The Tory Widow (40 page)

The tailor laughed. “You, my friend, are a rogue's rogue, to be sure.”

“Not too hard to puzzle it out after Patsy made mention of an engraver.” Jack jerked his head toward Titus. “Him and me often toy with the notion.”

“Print a pile of notes and flood the market with 'em,” Titus said. “The British wrecked the value of the Continental dollar with their counterfeits; we could do the same to them.”

“Ahh, now, Titus . . . our own Congress had a hand in that mess as well. Counterfeiting in quantities to devalue the currency is a major operation—a grand scheme, to be sure”—Mulligan tossed down his whiskey and blinked—“but I'm just looking for a little pocket money.”

Titus snorted. “Not worth risking a neck stretching for pocket money.”

“A figure of speech—although I plan to change a few of our notes into coin to pay informants and couriers . . .” Mulligan straddled his chair, resting his forearms on the back. “We'll be trolling for bigger fish.” The tailor shuffled forward a few inches. “Patsy has a quartermaster dangling on her line—one of His Majesty's bad bargains—the bastard commandeers trade goods for
military use
, then turns 'em for a profit on the black market. With a supply of British currency, we could purchase the goods and deliver to Washington necessary accoutrements like shoes, blankets, canvas . . .”

“I don't know, Hercules,” Titus said. “Doesn't smell right to me . . .”

Jack nodded. “Won't the quartermaster suspect the buyers of such goods for rebels?”

“Rest assured, lads—plenty of Loyalist merchants are thriving on black market trade in this city. How do you think I stock my shop? This shit-sack will sell to anyone paying in pounds.” Hercules sat up and laced his fingers behind his head. “The lobster scoundrels are a corrupt lot—especially the type who've worked their way up from the ranks, like our quartermaster. According to Patsy, he is anxious to line his pockets before the war ends, which he fancies will be soon.”

Jack put elbow to knee and chin to fist. “We'll need to age the notes, make 'em look like they've been in circulation.”

“Aye.” Mulligan nodded. “Now you've got your finger on it.”

“You're getting ahead of yourself, Jack.” Titus slipped into his shoes and tied the laces. “Above all, we need a good plate.”

“A quality plate . . .” Jack sat up. “This engraver of yours—he any good?”

“I'm counting on you to tell me.” Mulligan fished a ring of keys from his weskit pocket and unlocked the doors to the tall cabinet. “The engraver came to me unbidden—a Quaker—an odd little duck he is, too.” He drew out a flat packet wrapped in velvet, and set it and a magnifying lens on the desk.

Jack flipped open the wrapping. Titus pulled the curtain a few inches, casting a beam of light on a bright copper plate. They both bent close.

Perhaps five inches wide by four inches high, the plate was engraved with intricate scrollwork, fancy script writing and a very detailed crest of the Bank of England—the devices used to thwart counterfeiters.

“Excellent work.” Titus ran his fingers over the fine lines incised in the copper. “I think we could do something with this plate . . .”

Jack put Mulligan's magnifier to use. “This is the work of a master engraver.” He pulled a ten-pound note the German had given him from his pocket and compared it to its reverse image on the plate. “We'll need to find someone who can mimic the cashier's signature . . .”

Mulligan said, “The master engraver has informed me that he is also quite the forger . . .”

Titus took the note and rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb. “We'll need to match this paper stock, and lay hands on some English-made ink . . .”

Jack gave Titus a nudge. “We'll talk to Tully . . .”

Titus put his cap on. “You think Tully will know where we can find a decent press?”

“If he doesn't”—Jack pulled the string on his gunny tight, and tossed it over his shoulder—“we both know where there's a fine press to be had, don't we?”

“Arrah, lads! A toast! Here's to men of action”—Hercules Mulligan raised his cup—“to men who dare to be free!”

 

 

OFF to market, Sally marched her empty cart down Murray Street, taking a very roundabout route to avoid Canvas Town. It had become a habit—a ritual performed every Monday—going out of her way to purchase at the Bear Market across town the same sort of goods easy to obtain at the Fly Market closer to home.

Annie advocated positive thinking and hard work as measures to keep from fretting over the lads. But as the weeks and months passed, Sally's unuttered doubts and fears became like a canker on the roof of her mouth—painful and hard to ignore.

She slowed to a halt as she came to the college-turned-prison, tying a thick kerchief doused with lavender water over mouth and nose to mask the awful odor emanating from inside. She gripped the cart handle tight and rolled forward. Fighting an urge to gag, she studied the groups of prisoners crowded at the open upper-story windows, searching the faces.

Sally was aware many of the inmates were too ill to take a turn at the windows. She was also sensible that thousands of patriots were imprisoned elsewhere, but those realities did nothing to diminish the relief infusing her from within, upon seeing David Peabody was not among the filthy, gaunt faces jostling for a breath of air.

“Move along,” a guard ordered, as he always did when she lingered too long. Sally averted her eyes to straight ahead, pushing her cart past the prison.

“I-God!”

Straight ahead—not more than twenty yards away—Jack Hampton, Titus Gilmore and a longshoreman crossed Murray Street, heading south.

They did not hear her call, muffled as it was by the damp cloth she'd tied tight over her mouth. Hiking her skirts in one hand, she broke into a run, the cart clattering over the cobbles. Less than a block away the men stepped onto the stoop at Mother Babcock's Boardinghouse, and knocked at the red door. Sally slowed to a stop, forcing the mask down into a bunch at her throat. She took a few steps, squinting in the sun. “Tha's not Jack . . .” she muttered.

Similar in build, the farmer she mistook for Jack was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and stood in a terrible slouch. The black man had his back to her, and she could see he was bald, with ears that stuck out like the handles on a soup bowl. The longshoreman looked familiar—she'd served him before at the Crown and Quill, but not to know his name. “Na . . .” she muttered, surprised by the tears that sprung to her eyes. So desperate for news, she was seeing phantoms among farmers.

All three men swiped off their hats when the whore Patsy Quinn came to the door. Sally moved closer, blinking.

“Oh, Jack . . .” The whore sighed as she pulled him inside. The longshoreman and hairless Titus shuffled in after.

Sally pounded the brass ring to the plate and bowled past the poor girl who answered the door, drawing attention from a few of the red-coated customers at cards in the parlor room. She caught sight of Jack disappearing up the stairs hand in hand with Patsy, and managed to nab Titus by the sleeve just as he was about to mount the stairs.

“
Sally!
You shouldn't be in
here
. . .” Titus pulled her very quickly through the open door, glancing over his shoulder. “I can't talk right now . . .”

“Just tell me . . .” She clutched him by the wrist. “Is David dead? Is that why yiz havena come for us?”

“No need to start blubbering. We delivered David alive and well to his father's care in Peekskill . . .” he whispered. “That's all I can say.”

“Thank God he's safe . . .” She loosened the grip on his arm. “Why is it yiv not come for us? What's Jack doing . . . ?”

Titus backed her out of the bawdy house. “I have to go, Sal. I'm sorry . . .” And he swung the door shut.

 

 

ANNE gave the wash boiling in the copper a poke with the paddle. “You actually spoke with Titus?”

Sally stood in the kitchenhouse doorway. “Aye—direct.”

A little muscle set to twitching above Anne's left eye. She touched a finger to it. “And you're absolutely certain it was Jack you saw?”

“Hands over heart, Annie, may mine eyes drop out of my head if I'm not tellin' ye true,” Sally said. “I saw the devil skipping hand in hand with his trull, straight up the whorehouse stair—”

Anne swiped the mobcap from her head, befevered a-sudden, with a lump in her throat as if she'd just swallowed a toad whole. Pressing the flat of her fist to her heart, she dropped to a sit on the raised hearth, her voice very small. “He promised to come back for us . . .”

Sally sat beside Anne and threaded an arm around her friend's shoulder. “If that rotten scunner has the bollocks to come for ye now, Annie, he'll be comin' straight from another woman's warm bed.”

Anne flinched. Leaning forward, she gripped the edge of the hearth and tried to catch a breath, the wind knocked from her as if she'd been thwacked across the back with a thick strop. The image of Jack with Patsy in wanton embrace cut through her mind's eye like a well-honed razor—severing her heartstrings in one swipe.

Slipping her hand inside her pocket, Anne held up the iron half-crown still bound in ribbon. She set it to swinging with a flick of her finger, and imagined its counterpart strung around Jack's neck, swinging to and fro as he moved in and out of Patsy Quinn.

“God
damn
him!” With a snap of her wrist, Anne sent her token flying through the door, into the garden.

Sally gave Anne a squeeze. “Well . . . how about a nice cup of tea?”

“I don't want any tea.” Anne shrugged Sally off and stood up. Wavering a bit on weak knees, she smoothed her hair back, and released a breath in a big
whoosh
. Without a word, she took up the laundry paddle and resumed stirring the wash in the copper.

Sally moved in and tried to take over the chore. “Let me . . .”

“Leave off, Sal!” Anne snapped, maintaining firm control of the laundry paddle with a white-knuckled, two-fisted grip.

“Yiv had a heartbreak, Annie,” Sally crooned and rubbed small circles in the space between her friend's shoulder blades. “Ye need to go lie down and rest.”

“What I need . . .” Anne dug into the wet laundry in the cauldron, agitating the wet linen with a ferocious vigor. The effort and rising steam coated her face with sweat to mingle with the tears streaming down her cheeks. “What I truly need is to put that bastard from my thoughts—and I assure you, it is a thing not accomplished lying flat on my back in the middle of the day.”

Sally surrendered. Palms upraised, she backed away. “Aye, lass, maybe yiv the right of it. It's strength of mind what defeats a thing.”

“Don't you fret over me, Sally.” Anne hefted a steaming mass of wet linen aloft on her paddle, letting it drain and dribble hot water back into the wash copper. “I have already lived through the worst heartache any woman can suffer . . .” She dumped the wet cloth into the tin rinsing tub. “I'll survive being betrayed by the likes of Jack Hampton.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THOMAS PAINE,
Common Sense

 

 

 

 

 

H
ERCULES Mulligan paced the length of his office. Edging close to the oil lamp on the desk, he thumbed open the case of his pocket watch and checked the time once again.

“Pacing like a cat in a cage will not speed their arrival, Stitch.” Patsy Quinn lay propped on one elbow, languid on the bench pushed up against the wall. “You are goin' to wear a rut in the floor. Take a seat and follow the example set by the Quaker.”

They'd all taken to calling the engraver “the Quaker”—a moniker he initially protested, proclaiming, “But I'm really a Deist,” to no avail.

Mulligan eyed the strange little fellow sitting upright in the ladderback desk chair, serene as a broody hen, contemplating the lamp-light through a pair of blue glass spectacles. The Quaker startled violently at the sudden
thumpety-thump
on the window shutters, and Mulligan hurried to open the back door.

“You're late.”

“Would you have us arrested for curfew?” Jack pushed past the tailor. Titus and Tully filed in behind—all three of them dressed in dark clothes—Tully with a knit cap pulled over his graying hair.

“We had to wait for the streets to clear,” Titus said. “Too many Redcoats about.”

“As thick as fleas on a fat old dog,” Tully added.

“I forgot.” Mulligan knocked fist to forehead. “Mrs. Loring is hosting an evening of drink and cards . . .”

“Hey, Jack!” Patsy sat up, and patted the empty spot beside her. “Come sit next to me . . .”

Jack made straight for the big cabinet and the bottle of rye the Stitch kept there. After taking a good gulp, he banged the bottle to the desktop. “Paper—” Tugging a folded page from the pocket of his britches, he handed it to the engraver. “A close match—but we only have one ream.”

“Excellent.” The Quaker pushed his spectacles to the top of his bald head and held the paper sample close to the light, worrying the page between finger and thumb. “I must say, lads, I was not expecting anything this fine. This is near exact.”