The Messenger (21 page)

“The other side of what?”

“Of the war.”

“You mean the rebel side?” She sounded quite shocked at the idea.

I nodded.

“Well . . . it must be dreadfully dreary. They can’t be having half the fun in Valley Forge as we are here in the city.”

“But do thee ever wonder if they’re right?”

“About what?”

“About their ideas. Their cause.”

“I’ve never given it one thought. Besides, when they were here, they closed the theaters and cancelled the horse races. Life would be ever so dull if they occupied us again.”

“So it doesn’t matter to thee who’s right or who’s wrong?”

“Why should it matter as long as things go on the way they always have? Regattas in the spring and fox hunts in the fall, with parties enough to last all year.” She looked up as a clock downstairs struck three. “Bother! Now we have to go back to church. There’s some special lecture that’s been arranged.” She rose from her chair, placed her hat on her head, and stuck a pin into it. After giving herself a long look in the wall glass, she sashayed out of the room.

I picked up my own embroidery and turned my chair toward the window’s light. Why should it matter who was right and who was wrong? Because it did. It mattered for a very many people.

Mother came up to me after Polly had gone. I’d known I would have to pay for my carelessly spoken words; I’d only hoped it wouldn’t be quite so soon.

“Thee feel everything so keenly, Hannah. Thee must pray to God for help in moderating thy words and thy sentiments.”

“I can’t see why no one takes up a collection for the prisoners.”

“Truly? In a city controlled by the British? Do thee think that very wise?”

I knew she was waiting for me to shake my head, but I would not do it.

“Thee know the Yearly Meeting addressed that very question. We are not to involve ourselves in the rebellion. Not in any way.”

“But they’re starving, Mother. They have . . . hardly anything!”

“And how do thee know this?” She was watching me through narrowed eyes.

I said nothing. Jeremiah Jones was right. Sooner or later my indiscretion was going to cost me more than I could afford to pay.

“Thee mustn’t believe everything everyone says. We’ve all got too much time on our hands with this occupation. And gossip often sounds like truth.” She bent to kiss me on the forehead. “If the prisoners aren’t being supplied, then it’s their own fault for rebelling against the king. But I’m certain things can’t be as dire as thee say.”

They weren’t. They were far worse.

Jeremiah

John was lounging at one of the tables near the fire, staring glumly into his bowl of brandy. I shared his mood. Business had been slow due to the number of troops being sent down the river for foraging.

“You look as if you’ve married your heiress already.”

When he looked up, not one sign of a smile creased his face. “I’ve no money left. I’m completely dead-flat broke.”

“Too many presents for Miss Pennington?”

“Presents for the players of pharo, more like! I’ve had a dastardly string of bad luck. Can’t seem to win at anything.”

Now that was an interesting piece of news. “There’s a pharo bank? Here?”

“Haven’t you heard? A Hessian runs one out of City Tavern. And then there’s a cockpit over in one of the alleys.”

Gambling? Cock fighting? “The simple solution would be to stop playing.”

“I can’t. Don’t think I wouldn’t like to. But at this point I have to find some way to make back all I’ve lost.”

“What is it you’re playing with, if you’ve lost all your money?”

“My commission.”

His commission! I’d heard of soldiers doing such things, but I’d always figured them for the desperate, frantic type. Not the gentlemanly, sophisticated and arrogant type. “And what will you do if someone finally wins it?”

“I suppose I shall have to go home and marry my Brunhilda. Become disgustingly domesticated and respectably corpulent. You’ll have to come some night. To pharo. Take pity on an old friend and let me win a pound or two off you.”

Pharo.

John’s invitation kept flitting through my thoughts. I’d always had more than my share of luck at the gaming tables. And the ability to know when to quit. I never let winning go to my head; never let losing rob me of good sense. Pharo could provide the very opportunity for revenge for which I’d been searching. The chance to play presented itself on Saturday, two evenings later. John had no invitation to supper that evening.

“What? You’ve had a falling-out with Miss Pennington?”

“They’ve fallen ill over there with the grippe.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I hoped Hannah hadn’t caught it. The grippe was a miserable sort of sickness. I’d known grown men who had succumbed to it. I’d have to send the stable boy over to see if he could find out who was ill.

“Pity, that. I meant to pass a message to Miss Sunderland about her brother.”

I felt my heart pause in its beating. “What about him?”

“Just that he, and all the others, will probably be transferred to ships soon.”

“
Prison
ships?”

“You don’t think we’d give them the pleasure of a yacht!” He chuckled at the thought.

Prison ships. A death sentence. It would be kinder to let him die of neglect in the jail. To let all of them die in the jail. I would have to tell them to dig as fast as they could. Faster even!

When we arrived at City Tavern, we had to elbow aside a few captains and lieutenants in order to make ourselves room at one of the tables. John purchased his checks on the strength of his commission. I purchased my own—far fewer than he—with coin. The game started pleasantly enough. By the time an hour had passed, we were both still at the game. I cocked my card, risking both my stake and my gains.

John only ventured his gains.

I won; he did not.

Eying the abacus that kept track of the cards played, I decided to bend my card a second time, hoping to double my gains without risking my stake.

John had only his stake to venture, and so he did.

We both won.

We won and lost at the game for another hour. By that time I had won several times in succession by risking both my stake and my gains. John had been playing more conservatively, betting his gains only. But caution prodded me with an urgency I couldn’t ignore and so I decided to bet only my gains.

John did the same.

We both lost. I looked at him and shrugged. He dabbed at the sweat that dotted his forehead. He looked scared. Terrified, in fact. I might have gone home, but a perversity inside made me wonder what he would do if I risked my stakes.

He risked half of his.

I won; he lost.

What would happen, I wondered, if I bet everything I had? Would he do the same?

He did.

The punters sitting around the table had gone silent. Only one of us could afford to lose.

John dabbed at a trickle of sweat that trailed down from his temple.

The banker exposed the cards.

John shouted in relief. I let the banker collect my checks and rose from the table, trembling at the thought of what I had almost done. I had almost forced John into losing his commission. Perhaps I should have. It would have been one sure way to keep him from Miss Pennington—sending him back to London.

But had I done it, I would have rid myself of my only ally at the general’s headquarters. With John by my side I would never be accused of being what I was. Who would suspect a spy in the company of a staff officer?

Daft, daft, daft!

I’d almost allowed vengeance to trump the escape.

I needed to pass the information about the prison ships, but the next day was a Sunday. The bookseller wouldn’t be open, and I couldn’t wait even a week for Sgt. Addison to receive the message. They needed to dig faster. If Hannah’s father refused to let his daughter speak to a man who was not a Friend, then I would do what I had to do.

After rising the next morning, I put on the plainest of my new suits and walked over to the Meeting House.

I lingered at the corner until I saw good number of people filing into the building. The men all seemed to go in one door, the women in another. I joined the men, trying to enter as unobtrusively as possible, though the light blue color of my coat advertised itself among the dark colors and subtle patterns of the rest of the men. Inside, the plain, unadorned white walls and humble benches did not cast any shadows in which to hide.

As I settled myself on a bench, many heads turned in my direction and then just as quickly turned away. I saw Hannah and nodded. Watched her flush bright red.

The service started with some discussion of the care of the poor, who had been ensconced in one of the other Meeting Houses in the city. It continued with the reading of a letter from some congregation up in New York. A man got up to confess to having owned a slave, whom he asked to come up and stand beside him. With much weeping he described in detail how he had gone about setting the man free. A few more people stood up to say one thing or another. Then someone confessed to having a concern about treating too freely with the British.

It seemed like a more polite, more refined version of what was said at King’s Arms Tavern every night of the week.

But then there descended a terrific silence. It was ominous in its abruptness. Terrible in its complexity. The first few minutes I did not understand what it was about. I kept waiting for someone to speak.

Only no one did.

I snuck a look about me. Many had their eyes closed, lips moving. But just as many had theirs open, fixed upon some point in the distance, though there was not much worthy of attention in that sparsely furnished place.

The man next to me fell asleep. I thought about elbowing him, but decided that if he made a cry upon waking, it would be too costly a gesture.

Twenty minutes, half an hour must have passed.

And then a person stood. She quoted some verse of Scripture I vaguely remembered from my youth about a lion lying down with a lamb. She sat.

The silence continued.

So . . . these people were waiting for someone to speak their mind? Is that what it was all about? I glanced around. No one else came to their feet. If no one else was going to speak . . . I looked round again, but no one appeared to want to take the floor. So I stood, figuring if a few more people spoke, then we could all go home.

I cleared my throat. “I think that if any of us had any sense at all, we would realize that this rebellion is doing nothing but ruining our city and destroying the lives of some of the best of our people.”

Hannah flashed me a look of horror, then directed her gaze to the front of the room.

I sat down, expecting that at any moment someone would give a benediction. But no one did. We all sat there for another hour. I had a crick in my neck by the time I shuffled out the door. I tried to time my exit with Hannah’s. When we finally met in the crowd that mixed in front of the building, I was hoping we were not much noticed.

She was looking at me as if she had been scandalized. “Thee cannot be interested in becoming a Friend!”

“I never said I was.”

“Thee make a mockery of us just by being here.” She stepped closer, eyes snapping. “Thee may not use my faith as one of thy weapons.”

“I’m not. Lower your voice. People are beginning to look. Smile.”

“Like this?” Her lips curved, though the anger in her eyes did not lessen. “As if thee were saying something nice?”

“I’m not saying anything mean. I’m just wondering if this is all your church is about. People speaking what’s on their mind.”

“No! ’Tis not about speaking
thy
mind. ’Tis about speaking God’s.”

“Well, whether it’s my mind or His, I felt the need to say something. Weren’t you tiring of being there?”

“We wait, in silence, to see if God has something to say to us. Sometimes we end up leaving in silence as well.”

I pulled her away from the crowd. “God isn’t speaking to you people; He’s yelling at you. Shouting at you. No wonder He falls silent at your meetings. You keep pretending that you can’t hear Him.”

“Thee cannot know the first thing about it, Jeremiah Jones!”

I ought to have said
Thank Goodness!
and walked away. But a man I’d never met came up just then and invited me to dinner. Along with Hannah and her family. I should have declined the invitation, but Hannah was looking at me with so much venom that I found myself accepting. And tipping my hat at him as he left.

“What are thee playing at?”

“Nothing. I’m simply trying to have the chance to talk to you without having to arrange it. Your requirement, not mine.”

“Then speak and be done with it.”

“Listen: We both want the same thing. And it’s in both our interests to pretend a certain regard for each other.”

“I don’t mind pretense in the parlor, but I will not abide it in my house of worship.”

“I wish I could be as steadfast in my convictions as you people are.” Why couldn’t she just be nice! I was trying to do her brother—and all the other prisoners—a favor.

“It comes from so many of us having been forced to endure shame, and beatings, and imprisonment.”

“Which is why it’s such important work we’re doing now. In any case, I beg your pardon for any offense I may have caused. But until we settle on another way to meet, you might just have to endure me as a convert.” I extended my hand.

She looked at it for a moment before doing me the honor of extending her own.