The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (45 page)

He extended his other hand to assist her. She kept her hands at her sides.

As they started to climb again, he went on, “I wish I could lie to you, Anne. I wish I could pretend I can give you what you say you’ve got to have. That’d bring everything to a nice, neat solution—”

“But I’d know you were lying—if you were.”

“Bet you would at that,” he sighed. “Well, anyway, I can’t do it. Making promises is impossible.”

She stopped and looked at him, her eyes so intense that he felt they reached and wrenched at whatever soul or central essence lay in the depths of his being:

“For now? Or forever?”

His mind swirled with memories of Kentland, of his mother, of what he could have been—and might yet still be. Damn heaven, what
did
he want?

He said, “Anne—I don’t know.”

Turning, he stalked on up toward the searing light of the hilltop.

He wished he could lose himself in that fire, be consumed, destroyed, relieved of thinking, of decisions, of trying to unlock the riddles of the whole damned world—and himself—

He managed to calm down and occupy his attention with opening the hamper. In a few moments, Anne joined him. She seated herself beside the cloth he’d spread. Her cheeks were reddened but the tears were gone.

As Philip unpacked the food, he said in an offhand way, “I imagine you’ll want me to stop calling after this.”

Her smile, though forced, puzzled him until she said:

“That’s the last thing I want, Philip. Like these colonies, you’ll make choices. One way or another, something will become of you. I’d like to find out what.”

She glanced away. “However, the decision is yours.”

They passed the remainder of the afternoon in repetitious speculation about the tea crisis and empty pleasantries about the beauties of the early autumn weather. While he rowed her back to Boston in the twilight, neither of them said a word. He left her at the door in Launder Street with a quickly murmured goodbye, and without touching her.

He slept very little that night. The September afternoon had focused the question to unbearable sharpness: What was his ambition? His future? And how much of the choice would be his and how much the result of events he could not control?

Tossing restlessly, he concluded that he must be falling in love with Anne. Nothing else would explain his feeling so forlorn, furious and confused.

Express riders galloping in across Roxbury Neck in late October brought news that a mass meeting in Philadelphia had forced the resignation of the tea agents appointed for that city. A similar meeting was convened locally. But Governor Hutchinson’s nephew and two of his sons who had been appointed to the potentially lucrative posts would not relent.

Adams and his followers thundered denunciations of the tea consignees. Called them traitors, enemies of America. To no avail.

Then, on the twenty-seventh of November,
Dartmouth,
the first of three vessels reported on the way to Boston with the hated cargo, was sighted offshore.

The following night, Philip and Benjamin Edes labored almost until dawn. They set, proofed and printed copies of a sheet circulated throughout the town and nailed to the Liberty Tree next morning:

FRIENDS! BRETHREN! COUNTRYMEN!

That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company, is now arrived in this harbor; the hour of destruction or manly oppositions to the machinations of tyranny stares you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself, and posterity is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall at nine o’clock this day (at which time the bells will ring), to make a united and successful resistance to this last, worst and most destructive measure of administration.

Philip had no idea what Anne Ware thought about the atmosphere of tension and anger mounting hourly in the city. Since the day in September, he had not visited Launder Street once, and had arranged to be occupied in Edes’ back office whenever he spied the girl turning into Dassett Alley on her way to the shop. By now he was not entirely sure whether his reaction came about because he was in love with her, and feared it, or because he wasn’t.

The tea ship docking at Griffin’s Wharf brought accelerated activity among Edes and his friends. It also provided Philip with welcome diversion from the weeks of painful doubt and introspection, weeks which had still produced no definite answers in his own mind.

He could keep himself physically separated from Anne, it seemed. But he couldn’t prevent her from coming to him in other ways. Two nights after
Dartmouth
anchored, he dreamed about her—a heavy, sensual dream in which he glimpsed her naked through mist or smoke.

He groaned, rolled over on the cellar pallet, coughed, smelled the tang of his dream in the damp darkness—

Smoke!

Instantly his eyes opened. In a panic, he fought free of the sweated blankets. The erection produced by the dream wilted under his sudden fear.

His wool nightshirt flapped around his knees as he stumbled for the stairs. The smoke stench was growing stronger. A splinter stabbed his bare sole as he took the risers two at a time. He was terrified by the roseate light at the head of the stairs. He heard a sound. Crackling—

He burst onto the main floor, dashed past the entrance to Ben Edes’ office. Flames shot up from a stack of fresh-printed
Gazettes
near the press.

The fire was not large as yet; the still-damp ink produced the excessive smoke. He leaped for the burning papers, scorched his hands in the process of spilling the sheets off their pallet and away from the vulnerable wooden press.

The leaping fire showed him a fallen pine-knot torch and the front door half-torn from its hinges. The door’s outer surface bore the scars of gouging and prying. He’d apparently been sleeping so hard that he hadn’t heard the break-in.

“Fire, a fire!” he bawled from the doorway, hoping the hour was not too late.

Relieved, he heard the cry echoed a moment later by other men, some of the loafers hanging around the taverns close to the nearby State House, he suspected. He raced behind the press, seized the bucket of sand kept there for just such emergencies, emptied it on the scattered, burning newspapers with a hurling sweep. That helped—a little.

The voices grew louder in the close confines of Dassett Alley. Philip shouted at figures dimly visible at the door:

“Someone with boots help me stamp this out!”

A tottering tosspot with a red nose and a woolen muffler around his neck was pushed forward by his companions. “And one of you run to Mr. Edes’ house and fetch him—quickly!” Philip cried.

By the time Edes arrived in a quarter of an hour, the blaze was well extinguished. A noisy, quarrelsome-sounding crowd now packed the alley, some with torches. Edes had to struggle and shove his way through.

Shivering in his nightshirt, Philip greeted him at the door. Edes surveyed the damage while Philip explained what had happened.

“Sharp work,” Edes said finally, fingering the smashed-in door. “Thank God you saved the press.”

“Apparently someone discovered the source of the new broadside hung on the tree.”

The printer snorted. “D’you think that’s any secret? I’ve had threats of this—and worse—more times than I can count.”

Philip suggested that perhaps some partisan of the Tory cause had worked the damage. But Edes rejected the idea, searching the crowd outside.

“No, lad, the merchants who still kiss Farmer George’s ass are too concerned about their own hides—and too scared of the Sons of Liberty—to risk villainy after dark. ’Twould be soldiers, most likely. Come over from the garrison at Castle William. The right honorable King’s men.”

He spat, turned and began picking up charred sections of the
Gazette.

“They think they can silence our protests about the tea matter with a little hooliganism. ’Course,” he added, managing a smile at last, “they probably got their inspiration from our own organization. We’ve burned before, when circumstances warranted. Well, we must print again tomorrow. It appears they destroyed about a third of the run—”

“And came close to destroying the only place I have to build a future, damn ’em to hell!” Philip said impulsively.

Ben Edes gave him a keen look of approval. He reached under his shirt, pulled off the chain bearing a medal like the one Campbell had shown. He looped the chain around his startled assistant’s neck.

“A little gift, Philip. Wear it proudly. You earned it with what you did tonight. And what you just said.”

“P
HILIP, YOU KNOW THERE’S
to be action tonight. We need young men. Are you with us? I should warn you—it may be dangerous.”

Ben Edes spoke the words shortly after noon on a Thursday, the sixteenth of December. Outside, a thin early winter rain spattered Dassett Alley.

Philip wiped his ink-stained hands on his apron, met the inquiring gaze of the older man; he had no doubt about what sort of “action” Ben Edes referred to. Boston had seethed with talk of nothing else during the nineteen days
Dartmouth
had remained at Griffin’s Wharf, her cargo still in her hold. During those same nineteen days, two sister ships,
Eleanor
and
Beaver,
had dropped anchor at the same pier. Both carried more tea.

At public meetings in late November, Samuel Adams had reiterated the demand that all the tea be shipped back to England. Adams’ cohorts skillfully controlled the loud, vocal voting—in favor of the patriot resolutions.

But that made no difference to the Royal Governor. Hutchinson issued orders to the Customs authorities who patrolled the harbor that the tea ships could sail only on presentation of official documents to certify that the duty had been paid.

Tomorrow—December seventeenth—would mark the end of a crucial period. Twenty days after any ship’s arrival, Customs men could board her and seize her cargo for non-payment of duties.
Dartmouth’s
twenty days expired tomorrow.

In anticipation of that—so Edes had confided to Philip—three or four days ago, Adams had convened a secret session of Committees of Correspondence from Boston and four neighboring towns. The object was to prepare the plan that had to be carried out before the sun rose on the seventeenth—and the tea fell into Crown hands.

“The Governor won’t relent?” Philip asked now. “I heard at the Dragon there was to be another last-minute meeting to press for it.”

“Aye, there’s a meeting. At Old South Church, beginning at three this afternoon. But it’s doubtful Hutchinson will change his mind. If he does, several gentlemen I know will be exceedingly disappointed. The Governor obviously realizes trouble’s coming. He’s fled to his big country place over by Blue Hill in Milton.”

“Yes, I heard that too.”

“So the tea will be seized unless he permits
Dartmouth
to sail tonight. Which he won’t.”

“But what about the troops, Mr. Edes? Will they stand for what’s been planned?”

“That’s the question—and the risk. The soldiers could move in from the island garrison to block us. Worse than that, when we’re at Griffin’s, we’ll be in range of the guns of the English squadron. If that damned Admiral Montague decides to throw a little grape or canister to discourage our—protest, we could be in for it.”

“You think they’d damage the tea ships and the wharf?”

“To damage some patriots at the same time? I don’t think it’s impossible.”

Philip shivered. In response, Edes said, “There’s no guaranteeing anything, of course. With the town in its present mood, the lobsters might choose inaction. There’s also a question of what orders would be required for the soldiers to act. Orders to shoot us? We plan no harm to any person. Still—” He shrugged. “That’s not to say bloody hell couldn’t break loose. On purpose or by accident. So you’re fairly warned, lad. What’s your answer?”

The younger man grinned. “Risk or not, do you think I’d miss it? Especially after they tried to burn us out? Tell me what time and where.”

Edes clapped him on the shoulder. “My parlor. We’ve three groups organizing—one at my home. Lock the shop and be there before sundown. I understand those gathering at Old South will try one final time to force
Dartmouth’s
captain, Francis Rotch, to sail this evening. We’ll wait for his refusal—then Sam’s signal.”

With that, Edes bundled into his surtout of dark gray wool and hurried out of the shop.

Watching him go, Philip noted that Dassett Alley was enjoying more pedestrian traffic than usual this morning. Despite the wretched weather, the Boston streets teemed with people. Almost as if there were a fair, Philip thought wryly. The public mood hardly seemed suitable for a day when a clear and open blow was to be struck against the King’s law. Peculiar people, these Americans.

Philip arrived at Ben Edes’ home at quarter to five. The rain was beginning to slack off, the clouds to blow away as winter twilight came on. Edes’ young son Peter admitted him to the house, conducted him to closed parlor doors.

“I’m not allowed in, except to keep the bowl filled with rum punch,” he said unhappily.

The boy knocked. Philip heard muffled voices go silent suddenly.

A moment later the doors slid aside. Edes greeted Philip, gestured him in. He was unprepared for what he saw as Edes shut the doors again.

The room was crowded with young men, all of them unfamiliar. Most were mechanics; artisans, to judge by their clothing. They resumed conversing in lively fashion, joking and posing for one another in ragged costumes that ranged from tattered wool blankets to women’s shawls. But the talk seemed too boisterous, as if it concealed each masquerader’s apprehension—

The same apprehension Philip felt. Throughout the afternoon, worried-looking strangers had hurried into the shop, hunting Edes. Philip had sent them on to the printer’s home.

All at once Philip did recognize one face in the gathering. Revere, the silversmith. He was bundling a blanket under his arm and tucking what appeared to be two wild bird’s feathers beneath his coat.