A Catch of Consequence

by Diana Norman

  It was a busy day, as all days were. With Tantaquidgeon stalking in her wake, she took her basket to Faneuil Market instead of to Ship Street’s where she more usually did her buying, partly because the meat in its hall would be kept cooler and freer of flies than that on open stalls and partly to listen in that general meeting place for mention of a missing Englishman. She doubted if she could have heard it if there had been; Faneuil’s was always noisy but today’s clamour threatened to rock its elegant pillars.

  Boston patriotism, simmering for years, had boiled out of its clubs and secret societies into the open. For once a town that prized property and propriety was prepared to sacrifice both for something it valued higher. There was no catharsis from last night’s mayhem, no shame at the damage, everybody there had become a patriot overnight. ‘We showed ’em.’ ‘We got ’em running.’ She heard it again and again, from street-sellers to wealthy merchants. She found satisfaction in hearing it from a knot of lawyers fresh from the courthouse, as exhilarated as any Son of Liberty at last night’s breakdown of order. Deeds, wills, all litigious documents were subject to Stamp Duty; the tax had hit the legal profession hard. But you sharks can afford to pay it, she thought, I can’t.

  Even newspapers—another taxed item—had increased in price; she could no longer take the Boston Gazette for her customers to read as she once had. From the triumphant headlines: ‘The Sons of Liberty have shown the Spirit of America’, glimpsed as copies were passed hand-to-hand through the market, she gathered that the press was trumpeting revenge.

  Indeed, no catharsis. If anything, those who’d taken part were excited into wanting to do it again and gaining recruits who saw their royal Governor taken aback and helpless.

  In one corner, a penny whistle was accompanying a group singing ‘Rule, Bostonians/ Bostonians rule the waves/ Bostonians never, never, never shall be slaves’ with more gusto than scansion. Tory ladies, usually to be seen shopping with a collared negro in tow, were not in evidence, nor were their husbands.

  ‘Mistress Burke.’

  ‘Mistress Godwit.’ Wife to the landlord of the Green Dragon in Union Street. They curtsied to each other.

  ‘Reckon we’ll see that old Stamp Tax repealed yet,’ shrieked Mrs Godwit.

  ‘We will?’ shouted Makepeace. ‘Hooray to that.’

  ‘Don’t approve of riotin’ but something’s got to be done.’

  ‘Long as it don’t affect trade.’

  They were joined by Mrs Ellis, Bunch of Grapes, King Street. ‘Oh, they won’t attack patriotic hostelries. Tories’ll suffer though. I heard as how Piggott of the Anchor got tarred and feathered.’

  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, especiall
y 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.

  Immediately the injured man upstairs became a presence; Makepeace had to stop herself glancing at the ceiling through which, it seemed to her, he would drop any second, like the descending sword of Damocles. Bart’s virulence was convincing; she had no doubt that, should he discover him, he would contrive to have the Englishman killed before he could talk. Unlike most of those who’d indulged in smuggling—a decent occupation—Bart kept contact with the criminal dens of Cable Street and the surrounding alleys, never short of money for rum and tobacco. Whenever he hopped into the Roaring Meg its landlady was reminded that her tavern was a thin flame of civilization in a very dark jungle. And never more so than tonight.

  Act normal, she told herself. She said evenly: ‘No cussing here, Mr Stubbs, I thank you.’ She heated some flip, took it to him, putting a barrel table where he could reach it, and lit him a pipe.

  Sugar Bart asked no pity for his condition and received none; instead, metaphorically, he waved his missing leg like an oriflamme in order to rally opposition against those whom he considered had deprived him of it. An excise brig he’d been trying to outrun in his smuggler while bringing in illegal sugar had fired a shot which should have gone across his bows but hit his foremast instead, and a flying splinter from it had severed his knee.

  That Bart had survived at all was admirable but Makepeace had long decided he’d only done so out of bile. In all the years he’d patronized the Roaring Meg, she’d never learned to like him.

  He didn’t like her either, or didn’t seem to, was never polite, yet his sneer as he watched her from his chair bespoke some instinct for her character, as if he knew things about her that she didn’t. She’d have banned him but, discourtesy apart, there’d never been anything to ban him for.

  ‘Was you whistlin’ this morning, weren’t it?’ he asked.

  There was no point denying it. ‘Saw the redcoats coming.’

  ‘See anything else?’ Makepeace hadn’t expected thanks or gratitude and didn’t get any.

  ‘Lobster-pots. What else was there?’ She was an uncomfortable liar so she carried the fight to him: ‘And what was you doing there so early, Master Stubbs?’

  His eyes hooded. ‘Sweepin’ up, Makepeace, just sweepin’ up.’

  Jack Greenleaf said: ‘I heard as you was at the Custom House with the South End gang, an’ doin’ the damn place—sorry, Makepeace—a power of no good, neither.’

  ‘Ain’t denyin’ it.’ Sugar Bart was smug. ‘There’s some of them bastards won’t be shootin’ men’s legs off in a hurry.’

  There was a general ‘Amen to that’ in which Makepeace joined. Since the government cracked down on smuggling sugar, the price of rum, which, with ale, was her customers’ staple drink, had almost doubled. This time she excused the use of ‘bastards’. As a description of Boston’s excisemen it was exact.

  ‘They got Mouse Mackintosh today,’ Zeobab said, ‘so you be careful, Bart Stubbs.’

  Bart sat up. ‘They got Mackintosh?’

  ‘Noon it was,’ Zeobab said, ‘I was near the courthouse an’ redcoats was takin’ him into the magistrates. He’ll be in the bilboes by now.’

  ‘What they get him for?’ asked Makepeace. ‘Custom House?’

  ‘Don’t know, but earlier he was the one broke into Oliver’s house,’ Zeobab said in awe. ‘Led the lads, he did, swearing to lynch the . . . ahem . . . Stamper when he got him.’

  ‘Busy little bee, weren’t he?’ Makepeace’s voice was caustic; in her book Mouse Mackintosh was a South End lout and although Stamp Master Oliver deserved what he got, he was an old man.

  ‘A hero in my book,’ Bart said.

  ‘Cut the mustard an’ all, ’Peace,’ Jack Greenleaf pointed out on Mackintosh’s behalf, ‘they say as Oliver’s resigned from Stamp Masterin’ already.’

  ‘Still got to pay the tax, though, ain’t I?’

  ‘You have.’ Sugar Bart’s voice grated the air. ‘That’s a-why we’ll be on the streets again tonight, so fetch another flip, woman, and be grateful.’

  Conversation ended for her after that; the taproom was filling up with men whose thirst for the coming rampage was only equalled by that for liquor. Hungry, too, wanting to eat in company rather than with their wives who, in any case, were reluctant to light a cooking fire in this heat.

  She wished she’d caught more lobsters, but there was the lamb from Faneuil’s for lobscouse and there was always plenty of cod and shellfish to chowder.

  Aaron came back from work, taking off his coat and donning an apron, catching her eye.

  They managed a brief moment together in the kitchen, a savoury-smelling hell where the great hearth’s bottle-jacks, cauldrons, kettles and spits, outlined against fire, looked not so much domestic as the engineering of some demonic factory, a resemblance emphasized on the walls where Betty’s shadow loomed and diminished like that of a beladled, shape-changing harpy whose sweat, sizzling onto the tiles when she bent over them, formed a contrapuntal percussion with the hit-hit of mutton fat falling into the dripping well and the shriek of another lobster meeting its end.

  ‘Do you know who he is?’ Aaron was excited.

  ‘Philip Dapifer,’ she said.

  ‘Sir Philip Dapifer. They reckon he’s a cousin of the Prime Minister. He’s staying at the Lieutenant-Governor’s house. There’s a search on—he ain’t been seen since before dawn.’

  ‘Hokey! Is there a reward for him?’

  ‘Don’t know, but they reckon if he ain’t found soon
the British’ll send in troops.’

  ‘Holy, holy Hokey.’

  There was no time to pursue the matter; voices were calling from the taproom for service. With Aaron, she entered a wheeling dance between kitchen, casks and customers, carrying pots of ale, six at a time, balancing trays of trenchers like a plate-twirling acrobat, twisting past the barrel tables. The air grew thick with tobacco smoke, sweat and the aroma of lobscouse and became almost intolerably warm.

  Sugar Bart caught at her skirt as she went by. ‘Where’s Tantaquidgeon tonight?’

  ‘Poorly,’ she said. There it was again, that instinct he had. For all the heat, she felt chill.

  ‘Thought I couldn’t smell him.’

  Conversation was reaching thunder level, pierced by the hiss of flip irons plunging into tankards.

  And stopped.

  Sam Adams was in the doorway. He stood aside, smiling, threw out a conjuring hand and there, shambling, was the self-conscious figure of Andrew ‘Mouse’ Mackintosh.

  Little as North Enders had reason to love the South End and its gang, Mackintosh had become an instant and universal hero with them. The taproom erupted, boots stamped planking, fists hammered table-tops, cheering brought flakes of plaster from the ceiling. Even Makepeace was pleased; it was a bad precedent for Sons of Liberty to be in jail, and anyway, she loved Sam Adams.

  Everyone loved Sam Adams, Whig Boston’s favourite son, who’d run through his own and his father’s money—mainly through mismanagement and generosity—who could spout Greek and Latin but preferred the speech of common Bostonians and the conversation of cordwainers, wharfingers and sailors, and who frequented their taverns talking of Liberty as if she were sitting on his knee.

  Ludicrously, in the election before last he’d been voted in as a tax collector, a job for which he was unfitted and at which he’d failed so badly—mainly because he was sorry for the taxed poor—that there’d been a serious shortfall in his accounts. The authorities had wanted him summoned for peculation but, since everybody else knew he hadn’t collected the taxes in the first place, he’d been voted in again.

  He marched to the carver Makepeace always kept for him by the grate, his arm round Mackintosh’s shoulders, shouting for ‘a platter of my Betty’s lobscouse’.