“We’re selling up,” Melanie murmured, attempting to shove Miranda safely behind her. “Going to England.”
“That so?” Jezebel looked mildly interested. “What happened? They kill your man? Or tar and feather him?”
Melanie went white.
“No,” she whispered. Her throat moved as she swallowed, and her frightened gaze went toward the door. So that was the threat. I felt suddenly cold, in spite of the sweltering heat.
“Oh? Well, if you care whether they do, maybe you best move on down to Center Street,” she suggested helpfully. “They’re fixin’ to make roast chicken out of somebody, sure as God made little green apples. You can smell hot tar all over town, and they’s a boiling of folks comin’ forth from the taverns.”
Melanie and Miranda uttered twin shrieks, and ran for the door, shoving past the unflappable Jezebel. I was moving rapidly in the same direction, and narrowly avoided a collision, as Ralston Bogues stepped through the door, just in time to catch his hysterical wife.
“Randy, you go mind your brothers,” he said calmly. “Be still, Mellie, it’s all right.”
“Tar,” she panted, clutching him. “She said—she said—”
“Not me,” he said, and I saw that his hair dripped and his face shone pale through its sweat. “They’re not after me. Not yet. It’s the printer.”
Gently, he disengaged his wife’s hands from his arm, and stepped round the counter, casting a brief glance of curiosity at Jezebel.
“Take the children, go to Ferguson’s,” he said, and pulled a fowling piece from its hiding place beneath the counter. “I’ll come so soon as I may.” He reached into a drawer for the powder horn and cartridge box.
“Ralston!” Melanie spoke in a whisper, glancing after Miranda’s retreating back, but the entreaty was no less urgent for its lack of volume. “Where are you going?”
One side of his mouth twitched, but he didn’t reply.
“Go to Ferguson’s,” he repeated, eyes fixed on the cartridge in his hand.
“No! No, don’t go! Come with us, come with me!” She seized his arm, frantic.
He shook her off, and went doggedly about the business of loading the gun.
“Go, Mellie.”
“I will not!” Urgent, she turned to me. “Mrs. Fraser, tell him! Please, tell him it’s a waste—a terrible waste! He mustn’t go.”
I opened my mouth, unsure what to say to either of them, but had no chance to decide.
“I don’t imagine Mistress Fraser will think it a waste, Mellie,” Ralston Bogues said, eyes still on his hands. He slung the strap of the cartridge box over his shoulder and cocked the gun. “Her husband is holding them off right now—by himself.”
He looked up at me then, nodded once, and was gone.
JEZEBEL WAS RIGHT: you could smell tar all over town. This was by no means unusual in the summertime, especially near the warehouse docks, but the hot thick reek now took on an atmosphere of threat, burning in my nostrils. Tar—and fear—aside, I was gasping from the effort to keep up with Ralston Bogues, who was not precisely running, but was moving as fast as it was possible to go without breaking into a lope.
Jezebel had been right about the people boiling out of taverns, too; the corner of Center Street was choked with an excited crowd. Mostly men, I saw, though there were a few women of the coarser type among them, fishwives and bond servants.
The apothecary hesitated when he saw them. A few faces turned toward him; one or two plucked at their neighbors’ sleeves, pointing—and with not very friendly expressions on their faces.
“Get away, Bogues!” one man yelled. “It’s not your business—not yet!”
Another stooped, picked up a stone, and hurled it. It clacked harmlessly on the wooden walk, a few feet short of Bogues, but it drew more attention. Bits of the crowd were beginning to turn, surging slowly in our direction.
“Papa!” said a small, breathless voice behind me. I turned to see Miranda, cap lost and pigtails unraveling down her back, her face the color of beetroot from running.
There wasn’t time to think about it. I picked her up and swung her off her feet, toward her father. Taken off guard, he dropped the gun and caught her under the arms.
A man lunged forward, reaching for the gun, but I swooped down and got it first. I backed away from him, clutching it to my chest, daring him with my eyes.
I didn’t know him, but he knew me; his eyes flicked over me, hesitating, then he glanced back over his shoulder. I could hear Jamie’s voice, and a lot of others, all trying to shout each other down. The breath was still whistling in my chest; I couldn’t make out any words. The tone of it was argument, though; confrontation, not bloodshed. The man wavered, glanced at me, away—then turned and shoved his way back into the gathering crowd.
Bogues had had the sense to keep hold of his daughter, who had her arms wrapped tightly round his neck, face buried in his shirt. He darted his eyes at me, and made a small gesture, as though to take back the gun. I shook my head and held it tighter. The stock was warm and slick in my hands.
“Take Miranda home,” I said. “I’ll—do something.”
It was loaded and primed. One shot. The best I could do with that was to create a momentary distraction—but that might help.
I pushed my way through the crowd, the gun pointed carefully down not to spill the powder, half-hidden in my skirts. The smell of tar was suddenly much stronger. A cauldron of the stuff lay overturned in front of the printer’s shop, a black sticky puddle smoking and reeking in the sun.
Glowing embers and blackened chunks of charcoal were scattered across the street, under everyone’s feet; a solid citizen whom I recognized as Mr. Townsend was kicking the bejesus out of a hastily built fire, thwarting the attempts of a couple of young men to rebuild it.
I looked for Jamie and found him precisely where Ralston Bogues had said he was—in front of the door to the printer’s shop, clutching a tar-smeared broom and with the light of battle in his eye.
“That your man?” Jezebel Morton had caught up, and was peering interestedly over my shoulder. “Big ’un, ain’t he?”
Tar was spattered all over the front of the shop—and Jamie. A large glob was stuck in his hair, and I could see the flesh of his arm reddened where a long string of hot tar had struck. Despite this, he was grinning. Two more tar-daubed brooms lay on the ground nearby, one broken—almost certainly over someone’s head. At least for the moment, he was having fun.
I didn’t at once see the printer, Fogarty Simms. Then a frightened face showed briefly at the window, but ducked out of sight as a rock flung from the crowd crashed into the window frame, cracking the glass.
“Come out, Simms, you slinkin’ coward!” bellowed a man nearby. “Or shall we smoke you out?”
“Smoke him! Smoke him!” Enthusiastic shouts came from the crowd, and a young man near me bent, scrabbling after a burning brand scattered from the fire. I stamped viciously on his hand as he grasped it.
“Jesus God!” He let go and fell to his knees, clutching his hand between his thighs, open-mouthed and gasping with pain. “Oh, oh, Jesus!”
I edged away, shouldering my way through the press. Could I get near enough to give Jamie the gun? Or would that make matters worse?
“Get away from the door, Fraser! We’ve no quarrel with you!”
I recognized that cultivated voice; it was Neil Forbes, the lawyer. He wasn’t dressed in his usual natty suiting, though; he wore rough homespun. So it wasn’t an impromptu attack—he’d come prepared for dirty work.
“Hey! You speak for yourself, Forbes! I’ve a quarrel with him!” That was a burly man in a butcher’s apron, red-faced and indignant, sporting a swollen and empurpled eye. “Look what he did to me!” He waved a meaty hand at the eye, then at the front of his clothing, where a tar-clotted broom had quite evidently caught him square in the chest. He shook a massive fist at Jamie. “You’ll pay for this, Fraser!”
“Aye, but I’ll pay ye in the
same coin, Buchan!” Jamie feinted, broom held like a lance. Buchan yelped and skittered backward, face comically alarmed, and the crowd burst into laughter.
“Come back, man! Ye want to play savage, ye’ll need a bit more paint!” Buchan had turned to flee, but was blocked by the crowd. Jamie lunged with the broom, smudging him neatly on the seat of his breeches. Buchan leaped in panic at the jab, causing more laughter and hoots of derision as he shoved and stumbled out of range.
“The rest of ye want to play savage, too, do ye?” Jamie shouted. He swiped his broom through the steaming puddle and swung it hard in a wide arc before him. Droplets of hot tar flew through the air, and men yelled and pushed to get out of the way, stepping on each other and knocking each other down.
I was shoved to one side and fetched up hard against a barrel standing in the street. I would have fallen, save for Jezebel, who caught me by the arm and hauled me up, with no apparent effort.
“Yon feller’s right rumbustious,” she said with approval, eyes fixed on Jamie. “I could admire me a man like that!”
“Yes,” I said, nursing a bruised elbow. “So could I. Sometimes.”
Such sentiments appeared not to be universal.
“Give him up, Fraser, or wear feathers with him! Frigging Tories!”
The shout came from behind me, and I turned to see that the speaker had come prepared; he clutched a feather pillow in one hand, the end of it already ripped open, so that down feathers flew in spurts with each gesture.
“Tar and feather ’em all!”
I turned again at the shout from above, and looked up in time to see a young man fling wide the shutters in the upper story of the house on the other side of the street. He was trying to stuff a feather bed through the window but was being substantially impeded in this endeavor by the housewife whose property it was. This lady had leaped on his back and was beating him about the head with a spurtle, uttering shrieks of condemnation.
A young man near me started clucking like a chicken, flapping his elbows—to the intense amusement of his friends, who all began to do it, too, drowning out any attempts at reason—not that there was much of that.
A chant started up at the far side of the street.
“Tory, Tory, Tory!”
The tenor of the situation was changing, and not for the better. I half-lifted the fowling piece, unsure what to do, but knowing that I must do something. Another moment, and they’d rush him.
“Give me the gun, Auntie,” said a soft voice at my shoulder, and I whirled round to find Young Ian there, breathing hard. I gave it to him without the slightest hesitation.
“Reste d’retour!” Jamie shouted in French. “Oui, le tout! Stay back, all of you!” He might have been shouting at the crowd, but he was looking at Ian.
What the devil did he—then I caught sight of Fergus, elbowing viciously to keep his place near the front of the crowd. Young Ian, who had been about to raise the gun, hesitated, holding it close.
“He’s right, stay back!” I said urgently. “Don’t fire, not yet.” I saw now that a hasty shot might do more harm than good. Look at Bobby Higgins and the Boston Massacre. I didn’t want any massacres taking place in Cross Creek—particularly not with Jamie at the center of them.
“I won’t—but I’m no going to let them take him, either,” Ian muttered. “If they go for him—” He broke off, but his jaw was set, and I could smell the sharp scent of his sweat, even above the reek of tar.
A momentary distraction had intervened, thank God. Yells from above made half the crowd turn to see what was happening.
Another man—evidently the householder—had popped up in the window above, jerking the first man back and punching him. Then the struggling pair disappeared from view, and within a few seconds, the sounds of altercation ceased and the woman’s shrieks died away, leaving the feather bed hanging in limp anticlimax, half in and half out of the window.
The chant of “Tory Tory Tory!” had died out during the fascination with the conflict overhead, but was now starting up again, punctuated by bellows for the printer to come out and give himself up.
“Come out, Simms!” Forbes bellowed. I saw that he had equipped himself with a fresh broom, and was edging closer to the print shop’s door. Jamie saw him, too, and I saw his mouth twist with derision.
Silas Jameson, the proprietor of a local ordinary, was behind Forbes, crouched like a wrestler, his broad face wreathed in a vicious grin.
“Come out, Simms!” he echoed. “What kind of man takes shelter beneath a Scotsman’s skirts, eh?”
Jameson’s voice was loud enough that everyone heard that, and most laughed—including Jamie.
“A wise one!” Jamie shouted back, and shook the end of his plaid at Jameson. “This tartan’s sheltered many a poor lad in its time!”
“And many a lassie, too, I’ll wager!” shouted some ribald soul in the crowd.
“What, d’ye think I’ve your wife under my plaid?” Jamie was breathing hard, shirt and hair pasted to him with sweat, but still grinning as he seized the hem of his kilt. “Ye want to come and have a look for her, then?”
“Is there room under there for me, too?” called one of the fishwives promptly.
Laughter rolled through the crowd. Fickle as any mob, their mood was changing back from threat to entertainment. I took a deep, trembling breath, feeling sweat roll down between my breasts. He was managing them, but he was walking a razor’s edge.
If he’d made up his mind to protect Simms—and he had—then no power on earth would make him give the printer up. If the mob wanted Simms—and they did—they’d have to go through Jamie. And they would, I thought, any minute.
“Come out, Simms!” yelled a voice from the Scottish Lowlands. “Ye canny be hidin’ up Fraser’s backside all day!”
“Better a printer up my arse than a lawyer!” Jamie shouted back, waving his broom at Forbes in illustration. “They’re smaller, aye?”
That made them roar; Forbes was a beefily substantial sort, while Fogarty Simms was a pinched starveling of a man. Forbes went very red in the face, and I saw sly looks being cast in his direction. Forbes was in his forties, never married, and there was talk . . .
“I wouldna have a lawyer up my backside at all,” Jamie was shouting happily, poking at Forbes with his broom. “He’d steal your shite and charge ye for a clyster!”
Forbes’s mouth opened, and his face went purple. He backed up a step, and seemed to be shouting back, but no one could hear his response, drowned as it was by the roar of laughter from the crowd.
“And then he’d sell it back to ye for night soil!” Jamie bellowed, the instant he could be heard. Neatly reversing his broom, he jabbed Forbes in the belly with the handle.
The crowd whooped in glee, and Forbes, no kind of a fighter, lost his head and charged Jamie, his own broom held like a shovel. Jamie, who had quite obviously been waiting for some such injudicious move, stepped aside like a dancer, tripped Forbes, and smacked him across the shoulders with the tar-smeared broom, sending him sprawling into the cooling tar puddle, to the raucous delight of the whole street.
“Here, Auntie, hold this!” The fowling piece was thrust suddenly back into my hands.
“What?” Completely taken aback, I whirled round to see Ian moving fast behind the crowd, beckoning to Fergus. In seconds, unnoticed by the crowd—whose attention was riveted on the fallen Forbes—they had reached the house where the feather bed hung from the window.
Ian stooped and cupped his hands; as though they had rehearsed it for years, Fergus stepped into this improvised stirrup and launched himself upward, swiping at the feather bed with his hook. It caught; he dangled for a moment, grabbing frantically with his sound hand at the hook, to keep it from coming off.
Ian sprang upward and seized Fergus round the waist, yanking downward. Then the fabric of the bed gave way under their combined weight, Fergus and Ian tumbled to the ground, and a perfect cascade of goose feathers poured out on top of them, only to
be caught at once by the thick, damp air and whirled up into a delirious snowstorm that filled the street and plastered the surprised mob with clumps of sticky down.
The air seemed filled with feathers; they were everywhere, tickling eyes and nose and throat, sticking to hair and clothes and lashes. I wiped a bit of down from a watering eye and stepped hastily back, away from the half-blind people staggering near me, yelling and bumping into one another.
I had been watching Fergus and Ian, but when the featherstorm struck, I—unlike everyone else in the street—looked back at the print shop, in time to see Jamie reach through the door, seize Fogarty Simms by the arm, and snatch him out of the shop like a winkle on a pin.
Jamie gave Simms a shove that sent him staggering, then whirled back to snatch up his broom and cover the printer’s escape. Ralston Bogues, who had been lurking in the shadow of a tree, popped out, a club in his hand, and ran after Simms to protect him, glancing back and brandishing the club to discourage pursuers.
This action had not gone totally unnoticed; though most of the men were distracted, batting and clawing at the bewildering cloud of feathers that surrounded them, a few had seen what was going on, and raised a halloo, yelping like hounds as they tried to push through the crowd in pursuit of the fleeing printer.
If ever there was a moment . . . I’d shoot above their heads and they’d duck, giving Simms time to get away. I raised the gun with decision, reaching for the trigger.
The fowling piece was snatched from my grasp so deftly that I didn’t realize for an instant that it was gone, but stood staring in disbelief at my empty hands. Then a bellow came from behind me, loud enough to stun everyone nearby into silence.
“Isaiah Morton! You gonna die, boy!”
The fowling piece went off by my ear with a deafening bwoom! and a cloud of soot that blinded me. Choking and coughing, I scrubbed at my face with my apron, recovering sight in time to see the short, pudgy figure of Isaiah Morton a block away, running as fast as his legs would carry him. Jezebel Hatfield Morton was after him in an instant, ruthlessly flattening anyone in her way. She leapt nimbly over a besmeared and befeathered Forbes, who was still on his hands and knees, looking dazed, then pushed through the remnants of the mob and hared down the street, short flannel petticoats flying, moving at a surprising rate of speed for someone of her build. Morton careened round a corner and disappeared, implacable Fury close on his tail.
I felt a trifle dazed myself. My ears were still ringing, but I looked up at a touch on my arm.
Jamie was squinting down at me, one eye closed, as though unsure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. He was saying something I couldn’t make out, but the gestures he was making toward my face—coupled with a telltale twitching of the corner of his mouth—made his probable meaning quite clear.
“Ha,” I said coldly, my own voice sounding tinny and far off. I swiped at my face again with the apron. “You should talk!”
He looked like a piebald snowman, with black splotches of tar on his shirt, and clumps of white goose down clinging to his brows, his hair, and the stubble of his beard. He said something else, but I couldn’t hear him clearly. I shook my head and twisted a finger in my ear, indicating temporary deafness.
He smiled, took me by the shoulders, and leaned his head forward until his forehead met mine with a small thunk! I could feel him trembling slightly, but wasn’t sure whether it was laughter or exhaustion. Then he straightened up, kissed my forehead, and took me by the arm.
Neil Forbes sat in the middle of the street, legs splayed and careful hair disheveled. He was black with tar from the shoulder to the knee on one side. He’d lost a shoe, and helpful parties were trying to pick the feathers off him. Jamie led me in a wide circle round him, nodding pleasantly as we passed.
Forbes looked up, glowering, and said something muffled, heavy face twisting in dislike. On the whole, I thought it was just as well I couldn’t hear him.
IAN AND FERGUS HAD gone off with the majority of the rioters, no doubt to commit mayhem elsewhere. Jamie and I retired to the Sycamore, an inn on River Street, to seek refreshment and make repairs. Jamie’s hilarity gradually subsided as I picked tar and feathers off him, but was significantly quenched by hearing an account of my visit to Dr. Fentiman.
“Ye do what with it?” Jamie had flinched slightly during my recounting of the tale of Stephen Bonnet’s testicle. When I reached a description of the penis syringes, he crossed his legs involuntarily.
“Well, you work the needlelike bit down in, of course, and then flush a solution of something like mercuric chloride through the urethra, I suppose.”
“Through the, er . . .”
“Do you want me to show you?” I inquired. “I left my basket at the Bogueses’, but I can get it, and—”
“No.” He leaned forward and planted his elbows firmly on his knees. “D’ye suppose it burns much?”
“I can’t think it’s at all pleasant.”
He shuddered briefly.
“No, I shouldna think so.”
“I don’t think it’s really effective, either,” I added thoughtfully. “Pity to go through something like that, and not be cured. Don’t you think?”
He was watching me with the apprehensive air of a man who has just realized that the suspicious-looking parcel sitting next to him is ticking.
“What—” he began, and I hurried to finish.
“So you won’t mind going round to Mrs. Sylvie’s and making the arrangements for me to treat the girls, will you?”
A Breath of Snow and Ashes Page 69