The Tory Widow

by Christine Blevins

  Perhaps five inches wide by four inches high, the plate was engraved with intricate scrollwork, fancy script writing and a very detailed crest of the Bank of England—the devices used to thwart counterfeiters.

  “Excellent work.” Titus ran his fingers over the fine lines incised in the copper. “I think we could do something with this plate . . .”

  Jack put Mulligan’s magnifier to use. “This is the work of a master engraver.” He pulled a ten-pound note the German had given him from his pocket and compared it to its reverse image on the plate. “We’ll need to find someone who can mimic the cashier’s signature . . .”

  Mulligan said, “The master engraver has informed me that he is also quite the forger . . .”

  Titus took the note and rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb. “We’ll need to match this paper stock, and lay hands on some English-made ink . . .”

  Jack gave Titus a nudge. “We’ll talk to Tully . . .”

  Titus put his cap on. “You think Tully will know where we can find a decent press?”

  “If he doesn’t”—Jack pulled the string on his gunny tight, and tossed it over his shoulder—“we both know where there’s a fine press to be had, don’t we?”

  “Arrah, lads! A toast! Here’s to men of action”—Hercules Mulligan raised his cup—“to men who dare to be free!”

  OFF to market, Sally marched her empty cart down Murray Street, taking a very roundabout route to avoid Canvas Town. It had become a habit—a ritual performed every Monday—going out of her way to purchase at the Bear Market across town the same sort of goods easy to obtain at the Fly Market closer to home.

  Annie advocated positive thinking and hard work as measures to keep from fretting over the lads. But as the weeks and months passed, Sally’s unuttered doubts and fears became like a canker on the roof of her mouth—painful and hard to ignore.

  She slowed to a halt as she came to the college-turned-prison, tying a thick kerchief doused with lavender water over mouth and nose to mask the awful odor emanating from inside. She gripped the cart handle tight and rolled forward. Fighting an urge to gag, she studied the groups of prisoners crowded at the open upper-story windows, searching the faces.

  Sally was aware many of the inmates were too ill to take a turn at the windows. She was also sensible that thousands of patriots were imprisoned elsewhere, but those realities did nothing to diminish the relief infusing her from within, upon seeing David Peabody was not among the filthy, gaunt faces jostling for a breath of air.

  “Move along,” a guard ordered, as he always did when she lingered too long. Sally averted her eyes to straight ahead, pushing her cart past the prison.

  “I-God!”

  Straight ahead—not more than twenty yards away—Jack Hampton, Titus Gilmore and a longshoreman crossed Murray Street, heading south.

  “Jack! Titus!”

  They did not hear her call, muffled as it was by the damp cloth she’d tied tight over her mouth. Hiking her skirts in one hand, she broke into a run, the cart clattering over the cobbles. Less than a block away the men stepped onto the stoop at Mother Babcock’s Boardinghouse, and knocked at the red door. Sally slowed to a stop, forcing the mask down into a bunch at her throat. She took a few steps, squinting in the sun. “Tha’s not Jack . . .” she muttered.

  Similar in build, the farmer she mistook for Jack was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and stood in a terrible slouch. The black man had his back to her, and she could see he was bald, with ears that stuck out like the handles on a soup bowl. The longshoreman looked familiar—she’d served him before at the Crown and Quill, but not to know his name. “Na . . .” she muttered, surprised by the tears that sprung to her eyes. So desperate for news, she was seeing phantoms among farmers.

  All three men swiped off their hats when the whore Patsy Quinn came to the door. Sally moved closer, blinking.

  “Oh, Jack . . .” The whore sighed as she pulled him inside. The longshoreman and hairless Titus shuffled in after.

  Sally pounded the brass ring to the plate and bowled past the poor girl who answered the door, drawing attention from a few of the red-coated customers at cards in the parlor room. She caught sight of Jack disappearing up the stairs hand in hand with Patsy, and managed to nab Titus by the sleeve just as he was about to mount the stairs.

  “Sally! You shouldn’t be in here . . .” Titus pulled her very quickly through the open door, glancing over his shoulder. “I can’t talk right now . . .”

  “Just tell me . . .” She clutched him by the wrist. “Is David dead? Is that why yiz havena come for us?”

  “No need to start blubbering. We delivered David alive and well to his father’s care in Peekskill . . .” he whispered. “That’s all I can say.”

  “Thank God he’s safe . . .” She loosened the grip on his arm. “Why is it yiv not come for us? What’s Jack doing . . . ?”

  Titus backed her out of the bawdy house. “I have to go, Sal. I’m sorry . . .” And he swung the door shut.

  ANNE gave the wash boiling in the copper a poke with the paddle. “You actually spoke with Titus?”

  Sally stood in the kitchenhouse doorway. “Aye—direct.”

  A little muscle set to twitching above Anne’s left eye. She touched a finger to it. “And you’re absolutely certain it was Jack you saw?”

  “Hands over heart, Annie, may mine eyes drop out of my head if I’m not tellin’ ye true,” Sally said. “I saw the devil skipping hand in hand with his trull, straight up the whorehouse stair—”

  Anne swiped the mobcap from her head, befevered a-sudden, with a lump in her throat as if she’d just swallowed a toad whole. Pressing the flat of her fist to her heart, she dropped to a sit on the raised hearth, her voice very small. “He promised to come back for us . . .”

  Sally sat beside Anne and threaded an arm around her friend’s shoulder. “If that rotten scunner has the bollocks to come for ye now, Annie, he’ll be comin’ straight from another woman’s warm bed.”

  Anne flinched. Leaning forward, she gripped the edge of the hearth and tried to catch a breath, the wind knocked from her as if she’d been thwacked across the back with a thick strop. The image of Jack with Patsy in wanton embrace cut through her mind’s eye like a well-honed razor—severing her heartstrings in one swipe.

  Slipping her hand inside her pocket, Anne held up the iron half-crown still bound in ribbon. She set it to swinging with a flick of her finger, and imagined its counterpart strung around Jack’s neck, swinging to and fro as he moved in and out of Patsy Quinn.

  “God damn him!” With a snap of her wrist, Anne sent her token flying through the door, into the garden.

  Sally gave Anne a squeeze. “Well . . . how about a nice cup of tea?”

  “I don’t want any tea.” Anne shrugged Sally off and stood up. Wavering a bit on weak knees, she smoothed her hair back, and released a breath in a big whoosh. Without a word, she took up the laundry paddle and resumed stirring the wash in the copper.

  Sally moved in and tried to take over the chore. “Let me . . .”

  “Leave off, Sal!” Anne snapped, maintaining firm control of the laundry paddle with a white-knuckled, two-fisted grip.

  “Yiv had a heartbreak, Annie,” Sally crooned and rubbed small circles in the space between her friend’s shoulder blades. “Ye need to go lie down and rest.”

  “What I need . . .” Anne dug into the wet laundry in the cauldron, agitating the wet linen with a ferocious vigor. The effort and rising steam coated her face with sweat to mingle with the tears streaming down her cheeks. “What I truly need is to put that bastard from my thoughts—and I assure you, it is a thing not accomplished lying flat on my back in the middle of the day.”

  Sally surrendered. Palms upraised, she backed away. “Aye, lass, maybe yiv the right of it. It’s strength of mind what defeats a thing.”

  “Don’t you fret over me, Sally.” Anne hefted a steaming mass of wet linen aloft on her paddle, letting it drain and dribble hot
water back into the wash copper. “I have already lived through the worst heartache any woman can suffer . . .” She dumped the wet cloth into the tin rinsing tub. “I’ll survive being betrayed by the likes of Jack Hampton.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world.

  THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense

  Friday, June 13, 1777

  After Curfew, at the Sign of the Thimble and Shears

  HERCULES Mulligan paced the length of his office. Edging close to the oil lamp on the desk, he thumbed open the case of his pocket watch and checked the time once again.

  “Pacing like a cat in a cage will not speed their arrival, Stitch.” Patsy Quinn lay propped on one elbow, languid on the bench pushed up against the wall. “You are goin’ to wear a rut in the floor. Take a seat and follow the example set by the Quaker.”

  They’d all taken to calling the engraver “the Quaker”—a moniker he initially protested, proclaiming, “But I’m really a Deist,” to no avail.

  Mulligan eyed the strange little fellow sitting upright in the ladderback desk chair, serene as a broody hen, contemplating the lamp-light through a pair of blue glass spectacles. The Quaker startled violently at the sudden thumpety-thump on the window shutters, and Mulligan hurried to open the back door.

  “You’re late.”

  “Would you have us arrested for curfew?” Jack pushed past the tailor. Titus and Tully filed in behind—all three of them dressed in dark clothes—Tully with a knit cap pulled over his graying hair.

  “We had to wait for the streets to clear,” Titus said. “Too many Redcoats about.”

  “As thick as fleas on a fat old dog,” Tully added.

  “I forgot.” Mulligan knocked fist to forehead. “Mrs. Loring is hosting an evening of drink and cards . . .”

  “Hey, Jack!” Patsy sat up, and patted the empty spot beside her. “Come sit next to me . . .”

  Jack made straight for the big cabinet and the bottle of rye the Stitch kept there. After taking a good gulp, he banged the bottle to the desktop. “Paper—” Tugging a folded page from the pocket of his britches, he handed it to the engraver. “A close match—but we only have one ream.”

  “Excellent.” The Quaker pushed his spectacles to the top of his bald head and held the paper sample close to the light, worrying the page between finger and thumb. “I must say, lads, I was not expecting anything this fine. This is near exact.”

  Titus made himself comfortable on the floor, sitting tailor-style beside the lemon tree. “Tully’s also diverted a gallon of ink to the cause—best quality—English manufacture.”

  “Ahoy, Jack! Mind yer pocket,” Tully warned with a wave of his finger. “Yer about t’ lose yer kerchief . . .”

  Along with the paper sample, Jack’d dragged up a lace-edged handkerchief from the depths of his pocket. It dangled precarious by one corner—the lone relic from the last time he had held Anne Merrick in his arms. Snatching the linen up, Jack was ready to toss the thing out the window when a puff of lavender wafted up. Without forethought to the consequence, Jack brought the handkerchief to his nose.

  Underlying the lavender, the scent of Anne Merrick sent him back a step—pushed him against the wall. The taut cord connecting his wits to his stones drew tight as a bowstring, sapping all strength from his limbs. Arms dropping to his sides, Jack slid down to sit in the crease where the floorboards met the wall plaster, legs splayed, the lace-edged linen held loose in his hand. No one seemed to notice his plight.

  Mulligan clapped his hands. “All well and good. We are fixed for paper and ink. Any luck finding an engraving press?”

  The grizzled longshoreman sat down beside Patsy and swiped the cap from his head, his gravelly voice well suited to clandestine talk in the night. “I’ve spoken with a sailor who claims there is an engraving press working in the belly of the Rose, printing out counterfeit Continentals . . .”

  “Fiddle-faddle.” Mulligan dismissed the rumor as if waving away a bad smell. “Even if it were a fact proven, a press on a ship does us here on land little good.”

  “True enough,” Tully rasped. “There’s some credible noise on the docks having to do with Rivington expecting a press from England, but no one knows if it’s an engraving press. If a new press shows, we might divert its delivery.”

  “No telling when, though?” Mulligan asked.

  “No tellin’ when.”

  Jack could resist no longer. He crumpled the kerchief into a ball and brought his fist to his face. Eyes closed, he drew in another breath. The scent bonded to the linen threads evoked a moment of pure bliss—respite and relief from the constant, twanging heartache sorely plaguing him the past days.

  Mulligan pinched the bridge of his nose, pacing the width of the room. “I fear we’re running out of time. Signs point to Howe shipping out the bulk of his forces in an effort to take Philadelphia. Patsy’s greedy quartermaster will most likely soon be gone. We need a press now—right, Jack?”

  Jack managed to nod his head in agreement and smoothed the handkerchief out on his thigh. The farewell token Anne had given him was much worse for traveling all these months in his pocket—very wrinkled—the lace tattered and frayed on one corner, much like the state of his heart. He folded the linen square into quarters.

  Those last hurried moments with Anne wrapped in his arms suddenly so vivid, bright and happy, the notion of his woman giving herself to another was utterly unbelievable. The world’s gone upside down, she’d said. And maybe it had—but for Jack, there was one constant: He wanted Anne Merrick.

  Titus piped up. “There is an old engraving press stowed way back in the closet at Merrick’s. Over twenty years ago, the old man tried his hand at book printing—one of my first chores when I was bought as a slave was to drag them parts into the closet. I doubt the widow even knows it’s in there. Though I can’t vouch for its condition—and we’d have to dig through a mess to get to it . . .”

  Tully said, “Rivington has an engraving press working in his shop . . .”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Patsy gave Tully a jab. “Break into Rivington’s and steal the damn press.”

  “A tricky business, this . . .” Tully’s squinty eye disappeared in a clutch of wrinkles. “Not as simple as filching a coin from a drunk’s pocket whilst yer givin’ him a three-penny upright, missy. Whichever press we go after, we need to form a plan and find a trusty crew.”

  Hercules Mulligan pulled a copy of Rivington’s newspaper from his coat pocket. “We certainly did the Tory a favor when we ran him out of town. He’s been richly rewarded for his loyalty—‘Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty,’ ” the tailor read from the masthead of the Royal Gazette. “Betwixt his monopoly on Crown work, and this Loyalist rag he prints, he has his devils working his presses both day and night . . .”

  “Getting in and out of Rivington’s without being seen will be nigh on impossible,” Titus said. “His shop’s front door faces Queen Street, and the back entry faces Wall—two of the most patrolled streets in the city. Ain’t that right, Jack?”

  Jack slipped the handkerchief inside his shirt. “What?”

  “Impossible to get at Rivington’s press, I was saying . . .”

  Jack drew focus. “Nothing’s impossible.”

  The Quaker piped up. “The press at Merrick’s seems to be the better choice, even if it requires repairs. But I’m concerned—thievery of such a large item risks calling attention to our little project, gentlemen. Could we not gather funds and make an offer to purchase the widow’s press?”

  “We don’t have any funds, dafty.” Patsy giggled. “Why d’you think we’re about printing banknotes?”

  Mulligan laughed and gave the Quaker’s shiny head a good-natured knuckle scrub.

  Tully leaned forward, resting elbows on knees. Lacing his fingers, he began to twiddle his thumbs. “Breakin’ into the Cr
own and Quill would be a simple operation—cut the glass out of the back window and drop a skinny boy through to open the back door for the rest of us. Very clean and quietlike.”

  “You’ll have to contend with getting the press parts over the garden wall . . .” Titus reminded.

  “No worries,” Tully said. “The alleyway is good and dark—patrolled by naught but rats and pigs.”

  “Still risky,” Patsy said. “I don’t like it—breaking in with three armed British officers up the stairs . . .”

  “Sometimes we have to cut a coat according to the cloth at hand.” Mulligan banged a fist down on the desktop. “Merrick ’s it is. Put your crew together, Tully. Keep in mind, the officers are housed on the second floor—the widow and her maid reside in the garret rooms, but they often stay late in the kitchenhouse to see to the next day’s baking. It’s probably best to lift the press on a night like this one, when the Tory bitch and her dragoons are out at play.”

  Jack pulled up to his feet, dark eyes hooded. “How is it, Hercules, you are so privy to the widow’s particulars?”

  “Don’t be about getting your nutmegs in a grind, Jack.” Mulligan took a step back, palms out. “I make it my business to be privy to many particulars. One of the young lieutenants quartered there is a customer of mine, and prone to yammering. He tells me the widow and Mrs. Loring have become fast friends.” Mulligan snatched the bottle from the desk, and took a sip. “The widow has become quite the Tory gadfly these days. I’ve no doubt we’ll have our press by the end of the week.”

  Once the meeting was adjourned, Jack and Titus walked Patsy back to Mother Babcock ’s. Titus went in to pay a visit to Ruby, and Patsy tried to get Jack to cross the threshold as well. “C’mon,” she cajoled. “There’s a bottle of rum and a soft shoulder to cry on up there—no charge.”

  “I’m wrung out, Pats.” Jack shook his head. “Mrs. Day’s fixed a nice pallet for me in her kitchenhouse, and I’m just going to go and sink into my pillow.”