The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (42 page)

Philip hadn’t thought of the grenadier captain since the meeting at the London Book-Store. But today’s chance encounter told him Stark had not forgotten their exchange. Nor forgiven Philip’s insolence.

As the captain rode out of sight, Anne slipped her arm through Philip’s—and smiled. He was immensely pleased. It was the first time, in all the weeks of their strolls and conversations, that she had touched him.

Given extra confidence by that touch, he attempted to kiss her when they returned to the dusky shadows of the stoop at Launder Street. She averted her mouth, so his lips only brushed her cheek. Then she slipped inside with a murmured word of farewell.

The kiss had been a letdown. Eminently unsatisfying.
Damn woman!
he thought as he trudged back to Dassett Alley.
Always in perfect control of the situation.

Perhaps, he decided wryly, that was why he kept returning to see her.

And would no doubt continue to do so.

“Mr. Kent where is Ben Edes? This must be printed immediately!”

The querulous voice brought Philip out from behind the press, to see Sam Adams at the door, shaking with something more than his perpetual palsy.

The man’s breath smelled rancid. His threadbare waistcoat bore numerous wine and food stains. He looked, in short, as disreputable as ever. And yet he was a figure of commanding presence as he thrust a sheet into Philip’s hand. The ink was still damp.

Outrageous Affront to Englishmen’s Liberties!
proclaimed the heading of the short composition. Philip said, “Mr. Edes is up in the Long Room talking with Mr. Hancock, sir—”

Adams snatched the paper back. “Then they must both see it personally. The damned rumors were true after all. North’s inviting disaster—
and
giving us precisely what I’ve hoped for!”

“How, Mr. Adams?” Philip asked as the other scuttled for the stairs.

The older man wheeled back, his slate-blue eyes almost maniacal with glee.

“With tea, young man. With their Goddamn tea! A packet brought the news just this morning. A bill passed in London not thirty days ago—twenty-seven April to be exact—granting the rotten East India Company a virtual monopoly in the colonial tea trade. To shore up the company’s foundering finances, the export duties which East India previously paid in England have been canceled. And henceforth, no tea may be sold here save by the exclusively appointed agents of the firm. Even paying the threepence tax on this side, the company will be able to undercut the prices of both smuggler’s tea and that sold by law-abiding Tory merchants.
Now
we’ll see the damned conservative businessmen admit I’ve been right in saying danger to one citizen—or one colony—is danger to all.”

“But why would they pass such a measure?” Philip asked. “It’s bound to be unpopular.”

“They want to test us again! And they have no guilt whatsoever about using the law to rescue the privileged scoundrels who’ve manipulated the East India Company into near-bankruptcy. Damme, it’s an issue with real teeth—and they’ll feel the bite, by God!”

In a transport of delight, Adams clattered up the stairs.

Philip recalled hearing Burke and Franklin discuss a proposed scheme to shore up the trading concern. Now the scheme had become a reality. Whether it would indeed provide Adams and his associates with the clear-cut issue they desired remained to be seen.

With a May breeze blowing through the open front door of Edes and Gill, Philip had trouble getting excited about the turn of events. The warm air, redolent of the salt sea and the green ripening of spring, filled his mind with erotic images of Anne Ware. The images persisted as he went back to the press and listlessly resumed printing a commercial handbill.

But in ten minutes, Ben Edes, Adams and the elegant Hancock came clattering downstairs. Philip was put to work setting type for a broadside that was nailed to the Liberty Tree by sundown.

The heat of early summer brought further intensification of the crisis of colonies against Crown.

In England, Dr. Franklin had somehow come into possession of a packet of letters penned by Governor Hutchinson and the Massachusetts Provincial Secretary, Andrew Oliver, to a member of the North ministry. The letters contained a frank, even brutal appraisal of the character and activities of the Boston radicals.

Franklin sent copies of the letters back to Adams, who was apparently supposed to honor Franklin’s original promise to the supplier of the letters that they would be kept confidential.

But that was Franklin’s promise, not Adams’. The latter read every one to a secret session of the legislature, then promptly set the Edes and Gill press to work printing the full texts.

The letters revealed and damned Governor Hutchinson as deceitful. They exposed him as a man who was publicly trying to maintain an image of sympathy with the colonists, while at the same time privately advising London to deal with the rebel ringleaders in the only appropriate fashion—harshly. One letter contained the bald assertion that
“there must be some abridgement of what is called English liberty.”

Laboring night after night at the press, with Ware, Warren, Revere and other members of the Long Room group coming and going constantly with new pamphlets, broadsides, articles for the
Gazette,
Philip soon realized that Adams had indeed found sparks he could fan into a blaze.

The Hutchinson letters were kindling. But the real fuel was the tea monopoly.

Governor Hutchinson talked of appointing one of his nephews as the agent and consignee for Boston. Immediately, as Adams had predicted, Tory merchants found themselves economically motivated to add their outcries to those of the liberals. One merchant actually wrote an article for the
Gazette
which said, in part,
“America will be prostrate before a monster that may be able to destroy every branch of our commerce, drain us of all our property and wantonly leave us to perish by the thousands!”
Philip marveled. The temporarily converted Tory sounded almost as rebellious as old Samuel himself.

Anne Ware was exhilarated by what she called this major blunder on the part of King George’s ministers.

She predicted to Philip that Adams would orchestrate the issue to a crescendo of protest—and even to open hostilities. The mobs might be roaming Boston again very soon—

But it annoyed Philip considerably that the tea matter was virtually all Anne wanted to talk about when they took their Sabbath walks.

In an attempt to divert her from the constant preoccupation with politics, Philip counted his wages, decided he could afford to spend four shillings and invited Anne to go with him on a Saturday night in late June to view Mrs. Hiller’s popular waxworks on Clark’s Wharf. Early evening found them outside the stile at the door of the clapboard building, Philip handing the admission of two shillings per person to a ragged boy fidgeting on a stool.

The noise of the wharf faded as they turned the stile and pushed through curtains into the lamplit hall. Elegant duplications of England’s kings and queens were ranged on pedestals, the sequins and gold threads and shimmering velvets of their costumes picking up the glow of smoky lamps hung from the ceiling beams. Anne and Philip walked slowly past the first of the curiously lifelike figures whose wax eyes stared unseeing into the lamplight and shadow. There was strong-jawed Arthur of legend, with Excalibur. A handsome Richard Lionheart in crusader’s mail. A villainous, hump-backed John. And many more.

But Mrs. Hiller’s had only a few customers tonight. Perhaps it was the weather. A muggy mist had settled on the harbor, and the atmosphere was twice as stifling inside. It seemed to affect Anne’s mood. She was almost as remote as the frozen image of Queen Elizabeth in her starched white neck ruff. Anne stood staring at the queen, not really seeing her—

“This isn’t appealing, is it?” Philip asked finally. He was sweaty and thoroughly uncomfortable in his good suit. “We needn’t stay—”

“Oh, yes, let’s see the whole exhibit,” Anne responded, though without much enthusiasm, he felt. She pointed. “There’s our current monarch. I’m surprised Mrs. Hiller hasn’t thrown him off the end of the pier.”

Two patrons moved past them in the half-light, casting grotesque shadows on the not too clean floor. Under another lantern, they paused before the pudgy-faced, pink-lipped statue of a young George III. He looked boyish, benign, utterly harmless in a splendid suit of pale blue satin and a neatly powdered wig. The King’s cheeks glistened. The wax melting in the heat, perhaps. On the pedestal someone had scrawled an obscene epithet.

Philip shook his head after a long moment of silence. “No, I think we’d better go. Your mind’s elsewhere.”

She turned, apologetic. “Truly, it is. I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t resist a little sarcasm: “Shall we stroll up the wharf and discuss tea again?”

“It’s poor Mr. Revere I’m concerned about. He dropped in this afternoon with the porringer he repaired for Papa. He looked exhausted. I don’t think he spoke ten words.”

That, at least, Philip understood. Revere had been to Edes and Gill hardly at all during the preceding month. Early in May, his wife, Sara, had died. Ben Edes said her death had left him devastated.

“Sara Revere shouldn’t have borne that last child in December,” Anne said. “Isanna came into the world sickly, and my father predicts she won’t live long either.” She looked at Philip in a peculiar, searching way. “Mrs. Revere was only thirty-six. A year older than my own mother when she died. They say a married woman loses a tooth for every baby. Sara lost many more than that—and life too. That’s too high a price to pay for being what the world expects of a woman.”

“A wife and mother, you mean?”

Anne nodded. “I want a family of my own. But not at the expense of destroying myself.”

“I did get the feeling you took exception to the way a young woman of Boston is supposed to behave.” He meant it as a mild joke. The strained expression that came onto her face showed him he’d made an error.

“There’s more to living than babies and kitchens and seeing to the furniture!” Anne exclaimed softly. “That’s all my mother had. It killed her.”

“When—” He hesitated, almost reluctant to ask. “—when was that?”

“In sixty-four.”

“I never thought to ask you before, Anne—did you ever have any brothers, or sisters?”

“One younger brother, Abraham, Junior. He lived only three months.”

“What caused your mother’s death?”

Again her eyes seemed to reach through him toward some haunted past.

“The smallpox. There was a terrible epidemic. Almost five thousand people died here in town. Nearly fifty of them from the preventive measure that was supposed to save them. My mother was one of those.”

“What kind of preventive measure?”

Running her hand absently along the shabby velvet rope that separated them from the waxworks, she answered, “Back in the year 1721, another epidemic struck. A Dr. Boylston and the Reverend Cotton Mather argued that the only way to save lives was to give prospective victims a light case of the pox by a new method called inoculation. The selectmen of Boston considered that heresy then. But by sixty-four, they were willing to try the idea. My mother took the venom drawn from a pox victim. Took it in the prescribed way—on the point of a needle, directly into a wound cut in her arm. But she developed no light case. She died of it.” After a moment, she finished, “Papa never blamed the physicians. The idea was sound. Many more were saved than perished. I think my mother was ready to die. I think she had died long before, really—”

Her voice trailed off as she stroked the rope, staring at Farmer George’s bulging wax eyes. Philip felt he might be close to some understanding of this girl’s unusual spirit and independence, closer than he’d ever been before. He asked:

“Will you explain that, Anne?”

She looked at him. “Explain what killed her? The same thing that killed Sara Revere. Having the world limit what a woman is allowed to do. Rear babies. Supervise servants. Think no independent thoughts of any consequence—I vowed it would never be the same with me.”

“Knowing you, I’d guess it won’t.”

“But it takes struggle, Philip. Society doesn’t change quickly—” Her eyes fixed on his. “Would you like me to show you what destroyed my mother?”

Before he could answer, another female voice boomed out:

“Dear Annie Ware! For heaven’s sake—!”

A stout, cheery-faced woman of middle age appeared from the murky shadows at the rear of the hall. Approaching, she clasped Anne’s hand between both of her own.

“I haven’t seen my favorite pupil in ages. How have you been? Why don’t you ever call on me?”

“I do apologize, Mrs. Hiller. It’s very nice to see you again.” She inclined her head toward Philip. “Let me introduce my friend Mr. Kent. This is Mrs. Hiller, who owns the exhibit—”

Deflated, Philip said, “I should have realized—you’ve been here before.”

“Many times,” Mrs. Hiller smiled. “Though generally upstairs, where I conduct my private school for young ladies. Annie excelled in feather and quill work. Embroidery too. But her heart was never in it, I could tell. That’s what comes of spending too much time among her father’s books!” Behind her smile, the older woman was scolding.

“Yes,” Anne said, “Papa’s still disappointed that I learned the feminine arts but never do much about practicing them.”

“No doubt that will change when you’re suitably wed,” Mrs. Hiller replied, glancing quickly at Philip. He felt hotter than ever. The stout woman went on, “Too much learning is a hindrance, not a help, in the pantry and the nursery and the drawing room, my dear. Just remember—a man of substance doesn’t wed a woman because she has a dominant spirit. The opposite! Wives must be submissive.”

Anne sighed. “Then I imagine I’m not destined to marry.”

“That could well be your unhappy fate,” Mrs. Hiller advised,
“unless
you alter your outlook.” But she couldn’t conceal her fondness for her former student. Patting Anne’s hand again, she said, “Still, you were and are a fine, charming girl. Do come to visit some afternoon, won’t you?”