Johnny Tremain (12 page)

'Of course, I called him a squeak-pig. Don't see why he cares.'

'Well—you go around calling people squeak-pigs and you've just about got to take it when they hit back. Not with their tongues—mostly they're not quick enough—but like this. Tweedie saw his chance to get back at you. He says if Mrs. Lapham lets Cilla testify for you, he'll take a ship back to Baltimore. Says he's sensitive and a great artist and he can't be upset by thieves and brawlers. Well ... never mind. But I don't see the point of going around and...'

'Oh, forget those squeak-pigs, for Heaven's sake.' Johnny was sulky.

'Now for a lawyer. I've talked to Josiah Quincy. He often writes for the
Observer.
He says if you want him, he's ready.'

'Josiah Quincy? But ... Rab, you tell him not to...'

'You don't want him? He's the best young lawyer in Boston.'

'I could never pay him.'

'You don't understand. He'll give you his time for nothing. He's coming to see you this afternoon. And I'm meeting Cilla, sort of behind her mother's back, to make plans.'

'It all depends on Cilla, doesn't it?'

'Well ... pretty much.'

'And Mrs. Lapham and the squeak—I mean Tweedie—say they'll lock her up?'

'Lock her up so I can't get her out? Boy, I could get her out of this jail. Get her out of the Tower of London. And that girl would testify for you, even if it cost her her life. What's her real name?'

'Priscilla.'

'Well, may Priscilla be on my side if ever I'm accused of anything. What about the little girl—is she really as bright as she looks?'

'No, I don't think so. She's just sort of a parrot. She's always going around repeating what Cilla or anyone else says to her as if she had thought it all up herself.'

Mr. Justice Dana was a stout and florid man, dressed in a black silk robe and a great woolly white wig.

Johnny sat close to Mr. Quincy, watching the Justice's nervous, taut hands, listening to his 'What have we heres' and quick questions to the men and women shoved up before him. Some people he dismissed, some he ordered fined, or whipped, or set in the stocks, or held for a higher court. Johnny knew when his own case would soon be called because he heard the Justice tell a beadle to run down to Long Wharf and tell Merchant Lyte to present himself in half an hour.

Once again Johnny squirmed about, studying every face in the courtroom. Rab and Cilla were not there and he was frightened.

Mr. Quincy whispered to him.

'Rab said he'd get her here by eleven. Rab's never slipped yet.'

Johnny liked his young lawyer. A frail man, flushed with fever. His cough was prophetic of an early death. That was how Johnny's mother had died—burned up by fever, coughing herself to death. The man had a mobile, passionate face, handsome except for one wall eye.

Mr. Lyte arrived, escorted by his poor relative and clerk, Sewall. He entered as though he owned the court, calling a cheery good morning to Mr. Justice, interrupting the mumbled explanation of a shabby bakeress accused of selling mouldy bread. Next there was a rattle of light gig wheels, a jingle of horse gear, and to the intense pleasure of everyone Miss Lavinia Lyte entered and, as modestly as she was able, took a seat near the door.

Even the Justice straightened the bands at his throat. Sewall blushed. The bakeress forgot what she was saying as she turned to gape at the beautiful, dark woman, darkly dressed. Restless, easily bored, Miss Lyte often did unexpected things.

'Jonathan Lyte
versus
Johnny Tremain, alias Jonathan Lyte Tremain.'

Mr. Quincy gave him a secret pat on the knee. Johnny knew he must now step forward, take his oath on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth—so help him God. He was frightened, for as he stepped forward he was conscious that these might be the first steps toward those gallows—waiting in the dark beyond the town gates.

Next Mr. Lyte was called and was taking the same oath. Mr. Quincy's one good eye caught Johnny's. He was forming words on his lips. The clock had indeed struck eleven and there, standing in the doorway, were Rab and Cilla. Rab, enigmatic, dark, capable, looked as always. Cilla had on a hood that half-covered her face.

Mr. Lyte was talking as informally as though he and Mr. Dana were alone together, sitting at a tavern, cracking walnuts, drinking Madeira. He told how his great-grandfather, Jonathan Lyte, Mayor of Causeway, Kent, England, had had six identical cups made—one for each of his sons. Four of these cups had come to this country and these he himself had owned until last August. On the night of the twenty-third, a thief or thieves had broken a pane out of his dining-room window. The space was too small to admit a grown man, so it was a half-grown boy who had slipped in and taken only one of the famous cups.

Then he snapped his fingers at Sewall, who stepped forward and set four silver cups on the table before the Justice.

'This is the stolen cup,' Mr. Lyte said confidently. 'I've tied a red ribbon on it.' Then he went on to tell, with considerable humor anda bright sparkle in his slippery black eyes, about Johnny's visit to his shop, his claims of kinship, and how he had lured him to his house with the stolen cup.

The Justice said: 'Mr. Lyte, could it not be possible that this boy is related to you? Could his story be true?'

No, no, it was impossible. Would Mr. Justice Dana be so good as to glance at this indenture—which the boy's erstwhile master, Mr. Lapham, had been so kind as to lend him? The name was put down as Johnny Tremain—nothing about Lyte. Undoubtedly older heads than this boy's had egged him on to this wretched, scurvy trick, but Mr. Lyte had no wish to go into the matter beyond the recovery of his own property. He did not wish to suggest in any way that the Laphams had any part in the imposture—they were very humble, honest, pious folk. He believed that the case of the theft, all that interested him at the moment, was 'dead open and shut against the boy.' And might he ask the death penalty? There was too much thieving going on in Boston. Poor apprentices were getting out of hand. The gallows had been too long empty.

'That's for the court to say,' said the Justice sourly. He took snuff and Mr. Lyte took snuff. They sneezed together.

Mr. Quincy led Johnny on to tell his own story. The boy spoke confidently, now that Rab and Cilla were there. He had never had an audience before and he felt the courtroom hanging on his words, believing him. He spoke better and better. He told how his mother had given him the cup, the little that she had told him. She had bidden him not to part with the cup—ever. Nor ever go to the Lytes unless he had come to the end of everything. Then he spoke simply and easily of his accident, his hunt for work, his despair—and arrest. There was a murmur almost of applause.

'Johnny,' said Mr. Quincy, 'did you obey your mother—never show your cup to anyone?'

'Once I disobeyed. It was the second day of last July. I forgot—or didn't heed. I told my master's daughter, Priscilla Lapham, what my mother said was my true name, and about the cup. She wanted to see it. It was just dawn—that is, the dawn of the third ofJuly. Tuesday it was.'

Cilla was called. Johnny had always thought her a shy girl, but she stood up straight before the Judge, speaking in her clear, low voice. He was proud of her. And he had always thought her a skinny, plain girl. She looked at the moment just about beautiful to him.

As she finished, there was a sensation in the courtroom that outweighed the arrival of Mr. Lyte and even his handsome daughter. Isannah, her bright curls in wild array, flew into the courtroom, seeming, like a mouse, to run without feet. She stopped for no oath, no formalities, but flung herself upon Mr. Justice Dana, telling over again Cilla's story. Johnny knew she had been sound asleep when he had told Cilla. She had even been in bed when he had actually shown the cup to her older sister. He was amazed at the vividness of her jumbled recital and touched by the virtues she attributed to himself. Yet she was making it all up.

In vain Mr. Justice Dana's 'What have we here?' and 'I cannot accept this as testimony,' and Cilla's attempts to quiet her. She was so enchanting, so seemingly come from another world, she had her say.

'Bless me!' said Mr. Justice, blowing his nose. 'And how old might you be?'

'Eight, sir, going on for nine.'

'There now—be a good girl—here, you take this piece of licorice I have in my pocket and sit down quietly and eat it. There!'

Almost immediately he dismissed the case. There was not the slightest evidence, the Justice was saying, that the accused had stolen a cup, nor that the cup with the red ribbon, now illegally in the possession of Mr. Lyte, was the same one as was stolen from his house last August. Evidence was against that. For these young Lapham misses had proved to his satisfaction (and might he point out to Mr. Lyte his own testimony about the high character of honesty and piety the Laphams enjoyed?) that, unlikely as it might seem, the apprentice had possession of a silver cup, undoubtedly one of the original six ordered by the Mayor of Causeway, Kent. He bade Johnny Tremain take the one with the red ribbon. It was his own. If he liked, he might even bring a suit against Mr. Lyte. Didn't recommend it—Mr. Lyte was too powerful.

Johnny took the cup. In a moment he and Mr. Quincy, Rab and Cilla, were standing in the sunshine of the street outside the courthouse. They were so happy they could only laugh. The lawyer said now they would all go together, as his guests, to a tavern, to eat at their leisure, and drink a health to Johnny from the cup. But where was Isannah?

She was standing with a tiny hand in one of Miss Lyte's gloved ones, gazing up at her in adoration.

Cilla called her crossly. Miss Lyte stepped up into her high gig. It was a long step, but she was a lithe, long-legged woman.

'She said,' panted Isannah, 'she had never seen anything like me ... not even in some lane in London.'

'Drury Lane,' said young Mr. Quincy dryly. 'I was thinking of that myself.'

'Rab,' said the little girl, 'was I really all right?'

'Just about perfect. Only some of it you put in the first person, so it wasn't quite the truth, but ... you'll never starve.'

Then she tried to kiss Johnny, but he thought it beneath his dignity to be kissed on the street.

'You're too mussed up with licorice,' he said.

She bent and kissed his burned hand.

He said nothing. He was suddenly afraid he might cry.

T
HEY WENT
to the Afric Queen and ate in the dining room. This time no one asked to see the color of Mr. Quincy's money. The party even grew a little noisy. Isannah, Johnny, and Mr. Quincy himself were the most hilarious. Many of the leading Whigs dined daily at the Queen, and one man after another stopped at their table to laugh over Merchant Lyte's public discomfiture that morning in court. Hadn't Quincy practically caught the old fox thieving a silver cup from an apprentice? Mr. Quincy, flushed and happy, agreed to all this, but more seriously he warned Johnny to watch out for himself. Mr. Lyte was very proud. That pride had been hurt. From now on he was Johnny's enemy. But all enjoyed themselves, although Isannah drank herself sick and silly on sillabubs.

Johnny was disappointed when Rab told exactly how he had got Cilla to court that day. It was not half so exciting a story as Johnny had expected. Rab had simply shown Mrs. Lapham a letter signed by Governor Hutchinson and stamped with the Great Seal of the Colony. It had been sent to Mr. Lorne, commanding him and the other printers of Boston to quit their seditious, rebellious publications—or else. Mrs. Lapham could not read. All Rab had done was to take Cilla by the arm, unfurl the letter at Mrs. Lapham, point to the seal and say, 'Governor's orders.' He had not given her time to call the well-educated Mr. Tweedie out of the shop. Rab and Cilla ran hell-for-leather to the courthouse. He had already schooled Isannah and hidden her near-by in case he was unable to produce Cilla. Both girls, he thought, had done marvelously.

'That's what Miss Lyte said,' the little girl agreed eagerly. 'At least she said
I
was wonderful and...'