A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman

what passed for rich in Makepeace’s world – who was also a good man. She thought now: Captain Busgutt didn’t divorce his wife, though she was sickly and gave him no children. At her death he’d been left with no one on whom to bestow his riches and goodness, except his mother. He’d promised Makepeace a house, a brick house, near the Common, with an orchard and, most importantly, a place in it for Betty, young Josh and Tantaquidgeon. It was a considerable offer – the prospect of ending up a childless old maid and a burden on Aaron had given Makepeace sleepless nights – and she had accepted it.

      True, he was twice her age and didn’t set the mermaids singing but Makepeace had seen the unwisdom of her parents’ union – Temperance Burke had been made old before her time by her husband’s shiftlessness – and did not consider passion a good foundation for marriage.

      Captain Busgutt, above all, was admired in the community. The drunken reputation of Makepeace’s father, her trade, the colour of her hair, the dislike accorded her brother: all these had kept her clinging onto the edge of social acceptance by her fingertips. Captain Busgutt would cloak all of them in his own respectability and Makepeace, after a lifetime of the unusual, longed for the mundane with the desire of a vampire for blood.

      ‘For a man of his age, Captain Busgutt seems to believe in long engagements,’ said the voice from the bed. ‘Why are you still waiting, Miss Burke?’

      ‘None of your business.’ Then, because, despite everything, conversation with this man was curiously luxurious, she said, ‘Goody Busgutt.’

      ‘Another of the Captain’s wives?’

      ‘His mother.’

      Goody Busgutt had strongly objected to the marriage, pointing out its disadvantages to a man with a position to maintain and, like the good son he was, Captain Busgutt had agreed to delay the wedding until his return from England – the hiatus to be a term of trial during which his mother could assess Makepeace’s fitness for the position of Mrs Busgutt.

      Makepeace did not tell the Englishman this. She said, ‘Goody Busgutt is a woman of righteous character and forceful opinions. She thinks Captain Busgutt could make a safer choice of wife. Maybe he could.’

      Makepeace had forceful opinions of her own and at first the thought of being tested by Goody Busgutt had very nearly led her to break off the engagement. Then she’d thought: Why let that canting, lip-sucking old sepulchre ruin your future, Makepeace Burke? She can’t last for ever.

      Plums like Captain Busgutt didn’t drop from the tree every day.

      Suddenly, Makepeace was angry and frightened by the intimacy being established between her and the man in the bed. ‘And if she hears of it … if Goody Busgutt knew you was here …’

      ‘She wouldn’t look kindly on the wedding?’

      ‘She would not.’

      ‘What would she think we’d got up to?’ he said mournfully.

      Unsettled, she got up and went to the window. The moon was setting; it would be dawn soon. The shadows of ribbed hulls in Thompson’s boatyard across the slipway reminded her of Captain Busgutt’s creased, liver-spotted hands, their nails misshapen by a hundred shipboard accidents.

      Dapifer, watching her from his bed, smelled air fresher than any of the night and whatever hideous line in soap she used. She was … unusual, he thought, with her unexpected answers in flat ‘a’s; like this damn continent, new and disrespectful. Too good for Captain Busgutt, he knew that.

      He saw her stiffen. ‘What …?’ he began but she hissed at him to keep quiet.

      Carefully, Makepeace eased the shutter further forward so that she could peer out under its cover. An unaccountable shadow had moved in Thompson’s boatyard. She gestured behind her for the Englishman to snuff the rushlight.

      Dapifer pinched out the flame, struggled out of bed and limped across the floor to her. ‘What is it?’ He kept his voice low.

      She shook her head and pointed, at the same time putting a hand out to stop his access to the window. He caught hold of her shoulder to steady himself and felt the tension in there, the skin of it only separated from his hand by a thin layer of material which stopped at the curve of her neck. All at once they were conspirators, allies against whatever was out there threatening them both.

      After a while they both heard the tip-tap of movement, like a raven’s hopping, receding from the quay down an alley. She let out a breath and the muscle of her shoulder under his hand relaxed as tension went out of her – to be replaced by the awareness of how close he was. She stood still for another second and then turned. He didn’t move. ‘Are they watching us?’ he asked.

      She nodded.

      Us.

      He was taller than she was, her nose was level with his chin, the tip of her breasts almost against his ribs; Makepeace could smell his skin and Betty’s Specific. She knew he’d said something, his mouth had moved, but there was another conversation in progress between their bodies and she found difficulty in attending to anything else.

      ‘What you say?’

      ‘Is it trouble?’

      Trouble.

      She pushed past him. ‘We got to get you away,’ she said. Away from me. But the damage was done, there’d been an acknowledgement, something had been established.

      He used her as a crutch to climb back into bed, his arm a yoke across the back of her neck. He didn’t need to lean that heavily, they both knew it.

      ‘I’m still a sick man,’ he said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘I said, my dear Procrustes, I am too ill to move.’

      ‘Sabbath,’ she said. ‘It’s the Sabbath today. The Sons won’t be on the streets tonight. We’ll smuggle you away then. Now get your sleep and let me get mine.’ Determinedly, she plumped herself on her stool, crossed her arms and leaned her back on the wall. She should leave, she knew, go down to the taproom and its settle, but the weird enchantment of the night insisted she stay out its last moments.

      Dapifer closed his eyes obediently, wondering at a rioting mob which left off rioting on Sundays – and at a shared moment in a window with a tavern-keeper that had proved as erotic as any in his life.

      Two hours went by.

      Downstairs there was a rap on the door. A yawning Josh, readying himself to escape the boredom of a Boston Sabbath by going on an illegal fishing trip with friends, unguardedly opened it. A squall of camphor and propriety swept by him and up the stairs to Makepeace’s bedroom, awakening the two sleepers in it with a voice that could have clipped hedges.

      ‘And what is this?’ asked Goody Busgutt.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      Church. Oh God, God, I should’ve been in church.

      Behind Goody Busgutt was Goody Saltonstall; they hunted as a pair. Saltonstall being exceptionally fat and Busgutt thin, they resembled an egg and its timer in petticoats. In fact, they were the area’s moral police.

      As Goody Busgutt was saying, still from the doorway: ‘I knew, I knew. Moment you wasn’t in church, Makepeace Burke, I smelled licentiousness. ’Twas my duty to sniff it out, even if you wasn’t my son’s intended.’

      And it was. Though innocent, Makepeace did not question Goody Busgutt’s right, either as a future mother-in-law or as society’s licentiousness-sniffer, to invade her house. The goodwives might be an anachronism elsewhere but in this Puritan part of Boston they had the community’s authority to see that its women behaved like Puritans. They had the ear of the magistrates and could ensure that fornicators and adulterers received a public whipping, or at least a heavy fine – and had.

      She