The Messenger (31 page)

“I would have kept her, but it wasn’t my decision to make.”

“What I can’t understand is why you’re so set on obeying a man you seem to disagree with as a matter of course.”

“What does it matter if I—! Thee just don’t—”

“Don’t even think of telling me that I don’t understand.”

“Thee don’t. I am not my father!”

“And I am not—” The man I wished I was.

The slave woman waded into the middle of our discussion and stood there, hands at her hips. “If you don’t stop all this caterfussing, I’m going to take you both by the ear! Now. You be nice.” She admonished Hannah with a shake of her finger. Then she turned to me. “And
you
: You be good! I going to be standing right out there. In that hall.”

Hannah gasped and started toward her. “But thee can’t—don’t go! Thee are supposed to stay with me.”

“Sometimes people gots to say things to each other that ain’t for nobody else to hear.” She speared me with a look as she said it. “So you just get on with the getting on with it so we can get on with the doing of something else. I got work to do. And you . . .” She turned and leveled a look at Hannah. “You got places to visit.”

We stared at each other, across the expanse of my room, as the slave marched out the door. And then I started to work on closing the distance between us. “For a Quaker, you sure have a lot to say.”

“It’s because thee have a lot to learn, Jeremiah!” She didn’t back away, but she didn’t move toward me either.

“I thought you people were supposed to be kindhearted and gentle-minded.”

“And I thought thee were supposed to be—”

I took one more step closer.

“I thought . . .”

“Yes?”

“I thought thee were the enemy.”

“I’m a friend. The only one you have.”

“But there’s no . . . there’s no peace when I’m with thee. Thee bring turmoil like a cloud brings rain. And I can’t think. I can’t hear. I can’t—”

“Hannah.”

“Yes?” It sounded like a sob.

“Hush. Be still.”

“I—can’t!” It
was
a sob. A sob of pure frustration. And she passed it on to me as she grabbed hold of my coat with one hand and wrapped her other arm about my waist.

I kissed her temple. Inhaled her heady scent of lavender and lemon balm. “You’ve the heart of a patriot inside you. You know there’s great injustice here. And isn’t your God the God of justice and mercy?”

“It feels—”

“It feels like rage. It feels like anger.”

“It feels
wrong
.”

I pressed her head against my good shoulder. Mostly so I wouldn’t be tempted to shake her. “It’s everyone else in that blasted Meeting of yours that’s wrong. You’re the one who’s right!”

“But how do thee know? How can thee be sure?” She pushed away from me just enough to be able to look at me.

“Because I know you.” I took up her hand. If she would only believe the truth of what I had just told her.

She didn’t want to believe me. I could see it. And I also witnessed the moment when she changed her mind. “There’s only the two of us then against the entire British army.”

“In my mind, that’s just enough.”

She smiled. A small smile that quivered as it curved across her face. It made me want to kiss her.

Kisses.

Why was it that my body remembered so many things that I longed to forget? Fingers that dug furrows through my hair. The scorch of stolen kisses. Sighs that had risen, unbidden, at my touch. There were some things a man could never forget. And it was useless to try. It just gave the memories life. So I tried to talk myself out of the scent of lavender and the feel of Hannah in particular.

She was not meant for me.

She was probably already promised to some broad-brimmed, peace-minded Friend. Someone who never raised his voice and would never think to shake sense into anyone. Someone who would probably never know just what a treasure he had married.

Which was all the better for me.

I didn’t need a woman telling me what to do. Or how to act. Or what to believe about God. I didn’t need a woman looking me straight in the eyes or poking at my arm or telling me I was wrong about nearly everything I’d ever thought was true. I didn’t need a woman. And I definitely didn’t want one touching me.

The only problem was, I didn’t believe myself.

I knew I was lying.

Hannah

I sat in Polly’s room on seventh day, drenching myself in the bright sunlight, feeling as if the world might one day right itself. And then Polly came clattering through the door, trailing exuberance behind her.

“It’s arrived!”

“I’m not quite certain I—”

“My costume—for the Meschianza! You really must see it.” She turned toward Jenny, her constant shadow, gesturing for help with removing her gown. “It’s a polonaise with sashes and bows and fringe and spangles!”

Jenny placed the costume on the bed with great care and then helped Polly from her gown. As soon as she was freed, my cousin tore the string from the package and ripped open the paper.

“Help me put it on!” She nearly flung it into the enslaved woman’s hands in her haste.

I rose and helped Jenny sort out how it was meant to be worn. We each took one side and helped Polly into it. She danced across the room and then stood looking at herself in the wall glass, twisting and turning, trying to see all parts of herself at once. “What do you think of it?”

“I can’t quite say . . .”

“I know—I don’t have the words either!”

It wasn’t that I didn’t have the words; I just didn’t want to say them. The costume was so spectacularly extravagant that it was almost indecent. At its most basic layer, it was made of white satin. But there were sashes tied up at the waist, which hung quite low and dripped with tassels, and there was fringe . . . and everything else she had promised. And the whole was topped with an incredible gauze turban of the worst taste, decorated with even more tassels and feathers and a veil which could not even begin to hope to hide it all.

That afternoon I visited the jail as was my custom, but there was a woman sitting on the guard’s lap when I arrived. She seemed in no hurry to leave it.

The guard didn’t even have the grace to be shamed. “This is my . . .”

“Cousin.” She looked at me with a brazen stare.

I set a wedge of cheese on the table. He grabbed at it and took a bite. And then he passed it to his . . . cousin . . . rather reluctantly.

“The cell?”

“Hmph?”

“I would like to be shown to the cell.”

He rose, spilling the woman from his lap. But instead of walking to the door the way he usually did, he pushed her toward me. “Why don’t you search her?”

She eyed me and then looked at him. “You want me to do what?”

“Search her. You know. For forbidden things.” He was looking at me, a smile playing at his lips. “Maybe she’s a spy.”

The woman looked just as aghast at the idea as I was. She turned around to face him. “You didn’t pay me for that!”

“It’s something we’re ordered to do. Everyone visiting the prisoners is to be searched. Although, now that I think on it, I’ve just remembered that no one is supposed to be visiting the jail.”

I tried to smile and I tried not to think about the bag of grain and the other things that I was hiding beneath my skirts. “After all this time? Surely if I were going to smuggle something in, I would have done it by now.”

“Everyone is to be searched.”

I couldn’t very well argue that I wouldn’t be visiting much longer. There was nothing to do but comply . . . and pray. I held out my basket.

The woman lifted the cloth. Pushed her hand into it and felt around. When she pulled it out, her fist was closed around a roll. She smiled and then bit into it. “I searched. She isn’t taking anything in.”

“I meant a search of her person.”

“Here?” She plopped down onto his lap and wound an arm about his neck. He succumbed to her kisses for a moment. But then his eyes popped open and he saw me watching them. He pushed the woman from his lap again. “A real search.”

She frowned, put a hand to his chest, and pushed away from him. Then after casting a look back at him, she walked over to me. “Take off the cloak, then.”

I set the basket on the ground, pulled at the ribbons which bound the cloak at my throat, and offered it to her. She pointed to my pocket, so I offered it to her as well. As she felt about inside of it, I blessed Doll for her foresight in making me a secret pouch. Throwing my pocket back at me, the woman gave me a scornful glance from head to toe. “She’s one of them Quakers. Doesn’t even wear a hoop. She can’t hide anything under those skirts. There’s no room.” She gestured toward my hat, holding a hand out for it.

I pulled the pin from it and then removed it and placed it into her hands.

She turned it over and poked around inside, feeling beneath the brim. “Nothing there neither.”

“Try her shoes.”

I bent to pull them from my feet, hoping the outline of the blade of a hoe wouldn’t show through the folds of my gown. I handed them to her, waiting as the cold of the bare earth pressed through my stockings, into the soles of my feet.

She ran a hand around inside them. She turned them over, pulling at my plain silver buckles. “Nothing there.” She tugged at the buckles once more.

I held out a hand. “May I . . . ?”

She gave the shoes back to me.

The guard was looking at me, confusion crimping his brow. “There has to be something.”

There was of course something. There were several things. There was a note beneath the folds of my polonaise and some char cloths tucked underneath my garter. There was a bag of grain. I’d pulled a pair of breeches on beneath my hose and another pair was wrapped around my waist. There was also a hoe dangling beneath the skirts she had declared too modest to hide anything at all.

“There’s nothing.” The woman had given up the search and flounced back to the guard’s lap. He frowned as he caught her about the waist, but he gestured toward the door.

I knocked upon it and sent up a swift prayer of thanks as it opened.

Once I gained admittance to the cell, my heart quailed within me. More than half the men were lying prostrate on the floor.

“Another bout of the putrid fever.” William Addison said it with no little regret coloring his voice.

Again! And with so little time left. “The tunnel . . . ?”

He shrugged. “We’re trying. If only we could put it off another day or two.”

“Thee can’t. If thee cannot get out that night, then thee must not go at all. General Washington’s men would not know to expect thee at the lines.”

“We’re trying.” He was looking around at his stricken men.

I reached out and gripped his hand. “Thee must succeed. There will be no other chance.” I unfastened my cloak and handed it to him. He used it to shield me from sight as I divested myself of all I had smuggled in. I handed the message to him.

He read it and then held it out to me. “Do you know what it says?”

“I do not.”

“Read it.”

Once escaped, proceed directly to lines. No sick or lame.

“He would have me leave my men here?” He’d taken a step closer as he whispered.

“If thee take them, then thee are sure to be caught. And it will go worse for thee than if thee had stayed.”

“But if I don’t take them, then it will go worse for them than if they had been caught. And most of those men have been working on the tunnel.”

He had forgotten to whom he was speaking. He was talking to me, who had taken their cause as my own and sacrificed my brother to them. I understood the cruel irony and the tragedy of General Washington’s orders, but was it worth the lives of a handful of men to keep several dozen others from escaping? “General Washington has planned a disruption after midnight. He will keep the British busy as long as he can, but thee must make haste to cross the lines. Once the disruption is silenced, it may well be too late to make it through.”

“If we make it out of the city, then what are we to do in between our lines and theirs?”

I shrugged uncertainly. “Every measure has been taken in order to help thee, but it will up to thee to succeed.”

“You want me to send my men through that tunnel not knowing what awaits us on the other side?”

“Thee would rather take thy chances and stay here?”

We could hear the guard begin his walk toward us, keys clanking against his thigh.

William Addison looked once more at his men. Cringed as one sat up and hacked into the straw. Closed his eyes and sighed. “No. I’d rather die as one free.”

When I was shown back into the guard’s room, it was to find the woman gone and the man staring at me, an avaricious gleam in his eye.

“I thought we had an arrangement.”

He shrugged. “We did. We do. But why can’t I look for a safer means of investment?”

“Thee took the money. I expected thee to be honest in the doing of it.”

“That’s the thing about dealing with a cheat, miss. We aren’t known for our honesty.”

“It’s a shameful trick thee tried to play.”

He looked abashed, but only for a moment. “Can’t blame a man for trying.”

I threaded my arm through Doll’s as we walked away from the jail. I wanted to be able to talk to her without anyone overhearing. “They’re going to escape soon. On the night of the eighteenth.”

“During that big party everyone talking about?”

I nodded. “After midnight the patriots are going to create a disturbance to give the prisoners a chance to get through the city. Thee should join them. If thee can make it to the lines, thee can be free.”