by Smith, Skye
She was stepped on a few times as men clambered into and onto the carriage. Then they were away. She had no idea where they were because the hood of her cloak kept falling against her face and made it hard to do anything but concentrate on breathing. She decided to pray, but all that she could think of was to thank the heavens it was her own hood and therefore clean and louse free.
* * * * *
Jon raced down the stairs bashing his hands against the walls to save himself from falling, and remembered to grab his coat on his way to the galley. He reached up to the top shelf and pulled down the small, heavy carved box. He flipped the lid and grabbed the small pistol and raised the hammer to ensure it was still primed. The little cloth bag with the lead rounds and the small powder flask he put into his coat pocket. He cocked the pistol, and then backed out of the galley. Winnie was right behind him and while saving himself from falling over her, he almost pulled the trigger.
"I heard some of what they said in the meeting room," she explained, "through the keyhole. Mr. Hancock and the very big man were talking about black faces. Then they talked about emptying the tea. Then Mr. Hancock left and the big man was talking about small barrels and a shipyard."
Jon was barely listening. "Go and watch the Damas game," he said to her softly. "Put the old men between you and the rest of the shop." He waited a moment while she got out of his way. Then he crept to the meeting room door, and gently pushed it. It started to swing open. He ducked down low as he slammed his body against the door and then scurried sideways through the doorway with the tiny pistol aimed into the room.
He looked around the room from his low stance. The chairs were empty. The dark corners were empty. The back door was unbolted. He heard the sound of horses and hoofs. He ran to the back door and through it. The carriage had almost reached the end of the street. He waited and watched to see which way it turned. Left.
After closing and bolting the back door, Jon ran through the coffee shop yelling to the old men to go home and to Winnie to close the shop and go upstairs. Then he stopped and bent down close to Winnie's face. "You said they were talking about emptying the tea. You mean they were going to destroy the tea?"
"Yes," replied Winnie, "but I couldn't hear very well. It sounded something like, umm, go on the ship with black faces and empty the tea. But after Mr. Hancock left there was more. Something about small barrels and dories and a shipyard."
He gave her a hug, and then reached over and swept his hand over the Damas pieces, sending them flying, and again told the players to go home. They complained to his back as he ran for the door. Two men were just opening the front door and he told them that the shop was closed, and then ran around the building and after the carriage.
"It will be out of sight by the time I reach the corner," he thought. "Where will it be going? The worst case would be if it left Boston. Brown was from Providence." He resolved that if he could not find the carriage quickly and trail it, he would make for the southern causeway bridge immediately. It must not leave Boston with Britta aboard.
The corner was only a few strides ahead now. He fumbled with the hammer of the pistol as he ran, to uncock it without a spark. He didn't want it going off by accident. Around the corner he came to a stop and stared ahead. There were a lot of men in the street. The carriage had slowed because of them. It was barely a block ahead of him. He started to run again. He must catch it.
He never did catch it. The men in the streets opened a way for the heavy carriage horses to pass through, but they never moved an inch to let a lad run through. He was lucky to even keep it in sight. Groups of walking men became crowds of hundreds of men blocking the intersections. The men were oozing towards the Old South Meeting House, but the carriage turned away from it, towards Fort Hill. When he was finally through the thick of the crowds and had turned the corner he could no longer see the carriage.
The crowd was now moving against him. He kept to the edge and pushed through. When he looked up over the low sheds of the rope yard he could see the masts of the tea ships. That was where Brown was going, to the tea ships, to destroy the tea.
He took a short cut across the common behind Fort Hill and used a low rise to see out along the wharfs. He could not see the carriage. He cursed himself for being so sure of himself. The carriage could have turned into any one of a dozen courtyards and workyards. He tried to climb higher on the hill, but a sentry above yelled at him to stay off the slope.
He sat on his haunches. The sun was getting low and creating shadows in the streets. He had an idea. The tea ships were guarded. Most of the guards were Northenders, but a few were watchers working for Daniel. Perhaps they could tell him where the carriage was, or where Daniel was. Daniel would know what to do. Daniel was not afraid of John Brown, he hoped.
He walked down the slope. The more he thought about it, the better it sounded. Daniel was guarding Francis Rotch all the time now. Francis could be at his ships. He must hurry. The heatless winter sun was dropping behind the buildings.
* * * * *
The carriage stopped and started and slowed and stopped, and all around there were sounds of men, groups of men, lots of men. Britta assumed they must be close to the Old South Meeting House. Then the sounds were receding. There was a sound of iron hinges and the creak of gates and then the carriage stopped. She curled up in a ball so that the men would not step on her as they left the carriage. Eventually she was left alone in the carriage.
Men were unhitching the horses and leading them away. She expected them to come back and drag her out of the carriage. They didn't. Brown's deep voice giving orders but she could not make out he words. The voices got further away.
No one came back for her, so she started working at the rope or belt or whatever was cinching her arms to her waist. It seemed like forever before she got one arm free but then the other was free almost immediately. Instead of trying to push the cloak off her, she twisted in it, and twisted, until finally her face felt fresh air. She twisted once more and the cloak was no longer back to front. She could breath. She could see. She could push her hands out and undo the belt.
Laying on the floor as still as she could be, she listened and thought. The sun was low. Soon it would be down and this time of year it would be very dark very soon. It was about three days past full moon so there would be no moonlight for about three hours. She waited until the sunlight was gone, and then waited some more for night's darkness to reach across the sky.
* * * * *
Jon pushed his way along the guards blocking the gate to Griffin's wharf, searching for any familiar face. Finally he spotted one and went and stood beside him. The man must have been out here a long time because he was stamping his feet and kept blowing hot breath into his hands. He recognized Jon and even asked if Jon was his relief. He cursed at the answer but immediately paid attention when Jon told him that Britta had been abducted by John Brown and was in a carriage around here somewhere.
The man was no fool. He questioned Jon carefully, twice, and committed everything he was told to memory so as to report it to Daniel when next he made his rounds. One he knew the facts, he put his freezing fingers up to his mouth and whistled loudly, and then stuck his arm in the air so that everyone could see who had whistled.
A few men started drifting towards him from out of the crowd of onlookers. There were four. He gave them their orders. Spread out in twos and find a small black carriage with red doors and green wheels. When you find it, one man becomes its shadow. The other man reports back here.
Surprisingly to Jon, they went off alone, not in twos, but then he saw the reason. Each had a partner hovering in the crowd. They were definitely spies working for Daniel. They disappeared into the crowd as if they had been foxes disappearing into the bushes.
Jon tried to be patient, but his worry for his sister was gnawing at his guts. For months now, every time she'd left the shop he had worried. There were so many rough and dangerous men roaming the streets nowadays. Any of them would love to get
her alone somewhere, out of the sight of others. He moaned. The roughest and most dangerous man of them all now had her somewhere out of sight.
There were other worries, and he could only hope that the old regulars had helped Winnie to close the shop up safely. She was so young to be by herself in a prosperous shop. Thinking about Winnie made her last words to him ring in his ears. He nudged the watcher. "Where around here would I get a fishing dory?"
Another man standing nearby piped up. "Ede's shipyard, just past the next wharf. They make 'em and fix 'em." Jon looked where the man was pointing. It was close enough that he could check there and be back here quickly. He set off at a trot. It was getting very dark.
* * * * *
Britta was shocked at how quickly it had gotten dark. Hoping that the carriage was not being watched, she pulled herself up by the seat and raised her head just enough to see out. The men were in two groups on the same side of the carriage. One was down by a small pier inspecting a fishing dory and lighting its lantern, while the other group were gathered around an oil lamp rubbing something onto their faces.
She crept down the step on the other side of the carriage from the men and stayed low to the ground. There were two dories beached nearby. They were the only cover close to her. She stayed low and bent over in her puritan drab cloak and scrambled towards them over the soggy beach shingles. She checked over her shoulder. Both groups of men were still messing with lights. They would not be able to see out into the blackness.
She ducked behind the first dory. It was beached hard. She crouched behind it and caught her breath and looked around. There was a third group of men at the big gate to the street, probably the gate the carriage had used. She couldn't have seen them from the carriage, and she was lucky that they hadn't seen her when she was crossing open ground on the way to the dory.
With the gate guarded and a high fence all around, the only way out of this yard was by sea. The first beached dory was useless to her so she moved along it to the water's edge. The second dory was tied to the first but still afloat. Unfortunately, the tide was still going out. It would be a very low tide by the time the moon rose. She looked over the bow and down to the benches and could see oars.
The sea along the shore was calm, because the only wind was a cold breeze off the land. She could swim around the fence. She would have to leave her cloak. If she hiked up her Puritan smock she might be able to kick to swim.
She felt the sea water. It was like ice. Even if she was able to swim around the fence, she would then be ice cold and soaking wet on a cold night, and with no cloak. She sighed. There was no escape unless she could push the dory into deeper water. She put her shoulder to it. It didn't budge. She tried again. It inched backwards but the scrape against the shingles would have raised the dead.
She decided that she must choose the best of a lot of bad options. She pulled herself into the second dory and pushed herself up against the bow where there was some sail cloth to crawl under. It smelled of fish and mildew, and so would her cloak within minutes. She decided that the best thing she could do was to stay warm and rest and wait for a higher tide.
It would be hours before this dory floated. What were her chances that they would not miss her from the carriage. Hopefully by that time most of the men would be gone to the Dartmouth, and too few would be left to search for her, or to row after her.
* * * * *
Jon peered through a wide crack between two poles of the fence. He could see only a small part of the shipyard. The next crack was not as wide but it was a different angle. He shuffled slowly along the fence. Finally, he saw something. A fishing dory lit by a bow lantern with a group of men standing around it. He heard a heavy gate scrape somewhere ahead along the fence and he pressed himself into the shadow of the fence.
Five men trotted by in silence. They must have been slaves because their faces were black. He remembered Winnie's words. Black faces. Not slaves, then. Brown's men with blackened faces. This was it. Britta was behind this fence. Or so he hoped. He moved with renewed energy one by one down the poles of the fence. Finally he found a loose one.
He remembered tripping over a board a ways back and went to find it. Using the board he worried the loose pole until it swayed and then swayed further and finally he could squeeze through. From inside the fence he could see the carriage. The men were still at the dory. They had the lantern so bright that they would be night blind.
He watched for a second more and then he ran as softly as he could towards the carriage. There was an old oil lamp turned down to a low glow sitting on a sixty gallon barrel. He changed course just a bit to capture the lamp. The top of the barrel had soot scrapings on it. "Black faces," he said to himself. He ran with the lamp the rest of the way to the carriage, and when he had reached it, went around the back of it and lifted the leathers off the trunk shelf. Just trunks, no Britta.
He went to the far side door of the carriage and opened it quietly, just a crack at first. The dull lamplight showed it to be empty too. Quietly he closed the door, and then did a quick bird dog. No one was close. Slowly and carefully his eyes searched the shipyard. There were dozens of places where they could have stowed Britta. It was senseless to explore in the dark hoping he found her before some noise gave him away.
He sat on the carriage step and tried to think. His heart was pounding for he was frightened beyond reason. For two years he had been hiding from John Brown, and now he felt like puking sitting here on the carriage step. John Brown's carriage step, with John Brown not a hundred yards away.
Without the carriage it would be harder for Brown to get Britta out of Boston. If he could break a wheel, the carriage would be stuck here until it could be fixed. He looked around for tools. A hatchet, a metal bar, a hammer, anything. There was nothing. Just as well, for tools would make too much noise, and after crippling the carriage he still had to get away and raise the alarm. Instead of looking by the light of the lamp, he looked at the lamp and got an idea.
The carriage had oil lamps on the front. He unclipped the oil tank from one of them and then poured the lamp oil over the spokes of the right front wheel. There were some polishing rags on the floor under the driver's seat. He put them under the wheel and then poured the remaining oil on them. With his hands shielded from the heat by his sleeves he lifted the glass chimney from the lit lamp, then put the low flame under a corner of a rag.
The fire spread slowly at first, but then started licking up the spokes. No time to stop and watch it. He must get away. He ran, keeping to the shadows all the way back to the loose pole in the fence. He didn't look back until he had squeezed through. He could see the carriage. It looked quite strange as the oil fire licked up the wheel on the far side from him. Then he heard men shouting. Time to leave.
* * * * *
* * * * *
MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith
Chapter 25 - Trapped in the Dory
Voices. Men’s voices. Britta shuddered with cold and fright. How long had she slept?
"And I'm telling you it is leaking fast enough to sink under the load. These ones on the beach are newly sealed." The voices were getting closer. "Oye, bring those rollers. This bloody tide has left them both high and dry." She could hear booted feet crunching in the shingle and then the thump of a falling log. Then another thump. "Right, push."
The dory lurched backwards and she almost fell into the bilge. There was a pause while the men leapfrogged the rollers, then the dory lurched again and then she could feel it float.
"She's afloat," called a voice. "Bring the lantern, and hurry. They were supposed to start destroying the tea at five, and throwing our kegs in at six. They will be already dumping out the tea chests." She felt the dory tip as one, two, three men pulled themselves over the gunnels. She heard the oars being run out.
"Should I hang the lamp on the bow?" asked a voice, and she cringed. He would have to step on her to reach the bow. She would be found out.
"No, turn the b
loody thing off. We don't want the whole harbor to know where we are coming from. Put the bloody lamp down and grab the tiller, you stupid berk."
The two men rowing fell into an easy rhythm. They must be ship's crew. If they were Brown's crew then they were pirates pretending to be smugglers, slavers pretending to be fishermen. She breathed softly and listened from her hiding place.
"Steer us out wide of that first wharf. We don't want to be seen until we turn the lamp on and pretend to fish."
"Say, Ja..."
"No names. Just like at the Gaspee."
"Right, so what are you going to do when you are rich? Buy a ship?"
"No effing way. Give me enough money and I will never set foot on the salt again. I'll buy a farm, and a couple of comely slave girls to do the work."
"Do the work, or do you?" said a voice in a mocking tone. All the men laughed. "What about you?"
"No slaves for me. I don't want any black babies. I'll get me a bond girl. Young and blonde with no family close by. When I'm tired of her, I'll sell her bond and buy another. English trollops fresh off the boat." There was a pause. "You can make the turn now. Run along the shore. You can see the stern lantern of the Dartmouth over there. That is your course."
"Hmm, lots of fishing dories out tonight 'cause of the very low tide. That's good. They'll be hauling in flounder by now. Flounder and halibut. Saw a halibut dragged out yesterday that could have fed an entire ship. Must have been two hundred pounds."
"What about that blonde piece of tail from the coffee shop? Do ya think Big John would sell her to me?"
"Sure, once he's finished with her. You heard him. He wants her for breakfast. Give him a few weeks to bounce her. Once another wench catches his eye, he'll sell her to you, cheap."
