A Catch of Consequence. Diana Norman

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       CHAPTER FOUR

      Church. Oh God, God, I should’ve been in church.

      Behind Goody Busgutt was Goody Saltonstall; they hunted as a pair. Saltonstall being exceptionally fat and Busgutt thin, they resembled an egg and its timer in petticoats. In fact, they were the area’s moral police.

      As Goody Busgutt was saying, still from the doorway: ‘I knew, I knew. Moment you wasn’t in church, Makepeace Burke, I smelled licentiousness. ’Twas my duty to sniff it out, even if you wasn’t my son’s intended.’

      And it was. Though innocent, Makepeace did not question Goody Busgutt’s right, either as a future mother-in-law or as society’s licentiousness-sniffer, to invade her house. The goodwives might be an anachronism elsewhere but in this Puritan part of Boston they had the community’s authority to see that its women behaved like Puritans. They had the ear of the magistrates and could ensure that fornicators and adulterers received a public whipping, or at least a heavy fine – and had.

      She was ruined. She’d been caught alone in a bedroom with a man – in flagrante delicto as far as the Goodies were concerned. No marriage to Captain Busgutt now. Waves of images battered her, one after another: herself standing before the congregation with Parson Mather’s castigations roaring from the pulpit; in front of the magistrates’ bench, condemned as a trull; the Roaring Meg closed by official seal as a house of ill repute …

      Dapifer, glancing at her, saw her face age with defeat and became angry.

      Goody Busgutt had no interest in him. Her lips distended and narrowed, spouting shame – all of it at Makepeace. Who hung her head. She deserved it. Bringing him here, sending Betty to bed instead of making her sit with him … worrying, even now, about what he thought of her humiliation. She was sick; she wanted to fall down.

      He was sitting up, looking comically prim with the bedspread clutched to his neck. Uttering something unbelievable.

      ‘Thank the Lord,’ he was saying, and he was saying it to Goody Busgutt. ‘Thank the Lord for you, mistress. Rescue, rescue.’

      Goody Busgutt’s mouth paused in a quirk. ‘Eh? Who are you?’

      ‘Madam, my name is Philip Dapifer. I was thrown into the harbour yesterday by rioters for being an Englishman. This woman and her Indian dragged me out and, since there was nowhere else, brought me here. Most unwillingly, I may add. You look a kindly soul, will you get me food?’

      ‘Eh?’

      ‘Mistress,’ said Sir Philip Dapifer, ‘I have been here all night and this female has done nothing but lecture me on my politics and my soul. She has read to me from the Good Book without ceasing …’ He pointed to the bible lying open on the little table. ‘Mistress, I am as eager for the Lord’s word as anyone but did not our Lord minister to the sick as well as preach? Not a morsel has she given me, not a sip.’

      ‘Not a sip?’ Goody Saltonstall’s wattle quivered sympathetically.

      ‘And my head aches most damnably. I’m ill.’

      Saltonstall was already won; Goody Busgutt was holding out. ‘Thee talks fast enough for a sick ’un, Englishman.’

      ‘There you have it,’ Dapifer said, as if the two of them had struck agreement. ‘She holds it against me that I am from England. For some reason, she blames me that her fiancé has not yet married her. Since she learned that I have connections at the Admiralty, she has been on at me to find out what happened to his ship. I suspect he has sailed to the Tortugas to get away from her. I tell you, mistress, were I her fiancé, I wouldn’t marry her either.’ He fell back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

      Goody Busgutt walked round the bed like a woman searching corners for cockroaches. In the morning light, Dapifer’s pallor looked deathly, a man without enough energy to raise his eyelids, let alone any other part of his anatomy.

      ‘Thee could have fed him some broth, miss,’ she said.

      Makepeace’s wits were coming back. ‘’Tis the Sabbath,’ she sulked.

      ‘When did the Sabbath stop the Lord’s work? I tell thee, Goody Saltonstall and I should wish to be at our prayers instead of here, saving thy reputation. What were thee thinking of? Thee could have been the talk of the neighbourhood. Now fetch this poor soul some broth.’

      ‘An’ us,’ said Goody Saltonstall, ‘I’m moithered.’

      Makepeace got up, still astounded. He’d rescued her as surely as she’d rescued him. He’d worked the oracle on the two flintiest women in Boston.

      ‘Get to it, then,’ Saltonstall told her, sharply. ‘We’re seeing to ’un now.’

      Makepeace got to it, carefully clicking her teeth and muttering resentfully about free broth for the undeserving. Downstairs she fell into Betty’s arms, babbling.

      ‘Never believed you was jus’ talkin’, did they?’ asked Betty.

      ‘They believed him. And it was true,’ Makepeace said. She sat down, puffing, and ran her fingers round her neck, still feeling the noose. ‘In a way.’

      ‘Oh-ah.’

      ‘Don’t you start. And get that fire going. Pop in a couple of lobster and I’ll run up some pastry for patties.’ She was exhilarated by escape.

      ‘On the Sabbath? What’ll they say?’

      ‘Betty, Sabbath or no, we could set up a maypole and caper round it. I tell you, he charmed ’em.’