The Tory Widow (10 page)

Try as hard as she could, Anne could not gain control over her queasy stomach and sensitive nose when it came to administering the purging emetics and clysters the doctors prescribed to excite the nervous system and rid a body of fever. These popular treatments resulted in foul expulsions from one end or the other, and Anne's first day of duty found her off in a corner, heaving into a chamberpot for the better part of her shift. Having witnessed her unnurselike behavior, the physician general had suggested she limit her volunteerism to working with the recovering patients, who required a simpler form of nursing that would prove easier on her stomach.

Anne paused after exiting the hospital to draw in a deep breath of fresh air. Under Dr. Treat's rule, the staff put forth a valiant effort to maintain cleanliness and discourage the spread of contagion. The wards were fumigated with smoke from burning brimstone, chamberpots were emptied promptly and floors were swabbed every day with vinegar—but regardless—the malodor of vomit, diarrhea and death hung in the air, wet and thick as steam from a boiling kettle. Anne kept a hanky saturated with lavender oil tucked under the seam at her left shoulder, to allow quick relief with a turn of the head when the smell became more than she could bear.

She set the writing box down on the stoop. Overlooking the college grounds, Anne removed her straw hat, swiped the mobcap from her head and used it to blot the sweat from her face and the back of her neck before stuffing it into her pocket.

There were only a few moments of daylight left to be had and the shadows cast by the disappearing sun were long and murky. Realizing she'd been time-tricked by the lengthening summer days into missing the set curfew, Anne turned back into the building to obtain the requisite pass. She chased after the physician general as he bustled by with a pair of young medical students in tow.

“Certainly, Mrs. Merrick.” Dr. Treat wagged his head at her request, distracted. “Await at the front entry, and I will send 'round a pass and an escort to see you home safe.”

Anne sat on the stair with her writing kit on her lap and watched as nightfall overcame the last tinge of orange light in the western sky. The street was deserted—silent but for the passing footfalls of a stout sentry making his rounds armed with a slim halberd nearly twice his height. After the sentry disappeared, the old lamp warden came moving along Robinson Street in starts and stops. Wielding a long iron hook, one by one, he lifted lanterns from lightposts, filled the wells to the brim with whale oil and lit the wicks.

Dr. Treat must have forgotten about me . . .
Anne gathered her skirts, her hat and her writing box to go in search of the busy administrator. Scrambling to her feet, she turned and bumped square into Jack Hampton.

Jack held her at arm's length for a brief instant. “Mrs. Merrick! What are you doing here?” He brightened at their meeting, his dark eyes shining. He was dressed in rough work clothes—brown leather breeches and a linsey shirt open at the frayed collar with sleeves rolled above his elbows—his face and hands were stained with soot. Hatless, and ribbonless, his hair hung sweat-drenched about his shoulders.

Anne waved an exasperated hand toward the open doorway. “I'm waiting for my pass and a promised escort, but I suspect Dr. Treat is so busy he most likely forgot to send both.”

“I'm headed home,” Jack volunteered. “I can see you to yours.”

“If you don't mind . . . I would appreciate it. I hate to be a bother”—Anne glanced once more at the doorway—“but I fear Sally is twirling herself into a redheaded fret on my account.”

“No bother at all—the Cup and Quill is on my way.” Jack held up a finger. “I'll be right back.” Turning back into the hospital, he emerged after a few moments with hands and face washed, shirttails tucked in and wild hair tied back with a scrap of twine.

Anne smiled at the ablutions he'd undergone on her behalf. “You've come to my rescue once again, Mr. Hampton.”

“I'd have you call me Jack,” he said, taking her writing kit to carry.

“All right . . . Jack . . . and you must call me Anne.”

“Well, c'mon then, Annie—we're off !”

She fell in beside him, very much enjoying how he used her familiar name as if they'd been boon companions for years. They strolled along the deserted street—stretches of darkness punctuated by soft ellipses of wavering lantern glow.

“I didn't know you were helping to nurse the infirm,” Jack said. “I commend your duty.”

“Withhold your commendation, sir, for I'm afraid I am the poorest excuse for a nurse,” Anne said, with a shake of her head. “Since I lack the fortitude needed to be of good service to the patients in dire need, Dr. Treat has relegated me to the recovery wards. Today I wrote letters for the men.”

“Ol' Treat—he finds use for every willing pair of hands.” Jack walked, swinging her case like a lad on his way home from school. “It's no wonder I haven't seen you here, for I'm usually out back in the yard boiling the linen and burning the straw. Although some days, I help out in the upper wards with the lifting and turning.”

Anne noticed Jack's shirt was wet around the collar, and she caught a whiff of the lye soap he'd used to wash. “Difficult and grim—the upper wards. You're the one to be commended.”

“All for the cause.” Jack shrugged. “Since Parker moved his press out of the city, I have the time. I don't mind working with the sick—poor fellows—rather help them than dig a trench any day.”

“Sally and I were wondering why we haven't seen you lately with your shovel.” Anne winced a little in telling the lie. Sally couldn't give a fig for what happened to Jack Hampton.

Jack noticed the inclusion. “Sally wondered?”

Anne sidestepped his observation. “Well, I'm no fanatic to the cause, but Patriot or Loyalist, the unwell still need to be tended. I have to say, I am surprised by my squeamishness. When my son was so ill, I suffered no such qualms in seeing to his comfort and treatment . . .”

“You have a son?”

Anne swallowed back the painful lump lodged sudden in her throat. “I had a son—Jemmy—such a good boy. He was but six years old when both he and Mr. Merrick succumbed to the smallpox three years ago.”

“The brooch . . .” Jack said. “In memory of your son?”

She nodded. “And most precious to me. I keep it safe at home now, and no longer carry it about.”

Jack rested a hand between Anne's shoulder blades for a brief moment. “The death of one's child must be the awfullest pain to bear.”

“The worst I've ever borne.” Anne nodded, shoulders slumping a bit under the burden of her recollections. “Jemmy's gone from me, and I'm left with naught but a lock of his hair and a loneliness about my heart for which I fear there is no cure.”

To her relief, Jack did not sweep her grief away with some platitude concerning the ability of time to somehow “heal all wounds,” including one as deep and grievous as her own. Instead, he walked a ways in silence before striking up a new tangent.

“Contagion is a vexing problem. With nary a shot being fired, our army lost fourteen men just today. And who knows how many at the other hospitals? I tell you, at this rate, General Washington won't have much of an army left when the fleet invades.”

“There may not be an invasion,” Anne said. “Didn't you hear? The King is sending Admiral Howe with a peace commission, and maybe . . .”

“Peace commission!” Jack spat the words. “Don't tell me you actually believe that Tory tripe?”

“Of course I believe it,” Anne countered. They stepped off the curbstone on Broad Way and crossed the cobbles to the middle of the thoroughfare. “Better to be a fool and hope for peace than a fatalist expecting nothing but mayhem, bloodshed and death.”

“Oh, don't be such a noodle. The time for talking peace has long passed. Didn't you hear? Over two hundred ships were sighted rounding Sandy Hook today.” Jack stepped over the wide gutter that coursed the center of the street. “The King's ‘peace commission' is preceded by enough firepower to lay our city and all within to ashes several times over.” He reached out a hand to help Anne across the gutter.

“I'm no noodle!” Anne ignored his hand and traversed the gutter unassisted. Misjudging the span in the dark, her heel slipped the edge, and she lost her balance.

Quick to catch her around the waist—saving Anne from landing bum-end in the feculent trough—Jack took her by the hand. “Best keep close to me, alright?”

Anne was startled by this shift to kindness. Jack's gentle voice and her hand within his engendered a sudden, all-encompassing well-being—a feeling akin to being tucked into pan-warmed sheets on a wintry night—the wonderful, long-missed feeling of being cared for.

It struck Anne right then—from the time it took to travel from the steps of King's College to the gutter on Broad Way, Jack Hampton had shown her more compassion and kindness than Mr. Merrick ever had during a full seven years of marriage.

Anne had never been foolish enough to hope for love from Peter Merrick—not the kind of passionate love she'd read about in novels anyway—but she did hold hope her marriage might at least resemble a comfortable, respectful relationship similar to the one her parents'd had. After the first few weeks, she realized even that minimum would most likely never come to pass.

Merrick wore marriage like a hair shirt—a constant discomfort he bore as a penance in exchange for acquiring the progeny he deemed necessary to fulfill God's will. The handful of times her husband drank enough courage to knock on her bedchamber door, their coupling was at best difficult, awkward and brief. Merrick was most relieved once Anne announced she had conceived, and never again did he cross the threshold into her room. After Jemmy's birth, it became crystal clear she was deemed no more important than any of the other slaves and servants in her husband's employ. Anne only managed to float along in the misery of it all, buoyed by the love she bore for her son.

Anne held tight to Jack's hand as he led her across the Commons toward the Presbyterian church. Looming in the dark, the steeple was an immense black finger stirring the night sky strewn with as many stars as Anne had ever seen. She could count on five fingers the number of times she'd been out walking the streets of New York after nightfall, and never before had she ever seen such a celestial display.

The lamp warden had yet to fire any of the streetlamps on the crooked streets east of Broad Way, and the moonless night painted the narrow lanes a deep blue-black. Every so often faint scraps of laughter and conversation floated down from an open upper-story window. Wavering candle glow emanating from the same windows helped to abate a few of the sinister shadows crossing their path.

“Watch your footing,” Jack warned. “There's not a sliver of moonlight to see by tonight.” He chucked a stone to disperse a pack of rats swarming at the end of the block.

Anne wished they had thought to bring a light. Marshall law and curfew had emptied the streets of humankind and opened them to all manner of four-legged nocturnal habitants. Moving shadows scurried along the peripheries with gleaming eyes blinking red and gold in the night.

“Oh!” She stopped short, and squeezed Jack's hand. “What was that?”

“What?” Jack checked over his shoulder.

“Listen.”

They stood in the center of the lane, motionless.

“There!” Anne clung to Jack 's arm. “Did you hear it?”

He didn't answer but to pull Anne up a pair of steps and into the recessed doorway of a shuttered storefront, crowding her into a dark corner.

Anne's straw hat slipped from her head, the knotted ribbons pulled tight to the hollow of her throat, the crown squashed between her back and rough brick. Jack set the writing box down. The stubble on his face scraped a prickly path across her cheek as he leaned in to whisper, “Be very quiet.”

Every manner of evil-doer could be on their path, and all the Widow Merrick could think on was the handspan of warm space redolent with lye soap, wood smoke and lavender that separated her body from this man.

The distressing sound that had sent them into hiding drew near and distinct—leather soles slapping along tamped earth. Anne rose on tiptoes to peek over Jack 's shoulder as two men marched by, the steel halberds on their shoulders reflecting blue in the starlight.

“Only the sentrymen . . .” Anne sighed, and made to squirm past Jack, out to where she could catch a breath and collect her wits.

“No—wait!” Jack braced both arms against the wall, trapping her in.

“Wait? Wait for what?”

“I don't have a pass.”

Off in the distance a dog began to bark, and Jack shuffled in closer to stand a mere thumb's breadth away. His breath caused the loose hairs on the top of her head to flutter. If she but tipped her head slightly, she could rest her cheek on his chest. The wanton thought sent a shudder down her spine.

“Don't be afraid,” he said, lips to her ear.

A very warm night, and this whisper raised gooseflesh on her arms “But we don't have a . . .”

“Shhh . . .” Jack pressed a finger to her lips. He leaned in closer—a lock of hair slipped his queue and tickled her forehead. Anne shrank back against the wall, and the sound of the sentries' steps faded away.

Anne gave Jack a two-handed shove. “I thought you had a pass.”

“I forgot it.”

“You know I have a history . . .” Her whisper was harsh. “I could be arrested . . .”

“Right, and that's why we need to hide whenever the sentries come 'round.”