A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman

with Parson Mather’s castigations roaring from the pulpit; in front of the magistrates’ bench, condemned as a trull; the Roaring Meg closed by official seal as a house of ill repute …

      Dapifer, glancing at her, saw her face age with defeat and became angry.

      Goody Busgutt had no interest in him. Her lips distended and narrowed, spouting shame – all of it at Makepeace. Who hung her head. She deserved it. Bringing him here, sending Betty to bed instead of making her sit with him … worrying, even now, about what he thought of her humiliation. She was sick; she wanted to fall down.

      He was sitting up, looking comically prim with the bedspread clutched to his neck. Uttering something unbelievable.

      ‘Thank the Lord,’ he was saying, and he was saying it to Goody Busgutt. ‘Thank the Lord for you, mistress. Rescue, rescue.’

      Goody Busgutt’s mouth paused in a quirk. ‘Eh? Who are you?’

      ‘Madam, my name is Philip Dapifer. I was thrown into the harbour yesterday by rioters for being an Englishman. This woman and her Indian dragged me out and, since there was nowhere else, brought me here. Most unwillingly, I may add. You look a kindly soul, will you get me food?’

      ‘Eh?’

      ‘Mistress,’ said Sir Philip Dapifer, ‘I have been here all night and this female has done nothing but lecture me on my politics and my soul. She has read to me from the Good Book without ceasing …’ He pointed to the bible lying open on the little table. ‘Mistress, I am as eager for the Lord’s word as anyone but did not our Lord minister to the sick as well as preach? Not a morsel has she given me, not a sip.’

      ‘Not a sip?’ Goody Saltonstall’s wattle quivered sympathetically.

      ‘And my head aches most damnably. I’m ill.’

      Saltonstall was already won; Goody Busgutt was holding out. ‘Thee talks fast enough for a sick ’un, Englishman.’

      ‘There you have it,’ Dapifer said, as if the two of them had struck agreement. ‘She holds it against me that I am from England. For some reason, she blames me that her fiancé has not yet married her. Since she learned that I have connections at the Admiralty, she has been on at me to find out what happened to his ship. I suspect he has sailed to the Tortugas to get away from her. I tell you, mistress, were I her fiancé, I wouldn’t marry her either.’ He fell back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

      Goody Busgutt walked round the bed like a woman searching corners for cockroaches. In the morning light, Dapifer’s pallor looked deathly, a man without enough energy to raise his eyelids, let alone any other part of his anatomy.

      ‘Thee could have fed him some broth, miss,’ she said.

      Makepeace’s wits were coming back. ‘’Tis the Sabbath,’ she sulked.

      ‘When did the Sabbath stop the Lord’s work? I tell thee, Goody Saltonstall and I should wish to be at our prayers instead of here, saving thy reputation. What were thee thinking of? Thee could have been the talk of the neighbourhood. Now fetch this poor soul some broth.’

      ‘An’ us,’ said Goody Saltonstall, ‘I’m moithered.’

      Makepeace got up, still astounded. He’d rescued her as surely as she’d rescued him. He’d worked the oracle on the two flintiest women in Boston.

      ‘Get to it, then,’ Saltonstall told her, sharply. ‘We’re seeing to ’un now.’

      Makepeace got to it, carefully clicking her teeth and muttering resentfully about free broth for the undeserving. Downstairs she fell into Betty’s arms, babbling.

      ‘Never believed you was jus’ talkin’, did they?’ asked Betty.

      ‘They believed him. And it was true,’ Makepeace said. She sat down, puffing, and ran her fingers round her neck, still feeling the noose. ‘In a way.’

      ‘Oh-ah.’

      ‘Don’t you start. And get that fire going. Pop in a couple of lobster and I’ll run up some pastry for patties.’ She was exhilarated by escape.

      ‘On the Sabbath? What’ll they say?’

      ‘Betty, Sabbath or no, we could set up a maypole and caper round it. I tell you, he charmed ’em.’

      ‘They ain’t the only ones, I reckon.’

      When the trays were ready, Betty stopped Makepeace from carrying them up. ‘I’ll take ’em, gal.’

      She was right, of course; she usually was. The Goodies might be spellbound but they’d be watchful; she could hardly maintain a hostile front towards the Englishman by seeking his presence every few minutes. With a sense of loss, Makepeace watched Betty’s backside sway upstairs. The enchanted night was over.

      She sobered. If he’d rescued her from one danger, another loomed for them both. Goody Busgutt had no interest in politics, her concern was righteousness, as was Saltonstall’s, but you could as well prevent either from gossiping as alter the weather. The Sons of Liberty and everybody else in the Cut would be aware of the Englishman’s presence in the Meg as soon as the Goodies left it; her marriage was saved but her custom was ruined.

      Makepeace went upstairs and woke Aaron. He was to take Tantaquidgeon with him and go to Hutchinson’s house and tell the Lieutenant-Governor to send a sedan chair for Dapifer with an escort. ‘He ain’t fit for walking yet.’

      ‘A chair and escort? Why not trumpeters while they’re about it?’

      Makepeace shrugged. ‘Might as well, there’ll be a crowd whatever we do. I want him safe through it.’

      Aaron winked, as had Betty. ‘Ooh-er.’

      She said wearily, ‘There wasn’t no ooh-er.’ She suspected that her exchanges in the dark with the magical fish she’d caught would be all she had to sustain her from now on. Were they worth it? They’d have to be.

      For the rest of the day, he was the Goodies’ catch. Every so often one of them would come down to berate her for her neglect of him and command some recipe for his improvement. ‘Did thee not see how poorly he be? Now he’s coughing. Where’s the aniseed? And a plaster for his head.’

      She gave them what they asked for, along with some of her best Jamaican rum for themselves, anxious to keep them in situ for as long as possible until she could form some plan for counteracting the damage they would necessarily inflict on the Roaring Meg when they departed.

      The lobsters and patties had gone down well, the Goodies having included themselves in the Sabbath dispensation of hot food for the sick. Betty came down with trays on which no scrap was left. She frightened Makepeace with a high keening as she flopped onto the kitchen settle and put her apron over her head.

      ‘What is it? What is it? What did they say to you?’

      The apron moved from side to side. ‘They’s snorin’. But he ain’t. He …’ Betty’s voice failed. Her hand pantomime indicated that the Englishman had called her over to the bed, putting a finger to his lips.

      ‘What did he want?’

      Makepeace waited a full minute before Betty was able to answer. ‘Ladder.’

      ‘He wanted a ladder?’

      Betty’s apron nodded. ‘Fetch a ladder for …’

      Makepeace waited again, her own laughter on the simmer despite everything.

      ‘A ladder and not to tell nobody … for him and Goody Saltonstall is plannin’ to elope.’

      Makepeace sat down beside her friend and wailed with her.

      Aaron came back while they were both sweating over the next collation, lobscouse and flummery. His news lacked amusement; what he’d found in town had shaken him.

      It was Sunday. Boston,