A Catch of Consequence Read online

  What Aaron didn’t realize, because even now his fingers couldn’t take the pulse of the neighbourhood like hers, was how disastrous it was going to be for the Roaring Meg’s local reputation when a bunch of redcoats, invited redcoats from the loathed garrison at Castle William, turned up to rescue an Englishman from its midst. As well run up the Union Jack and be done with it. The Sons would never drink here again. Probably nobody else either, she thought. But what else to do? Nothing.

  She smoothed down her apron. That bridge would have to be burned when she got to it. ‘Go up and tell the Goodies we got lobscouse and brandy for their supper in the taproom,’ she said to Aaron. ‘You can tell the English your plan while they’re down.’

  Free lobscouse and brandy. She shook her head at her own open-handedness. ‘This rate,’ she said to Betty, ‘we’ll be ruined before we’re ruined.’

  While the Goodies gorged in the taproom, Zeobab Fairlee came to the kitchen door asking for them. Makepeace pounced on him, he was her oldest customer and friend, sat him down and began gabbling her tale of wounded, rescued Englishmen—‘What else could a Christian body do, Zeobab? Eh? Eh? Couldn’t let ’un drown, could I?’—and, having done it, how could she appease the Sons?

  He was preoccupied and barely listened to her. ‘There’s news, ‘Peace,’ he said, ‘I come to tell Goody Busgutt.’

  His brown nut of a face showed no expression—a bad sign; imparting and receiving disastrous news was done in this community with a stoicism that bordered on the comatose. ‘It’s the Gideon.’

  Betty paused over the fire, Makepeace sat down, gripping the knife with which she’d been cutting bread until her knuckles showed white. Her own face was impassive. Don’t let him be drowned, Lord, she prayed, don’t let Captain Busgutt be drowned. Batting your eyelashes at Englishmen and your fiancé drowns—it’s the Lord’s punishment. ‘Dead?’

  Zeobab shook his head. ‘Pressed.’ The word tolled through the kitchen like a passing bell. It was almost as dreadful, it was almost the same.

  Among the incoming ships piling up in the Bay, unwilling to risk their cargo and passengers while there was rioting in town and, in any case, last night barred from docking by Boston’s laws against Sunday working, was a pursuit boat from the Moses, a whaler recently returned to Nantucket full of blubber. Commanding the boat was the Moses’ first mate, Oh-Be-Joyful Brown, anxious to renew his acquaintance with the young Boston woman he’d been courting now that he had money enough to marry her. Impatient of the delay, Oh-Be-Joyful had irreligiously rowed ashore early this morning though, being nevertheless a dutiful man, he had not gone straight to his lady but had first sought out Goody Busgutt. ‘Couldn’t find her, see,’ Zeobab said, ‘so he comes to me.’

  ‘Will you get to it?’ snapped Betty.

  What Oh-Be-Joyful wanted to tell Goody Busgutt was that while hunting on the Grand Banks, the Moses had met another whaler, a homeward-bound Greenlander. Since neither was in competition at that stage of their voyages, they had stopped to chat in the middle of the Atlantic like two housewives over a fence.

  ‘An’ the Greenlander,’ said Zeobab, ‘she says three months previous she come across the Gideon sinkin’, rammed by a whale, see, and takes off the crew. But she was bound for Liverpool to discharge her oil, so that’s where she takes ’em. And at Liverpool, so her master told Oh-Be, the press comes on board an’ takes Cap’n Busgutt and his men for the navy.’

  ‘They can’t.’ Makepeace was standing. ‘They can’t press him. He’s protected.’

  In order for Britain’s trade to flourish, certain classes of seafarers necessary for its success had to be kept safe from the Royal Navy’s press gangs, always greedy for sailors to man its ships, and were therefore granted ‘protection’ in certificates of exemption. Captain Busgutt and his crew, providing the navy with essential tar, came into this category.

  Zeobab shook his head. ‘He don’t have a ship no more, ’Peace. The Gideon’d went down, see.’

  She saw. With the Gideon sunk, Captain Busgutt’s certificate was useless. The English press gang had found valuable booty, a crew of trained men without protection, and thought it was its lucky day.

  The knife in Makepeace’s hand stabbed into the loaf and stabbed it again. She was so angry. How dare they, how dare they? King George and his shite Admiralty. Kidnap your own men but you leave ours alone. Here it was again—British tyranny. Stab. It was an old grievance, another of the reasons for Boston’s disaffection and a better one even than the Stamp Tax for tearing down Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson’s house. Stab. Pity he weren’t in it.

  That the Royal Navy was even-handed and took any nationality it could lay its hands on did nothing to mollify an American seaboard which suffered badly from its predation. Men went missing with dreary regularity. Women and children were left waiting for husbands and fathers who’d been trawled like fish. Most never returned. Having been legally kidnapped, the few who escaped were hunted as deserters.

  Makepeace’s knife cut the Board of Admiralty’s brains into breadcrumbs. Betty leaned over and took it away from her. ‘Did Oh-Be say if they was all saved?’ Most of Gideon’s crew consisted of local men.

  ‘He di’n’t know.’

  Silence closed in on the kitchen with another question. Eventually Betty asked it. ‘Who’s goin’ to tell her?’

  ‘I ain’t,’ Makepeace said. Guilty of attraction to another man, she couldn’t look Captain Busgutt’s mother in the face.

  But in the end she accompanied Zeobab into the taproom and held Goody Busgutt’s hand while he told her. The old woman diminished before her eyes; there was none of the anger that consumed Makepeace, not yet at any rate, though Saltonstall, on behalf of her friend, supplied enough for all of them. Goody Busgutt kept pleading for reassurance—‘I’ll not see my boy again, will I?’—a question to which, terribly, she knew the answer as well as they did.

  They helped her back to her house.

  The evening was giving a rare mellowness to the Cut; to the left, the tide lapped softly at the cobbles of its ramp and along its narrow, north-east facing terrace houses were soft-hued shadows, but there was still ferocity in the light that turned the walls and windows of the Roaring Meg’s side into amber.

  Oh-Be-Joyful’s news had spread and further down the lane was a large cluster of women which hurried towards Zeobab and surrounded him with anxious questions. ‘Was my man pressed along of the others?’ ‘Did the press take Matthew?’ ‘Pressed.’ ‘Pressed.’

  ‘Ask her.’ Saltonstall established herself on Goody Busgutt’s steps and her voice rose above the clamour. She was pointing. ‘Ask Makepeace Burke. She’ll know. She’s took in a English lord as is a friend to them as steals our poor lads. Ask her what she’s a-doin’ with him in her bedroom.’

  Unbelieving faces in unison turned towards Makepeace, the women’s go-to-meeting caps like the frill of spume on an advancing wave. She began gabbling as she had to Zeobab: Drowning. What else to do? Where else to take ’un? Every hurried word an apology and admission of guilt—and unheard. It seemed to her the wave was coming at her and she backed defensively into the Meg’s doorway.

  But it was still absorbing shock. Almost the whole of the Cut was involved with the Gideon in one way or another; the men’s loss was not only personal grief but rents that now couldn’t be met, unpaid debts, little businesses that had been planned and wouldn’t transpire.

  Mary Bell from Number 25 shifted her baby more firmly onto her hip. She came up so that she stood on one side of the little bridge that led to the tavern, Makepeace, with her back to the door, faced her on the other. They were friends. Mary’s young husband was second mate on Gideon and had sailed before his child was born. ‘What’s she sayin’, Makepeace?’ Her face crumpled. ‘Where’s my Matthew?’

  Wordless, Makepeace stared at her. Useless, useless to say she’d saved a man from drowning not knowing who he was; her actions had no relevance to this woman.

  Had Gideon gone d
own with all hands, Mary could have grieved and recovered. She came of a coastal people; the sea gave, the sea took away, she understood it, her church had prayers to rejoice or mourn the caprice of its profit and loss. But there was no formula for putting to rest the victim that disappeared into the jaws of His Majesty’s authorized monster. Though he didn’t come back, he remained the man who might or might not be dead, the husband of a wife who couldn’t remarry; he was a disembodied scream that went on and on.

  These things had to be comprehended; Makepeace knew it because she too had to come to terms with an altered future.

  But once they were—and Makepeace saw this too—somebody would have to pay for them, pain must be subsumed in revenge, a shriek of protest go up against the distant, arrogant, little island that inflicted such suffering.

  And this time, there was a scapegoat to hand, trailing blood. Not a governor, not a stamp master—hirelings who took their orders from three thousand miles away—but a real, live Englishman who, on his own admission, had connections with the Admiralty, the same Admiralty that commanded the stealing of men. And he was here on their doorstep.

  Helplessly, Makepeace went into the Roaring Meg, shut the door, bolted it and began preparations for a siege.

  Chapter Five

  ‘NOTHING much to do,’ she said casually to Betty. ‘Why don’t you take Josh and go visit Hannah?’ Hannah was Betty’s close friend and lived along the waterfront.

  ‘You expectin’ trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Always could tell when you was lyin’.’

  ‘It’s just . . .’ It was difficult to clarify even to herself why she felt dread but she knew it wasn’t baseless. The nights of riot had created a palimpsest on which further havoc could be written, a ground for old and new scores to be settled in a way that Boston’s conformity had previously kept in check. Violence was in the air and she could smell it waiting outside her door. ‘ . . . just if there’s trouble, if there’s trouble . . .’

  ‘Me and Josh family or not?’

  ‘You know you are, you old besom.’

  ‘ ’N’ so do every other soul ’round here. Want me ’n’ Josh caught strollin’ back from Hannah’s an’ chucked in the harbour? Thank you kindly, we’s stayin’ indoors an’ don’t nobody else ought to go visitin’ neither.’

  ‘It’s me they’re mad with.’

  ‘When people’s mad they ain’t picky.’

  As an ex-slave Betty knew what she was talking about, but Makepeace was aware that she was just finding a good excuse to stay. How good an excuse was it, though? Would Aaron be safe going to Castle William?

  Yes, she decided, he would, as long as he set out immediately. She was tempted to send the Englishman with him and then rejected the idea; there were people milling about the Cut who’d see them go; a crisis would be precipitated. Better for them all if the man made his escape under cover of darkness and with a force to protect him.

  When Aaron came down from upstairs she apprised him of the situation. ‘You tell them soldiers to lie out from the jetty an’ keep quiet,’ she said. ‘We’ll row him to their boat.’

  She accompanied her brother to the jetty. Aaron, too, had been enchanted by Dapifer who had offered to introduce him to the playhouses should he ever come to London. ‘Now there’s a true English gentleman.’

  ‘Ain’t he though,’ she said flatly, but her brother’s enthusiasm reminded her of how young he was and she became nervous for him. A few of the crowd from the Cut had ambled onto the spillway and were watching them. ‘Hold up,’ she said. ‘You can take Tantaquidgeon with you.’

  He refused indignantly, affronted that she thought he couldn’t manage on his own. ‘Anyway, if there’s trouble, you’ll need him here.’

  Quarrelling would have attracted more attention so she let him go. She called Tantaquidgeon and put him on guard at the jetty, then went upstairs to take out her anger and discomfort on a true English gentleman.

  He was sitting by the window, looking tireder and gloomier than ever; a day with the Goodies could do that.

  ‘Well,’ she said, storming in, ‘you cost me my marriage. You gone and got Captain Busgutt pressed. Ain’t I lucky?’

  He turned his head, blinking. ‘He’s been ironed?’

  ‘Pressed, pressed. Taken for the navy.’

  ‘I did that?’

  ‘Thy government, then.’ She was waving her fist. She’d give him press gang.

  He had the sense to listen, giving a nod from time to time. When she finally ran out of breath, he said, ‘I can get him out, you know.’

  The sheer omnipotence of the statement made her angrier. ‘And what about Matthew Bell and the rest of the crew?’

  ‘I’ll get them out as well.’

  ‘Oh.’ She paused. ‘Do it then.’ She still didn’t want to be placated. ‘But how long’ll that take? They could be aboard an East Indiaman by now. Or sailed to China. I’ll be in my grave before I’m a bride.’

  ‘Believe me, my dear Procrustes, marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’ Then he said: ‘Does Mrs Busgutt know?’

  Makepeace sighed. ‘She knows.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Poor soul. I thought I heard the voice of Mrs Saltonstall. She was using the words “English lord” in tones that suggested a blight on our former intimacy. She’s blaming me.’ He looked at her. ‘And you.’

  He’s quick, Makepeace thought. She hadn’t meant him to know how much trouble she was in; that was her business. She said, more gently: ‘They got to blame somebody. It’ll pass.’

  ‘Will it?’ He shook his head at her. ‘You really should have let me drown, shouldn’t you, Makepeace Burke?’

  ‘You wanted to, di’n’t you? I saw.’ She advanced on him with another grievance. ‘You was letting slip. I saw you. You was letting it beat you.’

  He shrugged and turned back to the window. ‘As I remember, my situation appeared unpropitious.’

  ‘There’s always propitions—whatever they are. You struggle ’til the Lord sounds the last trump. See him?’ She pointed out of the window to where Tantaquidgeon stood on the jetty below them. ‘He’d be dead now if he’d thought like you.’

  She told him the story, partly so that he could profit from Tantaquidgeon’s example and partly because, when things were bad, as now, she encouraged herself with this triumph of Christian survival.

  At the time John L. Burke had been playing at frontiersman, attempting to earn a living for himself, his wife and his small daughter—it was before Aaron was born—by trapping along the fur-rich edges of the Great Lakes. Another failure; the family’s only gain from that particular enterprise had been Tantaquidgeon. Makepeace, then four and a half years old, had found him lapping from the stream to which she’d gone for water. The wound in his skull was horrific.

  The Burkes discovered later, from other sources, that an Iroquois war party had raided his settlement—he was a Huron—massacring everybody in it, including his wife and son, and as near as spit killing Tantaquidgeon himself. To reach the stream where Makepeace found him he’d crawled several miles. She’d run to fetch her mother.

  ‘His brains was coming out, Pa said he was a-dying, so did the other trappers’ families. But Ma said he di’n’t need to less’n he had a mind to it.’ Temperance Burke had prayed over him as she nursed him and become heartened by his repetition of ‘Jesus’, his only word.

  She’d named him Tantaquidgeon after an Indian familiar to the early Puritan settlers. ‘He was a praying Indian, see,’ Makepeace told Dapifer, triumphantly. ‘The Lord hadn’t sounded the trump for him yet and he knew it and he fought to stay living, spite of everything. He wouldn’t be beat.’

  ‘And you’ve kept him ever since?’

  Makepeace was as surprised at the question as she had been when Dapifer had asked her why she’d saved him from drowning. ‘Couldn’t manage on his own, could he?’ The Indian’s devotion to her mother had been absolute; after Temperance’s death it had been transferre
d to herself. ‘He’s family.’

  ‘Can he say anything at all?’

  ‘He says “Jesus.” Ma said that was enough.’ Makepeace felt heartened, as she always did by recounting the story. ‘Ma was a remarkable woman and Tantaquidgeon’s a remarkable man. You want to be more like him.’

  She means it, thought Dapifer. That overgrown doorstop down there is being held up as an example to me. He said, meekly: ‘I’ll try.’

  There was that ravishing grin again; she was extraordinary. He said: ‘They’re going to punish you, aren’t they, Procrustes?’

  The smile went. ‘It’ll pass.’

  ‘I’d better stay.’

  ‘That’d rile ’em more.’

  ‘What then?’

  With hideous honesty, she said: ‘I was minded there’d be a reward.’

  ‘Good God.’ He’d been fooled by the relationship that had grown between them; he’d intended to send her some extravagant memento, a piece of furniture, a jewel; he’d forgotten she was a member of a class that grubbed everywhere for money. ‘And what are you minded my life’s worth?’ He added, with assumed calculation: ‘And don’t forget I saved you from the Goodies.’

  ‘Not for long, you didn’t.’ She pushed an errant red ringlet back into her cap as she reckoned the cost of him. There was the expenditure on the Goodies’ food and drink, there was undoubtedly the loss of her custom, she might be forced to close the Meg and open a tavern somewhere else, and the loss of Captain Busgutt. And—here she doubled the figure she’d first thought of—there was the cost of falling in love with an Englishman who was about to leave her, who must leave her, who would have left her whatever the circumstances—she had no illusions about that—the memory of whom would keep her incapable of loving another man for the rest of the days. That was worth something.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Forty pounds?’