A Wicked Way to Burn (30 page)

Eventually, through the fields, they saw the spires and rooftops of Cambridge ahead. The town of about fifteen hundred souls was no larger than Worcester, but its atmosphere was vastly different. Here, the bells of Boston could often be heard coming across the water, and that city was a nourishing presence which provided a good deal of money, as well as a constant flow of new thought and information.

They soon passed a large Congregational church, whose yard held many of the Commonwealth’s founders, Warren observed. Then, on the left, they saw an open quadrangle of buildings neatly fenced off from the ordinary world.

There was Massachusetts Hall, four stories with a large clock that faced the road, Harvard Hall with its bell towers and unbelievable library of 3,500 volumes, and Stroughton Hall—all three constructed of redbrick around a large, bare courtyard, where students crossing and recrossing between meetings continually wore out the grass.

Warren had already told his youthful companion about Professor Edward Wigglesworth, the scholarly old man who still prepared most of the future theologians of Massachusetts, while he also taught the students Greek and Latin, rhetoric, logic, and ethics. Now, the doctor told several amusing stories about the far less ancient John Winthrop, who was responsible for teaching mathematics and natural philosophy, as well as calculus, astronomy, and geography. It was Winthrop who had created and still presided over the experimental laboratory on the second floor of Harvard Hall. There, a twenty-foot telescope had enabled him to learn more of the nature of sunspots, and comets. Winthrop also had an orrery in his apparatus chamber; this showed, by means of hanging brass bells moved by a wheel-work, the paths of the principal bodies in the solar system.

But when they entered Harvard Hall and looked in at the laboratory on their way to the library, it was a hanging skeleton that stopped Lem and held him dumb. Warren took the opportunity to show his new friend just how Sam Dudley had been approached and strangled, to the considerable interest of several students occupying the room.

Somewhat later, Lem sat under the eye of a watchful librarian, looking through a book he’d found on a huge oak table before him. As his eyes flitted over the pages he let the smell, the sight, and the sounds of the place work on his agitated mind. Poring over a single volume by the fire had once been a thrill. But now, that prospect gave him only a brief glow. Here, an entire world of books surrounded him, all of them waiting to be tasted, acting on the boy like a bonfire—even if, as Dr. Warren had warned him, three-quarters dealt with divinity.

Lem’s own questions had more to do with the stars and their names, details of inventions, places mentioned
in the newspapers, and the curious habits of weather and atmospherics described in the Almanac. How, and
why
, figured largely in Lem’s unspoken thoughts, along with an occasional and sometimes even heretical
why not?

One question that didn’t trouble his mind at the moment (although he was later to wonder why about that, too) was this: What was going on at home, in the house of Charlotte Willett, which he had left unprotected? And why, he might have wondered (had he been looking down from his favorite hillside perch at that moment)—why was a crouched figure creeping up to Mrs. Willett’s kitchen window, looking around to make sure Hannah Sloan continued on her way down the hill on a quick errand, then stealing like a shadow to the unbolted door?

EDMUND MONTAGU, TOO
, had passed Harvard College as he came through Cambridge very early, on his way back to Boston. But Montagu had no thought of stopping. Continuing on, he reached Roxbury and crossed over the Neck.

Nothing much, he decided with satisfaction, looked to have changed. Boston claimed a population these days of well above fifteen thousand, and its business kept on growing, in spite of the latest conflagration in 1760 which he’d often heard mentioned, and a currently rumored depression. He could see the masts of ships that had hurried to cross the Atlantic before the worst of the winter storms, clamorously unloading now on the wharves at the ends of east-running streets. As he rode on, he passed farm carts from the western mainland towns rumbling along the Common, bringing produce to markets and warehouses, as well as the cargo holds of the tall ships.

Commerce would always take care of itself, he
thought—unlike one particular participant of the Boston trade, whose business was finished. Soon, Montagu would mount granite steps he’d only watched before. A constable had already made inquiries there, when word of Middleton’s disappearance first arrived from Bracebridge. Later, he’d received word that Constable Burns had what nearly amounted to a wrestling match with the merchant’s housekeeper, a Mrs. Elizabeth Bledsoe. It appeared to have been a draw.

This time, the captain would try himself. All through his journey, a homily had rarely left his head: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And a will was just what Montagu wanted to find, now that Duncan Middleton was known to be really and truly dead.

Leaving his horse at a nearby stable, he stopped briefly at his rented quarters in a house in Pond Street. After that, he strode the half mile down to the big house off Water Street, near Long Wharf. Eventually, he lifted the heavy knocker on the large carved door.

After he had knocked several times more, the door was opened by a kitchen maid with greasy hands and a crooked cap, and coal dust around her nose. Montagu was about to ask to speak to someone else, when a bleating sound behind him announced the timely return of the housekeeper.

“Good afternoon, sir.” She slid by him, shooing away the unpresentable maid. Mrs. Betty Bledsoe was, as reported, a very ruddy and cheerful woman. She was also very round, and despite the cool weather, her face was covered with perspiration from her morning’s marketing. There was no doubt that she could use a good washing. The image of Mrs. Bledsoe in a bathtub helped considerably as the captain struggled to maintain a pleasant smile, while both caught their breath, for quite different reasons.

“Good day, madam,” he finally responded, and bowed.

Mrs. Bledsoe had already admired the fashionable young gentleman from behind; now, she enjoyed admiring him face to face, while trying to decide if his visit promised fair weather or foul.

“I’m afraid the master’s not in at the moment. Might I be of some service?”

“Certainly, for it’s you that I came to see, Mrs. Bledsoe.”

“Oh! Then you’d better come into the parlor. Unless—you might like to follow me into my kitchen? Nice and warm there, sir, and I could offer you a pot of tea, and some fresh buns, too.”

Having won a small victory, Mrs. Bledsoe led the way, taking just a moment to send the maid upstairs to polish a distant pair of andirons.

When the kettle was on the fire, the housekeeper lowered herself into a chair. Montagu watched her feet rise into the air, before hearing them meet the floor again with a plop. Curls like yellow sausages hung beside her flaming cheeks, and bobbed vigorously as she began uttering pleasantries, which soon moved toward the colony’s many faults. Montagu had quickly discerned that she was an Englishwoman. As it turned out, Mrs. Bledsoe had been born in Portsmouth, and proudly considered herself more loyal to the king than most of those around her. Had she, he asked, suspected that some of Middleton’s dealings had been less than aboveboard, when it came to their monarch’s interests?

Oh, they all stretched the laws a bit, didn’t they, businessmen? Especially these colonials. And didn’t the government generally overlook these things, for its own good reasons? Not that she could ever condone what sometimes went on.…

“Anyways,” she concluded, “wherever was I to find an honest man to work for? My own Mr. Bledsoe always believed America to be the land of opportunity, but when he left … when he
died”
she stressed, “I had very
little. I really had no choice but to take a post here in Boston. Unfortunately, my upbringing was not
quite
fine enough to get me a position in the house of a real English gentleman.”

“Of course,” said Montagu, bringing the conversation grandly back to his own design, “one doesn’t always have a choice. But I give you one now, as a personal representative of His Majesty.” He almost expected the woman to raise a hand in salute, considering her new expression. “I can only tell you so much, you understand … but I can say that you might assist your king and country greatly—and perhaps yourself—by answering a few questions.”

He now dropped a Dutch gulden on the table, causing Mrs. Bledsoe’s pale eyes to widen. “Certainly,” she replied, moistening her lips, “I’d like to accommodate a gentleman like yourself, especially if, as you say …”

“Mrs. Bledsoe. Betty … have you seen many of these before?”

“Didn’t they come in with the
Jenny Dean!
One of our ships, that was, back from Curacao just this August. I remember quite well, as I saw Mr. Middleton counting them out before he hid them away in his strongbox.”

“And where is this strongbox, Mrs. Bledsoe?”

“Oh, sir—” A sudden coldness in his expression decided her. “Well … it’s in the master’s study.”

Montagu again smiled affably. “Show me,” he said firmly, sweeping the gold to one side of the table, without taking his gaze from her.

Mrs. Bledsoe licked her lips again and swallowed. Then, seeing that the coin was not about to disappear by itself, she led the way down a hall. Rising to follow, Montagu quickly pulled a small flask of rum from his coat pocket, and poured a dollop into her teacup.

She stood waiting at the door of a dark, shuttered room with a fireplace full of ashes, and a dusty feel about
the rest of it. After walking to a pine highboy with soiled knobs, she opened a low drawer. She removed a painted tin box with an iron device over its clasp.

“It’s locked, I’m afraid, sir.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself any further, Mrs. Bledsoe.”

“Would you be needing anything else, just at this moment?” she inquired with an air of innocence that would have been out of place, he thought, in a child of four.

“Perhaps you need to attend to something in the kitchen? I’ll do quite well alone,” he assured her. “You go and have another sip of tea.” And he set to work with a pocket knife and a small metal pick, as soon as the door had shut behind her whispering skirts.

The contents of the flat box were, at first, a disappointment. On top were some signed papers promising payment of money borrowed against eventual delivery of goods, at an exorbitant rate of interest; a few hopeful letters from other firms, and one or two that less politely requested payment; lists of cargo; lists of captains and crew members.

Under these, he found two pieces of newspaper, both from the
Boston Gazette.

The first was a brief homage to Veracity Middleton, who left no one, and was probably missed by few. A second yellowing page was an account of the wreck of a cargo ship, the
Gloria Jones.
Out of Providence, she had gone down with all hands on the harbor rocks of a small port in the Canary Islands. It had happened during a hurricane that had savaged the area, and must have meant something to the old man. Then Montagu remembered that under similar circumstances the last remaining brother, Lionel, had perished as a sailor three years before. According to Montagu’s informants, who had taken a look at the city’s tax lists, Lionel’s name had, in fact, been removed.

And then he found the packet containing a series of old wills, most of them made when Duncan Middleton’s brothers and sister were still alive.

Presumably, the first slim document had been made at the urgings of his elder brother Chester, to whom it left most of a very little nest egg; small bequests went to a sister and two former servants. Next came a will leaving out the elder brother, presumably dead by now, and recognizing a younger one named Lionel, who had come of age. He was set to share a somewhat larger fortune with Veracity. A third will specifically excluded a disfavored Lionel, and left the sister all. The fourth and final document, made shortly after Veracity’s death in 1761, named only one person as the recipient of a smallish sum, to be given after the man carried out Duncan Middleton’s last wish. It seemed that the bulk of the now weighty estate, with all other claimants gone, went to—and here Montagu heard himself laugh out loud—a home for drunken sailors, to be established in Marblehead on Duncan Middleton’s death. As the merchant made very clear in a stinging paragraph, sailors were welcome to their vices, which he believed were far less wicked than those of most of his Boston acquaintances.

When Montagu returned to the kitchen, Betty Bledsoe again sat at her table. The gold coin had disappeared, as had several sugary buns from the previously offered plate. Standing, and giving a sly look toward his coat pockets, the housekeeper offered to pour another cup of tea.

“When your master left on Monday last, where did he tell you he would be going, my dear?”

“He didn’t tell me. But not to where he ended up, I’m sure … this place called Brainbridge—or Bracebridge. If that
is
where he ended up.”

“You doubt it?” he asked with a look that led the woman on.

“I really don’t know. It sounds like one of his tricks
to me! I’m not a superstitious person myself, so I don’t see him burning up, like they say. And I can’t see him going off and leaving all this behind. As it is, no one’s told me
what’s
to become of his fortune—although I can tell you he promised me my living, for the great many things I’ve done for him over the years. At any rate, no one has told me to leave or to stay, so I’m sure I don’t know what’s to become of Betty Bledsoe!”

Neither did Montagu, but he suspected that fate would soon arrange a new life of small pleasures, and considerable future pain, for some unwary son of England.

LATER, CAPTAIN MONTAGU
paid a visit to his benefactors at Town-house, who gave him little reason to go further in any particular direction. They did, however, alert him to the curious fact that the wagonload of tainted rum was still nowhere to be found.