The Whiskey Rebels (58 page)

I resisted the urge to pull my hand away from his. I could not afford to offend him, to make him feel ashamed. I must be honest also and say that his attentions were not without their appeal. Skye was older than I was, but charming and learned and attentive. He never bristled at my leadership. Andrew, for all that I loved him, had regarded me with a mixture of admiration and tolerance. He humored me as much as he admired me. Skye, though it pained me to admit it, understood me in many ways better than my husband ever could have.

Yet I could not imagine giving my heart over to another man. Something had been taken from me when Andrew was murdered, and I did not want my armor pierced. And there was more. I did not know what would come, but I knew I must be unfettered. Those around me had broken all the rules of human decency to bring me low, and I would not be bound by any rules in striking back at them. I would not be deterred, not by loyalty nor affection nor love, from doing what must be done. Most of all, I did not want him because I did not love him the way he loved me, or believed he did. I wanted his friendship and loyalty and affection, but I wanted nothing more.

“You know it cannot be,” I said to him. “You are in my heart, and I am in yours, but that is as far as we may go. There is too much, far too much, that lies before us.”

He removed his hand and said, after a moment of attempting to master himself, “Will revenge bring us happiness?”

I let out a bark of a laugh. “It is too late for happiness. Revenge shan’t bring it. If I am to speak honestly, I do not think it will even bring satisfaction. How can it? Revenge is the emptiest of enterprises, do you not think so? Days and weeks, perhaps years, to plan and execute, and then, once it is over, what have you? It is put together as meticulously as the artist crafts his work, but there is no painting or sculpture or poem to stand as testament to the labor. There is only the sensation, and that sensation must always be hollow.”

“Then why do you do it?” he asked. “Is it only for the money you hope to earn?”

“I should like the money,” I said, “but it cannot motivate me. I do it for the same reason you do—because it is my duty. Having conceived of it, having understood it could be done and that it ought to be done,
not
doing it would destroy me.”

“Doing it may destroy us as well.”

“Yes, it may. But that sort of destruction I can accept.”

I parted the dusty curtain of the coach and saw him emerging from his little house. A few minutes sooner might have avoided the conversation with Skye, but I suppose it was well to have it done with. I had turned Skye away but not hurt him. That should keep him content for a little while.

Out the window I saw the man approach the equipage with a cold determination, a man in perfect control though full of perhaps violent emotions. His stride was easy enough, however, as though I were there to take him to an appointment he anticipated with pleasure, or at least contentment. He opened the door and folded his large body into the coach. He nodded to me and Skye, and then took a seat across from us. He was a handsome man with good teeth, perfect and easy in his manners. In a new nation of rough men and rugged manners, it seemed ironic that in him I should find so complete a gentleman.

He looked at Skye. “Yet another associate.”

“He is with me,” I said, “but I’ll refrain from introducing him. I prefer to avoid names where I can.”

“I’m sure that is sound.” He waited a moment, then said, “I suppose it was inevitable you would come for me.”

“We do pay you, and quite well,” I said.

“And I do not complain, though I harbored the hope that I might continue to be paid well in exchange for doing nothing.”

“I must say I hoped the same,” I said, “but things are changing.”

He took a deep breath. “What is it you ask of me?”

“I want regular reports,” I said. “I want them sent every day. I want to know what Saunders is up to, what he plans, what he knows, and what he believes he knows.”

He took in a deep breath. “I don’t much like it.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

“Suppose I simply choose to defy you?” he said.

Mr. Skye leaned forward. “That would not be the wisest course.”

I shook my head at the man, vaguely coquettish, vaguely maternal. “It is too late for that, don’t you think? You are a man who believes in the value of keeping his word. Is that not why you are here? Captain Saunders did not keep his word to you. He promised to emancipate you, and yet he has not. He does not deserve your loyalty.”

“No,” said the slave called Leonidas, “he does not deserve it. And yet it is surprisingly hard to let it go.”

“You know who we are,” I said, “and you know what we have promised. Our enemies are his enemies, it is just that he does not know it, and if we deceive him, it is only to prompt him to do as he would choose himself, if he but knew all.”

He nodded. “I’ll do it, but if I think he will come to harm, I will not help you. If that is the case, I shall tell him everything, and then I shall be your enemy.”

“You are more loyal than he deserves, but I think you’ll find that we deserve it as well. When it is all over, you shall see. We will be reconciled.”

Leonidas nodded again. Without another word, he departed from the coach.

T
hrough the curtain I watched him return to the house, for I wished to be sure he did not try to follow us, and Skye watched me watch him. That is, I suppose, why we did not see the man approaching from the other side of the carriage. He opened the door and joined us, taking Leonidas’s seat almost before we knew he was there.

I knew the scent almost before I knew the face, and in an instant I thought how very ironic it was, for to itemize the odors, they were nearly the same as Skye’s—tobacco, whiskey, animal hides. But there was more too. This man stank of old sweat, of clothes infrequently changed, of urine and alley assignations. He carried about him the coppery smell of blood and an indescribable but instantly recognizable scent of menace.

Even in the dark I could make out the wide swath of scar that stretched across his face. “Well, if it ain’t Joan Maycott and John Skye,” Reynolds said. “I hope I ain’t interrupting anything too important or private. I hear talk about you, Skye.”

“How did you find us?” Skye asked. His voice rose in excitement and fear. He had not learned, as I had, to mask his emotions. Give no power, no authority, when it is yours to withhold.

“I’ve been following your lady friend here for some time, trying to figure out what she’s about. It ain’t been easy, and I’ll be honest with you, I still don’t know what you are up to. I couldn’t get close enough to the coach to hear much.”

“So you know of nothing against me,” I said. “Now, I suggest you get out of the coach before I inform Mr. Duer how you’ve treated me. He will not love to hear of this rudeness.”

“Duer?” Reynolds waved a hand in the air. “He’d be through with me if he knew, no doubt about it, but you won’t tell him. I don’t know what you’re about, but I know you don’t want him to know you’re having secret meetings with Saunders’s darky. Things ain’t what they seem, Joan. They ain’t at all. Now, I don’t care much. I admire a pretty and clever woman; my own wife is plenty pretty but not so clever. On the other hand, I don’t much admire Duer. Never have. But he pays me, so you see my difficulty. If only I had some—shall we call it incentive?—to keep me from mentioning what I seen.”

“What sort of incentive?” Skye asked.

“I think a hundred dollars ought to keep my curiosity buried.”

“For a hundred dollars, I’d want your curiosity buried forever.”

“Forever is one-fifty. Bit more. One hundred only gets you a temporary situation.”

I did not like it but had no choice. “Give me a few days to get the money, and I shall pay you the larger sum. I hope, however, you are as good as your word. We can deal with this amicably and financially so long as no one is exceptionally greedy, but if you think this a well you can return to again and again, I cannot answer for your prospects. As it is, I will need to conceal this arrangement from some of my allies, men who are not so willing to seek compromise as I. I conceal it, you understand, for your benefit.”

“I take your meaning,” he said, “and I will call upon you again soon. Good evening, madam; Skye.”

He departed the coach, and I ordered the driver to move on lest we get more visitors. Skye said, “He will not be content. Not for long. There is no forever for a man like Reynolds.”

“No,” I said. “Of course not.”

“Then why did you agree?”

“Because I hope one hundred fifty dollars will buy us at least a little more time. And when he asks for more, we will give him more. If he asks for two hundred or five hundred, we will give it to him, as long as it is likely he will remain quiet.”

“He has too much power over us,” Skye said.

“We have one advantage, however. He does not know we need only a little more time. We have to hope his greed and his belief in his own cleverness give us the time we need.”

I
t was a new year, and I believed that Duer, Hamilton, and the Bank of the United States had only a few more months left. They did not know it, but the ice beneath them was cracking, and all would soon fall into oblivion.

Duer increasingly found that he did not wish to be without my advice, so he rented for me a set of rooms at a boardinghouse in New York upon the Broad Way. When he was in New York, he wished me there too, though we did not travel together. I was not permitted to visit him at his home or to meet Lady Kitty. Cynics will believe that he and I must have crossed beyond the boundaries of propriety, but it was not the case. It might be that he desired me, perhaps he even believed he loved me—or loved the woman he thought me to be—but he did not seek to break his marriage vows. He did not even hint that he longed for such a thing. I provided him with something else, but even I was never certain what. Perhaps I did not wish to know.

Pearson was but one man among many, more than a dozen that I knew of, whom Duer deceived to ruin, though none of them knew it yet. Some of these men each believed himself to be Duer’s closest friend in the world. Each had no idea that within weeks he would be revealed to be worth nothing, his money sunk into Duer’s colossal dreams. Duer would talk around these things, never addressing them directly. I would listen, and I would assuage his guilt by telling him of his greatness and his ambition, how what Washington was on the battlefield, Duer was on the trading floor. Had Washington won liberty without sacrificing some of his beloved soldiers? Of course not. When men play at grand strategy, I told him, they can weep for the pawns they sacrifice, but they must sacrifice them still.

“Your vision of grandeur is too great for small men,” I told him one day. “In any glorious enterprise, in any historic rise to power, there must be men who suffer for the greater good. If you are to show this country, this world, your vision of what financial greatness can be, are you to stop because some lesser men might get hurt? Perhaps on the surface such a sacrifice might seem noble, but if you are truly willing to turn away from your destiny because it makes you a little uneasy, it is cowardly and selfish—and I know you are not those things.”

He nodded. “You are very wise.”

“And once you have achieved your final victory, you can be generous to those who were hurt because they were foolish enough to lie down where you needed to step.”

“It is true,” he said. “I can make amends later.”

I felt nothing but contempt for him as he planned to help later those he harmed now, but I could also not help but wonder if I was any better than he. After all, was I not willing to let Cynthia Pearson suffer now and help her at some future date?

In the meantime, Duer might have struggled with his feelings of guilt, but he also laughed at men like Pearson, men who were ruined and did not know it. Yet, Duer was ruined too, and he did not know it either. He owned more and more six percent issues, but he had borrowed far more than their value, and he continued to borrow. He borrowed from the banks, and when they would give him no more, he borrowed from the moneylenders. When they would give him no more, he turned to the poor and the desperate.

“It’s really quite marvelous,” he said. “I cannot gain control of the six percents or the banks without ready money, so where is it to come from? Why, now I borrow from little people—tradesmen and shopkeepers and cart men. A few dollars here and there for a promise of absurd interest payments. I shall never make good, but that is no matter. Once I have the banks, there will be no one to hold me to account. They may complain about their interest, but it is of no matter. And I am not a bad man, you know. I shall give them back what they lent me, but no more than that, I think.”

This was too much. It was one thing to cheat speculators, men who knew they must go into trade with their eyes open. If they were too foolish to see for themselves what Duer did, they had no one but themselves to blame. They must be devoured by the beast they hoped to ride. But now for him to turn his sights on the laboring poor, to squeeze their pennies out of them so he could keep his operations afloat? It was too much.