Ludicrous image, all the more ludicrous that it was set against his own drawing-room carpet; he’d almost laughed. But it had hooked itself into his brain like some flesh-burrowing insect and festered so that it pounded there with the energy of an abscess, debilitating him, making him careless of life in general, his own in particular . . .