The Tory Widow

by Christine Blevins

  When fully cured, the solid loaves of pure white sugar were drilled from the earthenware cones, wrapped in blue paper and sent to market. White sugar was expensive, and Anne only offered small nipped bits of it to her customers for a price. She was more interested in purchasing quantities of unrefined muscovado and molasses. These products held the rich flavor suited to Sally’s recipes and a frugal price that suited Anne’s pocketbook.

  Fraunces, having completed his business, tipped his tricorn to her as he passed on his way out the door. “Mrs. Merrick . . . you are quick to take advantage of opportunity.”

  “Well, I try to keep my hook cast these days—you never know when a fish will happen by.”

  “Speaking of happening by . . .” Fraunces stepped in close, and spoke low. “Are you in need of coffee?”

  “Always.”

  He slipped his tricorn from his head to shield his mouth. “There is a small shipment of coffee berries at King’s Wharf—the same Dutch trader who brought in this muscovado. I am on the prowl for rum, if you should hear of any . . .”

  “I will surely let you know. Thank you, Mr. Fraunces.”

  At her turn, Anne placed and paid for her order, arranging to have it delivered to her shop. King’s Wharf was a little more than a mile from the refinery, and she must make haste before word spread. It would not do for the army’s quartermaster to get his hands on all that coffee.

  “Good day, sirs,” she said in passing to the officers and the baker in serious conversation at the foot of the stairs.

  She sped down Thames Street only to be thwarted by a tall pile of logs barricading access to the Hudson. Altering her course to travel north, Anne found every street offering a route to the river similarly barricaded. Coming to yet another dead end, Anne drew her shawl tight about her shoulders.

  The most recent exodus had left these back streets in eerie desolation. Anne startled when a hog rushed out from a space between two buildings to commence snuffing and rooting in the open sewer that ran the length of Crown Street. She pondered the dark access between the tenements when a lone peddler emerged from the same gangway, slumped under a heavy bundle of birch brooms.

  “Pardon, sir, but does that way lead to the river?” She pointed from whence he came.

  “Aye . . . ye can cut through t’ Cortlandt Street,” he said. “They’ve yet to set a barricade on Cortlandt.”

  Anne thanked the man and turned into the dank, narrow gangway, immediately seeking the handkerchief kept stored up her sleeve. Pressed to her nose, the lavender water she’d splashed on it did little to mask an unwholesome compound of ordure and rotting offal. The awful stench served to put kick in her step.

  A sustained whirr caught her ear and grew louder as she progressed along the mazelike path running between ramshackle buildings. Through an open doorway, Anne spied a woman with hair as fair as the pile of flax at her side, working her spinning wheel in earnest. Without missing a beat of the treadle, the spinster waved merrily. Anne waved back, heartened by the woman’s industry in such forlorn circumstance.

  A warren of mean hovels and dilapidated clapboard sheds clustered behind and between the tall brick tenement walls. Here and there Anne spied smoke wiggling up from a mud-daubed chimney, and though she did not see another living soul, she could not squelch the uneasy feeling of being watched. The gangway she followed angled onto a long alley. With palpable relief, Anne could at last see twenty or so yards ahead, to the opening onto sunny Cortlandt Street.

  The alley was strewn with the detritus of concentrated human habitation, and the happy song of the spinning wheel was replaced by blowfly buzz, rooting pigs and squalling gulls scavenging through the rotting garbage piles. A pair of barefoot boys dressed in naught but grubby shirts sat on haunches at the edge of a foul puddle, intent on poking a bloated gull carcass with sharp sticks. The urchin heads turned as she passed, red-rimmed eyes wide in their thin, dirty faces. As if hearing a call from their mother, the two leapt to their feet to dart past Anne and disappear behind a slamming door at the end of the alley.

  A moment later, a squat, hulky fellow stepped out onto the stoop from the same doorway. He spotted Anne, tugged a sword from a scabbard belted round his waist and hit the alley running, barreling straight for her.

  Anne hiked her skirts with both hands, turned and ran in an all-out, full-legged stride back the way she came. Heedless of the puddles and rubbish she ran through, her shawl blew away and her straw hat flew from her head. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the bonnet crushed beneath her pursuer’s boots.

  Skittering to turn into the gangway, Anne ran square into another man blocking the narrow path. A head taller, he leered down at her with a death’s-head face—bulging, wicked eyes and an openmouthed grin exposing blackened teeth loose in gray gums. In a swift movement, he spun her round and pinioned her arms back.

  The man’s scrawny pigtail coated with stiff pine tar whipped about as Anne screamed, kicked and thrashed, trying to break free of his grasp. His dry fingers tightened, twisting into her skin like corded rope as he pulled her into a piss-smelly corner.

  “Ye skivin’ bag o’ bones!” the breathless running man arrived. “That one’s mine!”

  “Ah, look at you—ye great greedy-guts,” Bagobones sneered as he struggled with Anne. “Barely breathin’ you is. I’m shamed to name ye Brother Tar.”

  Greedyguts brandished his weapon. “Shove off, I say. I spied her first.”

  “She’d’ve outrun ye if’n I hadn’t stepped up, aye?”

  Dressed in baggy tarpaulin trousers and checkered shirts, both men were clearly beached seamen. Greedyguts stood and pondered the situation, scraping at the stubble on his cheek with the honed edge of his sailor’s sword.

  Shouting, “Thieves!” at the top of her lungs, Anne raised her knee high and stomped a sharp heel down on her captor’s toe. Yowling in pain, Bagobones loosened his grip enough for her to wrest free.

  Greedyguts snatched the back of her dress and whipped her up against the brick wall, rendering Anne silent and still with the sharp edge of his blade pressed to the base of her throat.

  “Arrah! She’s mine now.” His tarred tricorn slipped from his head and Greedyguts leaned in so close Anne could discern his breakfast—ale and fried kippers.

  The skin above Greedy’s left eye was pink, shiny and tight. The extent of this recently healed wound was made apparent by the loss of his hat, revealing wiry tufts of steel gray hair growing betwixt large patches of the smooth scar tissue that covered most of his bulbous pate.

  “Ah now, brother.” Bagobones turned genial. “What say we splits this plunder—even shares—fair and square?”

  Greedyguts grunted in assent and Bagobones shoved a hand down the slit in Anne’s skirt that gave access to the pocket tied about her waist. With a practiced jerk, he freed it, emptied the contents into one palm and tossed the pocket aside.

  “Fuck all! Naught but eight shillings and pence . . .”

  “She’s stashed it somewheres . . .” Greedyguts shoved a hand down Anne’s neckline, his furry tongue poked from gap teeth as he foraged between her breasts for hidden valuables. Anne could not help but jerk away and she felt the bite of his blade. Bright blood beaded to trickle down and slide over the curve of her breast.

  Furthering his search, Greedyguts thrust his free arm under her skirts, and his roving hand stopped to cup between her legs. He bent his monstrous head and lapped the blood from her neck with one long swipe of his tongue, all the while keeping the sharp edge at her throat, strangling her scream to a pitiful whimper.

  “Eight shillings . . .” he muttered. “Hoy, mate! Take m’ blade . . . keep her quiet while I butter her bun.”

  “Then I gets a turn,” Bagobones asserted. “Fair is fair.”

  The weapon exchanged hands. Bagobones stood duty at her left, licking his flaking lips and emitting a series of encouraging grunts while the stout man fumbled with his trouser buttons.

  The pitched scream she dar
ed not unleash shrieked in her head. Anne pressed back against the rough brick wall, wishing she could will herself to seep through its pores and crevices and break through to the bright light she imagined on the other side. She stared past the greasy knotted kerchief tied too tight to Greedyguts’s thick neck, and let her eyes lose focus as he struggled to find a way through her skirts.

  Bagobones suddenly blurted, “Hoy . . . mate . . .” and the worried utterance snapped Anne back into awareness.

  Jack Hampton’s angry face loomed in clear, perfect focus just beyond Greedy’s shoulder. Swinging a wide arc, the barrel stave wielded in his two-fisted grip sounded a sickening thwack as timber met skull bone. Greedyguts flew from her line of vision.

  Bagobones pulled her in close, keeping the blade tight to her throat. “Back off, or I’ll cut her . . .”

  Jack stepped up, raising the club over his shoulder. “Throw down!”

  “Slit her windpipe, I will . . .”

  “Throw down—now! ”

  Anne ground her heel into her captor’s slipshod foot. Bagobones yelped and she pulled away, scuttling sideways as Jack leapt forward swinging, knocking the tall man to his knees with a brutal blow to the neck.

  Tossing the sword aside, Bagobones raised his stringy arms in shuddering supplication. “Quarter, sir! I beg quarter.”

  His request was answered by the ragged end of the barrel stave rammed into his gut. Bagobones doubled over with a miserable groan, and Jack dealt him a fierce, felling blow to the jaw.

  Anne snatched up her discarded pocket. Jack grabbed Anne by the hand and began pulling her down the alley. “C’mon—afore the rest of their mates come after us.”

  Anne glanced over her shoulder at the two broken men lying bleeding in the dirt. “Are they killed?”

  Jack shrugged. “Who cares?”

  JACK’S heart pounded a retreat in his ears and he ran hard with the widow’s hand squeezed in his. Once they emerged onto Cortlandt Street, she began to drag and stumble. Without warning, Anne Merrick tore her hand from his, and slumped back against a wall. Her words expelled in exhausted puffs, “Please . . . I need . . .”

  Loose strands of hair escaped from the mobcap askew upon her head. Gasping for breath, her face shone as bright as a polished pippin. In a sudden panic, she turned her rescued pocket inside out, revealing a little gold brooch pinned to the inside. With an audible moan, she leaned forward, a bit wobbly with hands propped on knees, and studied the dirt patch in front of her feet like a drunk contemplating the best place to vomit.

  Jack paced a short course, checking up and down the street. The muscles corded taut in his arms and across his back like the springs in an over-wound clock. Waving the blood-spattered stave clutched in his fist, he checked over his shoulder and urged, “C’mon, c’mon—we need t’ get going!”

  Jack bounced on the balls of his feet and Anne pulled upright. Tugging the gold pin free and tossing the pocket, she slipped the brooch between her breasts. “It’s all I have from him.” Avoiding his eye, her thin voice cracked on his name. “Mr. Hampton . . . I don’t know how to begin to thank you . . .”

  “No. No time for that.” Jack grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along.

  “Stop pulling at me!” Anne’s angry eyes flashed lively as she struggled to jerk free.

  Jack gave her a rough turn, drawing her attention to a gang of sailors stepping out from the alley. He rasped in her ear. “I will not fare as well against six. Now run!”

  And she did—hand in hand they reached the crowded safety of Broad Way. With a palm pushed firm at the small of her back, Jack rushed Anne across the cobbles and down Maiden Lane. He pulled up to a halt at the corner and tossed his club into the gutter. Having lost both his hat and the ribbon from his queue in the tussle, Jack brushed his unruly hair from his face and drew a deep breath, releasing it in a whoosh. Fists on his hips, anger denting his brow, he demanded, “Now tell me—what in bloody hell were you up to?”

  Anne dropped her eyes. “I was going to see about a shipment of coffee beans . . .”

  “Coffee beans! Have you lost your wits?”

  Intent on her shuffling feet with fistfuls of skirt clutched in each hand, she did not answer.

  “Coffee!” Jack threw his arms up. “You stepped willingly into that nest of . . . of vipers, for coffee? What is wrong with you?”

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “It seems foolish now, but I . . .”

  “Foolish?” Jack loomed over her, jabbing a finger in her shoulder. “Foolishness does not begin to explain your recklessness. I question your sanity, madam—I do.”

  “You are right—” Anne’s head bobbed in assent. “I am truly so thankful you found me, and . . .”

  “Ravished with your throat cut on a pile of rubbish is how and where you would have been found if I had not been following you.”

  Anne’s head popped back. “Following? You were following me?”

  “I was—and lucky for you. Come along now.” He offered his hand.

  “I’ll see you safe home.”

  Anne ignored his outstretched hand. “Though I am apparently a witless idiot, I need trouble you no further. I can make my own way from here.”

  “Don’t be an ass.” He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her along.

  They tramped along in silence. Coming up to the little lane her shop was located on, Anne tugged Jack to a standstill and pulled him to the side.

  “Mr. Hampton—I would ask a favor . . .” she began, then dropped her chin to her chest.

  “What’s that?”

  Her fingernails bit into his palm, and before his very eyes, she crumpled like a piece of newsprint. Shoulders shaking, she cried and cried for what to Jack seemed an eternity, all the while clutching his hand. For lack of knowing what else to do, he was about ready give her a good hard shaking, when she caught a breath and gazed up at him with sad eyes saturated in shame.

  “Please . . . can we not keep this . . . incident betwixt ourselves?”

  “Oh . . .” Jack shook his head. “I don’t know about that . . . For one, we ought to make a report to the provost so . . .”

  “No! I beg you—not a word to the provost. Not a word to Sally. N-not a word to anyone—you understand?”

  “But the city militia at least should be made aware of . . .”

  “Please, Mr. Hampton.” Her grip tightened. “Promise me, not a word to anyone, ever.”

  Jack shrugged, nodding. “Alright. Not a word.”

  “Swear it.”

  He pried his hand from her grip and crisscrossed his thumb over his heart. “I’ll never tell a living soul.”

  “Thank you.” Her face softened in relief. “Now I’d best carry on alone. Sally is bound to ask questions if I show up with you in tow.”

  “Wait.” Jack produced a handkerchief. “You know,” he said, wiping her face dry, “Sally is nobody’s fool.” He dabbed the moistened fabric at the thin line of blood beaded where her neck met her collarbone.

  Anne fiddled with her neckerchief, pulling and fluffing the fabric to mask the slight cut. She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and held out her hand. “I owe you a debt, Jack Hampton, and I can’t see how I’ll ever be able to repay it.”

  “Well, you know,” Jack said, “I could use a good cup of coffee now and then.”

  At that Anne almost smiled. She slipped her hand free and turned the corner.

  THE next morning, Jack shuffled in with the morning crowd. The Cup and Quill was doing a brisk business and Sally buzzed from table to table with her coffeepot. Anne came in from the kitchenhouse, tying an apron round her waist. She seemed to have gained some strength and ease by virtue of being within the bounds of her own domain. Scanning the crowded room, she spied Jack as he took his usual seat, and called to Sally, “I’ll take care of Mr. Hampton this morning.”

  “Mr. Hampton should just wait his turn, aye?” Sally snapped.

  Anne bustled over to set a steaming cup,
a full bowl of lump sugar and a brimming creamer on the table. She tapped a finger to the brooch she wore pinned to the neckline of her gray dress. “Good morning, Mr. Hampton.”

  “Good morning Mrs. Merrick.” Up close Jack could see a golden curl of hair encased beneath a crystal and framed with a circle of seed pearls. He gave her a nod, sharing some secret he did not quite understand. “It does me good to see you so fit and happy this morning.”

  “A good night’s sleep works wonders sometimes.”

  Jack raised a dubious brow to the fare she’d laid out. “This all looks . . . grand.”

  She smiled. “I prepared everything special for you.”

  Jack laughed, and dropped two lumps into his cup. “Sally appears a bit out of sorts.”

  “She grows snippy when worried.” Anne let the tray rest on her hip. “While I was out yesterday, an officer came by asking for me by name.”

  “And?”

  “And it bodes ill. She’s certain he means to arrest me as a Loyalist and commandeer our home for quartering.”

  “You’re no Loyalist.” Jack pointed out the doorway with his spoon. “It says ‘liberty’ right there on your shingle.” His wry comment drew a rare laugh from the widow. “As for quartering, well, I think every citizen who can should be willing to provide room and board for our soldiers.”

  By the set of her shoulders, and the shift in tone, his comment surely annoyed. “I’ll fetch your scones from the kitchen.” Anne left him to his coffee.

  Jack looked over and found Sally scowling at him from across the room. He tried his best to answer with an equally rude glower, but after a moment, he realized she was not scowling at him at all, but at the Continental officer who had just entered the shop.