About to have her life changed.
To Makepeace Burke, emerging into the great harbour’s North End, the damage that she saw had been done to her waterfront overnight was change enough. Some of the damage was old and caused by the English: empty warehouses, wharves sprouting weed. Boats that had once been proud, respected smugglers delivering cheap sugar to willing Bostonian customers lay demasted and upended on the hards, killed by the newly efficient, newly incorruptible British Customs and Excise. Only sugar from the English West Indies, the expensive English West Indies, could be imported now – and that was unloaded further down.
But last night, in protest against the English and their shite Stamp Tax and Navigations Acts, Boston had gone on the rampage and done damage in return. Hadn’t they, by Hokey! Even from this distance, she could see the depredations to the Custom House. The bonfires were dying down but the smitch of burning was everywhere, even out here on the water. Papers that had drifted off the bonfires spewed along the quay. And the new warehouse Stamp Master Oliver was having built was now no more than a pile of broken timbers. Serve the old bugger right.
Makepeace Burke disapproved of rioting – not good for trade – but she disapproved of the Stamp Tax, which had been the cause of last night’s mayhem, a mighty sight more. The tax fell heavily on taverns and she was a tavern-keeper.
The August heat had been near suffocating for a month, like a volcano grumbling under the town in sympathy with the discontent of its inhabitants. Last night – what triggered it nobody knew – the cone blew off and out rushed lava of white-heat fury against unemployment, the government, its colonial representatives, its damn taxes and interference, its press gangs and its assumption that Bostonians were going to take all these things lying down.
Customs officials, known English-loving Tories, lawmen: all had been hunted through the streets by Sons of Liberty smeared with war-paint and howling like Mohawks, bless ’em. The British garrison had too few soldiers to put down a ladies’ sewing circle, let alone an outbreak of these proportions. The town had been streaked with flame and pounded with the beat of drums until it seemed that light was noise and noise was light.
If that was riot, Lord knew what revolution’d be. Well, maybe it was revolution. Sam Adams was preaching something suspiciously along the lines of it being time Americans threw off the English yoke. Didn’t put it like that but every good Bostonian knew what he meant.
Customers had run into the Roaring Meg to pass on the latest news, down a glass of celebratory flip and rush off again to join in. ‘Don’t you go outside, now, ’Peace,’ Zeobab Fairlee’d said. ‘The Sons is lickered up. Got at a few cellars. No place for a respectable female in them streets tonight.’
So she’d stayed with her tavern in case they tried to get at her liquor stock – Sons of Liberty or no Sons of Liberty, she wasn’t in the business of free drinks – but, come the revolution, she’d get her father’s musket down from the roof and march against the British with the best of ’em. She’d give ’em taxes.
She liked these lovely mornings, collecting lobster-pots. Peaceful. Hot already. Further out, towards the islands, gulls floated against a sky like blue enamel. Two tundra swans passed low over her head as the squadron came from inland, enormous wings held bowed and still, outstretched feet ready to furrow the water, heavy as pieces of masonry hurtling through the air. They were settling, fluting to each other, their size dwarfing the rafts of snow geese and oldsquaws further out.
More peaceful than ever this morning. Usually, down at the business end of the harbour, angular heron-like cranes dipped and straightened with bulging nets in their bills as they emptied incoming merchantmen and filled the holds of those getting ready to set out. Men with bales on their heads were to be seen filing up some gangplanks and down others, looking at a distance like infestations of marcher ants. Sails were taken in, others hoisted, all flapping like pinioned birds; greetings, commands, farewells – sounds of human busyness floating across the water.
But not today. Captains, worried for their cargo, had stood their ships further off where the Sons of Liberty couldn’t board them. They were out in the bay now, like a huddle of white-shawled grannies, until it was safe to come back. Deserted quays waited for them, sticking out into the harbour in protruding, wooden teeth.
She had to feather so that, by standing in the prow, she could negotiate between the detritus that had been thrown in the water during the night: pieces of door, window-frames, the lid of a desk, all of it a hazard to little boats like hers as it was carried out to sea on a combination of current and ebb-tide. A waste. Later on, she’d get Tantaquidgeon to see what he could salvage. Dry it out for tinder.
Lord, it was quiet. As she passed Copp’s Quay, a couple of painted figures that had been lying on it staggered to their feet and slunk off like dogs who knew they’d been naughty. Don’t let the magistrates get thee, boys. From the look of ’em, she’d guess their heads were punishment enough.
And there was Tantaquidgeon waiting for her as he always did, standing on the Roaring Meg’s gimcrack jetty and staring out to sea like the statue of a befeathered Roman emperor.
She was heading towards him when a prickle of movement a hundred yards further on caught her eye. A knot of men on Fish Quay, three, maybe four – it was difficult to see against the reflection of sun on water – a suggestion of furious energy and striped faces. Not all the rioters had gone home to sleep it off, then. No sound from them that she could hear above the call of the swans. One was standing still, keeping watch, while the others threw objects into the harbour as if they hadn’t slaked their revenge even yet. Something heavy had just splashed in, something else now – a hat. Waste again.
With her free hand she shaded her eyes to see who the men were. The one acting lookout was Sugar Bart, recognizable at once by the crutch that did duty for his missing leg. Would be. Always in trouble against authority, Bart.
Mackintosh? What was that shite doing this far north of town? No mistaking his swagbelly, painted or not; she’d seen it too often parading at the head of the South End mob on Guy Fawkes’ Nights. Mackintosh was leader of one of the gangs which took flaming papal effigies and trouble onto Boston’s streets every November 5, indulging in bloody and, sometimes, mortal battles with each other to show their enthusiasm for the Protestant cause.
Couldn’t make out the others.
Sugar Bart had seen her; she saw him stiffen and point. She’d be a blur against the sun. She waved to show she was a friend. A good taverner kept in with her customers, whatever hell they were raising.
Now what? She looked behind her. From her vantage point, Makepeace saw what Sugar Bart couldn’t.
A patrol of armed redcoats from North End fort was marching down the wharves towards Fish Quay, heading for Bart and the Mohawks who, because of the overhang of warehouses, couldn’t see it. The stamp of military boots came crisply to her, carried by the water, but Bart wouldn’t hear that either.
Makepeace put two fingers in her mouth and whistled a warning. Bart looked. She nodded towards the redcoats – and saw their muskets being levelled at her. She whistled on: With a tow, row, row, row, row, row for the British Grenadiers – signal to Bart there were soldiers coming, desperate advice to the soldiers she was a loyal subject of King George III, the shite.
One of the soldiers advanced to the edge of the wharf, shading his eyes. The sun was in its stride now, fierce enough to bleach colour and form out of the view of those looking into it. ‘You. Seen anybody?’
She cupped her ear, wasting time. The Mohawks had legged it; Bart was hobbling off.
‘Seen. Any. Body, you deaf bitch.’
She held up one of her pots. ‘Lobster. Lob. Ster.’ And may you boil in the saucepan with him, thee red-backed bastard.
The soldier gave up, the patrol resumed its advance down the waterfront and there was no time for reaction because, whilst dealing with the problem, she had seen a body. An upturned table with broken legs entangled with rags, part of last night’s wreckage, twirled on