by Smith, Skye
She watched carefully to make sure that he did not have too much. Just enough to send the demon back to where he came from. Just enough to make Jemmy sleepy. Not enough to make him pass out. He reclined against the pillows and puffed at the pipe. She sat close to his side ready to grab the pipe from him. When he coughed she took the opportunity to grab the pipe and then moved out of his reach.
She had never seen Jemmy like this before. She wondered if Lydia had seen him like this, seen his demon. She felt a wave of guilt and a wave of dizziness, and a full body shudder went through her. Now she understood why Lydia would sometimes come downstairs with opium smoke on her breath. Once the demon was let out, Jemmy could not help himself. He could not even help to light the pipe he needed to send the demon away.
Is this why Lydia was sometimes so long upstairs putting Jemmy to bed, and why she came down disheveled? Of course it was. She looked down at the thin slip she was wearing. It was stretched and wrinkled and stained from wrestling with him. Her hair was loose, her bonnet on the floor. Her breasts ached from being squeezed, and her thighs felt bruised.
She reached over the sleepy man and pulled at his far shoulder to roll him onto his side with his face close to the bucket. She must not hate Jemmy for this. It was not him. She prayed to Jemmy's God that he would not remember what had just happened here. How he had abused his future daughter.
A thought crossed her mind, a worrisome thought. "Oh, Christ," she blasphemed under her breath, "has this ever happened in his house? Has his demon ever touched Elizabeth or Mary in this way? Ruth did not trust him. Is this why?"
She felt giddy and dizzy and happy and sad with the effect of the charas and opium smoke. She felt quite strange. She wondered if she should send for Ruth, or even Mercy. She went to get some drinking water, and while doing so, saw the four rooms of her home through different eyes.
It was a mess. There were piles of clothes on the furniture, on the beds and even on the floor. Every flat surface was littered with dirty things waiting to be washed, and clean things that had not yet been put away. There was soot from the fire on everything close to the fireplace. The floor was littered with bits of trash and old crumbs of food and mouse droppings.
She wanted to cry. Even if she needed to send for Ruth, she couldn't. How could she bring her future mother-in-law into this dump. Again she felt a wave of guilt about Lydia. Over the months she had always cursed Lydia for being lazy, and for using Robby or her belly as an excuse for not doing her share of the work in the shop. Now she realized what else Lydia had been doing. She had used the time upstairs to keep her home neat and clean and always presentable.
While Jemmy slept, and while she stayed close to make sure he kept breathing, she sorted clothes and folded them and hung them and sided flat surfaces and wiped dirty finger marks, and generally put things away. Something in the pipe smoke gave her the energy and the focus to work away at mundane tasks. She even took their few mats and shook them out of the back window, and swept the floors, and took a damp rag to all the soot.
Winnie whistled in appreciation when she came up to say that men were drifting into the shop again. Their home was tidy like she had never seen it before. She found Britta sitting in a chair pulled close to Jon's bed where Jemmy was sleeping. Britta had her head down on her arms on the small table and was lightly snoring. There was a small carved wooden box on the table that she had never seen before. Britta's slip was filthy, her face smudged with grime, and her hair was pulled back out of her face into a simple pony tale. Winnie went back downstairs without waking her, or Jemmy.
* * * * *
Eventually a sleepy, yawning Britta made an appearance in the galley. Winnie giggled. "At least you remembered to put your clothes back on."
Britta gave her a half smile and explained, "He felt like puking so I had to take everything out of harm's way except for the bucket. How are we doing?"
"A few men came back from the Hall. They are in the meeting room. There are some regulars reading newspapers. That's about it," said Winnie.
"I heard a lot of men a little while ago."
"It was a protest march," Winnie replied. "They went by the shop and around the corner. We locked the doors just in case."
"What were they protesting?"
"You are going to call me a liar, so I am not going to tell you," said Winnie as she pulled Britta's smock straight and pushed some wayward golden curls up under Britta's bonnet.
Britta grabbed her before she could leave the galley. "Tell me."
"They are angry because prices are going to go down soon and taxes are to be cancelled. See, I said you wouldn't believe me."
The shop was quiet. She had expected more crowding once the Hall meeting broke up. At least Jon was back. He was waving his arms around as he told stories to the doorman. She cracked the meeting room door to see haw many were there. A dozen. She tried to open it wider, but someone was holding it closed. When it did widen, Daniel slipped through and closed it behind him.
"Not now Britta, love, they are doing some hard debating."
"Can you leave? Jemmy needs a ride home."
He looked around at the quietness of the shop. "All right. That will work if I go now and come right back."
* * * * *
Daniel helped Jemmy up the steps of his house and then right up the staircase to his bed. Britta walked into the house behind him, ignoring Jemmy's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who was trying to block her way. She reached the parlor just as Ruth was standing up to see what was wrong with Jemmy. "You are not welcome in my house, Britta."
"Please Ruth, we need to talk. In private. Before you tend to Jemmy."
"Rachel, do not take her cloak. She is not staying," Ruth told the maid who had followed Britta into the room.
Meanwhile Rachel was trying to catch Britta's attention to warn her away from the house. She was using hoodoo signs, the secret signals used by Black midwives in the Americas. Both Rachel and Britta had trained as midwifes and so both knew the hoodoo signs.
It was no use. Britta was not looking at her. Hoodoo signs were of no use if people weren't looking. Unless Ruth allowed her to take Britta's cloak, she couldn't even get close enough to the girl to whisper a warning. She waited patiently hoping that Britta would look at her.
The wife and the daughter-to-be stood staring at each other until Britta spoke. "I just shared a bed....room with Jemmy's demon. If you want everyone to hear what I am going to say, then so be it, for it needs to be said."
"Follow me," hissed Ruth and she led Britta through the kitchen, grabbed a lantern and then walked into the pantry and slammed the door behind them. "What did James do?" she said softly.
"James did nothing. He is a perfect gentleman. His demon, however, is a crass, foul-mouthed lout with a dirty mind, and roving hands." Britta started to cry. Not for herself, but for Jemmy.
Ruth came close to her and put her arm around her so that Britta could rest a cheek on her shoulder. "I too have met his dark side. The first time was shortly after the physician sold him the opium syrup. I thought it was time for him to stop taking it, so I hid it. The next time was when he himself tried to quit the syrup and threw it away. Now it happens about once a month, whenever he is too long without the syrup."
"I came to tell you never to risk the demon when Elizabeth and Mary are present. They would never forgive him. For that matter, never when any young women are present, for any right minded father would surely shoot him."
"He didn't, that is, go that far with you?"
"No. Though I am bruised from wrestling the opium pipe into his mouth."
"Will you ever forgive James?" asked Ruth slowly.
"For James there is nothing to forgive," replied Britta. "Forgive the demon, never. I want him cured of it."
"You must not tell Jim what happened," Ruth begged.
Britta wanted to slap her. All this woman could think of was keeping it secret, nothing about the woman who endured the abuse. "And you? Have you met the de
mon alone, or did you always have help?"
"So far I have always had strong hands close by to help hold him down while I dose him. Still, some of the things he said were vile, were ...."
"Demonic. Did you notice the change in his voice. Like the voice was speaking from some other world."
"Yes, demonic is the word, but I try not to use it. It was suggested that I have him exorcised, but then the church would know all."
"He told me he hasn't been taking any opium," Britta said, "not for over a week."
"That seems to be the pattern. It is as if the demon comes forth to find his opium."
"So, a little each week in the pipe, then. Perhaps just before bed twice a week."
"Do you think Lydia met the demon?" whispered Ruth.
"I am sure of it."
"I suppose I should have met with her when she came to discuss it," whispered Ruth.
"Yes, you should have. Well it's too late now. She won't be back to Boston any time soon."
There was a knock at the door. Rachel's voice called out, "Mr. Daniel says that he must leave soon. He is asking if Miss Britta is coming."
Britta opened the door and walked through the house towards the front door where Daniel was twirling his hat while waiting.
"Britta," Ruth cried out. "Wait." She went to a desk and unlocked a drawer and pulled out a folder. She walked to the front door and handed it to Britta. "Letters to you from Jim."
Britta's heart leaped. There were five. She looked at the dates. "But some of these are from months ago."
"When you have a son his age, you will understand," Ruth said.
"Don't you men, when I have his son?"
Ruth sighed and walked away into the house without saying goodbye. Rachel forced some cakes on them for the cart ride home.
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith
Chapter 14 - Love Letters
Britta was so frustrated she could scream. Daniel's cart was too bumpy to allow her to read Jim's letters in the dimming twilight. The ride home was infuriatingly slow because the way was blocked by crowds of men, most of whom seem to want to know what was going on, and did not want to miss whatever that turned out to be.
She stepped down from the cart before it had fully stopped in front of the shop, and crashed through the door and ran to the closest empty table that was lit with a lantern. Jon came to see what was the matter. She dismissed his curiosity with, "They are from Jim, go away and keep everyone else away from me."
All of the letters had been opened already. She read the letters in sequence. The earliest was a newsy letter about his room at the college, and how he spent his days, and the address to write to him at. The second was embarrassingly lovey mushy, and she read it three times before moving on to the next. It was a letter scolding her for not answering his letters. The fourth was another love letter but the last paragraph showed he was angry that she had not written.
The fifth was dated just a week past. It was very terse. It said that he took her silence as a foreboding that she was in trouble, and that he would quit Harvard and return to Boston if he didn't have a letter from her by the end of the month.
"That conniving bitch," she hissed to herself. "The only reason Ruth gave me these today was because she had no choice." All sorts of angry thoughts ran through her head. The obvious one was not to respond and have him quit Harvard and come back to her.
She saw Sam's cousin John Adams putting on his coat beside the fireplace. "John, how would I get a letter to Jim Otis in Cambridge? Quickly."
"You can give it to me. We have a dispatch box going there first thing in the morning. Seal it up with a name and address and I will put it in the box myself."
"I haven't written it yet," Britta said. She gave him a wide smile.
"Well, I can wait a few minutes longer. Hurry though. I want to reach home in time to hug my children before they fall asleep."
The fastest thing that Britta could think of to do was to write just a few words to stop Jim from worrying and then follow it with a longer letter in a few days. She began with "I am so sorry that I have been so long in writing. Your letters were delayed in the delivery and I only just today was handed the five of them. " Then she wrote a few "I love yous" and "I miss yous" and then she didn't know what else to write. This was, after all, the very first letter she had ever written.
She looked at her work, and then at John waiting by the door. Her work was a messy scrawl compared to Jim's letters, but she didn't have time to make a better copy. She heard John clearing his throat. She signed it, sealed it, and addressed it and gave it to John.
"Go with care now, John Adams. The streets are wild with men tonight." She kissed him on the cheek, and then used her fingers to wipe away the trace of her lip rouge. He was a married man after all. "Will you be seeing Mercy soon?" Mercy and John were best of friends. "Could you tell her that I need her help to compose a love letter to Jim."
John looked down at the letter. The address was written in an amateur hand and was smeared with ink runs. "I'll tell her tomorrow," he said as he made for the door.
* * * * *
Two days later when Mercy arrived, almost the entire central committee was meeting in the back of the shop. Britta skipped across to the door to take her cloak, and then gave her a full hug.
"Oh my dear," Mercy whispered, "whatever has happened?" Britta started to blurt out the story of the demon, but Mercy put a finger to her lips and nodded at all the men in the shop. "Why don't we have a nice chat upstairs."
Britta was suddenly very glad that she and Winnie had been cleaning the rooms, doing a little bit more each day. Mercy was barely sitting down when Britta started to tell her about the demon, and her visit to Ruth, and then the letters.
"My sister-in-law is just protecting her son from a loose woman of no family. A trollop." said Mercy. She smiled at the shocked look on the girl's face. "That is because she does not know you. Of course, it doesn't help that every time you meet with her you have an argument. At this rate she may never know how sweetly honest you are.
Ruth is one of those born-to-wealth women who have always been able to snap her fingers at a servant. She does not know how to do anything for herself, but she knows how to order others to do it for her. She knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Has she offered you money to stay away from Jim yet? No, I suppose she cannot do that until your bond to Lydia is finished. But she will. And she has a lot of money."
Britta was about to rant that she could never be bought to stay away from Jim, but of course, she already had been, by Lydia, her bond mistress.
"Now about letters," said Mercy with a smile. "There are business letters, and news letters, and thank-you letters, and none of them are anything like a love letter. A love letter must flow like poetry. It is not about facts and numbers and logic, it is about the feelings you have for another person. I can help you with the spelling and the neatness and the script, but only you can capture the feeling."
Mercy took the girl's hand and looked into her astonishing eyes. It was no wonder that all men desired her. "You must forget grammar and spelling for now. They can be corrected when you make a good copy to send. You must picture Jim. He must be sitting here holding your hand instead of me. What would you say to him, how would you say it, where would you break off words for a kiss or a touch? That is what you must capture on paper."
Britta went to get her plumes and paper and mix some ink. When she returned, Mercy was standing.
"You sit here and visit with Jim. When you have captured some of your feelings on paper, then come and show them to me. I will be in the meeting room taking minutes for the men."
* * * * *
It was a closed meeting and Daniel was at the meeting room door turning back other men with less important business with the committee. The shop was filling with well-dressed men drinking coffee while they waited. He allowed Britta to enter despite his or
ders. He motioned her to be quiet and pointed her to an empty chair where Mercy was sitting at the small writing desk at the back.
"Where is Jemmy?" she whispered to Mercy.
"He won't be coming to the meetings for a while," Mercy whispered back. "Ruth thinks they excite him and exhaust him too much. In any case, she hates the politics of this committee."
Britta had a long wait. She watched Mercy take the minutes. Her hand flowed effortlessly and rapidly across the paper and yet there was not an ink blotch or a scratch out to be seen. She did not write everything down. It was only when the men's loose thoughts and discussions had formulated themselves into a well-spoken statement that she wrote. She began to listen to what the men were saying.
"Yes, yes, yes," said Samuel Adams. "I am well-quoted about taxes, but we can no longer expect to keep gaining support for our demand for a Bill of Rights, and then more self-government, by using the people's hatred of taxes and high prices as a rally cry. London will remove the duties, reduce the rates, and the Company will drop prices, and then we will be all thunder and no lightning."
"And what do we replace it with? What will be the new issue?" asked a man wearing a well-tailored jacket made of costly and colorful fabrics. "Their hatred of banks, I suppose. Are you are still fighting your father's fight against the banks, Sam. Let it go. The next issue for the people will be jobs. The big global companies are making changes as we speak that will cost the provinces a lot of jobs."
"And destroy the fortunes of our merchants and ship owners," added a voice.
"And our smugglers," added mister fancy jacket.
Britta whispered to Mercy, "Who is the cockerel?" She was told that he was a Mr. John Hancock, a very, very wealthy merchant and ship owner.
"But don't you see," argued Sam, "behind it all is the big banks and moneylenders and the way they do business. All of England is in a financial crisis because of the fraud at the Ayr Bank of Scotland. The London share markets have crashed because of that bank. The source of the evil has always been usury and interest. Even the high taxes we were paying were enacted to pay the interest on the war bonds held by the bankers.