Taking Liberties (18 page)

To Philippa, to Beasley, her tales were endearing embroideries on an existence too stark to go unadorned. To Makepeace, who couldn't dissemble to save her life, they were plain lies. She laboured to recompense Dell for keeping Philippa safe, but did it clumsily. When, on the shopping outing, Dell had asked her for some white lead to disguise the damaged face, she'd exclaimed: ‘Heavens, no, that'd make it even worse.' She spent extravagantly on safer powders and paints for the woman but in Philippa's eyes they did little to ameliorate the ‘even worse'.

She knew she was confirming herself as a tyrant, the political role in which her daughter cast her because she would not take the side of the war that Philippa wanted her to, but the knowledge only meant that, more and more, she conformed to it.

The prison walls, when they reached them, were decorated by wanted posters giving the names and descriptions of escaped prisoners in alarming print.

 
‘Lord, how many are there?'

‘ “Ten guineas' reward for information leading to recapture”,' read Philippa. ‘I wonder where they all are. It shows how easy escape is.'

‘I say good luck to 'em,' Beasley said.

‘And me,' said Dell. ‘Let the poor lads have their freedom, I say.'

Makepeace raised her eyes to heaven. Undoubtedly, the posters suggested that Millbay Prison was as holed as a colander and—she could not help a flush of pride—her countrymen were taking advantage of it, but she held to her plan of procuring Josh's liberty by legal means, if you could call bribery legal. Despite the many times when she had fallen foul of and fought authority, Makepeace was not a natural rebel. Beasley's first choice was to flout the law; hers was not.

At the prison gates, entrance to the Sunday market was being delayed by a team of soldiers which was searching those wishing to go in.

‘Shall I send in my card to the commandant?' Makepeace wondered. ‘Or see Josh first?' How nice to greet the dear boy with the news that he was to be freed.

‘See Josh first.' Beasley was definite, so was Philippa.

They joined the line of people waiting to be searched, and were shoved aside by a heavy-handed guard in order to allow a carriage through. It was driven by a liveried black man and carried two women holding sunshades. It awakened a democratic resentment in those swallowing the dust from its wheels as it went by.

‘Haughty, haughty,' somebody said, and an old woman asked querulously of the soldiers: ‘Why'n't ee searching them Lady Muck 'n' Mucks along of we?'

‘Because they're Lady Muck 'n' Mucks,' a militiaman said. ‘Come on, Gammer, let's see what's in that basket.'

When it was Makepeace's turn to be searched, the contents of her basket—intended for Josh—a cut of ham, a cake and a bottle of cider, were confiscated. ‘You feeding the prisoners?'

‘We was going to sell 'em,' Beasley said, quickly.

‘Not here you ain't,' the guard said. ‘Need a licence. An' we got to sample 'em, ain't we, Charlie?' He winked. ‘Case you're trying to smuggle a file in for one of the Frenchies to saw through his bars. Very susceptible to the Frenchies, the ladies.'

Makepeace glared at Philippa—only fierce argument had stopped her daughter putting a file in the cake.

The market was bigger than she'd expected, and more popular. Already it was becoming crowded. The smell of fruit, fish and meat from the licensed stalls mingled with a stink that seemed to have settled on the prison like a fog. The discordance of flute-players vying with fiddlers and singers afflicted even Makepeace's unmusical ear.

Philippa looked round anxiously. ‘He isn't always here. He says they draw lots for which of them can be allowed to sell whatever they've got to sell. If they don't win, they spend the day crammed into a compound.'

Makepeace had tried to learn from her daughter what conditions were like in the prison but Philippa had been unable to tell her anything much. ‘Josh says they're “middlin' ” but I think he's being brave. I think they're awful.' However, Makepeace thought her daughter was prejudiced by the accounts of how the British army in America treated its prisoners which, if the half was true, was appallingly. Philippa had heard of huge mortality rates among men kept in prison hulks, of smallpox, hunger, overcrowding, even bayonetings. Whether these were tales merely to increase hatred for the British among American patriots, it was difficult for Makepeace to know. Philippa believed them.

On this evidence, Makepeace thought, Americans and now presumably the French were being more kindly treated in this country—that there was a market at all must surely prove it. Bunting, the calls of hucksters, the music . . . this was a surprisingly festive place. Nor did there seem any animosity towards the enemy from the townspeople who were bartering and buying and enjoying the entertainments as they would at any fairground.

Standing on tiptoe to look around she saw a good sprinkling of black faces among the stall-holders—none of them Josh's—as there were among their customers, presumably the servants of big houses. Navies, American or British, never minded a man's colour as long as he could haul on a rope and press gangs were democratic; they trawled all nationalities so that, as Makepeace knew from her tavern days in Boston, there were some ships of His Majesty's Navy where the only common language on the lower decks was pidgin.

In fact, pressed or volunteered, black men, especially former slaves, usually turned out to be good sailors who could be trusted not to abscond, mainly because shipboard life, hard as it might be, was egalitarian and therefore preferable to the one they'd led on shore.

‘I can't see him,' she said, despairingly.

They split up, Beasley and Dell going one way, Makepeace and Philippa another, having to struggle through an increasing crowd.

Then, for Makepeace, it all fell away: the sounds, the people. Josh was there, behind a stall near the wall; she could pick him out of thousands.

She began to move forward quickly but Philippa held her back. ‘Don't draw attention to yourself, Ma. You're not supposed to know him. He's just another prisoner.'

Not to me. Never to me. He'd seen her and, oh God, had begun to cry. Josh, who never cried, was weeping. She'd loved him always but never, until that moment, had she known what she meant to him; each incorporated memories of his mother for the other.

She had to walk away so that she didn't run to hold him and tell him it was all right, she was here now. She put her hands over her face and Philippa led her to the shelter of a booth.

‘I taught him to read,' Makepeace said, breaking down, ‘but he drew like an angel at the age of three.'

‘I know, Mama, I know,' Philippa said—and then to a concerned enquirer: ‘No, I thank you, she's quite well. A touch of the heat.'

Furiously, Makepeace rubbed at her cheeks. ‘Now's a fine time to water the morning glories,' she said, sniffing. ‘Let's go and see to my poor boy. Philippa, he's so
thin
.'

‘They starve them,' Philippa said.

They pushed their way through the crowd, trying to look insouciant.

Josh's stall was next to that of a woman selling cider from a barrel and doing a brisk trade among the thirsty. She appeared to be on intimate terms with the off-duty militia, two of which were leaning against the wall watching the activity and teasing the woman as they drank. As Makepeace came up, she called out: ‘Best cider, ladies. Three ha'pence a cup.'

‘Guaranteed apple-free,' one of the militiamen said. ‘Rot your socks.' The cider woman gave him a playful push.

Makepeace ignored them. Not looking at Josh, she examined what he was selling: a selection of bric-a-brac and objets d'art made by different hands, some of them dire, some astonishingly clever. She picked up a ship in a bottle. ‘How much for this, young man?'

‘Shillin', ma'am.' The tears still gleaming on his face could have passed for sweat except that there was not enough fat on his bones to produce any. There was a cut high up on his cheek. She was appalled at how he'd aged; the twenty-year-old skin was unlined, the eyes were those of an old man. But one of them winked at her. ‘Good to see a mother and daughter out together, ma'am.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘We're staying in the neighbourhood. We're waiting for a young friend to join us.' Under cover of a burst of laughter at the next stall, she whispered: ‘
You hurt, lamb?
' and nodded at his face.

He shook his head. ‘
It's nothin'
.' He swallowed. ‘
Thank God, Missus. Oh, Missus, thank God. I been a-worrying for that girl
.' He raised his voice: ‘There's other pieces might interest you, ma'am.' He bent down to pick up something from under the stall and handed it to her.

‘What is it?
I'm getting you out. I'm going to the chief man in this place right now.'

‘They won't . . . You'll make trouble
. . .' In his distress, he attracted the attention of the men at the cider booth. ‘No, ma'am, I cain't sell at that price. Ain't worth it.'

One of the militiamen strolled across to them. ‘What you selling, Quashee?'

Makepeace looked at the thing in her hand. It was an oval that had been cut from a piece of wood, then planed and treated to hold an ink drawing. It was her old inn, the Roaring Meg, come to life again in monochrome, every detail remembered: the rackety jetty and Tantaquidgeon standing on it, arms folded; a downstairs shutter hanging askew as it always had; a seagull perched on the starboard chimney; Betty flapping a duster from an upstairs window.

‘Grew up there,' Josh said, looking at Makepeace. ‘Happy times.'

She couldn't speak. She dug the wooden edges of the frame into her hands. Philippa took over. ‘It's quite pretty,' she said, primly. ‘How much is it?'

Makepeace smelled a sudden whiff of apple, alcohol and bad teeth as the militiaman peered over her shoulder. ‘Who done that?' he asked. ‘Not you, Quashee, I'll warrant. I'll have it.' He called across to the cider woman: ‘It's a picture of some tumbledown ol' pile, reminds me of my missus.' The cider woman laughed.

‘I'm buying it,' said Makepeace.

‘Yeah, but I'm havin' it,' the militiaman said.

Josh reached over, took the piece from Makepeace and handed it to the militiaman. ‘Don't matter,' he said, quickly. ‘They take the earnings off us anyways.'

‘You shut your mouth,' the militiaman shouted, ‘or your black carcass'll be in the Black Hole.' He was pleased with that, repeating it as he rejoined the cider-seller with his spoils. ‘Black carcass in the Black Hole.'

Josh shook his head in a warning to Makepeace. He knew her. So instead of getting a hat pin from her hat and killing the man with it, she asked him, quietly enough: ‘What's your name?'

‘What's it to you?'

‘I'm going to remember it.'

He was getting angry. ‘What's yours?'

Philippa pulled her away. ‘Come along, Mama.'

She was led off. ‘I can't bear it for him, Pippy.'

‘He's bearing it. We've got to.'

They found Beasley at the other end of the market.

‘I've been talking to an American captain. I bought his boots.' He swung the tired-looking bundle he was holding by a piece of string. ‘I was right. There ain't a possibility of exchange. He says there's a young prisoner here lost both his hands in action and they won't even exchange him. This captain, I asked him if money would do it and he said his family had tried—and they're rich as Croesus. They used diplomatic channels and got hold of Tom Hutchinson but even he can't and he's—'

‘I know who he is.' As Lieutenant-Governor of New England, Hutchinson had been the most distinguished of the men ruling it for the Crown and, when hostility to Britain broke out, the most hated. He was exiled in London now, a friend of royalty. Though she'd had no use for him when she'd been a patriotic Bostonian, she'd been holding him in mind for using his influence with the King on Josh's behalf.

But if Hutchinson couldn't even get a rich, white American captain released from Millbay, there was no hope for Josh.

‘That boy is not staying here,' she said, quietly. ‘They're beating him. I saw his face.'

Beasley shrugged. ‘Only one way then.'

‘Yes.' She sighed at the inevitable but had to face it. ‘If they don't want their damn laws broken, they shouldn't make 'em.'

They spent most of the day moving inconspicuously through the crowd, keeping an eye on the cider stall and waiting for the militiamen to leave it. They didn't; they became increasingly drunk to the point where Makepeace decided they could barely see and chanced a foray to Josh's stall on her own. He'd sold very little.

‘How much for that ship in the bottle?
Can you escape?
'

He nodded. ‘Sixpence.
Me and a friend got a plan
.'

‘What is it?'

A hand caught hold of her shoulder. ‘Got to go now, lady.' A soldier had a musket pointed at Josh. For one hideous moment she thought they were going to shoot him.
They heard us
. But the man was merely urging him to get in line with other prisoners, ready to be marched to their quarters.