The Tory Widow

by Christine Blevins

  Sporadic gunfire popped in the distance. “That’s close by.” Shifting from one foot to the other, Anne kept a hand on the pistol weighing heavy her pocket, the bulge a comfort while keeping a look out as Sally fiddled with the hooks and chains.

  “Och, it’s all a bloody tangle—I need some light . . .”

  Anne opened the door on the lantern and held it over her head, aiming the beam at the shop sign. “Does that help?”

  “Aye . . .”

  More shots rang out—accompanied by shouting and shoe leather pounding on cobblestones.

  “Hurry, Sal . . .”

  “Quit yer jiggling . . . I’m almost . . . ah!”

  Sally succeeded in disengaging the chains from the iron bracket. Anne set the lantern aside to take the unwieldy round placard from Sally and roll it inside the doorway. Sally scrambled down, and they slid the ladder into the shop and locked the door.

  Sally heaved a breath. “Och, it’s a good thing ye remembered th’ sign.”

  “Um-hmm . . .” Anne aimed the light on the shop sign, the word liberty even larger and more conspicuous at such a close proximity. “Not exactly what we want to advertise these days, is it?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring

  War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the

  Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every

  Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling . . .

  THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense

  Friday, September 20, 1776

  On the Way Home from the Bear Market

  THEIR meager pantry had been depleted over the course of the past week, and when she heard tell of traders at the market, Anne exhumed the strongbox from under her bed. Tossing a wad of useless Continental currency into the box, she pocketed a handful of guineas and shillings she’d stashed away when Washington’s Army had come to town.

  Bandit joined her on the long trek across town to the Bear Market on the Hudson, to find the stalls filled with upstate and cross-river farmers and merchants hawking their wares. Droves of eager customers paying in good old British coin crowded the aisles. A great variety of provisions were on exhibit—an abundance of riches Anne had not witnessed since before the Patriot army was in command of the city.

  Commerce is lured by silver and gold . . .

  So many hungry customers with ready coin drove market prices high, but Anne did not stint. She was more than willing to pay the price for best quality, for Jack would be coming soon to rescue them all, and David must be fit and ready to travel.

  She pushed a full cart back home, more than pleased with her acquisitions. Cornmeal, wheat flour, salt pork, coffee berries, sausages, eggs, cheese and butter—the kind of fresh food her brother needed to recover his health. Anne suffered a small pang of guilt for the pound sack of black bohea in her cart, but it had been so long since she’d had a proper cup of tea, she could not resist the aroma wafting from the tea merchant’s stand.

  Very Torylike, drinking tea . . .

  That morning, when British dragoons came marching down the lane, knocking on her door with the pommels of their swords, Anne tried not to panic, but she was quite terrified David would be arrested and carried off to some awful prison. She envisioned herself and Sally set upon the street, their home and possessions confiscated by order of the King.

  Armed with pistols, Sally and David waited upstairs, while Anne answered the door with a gentle widow’s countenance, and an offer of refreshment.

  Be a Tory, she thought, knees quaking, as she invited the Redcoat officers inside to take a seat at a table.

  Bemoaning the lack of tea, she offered cups of chicory coffee and coarse corn muffins with peach preserves, and proceeded to weave a Tory tale of woe designed to tug at any Englishman’s heartstrings. Beginning with a homily to her dearly departed, staunch Loyalist husband, she gave a dramatic recitation of the harm she’d endured at the hands of the demon Liberty Boys—the blackguard rebels who put her livelihood to ruin, and destroyed the very press and types she used to extol the King’s Majesty, and defend Crown interests.

  Quite a performance . . .

  Not only did Captain Blankenship praise her bravery and her fortitude, he told Anne about the Bear Market in progress, and gave her a length of red ribbon to wear. “To show your loyalty to our King,” he said. The Redcoats bid her good day, never knowing an armed rebel officer lay in a bed situated just above their heads, and they moved on without painting the dreaded “G.R.” on her door, indicating her property confiscated by the King for service to the Crown.

  Anne found great wisdom in Jack’s command to “Be a Tory.” In truth, women had it far easier when it came to shifting loyalties. No oath or promise of service demanded—only a few inches of red ribbon and a pin required for a total transformation.

  An instant Tory.

  Like a figure carved on the prow of a ship, Bandit sat at the head of the cart, proudly perched upon the firkin of cider she’d purchased. Nose to the wind, silly ears flapping, he sported a red ribbon collar matching the red ribbon rosette Anne pinned to her straw hat.

  “Tory doggy,” Anne teased, when she tied the collar to his neck. Bandit growled, and spun round and round, making himself dizzy trying to tear it off.

  She pulled her cart to a stop at Broad Way. The street was choked with a reverse exodus—wagons hauling supplies, furnishings and many Loyalist New Yorkers driven from their homes now returning in happy triumph. Loyalists seeking sanctuary from rebellious strongholds like Boston and Philadelphia also flocked to the city for protection.

  “Surrounded we are . . .” Anne muttered. Bandit agreed, beating a tune on the little keg with his tail.

  She dove into the fray, wriggling her cart through the tangle to travel down Fair Street.

  The city had also transformed in an instant. In the seven days since the British began their occupation, people poured in on the Post Road, and ferried in from the hundreds of boats anchored in the harbors. A whole new influx of sailors and soldiers roamed about in packs defined by uniforms different from those she’d become accustomed to, and Anne was learning a whole new set of distinctions.

  Crowding the sidewalks along with the multitude of British Redcoats were Scots Highlanders in dark tartan kilts, green-jacketed Brunswickers wearing upright plumes on their caps, and mustachioed Hessian grenadiers in blue jackets and mitered brass helmets topped with a fuzzy red wool ball—the sight of which always sent Bandit into a barking frenzy.

  The forlorn clotheslines bridging streets and alleyways were now filled with coats of red, blue and green wool flapping alongside petticoats and nappies. These new occupiers came with families in tow. The nomadic wives and children of officers and enlisted men took up residence in dwellings confiscated by the Crown, and the women now collecting water at the tea-water pump spoke in accents and languages foreign to Anne’s ear.

  With the population burgeoning, lodgings were quick becoming a scarce commodity, and Anne was beleaguered daily by newcomers in search of rooms to rent. The probability of being forced to quarter British soldiers in her home was high, and the stuff of her most recent nightmare.

  Jack will be here soon . . . and then all will be well . . .

  Smiling, she turned the corner onto her little lane between Duke and Dock Streets, and skittered to an abrupt halt, causing Bandit to lose his seat and leap from the cart.

  She had seen many a G.R. painted on the houses and businesses she passed along the way, but the G.R. on the Quakenbos Bakery door stopped her dead in her tracks.

  G.R.—George Rex.

  Anne touched her fingertip to the wet black paint.

  A few strokes of a brush, and the hard-earned rewards of one man’s toil and sweat become the property of another . . .

  Anne pulled her cart the few steps to her door, pondering the paint on her finger.

  It’s not going to be easy, being a T
ory.

  ANNE bolted upright with an indrawn gasp—eyes wide-open.

  In two staccato leaps, Bandit bounded from bed to floor, then to the chair she’d left beside the open window. Front paws resting on the sill, he joined the enthusiastic barking and howling chorus disturbing her sleep.

  “Shush that noise,” Anne moaned and slapped the mattress. “Come.”

  Bandit continued to bark without even suffering her a sideways glance.

  Anne rubbed her eyes and blinked—the portion of sky visible though the window flashed in shades of gold, blue and green. Amber light flickered on her whitewashed walls.

  Sally appeared in the doorway with a stubby candle sputtering in a dish, her sleepy-eyed face squashed in squint. “D’ye smell smoke?”

  Anne threw back the sheets and ran to the window.

  Bandit stopped barking. Sally squeezed in, and the three of them leaned out over the sill.

  “What’s happening?” David stood with his right shoulder bolstered against the doorframe, his left arm in its sling.

  “Whitehall Slip is on fire.” Anne pointed toward the East River.

  “It looks like the Fighting Cocks Tavern is in flames.” Sally pointed straight ahead to the battery.

  Anne boosted up to stand on the sill. “Take hold . . .”

  Sally grabbed two fistfuls of muslin nightgown.

  Bracing one hand to the window frame, toes curled to the edge, Anne leaned way out, straining for a better view to the east. “Something on Cruger’s Wharf is alight . . .”

  “Three separate fires?” Hopping on one foot, David traveled from doorway to bedstead to chair.

  Sally stared out the window, chewing her thumbnail. “D’ye think Washington’s spies are putting the whole city to the torch?”

  “No.” David plopped down in the chair. “Congress expressly forbid it, and the general would never disobey the rule of Congress.” Twisting around he pulled up onto one knee to view the scene. “Like most fires, I’d wager these were begat by drunkenness or carelessness.”

  Anne nodded. “And spread by wind—not spies—look . . .”

  Large flaming embers floated up from the fire at the Fighting Cocks. Borne on the breeze from the harbor, they scattered onto the neighboring rooftops. In the blink of an eye, six more buildings were alight.

  David shook his head. “This is dangerous. Without a drop of rain in days, cedar roof shakes are as dry as a nun’s gusset . . .”

  “Brother!” Anne chastised.

  “David’s right, Annie. The rooftops are so much tinder. This fire’s movin’ onward with every blast of th’ westlin’ wind.”

  David pounded the sill. “Why does no one ring the alarm?”

  “Washington took the bells—for cannon.” Anne jumped down from her perch.

  “Aye, and who’s t’ know what’s become of our lovely fire pumps—gone the way of the bells, no doubt.”

  Anne shrugged. “The neighborhood men like Quakenbos, who manned the fire brigades and knew to work the pumps, are long gone as well.”

  The three of them stood in nightclothes, mesmerized by exploding showers of sparks and the growing wall of flames leaping and moving in tall spires. David whistled when the fire swirled in like a flood tide, flowing across Broad Way. “It’s a good thing the wind is in our favor . . .”

  The silhouetted figures battling the blaze had no success containing it. The breeze drove the fire northwest, and running blocks of property along the tip of the island were engulfed in roaring flames.

  Anne left David and Sally at the window, and threw open the lid to the chest at the foot of her bed.

  “What are ye about?”

  Anne tugged a brown skirt over her nightshift. “I’m going to help.”

  David said, “Don’t be foolish. What can you do to help?”

  “Well—I can pass a bucket of water. I can do that.”

  Sally snatched up her candle. “I’m comin’ wi’ ye.”

  David threw up his one good hand. “You’re both a pair of idiots.”

  “You stay with David, Sally.” Anne pulled her ink-stained linsey blouse over her head, tucking it into her waistband. “Keep an eye on the fire. If the wind shifts, you may need to evacuate . . .”

  David rose on one good foot and hopped to grab hold of the bedpost. “Promise you’ll be careful, sister . . .”

  “I will.”

  Anne took a bucket from the kitchen. She heard the mantel clock chime once as Sally bolted the door behind her. One o’clock in the morning, and the southern sky was lit up brighter than a papist church on Christmas Eve. Anne ran parallel to the wall of fire that curved along Broad Street, slowing to a stop when she reached Broad Way. Empty bucket in her fist swinging, she was immobilized by the confused scene, not certain where to go or what to do.

  British soldiers were everywhere, forming bucket brigades, evacuating buildings, herding huddles of stricken women and children dressed in nightclothes and bed caps to the periphery. One company of marines armed with axes and crowbars worked at demolishing a whole row of combustible tenements to create a firebreak. Others worked as litter bearers for the injured.

  “Come with me, Mrs. Merrick.” A hand slapped her on the back, and the familiar voice added, “They’re calling for hands to fill the pumps.”

  Anne followed Patsy Quinn all the way to where Wall Street met Broad Way. She joined the line transferring water twenty yards from the well on the corner of Wall Street to the fire engine positioned in front of a burning mansion.

  A man stood on the top of the engine and aimed the protruding copper tube like a cannon at the uppermost story. Buckets and buckets of water were passed up the line and poured into the reservoir at the back end of the engine. Six strong-armed men flanking each side moved the crossbar handles up and down, working the pump.

  Something was not right. For all the hands and muscle power, they only managed to produce a feeble spurting stream, half the water never even reaching the target.

  “Like spitting on a bonfire,” Anne said.

  Patsy leaned in, passing a bucket. “Be better off pulling out their pizzles and pissing on the fire.”

  Timbers popped like musket shot, and the structure began to collapse. Brick walls crumbled inward, and in one giant sucking roar the house imploded in a ball of smoke and dust. A great golden plume of embers swirled up into the air, and everyone scattered, running as flaming brands and burning chunks rained down like the storms of hell, bouncing off the cobblestones in miniature glittering explosions.

  Bucket in hand, Patsy grabbed Anne by the arm and they ran in a crouch across Broad Way, coughing and choking, raising arms to shield their faces from the intense heat, and the cinders and ash roiling through the air.

  Flakes of fire alighted on the pitched roof of neighboring Trinity Church. In no time, flames crawled up toward the tall steeple, gobbling up the cedar shake skin like a swarm of locusts. Anne could not believe the tallest structure in the city was burning like a pine pitch torch. Soon the old stone walls supported a fiery skeleton of beams and rafters, looking much like a burning fist pointing one bony finger to the heavens.

  All efforts came to a halt, and all eyes transfixed with a collective indrawn breath on the steeple moving in a slow, graceful list to the west—snapping and cracking—hitting the earth in a booming iridescent puff of debris.

  “It’s hopeless.” Anne fell back against the wall.

  A mass of men and women with a gang of children tagging along came bouncing down Broad Way, shouting and shaking fists. At the forefront, pinioned between two large grenadiers, a slight, shirtless man was dragged along, sobbing, “Christ Almighty, it wasn’t me! I swear it wasn’t me.”

  The throng fell back as the Redcoats made straight for the burning church. Like watching a macabre shadow play in silhouette, one soldier drove the suspected arsonist to his knees with a brutal musket butt to the head. Taking the stunned man by the limbs, swinging once—twice—they tossed him into the
heart of the fire.

  To the shrieks of those watching, the man emerged from the fire—a stumbling, howling, keening apparition—smoke rising from the top of his head and from his right leg in flames. Arms outstretched, he lurched forward, steam wafting from the seared flesh covering his shoulders and back. With their relentless bayonets, the Redcoats herded him back, poking and prodding the wailing wretch, forcing him back into the conflagration.

  Gagging, Anne could not find a breath. Choking on sick, she hunkered down over the bucket of water Patsy had carried away from the line, splashing the brackish well water on her face. She sucked a mouthful from her cupped hands to wash the sharp taste of burnt hair and scorched flesh from her mouth.

  “Feels like I swallowed a spoonful of sand.” Patsy squatted down beside Anne, and took a drink. Tearing two wide strips from the hem of her petticoat, she doused them in the bucket, and handed one to Anne. “Tie it on—over your mouth and nose.”

  A passing Redcoat gave them each a shove with his boot. “Up off yer arses, bawds, and back to the buckets!”

  Anne bristled, and rose to give the man a good piece of her mind, but Patsy snatched her by the hand. “Not this night, Mrs. Merrick. Not after how they did that poor fellow.”

  The west wind swept the fire into the dense maze of wooden tenements behind the churchyard. Anne and Patsy ran past the graveyard and joined the bucket brigades trying to keep the fire from jumping over to Lumber Street.

  All nearby buildings were being evacuated, and Anne passed buckets to Patsy, watching several hundred rebel prisoners stumble out from Van Cortlandt’s Sugar House to be hustled into a double-file column by several companies of armed guards.

  “There are some customers of mine in those lines . . .” Anne whispered, with a nod, swinging a heavy leather bucket into Patsy’s hand.

  “I know some of ’em as well . . .” Patsy waggled her brow. “Customers.”

  Anne stiffened. This woman knows Jack.

  Sordid images flashed through her mind, knocking the wind from her as if she’d fallen from a great height. She tugged at the swath of fabric stifling her breath. In the chaos, it was easy to forget this friendly, helpful girl with soot smudged across her forehead was the same exotic temptress she saw Jack kiss so dearly—the cause of much heartache.