The Tory Widow

by Christine Blevins

  No. It was never in her nature to own that kind of reckless courage.

  Anne flinched when Peter Merrick grasped her by the shoulder.

  “Come along, Mrs. Merrick . . . your father assures me you’ve a deft hand at setting type. We’ve work to do today—a special edition at the least.”

  Anne took her husband’s proffered arm and he led her beyond the joyous din to begin her new life.

  PART ONE

  Revolution

  By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

  Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

  Here once the embattled farmers stood,

  And fired the shot heard round the world.

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  CHAPTER ONE

  Oye that love mankind!

  Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny,

  but the tyrant, stand forth!

  THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense

  May 1775

  New York City

  A strong breeze blowing in off the bay caught in the black wool of her skirts, propelling Anne Merrick across Broad Way at a smart pace. Dodging carriages and carts, she clutched the jute string wrapped around the package with her right hand, kept the plain cotton bonnet from flying off her head with her left, and zigzagged a path across the cobbled thoroughfare.

  Anne was not in the habit of making deliveries, but her pressman, Titus, was busy finishing a print run, and Sally, her servant girl, was late in returning from the ink seller. The rector at St. Paul’s paid a premium to have copies of his latest sermon delivered by Evensong, and times being what they were, Anne could not afford to lose yet another customer.

  Merrick Press & Stationers was located at the tip of the island off the corner of the narrow alley connecting Duke and Dock streets, and Anne did not often find reason to stray to the west side of town. With French heels tapping a brisk rhythm on the redbrick walk, she coursed a straight path past a row of stately mansions, noting many were shuttered and deserted by their owners. When news of Lexington and Concord galloped into town, more than a few Loyalist New Yorkers fearing Patriot malcontents closed their homes and boarded the first available packet bound for England.

  Patriots and Loyalists . . .

  How quickly the tides had shifted. Rebels and Englishmen was how Mr. Merrick would refer to them if he were yet alive. Her husband’s Loyalist sentiments had earned him the custom of a likewise devoted clientele and he prospered by his beliefs. A staunch supporter of the Crown until his dying day, Merrick was.

  Anne had once been avid to follow the politics of the day, collecting pamphlets and broadsides, always combing the papers for the latest news from London, Boston and Philadelphia. She weathered several of Merrick ’s stern rebukes in regard to her pro-Whig sympathies, and quickly learned to keep her reading material and her opinions to herself. After Jemmy was born, Anne found little opportunity to indulge in clandestine intellectual pursuits, and her interest in current events waned.

  In truth, the simultaneous loss of both her husband and her little boy to smallpox three years before sapped Anne of ardent feeling for anything—politics in particular. On most days, it was all she could do to swing legs from bed and tend to her printing business, much less give a fig for the ever-fickle ideologies of men. Anne lifted her skirts and picked a path through a rank pile of dung occupying the center of the walk. Loyalists and Patriots . . .

  The city teemed with newly professed Patriots who’d not a month before boasted lifelong fealty to their Sovereign. It was beyond her ken as to who were the worse—those with ideologies malleable enough to bend with whatever wind enriched their purses, or the fanatics, who by threat and violence forced their unyielding notions down the gullets of all.

  Taxation, tyranny, the rights of free men—Anne spent no time trying to make sense of the concepts and ideals filling newspapers and pamphlets, posted on walls, and spoken on street corners at every turn. She was only concerned with the rights of one woman. Keeping Merrick’s Press prosperous enough to remain free of her father’s tyranny and predilection to marry her off again—that was what kept Anne fully occupied.

  Marriage.

  The word alone was enough to set her teeth on edge. As a propertied young widow, she drew many a zealous suitor to her shop these days, but she had no problem rejecting every offer. She’d had more than enough marriage for one lifetime.

  Anne skirted around the tea-water peddler’s cart and donkey blocking the walkway, the sight making her wistful for the convenience of fresh, clean water delivered to her door. Merrick’s death coupled with new taxes and political strife had severely affected trade, forcing her to dispense with many such luxuries. Still, she could not bear for her coffee to be tainted by the brackish water drawn from the nearby public well, so every dawn she and Sally joined the stream of women toting buckets, making their way to the city’s only truly potable source, the Tea-Water Pump in Chatham Square.

  A trio of denizens came up from the dingy streets west of Trinity Church and fell in behind Anne on her northward trek up Broad Way. She glanced over her shoulder.

  Prostitutes.

  It was a bit early in the day for these women to have emerged. As a port and garrison town, New York City proved a haven for such women of ill repute. Doxies and whores of every ilk had, until recently, plied their trade with ease. But when the British military vacated the city to take up arms in Boston, these garish women in their ridiculous wigs and brassy petticoats suffered a harsh economic adjustment.

  How ironic, Anne thought. Losing all their Loyal customers, just like me.

  To Anne’s relief, and contrary to a typical streetwalker’s languid stroll, the women set a brisk pace and the threesome was quick to pass her by.

  Half a dozen dockworkers in red knit caps with lading hooks dangling from the waistbands of their baggy sailcloth trousers swaggered out from the Boar’s Head tavern across the street. One of them shouted, “How much?”

  Without a hesitation, a prostitute squawked, “Only four shillings, darling!”

  “Hoy! Ladies!” the shortest and slightest longshoreman called, wagging his hips. “How about you pay me four shillings and I’ll treat yiz to the biggest and best cock in Christendom.”

  The women stopped dead in their tracks, causing Anne to halt abruptly as well.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, sweetie,” shouted the youngest and prettiest whore with a jut of her hip. “We’re the ones what get paid to tell the lies about the size of your cock.”

  The whores flounced off in a giggle and the dockworkers fell about laughing at their mate’s expense.

  Anne put a kick in her step and outpaced the bawds, but as if she were the lead bird of a migratory flock, the prostitutes cruised along in her wake, matching her step for step. Past Crown Street, the sidewalk grew even more congested. Apprentices, mechanics, housewives, shopkeeps, schoolboys—the entire population of the town, it seemed—streamed onto Broad Way from all directions, and Anne found herself caught up in a rush toward the Commons. She clutched her package to her breast, swept along in the human wave like so much flotsam and jetsam. Every opportunity to escape from the throng eluded her. She asked one of the whores who were now crowded beside her, “What is going on?”

  The woman smiled, her fuzzy yellow teeth a high contrast to her pitted face painted with a thick layer of white face powder. Fleshy cheeks were heavily rouged, and in a fruitless attempt to hide a scabby sore, she’d applied a crescent-shaped black silk patch at the corner of her crimson mouth. “A rally on the green. Them Liberty Boys put out the word.”

  “Liberty Boys!” the eldest prostitute sneered from behind. “Liberty Brutes is what I calls ’em. I wouldn’t give ’em the time o’ day, exceptin’ I’m likely to garner some custom in a crowd this size.” This clearly mercenary pronouncement earned the woman many baleful glares.

  Anne, for one, agreed with the old whore. The Liberty Boys lost all check and reason the very day the British Garrison shipped out to que
ll the rebellion in Boston. They immediately formed a militia and commandeered the munitions in the armory. They marched about town provoking incidents, harassing Loyal citizens and vandalizing Loyal businesses. In the name of Liberty, these men manufactured much mischief and mayhem when times were troubling enough.

  Sighting St. Paul’s steeple over her shoulder, Anne realized she had overshot her destination, and she strained to get a bearing on her position. Above the many heads and shoulders before her, she could see the upper half of the Liberty Pole—a red ensign fluttering beneath the gilt weathervane affixed at the very tip of it spelling out the word LIBERTY.

  The first pole erected to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act had been a simple affair, an old ship’s mast haphazardly planted in the ground with a board affixed at the top inscribed George III, Pitt and Liberty. The display was an affront to the British soldiers quartered in barracks facing the Commons, and they hacked the pole to pieces. The original pole was soon replaced, and soon destroyed. The back and forth continued for years, escalating to violent mob action on more than one occasion.

  On the day the Liberty Boys with much pomp and circumstance installed this fifth and enduring pole, her Jemmy had been no more than three years old. Together they watched the sixty-foot mast being drawn by six draft horses bedecked in ribbons and bells, as it was paraded up from the shipyards with drums drumming and tin whistles whistling—how Jemmy had laughed and clapped! She had held tight to his little hand that day.

  Anne slipped her hand inside her pocket, and fingered the little brooch she kept pinned there. It had been three years since Jemmy’s passing, and the simplest recollection could still bring on a sting of tears.

  Overcome by the press and stench of the crowd, Anne pulled a hanky splashed with lavender water from her sleeve. Holding it to her nose, she rose up on tiptoes to catch a bit of the same fair wind that turned the weathervane taunting her with the word liberty.

  “I can’t see nothin’ either.” The youngest prostitute complained and grabbed Anne by the hand. “C’mon . . .”

  The girl ducked down; tugging Anne along, she wriggled, wormed, bumped and nudged toward the front of the throng. “Move away! Step aside! Comin’ through . . .”

  Anne tucked her head and joined the effort. Paying no heed to grunts and complaints, they bullied forward and broke onto the green to the right of the Liberty Pole.

  “Better, aye?” The prostitute gave Anne’s hand a little squeeze before letting go. “We’ll be able to see everything from here.”

  This girl was much younger than her well-worn companions—Anne judged her to be no more than eighteen years. Despite her youth, or perhaps because of it, she seemed to be a bit more astute and subtle in regard to the presentation of her wares. Eschewing the heavy makeup and high-styled wigs her sorority sported, this girl wore her thick raven hair swept up, with a fringe of loose curls framing her pretty face. A tiny black heart-shaped patch on her right cheek drew attention to the girl’s best features—a clear complexion and wide blue eyes.

  A gust of wind blew across the Commons and lifted Anne’s starched cap from her head to flutter away. The gilded weathervane began to spin erratic and the ironclad pole loomed against dark clouds menacing the eastern sky. A pair of young boys poked at a crude, straw-stuffed figure hanging from the pole. Pinned to the effigy’s breast, paper signs scrawled with the words Rivington and Tory rustled on the breeze.

  Mr. Merrick ’s colleague, James Rivington, published the Loyalist leaning New York Gazetteer—the most widely read weekly newspaper in town. A good percentage of Anne’s earnings was derived from the odd jobs deemed too small by Rivington that he kindly sent her way. The effigy did not bode well for Mr. Rivington’s fortunes or, for that matter, her own.

  A large packing crate lay on its side at the base of the Liberty Pole. “Ooooh!” The young prostitute pointed with excitement. Two bulbous tick sacks marked H. MYER, POULTERER sat propped beside the crate next to a steaming pair of buckets caked with amber pine pitch.

  Off to the side of the packing crate, two men were held at bay by half a dozen cudgel-wielding sailors—one man was writhing and spitting in protest, the other stood stiff, defiant and stoic—neither of them James Rivington. A tight huddle of men some ten yards back broke and solemnly came forward to form a semicircle around the packing crate. The Liberty Boys.

  Laborers, tradesmen and artisans stood side by side with merchants, bankers and lawyers, representing New York City’s faction of the Sons of Liberty. Anne scanned the diverse group, recognizing a few faces—Mr. Tuttle, her banker, and her neighbor Walter Quakenbos, the bread and biscuit baker—but her breath caught in her throat when she spied the man at the far end. Arms folded across his chest, his stance wide, there stood Jack Hampton.

  Anne hugged her package tight. Ten years had past, and the kiss under the portico at St. Paul’s remained emblazoned in her brain—the only pleasant remembrance she treasured from her wedding day. With crystal clarity she could call up the defiance in Jack Hampton’s dark eyes, the feel of his strong hands gripping her waist, his soft lips on hers . . . This vivid recollection formed the inkling, the wild imagining of a life she might have had.

  He must have come to the Commons straight from his press. Jacketless, he was dressed in leather knee breeches and his linen shirt was open at the collar. His sleeves were rolled up to elbows and his thick forearms were daubed with ink. In the years since she had last laid eyes on Jack Hampton he’d grown taller and broader through the shoulders—daily lifting wooden forms heavy with lead type tended to build strong arms and backs. Anne decided he must be prospering in his trade. His muscular calves were encased in fine clocked hose, and his leather shoes were not laced, but buckled with silver.

  He ought shave more often. The heavy stubble he wore put a dark, hard edge to an expression Anne had always recalled as being hopeful. He still wore his thick black hair parted and queued, and he still battled a stray lock that slipped the blue ribbon at the nape of his neck, but his angry eyes darted from the buckets of tar to the stormy skies, and two deep creases of consternation formed between his drawn brows.

  “Captain Sears,” Jack shouted to a thin, graying man wearing a cocked hat and a brown suit. “If we’re doing this thing, then let’s get it done.”

  This irked and annoyed Jack Hampton did not mesh well with her fond recollection. Anne always imagined him happy.

  “All right, Hampton, let’s get it done.” The captain mounted the crate and the crowd erupted in cheers and applause. Sears pushed the tricorn back on his head and began. “Brothers and Sisters of Liberty!” The crowd calmed. “With Patriot blood newly spilled on the fields at Lexington and Concord, we must all be diligent to expose and expel the Loyalist traitors lurking in our midst . . .” The captain gestured to the sailors and they prodded the stoic captive to stand in front of the crate no more than ten yards from where Anne and the prostitute stood.

  The whore nudged Anne with a sharp elbow. “Best seat in the house, eh?”

  The captain resumed. “John Hill, will you redeem yourself by damning the despot George and swearing your loyalty and your life to the cause of liberty?”

  The crowd grew hush. Hill spoke, “As God is my judge and God is my witness, I can swear to this: I will never draw my sword against my country, but neither will I raise my hand or my word against our Sovereign, King George.”

  The groans and snorts of disdain were audible. Anne knew full well this kind of prevarication would not hold sway with the mob assembled on the Commons that evening.

  “Tory rot!”

  “Traitor!”

  Wild hissing and jeering turned to laughter when a flung turnip hit John Hill square on the side of his head.

  “As a slave to the king who would make us all slaves,” Sears charged, “this man is an insidious enemy to the liberties of us all.”

  Hill did not offer any resistance as he was stripped of jacket and weskit. A sailor grabbed hold of each arm and h
e was forced to his knees.

  A knot formed in Anne’s throat. Her base instincts called on her to leave—to cut across the Commons and run full speed back to her shop—but her better sense forced her to stay put. It would not do to draw the attention of the Liberty Boys and risk being labeled a Tory herself.

  A bucket was swung up to the captain. The crowd sang out with encouragement. Pistols fired into the air and a boy pounded on an upended barrel with a pair of sticks. To this rude music the bucket tipped and hot pitch poured in a thick stream onto the poor man’s head. Luckily for Hill, the tar had cooled some. Flowing slow, like clover honey, it oozed over his face, down to his back and shoulders. The man shuddered and hunched in pain, for pitch hot enough to pour was hot enough to burn and blister. Anne supposed Hill should be grateful, for he had not been stripped of his shirt. As tar and featherings went, his proved to be a more benign sort.

  “Now to enliven your appearance . . .” Sears tore open one of the poulterer’s sacks and shook feathers over the poor man. Some feathers stuck to the tar—adding the ridiculous to Hill’s pitiful humiliation—but most of the feathers caught up on the strong breeze to form a blizzard of fluff flying in faces, up noses and into the mouths of the Liberty Boys and onlookers alike. Rather than cheer and applaud as they should, the crowd sputtered and slapped at feathers clinging to wool jackets and felt hats.

  “Move him along now.” Sears gave Hill a nudge with his booted foot. The crowd parted. With cudgels, two sailors herded the pathetic, staggering figure to parade down Broad Way.

  Anne thought to join this procession as a means to escape the crowd, but she hesitated to mix in with the rough cabal trailing along behind the tarred and befeathered victim, instead deciding to weather the mob and make a discreet exit when the crowd winnowed away on its own.