The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (50 page)

“We need men for the ranks. Six feet tall if we can find ’em—less than that if we can’t. I understand from—certain mutual friends that what you might lack in stature, you make up for in spirit and devotion to our common concern. We drill once a week, and the pay’s insignificant. But I feel confident Ben Edes would grant you the time off. If you don’t know how to load and shoot a musket, we’ll teach you.”

Philip realized that Anne’s assessment of Knox had to be true. While pretending purposeless amiability toward the British officers who turned his store into an unofficial salon, he was learning their tactical and strategic secrets. Now he was putting them to use. Philip answered:

“I fired a Brown Bess a few times. But that was several years ago.”

“The knack will come quickly if it was easy for you the first time.” Knox lifted his silk-wrapped hand. “As you may have noticed, handling a musket is impossible for me, thanks to a hunting accident. I suppose,” he added with a grin, “that’s the reason they turned me into an officer. Oh, I should tell you before you decide that each member of the company is responsible for securing his own musket. They’re not easily come by unless you’re a rural man who keeps one pegged over the hearth. But we are not overly curious about how a man
acquires
a gun—so long as he gets one. Until be does, he drills with a stick.”

Philip stifled a laugh. “A
stick
—!” Instantly, he knew he’d said the wrong thing.

“Be assured, sir, we are not playing children’s games. You can and will learn the proper order for loading and firing the weapon, even though you do not have powder and shot or the musket itself. But then when you have them—” Knox’s expression showed resolve. “—you will be ready to use them.”

A shiver of apprehension chased down Philip’s back. The step from orderly mobs destroying tea consignments to organization of military units was a long and significant one. Frowning, he asked the bookseller:

“Do you honestly think that we’ll come to open hostilities?”

“Who knows what we can expect when Hutchinson’s reports of the tea affair reach England—as they’ve surely done by now? Our basic position is preparedness. For any eventuality. You were recommended as one who would fit into our unit. If the recommendation was in error—” His unfinished sentence and challenging stare left no doubt about what his opinion would be if Philip responded negatively. The storm winds were blowing in earnest now, he thought. Buffeting him along—

“All right, Mr. Knox. I’ll join. Provided Mr. Edes agrees.”

Knox clapped him on the shoulder. “You can be certain of it! Once you’ve taken care of the formality of obtaining his permission, come ’round to the store and we’ll arrange the papers.”

A few days later, Philip found a couple of spare hours for personal business. He visited Knox at the Book-Store to sign the required forms. Then he hurried toward the North End, where he hoped to see Mr. Revere.

A January thaw had set in. Midmorning sunshine gilded windowpanes and glittered the ice melting on rooftops as he turned into North Square. From one end to the other, the Square teemed with citizens and tradespeople moving among flimsy stalls put up at sunrise. Several days a week, North Square served as one of Boston’s three chief marketplaces.

Philip pushed by single- and two-horse carts unloading vegetables or firewood fresh from the country, thrust his way around bargainers buying and selling firkins of country butter, baskets of fresh-baked gingerbread, gabbling turkeys. The shoppers were mostly towns-women with baskets on their arms. They haggled cheerfully with the farmers or their smiling but wary-eyed agents; some of these last, Philip noted, were black men. The noise of the market was loud but pleasant. And the aromas were a banquet: oysters and pickled pork, mackerel and rye meal, hams and haunches of venison.

Revere’s small, peak-roofed house fronted on the square. Philip was about to descend side steps to the shop entrance when he noticed a commotion a few doors down. He shielded his eyes against the sun, saw a small but rough-looking crowd—men, chiefly—gesturing and scowling at a second-floor window. He had no notion of the reason.

He watched a few moments longer, then went on. It was too fresh and sunny a day for such displays of bad temper, whatever the cause.

A bell over the door rang to announce his entrance. From an adjoining room, he heard Revere’s voice:

“Right with you—just a moment—”

Philip was content to wait, bedazzled by the profusion of goods jammed on the shelves, counters, even the floor of the establishment. Clock faces hung in rows. And branding irons and sword hilts. Sunlight slanting through the street-level windows flashed from the blades in a case of surgeon’s instruments.

And he had never seen so much silver in so many different shapes and sizes. Baby rattles and teaspoons, shoe buckles and chocolate pots, creamers and standing cups. The sun struck starry highlights from the products of Revere’s metalworking skill.

The craftsman himself appeared a moment later, wiping his hands on his leather apron.

“Mr. Kent! Good day. What brings you to this part of town?”

“I’m in need of your services, Mr. Revere.”

“Well, I’ve a diversity of those to offer! What’s your choice?” His blunt-fingered hands ranged over a display. “A baptismal basin? Ah, but nothing’s been settled formally with you and Mistress Ware, has it?” The smith’s grin confirmed what Philip already suspected. He and Anne were the subject of amused gossip among the group that gathered at Edes and Gill.

Revere picked up a glittering length of silver links. “A chain for your pet squirrel, then? Or how about a whistle? An excellent silver whistle—” He blew a piercing blast.

Laughing, Philip held up a hand. “I’m calling on Mr. Revere the dentist.” He opened his mouth, pointed. “I broke this the night we sank the tea.”

Revere stepped closer, peered into Philip’s mouth. Over the smith’s neatly clubbed hair, Philip could see into the darker adjoining room. It was dominated by a brick furnace. The furnace’s partially open door revealed glowing coals that gave off pronounced heat and cast a dull red glare on crucibles, an anvil, a heap of damaged silver cups and tankards, and other paraphernalia whose purpose he didn’t understand.

“A good tooth lost in a good cause,” Revere declared, straightening up. “I can fit you with a more than satisfactory replacement. Sit you down—” He indicated a peculiar-looking chair amid the clutter. Philip hesitated.

“We need to talk about the price first, Mr. Revere.”

“All right. I have a different and much higher set of charges for Tories—don’t get much trade from ’em, I confess. How much can you afford?”

Thinking of the sharp bargaining he’d witnessed in the square, Philip put on a doubtful expression. “Oh, no more than a few pence—”

“How few is few? Five?”

“Three would be better.”

“Call it four and I’ll guarantee to carve you a fine tooth no one will tell from the original. You’re lucky you broke a dog tooth—they’re easier. The price includes mounting with cement and the finest gold wire for extra permanence. I’ll whittle the new one of the very best hippo tusk, too.”

He began rummaging through the tiny drawers of a wall cabinet, found a large, curved tooth and displayed it proudly. Then, noting Philip’s dumbfounded expression, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Isn’t a hippopotamus an animal?”

“Of course it’s an animal. Where else d’you think a man gets a new tooth? The triangular traders bring me tusks from the West Africas regularly. I tried elephant a few times, but it yellows too fast. And sheep’s teeth are all snaggled and crooked. Difficult to work. Sit down, sir, and let me put in the wax—”

“Wax?”
Philip repeated in a somewhat strangled voice, as Revere thrust him into the chair and forced his head against a pair of pads projecting from an upright rod. Humming, Revere conducted another search under one of his counters, returned with a red chunk of the stuff.

“Open wide, please, Mr. Kent,” he instructed, practically yanking Philip’s jaws apart. He crouched beside the chair, peered upward at the damaged canine tooth, broke off a bit of the red wax, balled it between thumb and forefinger, then pressed the wax carefully up against the tooth’s broken surface.

A moment later he pried the wax out. He carried it to the counter, deposited it in a clay pestle and used a quill pen to scratch some figures on a scrap of paper. The paper too was put in the pestle, which was pushed aside to a place near half a dozen silver pepper pots. Philip wondered how the man could keep all his various business enterprises in order in his mind.

“I’ll have the tooth in a week, so drop back then,” Revere said.

“Don’t you need to take any kind of measurements?”

“I already did.” Revere lifted a hand to point to one eye. “The most accurate measuring devices known to man—provided they’re used properly. No, sir, we’re finished—unless of course you’d like me to clean those teeth up a bit. Only costs an extra pence to make your dental equipment white and sparkling. I use a special dentifrice of my own devising. Several secret ingredients I’m afraid I can’t reveal, plus saltpeter, gunpowder, crumbs of white bread, cuttlefish bone, broken crockery—”

Philip gulped. “You mean broken dishes?”

“It’s all in how you grind and mix it, Mr. Kent. Does wonders in attracting the fair sex. But then you don’t have that problem, do you?”

“Well—ah—thank you, but I don’t believe I can afford—”

“Paul?”

A female voice from a curtained door at the rear of the shop spun Revere around and brought Philip out of the chair. He saw a slender, dark-haired young woman in a plain frock and apron, a spot of flour whitening one cheek. She looked alarmed.

“What’s the trouble, Rachel?” the smith asked.

“I was just out on the stoop—there’s an awful row down the way. I fear a mob’s going to do harm to poor Johnny Malcolm.”

Instantly, Revere untied his leather apron, flung it aside. “The crazy old wretch will get himself killed with that tongue of his. There’s been trouble brewing all morning. Someone put in the square told me a little boy accused Malcolm of upsetting his sled of kindling. Come on, Kent, let’s have a look.” Grim-faced, he hurried for the door.

Philip followed the smith into the January sunshine. At the house where he’d seen a few people earlier, he now saw a crowd three or four times the size. An angry crowd. Taunts were being exchanged with a cadaverous, white-haired old man who leaned from a second-floor window, brandishing a pistol in one hand and a broad-axe in the other.

Revere and his companion trotted toward the crowd. Philip noticed three men running up, from the other direction, carrying a ladder.

“This Malcolm’s a friend of yours, Mr. Revere?”

“Far from it. Crazy Johnny’s a senile, vile-tempered fool. Likes nothing better than to bait people with his impudent and provocative jibes. Trouble is, he’s a flaming Tory. In this neighborhood, that’s not safe. The Sons of Liberty got blamed once before when some rowdies chastised him—”

As the two approached the edge of the crowd, the old man with the weapons shrieked down, “Ah, go to Hades, the lot of you! I’ll push over that little wart’s sled any time I damn please. His father helped drown the King’s tea, don’t think I don’t know that. If I split the sprout’s head, I’d get ten shilling sterling from the Governor. Twice that for the rest of you Yankee traitors—!”

The old man’s voice was shrill. Spittle flew from his mouth. Philip disliked the fellow on sight. But at the same time, he realized the unfairness of the odds against Malcolm.

Revere shouldered into the crowd. “Let him alone. Let the old lunatic rant—”

Scowling faces swung toward the smith and Philip. “Tend to your cream pots, Revere. He bullied the boy, and he’s no high son of liberty, either.”

“But he’s touched in the head. He can do no one any real harm—”

Revere’s argument produced no response except for more yells directed at the old man in the window:

“Have a care with your nasty tongue, John Malcolm!”

“Aye, don’t forget you were treated to the tar and feathers once before. If you don’t shut up, we’ll do it again—properly, this time.”

Malcolm howled, “You say I was tarred and feathered and that it wasn’t done in a proper manner? Damn you, let me see the man that dares to do it better!” He spat down on the crowd.

A coarse-faced woman cursed and wiped her forehead. That incited the mob to rage. There were cries for the ladder. Before Philip knew it, the ladder was jammed against the front of the house. Two burly men started climbing it, one after another.

“Stay away!” Malcolm screeched. “I’ll shoot!”

“He’s too daft to aim straight,” someone jeered.

“Or load it right,” another voice added. “Go get him!”

Revere fought through the press, grabbing arms, shoulders.

“Dammit, if you’re friends of liberty, leave off baiting a helpless enemy!”

“Get out of here!” someone bawled. Philip watched Revere stagger from a fist that struck hard into his belly.

Pushing, Philip tried to go to Revere’s aid. All around, he saw twisted mouths, vicious eyes, threatening hands. One, raw-knuckled, knocked him in the side of the head. He stumbled. Someone else struck the small of his back, hard.

One of the men on the ladder had already dived through the second-floor window, from which shrill yelps of fright now issued. The sunlight and the blows blinded Philip as he struggled to fight off those who pounded him, slammed boots against his shins. Somewhere near the house, Revere was down, exclaiming in anger. But the mob howled louder:

“Tar and feathers!”

“Tar and feathers for liberty!”

“We’ll show the fucking lobster-lover
—
!”

Suddenly Revere burst through a break in the crowd, staggering. A bruise showed on his forehead. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth. His clothing was dirtied and torn. Men grabbed at him from behind. Revere swung a quick, clumsy punch that drove the leading attacker back, clutching his nose and spitting curses.