The Turning of Anne Merrick (48 page)

They ran to the stall burgeoning with the first fresh citrus fruit Anne’d seen since living in New York. The wonderful smell of oranges, lemons, and limes overtook all sense and reason. She ordered a full bushel of each to be delivered to the shop, and purchased three bottles of orangeade, justifying the expense with, “The Redcoats are mad for punch.”

“Compliments, ladies!” Pleased
with the size of the order, the happy lemontrader placed three oranges into Sally’s basket. The women scooted over to the side to peel and share one on the spot.

“Mmmm…” Sally moaned with pleasure, and cracked the real first smile Anne had seen in days and days. “So good…”

Pink giggled, wiping the sweet juice from her chin. “Like eating a little bit of heaven, in’t it?”

Good to see them truly happy for a change…

In the afterclap of Bede Seaborn’s execution, Anne did not know what else to do but carry on, and they kept the Cup and Book open, putting on cheerful countenances as if nothing was amiss. The charade, difficult in the best of circumstances, was very wearing under these worst of circumstances. Isolated from the company of their men and surrounded by an enemy proven fearsome, they’d spent the past two weeks moving between sadness, worry, and plain anger, without direction or word from any quarter.

Anne pulled an orange from the basket. “Let’s peel another…”

Of a sudden, something came flying through the air, striking Sally square in the chest to land with a plop in the basket hooked over her arm. For a brief moment Anne thought it was a bird, until she heard a boy’s laughter and saw Jim Griffin run up, grinning and pointing.

“Beg pardon, miss, but that’s my ball…”

Anne, Sally, and Pink were speechless when quick as a wink Jim reached in with both hands to rifle through Sally’s goods.

“Here ’tis!” he said, producing a small ball made of stitched brown leather and stuffed tight with cork shavings and feathers. With a wink, and a smile, he ran to rejoin his mates and their game of rounders.

Sally looked down into her basket and said, “Th’ wee blackguard made off with the last orange!”

“But look—he left a note.” Anne plucked out a dirty, folded piece of paper, no bigger than the palm of a young boy’s hand. They strolled away nonchalant and rounded the corner before crowding together to unfold the slip and read the message.

“That’s David’s hand,” Sally said. “I’d know it anywhere!”

“What’s it say? What’s it say?”
Pink asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“It’s a list.” Anne read it aloud, “‘Hat, Quakers, sixth day, forty.’”

Sally puffed out a breath. “Well, I’m fair puggled—what’s it all mean?”

Anne shrugged, repeating, “Hat… Quakers… sixth day… forty…”

Pink ventured, “I think maybe it means we’re invited at Mr. Hadley’s today for tea.”

“Sixth day!” Anne exclaimed. “Of course! At Quaker’s Friday for tea!”

“Yer daft clever!” Sally laughed, and gave Pink a hug. “Do you think David will be there?”

Pink nodded. “He wrote the note, didn’t he?”

Sally laughed and clapped her hands. “Let’s go home. I want to bake some treats for our tea.”

Ripping the message into tiny bits, Anne spun on her heel, sprinkling them on the breeze as if she were sowing seed. Looping arms with Sally and Pink, they skipped all the way back to Chestnut Street.

“Welcome, ladies, welcome!” The odd little engraver met them at the shop door wearing blue-glass spectacles. Elbert hurried to slide the bolt home and draw the curtains closed, all the while his little spotted terrier leaping and barking like mad.

“Here, Bandit!” Sally called to the engraver’s dog and he leapt up into her arms, lapping at her face. She beamed. “See how the wee scoundrel remembers me!”

Anne reached over to give Bandit a scratch between the ears. “Of course he does. He remembers both of us.”

“No time for dawdling, no time for dawdling.” Elbert urged them forward, swinging the door to the workroom open. “My impatient fellows await the pleasure of your company…”

The engraver’s workroom was a pleasant space. To the left walking
in, a steep oak staircase led up to the second story. On the wall opposite, three large, south-facing windows looked out onto an open field, letting in great swaths of sunshine. The long table, usually pushed up to the windows to take advantage of the daylight, had been pulled out to the center and surrounded by a collection of mismatched chairs and stools.

“They’re here!” David called, jumping up from his seat at the head of the table; he moved from window to window pulling the canvas curtains closed, casting a bit of a pall on the room.

“Davy lad!” Sally skirted around the table and skipped into his arms. “I hardly kent it was you without yer uniform.”

Dressed in the plain clothes of a Quaker, David laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t get very far in this city wearing Continental blue, would I?”

Pink and Anne made a beeline to the back of the room, where Jack and Titus stood in shirtsleeves and leather aprons at a washbasin on the counter, wiping their hands dry. Tossing the towel aside, Jack met Anne with arms wide. Pulling her into a hug, his whisper tickled her ear. “I’ve been missing you so, so much…”

Anne wrapped her arms about his waist, pressed her cheek to his chest, and simply took in the smell of him—the familiar compound of ink, soap, leather a soothing calmative—a tonic that at once remedied the ills of her troubled heart. “The very best place in the world,” she murmured, “in your arms…”

“You are the darling of my heart.” Jack rested his chin on the top of her head and held her tight. “I could carry you away right now and never look back…”

Elbert held the back door open and Brian came bustling through carrying a steaming pot of coffee, with Jim right behind bearing a tray piled with cups and saucers and spoons. David called out, “Gather round, everyone!”

Hand in hand, Pink and Titus left their whispered huddle in the corner, and came to join the rest, taking seats opposite Anne and Jack. Handsome in a plain brown weskit and bright white shirt and cravat, David sat at the head of the table with paper and pencil, and Sally was at his right.

Looking very young and cavalier with his wavy hair falling about his shoulders, Quaker-style, Sally was clearly enamored with David’s choice of disguise. Leaning over she said to Anne, “Yer brother looks just like a schoolmaster, does he na?”

“Pfttt!”
Anne teased. “More like a schoolboy with his pretty curls!”

“I’m supposed to be plain, not pretty!” David wadded a sheet of paper and hurled it at his sister, hitting her on the head.

Sally set out some scones and sliced her loaf of soft gingerbread. Pink whisked aside the napkin from her plate of mackeroons. The boys set the table with blue and white delftware cups and saucers, and Elbert made the rounds, pouring coffee from a matching teapot, boasting, “Not a drop of tea has flowed from this spout since ’seventy-three…”

Reveling in the company, the room was filled with the chatter of loving friends. Elbert had Brian and Jim display the recent products of their apprenticeship—hand-colored, engraved illustrations of birds, lizards, frogs, and plants—and the boys were duly praised and encouraged. They all cheered and clapped when Elbert showed off Bandit’s latest trick—balancing a bite of ship’s biscuit on his nose, before flicking it neatly into his mouth.

David told about the doings back at the encampment. “Since Congress signed the alliance with the French, there’s been regular shipments of food and clothing,” he said. “Coupled with the success of Major Steuben’s training practices, you wouldn’t recognize the troops. They actually look and move like a proper army.”

Playing the gracious host, Elbert broke out a bottle of Armagnac. “More good cheer for our good company.” Bustling around the table, he splashed a dose in every cup. Raising his own cup high, he offered a toast:
“Ubi libertas, ibi patria!”

The boys groaned, obviously suffering from overexposure to Latin, and Jim said, “In English, Elbert!”

“Oh!” With a blink and a shake of his bald head, the engraver translated. “Where liberty is, there is my country!”

Arms stretched with teacups held high, they all responded with a happy, “Cheers!”

David stood, rapping his teaspoon to the table. “Time for us to set our boat aright…”

“I can tell you this about our ‘boat’…” Jack tilted his chair back, rocking it back and forth on the two hind legs. “Since the Redcoats sent Bede Seaborn to the gallows tree, we’ve all been heads down, David, lying on our oars, just trying to gauge the wind…”

“And hoping to not be hanged for it,” Titus added.

“I know. What happened to Mrs. Seaborn was a shock to us all,” David said. “Good intelligence is very valuable but, in this case, purchased at too dear a rate.”

“Are we going to shut it down, then, Cap’n?” Brian asked.

“That’s what we’re here to decide.” David sat down. “Tell me, how do the winds blow?”

“Lydia Darragh is undeterred.” Anne was the first to speak up. “She is still listening in on the British council meetings and bringing report. It seems all is at a standstill with word of Howe’s retirement—more discussion of horse races, cockfights, and theater plays than wartime strategy. I expect this will change once Clinton arrives to assume command. The good news…” Anne looked around the table, smiling. “As far as
our
operation, I think we can all rest easier. From what Lydia’s overheard, it is very clear Bede never divulged a word about any of us. They were certain she’d break when faced with the noose, and because she did not, the British are convinced she was working alone.”

“The butcher’s boy tolt us ’twas the chambermaid at the White Swan who pointed Bede out to the lobsterbacks,” Brian said.

Jim said, “The chambermaid spied the innkeeper’s widow goin’ through some officer’s papers, and then she went and squealed like the Tory pig she is.”

“Major Sutherland’s papers?” Sally asked.

“That’s him,” Jim said. “They say the chambermaid’s being rogered by the Major…”

Brian gave Jim a hard shove. “Will you mind your damn tongue?”

Jim shrugged. “That’s what
they
say…”

“Poor Bede. One day she’s in our kitchen having a chocolate and
eating mackeroons, and the next…” Pink shook her head, and left her sentence to trail off.

“The lobsterbacks willna be after hanging a woman again anytime soon,” Sally said. “The talk in the market, even among the Tories, is much against it. Over harsh, they say.”

“Most Redcoats don’t like it, either,” Pink added. “At least the kind that come to our shop. Uncivilized, I heard one say. Another said hanging women makes the rabble uneasy.”

“Bastards didn’t hesitate to send a message, though, did they?” Titus shook his head.

“We all dodged a cannonball,” Jack said. “That’s for certain, and after listening to what Anne had to say, there doesn’t seem to be any value in our staying on. I say we pack it in.”

Anne turned to Jack. “Really?”

Titus folded his arms across his chest. “I’m with Jack. The gain is small, the risk—too high.”

“How do we gauge value?” David poured himself another cup of coffee. “Though Anne says it is quiet now, I think there is value in having an agent fully entrenched by the time Clinton takes over. The Cup and Book is becoming a magnet for Redcoats. When the wind does begin to blow, the sails on our mill are then ready to turn.”

Brian slid a mackeroon off the plate being passed around. “In’t there some value to General Washington in learning that there ain’t nothin’ to learn?”

Sally said, “It would be a crying shame to abandon all th’ hard work gone into opening our shop. There’s value in tha, no?”

Anne said, “And there is great value in exploiting Betsy Loring while she still holds some influence. Through her I’ve made friends with Peggy Shippen and Peggy Chew, who’ve already introduced me to a Major André and others in the upper echelons.”

“That’s true,” Elbert said, balancing his teacup very gingerly on one knee. “When nothing is ventured, no laurels are won.”

“I’m more worried about our hides than any laurels,” Titus said.

Matching Titus’s stern posture, Jack folded his arms across his chest. “Agreed.”

“
You agree? I’m absolutely baffled.” Anne shook her head. “You’re the man who once told me you were in this thing whole heart. Blood has been shed, you said, and you would not have your fellows die in vain. But now Bede’s been hanged, and you want us to pack it in?”

Jack groaned. “That was different. I was talking about men dying at Concord and Lexington…”

“Why is it different? Because Bede was a woman?” Anne gave Jack a little shove. “Bede Seaborn sacrificed her life so that we could live and continue our work here…”

“I will not have you sacrifice your life for the cause, Annie…”

“And I will not have Bede’s sacrifice be in vain.”

The room went still, and Anne could tell no one wanted to be the first to step between them. At last, Jack heaved a great sigh, and took Anne by the hand. “You’ve got the right of it…” he said. “We should carry on for Bede’s sake, and for the sake of our cause.”

David stood up. “Is everyone agreed that we continue?”

All heads were nodding, except for Titus, who sat stone-faced, big arms still crossed over his chest. “I’m not as yet feeling all smiles and cookies. If we’re t’ carry on, we all need to be more careful. I won’t be able to take seeing one of us swinging from a gallows tree. I swear t’ Christ, I won’t.”

“Titus has a point,” David said. “Minimizing risk necessitates some change. We need to tighten our operation, so I’ve devised a new system using signals and drops.”

“Like we did with Burgoyne?” Titus asked.

“In a way….” David sat down. “Elbert will become a regular borrower at the Cup and Book library.”

“That’s good.” Elbert nodded. “I’m one for enjoying a good book.”

“On the days when Sally wears a striped apron,” David continued, “Elbert will borrow the book Anne suggests from the library, containing missives written in secret ink in the margins of certain pages.”

“Striped apron,” the engraver very seriously repeated.