After the police interrupted his duel with Nicky Blunt (probably saving his life), Matthew escaped through the Log to the modern world for a well-deserved break from 18th-century problems. But he can't help but wonder how he might help his benefactor, Francis Rotch, who is about to lose his cargo of tea to the corrupt British governor of Boston.
A battle surged down the docks, dark-clad figures in the early gloom of a foggy July evening advancing with loud cries, swinging their swords and firing their guns. The beleaguered little band opposing the attackers retreated stubbornly, taking cover behind boxes and piles of tackle, leaning out from around corners to snap off shots, but these, being hurried, were essentially unaimed and did no good. Now the end of the dock was at their heels, and there were no boats waiting to take them off—no escape—just the prospect of an icy swim. With the other shore at least two miles off, surrender or slaughter seemed the only choice.
Matthew Roving gasped, leaning against the boathouse shed, his sword-arm dead from hacking madly the last half-hour. In his left hand he had a pistol, its chamber empty. He had to admit things looked dire. But surrender to Nicky Blunt? Never!
"Aaron, I'm going to slip around behind them," he called to his friend and sailing-school partner, the African-American son of a submariner. "Create a distraction." Aaron Briggs nodded, then leaped up and sprinted into the open, smacked a black-clad rival across the head, and darted forward to overwhelm another. Matthew dropped his sword and useless pistol, slipped over the side of the dock, and swung along beneath it as fast as his hands could take him. He could sense the attackers shuffling above him, but they were too busy with Aaron to look down.
Hauling himself up on the dock, he lay flat on his belly, breathing heavily while sizing up the odds. Four to his right, inching along the edge of the dock to keep out of sight. Three on the left, including Nicky Blunt, relentless and deadly with his sword, pushing Aaron back despite his fierce counter-strokes. To Aaron's left, Matthew's sister Abby was desperately trying to load a pistol from a flask at her feet.
Weaponless but with the advantage of surprise, Matthew charged along the right side, hurling three bodies off into the Bay, seizing the fourth's sword before sending him along to join them. Two of the three on the right turned in alarm, but Matthew's battle-maddened expression must have been something to behold, as they turned and dove over the side.
Now it was just Nicky Blunt, caught between Aaron and Matthew. "Yield!" Matthew roared. Nicky turned, smirked, and wiped the water off his brow with the back of his sword hand. "Yield to a wannabe total wuss? Never!"
Reaching under his shirt, he yanked out a bright yellow Supersoaker and pumped a half-dozen shots into Matthew's face.
The students of Narragansett Bay sailing school waited in the parking lot to get picked up and, no doubt, scolded—all except for Matthew and Abby, who wandered afoot toward the Quaint Misbehaving Inn. They were in no hurry to get home. It was no home, for one thing; for another, Mom had gone off to Washington, D.C., to try to lobby for more information about the fate of the Vineland and the crew, including their father.
"I don't know if I can take another evening of Wydontia's prying," said Abby, referring to the inn's proprietor. "That woman's a mental case—never leaves me alone." She eyed Matthew. "It doesn't help that you've been so weird lately."
He nodded, cautiously. He could only guess what his modern self was like when he was away in the 18th century. "I guess I've been playing too much Gameboy, huh?"
"Like a zombie." They rounded a corner, turning from the waterfront into the maze of cobblestoned streets—Matthew always felt a little queasy here, in anticipation of the shift in the texture of things, from modern to ancient. Sometimes he had to remind himself which century he was in; with each tide in time that he caught, it seemed to take him longer to regain his bearings.
One foot on asphalt, the other on cobble, he paused as a mass of people blocked their way. Behind the crowd, the lights of a half-dozen police cars flashed and pulsed rhythmically. Matthew saw people holding signs, heard shouted chants. "It's some kind of protest, I think."
Abby shrugged. "I saw something about it on TV this morning, these people saying stuff, like, globalization, and we should boycott coffee." She laughed. "Hey, and you won't believe this: Wydontia Gaway agreed! She was watching it with me and said we should all stick to tea!" She pointed an outflung arm. "I know those guys!"
Matthew did a double-take. It was the local gang of pierced and tattooed punks and skateboarders in their buzz-cuts and Mohawks, the guys who sometimes taunted him. "Hard to believe they know what they're shouting about," he scoffed. "Let's go another way."
Abby stood her ground. "Wait a sec—I want to watch." As he waited in the near-darkness, Matthew had an almost blinding revelation: Sam Adams is going to love this!
Gaunt, intense Sam Adams and placid, sharp-eyed John Adams stared at Matthew with the exact same look of disbelief. "How can you, a stranger to us, and only lately arrived in Boston, find us our band of incognitos?" asked Sam, finally.
"I know of a gang," said Matthew, "and that's all I'm saying." Sam turned to John Adams and hitched an eyebrow. John pursed his lips, looking quite the figure of a cautious country lawyer, which he was. But something besides love of money gleamed in his eyes. "What does it matter where he gets them, cousin," he said, "if he gets them?"
"I don't know," said Sam Adams. "But I don't like it."
"But we are stalemated," chided John. "You yourself said we must find a way to be done with that dratted tea once and for all—and we have but two days before Governor Hutchinson can order it seized by law. Our problem is that any action we shall take will lead to our certain arrest, as we shall be recognized."
"We can go disguised as Mohawks," said Sam, grumpily. His cousin sighed. "But," said Sam, after a moment, "I don't suppose that fools anyone anymore." He retrieved an ember from the fire and relit his pipe, puffed up a cloud, and then began to cough.
"That will give you cancer," said Matthew.
"And your aggravatin' obstinance will plant flowers on my grave," snapped Sam, "so go ahead. Bring on your band of bravos. What'dya call em, anyways?"
"Why, I calls ‘em Mohawks, same as you," Matthew said, and smiled.
Back in his cabin on board the Dartmouth, Matthew reached deep into a crack between the tea chests stacked and trussed to the forward bulkhead, drawing out the Log. As he opened it to the place marked by a gull's feather, cold shivers rippled down his forearms and a faint nausea roiled his stomach. No doubt about it: his body didn't look forward to shifting centuries. There should be a warning sticker, he thought. Frequent use may lead to timesickness.
At least this trip was necessary. When Matthew had been paroled from his cell at Castle Clinton—by his benefactor Francis Rotch, of course—he'd been so shaken by the duel that all he could think of was going home. It hardly had registered at the time that his friend and benefactor was seriously disturbed at being the focal point of the entire argument between the tax laws of Britain and the rights of Colonials. All Matthew wanted was to get out, and having the Log at hand made the decision easy.
Perhaps too easy. He'd started having doubts back in Newport, even as he gave himself over to a day of sailing school, Gameboy, ice cream cones, hot dogs, and clam strips. He couldn't get the picture of good-hearted Rotch out of his mind, pacing the Dartmouth's deck and explaining how he'd discovered that Governor Hutchinson had tricked him. "You see, Matty, the Governor and his two sons are up to their knee-hose in the tea business," he'd said. "And I thought this would ensure that everything would go smoothly. Well! I did not anticipate that your Colonial temper would be so peppery. So I said to the Governor, ‘I cannot cross the Sons of Liberty. We do too much business in America to make enemies.' Do you know what he replied? Having already docked in the Harbor we must pay our customs duties, and if we did not do so in 48 hours the Crown would confiscate my tea for non-payment of the tax. Meaning that the Governor would then give it to his two sons to sell. ‘But I would lose everything,' I complained, to which he replied, ‘Yes, but their boycott will fail.'" Rotch had slapped the quarterdeck's railing. "There is only one thing to do."
Matthew glanced at him, impatient to get to the Log in his cabin and take himself away from all this. But he remembered his history lessons, if imperfectly: "Dump the tea in the harbor."
Francis Rotch stared at him. "How did you know that? You were in a prison cell when I spoke to the Committee of Correspondence at The Green Dragon Tavern." Then he smiled and ruffled Matthew's hair. "But I forget what a wise head and courageous heart you bear on those young shoulders—if only there were 30 more of you! Because, alas, the Sons of Liberty are now too well known to venture forth, even in disguise."
Standing under a freeway culvert, half in shadows, Matthew let Abby do the talking to the townie gang; except that she really had to shout. The guys (and, Matthew was surprised to realize, a couple of girls) were skateboarding the entire time, in ones and twos, attempting to ride up the smooth sides of the culvert, pull off a 360, and skate down. Most fell, loudly.
But they listened, even lying on their backs in pain, and asked questions that were pointed but not altogether rude. Abby more than held her own on the coffee stuff, discussing pesticides, low-wage labor, bird habitat, and shade-grown this and sustainable that. "So then Matt here had this really cool idea," she said, finishing her windup. "We, like, re-enact the Boston Tea Party right here in Narragansett Bay. Hand out leaflets as we toss this cargo of totally bogus coffee."
A silent, lanky creature in purple dreadlocks glided up to the top of the culvert and grabbed onto the chainlink fence above. "Sounds cool, but we're talking no violence, right?"
"And no trashing of property, dudes," said a girl who was chalking a rainbow on the concrete. "It sends the wrong message." There was a murmur of assent. The girl turned. "So, Matt, why don't you come out of the shadows and tell us the plan."
Matthew kept his briefing short. When someone asked how soon they would go, he said, "Follow me." And they did.
Having scouted out a warehouse near the sailing school pier, Matthew had unlatched a window during the day's lessons. Then he'd placed the Log on the floorboards just below the window, open to the entry for December 17, 1774. Once the townie gang had assembled on the docks, he and Abby handed out dime-store feathered headdresses and used some old Halloween makeup to paint stripes and squiggles on their faces. Some, of course, needed no help at disguise. Then it was pop through the window, emerging in late evening in a warehouse where Sam Adams, Joseph Warren, Paul Revere, and other Sons were there to hand out axes and point the way to the Dartmouth and her sister-ship, the Eleanor. Matthew had explained that the chests would be locked, that their padlocks must be forced and their lids opened so the contents could be dumped overboard. But Francis Rotch himself had pressed the keys into Matthew's hands before he boarded. "Go, and godspeed," he whispered. "You have my blessing."
The night was freezing, and the Mohawks were overcome momentarily by the cold and their awe. "These are real sailing ships!" one blurted. "Ugh!" grunted another, the pre-arranged signal for shut up, dude! Forming teams and lines, they set to work, Matthew going from chest to chest with the keys and unlocking them; as soon as he had passed, the lids creaked up and eager hands passed bales wrapped in burlap up to the deck, where they were given the heave-ho into the harbor. The splashing soon became continuous. "Look at all the people!" a Mohawk suddenly cried, pointing to the shore. Matthew turned and shivered. Thousands of silent Colonials were gathered under the cold brilliant light of the moon, watching.
A Mohawk paused, a bale clasped in his arms, sniffing suspiciously. "Hey, are you sure this is coffee?"
Matthew whirled around. "Ugh!" he grunted, followed by a muffled chorus of "Ughs!" The Mohawk shrugged, and carried on. At the end of two hours they were done. The harbor was filled from end to end with slowly sinking bales. And Matthew was escorting the Mohawks, single-file, through the window, back into the century from which they'd sprung. The last hopped through as Matthew cast a final look around and prepared to do the same.
His glance alighted on a strangely incongruous figure, and he froze. He shook his head and squinted again. No mistake about it: that was Nicky Blunt wandering around with a look of open astonishment and genuine bemusement on his face. But it was the modern Nicky Blunt, judging from the way he carried himself, not to mention his utter lack of reaction to the scene in the Harbor. He's followed me—went through the window—and now he's going to get himself beaten up, Matthew thought. Wandering around alone with that goony grin, and who knows what he'll say!
After a moment's hesitation, Matthew slid the window shut. Nicky was vanishing into the crowd, completely unaware that several ruffian fellows trailed behind him, mimicking his manner of strolling. Nicky may have been ridiculously snobbish, but he did not entirely deserve the thumping these Sons of Liberty were about to give him—at least not in the century whence he'd come.
"Let's put him on a rail—give him a ride out of town," a Southie was jeering when Matthew caught up. Swooping down, taking the bewildered but friendly Nicky by the arm—"Hey, whoa! Slow down!"—Matthew dragged him into a side street. The crowd followed, becoming boisterous. Seeking a safe haven, he spotted the rear doorway of a local tavern and plunged in.
It was smoky and ill-lit, not overly crowded but noisy. Coughing and squinting, Matthew peered at the copper insignia over the bar, having grown accustomed to deciphering the symbolic items on display above the beer-barrels: a compass and a T-square and a bunch of grapes. "Lucky for you," he shouted into Nicky's ear. "It's a Tory tavern."
"Tennn-shunt!" bellowed a beery but bellicose voice. Matthew and Nicky turned simultaneously to find a squad of British Naval Marines and a quartet of brawny sailors in naval garb snapped to attention before them. The owner of the beery voice, a middle-aged naval rating, addressed Nicky: "Sir, I sees you brought us back a live 'un," he said, pointing at Matthew. "A deserter, I heard yer say so yourself. So shall we ring his rebel bell once and fer all, sir?" He gestured with a belaying pin plucked from his belt.
"You talking to me?" asked Nicky, with a nervous laugh.
"Aye, sir. Want me to ring his bell? Just say the word."
"Yeah, sure," said Nicky, grinning at Matthew, who was trying desperately to signal him with his eyes: no no no no! "Whatever."
Matthew sprang for the door, but was caught, squirming like a mackerel, by a net of hard-callused hands. A sickening crunch of bone, only slightly cushioned by hair, sent a bolt of lightning to scorch his eyes. Then all went black.