SIMON
"A skirmish, Simon. Lexington was a skirmish."
I shake my head at Penny, pulling her down the marketplace cobblestone street. The Salisburys sent us off in search of wheat flour, and to restock on tea. Locally produced tea, Boston tea. We have already purchased some with the rattling coins they sent us off with. We've yet to get cheese, but the change is ours, and I can smell the meat pie street stall a couple stalls down from here.
"We'll take one, ma'am," I tell Ebeneza, the woman at the goat cheese stall Penny won't stop inspecting. We love her cheese, and we've nearly run out, so now is as good a time as any to get more.
She sniffs and wipes at her eyes– she's always a little sad– but she pushes back her blonde hair and gives me a watery smile and a wheel of cheese for the coins I hand her. She takes them in her big hands and drops them into her apron with a loud clinking. It bulges more in the pockets than it does at her chest– she's had a very good day for business, although to be fair, her apron lies almost flat in the front.
She gives it to us for cheap because she's good friends with Mrs. Salisbury, but even so, we won't have any change left after the meat pie for me to add to my savings.
"Now, Concord, that was a proper fight," I say, as we return to our path towards the meat pie stall.
Penny shifts the sachets of tea to her other arm so she doesn't drop them. Good thing, too, because a coach clatters loudly down the street, not slowing even as it parades through the market, and I knock her in my haste to get out of it's way.
It's a right fine coach; the horses' shoes sound new and their powerful flanks shine, the coach itself is painted down a sleek black. The man in the back is dressed like he's from a noble family– his clothes are pressed and clean, black coat over a ruffled white shirt. I'm fixated on his jet black hair and his impossibly dark eyes– or maybe it's just the coach's shadow. There's something about his face–
"Simon, are you listening to me?" Penny turns once she realizes I'm no longer with her– I stopped walking to stare. I flush, well aware I must look a pudding-headed fellow, standing stock still in a busy market street, staring at a gentleman's coach like it's the first time I've seen one.
"Pardon, Miss Penelope," I say, which earns me a light slap on the shoulder. I resume my quest for meat pies, and she follows, repeating what she'd said while I stared at the pretty fellow in the carriage.
"I trust you heard how it ended."
I only heard more Redcoats would be flooding Boston's streets soon, and that Concord sounds like a riot in both senses of the word. I wish I'd seen it– and maybe done a bit more than just see. Mr. Salisbury, for one, would like me to have fought.
Just yesterday Mr. Salisbury pulled me aside. "How are the men? Have you been practicing with your shot?"
I told him I had, and that General Thomas thought the men were doing alright, all things considered, though of course we weren't exactly ready and set.
He had brightened at the mention of my speaking to the general. "Did you tell him I sent you?" I've been going for months, but Mr. Salisbury likes me to say I've been sent by him every time. I think he'd like to be friends with Thomas– as a General, John Thomas is a powerful man.
"If only you'd been at Lexington," Mr. Salisbury had said wistfully. Eight people had died at Lexington. "You're made to be a fighter."
He looked like he wanted to say more, but just then Mrs. Salisbury came in, carrying new fabrics, and he'd quickly busied himself elsewhere– we know better than to bring up the idea of me fighting around her.
Penny glances at me, but I haven't got anything to say, so she continues, "Redcoats were saved by some Earl Percy, Lieutenant-General."
I scowl, but at that moment the man from the market stall hands me the meat pie, and I make sure to smile. He likes me because I always buy from him, and I don't want him thinking I'm mad at him– I like him too. He quietly refuses to sell to Loyalists, and he seems to look forward to me buying his pies as much as I look forward to buying them.
"Well, we still won," I reason, "And that means something. We made a point! I wish I was there."
"I know you do." Penny sighs and tugs me down the street so I don't get in the way of throngs of people buying their goods as I eat my pie.
We're going down the street back the way we came, towards home, where the Salisburys are. It's stupid to think about, but this is the way the fancy coach went and if it stopped, we'd run into it.
"I can't believe they're sending in more troops." I'm not sure what they hope will happen; it isn't as if we'll go back to loving Britain. Are they going to saddle themselves with a colony on the edge of revolution indefinitely? Do they think we'll settle down and comply if they use enough force?
As far as I'm concerned, the Patriots' cause is only dead when no one else will fight for it, and I know people will fight for it. People are fighting for it right now. Penny says she's surprised shots were fired and this has become an actual military conflict, but I say it's been brewing for years. It's about time.
"I know you are," Penny says again. "And I think that's a bit blind of you. They're going to try to quell the rebellion, and Boston's the center of the revolutionary leadership. They'll need as many troops here as they can get."
I hear they're making a lot of arrests. Those who aren't hung end up in jail, and the jails are so dirty and cramped, they die quickly anyway– they seem to think that the threat will put people off. No it won't. If anything, it's making people more mad– even some Loyalists get more neutral after seeing someone get hung or hauled off to jail.
I look at her. The darkness of her skin is emphasised by the bright daylight. I don't think spring is a good term for this weather; late April may as well be late winter, if you ask the sun. There's something about the cold that makes daylight seem stronger.
"They're not going to win," I insist, "They're just putting off the inevitable."
"They're not just going to give up, Simon," Penny laughs, and I smile too. It's kind of a pointless conversation. I know they're not going to just give up– that's not how war or countries work.
"I know." I try to imagine Britain throwing its hands up in surrender as if to say, you're just too much trouble. I laugh. "I wish they would."
Penny hums in her throat. I can hear it a little over the rushing sounds of people talking, since the street the Salisburys live on is much quieter than the market place. Mostly I just know she's humming because of the face she's making, the sceptical one I like a lot less than the fond one.
"Do you?" Her eyes bug out. "Simon, watch your step!" I narrowly avoid trodding in a pile of horse shit.
"I do!" I say when I've safely avoided the droppings, "I want to win!" I do. I can see the final battle: the Redcoats dropping their weapons, a commanding officer frantically waving a white handkerchief. Mr Salisbury's proud smile, General Thomas's slap on the back.
We reach the Salisburys' doorstep, and Penny looks at me. "I think you want you to win," she says, not unkindly.
Yeah. I guess I do.
BAZ
Is it strange that I can't get that street boy out of my head?
Father's servants welcome me in, scurrying to take care of the horses once they've released them from their tethers to the coach.
He wasn't anything special– an errand boy, perhaps. A very fit errand boy with tousled curls who can carry a large bag of flour like he doesn't even realize he's still holding it.
He stared as if he'd never seen a coach before, although surely he has. An unpleasant twist in my stomach tells me he might have been studying the shade of my skin, which is unlikely, but I can't think what else he might have been staring at me for. Though I'm so light I pass through society with only a couple of whispers, I'm no fool. I know I'm not as fair as the boy in the street, and even he had a rich skin tone of someone who spends many an hour in the sun.
He was heart-stoppingly pretty– a riot of bright curls, shining eyes. The short sleeves of a working boy that should be off-putting but instead only draw attention to his arms.
I sigh, thanking those who come to take my travelling coat and bring me water on a tray as I retire to my room and lie down in my neatly made bed. My father will want to speak to me soon– that's why I'm here, after all.
He wants me to do something, I'm sure. He's never cared to speak much to me unless he wants something of me. I doubt he plans to start now, now that he's gotten even more prestige after that rescue operation– "intervention," he likes to call it– he pulled.
Sure enough, when supper hour arrives, he's seated at the head of the table as servants– and a slave or two– serve up a multi-course feast. If I were a hero, I'd free the slaves. Tell them to run. Since I'm nothing close to a hero, I make sure they're not hurt, bring them extra food and water and blankets on the colder nights. Before we came to the American Colonies, Dev would call me soft-hearted, joking about what my father would say if he found out. He didn't find out, and he still hasn't.
Aunt Fiona is somewhere here in the colonies, or so I hear. I used to think I'd like to be like her– she ditched the family completely and they say she got a huge estate somewhere in the colonies and never wrote back. I wonder if I'll run into her. I doubt it. What's she doing, now that the colonies are in greater uproar than ever? Is she a Loyalist? I'm not sure– she always loved the money and extravagance that our Crown-given class provided for us, but she also never missed a chance to be a rebel.
If we were back in England, Dev would be here, Niall too. Instead the long wooden table stretches out between my father and me, chunky wooden chairs on either side of us empty and the dishes never-the-less full enough for five. My elder brothers already live on their own, my eldest sister was married off, and my younger siblings are back on the estate in England. It's just us two.
"Father," I say and he hushes me so we can say grace. I'm not so sure on the existence of God, seeing as the fit boy still won't leave my head, but I'm wise enough to bow my head and keep my mouth shut. "Father," I say again when that's over, "What do you want me here for?"
I arrived only two nights ago, and have stayed in two rather inhospitable inns on my way here– Boston isn't exactly fond of Loyalists, let alone nobility– and I'm eager to find out the purpose behind such suffering. For all the British quartering here, Boston remains painfully rebellious.
"Tyrannus, I trust you've heard of the events of the Concord battles?" Even now, he looks even more self-satisfied than I imagined him to be when I read his letters. At my nod, he gives another little self-satisfied smirk and waves for more water. "I would like to position you in a household."
I blink. "I'm not staying here, then? Are you sending me off to Aunt Fiona's?"
"I'm not in correspondence with your aunt," Father says confidently, but to some spot above my head. "I want you in a rebel's household."
Excuse me? "What, like a spy? I'm not one of your troops to order around." Did he bring me all the way from England to stick me in someone else's house? I already miss the England estate.
"Soldiers are dumb," my father tells me. The statement is very objective. "They make very bad spies, and I believe we've managed to put a finger on a young man who has a remarkable amount of trust from the rebellious leaders." His voice goes bitter in his last two words, "He's the commonest you can get, a working boy for a family called the Salisburys, who seem to run a bit of a crowded household."
This coming from a man with nine children, a few of who are the children of slaves. My mother was a slave. After he forced her to stay until she had me, she set the estate ablaze and ran with me in her arms, or so the slaves still working there have told me. She made it nearly to the road.
He hands me a stack of papers, thin, with information about this man. A typewritten segment: Simon. Boston, other pieces of official information (or in this case: non-information. Date of birth: unknown, parentage: unknown, last name: unknown). Below it, a handwritten description– not my father's, so probably whoever tipped him off for this information in the first place. That part reads out physical descriptions, speculation on who he corresponds with, how and when.
"If you have this much information on him, why not hang him right now?"
This is a sore spot for my father; he frowns. "Of course we could, knowing what we do, but he's more useful alive than dead if you can manage to get any information from him. We'll hang him when we've gotten all the information from his station we can, so don't get too attached. You've always been fond of poor folk."
My stomach twists. The papers say his birthday is unknown, but he's seventeen. Seventeen.
Father's mouth twists. "And when we're satisfied with the information you've given us, you can go right back home." He knows me too well. He can read it in my eyes, how much I dislike this wild, loud city full of political rabble and not a moment of peace in sight.
I wonder if the cold laughter in his eyes is just a trick of the evening light, and whether this is his way of tormenting me. I've always wanted to live apart from him, but never under the condition of working for him. Once or twice, when I was younger, I even daydreamed about running away to live with Fiona, but now that I'm here, I'm glad I never tried.
"What do you want me to look for?"
He waves his hand dismissively. "Mail, any rebellious correspondence, anything you hear, and any indications of location. It has come to our notice–" his chest puffs out at 'our' "–that the weapons we found in Concord were not all of their original ammunition collection. We can expect plans from the rebels to dismantle our hold of Boston, as we can already see they are attempting through besieging the town. I am under the impression that this is the sort of information that passes through this young man's hands. I've got a man in the Boston recruits, and he tells me the generals are inexplicably fond of him."
"You can't ask your man in the Boston recruits?" I want to go back to England. I already miss the rolling green fields, the quiet, expansive estate, the rose garden where I would sit and read my books. Who'll teach me violin if Miss Daphne is across the ocean?
"They don't tell most of their men much," Father says, not looking at me, and I wait. He scowls. "And he was found out and hanged last week."
Ah. Is this a play for him to get rid of his least favourite son?
I rub my eyes with the backs of my palms, the third course is brought in, the slave stumbles and barely rights herself and my father scowls again.
Suddenly I want to get out of this house, whatever it takes. I'll give him whatever he wants; all I want is to go back. To get away from him, across the sea where he can't loom over me anymore.
I open my mouth and Father's mouth turns up. "When do I start?"
"You start tomorrow. I expect you to keep in touch. A letter a week will suffice, but if you find anything it will be reported immediately, and I will have you come speak to me in person anytime I wish to hear your progress from your own mouth." To make sure you're not lying to me is unspoken, but there nonetheless.
I fight to keep my face neutral. Tomorrow might as well be right now.
"And Basilton?" He calls me Basilton to wound me; it was my mother's name for me. "I'm sure you've noticed the little soldier is your age. Try not to get too attracted."
I shove away from the table and leave for my room, those words burning in my ears.