Jane said, “Henry, ’tis time for you to go home.”
He opened his eyes. He said, “ ’Tis a British sword did this to him.”
“Perhaps,” Jane said. “Or perhaps it was the boy who was killed. Or perhaps the times we live in.”
“Do you mean to say we shall all go mad with him?”
“I don’t know. But you must go home.”
Henry heaved himself to his feet, all the towering, rosy, gleaming physical health of him once again in something like command. He took up Jane’s hands and pressed the backs to his eyes. “You must know—surely you must know—but I must tell you now—”
Jane said, “Now, Henry, you must go home.”
WHEN THE KNOCKER SOUNDED early the next morning, Jane expected to find a sheepish Henry on the other side of the door and beat Prince to answer it, hoping to keep any discussion of the previous night out of range of her aunt’s ears; instead she found her pale and heavy-eyed brother. She took him into the parlor and brought him a cider, which he drank down. He said, “I have news of Otis.”
“I know it.”
“ ’Tis as if they murdered him. They beat out his mind, and the whole heart went too. And they clap one another on the back and go freely all over the town. If there were murder in me—”
“There’s already been one too many murders done.”
“The more reason.”
“It was no soldier killed that boy.”
“It was one of their kind.”
Jane let it be. After a time she said, “What news of the case?”
“Case?”
“Winslow’s horse.”
“Winslow’s horse! I’d not be likely to know.”
“But Mr. Adams—”
“Mr. Adams declined the case. Did I not say so?”
“No! But . . . why decline? Did he tell you his reason?”
Again, Nate made no answer. After a time he looked at Jane anew. “When Father was here he went on about Paine, again. About how you disobeyed him over Paine.”
“Father was here?”
Nate looked his surprise. “A fortnight past. Did he not stop and see you?”
“No.”
“Hah! Who would think I should turn up the favorite! I must say, Phinnie Paine seems a fine enough fellow, but I’m not about to argue him to you. ’Tis Knox, then? There you’ll get your argument—from Father—though I’d like to know what worse he could do to you. I’ll do what I can, but it might hinder more than help, you know. At the least I could create a diversion, provide someone worse for him to take his fit over.” He fell silent. Miss Linnet, thought Jane, thinking of the raised voices she’d left behind in Nate’s rooms. But Jane couldn’t think about Miss Linnet for long. Her father, who had sent her into this roiling, raging madness, had himself traveled all the way to town and not even troubled to see how she fared.
When Jane looked again at her brother she saw that he was looking at her with the kind of fellow feeling she’d almost forgotten he owned. He said, “I told Father what happened to you at the hand of that sentry.”
“ ’Twas nothing happened to me by that sentry’s hand! How many times must you hear me say it? I tripped and—”
“I showed him the piece in the paper. He’d seen it, of course, and had been going on in his usual rant about the paper being full of lies. I picked up that paper and showed him. I said ’twas his daughter was accosted and what did he think now?”
“He wouldn’t believe it.”
Nate looked at her.
“Well, he shouldn’t believe it.”
Nate said, “He’s been to town three times now. Has he once called on you?”
No.
HER FATHER, THREE TIMES in town and not once come to call. Her father, being told she’d been accosted by a sentry and still not come to call. As soon as dinner was over and Aunt Gill at her nap, Jane took over an errand to the butcher’s from Martha just so she could walk her mind into quiet, but the butcher’s was not far enough away for such an undertaking. She kept on, making her turns at random, until she came out of her fumes to discover herself on Hutchinson Street, before Gray’s ropewalks; Jane had never seen the making of rope before and paused. Thick cables, many hundreds of feet of them, hung in the air, with walkways constructed on each side; men lined the walkways, using long wooden sticks to twist the cables into rope.
Jane made to continue, but as she returned her eyes to the road she discovered a soldier standing in the way before her, staring at the ropeworkers; he took a step toward them, paused. Jane had heard from her grandfather of a growing problem in town—the underpaid soldiers hunting for extra jobs and taking up the work that the inhabitants felt was their own. The ropewalks were, no doubt, a popular place for such job searching, and indeed, one of the ropeworkers now called out to the soldier in the road, “Are you looking for work, man?”
The soldier brightened. “Faith, I am!”
“Then you may clean my shithouse!”
The line of men on the ropewalks collapsed into laughter. The soldier’s face suffused till it matched his coat; he took three long strides and pulled the nearest ropeworker off the walk and onto the ground. The ropeworker was strong; in no little time he had the soldier down and landed a blow to his face; a pair of soldiers passing by leaped in. Foolish, foolish men! How many ropeworkers were there at hand? Even as Jane thought it they began to pile off the walks and into the melee, pummeling the soldiers with fists, sticks, even tar pots; the noise of it drew more soldiers, and soon the street ahead was filled with grunting, swearing, grappling men.
And Jane? Foolish, foolish, woman! She stood like a stuck pig through the whole, and was still standing there when the defeated soldiers scrambled to their feet and ran, swarming past her on either side. She caught a shoulder in the cheek and a boot in the ankle and only kept her feet because one of the soldiers caught her elbow and dragged her along. Another soldier caught her up and shoved her into a third; that soldier took her and shook her till her head snapped back, his mad, blind, raging eyes inches from hers; she drew back and kicked as hard and as high as she could; he let go; she ran. She started to run for home but was too rattled to remember all the turns she had taken to get there; at last she spied a familiar corner—the corner of Water Street—her grandparents’ corner. She began to shake. She turned down.
JANE’S GRANDMOTHER PUT CAMPHOR poultices on Jane’s swelling cheek and ankle; she swabbed the scratches on her arms with balsam. She took up the brandy bottle and poured it into a steaming cup of what smelled like but couldn’t possibly have been real tea; Jane’s fingers still shook as she gripped the cup, but she took as long a swallow as the heat allowed. It tasted real. She took another.
Jane’s grandmother had been talking since Jane had burst in—hard, clipped words that Jane hadn’t managed to sort out till now. “ ’Tis what happens when you quarter two poorly paid regiments in amongst the inhabitants. The winter’s been a hard one; the soldiers need wood and a meal the same as anyone. They take any work, and I don’t mind saying they’ve been known to work harder than some. Such it is all over town.”
“I should have walked on. I should have walked on.”
“ ’Tis over now.”
Jane set down her empty cup and looked at her grandmother. “Is it?”
Jane’s grandmother sat abruptly in the chair across from Jane. “No.”
BY EVENING JANE’S EYE had begun its journey to black, her ankle had swelled, the scratches of strangers’ nails had made vivid red streaks along both arms. Aunt Gill’s horror at the sight of her was soon overcome by her horror at the tale; not that Jane had been handled so but that she’d dared to walk about that part of town alone, dared to walk about the ropewalks alone. She clutched Jane’s arms, if not digging new trails in Jane’s flesh then sufficiently aggravating the ones that were already there till they felt new, and extracted promise after promise that Jane would never do so foolish a thing again.
Henry Knox called late, on h
is first hearing of the news, after an exhausted Aunt Gill had retired. He exclaimed at the sight of her, “Good God! This isn’t to be borne!” but from there he turned into another Aunt Gill. “What are you thinking, wandering about the ropewalks? Do you have the least idea—”
Jane held out her arm, her ankle. “I do.”
“I can’t fathom it! In truth, I cannot! You’re not without your wits, Jane.”
“Nor are you. At this visit.”
Henry took her meaning at once, if not her intention to divert him, and swung into a fine apology for his liquored call, but he seemed to have no recollection of its details, a fact Jane found suspect, since in no long time he’d found his way there again. Soon a breast escaped its lacing and a petticoat rose to the thigh; Jane stopped him there, but even as she stopped him she couldn’t think why she did so. Suppose it ended in a swollen belly? Henry would do by her as he should. Henry would keep her safe. And she must marry somebody, after all.
THAT NIGHT JANE OPENED her letter book and wrote, Honored Father, This day I was caught up in a melee at Gray’s ropewalks and mauled by the soldiers—I write you this so that when you read of such an occurrence in your newspaper you may count on its being true.
Jane set down her pen and sat back, looking at the black words on the white paper—the words of a child. She scratched them through.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE NIGHT AFTER the incident at the ropewalk it began to snow; during the next day and that next night over a foot of the stuff fell. On Monday the sun came out just long enough to melt the top layer in preparation for that night’s chill; on the evening of the fifth of March King Street was glazed all over with moonlit ice and snow.
Henry Knox had prevailed upon Aunt Gill to be allowed to take Jane to another play-reading, this one to be held at his store, convincing the old woman that Jane would be at no risk as long as she remained under his substantial wing. Indeed, Jane clung hard enough to that wing, her ankle in some doubt, the frozen drippings from the eaves having thoroughly iced the edges of the road; they walked arm in arm to the store. There were no soldiers in attendance—such was the changed mood in town since the ropewalk—and the evening began dull and stayed so. Henry locked up the store and escorted Jane into the street soon after eight o’clock, arm in arm again, the brilliant moon helping them pick their way along. Soon ahead of them the sentry appeared—Hugh White again—and a pack of boys shouting the usual names. Bloody lobster! Son of a whore-bitch! Flea-bit dog!
At the word whore Jane reflexively clutched harder at Henry’s arm, but White took it as he’d taken all the rest. When another boy stepped into the street and began shouting something about a Captain Goldfinch—that he was mean, that he never paid what he owed—Jane hardly turned. That the insult to his captain would pull White off his post where the insult to his mother would not, Jane could never have foretold.
White left the box and came up to the boy in the street. “Let me see your face!”
The boy stepped up to the sentry, chin in air; White brought his musket around and smashed it into the side of the boy’s head.
Jane saw it, heard it, and didn’t believe. She looked at the staggering, crying boy and still didn’t believe. A crowd began to form around the boy, and soon enough they turned their attention to the sentry—the usual names, the usual missiles began to fly, only this time made of ice, not mud. When the first one cracked against White’s boot like a lead ball, he fixed his bayonet, lowered his musket. Henry dropped Jane’s arm and hurried toward the sentry. “Here, now do you wish to die? I promise you, fire and you shall!”
“Damn them!” White shouted. “If they molest me I’ll fire!”
Henry turned to the boys. “Get on home! Get on! Stop molesting the sentry!”
No one moved. Jane noticed there were more of them now and that they weren’t all boys, weren’t even boy-men; some of the men she recognized from the affray at the ropewalks. Too many of the men. From somewhere nearby a church bell began to ring, the call for fire; another bell took it up and another. More men began to appear out of the alleys, some carrying buckets, some clubs. They swarmed around the sentry; he looked wildly left and right; he screamed, “Call out the Main Guard!”
The Main Guard was barracked no great distance down King Street. In no time a column of grenadiers, the tallest of the king’s soldiers, marched into view, their high bearskin hats making them taller still. Jane recognized Captain Preston marching beside the column; she recognized one of the soldiers who had been knocked to the ground at the ropewalks. A boy stepped into the road in front of the column, and one of the lead soldiers shouted at him, “Stand out of our way!” The boy didn’t move. A bayonet gleamed—all the bayonets gleamed—like ice under the moon, but the column parted calmly around the boy and continued on.
In the meantime Henry had been working hard on the crowd, urging them to go home, but no one paid him any mind. When he saw Preston he crossed the road and caught hold of his sleeve. “For God’s sake, Captain, take care of your men! If they fire, you die!”
Preston shook him off. “I am sensible of it, sir!” The grenadiers marched on to the sentry box; Preston ordered White to fall in with the line and attempted to swing it around, to march it back as it had come, but the crowd had pressed in too tight; it would have taken the bayonets to make room to move.
The press of the crowd had also separated Jane from Henry. She looked for him as Preston gave up on marching and fanned out his men in a semicircle, backs to the Custom House, bayonets to the crowd. Hugh White had taken up a position nearest Jane; he saw her and called out, “Miss Clarke! For God’s sake, go home or you’ll be killed!”
Jane would have liked to go home—she would have very much liked it—but she had better chance of getting to Satucket than she did of getting through the crowd that blocked the entrance to Royal Exchange Lane. She pulled back as near as she could to the tavern wall and watched in horror as Preston’s pleas to disperse the crowd were met by curses, chunks of ice, even rocks now. Bodies in the back pushed against bodies in the front to see what went on; the press against the soldiers grew. Jane was so close she could see Hugh White trembling, but whether from rage or fear she couldn’t know.
A cry went up from the street: “Damn you, you sons of bitches, fire! You can’t kill us all!” The cry was taken up through the crowd. Fire! Why do you not fire? Fire and be damned! So close were the two sides that Jane could hear the smack of sticks and clubs against musket barrels, but by now the two sides had become less well defined. A townsman in a dark-colored cloak slipped out of the crowd and behind the soldiers’ line; he began to pace up and down behind the soldiers, calling to them, “Fire! Fire! Be the consequence what it will!” Jane looked back and found Preston standing in front of his men, his mouth fixed in a hard line. A club sailed over the crowd and out into the moonlight, catching one of the soldiers dead on; he went down on his hindquarters, the musket clattering to the ground. He struggled up in visible rage. “Damn you, fire!” he shouted to his fellow soldiers and discharged his musket. Jane looked again at Preston, still standing between his men and the mob. She thought, If they fire, he dies, but unbelievably, the soldiers held. Someone from the crowd swung a club, and it glanced off Preston; if it had found its mark his head would have been a match for Otis’s. He stepped back and the cry rang out loud from behind the soldiers: “Fire by God, I’ll stand by you!”
And there the soldiers fired. It came in no concerted volley but in random bursts—a muzzle-flare here, another there, the flash of powder bright against the red coats, the sound bouncing off the stone in the street and the brick in the walls. The bodies began to fall. There followed the kind of silence that comes with disbelief, with horrified wonder; the next sound Jane heard was the click-click-click of the soldiers’ muskets as they were loaded and cocked all around.
The crowd heard the sound too. It drew back. Preston heard it and ran along the line of men, knocking up their guns. “Stop firing!�
�� he shouted. “Do not fire!”
That fast, it ended. Preston ordered his soldiers to fall in and began to march them back down King Street; the crowd saw the soldiers moving off and stepped in to see to their dead and wounded. Jane found Henry leaning over the body of a big mulatto, but he stood up and left the body to lie, pulling Jane back under his arm. She could feel his heart thrumming, thrumming, thrumming. Or was it her own? “For the love of God,” he said. “Come. I must get you home.”
Too late. Henry was too late. And besides, lying there in the street was, at last, something Jane could do. She twisted free of Henry; someone called to him from the outskirts of the crowd; he slipped out of her field of vision, and she thought of him no more. She moved swiftly to the nearest motionless form lying in the snow; she leaned over and felt for life—none. She straightened and moved to the next, this one struggling to sit up, and Jane helped him, steadied him, until two men came forward to lead him off. The next victim had suffered a head wound that bled freely, which meant life; Jane took her teeth to the lining of her cloak and ripped out enough cloth to compress it against the gash; after a time more men came and carried that victim off as well. Next she found a weeping boy, apparently unharmed but too frightened to move, and Jane knelt and comforted him until a young woman came and took him away. Next she found her brother.
Jane dropped onto her knees in the hard-packed snow. Nate was sitting up, propped on the one side by an old woman clutching his jacket and on the other by a young boy gripping his elbow. His queue was untied, his jacket half off his shoulders, his stockings torn, as if all the rage inside him had finally blown outward, but where was the evidence of the soldiers’ rage that had blown him to the ground? Jane saw no blood or wound. “Are you all right?”
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke Page 16
