A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman

windows of them as disobeys.’

      Sam: ‘See that Crown officials, stamp-holders, customs officers are made aware of our discontent.’

      ‘Break their windows an’ all,’ Mackintosh said. ‘Keep ’em awake at nights with our drummin’.’

      In other words, thought Makepeace, Sam was going to play pretty to the British and let Mackintosh and his mobs stir the pot.

      Even had there been an opportunity for her to have a secret word with Adams, she decided, in view of these ‘strategics’, that it would be unwise. He was advocating reason yet allowing Mackintosh to inflame his audience for another night of rioting. Maybe he was out for revolution but, whether he was or wasn’t, he’d got a tiger by the tail; even if he’d be prepared to understand why she sheltered a representative of British tyranny, his tiger sure wouldn’t. Word would inevitably get out. Broken windows, lost custom: that’d be the least of it. Did they tar and feather women? She didn’t know.

      She didn’t, she realized, know what men were capable of when they got into this state. She was watching the customers of years, ordinary decent grumblers, become unrecognizable with focused hatred.

      For the first time, she wished Sam Adams would leave. She nearly said to him: Ain’t you got other taverns to go speechifyin’ in? But it appeared that he had anyway. She saw him and Mackintosh to the door, curtsied, received a kiss of thanks from Adams, a grunt from his companion and watched them go with relief.

      But it was as if they’d lit a fuse that gave them just time to get out before it reached the gunpowder. Makepeace turned back to a taproom that, without the restraint of Sam Adams’s presence, was exploding.

      Was that old Zeobab climbing up on a table? ‘Let’s drub ’em, boys,’ he was shouting. ‘Let’s scrag them sugar-suckers.’ An exhortation causing stool-legs to be broken off for weapons, perfectly good pipes to be smashed against the grate like Russian toast glasses, and rousing Jake Mallum into trying to grab her for a kiss.

      And Tantaquidgeon, her chucker-out, was upstairs.

      Makepeace cooled Mallum’s passion by bringing her knee up into his unmentionables, yelled for Betty and, with her cook, managed to snatch back two stool-legs with which to belabour heads and generally restore order. Betty lifted Zeobab off the table and planted him firmly on the jetty.

      Makepeace went to the door, holding it wide: ‘Git to your rampage, gents,’ she called, ‘but not here.’

      She saw them out, some shamefaced and apologizing, most not even saying goodnight as they rushed past her to begin another night of liberty-wreaking. Already flames flared on Beacon Hill and Boston was beginning to reverberate with the beat of drums.

      Sugar Bart was in front of her. ‘That redskin were healthy enough earlier,’ he said. ‘Saw him with you in town. Where’s he gone?’

      Sure as eggs, he knew she’d seen what he and the others had done to the man on Fish Quay this morning and found Tantaquidgeon’s unusual absence from her side suspicious. He couldn’t think she’d betray him but he knew something was up.

      She loathed the man; he frightened her. ‘You ain’t welcome at the Meg any more, Mr Stubbs,’ she told him stiffly, ‘not after what you said about Aaron.’

      He rubbed his chin, staring straight into her eyes. ‘The Sons is at war now,’ he said. ‘Know what they do to informers in war, Makepeace Burke?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you still ain’t welcome.’

      She watched him hop away, ravenlike, into the darkness, then quickly bolted every shutter and door.

       CHAPTER THREE

      Tantaquidgeon opened the door at her rap; he’d been in darkness, she realized, she’d forgotten to leave him a rushlight, and Betty, who didn’t believe in fresh air for her patients, had closed the shutters. She opened them. The room was an oven that, from the smell of it, had been cooking Tantaquidgeon and vomit. ‘Dammit, what’d you let him do that for?’

      The Englishman had been sick on his pillow, his head nestled in it. He was still asleep.

      She pushed Tantaquidgeon from the room, fetched a basin of water and a cloth, dragged the pillow from under, propped the Englishman’s head while she sponged his hair and face clean, and found a fresh pillow. He slept all through, with no care for the extra washing he was giving her, let alone that someone – she – must now sit up with him all night in case he be sick again and choke on it.

      Her eyes pricked with tears of fatigue and self-pity. Night was precious, an escape from seventeen daily hours on a treadmill of work. ‘And now you,’ she said to the bed. ‘Ain’t I lucky?’

      The wharves were quiet tonight – the rioting was centred on the middle of the town and its noise reached her room reduced and compacted, like the buzzing of an exceptionally angry hive.

      She lit a lamp – the oil in it was insufficient but damned if she’d pour in more; he was costing her enough already – put out the rushlight, snatched up her bible and sat on a stool beside the bed, opening the book at Matthew 25 for some encouragement from the Mount of Olives.

      ‘For I was hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick’ – all over your pillow – ‘and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.’

      As always, it calmed her. She fell asleep.

      She woke up in darkness to find the top half of her body slewed on the bed, her head resting sideways on something hard. It came to her that she had been asleep across the drownder’s body, her cheek against his knee. Knee? Christ have mercy. She jumped up as if on springs.

      ‘Pity,’ a voice said, sadly, ‘I was enjoying that.’

      Shocked, disgusted, Makepeace walked to the window. Her cheeks were hot with embarrassment, so was her ear where it had lain on his …

      A view of the jetty’s mooring post down below, sheeny in the moonlight, did little to restore her composure, but for her own sake she must pretend she didn’t realize what his pleasure had consisted of. Her fault for lying on it. Sick as he was, he was a man. ‘Still in Boston, am I?’ the voice asked.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Still your tavern?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And to whom am I indebted for my delivery from Boston’s waters?’

      ‘Name’s Makepeace Burke.’

      ‘Thank you again, Miss Burke.’

      His voice was a pleasing tenor and, despite his questions, suggested an intimacy she found unsettling, as if he’d met her before. Her answers came like a crow’s caw in contrast.

      ‘It’s been a curious day, Miss Burke … has it been a day?’

      ‘Fished you out early this morning.’

      ‘Difficult to distinguish fact from dreams. Did I at some point gather that my presence in your hostelry is a cause for concern?’

      She said: ‘English ain’t welcome here.’

      ‘Ah.’

      She was ready for him now. She turned round, went back to the bed and sat on the stool, leaning forward and positioning the lamp so that she could see him. ‘How’d you come to fall in the harbour?’

      ‘I was set on, belaboured and, presumably, thrown in while unconscious.’ He squinted in order to read her frown carefully. ‘Or did I imagine it?’

      He was no fool. ‘You imagined it,’ she said. There was no point in pit-patting around. ‘That’s my price