Chapter VII

The long winter night was unrelieved by any hint of dawn when Justin scrambled through a hurriedly-opened window, dropped to the gently slanting roof of a one-storey shed attached to the Wilkins house and slid safely into a deep pile of snow.

Working his way clear to the rutted icy alley that passed for a street, Justin's chief impression was not wonder at the miracle that had actually transported him backward through time into the Old Boston of his dreams. It was a combination of uncertainty, befuddlement and utter physical discomfort.

In the first place the cast-off clothing of her father that Deborah had managed to procure for him from an upstairs hall closet was extremely uncomfortable. Made of coarse homespun it felt like steel wool against his skin. There was no underwear to ease the contact, nor had Deborah thought of any.

* * * * *

A chill east wind from the Bay knifed up the alley and chilled the marrow in his bones. Bitterly he recalled that the climate of north-eastern America had been growing steadily warmer for more than a century in his own time. He had returned to the very depths of the cold era.

Nor was he used to strange and narrow streets, slippery with ice, littered with refuse and utterly without lights. Holding with one hand to the cocked hat Deborah had loaned him, he groped his way with the other stretched out before him.

From the Wilkins house he was to proceed east on Mills Street, past Arch Street, until he came to Long Lane. There he was to turn right until he reached, on the corner to his left, a house, a full storey higher than the structures around it. He was to rap the knocker until a Mrs. Cooper answered and tell her that Sam Wilkins had sent him.

The small "hoard" Deborah had given him clinked in the cloth pouch she had tied round his waist. In spite of his discomfort he felt his thoughts soften at her generosity, as well as at its pitiful smallness. She was, in truth, a lovely thing to happen to any man.

He found the house and banged the heavy brass doorknocker with congealing fingers. After awhile a faint light glimmered through the fan-glass above the door, to be followed by the metallic sounds of a bolt being thrust back. The door opened a crotch and, above a wavering candle, a long-chinned toothless crone peered out at him and said, "What devil's business brings _ye_ to my door at this heathen hour?"

"Mrs. Cooper?" Justin asked, his teeth chattering.

"Aye, that I be," was the wary reply. "And who might _ye_ be?"

"The name is Justin," he replied. "Sam Wilkins sent me here in the hope of obtaining lodging for the night."

"Hmmp--there's little enough left of it," came the sharp reply. "Ye needn't think 'twill gain thee a short fee. That'll be a shilling and tuppence extra for rousing me at such an hour."

Justin willingly disgorged the required sum with rapidly numbing fingers and was led by the grumbling old crone to a small but unexpectedly clean second-floor chamber overlooking the street. With its white-washed walls, small mullioned window, wood fireplace, bureau, bed, table and chair--all these of hard dark maple--and knitted sampler on the wall, it might have been any of thousands of "Colonial" restorations in suburban homes of his own epoch.

Since there was no wood in the fireplace, Justin undressed quickly, glad to be out of his raspy clothing, and crawled naked between sheets almost as rough. But fatigue quickly overcame him and he fell into a dreamless sleep of sheer exhaustion.

He was awakened by a pock-marked mulatto girl who was apparently in the process of changing his chamberpot. She informed him as he rubbed sleepy eyes, "Ye slept through breakfast, Master. Mistress Cooper ast me to tell ye there's a young leddy downstairs to see ye."

Justin got out of bed in a hurry as soon as the slave had left. He let out a gasp as his bare feet struck the icy floorboards, crawled hastily into his ill-fitting clothing. He had to break ice in the basin.

Deborah was awaiting him downstairs in the parlor. Wearing a full-skirted tight-bodiced gown of light blue wool that matched her eyes, with blue-and-white bonnet, she looked to Justin delightfully quaint and breathtakingly lovely. She rose from the settee on which she had been waiting and came eagerly to him.

But when, after a warm kiss of greeting, he sought to embrace her further she danced away, laughing and saying, "Not now, Charles. Ye'll have Mistress Cooper saying dreadful things about me. 'Tis a fine winter's morning outdoors. I came to show ye the sights."

He went upstairs for his own borrowed cloak and by the time he got down she had already donned hers, a warm-looking grey wool wrap with grey woolen mittens to match. Outside the sun was bright and the night chill was off the air. Deborah said, watching her own breath congeal and mingle with his, "I had to come and see that ye made Mistress Cooper's safely. I lay abed and fretted for ye all night long."

"You don't look it," he told her.

Then he looked at the snow-covered city about him. There it stood, the Boston of his studies, of his dreams, the quaint old shops and houses and taverns, many with overhanging eaves and gables, the ancient signs, some fresh, some weathered, the innumerable and oddly-designed weather vanes and chimney pots.

Yet his next impression was one of dinginess. The snow, piled high on either side of the street, looked almost as dirty as snow that had lain for awhile in the side-streets of his own Boston. A narrow passageway had been dug out and even as he and Deborah watched a horse-drawn cart, laden with night-soil, and an ox-cart, evidently proceeding north to market, stood motionless, facing one another, while their drivers indulged in the mutual invective city and countrymen have invoked in like dilemmas since the invention of the wheel.

"What horrid words!" said Deborah, feigning shock. Justin took her arm and they edged past the incipient combatants, about whom a crowd of rough-looking customers was beginning to collect.

A gust of wind caused Deborah's cloak to billow about her and she tugged him away to the half-shelter of the rope-walk, where despite the weather a few hardy souls were engaged in splicing and reeving and other intricate arts of rigging and sailmaking.

A gong rang in Justin's memory. He said, "Where does Sam Adams live?"

"Ye know of him?" she countered, added, "That big run-down house at the next corner. What would ye of Master Adams, Charles?"

"Never mind, honey," he told her but his thoughts were humming. Sam Adams, of course--here was his opportunity, not only to survive in Old Boston, but to do it creditably in Deborah's eyes. Surely the so-called father of the Revolution would not be able to refuse the aid of a man who knew the course of the future.

* * * * *

Anxiety struck him. He said, "You aren't a supporter of the Court Party are you, Debby?"

Her eyes widened in surprise. Then she said, "Nay, not yet--but unless certain folk cease plaguing me in the name of the Colony I shall become so in self-defence."

"Don't switch," he assured her, relieved.

They walked the streets of the Old Town, down Belcher's Lane and the Battery March, whence they could see scarlet-coated soldiers at frigid sentry duty atop the Fort ramparts. They warmed chilling bodies with boiled beef and bacon and steaming buttered Medford rum at Stratton's tavern just off King Street, then on to the Province House toward Beacon Hill.

Look at the palladian gable of that small but stately structure, at the gilded lion and unicorn that adorned its cornices, Justin reflected it looked scarcely younger than when he had paused on his way home in the dusk to survey it a scant sixteen hours--or rather a hundred and ninety-two years--away. If anything, in his own era, it was rather better kept up.

Then they rambled back along Rawson's Lane to Milk Street and Deborah's house, which by daylight proved to be a stoutly comfortable dwelling in obvious good repair. To his surprise Deborah bade him enter. He followed her inside, said, "How are you going to explain me, honey?"

"I'm not," she replied with a flicker of dimple. "There's no soul here but ourselves."

He pulled her close and for a few blissful moments they embraced. Then, again, Deborah pushed him away. He looked at her, said, "What's wrong?"

"Ye must leave quickly," she replied. "I have something to attend to and with ye around I cannot."

"Is it your mission from Ortine?" he asked her.

"If that were all," she replied, "I'd willingly defy Ortine and all the de'ils in hell for ye, Darling Charles--but there is far too much involved."

He argued but to no avail, reluctantly took his leave. By a steeple clock he saw that the afternoon was still young. He might as well, he thought, put his time along to good use. So he made his way directly to the ramshackle doorway of Sam Adams' ramshackled old house.

An immense shaggy Irishman, his face pitted by the universal pockmarks of the era, opened the door to his knock. His free fist was clenched about the handle of a large pewter mug and his accents were slurred as he said, "What have we here?"

"I'd like to speak to Mr. Adams," Justin said.

The giant roared, "_Sam!_ A peasant to see ye--with the voice of a man fro' the moon!"

There was a murmur from within and Justin entered a house whose interior looked as threadbare and ramshackled as its facade. He was taken to a disorderly looking study where a tall red-faced genial-looking man, whose coat was glossy with gravy stains, regarded Justin not unpleasantly and said, "Ye wish to see me?"

"I do," replied Justin, his knees weak. Glancing at the glowering Irishman behind him, he added, "On a matter of some confidence, Mr. Adams."

Adams glanced at his companion and said, "I doubt me much that this honest-looking stranger wishes me ill. Outside, Will."

Memory rang another gong within Justin's head. Will--that could mean only Will Molineux, tough rugged South End mob leader and soon-to-be captain of the town's Liberty Boys, a vital lower-bracket cog in the machinery that ultimately set up revolt against the Crown in Boston.

"Now, Master...?" said Adams inquiringly.

"Justin--Charles Justin," he said. "I must ask you to accept some of my story on its face--otherwise I fear you will find it incredible. However, I think I may be of use to you."

"I'll be glad to hear ye out--if ye take not too long," said Adams, indicating the papers on his desk.

Justin decided to plunge directly into his proposition. He said, "To what use would you be able to put a man who could foretell the future in your behalf?"

Adams' face became hard as flint. He said, "I know not who ye be or whence ye come--but I ha' not the time to sit and listen to such childish prattle."

"Please, Mr. Adams--I shan't take long," Justin put in desperately. "I'm a Bostonian like yourself but I come from a different time--from two centuries in the future to be exact."

Something in the sincerity of his plea won Justin a reprieve. "Very well, Master--Justin--if that be ye'r name. Ye'r accent is odd enough to account for such a story--not that I credit ye with truth for a moment. Since ye know so much of what ye term _ye'r_ past, mayhap ye can tell me something of mine own."

Justin said, "You and your father made the first open attacks on the Crown, following the return of Louisburg to France in seventeen forty-six after its capture by Massachusetts men. You have run through a fine inheritance and are incapable of conducting any sort of business because your interest lies in politics. You graduated several notches higher in your class in Harvard than your young cousin John of Braintree.

"At the moment you are seeking some means of renewing the fight against the Crown. You are in the process of organizing the North and South End mobs of Boston to that purpose, uniting them into a controllable body that will obey your commands. Will Molineux, in the next room, is one of your chief aides...."

"Thus far ye have told me nothing that is not common knowledge." But Adams frowned slightly as he spoke.

"Is it generally known how well you have organized the mobs, Mr. Adams?" said Justin. "Is it generally known that you are counting, perhaps at this very moment, upon the enforcement of Writs of Assistance to re-rouse the opposition to the Crown that has lain dormant so long?

"Is it generally known that your opposition to the mother country is based upon a snubbing you received from a British officer in an ale-house fifteen years ago?"

"Enough, young man," said Adams. "Ye are either what ye say ye are--in which case ye'r a wizard--or ye'r a spy sent here by my enemies to muddle me with poor advice. Ye know too much about me and I know too little about ye. Now get out!"

There was no mistaking the anger in those genial brown eyes as Adams rose to his feet. All at once Justin realised he was going to call Molineux, have him chased out of town, perhaps beaten. After all, there was no police force in the Boston of 1761.

Moving quickly he picked up a heavy paperweight, evidently once an Indian axe-head, that lay atop a stack of foolscap on the desk, and struck Adams on the head with it before he could call for help. The oft-called Father of the Revolution fell forward across his desk. Justin bolted.

Molineux, who had been facing a front window in the other room turned and made a menacing move. "In there!" cried Justin. "Mr. Adams has fainted. I'll get help."

Feeling like an errant coward, Justin fled.