The knocking at the door shifted to an incessant thudding, but the sturdy brass hinges and bolts withstood the weight of determined shoulders being heaved into the oak door. Anne took a position at the front of the shop next to one of the trestle tables. A good foot taller, Titus stood behind her, the iron poker snatched from the hearth gripped in one fist. Anne waved Sally to the door. “Go, go, go . . . afore they break it down.”
Sally snapped the bolts back, one by one. “Hoy, lads!” she shouted. “Keep yer breeches on, aye?”
The door swung open, and a dozen men spilled into the shop like so many slippery cod from a fisherman’s net—young men smelling strong of rum and ale—dockworkers, mechanics and apprentices by the looks of them. Having gained entrance, the raiders blinked in momentary confusion, floundering to form slipshod ranks. Most were armed with clubs, though Anne noticed several muskets and one man with a brace of pistols tucked at his waist.
The last three men came through the open door bearing grim expression—all three familiar to Anne. Walter Quakenbos, the baker in apron and shirtsleeves, must have come straight from his shop next door. Captain Isaac Sears and Jack Hampton were dressed for cold weather in boots and caped wool coats, their cocked hats tucked beneath their arms. Hatless Quakenbos, a burly man, folded his arms across his chest. Sally shut the door and backed away to stand together with Anne and Titus.
It disturbed Anne to see Jack Hampton once again mixed with vulgar company, but then, the man who’d just stepped into her shop was not the celebratory, smiling Jack of her memory. Tar-and-feather Jack had come to call this day. Beat-a-man-senseless Jack.
Isaac Sears took the lead, and came to stand before her. “You are Widow Merrick, the proprietress?”
Anne nodded. “I am, sir. Indeed.”
“Why did you bolt your door to us?”
Her knees had gone as soft as Sally’s egg custard and she braced a hand on the tabletop beside her. “Bolted with no prejudice on my part, I assure you, sir. All comers will find my shop closed Mondays.” Anne forced a smile. “Why, my neighbor Mr. Quakenbos knows this for the truth. He can attest.”
“ ’S truth.” Quakenbos shagged his head up and down. “Always closed Mondays, even back when ol’ Peter was alive.”
The baker’s confirmation did not serve to ease her plight, for Sears was not persuaded. “Why did you hesitate to come to the door when called to it?”
“Habit, sir. I am a widow alone living in uncertain times”—Anne pointed to her boarded windows—“with ample cause to be wary.”
“But you are not alone today,” Sears noted.
“My journeyman and maidservant are here cleaning shop.” Anne pointed to Sally’s basket sitting on the table. “We were making ready for supper when you and your companions arrived.”
Sears peeled back the napkin covering the basket. He picked up a crescent-shaped pie, sniffed it and took a bite from one flaky end. Chewing this mouthful, he stepped closer to eye Titus and the poker tight in his fist. A spattering of crumbs sprayed from his mouth when he spoke. “Your nigger seems to have violence on his mind.”
“I hold no slaves,” Anne asserted. “Mr. Gilmore is a free man in my employ and a good friend to Sally and me. As such, he is concerned for our protection.” Anne turned to her journeyman. “Please put the poker by, Titus. I’m sure these men mean us no harm.”
Titus hesitated, then flipped the poker to bounce and clang onto the table. Disarmed, the big man still bore a threatening countenance and Anne was grateful to have him at her back.
“Mr. Sears,” Anne brooked a conciliatory tone. “I do sincerely apologize if my locked door and Titus’s fervor caused you and your friends alarm. You need not waste any more of your valuable time with us. As you can see, we are up to no mischief here.”
“Very nice. Very civil indeed.” The captain popped the last bite of the lobster pie into his mouth. “And yet”—he reached into the basket again—“I still wonder why you were so long in opening the door . . .”
Jack Hampton shifted from one booted foot to the other and loosened the horn buttons on his overcoat. “Isaac! What does it matter? Let’s get on with the search.”
“Search!?” Anne squeaked.
“A thorough search.” Hampton looked her square in the eye without a flicker of recognition. “Rivington’s apprentice informed us we’d find Tory swill originating from your press.”
“Well, sirs,” Anne dithered, “I—I . . . I’m absolutely shocked to hear you lend credence to such charges. Your source is obviously suspect—a terrified boy who would no doubt say anything to gain this lot’s good graces—including pointing a finger my way.” Anne dismissed the notion with a flip of her hand. “So much stuff and nonsense. My press has been idle for weeks for lack of paper and ink.” Interlocking her fingers she clasped them at her waist to keep the men from seeing her trembling. “Times are hard, sir. Our living at Merrick’s is earned from the sale of coffee, quills and scones these days.”
Jack squared his shoulders. “We have cause to search. If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.”
“I fear for the loss of my common rights.” Anne took a step and blocked the aisle leading back to the print shop. “I will not allow a search. I recognize neither your cause nor authority.”
“We do not seek your permission, madam.” Sears came to stand before her. “We cull traitors from our midst by the authority of the people.”
“The people?” Anne scoffed. “This drunken mob?”
“Liberty must be protected.”
“And who’s to safeguard my liberty?” Anne gritted her teeth, anger displacing fear. “My rights are being trod upon here. Am I to be tarred and feathered for not flinging my door open quick enough?”
“Widow Merrick,” Quakenbos interceded. “Be reasonable. We’ve no tar and feathers here . . . Allow the lads a quick look around and then we can all be on our way.”
“Bugger that!” Sears swiped the back of his forearm across his mouth. “We will search these premises at will. We’re not a mob. We’re militia, duly recognized by the Committee of One Hundred.”
Anne’s ire sparked a fury. “Militia—mob—it is a pity that most of us citizens are hard-pressed to tell the difference these days.”
Sears towered over her. “You are glib, madam.”
“And you, sir, are a brute.”
“Search the shop,” Sears shouted.
The militiamen pushed past Anne and fanned out to begin poking about. Sears sent half a dozen men up the stairs to search the living quarters. Titus followed after them, calling out, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Anne. I’ll mind they don’t steal anything.”
Smug Isaac Sears made himself comfortable at one of the tables. Quakenbos joined him. Jack Hampton set his hat down and made a beeline for the press.
Anne paid no mind to the militiamen rifling through drawers and cupboards. Her eye was locked on Jack Hampton. He strolled around her press, stopping to give the rounce several turns—moving the carriage in and out from under the brass platen. He swung open the tympan and pressed a palm to the marble imposing stone still damp from its recent cleaning. Jack wandered to the compositor’s table and poked through the disorganized pile of quoins, gutter sticks and leading—the miscellaneous parts and pieces from the form she had just dismantled. He found the pissbucket in the corner and hoisted it onto the compositor’s table. Using a gutter stick, he fished up one of the leather inkball covers, studying the urine-drenched sheepskin for quite some time before dropping it back to the bucket.
Blast his eyes. In all the hubbub, she had not thought to clear the bucket away. She called to him, “Cleaning day, sir! Long overdue.” He nodded and continued to poke through the mess on the back table.
Sally came up and whispered. “Tha’ one’s a nosy bastard, in’t he? Dinna fash, Annie, these rebels canna arrest ye fer keepin’ an untidy shop.”
“I don’t know . . .” Anne grasped Sally by the hand. “Who’s to stop the
m from doing whatever they please?”
Hampton looked out the back window and called two militiamen over. “Go search those outbuildings there,” he ordered, sending the men through the back door to search the privy and the kitchenhouse.
“Och! My kitchen . . .” Sally snatched up her cloak and bustled after them.
Jack turned his attention to the other items on the table. Picking through the type cases, he held the inferior bits of type up to daylight. He tugged Anne’s mobcap from the box of leading and spread it out on the tabletop. After contemplating it for what to Anne seemed an eternity, he took the leather aprons hung from their hooks and laid them on the table.
A loud noise erupted from the Stationery and Anne turned to see a big man—a fisherman by his wooly cap and cuffed seaboots—standing before her case of Books for Sale, sweeping shelf after shelf of leather-bound volumes to the floor like so much rubbish.
“Have you lost what little wits you possess?” Anne rushed round and gathered up an armful of books from the floor, piling them onto the countertop. “Fish-stinking lout!”
“Mouthy Tory bitch.” The fisherman swept his arm across the countertop and redistributed the books she had just set there back to the floor.
“Blount!” Jack Hampton came over, boots pounding hard on the floorboards. “There’s no call for that!”
“Bugger off, Hampton. Who’s to say I won’t find some Tory scribblins hidden here?” Blount pretended to study the gilt-stamped title of the book he was holding upside down in his filthy hands.
Anne winced at the sight of his coarse fingers reeking of fish offal fanning through the pages, muttering, “It might be easier to read if you held the book right-side up . . . you illiterate ape.”
Blount paused from his feigned perusing of the pages. He grimaced at Anne, baring filmy gray-green teeth, and slammed the book hard against the edge of the countertop, flipping the broken volume onto the floor with the others.
“Enough!” Jack clapped a hand to Blount’s shoulder and shoved him toward the door.
Blount shrugged free, rubbing his shoulder. “Leave off. You ain’t the cap’n here . . .”
In a single swift motion Jack took a step forward and freed a nasty dagger from his left boot. With eye dark and voice low, he growled, “Off with you.”
“Yiv no call t’ pull yer sticker on me, ye correy-fisted devil. I’m on my way.” Blount backed away slow. Pressing a crooked knuckle to his brow in sullen mock salute, he exited the shop.
Jack slipped the knife back into his boot. “I just can’t abide a fellow like that . . . only in it for the mayhem he can cause and the free grog he can swill.” He picked up the broken book just flung to the floor and handed it to Anne, its loose binding strings and pages dangling at a distressing angle from between the cover boards, like the broken wing of a bird.
A soft “Oh!” pushed from Anne’s lungs as she cradled the damaged book on open palms. More stunned than frightened by the wanton destruction, she opened the book and turned past its torn frontispiece to the title page—The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Shoulders slumped, she squeezed her eyes tight to contain a rush of tears.
“A beautiful edition, this.” Jack took the book from her hands and examined the damage. “Crusoe—one of my favorites. You know, Fletcher’s Bindery on Wall Street . . . they can mend it for you good as new. Tell ’em Hampton sent you.”
Anne swiped her tears away, and tilted her head back to meet Jack square in the eye. “Why are you in it with them?”
“What do you mean?”
“That man Blount—in it for the grog you said. Quakenbos there . . .” Anne flipped a thumb to the baker sitting across from Sears. “He’s had his eye on my shop since the day Mr. Merrick died—he is sure to prosper by my being run out of town. And Sears—well, everyone knows he’s plain power mad. Why’re you in it?”
“Fair question.” Hampton cocked his head, a half smile crinkling the corners of his eyes a bit. “A few months ago I would have answered you with much rabble-rousing zeal—something dramatic like, ‘For I prefer Liberty to wearing shackles and licking the hand of a Tyrant, madam!’ ”
Overhearing Jack’s loud pronouncement, Quakenbos thumped the tabletop with a beefy fist and uttered a “Hear! Hear!”
Jack lowered his tone. “But there’s more to it now. Much more.” He shifted his weight and twin furrows creased the spot just above the bridge of his nose. “We are at war. Blood has been shed, and our countrymen are dying. I do all I can for our cause—wholly in it, heart, mind and soul, for I will not have our men perish for naught.”
Face-to-face with Jack’s pure conviction, her cynicism began to dissipate, lifting like a misling fog on a sunny day. The man’s sincere expression reminded Anne of her brother, David, and of herself, so long ago when she once felt strong for the American cause. Anne bent to gather the books from the floor to hide the sudden shame coloring her cheeks.
“Let me help . . .” Jack joined her, rattling off the titles as he gathered an armful of books. “Tristram Shandy, Gulliver, Don Quixote, Tom Jones, Pamela . . . a very fine selection.”
“I ordered this stock after Merrick died,” Anne said with some pride. She took up a rag, giving the embossed covers and gilt edges a good swipe before shelving each book. “My husband—he would not tolerate a novel in his Stationery.”
“Husband . . .” Jack said with a shake of his head as he set a stack of books on the countertop. “I thought he was your father.”
Anne glanced over her shoulder. “What?”
“Merrick . . . the day the Stamp Act was repealed . . .” Jack clarified. “Truly, I thought him your father.”
“You remember that day?”
“Everyone remembers that day. You remember it as well.”
Anne nodded. “That I do, sir, for every woman remembers her wedding day.”
“Wedding day?” Jack winced and groaned. “My deepest apologies, Mrs. Merrick—I was filled with brash and more than a few pints and . . .”
“Never mind . . .” Anne was amused by his fluster. “T’was a lifetime ago.”
Jack handed Anne another book, and she wiped it clean, basking in his genuine smile, once again allowing it to comfort her on a day of despair.
Sally strolled back in with the two militiamen trailing behind, each of them munching on a raisin scone. She winked at Anne and waggled her brows. Anne looked up at Jack, a good head taller than she, and caught him admiring the view down the front of her blouse.
Titus and the six militiamen came clattering down the stairs. One of the men announced, “We din’t find no Tory contraband anywhere up there, cap’n.”
“Alright then, it’s off to the pub with us.” Sears stood, brushing pie crumbs from his coat. “Let’s get going, boys.”
As the men shuffled into ranks, buttoning jackets, pulling on hats and rewinding woolen mufflers against the winter chill, a warm wave of relief wafted over Anne. She issued a silent vow to never, never again be lured by crown silver into another such precarious position.
Jack and Anne bent together to gather the last few scattered books. It caught Anne’s eye first and Jack followed her gaze—a lone surviving freshly printed folio, hiding in the shadow cast by the bookcase, one corner caught under the edge of the skirting board.
Anne reached for it, but Jack was far too quick. He snatched up the sheet and straightened, holding the page to the light. At that moment his expression reminded Anne of the time she had fed her trusting little Jemmy a dose of bitters—sheer surprise turning to utter betrayal and in an instant, shifting to the vehement anger hooding Jack’s eyes and sending the muscles at his clenched jaw a-twitch.
Anne grasped his forearm and whispered, “I’m no Tory . . . I swear to you, I’m not!”
Jack swiped his thumb over the damp ink, smearing the word “Reasonable” illegible. Jerking from her grip, he stumbled back a step and held the page aloft. “Isaac! Have a look—�
�
Sears strode over and read the sheet in Jack ’s hand.
“Well, well, well . . . so the indignant widow is not so innocent.” Sears smirked with such pleasure. “Alright, boys, the pints will have to wait. Go and work up a thirst—have at the Tory’s press.”
With a whoop and a holler, the militiamen ran to the back of the shop. Three dockworkers in thick-soled hobnail boots kicked and kicked at the press’s wooden frame until it splintered. They pulled and wrenched the pieces apart, sending the imposing stone to the floor with a crash. There was a mad scramble for the machined parts, as they would fetch a good price for anyone lucky enough to wrangle one free.
Sally and Titus pulled Anne away. Urging her up the stairs, they could not get her to progress beyond the first three steps. Gripping the banister tight, she stood frozen and watched the broken bits of her press march out the front door.
Sears yelled out, “Don’t leave the type behind, boys.”
A sandy-haired apprentice produced a tin whistle and tooted a crude “Yankee Doodle” as the cases of worn type were carried out the door. Quakenbos and Sears fell in at the rear and Sears waved his tricorn in salute. “The Sons of Liberty thank you, Widow Merrick! Tory type makes for the best musket balls.”
And they were gone. The door hung open, banging against the wall in time to the fading “Yankee Doodle,” while the evil wind once again whipped through her shop. Anne stumbled from her perch on the stairs, agog at the militia’s swift ferocity and the sudden silence of its departure. She pushed the door shut and saw Jack Hampton’s hat on the trestle table. She grabbed the hat and looked to where Hampton stood lingering near the back window, intent on comparing a few bits of type spilled from the carted-away type cases, to the damning folio he’d laid out on the compositor’s table.
The Tory Widow Page 4
