A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman

said, hopefully, ‘Dump him outside, like.’

      Betty pointed to a meat cleaver hanging on the wall. ‘You’ve a mind to kill him, use that,’ she said. ‘Quicker.’

      ‘Oh … oh piss.’ Makepeace ran her hand round her neck to wipe it and discovered for the first time that her cap was hanging from its strap and her hair was loose. Hastily, she bundled both into place. Respectable women kept their hair hidden – especially when it was a non-Puritan red.

      Although the kitchen’s high windows faced north, the sun was infiltrating their panes. Steam came from the lobster boilers on a fire that burned permanently in the grate of the kitchen’s brick range, and the back door had to be shut not just, as today, to prevent intruders but to keep out the flies from the privy which, with the hen-house, occupied the sand-salted strip of land that was the Meg’s back yard.

      Makepeace went to the door. Young Josh had been posted as lookout. ‘Anybody comes, we’re closed. Hear me?’

      ‘Yes ’m, Miss ’Peace.’

      She bolted the door, as she had bolted the tavern’s other two. Tantaquidgeon was keeping vigil at the front. ‘Git to it, then,’ she said.

      They were reluctant to cut away the patient’s coat in order to set his collarbone – it had to be his best; nobody could afford two of that quality – so they stripped him of it, and his shirt, causing him to groan.

      ‘Lucky he keep faintin’,’ Betty said. She squeezed her eyes shut and ran her fingers along the patient’s shoulder: ‘Ready?’

      Makepeace put a rolled cloth between his teeth and then bore down on his arms. Her back ached. ‘Ready.’

      There was a jerk and a muffled ‘Aaagh’.

      ‘Oh, hush up,’ Makepeace told him.

      Betty felt the joint. ‘Sweet,’ she said. ‘I’m one sweet sawbones.’

      ‘Will he do?’

      ‘Runnin’ a fever. Them Sons give him a mighty larrupin’. Keep findin’ new bruises and we ain’t got his britches off yet.’

      ‘You can do that upstairs. He’s got to stay, I guess.’

      ‘Don’t look to me like he’s ready to run off.’

      Makepeace sighed. It had been inevitable. ‘Which room?’

      Betty grinned. The Meg was a tavern, not an inn, and took no overnight guests. The bedroom she shared with her son was directly across the lane from the window of the house opposite. Aaron’s, too, faced the Cut. The only one overlooking the sea and therefore impregnable to spying eyes was Makepeace’s.

      ‘Damnation.’ The problem wasn’t just the loss of her room but the fact that its door was directly across the corridor from the one serving the meeting-room used by the Sons of Liberty.

      Oh well, as her Irish father used to say: ‘Let’s burn that bridge when we get to it.’

      They put the bad arm in a sling of cheese-cloth and Tantaquidgeon lifted the semi-naked body and carried it up the tiny, winding back stairs, followed by Betty with a basket of salves. ‘And take his boot off afore it dirties my coverlet,’ Makepeace hissed after them.

      Left alone, she looked round the kitchen for tell-tale signs of the catch’s presence in it. Nothing, apart from a bloodstain on the table that had seeped from a wound on his head. Jehosophat, they’d cudgelled him hard.

      She was still scrubbing when Aaron came in, having rowed back from Cambridge after a night out with friends. ‘All hail, weird sister, I expect my breakfast, the Thaneship of Cawdor and a scolding. Why all the smoke in town, by the way? Did Boston catch fire?’

      ‘It surely did.’ He looked dark-eyed with what she suspected was a night of dissipation but she was so relieved he’d missed the rioting that he got an explanation, a heavy breakfast and a light scolding.

      He was horrified. ‘Good God,’ he said.

      ‘Aaron!’

      ‘Well … the idiots, the weak-brained, scabby, disloyal, bloody—’

      ‘Aaron!’

      ‘—imbeciles. I blame Sam Adams. What’s he thinking of to let scum like that loose on respectable people?’

      ‘You stop your cussing,’ she said. ‘They ain’t scum. And Sam’s a good man. Respectable people? Respectable lick-spittles, respectable yes-King-Georgers, no-King-Georgers, let me wipe your boots with my necktie, your majesty. I wished I’d been with ’em.’

      ‘It’s a reasonable tax, ’Peace.’

      ‘You don’t pay it.’ Immediately, she was sorry. She didn’t want him indebted; she’d gone without shoes and, sometimes, food to raise and educate him and done it gladly. What she hadn’t reckoned on was that he’d become an English-loving Tory.

      She broke the silence. ‘Aaron, there’s a man up in my room—’

      He grinned. ‘About time.’

      ‘You wash your mouth out.’ She told him the story of her dawn catch. He thought it amusing and went upstairs to see for himself.

      Makepeace turned her attention to the lobsters which, neglected, had begun to tear each other’s claws off.

      ‘Reckon he’s English,’ was Aaron’s verdict on his return. ‘A lord to judge from his coat. Did you see how they cut the cuffs now? When he marries you out of gratitude, remember your little brother.’

      ‘Sooner marry the Pope,’ Makepeace said. Aaron could be trusted on fashion; he made a study of it. An Englishman, by Hokey, worse and worse. ‘That important, somebody’ll be missing him, so keep your ears open today and maybe we’ll find out who he is. But don’t ask questions, it’d seem suspicious. And, Aaron …’

      ‘Yes, sister?’

      ‘I want you home tonight. But, Aaron …’

      ‘Yes, sister?’

      ‘No argifying and no politics. The Sons is getting serious.’

      ‘Ain’t they, though?’ He kissed her goodbye. ‘Just wait ’til I tell ’em you’re marrying the Pope.’

      She waved him off at the door.

      The Cut was awake now, shutters opening, bedclothes over windowsills to be fumigated by the sun, brushes busy on doorsteps, its men coming up it towards the waterfront – even those without jobs spent the day on the docks hoping, like rejected lovers, that they would be taken on again. Only Aaron went against the flow, heading towards the business quarter with an easy swagger.

      Few wished him good morning and she suspected he didn’t notice those who did. Already he’d be lost in the role of Romeo or Henry V or whatever hero he’d chosen for himself today; he was mad for Shakespeare. The Cut, however, didn’t see youthful play-acting, it saw arrogance.

      From a doorway further down came a sniff. ‘You want to tell that brother of yours to walk more seemly.’ Goody Busgutt was watching her watch Aaron.

      ‘Morning, Mistress Busgutt. And why would I do that?’

      ‘Morning, Makepeace. For his own good. He may think he’s Duke Muck-a-muck but the Lord don’t ’steem him any higher’n the rest of us mortals. A sight lower than many.’

      Makepeace returned to her empty kitchen. ‘I’ll ’steem you, you bald-headed, bearded, poison-peddling, pious …’ In place of Mistress Busgutt, two lobsters died in the boiler, screaming. ‘… you shite-mongering, vicious old hell-hag.’

      Cursing was Makepeace’s vice, virtually her only one. John L. Burke, master of profanity, lived again in the Irish accent she unconsciously adopted when she indulged it. She allowed no swearing in others but, as with the best