The Tory Widow Read Online Free Page A

gestured to the sailors and they prodded the stoic captive to stand in front of the crate no more than ten yards from where Anne and the prostitute stood.
    The whore nudged Anne with a sharp elbow. “Best seat in the house, eh?”
    The captain resumed. “John Hill, will you redeem yourself by damning the despot George and swearing your loyalty and your life to the cause of liberty?”
    The crowd grew hush. Hill spoke, “As God is my judge and God is my witness, I can swear to this: I will never draw my sword against my country, but neither will I raise my hand or my word against our Sovereign, King George.”
    The groans and snorts of disdain were audible. Anne knew full well this kind of prevarication would not hold sway with the mob assembled on the Commons that evening.
    â€œTory rot!”
    â€œTraitor!”
    Wild hissing and jeering turned to laughter when a flung turnip hit John Hill square on the side of his head.
    â€œAs a slave to the king who would make us all slaves,” Sears charged, “this man is an insidious enemy to the liberties of us all.”
    Hill did not offer any resistance as he was stripped of jacket and weskit. A sailor grabbed hold of each arm and he was forced to his knees.
    A knot formed in Anne’s throat. Her base instincts called on her to leave—to cut across the Commons and run full speed back to her shop—but her better sense forced her to stay put. It would not do to draw the attention of the Liberty Boys and risk being labeled a Tory herself.
    A bucket was swung up to the captain. The crowd sang out with encouragement. Pistols fired into the air and a boy pounded on an upended barrel with a pair of sticks. To this rude music the bucket tipped and hot pitch poured in a thick stream onto the poor man’s head. Luckily for Hill, the tar had cooled some. Flowing slow, like clover honey, it oozed over his face, down to his back and shoulders. The man shuddered and hunched in pain, for pitch hot enough to pour was hot enough to burn and blister. Anne supposed Hill should be grateful, for he had not been stripped of his shirt. As tar and featherings went, his proved to be a more benign sort.
    â€œNow to enliven your appearance . . .” Sears tore open one of the poulterer’s sacks and shook feathers over the poor man. Some feathers stuck to the tar—adding the ridiculous to Hill’s pitiful humiliation—but most of the feathers caught up on the strong breeze to form a blizzard of fluff flying in faces, up noses and into the mouths of the Liberty Boys and onlookers alike. Rather than cheer and applaud as they should, the crowd sputtered and slapped at feathers clinging to wool jackets and felt hats.
    â€œMove him along now.” Sears gave Hill a nudge with his booted foot. The crowd parted. With cudgels, two sailors herded the pathetic, staggering figure to parade down Broad Way.
    Anne thought to join this procession as a means to escape the crowd, but she hesitated to mix in with the rough cabal trailing along behind the tarred and befeathered victim, instead deciding to weather the mob and make a discreet exit when the crowd winnowed away on its own.
    Anne looked over to where Jack Hampton stood, his arms folded and his expression a dark cloud of impatience as Captain Sears waited for the tumultuous multitude to reform and shuffle close in anticipation of the second tarring. Taking advantage of the lull, a pie man, as wide as he was tall, skirted along the front edge doing a brisk business.
    At last, the second man was brought to the fore. Writhing and spitting, his voice grated the ear like an iron nail drawn across a quarrel of glass. “Fuckin’ sods! Whoresons! Bugger yiz all! Bugger yiz all !”
    The young whore leaned in. “Now there’s a pinheaded, pinched-faced Tory sniveler if ever I saw one.”
    And that was an apt description. Tall and exceedingly thin with drooping shoulders and a sunken