A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman

jump and shake disasters down on her head like rocks from an eruption. Day before yesterday her life had been neatly patterned, not happy perhaps – whose was? – but bearable, useful. Tonight, because she’d acted the Good Samaritan, she stood stripped of everything she’d previously counted good.

      And what in exchange? An ecstasy so acute that she suffered for the man who’d just been stricken as if they were twinned.

      ‘And now having to serve you buggers,’ she said, slopping another tankard into another fist. ‘Ain’t I lucky?’

      ‘I hope you are, miss,’ the redcoat said, fervently. ‘We was goddam thirsty.’

      ‘Don’t you swear in this house,’ she snapped at him.

      As soon as she could she made for the kitchen. He’d managed to get himself in hand and was putting his good arm into a coat that angels had tailored. Robert stood by, holding a sword and its belt. ‘I’m taking ship for England right away,’ Dapifer said, briskly. ‘Robert, give us a moment and then fetch Sir Thomas in here.’

      Robert minced back to the taproom, eyebrows working.

      They faced each other in the firelight. Tension had replaced Dapifer’s normal assumption of dejection, making him appear better looking and less familiar to her. ‘There you have it,’ he said after a moment. ‘I have to go back. Ffoulkes’s wife is dead and he has … had a young son. I’m the boy’s guardian, I’m responsible.’ There was a cleaver on the table and he lifted it and drove it deep into the pine. ‘I’m responsible for every bloody thing – Ffoulkes’s death. You. All this.’

      ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I’m responsible for me.’

      ‘But I’ll wager you don’t fish any more men out of the harbour.’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘They can stay there.’

      He nodded. He pointed to a purse on the mantel. ‘The reward,’ he said. ‘Forty pounds as agreed, and a bit extra.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      There wasn’t much else to say. She busied herself trying to pull the cleaver out of the table. It was still quivering. ‘Look what you done.’

      ‘Look what I’ve done. Would you do me a favour before I go?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Take that bloody cap off your head.’

      She thought about it for a moment, then pulled the strings at her chin and took the cap off, knowing it was the most sensual and abandoned thing she had ever done or would ever do.

      The curls came warm onto her neck. His arm reached for her and the Meg’s kitchen twirled into a vortex that centred on the two of them, bodies absorbing into each other in its centrifugal force.

      Somebody from another dimension was coughing. Robert in the doorway was a-hem, a-hemming. Behind him, the Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts Bay watched them with the benignity of a man used to seeing gentlemen kissing tavern-maids.

      Dapifer was unconcerned. He kept his arm round her. ‘I want this woman protected, Tom. An armed guard, if you please. For as long as may be necessary.’

      ‘I don’t want a guard.’ But neither of the men paid attention to her.

      ‘Of course,’ said Sir Thomas.

      ‘And I shall need a passage on the Lord Percy. I have urgent business in England.’

      ‘Certainly. One of the boats can take you out to the ship. My dear fellow, I feel this has been a most inauspicious visit but I trust …’

      Makepeace wrenched herself free and Dapifer strolled away from her to the taproom, chatting.

      She began bundling her hair back into her cap, wondering what string connected lips to labia that both those parts of her were twanging. She sat down to calm herself, then sat up. The man Robert was still in the doorway. ‘What.?’

      ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ He quirked a hand towards the mantelshelf, his little face twisted. ‘There’s a hundred guineas in gold in that purse, did you know?’

      She was suddenly very tired. ‘Is there?’

      ‘There is. What did you do to earn it?’

      The taproom was emptying as soldiers left to take up guard duty at points around town likely to be attacked once the Sabbath lull was over; other reinforcements were being sent from the garrison at South End. The Cut vibrated from the stamp of marching boots.

      Two men were being detailed to stay at the Roaring Meg, one of them the soldier who’d said he was thirsty. She saw them have a last swig of ale, shoulder their muskets and take up position on the bridge outside the front door. ‘They can’t stay there.’ She went up to their sergeant as he ordered the last contingent out. ‘I don’t want those redcoats there.’

      He shrugged. ‘Orders, miss.’

      ‘But …’ She looked for Hutchinson; he was talking to an officer. She went up to him and tugged his sleeve. ‘I don’t want men guarding this place.’

      He smiled vaguely; he had other things to think of. ‘Sir Philip is worried for you, my dear. He thinks his presence may have made this inn unpopular with the rabble.’

      ‘Will be if it’s got lobster-backs outside the door.’ But he’d already gone to make final arrangements with the officer in charge.

      And it’s tavern, not inn, and they ain’t rabble. No doubt he thought he was protecting her. He didn’t understand; a guard on her door put her on the same footing as the Tories, as Stamp Master Oliver and the Lieutenant-Governor – and look what happened to them. She’d be lucky if it was only her effigy the Sons of Liberty strung up.

      She could have appealed to Dapifer but she didn’t; they’d said their goodbyes.

      She and Betty stood hand in hand on the jetty to watch the embarkation. Dapifer’s boat was to head south along the waterfront to the Lord Percy, the Lieutenant-Governor’s north to Castle William. Besides the navy’s rowers, each had a guard with them.

      As Dapifer went down the steps with Hutchinson behind him a drum began to beat somewhere on Beacon Hill. At first the two women thought it some military signal but the reaction of the men told them it was not. Each sailor’s head went up and they readied their oars. Hutchinson flinched for a moment, like a man who’d been punched.

      The beat was answered by another in the east, then west, then south, then others joined in, more, until Boston palpitated as if infested by a thousand giant, deep-toned, stridulating crickets. They could hear whistling now, and the crackle of fire. The Sabbath was over.

      Hutchinson managed an admirable shrug. ‘These Bostonians,’ he said.

      Makepeace didn’t look at Dapifer as he was rowed away, nor he at her; she kept her head turned in the direction Sir Thomas’s boat was taking, watching for Aaron. Behind her the silence that had fallen over the Roaring Meg was filled by the distant roar of the town where the glow of bonfires matched the tangerine of an extraordinary moon.

      ‘Boat out there,’ Betty said. Her deep shout carried across the water: ‘That you, Aaron?’

      No reply, but she was right. Makepeace could see a light floating on the sea directly opposite, impossible to judge its distance from the jetty; somebody appeared to be fishing with the use of a fire-pot – a dangerous and, she thought, futile activity at this time of the year.

      ‘Ain’t Aaron,’ she said.

      The projectile came at them almost lazily, not seeming so much to get nearer as to grow in size, a bit of comet spinning out of control with fire at its centre, getting bigger and bigger.

      There was a splatter against the end of the jetty and little trills of flame began running