Maya's Aura: Destroy the Tea Party

by Smith, Skye

  "So as always, the rich get richer and the poor get pregnant," moaned Britta.

  "In this case, a lot of Puritan and Baptist rich will join the poor, and the Anglicans will be swimming in money," said Lydia. She held Britta's hand and looked for the violet flecks in her eyes. "I miss your company so much, yet I cannot risk meeting you at the shop. If we want more time together it must be here. Come again early tomorrow so that we can have each other all to ourselves."

  "Ugh, Lydia, the kissing and caressing. Do you expect that of me?"

  "Love, the way you flicker those eyes you could seduce a bishop," whispered Lydia, "whereas I am simply an adulteress, so as far from a bishop's high morals as can be. And you wonder that I am seduced by you." She touched Britta's knee, "I promise to behave." The silence in the house was now noticeable. Even the kitchen must be put away by now. "Do you need a ride home?"

  "No, Daniel is waiting for me outside."

  Lydia sucked in her breath. "You must be important to the Caucus, for them to risk their spymaster to bring a chit of a girl here."

  "Their spymaster. Daniel is the bodyguard to the chairman. First to Jemmy, and now Samuel."

  "Oh, my dear. Didn't you know? He is the paymaster for all the spies who are not true believers in the cause." Lydia thought for a moment. "Oh, he is wily. Not only did he use you to recruit me, but your invitation to this banquet gave him the opportunity to hang about outside with all of the drivers, and perhaps even some of the kitchen staff. I wonder how many he tempted with his silver on this night?"

  The same thought crossed both their minds at the same time but neither spoke to it. It was too evil to put into words. Had Daniel paid to have the soup poisoned?

  * * * * *

  Britta's was the last cart in the drive way. Everyone else was long gone. When the governor left, the Austrians went with him. She walked unescorted down the steps and along the driveway to the shay. Daniel was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, on the bench. He opened one eye.

  There was no way she could climb into the shay in this gown, so she folded her arms and stared at him. He leaped down, bent low, and put an arm behind her knees and then lifted her as if he were cradling a child. He then set her gently down onto the bench. He leaped up beside her and they were away in a trot with only the rhythm of the hoofs punctuating the cool silence.

  "So, vhat did you learn," he asked after they were through the gate.

  "That is for Samuel's ears, not yours. You are just a bodyguard."

  He looked at the pout on her face and laughed. "So tonight little daughter has lost some of her innocence. Vell, the day had to come. I do not mind your not telling me. It vill be one less time you vill have to tell it."

  It was late and the shop was already closed. One of the doormen, around the clock doormen now, signaled that she would be safe, and so Daniel went home to bed.

  She did not sleep a wink all night for she feared that she would forget something. Over and over she listing the events of the evening and the information she had learned, hoping not to forget any. Always she came to the question of was Daniel a poisoner.

  * * * * *

  In the morning Winnie decided not wake Britta. She had heard her come in late and toss and turn in her bed, probably from the rich food. She left her sleeping and went to help Jon and the doormen to open the shop, and much later came back upstairs with a pot of black Chinese tea for Britta.

  Britta's mind was in a turmoil. What had she gotten herself into? More correctly, what had she gotten herself deeper into? She drank her tea and waited impatiently for Winnie to come with the news that Samuel Adams had arrived. When he did arrive, she dressed in Puritan drab and went downstairs and dragged him and his morning coffee away from the newspapers and into the meeting room.

  "Was my mission .... that is the word for spy work, isn't it? Was my mission to gather information from the men meeting with the governor, or was my mission to recruit Lydia as a spy?"

  "Either, both," said Samuel, "we did not order you to recruit Lydia, for we thought that would decide you not to go. I take it that Lydia assumed that was why you were there."

  "She did and I felt dirty when she told me. How dare you? Lydia is like a sister to me."

  "More like your mother or your aunt, but I suppose older sister would fit too," he said softly trying to calm her. She had a fast temper but he did not think that her concerns were as shallow as just her temper. This had been fermenting for a while.

  "Was Daniel's mission to protect me, or was it to recruit and corrupt the staff of those men?"

  "Either, both," said Samuel. "I haven't spoken to him today. Did he recruit any?"

  "Is he your spymaster?"

  "You must never say that. He is our captain of security," Sam replied. She looked back at him with ice in her eyes. It turned them from blue to grey. Or was that just the light? "Yes. He is our spymaster. He is very, uh, capable, dangerous. He has the skill of attacking without warning. Now you must forget that I said anything about him."

  "Did he poison the dinner guests last night?" She saw his lawyer's mind looking for a loophole. "Or cause them to be poisoned," she added.

  "We did not order him to do so. What a good idea. We should have. Did he do it of his own accord? He is certainly capable of doing it. I don't know, but it will be interesting to hear his own answer to that question." He watched her clamp her mouth closed. She was silent for a long time. Samuel let her think. He knew better than to press this young woman to do something. She and Daniel were the same in that way. They were both stubborn cusses.

  "Do you want to here my story from last night?" she asked.

  "Not yet. Wait until there are more of us here to listen, and perhaps Daniel as well." He watched her reach into her apron pocket and push a folded paper towards him. He unfolded it and read a recipe for nut loaf written in a very feminine hand. He turned it over and put it down on the table and then just stared at it, mumbling to himself. He didn't even notice her leave the room.

  * * * * *

  Britta looked at the men in the room. It was the core group including Daniel. "You already have the list of bankers that support the consignees. I gave you that to save Daniel the trouble of writing down the list. Before I repeat anything else of what Lydia told me last night, or describe what I saw and heard I must ask you for an oath."

  Samuel immediately nodded to her as if he had been expecting something like this. She began again. "You must swear that that you will protect and support Lydia as if she were your own wife and her children as if they were your own children."

  Samuel stood and placed a hand over his heart and said, "I swear it."

  "No, it is not good enough that the chairman swears it for the committee. I want each of you to swear it." She watched them look at each other. Daniel stood up and swore it immediately. The others followed.

  The last to swear it, and only after all others stared at him, was the cockerel John Hancock. She knew that Samuel had once been this man's good friend, despite the frostiness that now stood between them. Sam had told her that he had become a trouble maker, but she knew differently. She had seen men driven mad by pain before. This man was in pain all the time, and from the way he walked, she could guess it was from gout in his foot.

  Britta quickly told her stories, and then Lydia's stories. She told them of Red's hopes and his observations on the financial and banking catastrophe working its way through England and now to Boston. When she was finished speaking, and after they had all stopped asking her questions, she looked at Daniel and asked, "Did you or any of your agents try to poison the dinner guests last night?"

  There was a stunned silence and then everyone was asking questions at once, of Daniel. He looked at her and slumped his shoulders in disappointment and sighed. She quietly left her unaccustomed seat at the head of the meeting table, and took her more normal seat at the desk in the back and watched and listened.

  "Ve vere not responsible and I curse those that did it for it mea
ns ve vill never again have that chance," said Daniel. "I must caution you that to protect those that did it, I cannot say much. In their defense it was not meant as a poison but as a purge. It was done by replacing the salt in the soup with gastric salts, probably Epsom salts. People who like salty foods, that is, the men, suffered the largest dosing."

  The hot heads were shouting that it was a shame that real poison was not used. The moderates were angry that such a foul act may be blamed on them. Mr. Hancock was strangely quiet. Britta wondered if she had done right by telling all this in front of Mr. Hancock. He consistently acted so differently from the rest that it crossed her mind that perhaps he was spying on these meetings for the governor.

  * * * * *

  After the meeting, Britta pulled John Hancock into the galley. "You are plagued with gout, Mr. Hancock?" Mr. Hancock gave her a look as if to say, it is none of your business. "I may be able to help you. Come upstairs to my home and I will see what I can do." He pulled away from her. "What have you got to lose except the pain?" she asked as he turned his back. He stopped.

  Upstairs she had him sit on a chair and put his worst foot on a stool and then she removed his boot and his stocking. "Oh good Lord, why are you even walking on it? You must be in agony."

  He had been angry when this woman pulled him aside in the galley, but when he realized she was truly offering to help and not pitying him, he had come upstairs. Now in a room by himself with her, he was having second thoughts. It was bothering him to look helpless before this young woman. "I used to baby it, but I am a busy man, and there are things I want to do. Things that are important to me. Now I just bear the pain."

  " 'Bear' is too right. You are in pain so you are a bear to everyone else. Sometimes it would be better if you stayed home." She looked up at him and saw the truth in his face. "Ah, so your wife sends you out of the house when she can no longer bear you." She started to laugh.

  At first he was angry with her for laughing at him, but then he thought back on what she had said and started to laugh, too. "I have no wife." He leaned forward to gain a better view of her shapeliness, for the serge of her puritan dress was pulled tight across her chest.

  She let him stare a while, flattered, but then the thought that she was alone with an unmarried man in her quarters brought other worries. Although she had assumed he was married, all the men who had seen her take him upstairs would know better. They must go downstairs again and quickly. She slumped her shoulders to loosen the stretched serge and asked, "What does your physician say?"

  "To soak it in Epsom salts and to take his medicine."

  "That is all?" she said in wonder. He nodded.

  She went to the little kitchen and brought back a rum bottle filled with apple cider vinegar and a packet of baking soda and a cup and saucer and a tablespoon. "Watch," she said, "these two are opposites. Watch what happens when I mix them. She put a little baking soda into the cup and then dripped some vinegar into it. It foamed up the sides of the cup.

  "Most of the time the vinegar works to relieve the gout, but for a few people it doesn't work and they must try the soda. You can take a tablespoons of the vinegar from the spoon or you can mix it with drinking water or tea. Do that before every meal. If that doesn't work then stir a teaspoon of the soda into drinking water or tea and drink that before every meal."

  "You mean that is all I must do? We have those in our kitchen. Why didn't Dr. Warren tell me that?"

  "Did he sell you opium syrup?"

  "Yes," he replied, "that is normal. The physicians sell that syrup for all aches and pains."

  "How long have you been taking it?"

  "A week," he replied. "I am half way through a bottle."

  "Throw it away. It is too dangerous to use for things with other cures."

  "But it cost...."

  "Throw it away. Believe me. Just throw it away. The vinegar or the soda will ease your pain better than the opium, and without the dangers of the opium. You do realize, however, that none of these will actually cure your gout?"

  "What, what is that you say?" He said feeling a bit confused.

  "The pain is a symptom of something else. All of those remedies ease the pain, the symptom, but they do not stop the cause."

  "So what is the cause?"

  "It is different in every person, so there is no easy answer. In older men it is often alcohol abuse, or an injury to the organs of the lower back. Sometimes it is over eating, or over eating of one type of food, such as organ meats or venison. To find the cause in you, you must change your habits one thing at a time. For instance, give up alcohol for a few weeks and see if your gout goes away. If that doesn't work, then try giving up something else, perhaps organ meats next, and keep giving habits up until you find out what is causing it."

  "Wouldn't it be easier just to keep taking the vinegar?"

  "Eventually it will no longer ease the pain. By then your gout could have poisoned your entire body, not just your feet. No, you must find out, by trial and error, what is causing it." She gave him a double dose of vinegar and then gave him water to clear the bitterness from his throat. Then she gently replaced his stocking and boot.

  "Thank you, Britta, I will try your advice." He stood up unsteadily and winced, and then started towards the door. As he passed by she reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a medicine bottle and held it up to the light. Half full. Lydia had told her that the opium problems usually did not start until after the second bottle.

  He reached for his bottle, but she wagged her finger at him and dropped it into a drawer. "If neither the vinegar nor the soda work, then you may ask me to return it." She stood and took his arm and helped him down the stairs. Halfway down she asked, "Are you a smuggler, Mr. Hancock?"

  He stopped walking and said, "That has never been proven." He tried to walk again but she held him back. He looked around at her and said, "Yes, my ships smuggle and I sell smuggled cargoes." She helped him to shop door and asked the doorman to find him a hackney shay to take him home.

  She held him steady by his arm while he waited for the shay. Now she knew that he was a spy, but not for the governor or the navy. He was a spy for the smugglers and their merchants. He was a spy for men like John Brown.

  While he was getting up the one step into the shay he lost his balance and she took his hand to steady him. The doorman stepped forward and took his weight and thankfully she could let go of his hand. She felt like fainting. A darkness had entered her and she was quite dizzy. She wouldn't be so quick to help Mr. Hancock ever again. A slaver for sure. He had the charred touch.

  As he drove away she said to the doorman, "Typical modern man. As soon as the vinegar rids him of the pain, he will stop looking for the cause. In a year or less he will be crippled by gout and the vinegar will no longer work."

  To herself she mumbled. "Bastard physicians. Giving people medicine that is dangerous or doesn't work just so they can make a profit. And why opium syrup? It is the worst." The answer, of course, was too simple to say and too evil to believe. The physicians were pushing the opium syrup as a cure-all because it was so habit-forming that people had to come back to them and buy more.

  She went back inside and just to be sure that all the men in shop knew why she had taken Hancock upstairs, she called out to Jon, "He is a fool to be walking on that foot. I told him how to cure it, but I fear he was in too much pain to listen." Jon looked at her and shrugged. What did he care.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith

  Chapter 20 - The Occupy Movement

  "I was wondering dear," came Nana's voice over the sound of the whistling kettle. "In your crystal memories you often mention Faneuil Hall. It is still standing you know. Boston has preserved it. Would visiting it help you to remember." The whistling changed pitch and then ran out of steam as Nana poured the hot water over the breakfast dishes.

  Maya stepped out of the cottage and looked all around at the water
on the bay. There was barely a ripple. "Okay, but right now, while it is calm. That way we can go in the runabout and be back well before dark."

  "Oh, I don't think I should go. It would be a lot of walking. I just can't, not any more."

  "Oh no you don't, it was your suggestion and I will need you as a tour guide," replied Maya. "And as for your fear of walking, great grandfather's folding wheel chair is still in the shed. I'll go and throw it in the boat while you grab our coats and bags."

  * * * * *

  The runabout had made short work of the seven mile run to Boston's small-boat marina. It cruised easily at twenty miles an hour over the still waters and that was with the twin outboards barely breathing hard. Arriving with an old woman in a wheel chair won them preferential treatment at the marina, and less than an hour after they got into the boat, they were facing Faneuil Hall.

  "So," asked Nana. "Is it flooding you with memories?"

  "No, gran," Britta said. "It is nothing like I remember."

  An old man sitting on a bench near by caught their words, and grumped at them. "It hasn't changed much since it was rebuilt in 1899, so you remember wrong."

  Maya wheeled Nana away from the grump, "The whole area is different, and it's not just the paved roads and the parking lots and the tall buildings. They've filled in all the old waterways and inlets. " She walked along the street that should take them to the Anchor Cafe building. The block was now an office tower. She gave up, but wheeled Nana to the other side of the Hall just to see.

  "Even the statues are wrong," she moaned looking up at one of Samuel Adams. "I knew Sam as a younger man, I mean, the memories are of a younger man."