Saturnalia Page 4

  He neared the tavern, heard voices, smelled food. He told himself he would just stride by it. He hadn’t come for the meeting, after all—he’d no notion of the hour. And as for rooting the English out of the country, the task was impossible. Even if it weren’t, would he wish to see the Curries murdered, their house in flames? He would just walk past, out of curiosity. But as he approached and glanced at the door, he found his steps slowed by the thought that Cancasset himself might be on the other side. He felt lightheaded, flooded with hope. How could he pass up a chance to meet the twin brother he’d spent six years searching for? Or if not him, perhaps another Narraganset who knew where he was.

  William’s feet stopped. He eyed the door latch. Half disbelieving, he watched his right hand reach out for it, felt the iron in his fingers— then froze. The noon bell was ringing! He’d be thought a member of the conspiracy, borne out by the hour given on the note! And at once he saw not a door before him but a gallows, heard the tolling of the bell and recalled his older brother swinging back and forth from his rope like a pendulum.

  As if it were molten, he dropped the latch. He stepped back, nearly slipped, then burst into a run, clutching his basket to his chest and bounding through the snow like a deer—to the great disappointment of Mr. Baggot within, the note’s author, who saw him fly past the window.

  On William sped, not stopping until Flint’s Alley was far behind him. Passing a blacksmith’s shed, he entered, tossed the note into the forge, and watched the flames fight over the morsel. He scurried on and reached the printer’s. Opening the door to the comforting scents of ink, paper, and Mrs. Gurrie’s cooking, he closed his eyes, immensely grateful to be home and relieved he’d not entered The Pearl.

  The door’s brass bell jingled. “You there! Printer’s devil!”

  The words cut short William’s giving of thanks.

  “Trouble and plague! Attend me, boy!”

  He knew the sharp-clawed voice at once. Girding himself, he turned as expected toward the ancient Mr. Rudd.

  “I wish twenty handbills! In good speed, do you hear? Ere the scoundrel dashes clear to Virginia!” Stiff-backed and withered as a dried smelt, the eyeglass maker glared at William.

  “And which scoundrel might this be?” he asked, as if he didn’t know full well.

  “My latest ’prentice!” raged Mr. Rudd. He grasped the awl that hung from his neck by a long leather cord and jabbed at the air. “He’ll feel the devil’s pitchfork, he will. Along with the rest of the race of servants!”

  His jagged chin advanced upon William. “What shameless sins could have brought down upon us such a plague of saucy, malingering scamps?” He fixed upon William an accusing gaze, multiplied by the ten pairs of hostile-eyed pewter buttons running down his coat.

  “But before you slink off in the night like the rest, see that you put this in type.” He unfolded a sheet of paper and thrust it at William, who focused his eyes on the text.

  Runaway Sought. Apprentice to Eyeglass Maker. Fifteen Years in Age, of middling Stature, Face well pitted from the Pox. Wears his own Hair, brown and most unruly, befitting his Character. Comes to the name of Solomon Moody when he has a Mind to. Fled the 13th Night of December. Any Person who brings him to the Shop of Mr. Rudd, Middle Street, Boston shall receive 40 Shillings for his Pains.

  “Scarce two months and a half the rogue stayed!” cried Mr. Rudd. “Trouble and plague!”

  William, who’d set such handbills for him before, was hardly surprised by this fact. The man was notorious for being stingy with food and overgenerous with his three-corded whip.

  “Further, the knave took a dozen rolls with him! A blunt-brained apprentice at grinding glass, but a master at shirking and a journeyman thief!” The eyeglass maker’s bony hands fisted. “But he’ll smart for it, tawny. Mark me, he will! He’ll learn what it means to sign himself into the service of Mr. Uriah Rudd!”

  Eyes bright with vengeance, he whirled about, tugged upon his black wig where it failed to fully cover his own white hair, cursed the nameless apprentice who was likely to blame for the error, and stalked away. Leaving a ravenous William to join the rest of the family for a plate of fried eels and a bowl of hotchpotch stew.

  “Did I detect the angel-voiced Mr. Rudd?” asked the printer above the slurping and clatter of eleven mouths being fed.

  “In faith,” replied William. “The angel of death, hunting his latest apprentice. The boy’s fled.”

  “Displays good sense in the lad,” said Mrs. Currie.

  “’Tis said the vulture skims his milk at both ends,” the journeyman Amos announced, and guffawed to the hearth and back for more stew.

  Mr. Currie emptied his tankard of ale. “Ungrateful gluttons!” His impish eyes glittered. “Without the man’s endless stream of handbills, shouldn’t we starve in a fortnight ourselves?”

  “The fallacy of exaggeration,” Sarah protested at once. “Mr. Lee’s now instructing me in logic,” she added, winning a wink and a “Well spoken” from her father.

  The serving girl Gwenne fetched two mince pies. “How I should love to set my eyes on a Saturnalia at Mr. Rudd’s and see him serve his servants for a day! Flying about the house at their bidding! Kicked for his pains, then flogged for good measure!”

  Mrs. Currie inserted a spoonful of broth into the mouth of the baby Rose. “I believe you fright me, Gwenne, more than he does.”

  “And as a Saturnalia shall be held here,” said her husband, “with my rank the bottommost, I beg you, no talk of kicks and whips!” A plea for mercy that brought from his children a dozen new whispered escapades to be executed on the approaching day. Retreating from the table in mock terror, Mr. Currie returned to his printing press, followed soon after by William, who’d no sooner picked up his composing stick than the shop’s bell bade him set it down.

  He entered the sun-filled front room. “Yes, sir.”

  This offer of service received no reply from Mr. Hogwood, eyeing the shop’s stock of books, or Malcolm, equally intent on a female fruitseller passing the window. Reluctant to let her slip out of his sight, the manservant squinted, then bent to the left, banging his head on the glass and nearly punching two panes into the street, glanced about, and spied William with surprise. “Mr. Hogwood wishes to purchase a book!” he declared with all the dignity of his office.

  William turned his eyes on the wigmaker, who brought Malcolm to his side with a snap of his fingers. “What think you of this?” he asked under his breath, not wishing such discussion overheard. In his hand was a copy of Munk’s Christian Marriage.

  The manservant meditated on the choice, then stooped to reach his short master’s ear. “Too bold, I fear,” he whispered in answer. “She may startle like a doe.”

  Mr. Hogwood scowled impatiently. To court was to enter a perilous wilderness of cliffs and avalanches, where a single misstep might mean one’s end. He shoved the book back on the shelf, then pulled out a handsomely bound Latin grammar.

  “We must also be wary of sending her to sleep,” Malcolm counseled sagely.

  Incensed at his use of “we,” the wigmaker wrathfully motioned the upstart away. Madam Phipp would brook no such familiarity from her servants and neither would he. He leafed through the pages of an almanac. He considered an herbal. Then again, he reflected, although he admired his beloved’s firmness with inferiors, she wasn’t charged with choosing courtship gifts. He snapped his fingers for Malcolm once more.

  “What say you to Wigglesworth’s Day of Doom?”

  The manservant cogitated deeply. “I believe we may wish to avoid,” he whispered, “any link in her mind between marriage to you and the torments of the damned.”

  Mr. Hogwood, desperate, ignored Malcolm’s “we.” “Hang the business! You select it!”

  Speedily, Malcolm scanned the shelves. He drew out a collection of sermons by Dr. Mather, inspected the contents, th
e binding, the paper, then offered it to his master. “’Twill speak to her of your high-minded nature, and your tender concern for her soul.”

  Mr. Hogwood, unaware until then that his concern reached beyond her wealth and rank, waved the book away. “Very well!”

  At these words, William ceased his inventory of the room’s inkhorns and quills.

  “Mr. Hogwood wishes this volume!” boomed Malcolm. He presented the book to the apprentice, paid, yanked open the door for his master, and followed him out to the street.

  “Quick,” said the wigmaker. “Fly to Madam Phipp’s! Ere another suitor hands her the same book!”

  Malcolm stood still. “’Tis a worthy offering.” He cast a troubled eye on the gift. “Yet I fear she may feel you’ve tended to her soul’s nourishment but neglected her body’s.”

  Mr. Hogwood, his own soul harassed past endurance, hurriedly searched his several pockets. “Greedy she-dragon! Add these to the tribute!” He handed his servant a half-emptied, paper-wrapped bundle of sugared almonds. “Now be off!”

  Malcolm shot forward at once up the cobble-stoned path worn through the snow. He turned to the right, leaving his master’s sight, devoured a half dozen of the almonds, and was about to enter his favorite cookshop for a leisurely lamb chop and mug of ale when he noticed Madam Phipp’s serving girl strolling a few paces ahead. Ignoring the enticing aroma of meat, he focused his mind on higher matters, adjusted his hat, smartened his coat, and discreetly advanced to her side.

  “What luck! Well met! Returning to your mistress?”

  The manservant’s question went unanswered, as the girl, upon recognizing him, instantly doubled her speed.

  “I’m bound that way myself, as it happens.” He admired afresh her linen-white skin while straining to keep up with her graceful gait. “My master wishes to give a gift to Madam Phipp.” He indicated the book. “I likewise have something to bestow. Upon you.”

  He closed up the paper bundle in his pocket, offered it, grinned, but received no response. He avoided a pair of pigs, swerved to the left to stay beside the girl, then discovered, too late, that she’d guided his feet through a mound of freshly deposited horse dung.

  “Almonds!” he called out, falling behind. Frantically cleaning his boots in the snow, he returned his feet to the cobblestones, saw her turn right, and strode frenziedly after her.

  “Sugared almonds!” the manservant panted when he’d caught up. He presented them again.

  “’Tis a crime to accept stolen goods,” the girl informed him without slowing her pace.

  Malcolm affected an injured look, searched his wits for an alternate explanation of how he’d come by the nuts, then suddenly saw that the girl had taken advantage of his preoccupation to lead him straight toward a hitching post. Lurching at the last moment, he tangled his legs, tripped, and went sprawling in such fashion that his right hand and the book it was holding landed in a puddle of worrisome origin located next to a butcher’s cart.

  Fearing to lose sight of the girl, Malcolm struggled to his feet and drained Dr. Mather’s sermons while he ran. He eeled his way between passersby, dodging handcarts and wood sellers’ wagons.

  “’Twas a gift from Mr. Hogwood! To mark my birthday!” He caught up with her just as she reached Madam Phipp’s. And was gratified to see the girl finally stop, turn, glance demurely at her feet, then raise her smiling eyes toward his.

  “Truly.”

  “In faith!” wheezed Malcolm, out of breath. Though the statement was false, its parts were at least true. Wasn’t his birthday in the month of December, albeit two weeks in the future? Wasn’t his master’s name Mr. Hogwood? “My twentieth,” he added proudly.

  Lowering her eyes in a modest fashion that particularly attracted him, the girl edged two paces to her left, followed like a shadow by Malcolm—who suddenly felt his feet give way and plunge through a skin of thawing ice into a thigh-deep, water-filled pothole. Struck voiceless by the cold, his arms shot up, from which convenient height the serving girl plucked the book from his fingers, declined the almonds, offered her warmest congratulations on his birthday, and marched inside.

  FOUR

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON Boston’s weathervanes suddenly shifted in unison, all pointing accusingly toward the north. An icy wind swooped down on the streets. Clouds curtained the sun. Birds sought shelter. By nightfall the sky had begun bestowing snow upon the town, stingily at first, then with boundless philanthropy. Flakes covered the cobblestones once more, recolonized the windowsills, and filled portly Mr. Trulliber’s lantern beam with a legion of alarming mirages.

  The night watchman ambled up Mackerel Lane. He disliked falling snow. Crossing King Street, he found the normally empty thoroughfare thronged with wolves and fleeing thieves. Silent, billowing beings whom he felt bound by his public duty to probe with his light lest any prove real.

  Glancing down an alleyway, he trained his beam on the shape of a serving girl sprinting with a strongbox in her arms. He shouted out to her to halt and watched as the flakes of which she was made obediently fell to earth. Walking on, he certified the insubstantiality of scores of dicers, dancers, arsonists, Indians, papists, witches, and sundry other threats to the public peace. Then he glimpsed the outline of a boy standing in front of an apothecary’s shop, a figure who failed to dissolve.

  “You! State your business!”

  There came no reply. A gust whipped snow into the watchman’s face, blinding him for a moment. “Stand fast!” Fearing the boy would dash away, he lumbered toward him, squinting through the flakes, holding his lantern out at arm’s length—and discovered that he’d been addressing a sundial.

  He glared at the column upon which it was mounted, falling snow accumulating on his hat, shoulders, and ample stomach. He searched for any witnesses to his folly, then aimed his light upon the dial, brushed off the snow, and made out the words “The Hour Is At Hand.” He sneered. A poor choice of motto, he mused, to place before a shop selling medicines. And if the hour were indeed at hand, the sundial gave no indication. Once the sun set it could show no hour, slumbering like the rest of the town. The sleep-scorning Mr. Trulliber eyed the timepiece with lordly contempt. Tapping its granite pillar with his toe, he reconfirmed that it was not a boy’s leg, turned, marched on, and failed to spy a boy not of stone but of flesh dart across the street just half a block to his rear.

  William paused, made certain of the watchman’s course, hurried on—then froze. Footsteps were coming! Panicked, he flattened himself against a recessed shop door and seconds later sensed a moving human presence inches away: Boot heels sounded, clothing rustled, the faint breeze from the walker’s passage brushed against his face. He heard a man’s voice, humming jauntily.

  Mr. Baggot, the tithingman! William’s heart boomed. Even though he’d excused the apprentice from his twice-weekly examinations, the man had been much on William’s mind. Twice he’d thought he’d glimpsed him lurking outside Mr. Currie’s after dark, waiting to snare him, as he’d vowed to do. “I want you to know that my eye is upon you.” His words reverberated in William’s mind. And yet, the voice of the man who’d just passed seemed higher than Mr. Baggot’s. . . .

  William waited, stepped out from the door, and saw no sign of the man. He sped on, reached Boston’s North End, and blew upon his fingers. Putting his heron-bone flute to his lips, he began to play, shaping his breath into tunes that led his mind to wander back to winters long past. Through the veil of falling snow he could almost believe that the water on his right was not Boston Harbor but Narragansett Bay, that the buildings about him were his tribe’s winter houses, that the long-handled pump ahead was in fact his father crouching, stringing a bow. If he found a road leading back to his former life, would he take it? He pondered the question. The English were greedy, ruthless, self-righteous, fearfully serving a god who was as cruel a master as the worst who walked Boston. Yet he now spoke, wrote, thou
ght, and dreamed in their language, as naturally as swallows swooped through the air. He was held up as a shining example of hard work and quick wits—a model for the very people who’d murdered his family.

  He turned from the harbor and strolled up an alley. It wasn’t often that he wandered the town twice within a fortnight. But the note that morning, and the news that another Narraganset servant had come to the North End, had drawn him back out into the streets. His music quivered with readiness. He felt that a meeting lay before him.

  He angled down North Street, his eyes flitting from window to window, then scouting for watchmen. The snow was falling more thickly now, seeming to occupy all the air, a silent torrent that hid William from sight but left his music free to tap gently at windows and to curl underneath doors. He reached the wharves again and turned north. Twice he made out Cancasset’s face behind a window, only to find that the falling snow had deceived him. His path meandering, he strolled up one street and doubled back down another. He passed Hudson’s Point and the burying place. He wound alongside the Charles River. He trudged past churches, shipyards, the Battery. Finally, he leaned up against a cooper’s door to rest.

  He’d been awake since cockcrow, as usual, and had a full day in the printing room ahead. And all of a sudden he felt footsore, weary as a mill horse, ravenous for sleep. He’d been mad to think he would find Cancasset. Frequently his flute had lured to a window or door a Narraganset servant who was unknown to him, but not even that had happened this night.

  Reluctantly straightening up, he staggered homeward like a sleepwalker. His cloak was as white as the coat of a hare. Turning to his left down Middle Street, he warmed his frigid fingers and piped himself toward bed with a lullaby he remembered hearing his father play, then slowed his feet. Then stopped entirely.