The Tory Widow

by Christine Blevins

  “David!” Sally squealed. “I can see David!”

  In the same instant, Anne’s brother—cutting a fine figure atop a jet-black stallion—noticed the trio on the stair. Anne and Sally bounced up and down, cheering and waving. Jack stepped between the two women, and wrapped his arms around their shoulders. Grinning like a madman, he joined in, shouting, “Huzzah! Huzzah!”

  David trotted past, maintaining a soldierly demeanor made even sterner by the irritation of seeing his sister in the company of Jack Hampton. Sally broke away, and ran down the stairs to track alongside David in the parade.

  The pleasure derived from rankling Anne’s recalcitrant brother and bidding good riddance to Sally was soon eclipsed by the sight of General George Washington himself. Busked out in blue and buff military splendor and mounted on a lively sorrel gelding, the Commander in Chief cantered by, inducing a raucous cacophony of cheers and huzzahs.

  Anne said something, but for all the noise, Jack could not hear her. He leaned down, and she rose up on tiptoes, her mouth to his ear. “The general—he seems sad.”

  Jack nodded. “The enemy armada in the harbor,” he shouted. “No doubt a bit worrisome.”

  “No doubt.”

  Jack took Anne by the hand, and they left the portico of St. Paul’s to join the citizens following behind the army to the Commons. The general, accompanied by his immediate staff, rode out onto the green, and took a place at the center of the hollow square formed by the infantry ranks. The crowd, the fifes and drums all quieted. A terse order was given, and the officer at the general’s left dismounted and stepped forward. Without preamble, he began to read in a booming voice, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” He paused, taking in a deep breath before launching into the heart of the declaration.

  “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . .”

  The words washed over the thousands gathered at the Commons and Jack took note of the people’s reaction. Peppered throughout the multitude, a few faces evinced anger or dread, but the vast majority of heads nodded in resolute concordance as each grievance against the King of England was read aloud.

  The officer finished reading the last sentence, “. . . And for the support of this Declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Folding the Declaration into his pocket, he then announced, “The general hopes this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that now, the peace and safety of his country depends solely on the success of our arms: and that every soldier is now in the service of a state possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest honors of a free country.”

  Caps and hats flew from heads. The intensity of the cheer rising up from the ranks shook the very ground they stood upon. Horses whinnied and stamped and the officers struggled to control their mounts while muskets and pistols were fired haphazard into the air.

  The troops were dismissed and the newsboys tore into the crowd. The broadsides Anne and Jack had worked so hard to print the night before were snatched up by eager hands, as if each sheet were wrapped around a sweetcake. Small crowds of soldiers and citizens encircled those lucky enough to grab a copy, rereading the incredulous words they’d just heard, puffed with pride, faces alight, happy to at last officially shed the cumbersome yoke of tyranny.

  “There it is, Annie,” Jack proclaimed. “The power of ink on paper—”

  Anne stood looking up at him, smiling proud, her blue eyes sprung with tears. “Oh, Jack . . .” She squeezed his hand and tipped her head to his shoulder. “Our independence is won as much by lead type as it will be by lead bullets.”

  Jack gathered Anne Merrick in his arms, and there—in the middle of Broad Way—kissed her most thoroughly on the lips.

  BEFORE Anne knew what he was about, Jack slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a crush, his mouth on hers. This bold kiss unfolded with such force and speed as to leave her no recourse but to cling to the bunched muscles at his shoulders, lest she be swept from her feet. Innate modesty was overcome in an instant by the taste of sweet-tart apple coupled with a brazen and wonderful sensation stirring in the warm place between her legs. Anne let escape an unexpected and wanton moan, and she cradled his face with her hand, the day’s unshaven stubble rough in the cup of her palm.

  Jack released Anne as suddenly as he had embraced her, and she wobbled for a moment to maintain her balance, unsteady on the cobbles. A wild horde of celebrants brushed by, marching back toward the waterfront with a cry of “T ’ the Bowlin’ Green!”

  Without giving Anne much opportunity to gather her wits, Jack looped his arm through hers, and the couple became part of the human current sweeping down Broad Way, marching in time to the thunder of drums and trilling fifes.

  Anne struggled to keep the pace in her French heels, all the while cursing her vain choice of footwear. Taking two steps to Jack’s one, she realized she had somehow lost her hat.

  “Don’t worry—I’ve got a hold on you, Annie,” Jack shouted, holding tight to her arm. His tricorn was cocked at a dashing angle, and he looked down at her with a happy, satisfied face, as if they’d been at play and he’d just won every one of her marbles. All Anne could do was nod and notice how he was made even more handsome for the jubilant smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

  “That’s the way, lads!” Jack shouted as they marched past Trinity Church. A tall sailor had mounted atop another’s shoulders, and to the cheers of all passersby, the pair tore down the banners hung over the church doors that proclaimed the King’s crest.

  The fife and drum boys struck up “The British Grenadiers,” a familiar tune from the time, not so long ago, when red-coated soldiers would drill on the Commons. The marching Patriot mob began to sing along, substituting the standard lyrics with a popular rebellious refrain:

  “Vain Britons, boast no longer

  With fine indignity,

  Your valiant marching legions,

  Your matchless strength at sea.

  For we, your loyal sons oppressed,

  Have girded our swords on.

  Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

  For War and Washington!”

  Singing at the top of their lungs, Anne and Jack merged in with the mad tumult congregated on the street around the Bowling Green. Spirits were high—bottles produced and shared, and New Yorkers banded together with soldiers from all the colonies in impromptu song and jig. Anne scanned the confused throng of happy revelers, searching for Sally and David with no luck. The drummer boys began to pound a quick-time march while soldiers and citizens continued to swarm the green.

  An impatient crowd of men churned near the locked gates of the green as a burly, red-faced Irishman strained with a crowbar, working the sturdy padlock. At last he broke through, the gates swung open and the six-foot-tall iron fence encircling the elliptical green was breached.

  “We better stay out of there . . .” Jack steered an aggressive path to claim a spot outside the enclosure. Grabbing the iron bars with both hands, Anne stepped up onto the curbstone that curved along at the base of the fence, improving her view by a few inches. Jack moved to stand behind Anne, both hands at her waist, planting his feet to defend his ground, and keep from being pushed aside.

  “Finest seat in the house,” Jack said, his bristly cheek rasping the curve of her ear.

  A half a dozen laughing boys ran up with a bulging gunnysack. Bypassing the crowd clogging the open gate to scramble over the fence like a troop of monkeys, the lads entertained the growing crowd, flinging rotten peaches at the statue centered on the green.

  Raised up on a massive marble pedestal almost two stories tall, the figure was posed clad in patrician Roman robes astride a noble steed. With head wreathed in triumphan
t laurels, New York ’s golden King George III loomed out of reach against an ever-darkening and flashing sky.

  A spindly forest of musket barrels, halberds and pikes and upraised fists had sprouted around the pedestal, shaking in happy defiance. Amid a chorus of “Coming through!” and “Let ’em pass!” the crowd parted to allow two men—one carrying several coils of stout rope, the other, a ladder. The ladder was quickly propped against the marble base, scaled, and King George now shared his pedestal with determined men busy securing rope around the horse’s withers, middle and rump. The activity garnered the attention of one and all, and a deafening roar went up when the last noose was tossed over the monarch’s head.

  Jack pressed forward, the dome-shaped buttons on his weskit dimpling a vertical line along her spine, his hot breath tickling her ear. “Can you believe it?” he asked.

  The loose lead ends were tossed down to many willing hands. Anne and Jack shouted along, “Heave! HO! Heave! HO!” Muscles and ropes strained, stretched taut as bowstrings, but the King did not budge.

  Bright flashes chased behind the thunderheads roiling in the sky and big summer raindrops pattered down, ticking like an erratic mantel clock as they hit the sun-warmed King and his mount.

  “Arrah!!!” The same burly Irishman who’d opened the gates charged up the ladder, brandishing his iron pry bar in an upraised fist to rally the crowd. “Arrah!!!”

  He shoved the flattened end between marble and fore hoof, and called, “Pull!” to the men at rope’s end. The pullers ground their heels in the turf, and slack rope drew tight. The Irishman scurried back to loose a hind hoof and the chanting began again, “Heave! HO! Heave . . .”

  Two of the four hooves popped free from the plinth and the behemoth creaked to one side, canted on a two-legged axis. With the statue balanced at this precarious angle, the tugging men gave one last mighty heave before dropping their ropes and scattering like grape-shot. King and horse arced over and toppled from the pedestal in a clanging crash, brought down by their own ponderous weight.

  The figures landed in a broken heap, and the illusion of solid gold was exposed as the thinnest layer of gilding over common lead castings. The crumbled plaster, clay and sand used to fill the castings’ hollows spilled from the mutilated figures like entrails from a butchered carcass.

  Anne pressed her face between the two iron pickets she clutched, her breath caught in her throat, stunned. The symbol of her Sovereign Lord knocked like so much rubbish to the ground—the same Sovereign she’d taught her child to include in his prayers—the beloved monarch whose health was toasted in homes and taverns throughout the colonies—the King who, not six years before, earned this ornate monument erected in his honor—this man would lose an empire. She was certain of it.

  The destroyed figures were at least twice the size of natural man and beast, but the giant proportions did not hinder a pair of prostitutes from running in to wrest the gilded crown of laurels free from the statue’s head. A solemn-faced infantryman wearing the blue and buff coat of a Massachusetts regiment marched forward, and to rousing huzzahs, aimed his musket and discharged a ball, embedding it between unblinking regal eyes.

  The crowd surged forward with shouts of “Liberty!” and “Freedom!” Jack braced his arms to the iron cross rail, acting as a protective counterforce, providing Anne a shield against the crush. A fierce gust swept in off the water, followed by several deafening thunderclaps and accompanying streaks of lightning. Rain began to fall in earnest.

  A hard-muscled man armed with a maul began hacking at the king’s thick neck, rousing wave after wave of rebellious cheering with every blow. The severed head was speared upon a sturdy pike and the same man who’d acted as axeman paraded the trophy around the green, out the gate and up Broad Way. The fife and drummer boys struck up the “Rogue’s March,” fell in step with the most boisterous of the soggy multitude trailing along.

  The rain dwindled to a drizzle and the crowd winnowed down to no more than a few score who lingered and watched a young officer direct a handful of men in dragging the statue parts and pieces into a pile outside the gate.

  “Hey, Captain,” Jack called. “That’s a good supply of lead. I hope you plan on running it into musket balls . . .”

  The captain smiled, and raised one booted foot to rest on a portion of the torso. “Even though the poor fella’s lost his head, King George here will be making a big impression on more than a few Redcoats.”

  A carpenter hurrying home stopped, set his toolbox down with a thump and pondered the salvage operation. He folded his arms, shook his head and announced, “You know, it still ain’t right.” Tugging a tool free from his kit, he stepped up onto the curbstone and proceeded to saw at one of the little cast-iron crowns that decorated the top of every fencepost. After five good strokes of the blade, the carpenter snapped the crown off the post, hurled it to the pavement and moved down the line to the next fencepost.

  Hand in hand, Anne and Jack tarried, amused by the determined carpenter as he moved from post to post sawing, then flinging the little crowns to the rain-slicked cobblestones.

  “Hey, Jack! Jack Hampton!” a man called from a jovial gang making its way around the green. “We’re off to Montagne’s to toast the Declaration. Join us for a pint . . .”

  “Not tonight, Ezra.” Jack laughed. “My pocket won’t support one round with you, much less the herd you roam with!”

  “Come along, brother—your pretty lady’s welcome as well—I’m buying!”

  “What?!” Jack clutched at his chest, aping a fit of apoplexy to everyone’s great amusement.

  “Why don’t you join your friends?” Anne urged. “I have to get going anyway. David will be sending the cavalry out in search if I’m not home before curfew.”

  “Alright . . .” Jack ’s eyes shifted to his fellows waiting on his answer. “. . . but I’ll see you home first.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Anne pulled her hand free from his. “I’m not helpless—there’s still plenty light and home is but two blocks away . . . I’ll be fine.”

  “Alright, then . . .” Jack said, taking several backward steps. “I’ll come by tomorrow morning—to break down and stow the press.” He turned to circle the green in a brisk half run to catch up with his mates. Suddenly, he pulled up short, bent down to retrieve something from the pavement and ran back to Anne.

  “Look . . .” Jack smiled, breathless. In his hand he held one of the discarded crowns that had broken cleanly into two pieces. He dropped one half into his pocket and pressed the other half into Anne’s hand. “For us—a token to remember the day by . . .”

  Anne grasped Jack by the placket of his weskit, pulled him down to her level. “Oh, I’ll not soon forget this day.” And before she knew what she was about, she kissed Jack Hampton most brazenly on the lips. Releasing him with a little shove, she took a step back. “Go on . . . off with you now . . .”

  “Why, Widow Merrick.” Jack grinned, straightening his hat thrown askew by her kiss. “You never fail to surprise.”

  “Hey, Hampton! You comin’?”

  Jack took off up Broad Way. He looked back once and waved, and Anne waved back, watching until he disappeared in the scrum.

  A gust of wind off the bay tugged at her damp skirts. Anne’s fingers tightened around the little half-crown Jack’d given her—the broken edge biting into her palm as she pressed her closed fist to her heart. Turning toward Whitehall Street, Anne cast a lingering look over her shoulder, at the empty pedestal on the green.

  Void of its King, the marble monolith stood desolate in the twilight, facing a storm-tossed sea and the silhouette of the armada menacing the horizon.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are

  virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected,

  even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.

  THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense

  Friday, July 12, 1776

/>   The Cup and Quill Is Closed for the Day

  WOOD squawked against wood, and stacks of treenware plates tottered on the shelves, clacking in alarm as Anne and Sally wrestled the unwieldy cabinet away from the wall.

  “Heave, Sal! Heave! ”

  Together, the women managed to jerk the heavy cabinet from its comfortable footprint, and push it far enough to make accessible the small door behind it. Swiping mobcaps from heads, Anne and Sally fell back, gasping.

  Anne could no longer operate her business with the back end of the shop in total disarray. After waiting two days for Jack Hampton to come as promised and break down the press, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She chased the dregs of her breakfast trade out the front door, and closed her shop for the day.

  “It’s only but forenoon, and this day’s already hotter than the middle pits o’ hell.” Sally whisked off the kerchief tucked at the neckline of her dress and floated it to hang over the lever handle on the press.

  Anne opened the door to the odd-shaped little storage room beneath the stairs, only to be pushed back by a heated cloud of dusty air. “Ullcchh!” she said, scrinching nose and eyes. “Best give it a moment to air out.”

  “This swelter is no friend to me.” Sally unbuttoned her skirt and kicked it off. “I canna bear it—soakin’ wet I am.”

  Anne stepped out of her skirt as well, and pulled her blouse over her head, giggling. “Brazen, but it is just the two of us here. Why should we suffer this heat?”

  Barefoot, and considerably cooler stripped down to sleeveless muslin shifts and stays, the women went a step further, pinning their hems at their hips to accommodate a breeze and ease of movement about the legs.