“She’ll come around, lay off our quarter, pound us to slivers.” There was no fear or anger or panic in the mate’s voice. It was just an observation.
But it was wrong. The Frenchman did not turn, did not bring her other guns to bear, did not heave to where the Elizabeth Galley’s guns could not reach and pound away.
Rather, she settled back on her old heading. Her guns ran in; her mainsail tumbled from the yard and was sheeted home. Topmen raced away aloft and loosened off the topgallants.
“The impudent dog!” Marlowe exclaimed. He tried to point at the Indiaman, for emphasis, forgetting his broken arm until he raised it up. He felt the pain shoot through him. He gasped and let it drop again. “Can’t even be bothered with us! Like we were some trifling annoyance.”
“If you would rather they come back and murder us all, I could go ask under flag of truce,” Bickerstaff suggested.
“No, no, I suppose we’ll let him go.” Marlowe was feeling buoyant, despite the pain.
He watched as the Frenchman set her topsails once again. Lord, he thought, how long can luck like this hold out?
Chapter 23
The Ship and Compass was no strict-run Puritan boardinghouse, but rather a place that catered to visiting sailors, men who were not quite as firm in their piety as the citizens of Boston. That much was clear to Elizabeth.
Billy Bird, it turned out, had patronized the lodging so often, and spread his gold so liberally, that he was welcomed like the prodigal son, despite the late hour.
They spent the night in the inn’s best room, Billy sleeping like the dead on the floor, Elizabeth lying awake on the wide bed, thinking, planning, fretting. When dawn at last made the cotton drapes glow with gray light, she still did not know how she would proceed, what she would do to find out Dunmore’s dirty little secret, why, indeed, she had even come to Boston.
“Good morning, my dear,” Billy said, rising from the floor at the foot of her bed. Elizabeth pulled the sheets further over her.
“Humph.”
“ ‘Humph’? Is that it? Do you appreciate how difficult it is for me to be cheerful after having spent the entire night with the most beautiful woman in Boston and having to sleep on the floor the whole while? I think some sympathy is due.”
“If it is so bloody hard being cheerful, then bloody well don’t be.”
“Uh-oh. Someone has had a hard night.”
“Billy, whatever are we going to do? We have come here with no plan in mind…how ever are we to discover anything about Dun-more?”
At this Billy looked confused, as if she had asked him how they would find air to breathe. “How? Why, we shall just ask.”
“Ask whom?”
“ Dunmore ’s father, I should think. And people who know both him and Dunmore the Younger.”
“How shall we find Dunmore ’s father?”
“God, Lizzy, you are a bleak one in the morning. Dunmore ’s father is some kind of preacher. If we ask in any church, I should imagine they would know where to find him. Boston ain’t London, as awestruck as you are by the size of this place. We’ll find him. Now, I hope you can stomach cod for breakfast, because that is damned near all they eat around here.”
Billy’s optimism did much to buoy Elizabeth ’s spirit, enough even that she was able to eat the breakfast of fresh-baked bread and cod’s tongues that was served to them in the ordinary adjoining the Ship and Compass.
She was further amused to find that no comment at all was made about the fact that Billy had arrived with a young gentleman friend the night before and come downstairs the next morning with a woman of strikingly similar appearance. The absolute lack of surprise on the part of the innkeeper and his servants made Elizabeth guess that the Ship and Compass was as much honored for its discretion as its room and board.
They headed out in the late morning, making their way through the crowded, narrow streets in the direction of the closest church they could see. In the daylight, and with the excitement of their arrival having passed, Elizabeth was able to make a more sober assessment of Boston.
It was big, by colonial standards, and crowded by any standard, save for that of the biggest cities. Brick buildings and timber buildings formed solid walls on either side of the cobbled streets, hemming in the people like the banks of a river; people on foot, people on horseback, people pushing carts and driving drays and wagons and carriages, all made their slow way through the city. It was as if God had taken up a small section of London, cleaned it a bit, thinned out the population some, and set it down in the New England wilderness. Being in those narrow, crowded, noisy streets brought back in a rush the memories of Plymouth and London, and she did not care for them.
“Do you see what a damned lot of Puritans they are?” Billy asked.
“Yes…,” Elizabeth equivocated. There certainly were a number of men in their black clothes and white wigs and wide-brimmed black hats and capes, but not nearly as many as she had imagined. From Billy’s descriptions she had expected the entire city to resemble a Congregationalist church service, but that was a generation or two gone. This was no longer John Winthrop’s Boston.
But neither was it rollicking Virginia of Royalist birth, the Virginia of Raleigh and John Smith, with its hunts and horse races, its grand balls at the governor’s house, and its raucous Publick Times. Boston was more sober by far than that.
They came at last to the church, called simply the Old Church, just across Cornhill Street from the Town House and Crooked Lane. It was a redbrick affair with a tall white spire and big wooden doors thrown open. With not the least hesitation Billy Bird climbed the granite steps and walked into the cool interior, Elizabeth trailing behind.
The church was empty. The tall, white-painted, uncomfortable-looking pews stood like soldiers in ranks waiting for the order to march. The walls were plastered and painted white; the arched windows rose high up the walls in regular intervals. Unlike the Anglican Burton Parish Church of Williamsburg, which flaunted its wealth and elegance with understatement, the Old Church displayed a genuine understatement, no more or less presumptuous in its conspicuous simplicity than the Puritan black coat and hat.
At the far end of the church, high in the pulpit, the minister stood flipping the pages of a book. He looked up at the sound of Billy’s shoes on the wood floor echoing through the empty hall and climbed down the stairs to meet them.
“Good day to you, sir.” Billy gave an elaborate bow.
“Good day.” The minister was in Calvinist black, set off by his white wig and cravat fringed with a simple lace. His eyes flickered over Billy’s fine red wool coat, his silk waistcoat, his hat with the gold trim, which he held under his arm, the sword at his belt. “How may I help you?”
“We are just arrived from England to your country, sir, and we are seeking out an acquaintance of ours, a Mr. Frederick Dunmore, whose father, I am told, is a man of the cloth in this town.”
At that the minister frowned, and if he wished to deny knowing Dunmore it was too late. When he spoke his tone said much more than his words. “I have not heard tell of Frederick Dunmore for some years now. I had thought he was in London, but if you are just from there, then I suppose not. In any event, he does not live in Boston and I do not know where he now makes his home.”
“Then perhaps we shall call upon his father, if you would be so kind as to tell us where we might find that worthy gentleman?”
Butter would melt on Billy Bird’s tongue, Elizabeth thought.
The minister cleared his throat and it took him a moment to decide what to say, during which time Billy smiled and waited, the picture of guileless innocence.
“Reverend Wait Dunmore is minister of the Middle Street Church, which stands at the corner of Middle Street and Cross. Do you know it?”