The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles Page 33

  She said it all quietly. But she impressed Philip with her seriousness. He thought briefly of Alicia, contrasting Anne Ware’s calm-spoken idealism with the frank lack of it displayed by the Earl of Parkhurst’s daughter—

  A tea tray rattled. Philip looked up to see Lawyer Ware entering, followed by his cook, whom Philip had met at the door on his first visit to Launder Street. The cook was a young, buxom girl with bright red hair and a cheery face. Ware introduced her as Daisy.

  The cook put the tray down and began to pour tea into delicate china cups edged with pale blue. When Daisy had finished and retired, Ware hoisted his cup in a small gesture suggesting a toast.

  “Will you drink with us to the resistance of tyranny, young man? I should perhaps note that we are drinking smuggled Dutch tea. We’ll have none of the damned stuff from England, so long as it still carries that intolerable threepence tax.”

  Nothing, it seemed, could escape the taint of politics, Philip thought as he raised the steaming cup to his lips, not even a rather awkward Sunday visit in a dark-paneled, comfortable old room from whose chimney piece an oil portrait of a bearded man in severe black stared down.

  “I’ll drink to your hospitality too, sir,” Philip said, and did.

  He stayed only half an hour longer. During that time, Lawyer Ware held forth on the various abuses and, as he called them, crimes of the North ministry. At the end of a pause in the diatribe, Philip stood up quickly and announced that he had to leave.

  Ware rose in turn. “Your company’s been most welcome.” He started to the door with Philip. But Anne, rising smoothly from her chair, touched Ware’s arm. “Finish your tea, Papa. I’ll see our visitor out.”

  Sun through the front fanlight lit her eyes and her chestnut hair as she walked with him to the entrance. He felt embarrassed by the entire experience. He didn’t have the proper graces or training to hold his own in this kind of social encounter. He had an urge to flee as swiftly as possible, back to more suitable surroundings—the cellar room at Edes’.

  Anne said, “I thank you for coming to call, Philip.”

  “I enjoyed it.” His words were forced.

  They stood close together for a moment, bodies nearly touching. Where was the shrew Ware had spoken of? he wondered. He saw only the whiteness of Anne’s smile—the loveliness of her brown eyes.

  She said, “You’re welcome to come again.”

  To his own astonishment, he found himself replying, “Thank you. I will.”

  And as he set off through the slushy streets under the pale January sun, he felt exhilarated all at once. Ashamed of his earlier desire to run.

  But one crucial question remained. What in heaven attracted him to the girl? Beyond the obvious physical excitement produced by too long a period of celibacy?

  Anne Ware was aligned on the side of the patriots, of that there was no doubt. She had subtly but unmistakably challenged him as to where he stood. He didn’t honestly know.

  Well, perhaps that explained it—

  Anne Ware was a kind of mirror. One in which he might, with luck, at last discern a clear image of himself.

  On top of that, she was poised, intelligent, strong-minded. He was curious as to how she’d come by her independence of thought and action. She wasn’t extreme about it—but if personal experience, her father and Edes could be believed, she was still clearly different from the typical young woman of Boston. The curiosity he felt added yet one more dimension of intrigue—

  As did the fact that she was damned attractive.

  Whistling, he quickened his step. I’ll bed her before it’s done, damned if I won’t, he thought.

  ii

  Philip did not know the precise and complete implications of the word courting, a common term in the Americas. But in the months that followed, he gradually assumed that he was involved in the process.

  He became a frequent visitor at the house in Launder Street. And the attorney’s daughter, in turn, was almost always the bearer of Ware’s essays delivered to the Gazette.

  They walked abroad in Boston a good deal as the winter waned and the mild heat of spring lay over the city. In Sabbath twilight, they would often turn into Hanover Square, where the paper lanterns of the patriots glowed on the huge Liberty oak. The lanterns were constantly torn down by the royal troops or Crown sympathizers. But new ones always appeared to illuminate thinly veiled threats against the Tories from Joyce Jun’r., or broadsides carrying news of the patriot cause.

  How the Virginia House of Burgesses had established an eleven-man Correspondence Committee on the Adams model, for instance. That was important, Anne explained, because the more conservative planters of tidewater Virginia did not carry the taint of extreme radicalism that the New Englanders did. When men of property and status—she named Henry and Jefferson and Washington and Richard Henry Lee, all unfamiliar—heeded Adams’ warnings and set up machinery to maintain communication with Massachusetts, the cause of liberty had been significantly advanced.

  Once, as they were strolling at the Common on a late Sunday afternoon, a half-dozen British officers galloped by; racing their splendid horses across the open grass. One man thundered past, then reined in long enough to look back and verify the identity of Anne and her companion.

  Holding his snorting horse in check, Captain Stark did not speak to them. But his glance at Philip said all that was necessary. The flesh around his chin scar looked livid white as he dug in his spurs and galloped off after his hallooing companions. A small, ragged boy who had been sitting against a nearby elm scooped up a stone and flung it after the rider:

  “Dirty shitting lobsterback!”

  Philip hadn’t thought of the grenadier captain since the meeting at the London Book-Store. But today’s chance encounter told him Stark had not forgotten their exchange. Nor forgiven Philip’s insolence.

  As the captain rode out of sight, Anne slipped her arm through Philip’s—and smiled. He was immensely pleased. It was the first time, in all the weeks of their strolls and conversations, that she had touched him.

  Given extra confidence by that touch, he attempted to kiss her when they returned to the dusky shadows of the stoop at Launder Street. She averted her mouth, so his lips only brushed her cheek. Then she slipped inside with a murmured word of farewell.

  The kiss had been a letdown. Eminently unsatisfying. Damn woman! he thought as he trudged back to Dassett Alley. Always in perfect control of the situation.

  Perhaps, he decided wryly, that was why he kept returning to see her.

  And would no doubt continue to do so.

  iii

  “Mr. Kent where is Ben Edes? This must be printed immediately!”

  The querulous voice brought Philip out from behind the press, to see Sam Adams at the door, shaking with something more than his perpetual palsy.

  The man’s breath smelled rancid. His threadbare waistcoat bore numerous wine and food stains. He looked, in short, as disreputable as ever. And yet he was a figure of commanding presence as he thrust a sheet into Philip’s hand. The ink was still damp.

  Outrageous Affront to Englishmen’s Liberties! proclaimed the heading of the short composition. Philip said, “Mr. Edes is up in the Long Room talking with Mr. Hancock, sir—”

  Adams snatched the paper back. “Then they must both see it personally. The damned rumors were true after all. North’s inviting disaster—and giving us precisely what I’ve hoped for!”

  “How, Mr. Adams?” Philip asked as the other scuttled for the stairs.

  The older man wheeled back, his slate-blue eyes almost maniacal with glee.

  “With tea, young man. With their Goddamn tea! A packet brought the news just this morning. A bill passed in London not thirty days ago—twenty-seven April to be exact—granting the rotten East India Company a virtual monopoly in the colonial tea trade. To shore up the company’s foundering finances, the export duties which East India previously paid in England have been canceled. And henceforth, no tea may be sold here s
ave by the exclusively appointed agents of the firm. Even paying the threepence tax on this side, the company will be able to undercut the prices of both smuggler’s tea and that sold by law-abiding Tory merchants. Now we’ll see the damned conservative businessmen admit I’ve been right in saying danger to one citizen—or one colony—is danger to all.”

  “But why would they pass such a measure?” Philip asked. “It’s bound to be unpopular.”

  “They want to test us again! And they have no guilt whatsoever about using the law to rescue the privileged scoundrels who’ve manipulated the East India Company into near-bankruptcy. Damme, it’s an issue with real teeth—and they’ll feel the bite, by God!”

  In a transport of delight, Adams clattered up the stairs.

  Philip recalled hearing Burke and Franklin discuss a proposed scheme to shore up the trading concern. Now the scheme had become a reality. Whether it would indeed provide Adams and his associates with the clear-cut issue they desired remained to be seen.

  With a May breeze blowing through the open front door of Edes and Gill, Philip had trouble getting excited about the turn of events. The warm air, redolent of the salt sea and the green ripening of spring, filled his mind with erotic images of Anne Ware. The images persisted as he went back to the press and listlessly resumed printing a commercial handbill.

  But in ten minutes, Ben Edes, Adams and the elegant Hancock came clattering downstairs. Philip was put to work setting type for a broadside that was nailed to the Liberty Tree by sundown.

  iv

  The heat of early summer brought further intensification of the crisis of colonies against Crown.

  In England, Dr. Franklin had somehow come into possession of a packet of letters penned by Governor Hutchinson and the Massachusetts Provincial Secretary, Andrew Oliver, to a member of the North ministry. The letters contained a frank, even brutal appraisal of the character and activities of the Boston radicals.

  Franklin sent copies of the letters back to Adams, who was apparently supposed to honor Franklin’s original promise to the supplier of the letters that they would be kept confidential.

  But that was Franklin’s promise, not Adams’. The latter read every one to a secret session of the legislature, then promptly set the Edes and Gill press to work printing the full texts.

  The letters revealed and damned Governor Hutchinson as deceitful. They exposed him as a man who was publicly trying to maintain an image of sympathy with the colonists, while at the same time privately advising London to deal with the rebel ringleaders in the only appropriate fashion—harshly. One letter contained the bald assertion that “there must be some abridgement of what is called English liberty.”

  Laboring night after night at the press, with Ware, Warren, Revere and other members of the Long Room group coming and going constantly with new pamphlets, broadsides, articles for the Gazette, Philip soon realized that Adams had indeed found sparks he could fan into a blaze.

  The Hutchinson letters were kindling. But the real fuel was the tea monopoly.

  Governor Hutchinson talked of appointing one of his nephews as the agent and consignee for Boston. Immediately, as Adams had predicted, Tory merchants found themselves economically motivated to add their outcries to those of the liberals. One merchant actually wrote an article for the Gazette which said, in part, “America will be prostrate before a monster that may be able to destroy every branch of our commerce, drain us of all our property and wantonly leave us to perish by the thousands!” Philip marveled. The temporarily converted Tory sounded almost as rebellious as old Samuel himself.

  Anne Ware was exhilarated by what she called this major blunder on the part of King George’s ministers.

  She predicted to Philip that Adams would orchestrate the issue to a crescendo of protest—and even to open hostilities. The mobs might be roaming Boston again very soon—

  But it annoyed Philip considerably that the tea matter was virtually all Anne wanted to talk about when they took their Sabbath walks.

  In an attempt to divert her from the constant preoccupation with politics, Philip counted his wages, decided he could afford to spend four shillings and invited Anne to go with him on a Saturday night in late June to view Mrs. Hiller’s popular waxworks on Clark’s Wharf. Early evening found them outside the stile at the door of the clapboard building, Philip handing the admission of two shillings per person to a ragged boy fidgeting on a stool.

  The noise of the wharf faded as they turned the stile and pushed through curtains into the lamplit hall. Elegant duplications of England’s kings and queens were ranged on pedestals, the sequins and gold threads and shimmering velvets of their costumes picking up the glow of smoky lamps hung from the ceiling beams. Anne and Philip walked slowly past the first of the curiously lifelike figures whose wax eyes stared unseeing into the lamplight and shadow. There was strong-jawed Arthur of legend, with Excalibur. A handsome Richard Lionheart in crusader’s mail. A villainous, hump-backed John. And many more.

  But Mrs. Hiller’s had only a few customers tonight. Perhaps it was the weather. A muggy mist had settled on the harbor, and the atmosphere was twice as stifling inside. It seemed to affect Anne’s mood. She was almost as remote as the frozen image of Queen Elizabeth in her starched white neck ruff. Anne stood staring at the queen, not really seeing her—

  “This isn’t appealing, is it?” Philip asked finally. He was sweaty and thoroughly uncomfortable in his good suit. “We needn’t stay—”

  “Oh, yes, let’s see the whole exhibit,” Anne responded, though without much enthusiasm, he felt. She pointed. “There’s our current monarch. I’m surprised Mrs. Hiller hasn’t thrown him off the end of the pier.”

  Two patrons moved past them in the half-light, casting grotesque shadows on the not too clean floor. Under another lantern, they paused before the pudgy-faced, pink-lipped statue of a young George III. He looked boyish, benign, utterly harmless in a splendid suit of pale blue satin and a neatly powdered wig. The King’s cheeks glistened. The wax melting in the heat, perhaps. On the pedestal someone had scrawled an obscene epithet.

  Philip shook his head after a long moment of silence. “No, I think we’d better go. Your mind’s elsewhere.”

  She turned, apologetic. “Truly, it is. I’m sorry.”

  He couldn’t resist a little sarcasm: “Shall we stroll up the wharf and discuss tea again?”

  “It’s poor Mr. Revere I’m concerned about. He dropped in this afternoon with the porringer he repaired for Papa. He looked exhausted. I don’t think he spoke ten words.”

  That, at least, Philip understood. Revere had been to Edes and Gill hardly at all during the preceding month. Early in May, his wife, Sara, had died. Ben Edes said her death had left him devastated.

  “Sara Revere shouldn’t have borne that last child in December,” Anne said. “Isanna came into the world sickly, and my father predicts she won’t live long either.” She looked at Philip in a peculiar, searching way. “Mrs. Revere was only thirty-six. A year older than my own mother when she died. They say a married woman loses a tooth for every baby. Sara lost many more than that—and life too. That’s too high a price to pay for being what the world expects of a woman.”

  “A wife and mother, you mean?”

  Anne nodded. “I want a family of my own. But not at the expense of destroying myself.”

  “I did get the feeling you took exception to the way a young woman of Boston is supposed to behave.” He meant it as a mild joke. The strained expression that came onto her face showed him he’d made an error.

  “There’s more to living than babies and kitchens and seeing to the furniture!” Anne exclaimed softly. “That’s all my mother had. It killed her.”

  “When—” He hesitated, almost reluctant to ask. “—when was that?”

  “In sixty-four.”

  “I never thought to ask you before, Anne—did you ever have any brothers, or sisters?”

  “One younger brother, Abraham, Junior. He lived only
three months.”

  “What caused your mother’s death?”

  Again her eyes seemed to reach through him toward some haunted past.

  “The smallpox. There was a terrible epidemic. Almost five thousand people died here in town. Nearly fifty of them from the preventive measure that was supposed to save them. My mother was one of those.”

  “What kind of preventive measure?”

  Running her hand absently along the shabby velvet rope that separated them from the waxworks, she answered, “Back in the year 1721, another epidemic struck. A Dr. Boylston and the Reverend Cotton Mather argued that the only way to save lives was to give prospective victims a light case of the pox by a new method called inoculation. The selectmen of Boston considered that heresy then. But by sixty-four, they were willing to try the idea. My mother took the venom drawn from a pox victim. Took it in the prescribed way—on the point of a needle, directly into a wound cut in her arm. But she developed no light case. She died of it.” After a moment, she finished, “Papa never blamed the physicians. The idea was sound. Many more were saved than perished. I think my mother was ready to die. I think she had died long before, really—”

  Her voice trailed off as she stroked the rope, staring at Farmer George’s bulging wax eyes. Philip felt he might be close to some understanding of this girl’s unusual spirit and independence, closer than he’d ever been before. He asked:

  “Will you explain that, Anne?”

  She looked at him. “Explain what killed her? The same thing that killed Sara Revere. Having the world limit what a woman is allowed to do. Rear babies. Supervise servants. Think no independent thoughts of any consequence—I vowed it would never be the same with me.”