Maya's Aura: Destroy the Tea Party Page 4

  Dr. Warren spoke softly to her, "Both wife and baby succumbed, and I am now rearing my four young children alone." He took an appraising look at the two women who had just been introduced. Lydia was a widow, as was he, and comely and mid twenties. Britta was too young for him, but the stuff that dreams were made from. He would ask Sam about their personal stories later.

  "Remember the essay you took to Jemmy Otis for me," interrupted Sam, "Joe and Ben here, wrote the other sections of the pamphlet. Jemmy, or rather, Mercy has asked us to meet and discuss the changes suggested by the committee. It is the last step before we send it to the printers."

  "Do you need privacy?" asked Lydia. "I will ask Jon to set up a table and chairs in the back room, and to light the fire. Britta, ask what these men would like to drink, and tell them what we stock from the bakery."

  Sam caught the eye of the other two men. "Yes, I think it fitting that we use our new meeting room. Please call Jon." Sam looked at Britta. "And I think just a jug of coffee and uh, five cups. James and Mercy will be joining us soon. Show them in as soon as they arrive."

  Britta had for some reason expected Mercy Warren and her husband James, and was overjoyed when Mercy walked through the door with her brother Jemmy. It took her a moment to recognize Mercy, for it was the first time she had ever seen this formidable women dressed in the drab garb of a good Puritan woman complete with a fully modest bonnet.

  Realizing that Jemmy was here, Britta kept peering over their shoulders trying to see if Jim had driven them. There he was. He was standing with the horse. Without a by your leave, she ran out of the shop to the cart and leaped into Jim's arms.

  Jemmy looked at Mercy and then at Lydia, and said, "Oh dear, what will I tell my wife? Until I saw Britta, I had no idea that our new meeting room was in any way connected to her. No wonder Jim was humming all the way here. He knew the address."

  "How can Ruth be unhappy that her son has found such a wonderful mate?" asked Mercy with a straight face, and then burst into laughter. "Oh I shouldn't laugh, but that wife of yours is so old-fashioned, and such a snob. After all these years living with a Digger communist like you, you think she would have changed."

  Jemmy defended his wife, "I do not completely disagree with Ruth. Jim is too young for marriage, and a young husband should be ten years older than his wife. And we are not Digger communists, we are Harvard communists."

  Mercy hooted. "You hypocrite! There are barely four years between you and Ruth. How much older is Jim than Britta?"

  "A year perhaps," answered Lydia, "What is a Harvard communist?"

  "Oh, it was the political movement at Harvard that many of the Sons of Liberty were nurtured on. It's aim was to reduce the influence of foreigners by increasing the common ownership of property and mills and banks, you know, move away from Dutch style corporations and towards Puritan style commonwealths and cooperatives.

  Lydia didn't understand. She had only asked the question to try to impress Mercy. "We had best go to the back," said Lydia. "Samuel will be impatient. I will keep my eye on our teen lovers." Lydia dropped back to walk beside Mercy. "So your play was well received, I hear. Our customers are all talking about it."

  "Hah, they are more likely to be talking about your sister Britta," scoffed Mercy.

  "Sister? You have been misinformed. She is my bond servant, as is her brother. They are redemptioners."

  Mercy turned to her. "Oh my. I had no idea. I just assumed. No wonder Ruth is snubbing the girl."

  "Pah," Lydia thought and spoke quickly, still trying to impress this woman, "the bond is not an issue. If they marry with your brother's consent, then I will cancel the bond as my wedding present to them. As far as her being a redemptioner, well she has somehow kept her purity, though when you see them together, one wonders for how many more days."

  Mercy was shown the to the Ladies' Retirement Room while Jemmy continued on through the back door.

  She looked around at the furnishings of the retirement room, all the time nodding her head in approval. "This month you will have many women guests, society women. This retirement room by itself will win them over. There is a scarcity of pleasant ones near to the market. I suggest another large mirror on that wall so that they can see both front and back at once. Oh, and I brought these."

  Mercy lifted a cloth bag onto the mirrored dressing table and pulled some neatly-folded cloth out. "Samuel had warned me that you were wearing bodice dresses while serving, so I brought you some pinafores. May I suggest that you switch to wearing Puritan smocks and bonnets, but with these pinafores worn overtop."

  Lydia looked at the pinafores. She had heard of them but had never seen one before. They were a large apron of good fabric, and were pleasingly shaped and decorated with lace. "Why?" she asked.

  "When our women are out and about in town, they must dress modestly as Puritans. You know, modestly covered from head to toe. They may take offense if you and Britta are not also dressed modestly. The pinnies will keep you looking bright and cheery despite the drab smock underneath." There was a pregnant silence so Mercy put the pinnies back in the cloth bag. "Well, it was just an idea. I will leave them with you. I must go to Jemmy now."

  When she was gone, Lydia held up one of the pinafores in front of her and looked in the mirror. As she suspected it made her look like a servant. Perfect, just when she was about to be in the company of society women, she was being asked to dress like a servant. There was a seamstress a few streets away. She would go and ask her advice.

  Meanwhile Britta was showing Jim how to best prepare coca leaves into a matea for his father. "You must boil it. It is not like Chinese tea where you pour boiling water over it. It is like Indian charas tea where you must boil it. Then simmer. Then add sugar or honey and pour it into the serving pot. Here, taste."

  Jim made a face at its bitterness. "It needs more sugar."

  Lydia had come to watch and she said, "We never put in enough sweet when we make it. In that way each person can sweeten it to their own taste. Now take that pot in to your father. Coca dulls the craving for more of the opium syrup. Did he bring his syrup with him?"

  "It never leaves his pocket."

  Lydia moved closer to Jim until he was very aware of her femininity. She ignored Britta's possessive look, and told him, "You must convince him to let you carry his syrup. To do that you must promise him that he will never be refused it, but that you will take charge of measuring the dose. You do understand why, don't you?"

  "I understand. He never measures the stuff himself, he just swigs at it." He picked up the pot of matea and a cup and walked towards the back.

  "I saw you rubbing your breasts against Jim's arm," Britta hissed at Lydia. "You stay away from him."

  "Dearie, I do that with all comely men." She touched Britta's cheek ever so gently. "You are besotted, aren't you? I suppose that you are to the stage where you think of him constantly. Well good. I'll keep my hands off Jim, if you leave Dr. Joseph Warren to me."

  "But Joseph is newly widowed and still grieving."

  "As am I," said Lydia curtly. "Besides, the man needs comforting."

  Britta was not crass enough to mention that though Lydia was newly widowed, she was definitely not grieving. And she knew exactly how her mistress wanted to comfort Joseph, the slut. Well, what of it. Lydia had come to Boston to socialize and find another husband. Joseph Warren was probably a good catch, being a physician and all. "He has four children," she warned.

  "And I have one and another on the way. We are a perfect match. Besides, he will already have been house-trained by his first wife, and hopefully trained in other ways too." Lydia gave Britta a saucy look, and so Britta gave up on her and went to clean tables.

  Standing there thinking of Joseph, Lydia had an epiphany about how to dress in the shop while serving society women. She would wear the costly widow's gown she had worn to her husband Robert's funeral. When she was actively working, she would cover it with a pinafore. Britta, of course, would for sure have to
wear a drab smock. In her bodice dress she looked a bit too much like a tavern wench. That would never do for the girl engaged to Jim Otis.

  When Britta returned to the galley, Lydia sized a pinnie up against her, and then asked, "These pinafores don't have to be white. I can have them dyed. What color should we choose?"

  "Turquoise," Britta whispered back, "like your ball gown."

  "Oh yes, of course. I will have all of our aprons done with the same dye lot."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  MAYA'S AURA - Destroy the Tea Party by Skye Smith

  Chapter 4 - The Committees of Correspondence

  That week saw a sharp upturn in the shop's business. Men were riding in from all over Massachusetts to take coffee at the shop, and then riding away again. Each stranger who asked after Samuel Adams was escorted to the back room, where he would collect some of the committees political pamphlets, and not just the latest one, for there were also reprints of the one from two years ago that explained how to create a committee of correspondence in a village, and why, and what it did.

  That night Britta took copies of each of the pamphlets upstairs to read. She was still a slow reader and she was constantly asking Lydia to explain some of the larger words. "I knew it," she said to Jon. "Committee of Correspondence is just a fancy name for an spy ring. Oh, look here. They describe how they are organized like a tree with smaller and smaller branches so that even if one branch fails, the tree will still survive.

  The Central Committee that meets downstairs is the central trunk of the tree, but they call it the Politbureau. That sounds French. The smallest of the branches are the actual spies. It says here that it is better if they don't actually know that they are being used as spies. They report what they see to their local spy masters who are members of the local committee. The local committee sends reports to the politbureau.

  The politbureau reads everything and makes sure that important information is fed back to all of the local committees. That means that if something important happens in one village, all the other villages are made aware of it as soon as possible."

  "That sounds exciting," said Jon. "I would love to be a spy. Think of the adventure."

  "You weren't listening. If you were a spy, you wouldn't know you were a spy. For instance, if a woman took you to bed, and you told her the names of all the committee members downstairs, then you would be a spy and you would not know it. The woman would be your spy master. She would know that you were a spy, but you wouldn't."

  "Like I said. I would love to be a spy. I haven't bedded a woman since we left the dairy farm. Sometimes I ache for one." He looked over at Lydia, who was reading another pamphlet, and he sighed.

  Lydia looked back at the pretty boy. She well knew that look, the look of a hungry man. She tried never to tease Jon, but he wasn't the only one who was missing the gentle touch of a lover. "Britta makes a good point," she said, putting down the pamphlet. "We do not want to be used as unwitting spies. From now on we must take care never to name our customers, and never to pass along the gossip that we hear in the shop."

  They all agreed at the sense in this. Britta added, "Sam told me that they have called a town meeting for November twentieth at Faneuil Hall to explain the organization and the need for the committees. Jemmy is chairman, so he will be the main speaker. They are hoping for over two hundred village committees to be formed. So far I have served perhaps only fifty men from the villages."

  "That is next Tuesday. Oh dear," said Lydia, "Well, I hope that Jim has taken away his opium. It would be terrible for him to overdose before the meeting."

  * * * * *

  In the shop now, not only were they serving men from the surrounding villages, but they were also serving well heeled women from Boston. Some came to collect pamphlets of behalf of their husbands, others were waiting for their husbands, and others darted in simply to use the closest retirement room to the linen market. The landlord had put up a new mirror in the retirement room, and Jon had moved tables around so that the largest one was close to the Franklin stove. It had a neatly printed sign on it. Ladies Only.

  Whenever a woman entered the shop without an escort, either Britta or Lydia would be quick to meet her at the door and lead her to the ladies' table. Women almost always ordered a chocolate drink, and then while waiting for it, visited the retirement room. Only when they were sipping chocolate would they gather their nerve to ask quietly after Samuel Adams.

  Mercy had been right. Once word went around the women’s circles about the pleasant retirement room so near to the market, the number of women customers increased. Lydia was joyous. She would sit with them looking very respectable in her costly widows gown, and would play hostess to their every need-away-from-home.

  Britta did not mind wearing the drab smock, because the turquoise pinafore brought out the beauty of her face. Instead of a full Puritan bonnet, she wore a half bonnet, also died turquoise. Whenever she needed help, Lydia would make her excuses to the women around her, would wrap a turquoise apron, not a pinafore, around her waist, and would pitch in to help.

  With Lydia now playing hostess more than working, Jon had plenty to do. Whenever Jim arrived with his father, he would pitch in to help as well. Their butcher's style aprons were also dyed turquoise, and since both men were attractive and fair, they looked good in them, and very much like brothers.

  * * * * *

  Sam warned them on the Friday that there would be many Whigs coming to the shop directly before the town meeting on Tuesday.

  "Whigs," said Britta, "you mean judges."

  "No love," he replied sweetly. "Members of a political party. It is what the Popular Party now calls itself. Either Whig or Whig Patriot. A Whig in England is a politician who believes in rule by Parliament, not the king, and is against Papists, ugh Catholics. Here a Whig is a politician who wants local things to be ruled locally with the help of local banks."

  "I have heard so many different names. Is Whig their real name, not Committee, not Caucus, not Sons of Liberty?" she asked.

  "There are many Whigs. Only a small number of them, the leaders, call themselves by the other names." He turned to face Lydia. "This town meeting could turn unruly. Winter is the season of mischief against the governor because we are cut off from England. The Whigs always use the winter to press their agenda on the governor. They put up with him in the summer, and strike back in the winter."

  "What you are saying is that the women will stop coming to the shop for a few days," said Lydia.

  "Yes, that and more. I will ensure that there are men guarding the shop door."

  "Ah yes," said Britta, "Committee men, though paid by the landlord."

  "Exactly. This shop is very close to the hall, and there may be a lot of men using your street."

  Since Lydia was busy with Sam, Britta took Robby off her hands and took him upstairs to feed him. She hissed quietly at Jim to follow her.

  It wasn't until Lydia and Sam had finished arranging for the coming chaotic days, that Lydia realized that both Britta and Jim were still upstairs. Neither had any sense of time when they were together. She went upstairs, but the sitting room was empty. Her own bedroom door was open and she could see that Robby was asleep.

  She opened Britta and Jon's bedroom door without knocking. She and Jim were sleeping in each other's arms on Britta's bed, however they were still fully clothed. Lydia smiled at the sight, and quietly backed out of the room and went back downstairs.

  * * * * *

  In the coffee shop, Jemmy was searching anxiously for Jim. Lydia sat him at the ladies' table, for it was empty and in the warmest place. "They are upstairs together, exploring each other. I can do nothing other than trust they will abide by my warning not to go too far before they are married."

  Jemmy was speaking slowly, almost mumbling. "I envy them their youth and their romance. Unfortunately, my wife Ruth has heard that our politbureau meets in your shop. She is very angry. I fear that she will forbid Jim to see h
er."

  "Forbid or not, they will not be kept apart," she replied.

  "Too true. They are young and rebellious. I fear that Ruth's actions may rush them to marry out of spite. They are of age. We could not stop them, legally I mean."

  "Exactly. That is why I am allowing them their privacy upstairs. Rather there in safety and comfort, than lusting behind some barn where they may go too far." She looked into his eyes. She had seen those anxious eyes so many times before on her husband. "Jim has your opium syrup upstairs, doesn't he?"

  "Yes," Jemmy mumbled, embarrassed.

  "I still have my late husband's opium and his pipe. Would you like me to mix you a pipe?"

  "That would be so kind of you, oh please."

  Lydia went and fetched the pipe. As she prepared it for him she said, "To wean my husband from the opium, the first step was to switch away from the syrups. Syrup is the most expensive way of taking opium because of the physician's profit, and it is too easy to take too much.

  With the pipe, it is much cheaper, much purer, and before you have had too much, you fall asleep. Unfortunately smoking it is a filthy habit, and the smell of the smoke is unmistakable, so you cannot hide that you are using opium from others."

  She handed the pipe to him. "Here, I will light it for you. This is a mix of opium and charas. Do you know charas? Some call it hashish. Both are demons brought here by the East India Company." After he had taken three long puffs she touched his hand. "Pause for a while and see how you feel. It takes a few moments for it to reach your blood. You can have more later if you need it."

  He coughed a few times because he was trying to hold the smoke in as long as possible. She had brought a cup of some left over matea with the pipe. It was cold and old, but it would cool his throat and calm his stomach. She watched his eyes visibly relax, and lose that look of panic and distress.

  "Was he a good man, your husband, I mean before the opium?" Jemmy asked.