The Tory Widow (47 page)

Mulligan pressed a glass of whiskey into Anne's hand. “I learned from an informant that Jack 's to be brought before the provost marshall with a charge of treason.”

“For the counterfeiting . . .” Anne nodded.

“That's the rub,” Titus said. “They've no idea about the counterfeiting. He's charged with colluding with the enemy in the sale of smuggled goods.”

“The provost is nobody's fool. It's only a matter of time before he puts Jack to the question and wills out the truth.” Mulligan shook his big melancholy head. “And once Jack breaks, we are all in danger.”

Anne looked up. “Jack will not break.”

“And he'd never inform on any of us.” Titus rose to his feet.

“Tough as nails, Jack is,” Tully graveled.

“Your faith in Jack is admirable, and aye, he was a good friend to all of us, but the provost is not known for kindness to those in his charge.” Mulligan shrugged. “He'll have Jack talking by Sunday, and dangling on Monday.”

“Jack is not dead.” Anne stared into the drink in her hand, the amber liquid smooth as glass. “We don't have a lot of time. We need to come up with a plan to free him.”

“Don't be daft,” Mulligan snapped. “I brought us together to discuss how we can save our own skins, not Jack's. There is absolutely no way for us to get to him.”

“You know Jack would come up with a way if it were one of us the Redcoats nabbed,” Tully admonished.

“Could we bribe a guard?” Anne asked.

Titus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Noooo . . . the Stitch is right. There's no good way to get to him while he's in prison . . .”

“At last,” Hercules exclaimed. “A voice of reason!”

“. . . But we just might be able to get to him on his
way
to the gallows.” Titus smiled.

Tully pounded his fist to his palm. “Ambush the bloody buggers just like they ambushed us!”

“I-God!” The tailor threw his hands up.

“Cunningham holds his hangings after dark,” Patsy added. “Awful, drunken parties—Mother Babcock often provides the company keepers. I've never gone—there's not enough gold in Christendom to get me to lift my skirts for that lot—but my friend Molly, she's been to more than one of his hangings . . .”

Mulligan fell back against the wall. “You're all mad,” he said, with eyes shut. “Each and every one of you . . . mad as hatters.”

“Patsy, you must question your friend, and find out everything you can.” Anne put the glass to her lips and downed the whiskey with one gulp. “We are going to do this thing.”

 

 

IT was impossible for Jack to keep pace with Quartermaster Floyd. The short span of chain linking the leg irons he wore rattled a rusty, arrhythmic tune as he struggled to mount the stairs into the Provost Prison. His hands were similarly bound in tight iron bracelets, the gritty shackles chafing his wrists raw and staining the cuffs of his shirt ocher. The impatient guard at his rear wielding a bayoneted musket was only too eager to speed Jack's halting progress up the stairs, and the fine linen across Jack's shoulders was punctured and dotted crimson with pointed encouragement.

“Enter!” the voice called in answer to the quartermaster's knock.

Manacles chattering, Jack shuffled into the provost's office, and was prodded into a position three paces away from a large desk, where Cunningham sat with head down, scribbling away in a large ledger. The quartermaster dismissed the escort, and took an at-ease stance beside Jack.

It was long past sunrise on a bright June morning, but the provost marshall kept a thick bayberry candle burning in a futile attempt to mask the unwholesome, rotten cabbage stench permeating the dreary brick walls. The open windows were veiled with a crisscross of iron bars, and the daylight streaming in cast checkered patches on the smooth floorboards at either side of Cunningham's desk. A ladderback chair—the only other piece of furniture in the room—was pushed into the far corner amid a herd of empty rum and whiskey bottles.

What I wouldn't do for a slug of whiskey right now . . .
Jack peeked through the tangled periwig askew upon his head, eyeing the half-full bottle on the provost's desktop. His head ached—ears ringing a constant, shrill peal, as if it were Christmas morning over and over again. Shackles clattering, Jack reached behind to awkwardly finger the prodigious knot swelled up and throbbing on the bulb of his skull bone.

Cunningham set aside his quill, and pushed the ledger away. Just as he had been two weeks before, when putting an end to the brawl between Jack and the Brunswicker, the provost was bewigged and trussed into an austere, dark uniform. The silver gorget he wore strung on a bloodred ribbon reflected an eerie light onto pockscarred skin drawn tight to the bone. The provost grasped the neck of the bottle with thin fingers bulging at the knuckles, and dosed himself with a swallow.

“Am I to take it, Mr. Floyd, this man has sprung our little trap?”
A trap for counterfeiters, and I stepped straight into it.
Jack retreated farther into the ridiculous wig Mulligan had furnished him; keeping his eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, he shook a few more gray locks forward to mask his face, and tried to make himself small.

“He says his name is Shipton, from Elizabethtown across the river—” The quartermaster gave Jack a shove forward, and tossed the banded stack of currency onto the desk. “Fifteen hundred pounds he had.”

Cunningham leaned forward and flipped through the banknotes. “You realize, Mr. Shipton, trafficking with rebels is high treason—a hanging offense.”

Jack wavered a bit, struck by Cunningham's failure to reference counterfeiting.
Tread carefully . . .
Keeping his eyes downcast, he spoke, raising the timbre of his voice to incorporate a plaintive whine. “I know no rebels, sir. I was trafficking with your man—Quartermaster Floyd.”

Cunningham hitched forward in his seat. “You are familiar to me, Mr. Shipton . . . have we ever chanced to meet before?”

“We have.” Jack gulped back the dry lump in his throat, and nodded. “I confess to a weakness for faro.”

“A gambler, eh?” Cunningham tapped the pile of notes, leaned back and took another drink from his bottle. “Mr. Floyd, what proof have you to support your claim of treason in this case?”

“My claim?” Annoyed by the shift in attitude, Floyd snapped, “You know we arrested this man for purchasing illicit army stores—what more proof do you require?”

Jack nodded in agreement. “I readily admit to the offense, Marshall. The same greed for quick and easy profit that leads me to your gaming table has led me to purchase contraband goods. For that crime, I submit to any punishment you hand down.” He raised his shackled fists to his heart. “But as an ever-true and loyal subject to the Crown, I strongly protest the charge of treason.”

The quartermaster folded his arms across his chest. “Shots were exchanged. He fired upon King's soldiers.”

“The shots were fired by hired men in flight. I never fired a single shot. I committed no treason, nor did I ever plan to.”

“You purchased a very large quantity of wool and canvas,” Cunningham pointed out. “Who was your intended customer, if not the Rebel Army?”

Keep your wits about you.
Jack raised his head, and blurted, “Germans.”

“Germans!” Floyd leaned on Cunningham's desktop. “You hear that? Those Hessian bastards—giving us the short shrift and taking their custom to the black market!”

Jack wagged his head up and down. “The Hessian quartermasters pay in hard currency.”

“Germans . . .” Cunningham sat for a moment, pinching the bridge of his hawkish beak. “Well, Mr. Shipton”—he slapped the desktop with both palms of his hands—“
I
am convinced, and am reducing the charge from treason to smuggling, which carries the lesser sentence of impressment into His Majesty's Navy.”

A life sentence aboard a floating prison—better to be hanged.
Jack inched forward, his hands clasped. “I have learned a rough lesson here, Marshall. I swear on all I hold dear, I will never again venture into illegal trade—not with Germans—not with anyone.” Jack cast his eye at the stack of banknotes. “Could we not reach some sort of mutual accommodation?”

“Perhaps.” Cunningham laced his fingers. “After all, we are sensible, are we not, Mr. Floyd, that greed can often drive a man down a road untraveled . . . but young men so led astray, can often be . . . redeemed.”

“A wise and fair judgment, Provost.” Floyd reached for the bottle.

Cunningham picked up the stack of banknotes. “As this is your first offense, I am reducing the sentence from naval service to payment of a fine—say fifteen hundred pounds?”

“Gladly, sir.” Jack heaved a sigh. “Happily!”
Out the door to the Thimble and Shears as fast as feet will fly. Send Mulligan for Titus and Anne. Push off from these shores, never to return until the British are purged from the city . . .

“
O'Keefe!
” Cunningham bellowed, slipping the stack of banknotes into his pocket.

The red-faced sergeant marched in and Cunningham ordered, “Strike this fellow's irons and see that he's released.”

“C'mon, ye troublesome bollocks.” O'Keefe took Jack by the arm and led him to the door. “What d'ye do this time? Wrestling with those green-jackets again?”

Jack shook his head no—pulling ahead of O'Keefe—the door was but two paces away.

“Hold!”
Cunningham came rushing around the desk and snatched the wig from Jack's head. “His name, O'Keefe—do you recall what it is?”

“Hampshire . . .” The sergeant paused. “No. Hampton.”

“Hampton!” Cunningham grabbed Jack by the arm and pulled him into the light near the window.

Jack could see the cogs and levers working the machine in Cunningham's mind—recognition triggering memories, memories turning the wheel, producing connections, parts and pieces tumbling into order in a heartbeat. “Hampton. Aye. You were there—”

“I don't know what you're talking about . . .”

In a sudden, frantic fit of madness, Cunningham pushed at the sleeves of Jack 's shirt, forcing the fabric up to his elbows. “I remember you. A mechanic, with ink on your arms . . .”

“No, sir. You have me confused . . .”

Cunningham ripped off his own wig, exposing the thick pink scars worming along his skull. “See the damage you wrought.
‘Let's get it done,'
you said.” The provost had gone pale as a cadaver. “One of Isaac Sears's myrmidons you are—shoulder to shoulder with those fanatics. Admit it—you were there with them.”

Jaw clenched, Jack met the provost marshall, eye to beady ferret eye. He drew himself tall, threw back his shoulders and said, “I was then, as I am now, a Son of Liberty.”

Floyd and O'Keefe stood bristling with pistols drawn as Cunningham staggered back to his bottle, a mad jack-o'-lantern grin rupturing his face in two. “Take him away. Put the bastard in Cortlandt's Sugar House for the time being. Come Monday, I will put a period to his existence.”

Jack turned to gaze out the window, pressing shackled fists against the iron token strung around his neck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THOMAS PAINE,
Common Sense

 

 

 

 

 

MR. Wemyss!” The Widow Merrick hooked the pudgy lieutenant by the arm as he came down the stairs, and led him back to the garden. “Might we have a word before supper?”

Anne left him at the table in the shade of the peach tree to fetch over a draft from the firkin of cider keeping cool in the cistern.

Wemyss peeked in beyond the threshold of the kitchen door to catch a glimpse of Sally bustling around the fire. “Something smells good.”

“Sally's preparing a special Sunday supper.” The widow beamed, sitting opposite him. “Split chickens spiced and broiled on a grate over a clear fire, parsley sauce, corn pudding . . .”

“And dinna forget the gooseberry fool!” Sally came out of the kitchen swiping off her head scarf, a pretty sheen of sweat glistening on her freckled cheeks. She set a plate of hard cheese and savory biscuits on the table, and sat close to the lieutenant.

Wemyss helped himself to the cheese. “Now that I am suitably cosseted, perhaps you ladies can tell me how I can be of service?”

“You are very astute, Mr. Wemyss.” Anne unfurled her folding fan, and beat the air near her face. “You must have noticed, our Sally has been suffering an upset of late, being in the throes of an unfortunate family . . . situation. As I am familiar with the bend of your sympathies in this particular regard, I have counseled her to ask for your assistance.”

“I see.” Wemyss reached for a biscuit.

Sally laid a hand on the lieutenant's knee. “I feel I can trust ye, sir, with this confidence . . .”

“A strict confidence,” Anne added, “for reasons soon to be revealed.”

“Of course.” Wemyss nodded. “I am not one to bear tales. You have my word as an officer and a gentleman.”

Sally folded her hands in her lap and took a deep breath. “My close cousin—my mother's sister's son—Jack's his name—has run afoul of the law.”