“Why do you do accosting this lady in such manner? Who do you think you are, you bloody-backed lobster? Shall I teach you your manners?”
The sentry’s grip on his musket tightened. “Take yourself off, boy. Don’t look for trouble here.”
“Look for it! You’re the thing itself! You stink of it! You stink of a stable!”
Jane stepped into the road. “If you think this soldier spoke out of turn you’re mistaken,” she said, but the harangue went on as if she hadn’t spoken. Bloody-back! Lobster-back! Bloody-backed rascal dog! Son of a bitch dog! Damn your blood! So startling were the words and the vehemence behind them that Jane stood motionless, staring at the creature until the sentry called to her. “Here, miss! Best get along.”
Jane took a step and paused again. Across the street a group of other boys had begun to gather; one of them picked up a clump of dirt and shied it at the sentry. Another. A black mud blossom appeared on the sentry’s red coat but he didn’t move. Jane attempted to back away and stumbled in the gutter, going down onto a wrist and knee. She was already up and batting at the filth on her skirt by the time the boys had crowded around her, now shouting to the passersby who had begun to close around. “He did it! The bloody soldier! He went after her!”
“For heaven’s sake,” Jane said, “I tripped, is all,” but the crowd didn’t, or wouldn’t, hear. They drew in around Jane, and the boys saw the mess of her and took up the cry, adding to it as it went along. “He went after her! He chased her! He knocked her down!”
After a time a middle-aged man, respectably but carelessly dressed with a face blackened with rage, pushed into the center and captured Jane’s arm. “What’s your name? Where do you live?”
When Jane didn’t answer he shook her arm. “Speak up, girl; I’m all that’s getting you safe home.”
Jane looked at the thickening crowd around her. She pointed ahead to Royal Exchange Lane.
Chapter Ten
SHE WAS QUITE unharmed. She said so to the gentleman whose name turned out to be Molineux—a name that rang a vague and distant bell—and she said so to Aunt Gill, but the gentleman merely continued to bark out his own litany about the abuses of the soldiers, and the aunt appeared to have positioned Jane at death’s door and could not back away from that view. By the time Molineux left, Aunt Gill was trembling so hard she rattled the cups and saucers on the table to which she clung; she would let Jane alone only after Jane promised to give up her trip to the bookshop and rest on her bed till dinnertime, which only made her feel the want of a book more.
At dinner Aunt Gill ordered her own boiled pudding served to Jane and insisted on suffering with the mutton that had been roasting temptingly all morning long. She insisted again that Jane rest in the afternoon, and in truth, by then Jane was so worn down by her aunt’s fussing that she happily went up the stairs. She even slipped into a doze, but found any loud cry from the street brought her out of it. She heard similar shouts to those of earlier in the day—or did she? Was it “bloody-backed dog” or “blackened log”? “Lobster” or “stop her”? And if “stop her,” stop her from doing what? Going where? And was that a knock at the door or had she now become Aunt Gill? Yes, a knock. And a familiar voice; two. Jane leaped up and flew down the stairs.
Her brother and her grandfather Freeman had just found their way into the front parlor. Jane hadn’t seen her grandfather in more than a year, but she had long ago learned to collect his smiles like ripe apples; this one hinted of something out of last winter’s store. Even at his best fettle he was more loose angles than fleshed limbs, but the way his coat hung on his shoulders made her think he’d either been ill or worked into a state near to it. He came directly to Jane and dropped a kiss on her brow; he may have been tired, but he didn’t miss the faded scar, angling his head for a closer look. He said, “Tell me, please, child, how do you fare?”
Nate’s first words tripped over the last of her grandfather’s. “How she fares is the same as we all fare with these bloody red coats in our face every time we turn around!”
Jane said, “How did you hear of this, Grandfather?”
“How did we hear!” Nate answered for him now. “The whole town hears! And mark me, those who haven’t, shall!”
But Jane’s grandfather was still looking at Jane. “Are you injured, child?”
“No, sir. I stumbled into the gutter. When the sentry said to get along—”
“The sentry ordered you along!” Nate again.
“He only meant to keep me safe from the crowd. And I would have been safe enough if I hadn’t tried to look backward and walk forward. Which I wouldn’t have tried to do if the crowd wasn’t throwing mud at the poor man. And all because he spoke to me.”
“He spoke to you!” Again, Nate.
“He bid me good-day; nothing more. He lives on this street.”
“So he takes that as his right to accost you?”
Jane looked at her brother in surprise; his rage now heated the room. “The sentry accosted no one, Nate. ’Twas the boys accosted him.”
Aunt Gill said, “ ’Tis not the boys who’ve invaded our town unasked and unwanted.”
Nate turned to his aunt. “At least you know who your enemies are, Aunt Gill! But you needn’t fear. We’ll settle them soon.”
Jane looked at her brother again. No matter how much of the man had usurped his form, no matter how many lawyer’s poses he’d learned, he reminded her of nothing so much as the boys in the street. The boy-men.
IT WASN’T UNTIL NIGHT, when Jane had finally settled an anxious and clinging Aunt Gill to sleep, that Jane could turn to settling her own mind, but she found it more difficult than she’d imagined; she felt as if she’d dropped right-side up into an upside-down barrel. Even her father’s rages over the papers seemed whitewashed compared to the misplaced fury she’d encountered in the street and in her brother; she didn’t yet know where to place her grandfather in the scheme. She wished she could have talked to him alone; she wished—how mad it was—she wished she could have talked to her father.
Her father being her last clear thought as her mind shut down for sleep she was unsurprised when his old words came flooding in as soon as her more conscious thoughts had gone. Otis. Adams. Molineux. Feeding the lower classes tyrannous articles in the paper and rum in the tavern. Sending them out to so abuse the soldiers it would try the patience of Job.
Molineux? The same Molineux who had picked her out of the gutter and seen her to Aunt Gill’s? In Satucket she would have said yes, it would have to be; in crowded Boston she could say only maybe.
IT BECAME SOMETHING MORE likely the next day, when Aunt Gill’s newspaper arrived along with her mail. The old woman hadn’t gotten far in her reading when she exclaimed and handed the paper to Jane. Jane read, and with great effort of will restrained any sound of her own.
Yesterday at the corner of King and Exchange a young woman being accosted by a sentry was brought to the ground and only saved from further injury to her person by the speedy intercession of some nearby concerned inhabitants of the town.
Jane read it through again, discovering a fine rage of her own. Once Aunt Gill had settled into her nap, Jane picked up the paper and went to the door, but before opening it she paused, thinking of the trouble she might cause the sentry if she sought him out in daylight. She waited through a long afternoon and longer supper until Aunt Gill was settled into her bed once again before returning to the front room, to sit by the window and watch, but it must have been another sentry scheduled for duty that afternoon; her dirty-booted friend didn’t come.
JANE WAS FORCED TO repeat her watch for another full day and evening before she spied the sentry passing by the window. She stepped outside; it was after ten o’clock at night and the sound of her latch lifting and falling brought him whirling around on his boot heel.
“Lord God, miss! What’re you doing about at this hour?”
“Looking to speak to you. I wanted you to know that what got in the papers—
”
“Had naught to do with you. This I knew when you first spoke up in the street. Now you’d best get in before one of those rabble from the tavern sees you.”
“Is this what it is to live in this town? Neighbor must fear talking to neighbor?”
The sentry was silent. Against the lesser dark of the sky she saw the dark shape of his hat come down. “The name’s Hugh White. I know yours. And ’tis glad I am to call you neighbor. Good night, Miss Clarke.”
“Good night to you.”
JANE’S NEXT ATTEMPT at Wharton & Bowes began better. She set out determined to keep her eyes off anything in a red coat, and in an effort to do that she walked the north side of King Street, which would put her far from the Main Guard and the sentries on duty there. She also set out determined to keep her mind off Phinnie Paine; he had just come from town in May—how likely that he would be back in July? Jane had no idea how often shingles and barrel staves might bring a man to town; they had seemed to bring him often enough to Satucket, but that was another thing. She thought back over his visits to Satucket—the first had been in September, when she had met him in her father’s office; but what had come next? Yes, it had been another visit that same month—she remembered being surprised to see him so soon—but she would hardly call it a visit; she’d met him walking north along the millstream on his way to speak with the miller while Jane had been walking south just returning from an errand to the same. She didn’t remember how it had happened but somehow he had turned with her, and they had walked together along the stream all the way to the marsh, talking about nothing. About how he liked the look of a fall marsh. About how she disliked what it warned of—the coming cold. He told her if she thought herself warm she could make herself warm and he bade her try it, holding her hands to judge the heat in them. Jane warmed then and she warmed now, remembering—the touching, yes, but also the matching smiles at the joke of it, the feeling of looking in a glass when she looked at him. How enormous a thing it had seemed at the time, and now it only seemed . . . silly.
Jane came out of her musings and discovered that she’d walked straight past her turn to the bookshop. She looked around. On one side of her was the courthouse and on the other side was the print shop of Edes & Gill, publishers of the Boston Gazette. The name Gill reminded her that her aunt had claimed a distant relation to one of the publishers of the Gazette, a relation that Jane’s father had understandably never mentioned; staring at the sign Jane discovered a few things she should like to say to this relation. She pushed open the door and went in.
It would be another boy-man who greeted her, of course, his face spotty, his neck too small for his shirt, his fingernails rimmed with ink and frequently in his mouth.
“I should like to speak to Mr. Gill,” she said.
“Ain’t in.”
“Mr. Edes, then.”
“Ain’t in nether.”
“Then I should like to know how to go about correcting something that was printed in the paper.”
“Depends what you’re correctin’.”
“A false account of an episode that occurred at the corner of King and Royal Exchange.”
The boy took out a piece of paper and began to write; encouraged, Jane went on. She had been neither accosted nor insulted by the sentry at the Custom House, she said; the boys—she emphasized the word boys—had engaged in an unprovoked attack. The sentry and she had exchanged a greeting, nothing more. She had tripped in the gutter, nothing more. The boy asked for Jane’s name and address and she gave it with some pride; she left the printer’s shop feeling of some use once more.
At Wharton & Bowes Jane discovered that Henry Knox had read all about the altercation in front of the Custom House, but she suspected he’d heard something else that hadn’t been in the papers—the identity of the supposed victim. He came at her in a rush and took her hand, which could only remind her, again, of Phinnie, but she took back the hand long before it might have warmed. “Miss Clarke! How glad I am to see you! But may I inquire—I must inquire—how is your health?”
“My health has never been better.”
“And your spirits?”
“The same.”
Knox peered at her hard, but whatever he saw seemed to satisfy; he moved the subject along.
“And what report do you make to me on The Nun?”
“Another end would have left me better disposed toward it.”
“You don’t find being generally lamented and honorably buried sufficient reward for a beheading?”
“I do not, sir.”
“Then you must take another book in exchange. You see I would please you, Miss Clarke.”
Did she hear something in that remark? She looked at him and met so clear a gaze she had little trouble reading the thought behind it. A surprise thrill ran through her. A strange town. A strange man. She was only Jane Clarke here, not daughter or sister or intended wife or even neighbor; there was no father to direct her, no family or friend to presume this or that out of any remark she made. But who might this “only Jane Clarke” be? She said, “I wonder what you would recommend, sir, now that you know something of my thoughts on severed heads.”
Knox folded his arms and stared, as if making a great study of her. He disappeared among the shelves. He came back with The Life & Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, a much larger volume than The Nun.
Jane turned to the first page, where a subheading informed her that the first chapter would be about Crusoe’s desire to go to sea, his father’s wise counsel against it, and his decision to leave home anyway. Jane said, “Does he live, or is he too generally lamented and honorably buried?”
“Ah, Miss Clarke, you must trust me there.”
“Despite having been given little reason thus far to do so?”
“This is where the trust enters. But it comes with little risk, as I make no extra charge for it.”
“Except of my time.”
“Yes. That I would charge you. And perhaps more of it one day.” If that weren’t quite plain enough he added, “And allow me to assure you, Miss Clarke, once you pass through that door you will be most specifically lamented.”
Chapter Eleven
WHEN JANE GOT home she found Aunt Gill in the front room asleep where she sat, the rest of the house settled into a rare and utter quiet—no clattering utensils in the kitchen, no shuffling of furniture or chopping or hammering from any of the rooms or the yard beyond. Jane worked her way down the hall to the keeping room; Martha and Prince stood with their backs to the door, but they didn’t stand close enough together; in the narrow space between them the light caught and flashed on a silver coin changing hands. Jane tiptoed back as she’d come.
As Jane turned for the stairs to put away her book, she heard something smash against the front windowpane. A bird, she suspected. She walked to the window and caught the second and third mud balls as they struck. She peered out and clearly saw the face of the boy from Edes & Gill; of the other two boys she saw only their heels as they ran away.
Aunt Gill called from behind. “Jane? Jane? What is it? What’s the noise?”
“A flock of birds,” Jane said.
THAT NIGHT AFTER THE HOUSE had quieted a second time, Jane took herself down the stairs, barefooted and silent, to her aunt’s work basket. She removed the key from the needle case, slid through the hall and into the back room. She fitted the key to the desk lock and opened the drawer. The silver glinted as she counted the coins: two, four, seven, nine, ten. She counted again, not believing, and came again to ten. All there.
WHEN THE NEXT MONDAY’S Gazette arrived along with the post, Jane made sure to capture it before her aunt could see it, but she needn’t have bothered; there was no correction inside, only more of the same about abuse by the soldiers. But in the collection of letters for her aunt, Jane discovered a lengthy note from her grandfather for Jane, the first part an apology for taking so long to pay Jane the proper attention on her arrival, his excuse
being his absence from town on “tedious matters of lesser import.” As a lawyer and representative to the legislature Jane imagined the “tedious matters” that required her grandfather’s attention were of greater rather than lesser import, and was all the more surprised when the second part of his note contained an invitation for Jane and her aunt to dine. As her grandfather made sure to note that the invitation included her brother, few things could have enticed Jane more. Jane’s only worry over the invitation was that as far as she had been able to observe, her aunt seldom if ever left her home. And if Jane’s aunt declined the invitation Jane must likewise decline—her duty lay in attending her aunt.
Jane couldn’t have been more astonished when Aunt Gill sat down and wrote out an acceptance to Grandfather Freeman’s invitation. It caused such a spark of new life in Jane that she found herself unable to contain it; she leaped up from her chair and kissed Aunt Gill’s papery cheek, an act that looked to surprise the aunt as much as it did Jane. But as Jane considered it afterward, she was glad for her impetuous act—Jane now knew that the old woman would not be getting any kind of affection from Prince or Martha, and who else was there within those tall and narrow walls to give it to her? Come to that, who else was there for Jane?
JANE’S GRANDFATHER LIVED ON Water Street, two blocks south of King. Right up until the minute his chaise arrived to collect them Jane thought Aunt Gill would suffer one or another effect that would prevent her going out, but she called Jane to help her dress at half after eleven, and they were in the chaise only a quarter hour later than they had planned. Jane again expected difficulty from her aunt’s nerves once they were under way, but the old woman appeared more at ease out in the middle of all the noise and traffic than she had been inside her own dwelling. She looked left and right with more interest than alarm and only once cried out to Jane, “Look! There! Does that man carry a musket?”
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke Page 8
