Another day at sea, another dinner on board the Dartmouth that Matthew dearly wished his mother, always on his case about eating fast food, could have witnessed: beef broth served cold not hot, some kind of smoked fish in hot cream, braised haunch of beef with orange marmalade, a duck stewed in purple prune sauce, a bubbling souffle made with preserved cherries, and a plank of the rankest and smelliest cheeses imaginable. Talk about fast food—it took about three hours to get through dinner!
Even Mom might feel that was a trifle too long. And, of course, she would disapprove of having wine. It was red and tasted like iron filings to Matthew, who nevertheless drank to the health of the host of the dinner, the tea merchant Francis Rotch. He hoped his mother would forgive his breaking the law just this one voyage. And if that meant staggering out on deck to study the starry sky in a slightly tipsy condition, well, that was life in 1773.
Matthew leaned against the mast, letting November's cold sea air sober him up before going below to the cabin he shared with Abby. Twelve days had passed since being rescued from the open boat, and after 12 of these dinners—not to mention two breakfasts and a late-afternoon tea that was a full lunch—he and Francis Rotch were fast friends. ("You mean 'fat' friends," Abby had teased.)
If only they could stay at sea forever. There was a magical feeling on board the East Indiaman. Part of it was because the ship was so slow and comfortable: wide decks, plush berths, a dining room with window seats, perfect for lying down and reading one of the books from Captain Spencer's library. Part of it was the company: Captain Spencer's wife, Hermione, the jolly first mate who enjoyed teasing Abby, and Francis Rotch's niece, Prudence. They played cards every afternoon before dinner, and though Matthew was slow to learn their games such as bid whist and bridge, he enjoyed wowing them at Rich Man, Poor Man, which they never seemed to have heard of.
He and Prudence might even be becoming more than friends, only it was hard to tell what she felt. She smiled a lot, laughed easily, was pretty in a soft and fuzzy way. With her there was no teasing, no sarcasm, no kidding around like with the girls at home. Sometimes Matthew thought he'd seen her looking at him out of the corner of her eye, but whenever he looked again he decided he had been mistaken.
Time passed gently, peacefully. Matthew would climb the foremast after breakfast and chat with the lookout for an hour, then race Abby up and down the rigging to the mainmast, where they'd each sit on a yard and sway with the roll of the ship, 100 feet up in the air and only bare feet hooked around a rope holding them on. At times he almost fell asleep up there, then would catch himself relaxing to the point of letting go, as if to test his reflexes. Sometimes he almost forgot the voyage had to end.
But no longer. They were due in Boston tomorrow. And what worried him wasn't what he and Abby would do then, or whether he would ever see Prudence again, but what might happen to Francis Rotch. A pink-faced, smiling man with a habit of looking you directly in the eye, Rotch was totally rich and a major aristocrat, but that didn't prevent him from being a great guy. And he was as much taken with Matthew as Matthew was with him.
It helped that Matthew had gotten the hang of talking with 18th-century people. Not to brag, but conversation in another century is harder than it looks in the movies. Matthew, however, had made an important discovery. Without TV or the Internet or CD players, what these 18th-century folks really were into was ideas. Big ideas, small ideas, far-out ideas. And you couldn't just sit there and listen and nod your head; no, they expected you to have ideas too. They liked to argue over their opinions. In fact, debating opinions was their chief sport, and Matthew kind of liked it too. During the dinners he'd felt his head filling up, expanding like a balloon. Great rafts of talk and drafts of warm friendship had buoyed the voyage. Tonight Rotch had even spoken of taking Matthew into business with him when they landed in Boston. "You can be my American agent," he said, sparking an instant vision in Matthew's brain of a chain of hip tea-shops, one on every corner of every city: Brew-Bucks!
But all through the voyage there had been a couple of moments when the wide-open, exhilarating conversation stopped dead, and that had to do with ideas, too—ideas that they just wouldn't discuss or debate. A girl speaking her mind, the way Abby did sometimes, just made Francis Rotch look into space and the captain slowly turn very red in the face. Then: "Isn't it time the ladies returned to their cabin?" Abby would scowl but take the hint and Prudence, he had to admit, would look a little smug.
Then there was this business about birth. Captain Spencer made a big fuss about being "well born," as he called it. He fawned over Francis Rotch every chance he got, and was always scolding his mate for not showing "proper respect to your betters." As soon as he saw how well Rotch treated Matthew, the captain began treating him with special consideration, too. He even called him "the young lord." That should have made Matthew feel good, especially as Prudence always seemed to smile at him at those times. But having already gotten a dose of snobbery from his run-ins with Nicky Blunt, and remembering the insults John Paul Jones had been forced to bear, Matthew wasn't so sure he wanted to be well-born. (But if only his mother could have heard that "young lord," just once!)
Besides, being well-born meant living by a lot of unfamiliar rules, the strangest of which involved fighting. To hear the captain tell it, fighting was big. You had to practice your swordsmanship every day, just in case—like taking a daily multiple vitamin.
So for the past two weeks Matthew had worked out with a sword on the quarterdeck. As Francis Rotch and Prudence looked on, the captain had taught him how to hold a sword, how to greet an opponent, how to fight with your free hand behind your back (not because it looked cool, but for balance).
The captain also went on and on about whom to fight, and when, and how. He stressed that you had to be very careful to fight only equals or betters. If someone dissed you who wasn't well-born you had to ignore him, or call the cops (the captain actually said "constable"). But if someone well-born so much as looked at you wrong, that meant you had to strap on the swords. Or, on land, pistols.
There was one thing Captain Spencer couldn't or wouldn't teach Matthew, however, and that was how to fight. He just beat him, over and over again, taking only one or two quick moves before his sword-tip was resting on Matthew's chest or throat. Even at half-speed, even in practice, that was pretty frightening. And he didn't much like being embarrassed in front of Prudence.
Yesterday he'd actually stopped in the middle of practice, just dropped his sword. "I don't need to do this," he snapped. "It's stupid."
"Nay, it's thee that's stupid," said Francis Rotch, surprising and shaming him. "Captain Spencer here can now just spit thee like a goose because ye did not ask for quarter."
"Okay, then—quarter?"
Captain Spencer held his sword outward until it touched Matthew's shirt. "Granted."
" 'Twas not done very gentle-like," giggled Prudence.
To hear Francis Rotch agreeing with the captain about a gentleman's need to be ready to fight perplexed Matthew because Rotch was such a good sport it was impossible to imagine him angry. He always rose to the defense of America in their debates with the captain. "Britain has treated America terribly. It's just a few loud and bloody-minded voices in Parliament that have provoked this quarrel," he'd said again tonight. "Britain and America are like father and son, mother and daughter. We belong together, forever."
It sounded so peaceable and reasonable at dinner that Matthew never thought to disagree, even for the sake of argument, even as the token American at the table. But now, leaning against the mast, Matthew felt a familiar nagging worry replace the slight dizziness caused by drinking the glass of wine.
He had put two and two together from the moment he saw the chests of tea in their cabin. For weeks he'd tried to remember something about the Boston Tea Party, other than that there had been such a thing, once upon a time. He barely recalled a picture of men dressed as Mohawk Indians throwing chests overboard. It would be just his luck to land in the middle of that!
He went below to the cabin he shared with Abby, where he found her still fuming over how she'd been treated at supper. "Here's what the English can do with their tea," she said contemptuously, kicking a chest. "Spread it out with the manure in Mother's garden!"
And if that should be the case, Matthew wondered, shouldn't he warn Francis Rotch? The man had saved their lives and treated him like a son. Would it be wrong to use what little he knew about the Tea Party to help Rotch save his cargo? Or would that be treason—betraying his country? Especially if it somehow changed the course of events.
If only a wind would spring up and blow them all back out to sea. If only the voyage would never end. If only tomorrow would never come.
Tomorrow came. A mob was waiting for them on Griffin's Wharf. As the Dartmouth slowly coasted to a halt under the guns of Castle Clinton, Matthew felt a twinge of relief that they weren't tying up directly on the docks. This was definitely not cool, caught on the fence at the start of the American Revolution. He glanced toward smiling Francis Rotch, his pink face shining in the feeble December sun; poor guy, he didn't have a clue.
Rotch clambered down into the ship's boat with the customs officer and pilot, going ashore to clear the paperwork. He turned and beckoned to Matthew and Abby. "Come along, and touch your own soil again."
With dread he followed. As the blades of the oars dipped and rose, flashing fans of spray like cold diamonds, Matthew heard a loud roar from the mob on the docks. He listened, cupping an ear, to what sounded like . . .cheering? By the time they tied up on the wharf the crowd was melting away. "Going to a party at Faneuil Hall," explained the pilot. "On account of today's Friendship Ball."
Matthew stared at a passerby costumed as a Mohawk Indian. "What about the Tea Party?" he asked, before he could stop himself. But the pilot merely shrugged. "Oh, I suppose that's up at the Guv'nor's Mansion," he said. "That's for the fancy folk, like the Assembly and the Committee of Correspondence, not for the likes of me and thee." He threw an arm around Matthew's shoulder. "Come along with you. There's more than tea being served at Faneuil Hall." He winked. "And they say the grog is on the Crown!"
At that moment a carriage arrived for Francis Rotch. "I'm sorry to say I shall be awhile at customs, then off to the Governor's mansion," he said, apologetically, before handing them each a silver coin. "But welcome home, my dear American friends. Enjoy your liberty."
Abby and Matthew strolled about the crowded street fronting the docks, pausing to peer into a crowded tavern, to purchase a penny's worth of sugar candy, to listen to gossiping citizens clustered around a poster nailed to the wall. Men took turns reading aloud from it with voices full of giddy importance. "Long live Lord Dartmouth!" cried one.
Abby turned on the rough-looking fellow. "Dartmouth? He's no friend of America."
"Have ye been sleeping these past weeks?" the roughneck retorted. "What's he done but suspend the tea tax?" He hiccuped.
"And make free with the rum!" leered a grizzled pal.
Another man, in a neat serge suit with a bright yellow cravat at his throat, jumped in. "Commercial considerations aside," he sniffed, "didn't he recommend an American Peerage? A House of Lords for the Colonies, handpicked of those best suited to rule, is a most reasonable solution."
"This is wrong," said Matthew, suddenly, stopped in his tracks by a vague memory from a history lesson. Abby turned, asking, "What is?"
"This whole scene . . ." But he couldn't quite remember what, just that everything seemed topsy-turvy. "The Governor's Ball," he said. "I want to check it out—I mean, go there."
"Surely you're joking," said the man with the yellow cravat, looking at Matthew and shuddering. "Unless you intend to muck out the stables."
Matthew grabbed Abby's arm and dragged her away, back to the wharf. But the ship's boat was gone. Matthew craned his neck, peering into the darkness. Just as he was about to hail a passing longboat and offer to hire them, Abby tugged his arm and pointed. Out of the murk came the boat, oared by a sailor, with Prudence and Captain Spencer on board.
"Hallo!" hailed the captain when he saw them. "Not making an early night of it, I hope?"
"Oh, no." He couldn't think of what to say. Abby spoke, calmly: "I just wanted to fetch a heavier cloak—it's quite dank out."
"Well when you do, seek me at yonder tavern and I shall stand you a hot milk punch." The captain bowed to Prudence. "Let me hie you your carriage to the Governor's Ball."
"Oh, I can do that," said Matthew, boldly smiling and offering Prudence his arm. With a show of hesitation, she took it. Captain Spencer beamed and raised his thumb to Matthew: "Spoken truly, just like a young lord!" Giving himself a shake, he set off at a seaman's sideways gait for the glowing windows of the tavern.
Matthew glanced down into Prudence's eyes, which seemed to both meet his and dart to one side.
"May I ask a favor of you?" He made his voice low and manly. She raised her eyes, gave a tiny nod. "I would like to accompany you to the Ball. Oh, don't worry, I'm going to change out of these clothes into something more fitting for a, uh, gentleman."
Prudence wouldn't meet his eyes for the longest second of Matthew's life. When she did, he was amazed: they were flinty, cold, and utterly dismissive. "That you consider yourself fit for well-born society is an absurdity second in impertinence only to your scurrilous request for a lady's arm to give cover to your overweening, bloated, self-inflated, contumely Colonial's rank ambition to be what you are not and never could be: a gentleman."
Matthew recoiled. "Really?"
"Indeed. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must find myself a carriage."
Without seeming to have moved, Prudence now stood far apart from him, the gap widening by the second, until her eyes glimmered like two stern lanterns on a beautiful East Indiaman gliding away into the night, a vision unforgettable yet forever unattainable.
He felt a touch on his arm: Abby. "Come on," she whispered. "The boat is waiting."
All the way out to the Dartmouth he couldn't speak, couldn't think of anything except of the fool he'd made of himself, not just now, but during the entire two weeks. The whole time he'd been showing off for Prudence, she'd been laughing at him, then despising him. And the thing was, she was right. He had been a fool; he had suckered himself into thinking he was cut out to be an aristocrat like Francis Rotch and Nicky Blunt and the rest of them.
He felt almost helpless with anger and self-loathing. But just as they bumped up against the ship a sentence came swimming to him out of the blackest water of Boston Harbor: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
From there he went straight into Francis Rotch's cabin and began to haul clothes out of the wardrobes and chests. Abby stared in shock as he yanked his rough doublet over his head. "Don't just stand there," he muttered. "Dress me like a gentleman."
It was Matthew's first time putting on fancy dress, and even with Abby's help it proved a trial: the starched shirt with neckcloth, the knee-length trousers, the silk hose secured by garters below the knee, the brass-buckled shoes, the little embroidered damask jacket, and finally the wig—heavy, held in place by wire clamps, and powdered with white talcum by Abby as he ran to the door. As he paused to inhale, and admire himself in the mirror, his eye alighted on a rack of swords in their scabbards, including a fancy rapier that he knew belonged to Francis Rotch, though it had never been taken out during the voyage.
Might as well play the part, he thought. To the hilt.