The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (55 page)

“What will become of those things?”

“I’ll leave them hidden in the barn. Or ditch them in the river. If I tried to haul ’em along with me, they’d be recognized as Crown issue right off. And God save me, I’ve come to hate all they stand for. Any fighting I have to do, I’ll do with my own two hands.”

Philip’s dark eyes shone with a sudden intensity. “Will you give me the musket and the bayonet?”

Lumden grinned. “In return for finding the reliable lad to help with our plan.”

“Done!”

“I prefer not to speculate on what you want with those things,” Lumden said. “If the time ever comes when you use ’em against men who might be friends of mine, I hope I’m tilling a field in Connecticut and bouncing a youngster in my lap.” He reached over to clasp his pale hand around Daisy O’Brian’s.

She stared back with unashamed affection. Philip barely noticed. His mind’s eye glowed with an image of the Brown Bess and its shining length of steel. With difficulty, he refocused his thoughts on the reality of the moment.

“One more thing. Who’s to know this plan? Mistress Anne, for instance?”

“I have already described our intentions to her,” said the girl. “I imagine Mr. Ware will need to be told, too. Beyond that, I’ve spoken to no one. I haven’t sent a letter to my father—and even if I could find someone to write it for me, I won’t. If George should be caught—”

“I’d be flogged at the least,” Lumden put in. “Or, more likely, shot.”

“So I figured it’s best my father know nothing of it till George reaches the farm. I hear sending messages out of Boston can be risky these days.”

“Agreed,” said Philip, rising from the table. There were noises at the front of the house.

Lawyer Ware appeared momentarily, knocking snowflakes from the crown of his tricorn hat.

“Aha, some conspiracy brewing!” he said with a sly smile. “I can tell from the cats’ grins you’re all wearing.” In spite of himself, Ware had taken a liking to Lumden.

Anne entered the kitchen. Philip moved a couple of steps so their hands could touch briefly. With his other hand, he lifted his tankard in mock toast.

“Yes, sir, we’re conspirators, all right. We’ve just recruited a new man to the cause. Or at least subtracted one from the other side. We should celebrate.”

“You’re mighty free at celebrating with my own supply of spirits, Mr. Kent,” Ware said with false seriousness. “What’s the nature of this conspiracy?”

As soon as Lumden explained his decision, Ware clapped his hands in delight and demanded that they all drink several festive rounds.

“At my expense,” he said with a look at Philip. “This time.”

Following the advice of Ben Edes, Philip decided to hire his help at the Green Dragon. Edes said boys who worked there were none too scrupulous about how they earned extra pay.

The boy on duty when Philip dropped in was an unkempt, ragged lad, one Jemmy Thaxter. Recognizing Philip as a friend, the landlord stated confidentially that, yes, Jemmy was willing to do illegal work when sufficiently rewarded.

“But he’s been on the streets since he was seven or eight. So drive a sharp bargain. And keep any necessary secrets to yourself.”

Philip disliked the fox-eyed twelve-year-old from the start. He especially hated Jemmy’s putrid breath and his noxious habit of licking his crooked, yellowing upper teeth.

But Jemmy listened carefully, then said sure, he could come by a rickety cart and a horse in the slums of South Boston where he lived. Some risk to the venture? Never mind—all he cared about was the ten shillings.

Philip didn’t ask how the boy intended to acquire the cart and the animal. Steal them, probably. Nor did he outline details of the plan, or its purpose. Those would be revealed only just before Lumden’s departure, when it would be too late for the boy to betray them.

Jemmy shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “So long’s I’m paid, I’ll sup with Old Nick himself. When’s this here cart and nag wanted?”

“When I tell you so and not before. Could be days. Could be weeks. I’ll let you know.” The timing, Philip had been told, was up to Lumden himself.

The whole scheme somehow made him apprehensive. He charged it off to the worsening mood of the city. The closed port put hundreds of men out of work at the shipyards, the sail houses, the ropewalks. Why build a vessel if she could only be launched to sit in the harbor? Quarrelsome bands of the unemployed roamed the streets, harassing Gage’s soldiers. Attacks against the troops became more frequent and more violent. The unwary enlisted man or officer who ventured out alone after dark stood the risk of being found the next morning severely beaten or—in two cases Philip heard about—dead. The only relief from the general grimness came during the occasional moments he and Anne managed to steal for themselves.

On the last night of the old year, he visited Launder Street exactly as he’d done twelve months earlier. Anne teasingly suggested they welcome 1775 in the manner that had pleasured them both a year previously.

Accomplishing the suggestion proved a little harder. Lawyer Ware yawned and retired well before the clock chimed eleven. But Daisy and her sergeant kept the kitchen humming with their claret-primed merriment. Philip and Anne ultimately had to resort to the pretense of announcing a short stroll in the wintry air just before midnight.

Once into Launder Street, they slipped around through twisting alleys to the sanctuary of the tiny barn, where they shared each other’s embraces with eagerness and delight. But because of the glow from the kitchen windows, they didn’t dare linger too long. They returned to the house the way they had left, within half an hour after the tolling of the bells.

As the new year opened, food and supplies in the Ware home, as in all of Boston, became more and more limited. The Wares took to burning only a few sticks of kindling in the kitchen hearth at night, and none in the parlor.

And although Philip repeatedly offered Lumden reassurances that the plan would work smoothly, he continued to feel less than certain. Conditions in the city generated that kind of pessimism. Everything seemed to be breaking down.

While the days went by, Lumden grew increasingly fretful. Philip was worried that the man’s agitated state would draw suspicion from his senior officers. Almost daily, so Anne reported, the sergeant vowed that he couldn’t wait any longer. But he refused to name a day and hour when he would actually desert. Clearly, a violation of military law ran against his principles. Even though he was sustained by Daisy’s romantic encouragements, the whole business placed him under a severe strain, Anne said.

Visiting Launder Street the next time, Philip discovered she hadn’t exaggerated. Lumden spoke in monosyllables. He paced the Ware kitchen, up and down, up and down, fingering the mole on his forehead. On one of her trips to Dassett Alley, Anne said:

“I think if the poor man delays much longer, he’ll suffer some kind of seizure. Or blurt out his guilt to the whole town. Do you suppose we should encourage him to abandon the idea?”

Philip shook his head. “I want that musket.”

A somber pleasure brightened Anne’s dark eyes. “Papa and I may make a revolutionary of you yet, Philip.”

Ignoring the remark, he said, “I agree with you that Lumden shouldn’t keep waiting. Else he may well give the game away. We’ll talk to him tonight. Try to force a decision. Speed, after all, is to his advantage. Adams is already predicting that Gage will move in the spring. Go after the militia stores out in the country in earnest. So if our sergeant delays and delays, he may be marching in battle formation whether he likes it or not.”

Philip repeated the warning that same evening. The pale infantryman listened in silence. Wintering indoors in the city had turned his cheeks hollow but had added even more weight to his belly.

When Philip finished, Lumden gnawed his lip, said with effort:

“All right—Saturday. Tell the boy Saturday. When it’s dark. I’ll disappear after evening muster—”

“How soon will you be missed?”

“Not till late Sunday, I shouldn’t imagine.”

Daisy looked relieved. “I have all the clothing put by.”

“Good,” Philip said. “Saturday. Seven o’clock.”

The next afternoon, Philip asked Ben Edes’ permission for half an hour off. He trudged to the Dragon in a thin, sifting snow. He instructed Jemmy Thaxter to bring the cart and horse to Launder Street at the appointed time. Sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve, the boy promised he would.

Philip slept badly the two nights prior to Saturday. The day dawned dull gray and unseasonably warm. He had trouble concentrating on his work, the typesetting for Monday’s edition of the paper. At closing time he locked the shop and rushed to Launder Street. He found Lumden again pacing the kitchen.

“Well, you do look the picture of a countryman,” Philip nodded, taking in the sergeant’s attire: a leather hunting shirt with decorative fringe; a flop-brimmed hat and a thick muffler of dark brown wool; dirty trousers that might once have been bottle green; worn boots with flapping sole pieces. Daisy had indeed secured the ultimate castoffs of other households.

“Smear some of that fireplace soot on your neck,” Philip instructed. “Under your nails, too.” He went to the parlor for a glance at the enameled clock. Nearly six-thirty already.

He lifted one of the draperies, peered into Launder Street. Why was he so damned jumpy? His mind swam with a memory of Jemmy Thaxter’s foxy, opaque eyes.

At seven-thirty, standing beside him in the cold, lightless parlor, Anne voiced the fear that had become a certainty to Philip:

“Something’s amiss. He’s not coming.”

“I’d better go find out what’s happened—”

“Philip?” He turned on his way out. “Please be careful.”

Nodding, he bundled into the surtout he’d purchased a few weeks ago for protection against the damp January winds. He tramped to the Green Dragon, pushed through the doors, blinked against the smoke—and clenched his teeth in fury at the sight of Jemmy Thaxter piling three new logs onto the irons of the blackened hearth.

The boy saw Philip immediately. He bolted for the back.

Philip ran after him, dodging among the startled patrons. “That’s Ben Edes’ devil!” one exclaimed. “What did Jemmy do this time, sell his sister and give the lad the pox—?”

Philip crashed out through the tavern’s rear door, sprinted six steps along the alley, caught Jemmy’s collar.

“Leave go!” the boy squealed. Instead, Philip shook him, hard.

“Seven o’clock’s come and gone. Where’s the horse? Where’s the cart?”

Still struggling, Jemmy cried, “I don’t want nothin’ to do wif a soldier running away!”

“Running
—
?”

Philip was so astounded, he nearly let the boy go by accident. But he held on. Jemmy coughed, a heavy, wheezing sound. Philip’s mouth tightened. His voice dropped, threatening:

“How did you decide that’s why the cart was wanted?” He shook Jemmy savagely. “Tell me or I’ll break your damn bones!”

“I—I didn’t think this was no straight deal from the start. I wanted to see wot I was gettin’ into. So I follered you one night. From Edes’ place to that house in Launder Street. I peeked in an’ saw you talkin’ to that lobsterback in the kitchen. He’s goin’ to ditch, ain’t he? That’s what I’m ’sposed to do, ain’t it, help smuggle him ’cross the Neck? Well, I don’t like bloody Tommy any better’n the next. But I ain’t mixing in helping somebody from the Thirty-third run away. Ten shillings ain’t worth it—nothing’s worth it—you git a whip or a musket ball if you’re caught—
quit holding me so hard!”

Something in the boy’s darting eyes started suspicion churning inside Philip. But he couldn’t quite pin down what was wrong. Especially when his anger was running high, urging him to administer a beating. The frail, dirty boy disgusted him.

“So you haven’t got the horse or the cart?” he asked.

Jemmy gulped, admitted it was so. Philip flung him away, cursing.

“Ain’t you going to hit me or nothing?”

“Hell, why? The harm’s done. But let me warn you, Jemmy. Boy or no boy, breathe a word to a soul and you’ll be called on by some gentlemen in liberty caps. They won’t spare you because of your age, you sneaking little bastard.”

Coughing out a mist of spittle, Jemmy cowered back against the fence opposite the Dragon’s rear door. “There won’t be a word—nobody knows ’cept me. I haven’t even told the lady, God’s truth! I just decided not to go through with it, is all—”

“Why didn’t you tell me that, dammit?”

“I—I was scairt to. I thought you’d beat me.”

“Remember that you’ll be beaten worse if you don’t keep your mouth closed.”

“I will—I swear.”

Again Philip felt that sting of suspicion; again he failed to define the source. It was obvious he’d simply approached the wrong boy, and now Lumden’s whole escape was in jeopardy. Once more he tried to read Jemmy’s grubby face, darting eyes. He couldn’t.

Turning, he sped off up the alley, intending to run all the way to Launder Street.

At least, he thought as he raced along with the night air stinging his cheeks, Lumden could return to his unit for the next muster and not be missed. But Philip also realized he’d have to call at the Dragon a few more times, to make certain he’d put sufficient fear into Jemmy Thaxter to ensure the boy’s silence—

A silence which the next moments revealed to be a fraud.

Philip rounded the corner into the street where Lawyer Ware’s house showed lamplight at its parlor windows. He stopped in mid-stride, cold dread clawing his middle.

In front of the house, reins looped and tied to the ring of the mounting block, a horse fretted and blew out plumes of vapor.

Philip had seen enough wealthy people riding on the Common to recognize an expensive saddle. What person of means was calling on Abraham Ware just at the hour when Lumden’s escape was supposed to be taking place? It was too damned coincidental for comfort—

Stealing toward the stoop, Philip suddenly recalled something else. Jemmy had specifically identified Lumden’s regiment. That was what had been nagging his mind!

Perhaps the boy already knew which regiment wore willow-green facings.