Infernal Revolutions (29 page)

‘I wouldn't do that,' I protested, almost crying with integrity, ‘No, not I.'

Sophie laughed with delight, and called me a
sweetie
with great tenderness. I ventured a kiss. I was rebuffed by a playful poke in the eye. Emboldened nevertheless by the
sweetie
still lingering in my ears, I tried again. I was not rebuffed this time, and I was granted a smacking kiss full on and just inside the lips. In the distance someone, perhaps Nancy, wolfwhistled saucily. Then a terrible screech, as of a cat having its guts ripped out, pulled us apart most painfully. Terror turned to resignation upon realization that ‘twas merely a fiddler tuning up on the green behind us. Moments later a tune of sorts appeared, accompanied by a surge of shouting and clapping. The dancing, it seemed, had begun, and my life, I could not help thinking presumptuously, had begun with it. It was a shame in many ways, therefore, that it would end when Sophie discovered my true identity. Putting such troubling thoughts aside for the time being, I crooked my arm for Sophie to take, and escorted her to the grassy dancefloor, a Bookseller and his Bobbing Moll, intrepid Pursuers of Happiness in the Land Of Liberty. Of the hackneyed Revolutionary triad, only Life seemed in short supply.

Jostling with sturdier, more accomplished dancers, we nevertheless soon elbowed out a space for ourselves, and partook fully of every hoedown, jig and hay on offer. By the time we paused for rest, the stars had come out, along with trestle tables full of pies, puddings, and fowls both boiled and roasted. Helping ourselves to the food, and washing it down with pewter tankards full of spruce beer, we were soon revived enough to re-enter the fray.

This time the fiddlers seemed to be playing even faster, so that our dancing soon resembled a Dionysian frenzy; indeed, the pace was so frenetic that at times only Sophie's desperately clutching fingers about my neck prevented her from flying off into the crowd.

‘Look at that Bookseller go!' called one cheering, stomping onlooker, who, after several revolutions of the circular kind, I recognized as Half-Cock Henderson, looking well the worse for drink. Around him stood other beaming, sweating, swaying members of the Hackensack Militia, and they proceeded to perform the courtly hand roll in my honour. I was most touched, and would have responded in kind, had Sophie's life not depended on my continued concentration on the dancing.

‘Know them, sweetie?' laughed Sophie in my ear, after I had brought her safely in to land.

‘Lads I met earlier in the tavern. Hackensack Militia boys.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Sophie, twisting her head round to view them. ‘Fools playing at being soldiers, for the most part.'

‘I quite like them.'

‘And the British will like them even more,' said Sophie, returning her attention to me and the dance in hand. ‘Can't see Saul Pipe and company putting up much resistance to their regimental dog, let alone a bayonet charge.'

Making a mental note of Sophie's backseat-driving tendencies, I suggested we take another rest and sup some more beer. Whilst we sought a seat, we encountered again the performing dogs, who walked past on their hind legs with their noses in the air, for all the world like a couple of disapproving dowagers. How Sophie and I laughed, and bonded more tightly! Then, as we drank under the branches of a tree prettily adorned with hanging lanterns, I whipped out one of my favourite poems in honour of Sophie's origins:

Sophie was delighted, and asked me how I knew the German tongue. I told her, and added that, exciting though it was, it was not as good as other tongues for the purposes of romance. This saucy gambit, once the penny had dropped, led surely onto a wondrous kissing session, much remarked upon by passers-by. Then we resumed our dancing, and continued until Sophie started to wheeze badly, and my knees began to buckle with the strain of repeatedly lifting her off the ground. Hobbling off, our going was a sad blow to all, and cast a pall over the mood of the revellers. Inevitably the entertainments of the night came to an end shortly afterwards in a flurry of fireworks and fists. The former were provided courtesy of the self-styled Pyrotechnicrats Of The Revolution (better known locally, so Sophie told me, as Ted Webster and Zachariah Roome, retired apothecary and candlestick-maker respectively); whilst the fists were exchanged between the Continental Army boys and the Hackensack Militia, and anyone else who cared to join in the simmering dispute over pay, conditions and fighting capabilities.

‘Is this how Musters always end?' I asked Sophie, as arm in arm we strolled away from the chaos.

‘No,' said Sophie calmly, resting her head on my shoulder and sighing contentedly, ‘usually I'm tucked up in bed by now, crying myself to sleep.'

‘Poor sweetie,' I soothed, kissing her awkwardly mid-bob.

‘But you can't regret unhappiness in the past if you are happy now, can you? Cause and effect, see; the sense of everything leading inevitably up to the present moment. One has to pay one's dues to fully appreciate times like these when they come along.'

‘Aye, ‘tis true enough,' I concurred, examining Sophie afresh out of the corner of my eye. Not only had I landed a Patriot, I had landed a philosopher as well it seemed, with all the ammunition for conversation that entailed. ‘Twas also proof, no doubt, that her life
had
been unhappy – philosophers like poets not generally coming from the ranks of the sane, let alone the cheerful. But would two negatives make a positive in our case?

‘I suppose now, Sir, you will wish to be on your way?'

‘I told you, I have no particular place to go, nor am I in any rush to get there.'

‘Really? What about the debts you have to collect?'

‘Debts will always be with us, Madam, but we, my dear, are here only once.'

Sophie shivered, and staggered a little on her stick.

‘Sir – I blush.'

I took her free hand and kissed it tenderly, a romantic dog.

‘So my guardians were right this afternoon,' said Sophie, ‘it is your intention to have your way with me.'

Now ‘twas my turn to blush. I had not expected such a direct response.

‘W-well,' I stammered, ‘well..'tis not what…'

‘Because if it is, you can!' Sophie interrupted, a little desperately. ‘'Twould be an honour indeed to be tupped by such a great man.'

‘Sophie, I am not a great man. I am…' Regretful, I went on with the lie, for Dick's sake, ‘…a businessman who has belatedly realized – since the fire – that there is more to life than business. Surely many such men must have paid court to you over the years, having reached the same conclusion.'

‘Of course,' snapped Sophie, after a look of panic had swept across her face. ‘Millions. And I had my fair share of them, let me tell you.' She stared at me, defying me to contradict this unlikely statistic. ‘So when I tell you that you are a great man, and give you permission to enjoy my favours, do not quibble modestly, as if refusing a penny loaf, but grab the opportunity with both hands. If you do not, I may withdraw my offer, and think then of the regret you will suffer for the rest of your life.'

I thought about it, and did not like it. Sophie was right: the deed had to be done, and done now. Breathing hard, we paused in our perambulation, and looked up in admiration at the rockets bursting over us. Red, white and blue sparks flowered gracefully, while puffs of smoke and casualties of the fighting drifted across the common. The air was pungent with the smell of gunpowder, and vibrant with the sounds of explosions, shouting and clapping. My senses were tingling, and my mind was in a pleasant turmoil. Boldness, I knew, was required.

‘But where are we to go?' I asked.

‘There is a barn on Mr Placquet's farm where we can spend the night.'

I quivered ferociously.

‘Is it far from here?' I croaked, dry-mouthed.

‘About five miles. Not far on your horse.'

I wrestled briefly with a last-minute bout of cowardice. What if she was lying to me? What if she was a human gintrap, a snapper-shut of spies? What if I could not get a horn? What if I caught the bube? Then I relaxed. I could see that it was a terrible risk to go with her, but I could see also that not to go with her was a sin against nature, something Dick had warned me about many times. So, taking the bull by the horns, I answered in a very suave and assured manner:

‘Then let us go there, Madam, and put the night to rout.'

Sophie's eyes shook in their sockets, then darkened with lust. I knew then that my suit would be successful, right to the very end. My heart and loins growled with desire. The field and the booty was mine.

Our bodies aflame, we made our way to the tavern stables. Alone, I would have been fretful now lest a prowling corporal had requisitioned my horse for Continental Army use, and left me well and truly adrift in Rebel seas. As it was, with Sophie bobbing loyally by my side, it did not matter if someone had slaughtered and cooked it, and served it up as part of the evening's entertainment; we would find a way round the problem, Sophie and I. But of course, being prepared for the worst there was no problem to find our way around. The ostler, when we finally found him, was drunk but friendly, and assured us that my horse had been so well fed and watered that even Paul Revere himself could get an immediate thirty miles out of it, before it collapsed in foaming agony. There were whinnies of resentment at this remark, and several equine attempts to decapitate the insensitive ostler, so while the horse was being calmed down, I settled the bill with a mixture of American, English and Portuguese coins. Then I saddled up, cocked my right leg perhaps higher than usual, and clambered on, dragging Sophie up after me.

‘Not riding sidesaddle, Miss,' enquired the happy ostler as Sophie, with much dress-rustling, squirmed into position behind me.

‘We're friends,' said Sophie, inserting what felt like bare knees into my curiously-named popliteal spaces, and clasping her hands around my waist.

‘Hold tight then,' said the ostler.

‘What, like this?'

Sophie's grip tightened surprisingly. Hugging herself to me, she rested her chin on my shoulder, and used the extra slack in her arms to give my chest a right royal rubbing. I almost whinnied with ecstasy.

‘Lovely,' beamed the ostler. ‘With friendship like that, who needs love?'

‘Who indeed?' I pondered, as we took our leave and trotted away. Needless to say, I was as content as Old Nick, warmed by love and the hot blood that surged both beneath and behind me. Instinctively, I tilted my head back and rubbed my cheek against Sophie's, falling into a kind of trance as I did so. Indeed, so blissful was my oneness with Nature that my mind, cluttered with accumulated centuries of Reason from Horace to Pope, began to shut down completely, until, intellectually speaking, I was little more than a monkey in a dresscoat. I breathed deeply of the night air, which was odiferous with the warm smell of trees and the scent of Sophie's blackcurranty skin; I looked up at the waning moon and the bright stars, and goggled at them like a baby; I listened to the distant hoot of an owl, and identified wholly with the mysterious longing of its tremulous soul. In fact, so stupified was I by this wondrous moment, that I felt like confessing I was a spy just to attain perfect Oneness with my love. I was on the verge of doing so when Sophie suddenly decided to root around in my saddlebag.

‘Anything interesting in here, sweetie?' said Sophie. I looked back and saw that she was angling a sheaf of papers to the moonlight.

‘Oh, ‘tis only an inventory of my stock, and other business papers.'

There was a pause, and a rustle of paper, as if close scrutiny of them was going on.

‘Well, I can't make heads or tails of them. Here, you look.'

A piece of paper was thrust in front of my face, occluding my view of the road. After making the necessary adjustments to suit my focal and riding capabilities, I found myself staring at one of Dick's practice code sheets; the scoundrel, it seemed, had dumped all incriminating evidence on me! The realization that the ostler could have found them at any time made me queasy with retrospective danger. A shiver of treachery and vulnerability went through me, noticed by Sophie.

‘What is it, sweetie? Someone walked over your grave?'

The fresh hug of reassurance I received felt more like the arms of a gintrap closing, and I had to fight the urge to shake her off and bash her to death with her stick. Fortunately, the urge passed as quickly as it had come, and I resorted to my usual means of protection, barefaced lying.

‘They're creditors' letters, Sophie. Paper arrows in the heart.'

I handed them back to her with a great show of weariness. Job Oysterman.

‘So you're on the run in New Jersey, as well as collecting debts?'

I sighed and admitted I was. I had hoped with Sophie to stop my baroque, vocational lying, and then Reveal All when the time was right (for without Truth and Honesty, I had read somewhere, there could be no Love). But the exigencies of my terrible trade were now making it apparent that this could not be done: business and pleasure were inextricably linked. And whilst there was fun and fascination to be had in deceiving representatives of authority, ‘twas painful indeed to have to use the same deceit in one's personal affairs.

‘You'll be telling me next that you have a pistol about your person.'

‘I do,' I said, telling the truth for once.

Sophie gasped.

‘Why, Harry – you're
dangerous
. Who would have thought it from just looking at you?'

‘Never judge a bookseller by his cover, Sophie.'

‘I begin to wonder now if I have chosen right in riding with you. You might decide to take out your business frustrations on me.'

I was about to reassure her that I would not when a little crab, or something similar, attached itself to my right earlobe. Thinking it to be some horrific form of Colonial nightlife, I shot my hand up to flick it off – only to find my fingernails tapping on Sophie's teeth. This was perhaps a timely discovery, for had Sophie's moist darting tongue entered my aural canal unannounced, I fear I would have shot into the air like a drab firework. As it was, forewarned was forearmed, and I was able to relax enough to first endure, then enjoy, and finally adore the outrageous probings. And as if this was not exciting enough, Sophie simultaneously began to stroke with her fingertips the tender insides of my thighs, describing figures of eight on them in a very accomplished manner. Needless to say, I was soon A Spy On The Brink, a mere bag of roaring blood, throbbing veins, tingling nerves, and maddened organs. I managed to hold out for a mile, but then my overloaded cannon burst extravagantly, drenching my breeches and moistening my saddle. A distinct aroma of salt marshes assailed our noses, as though the wind had just got up from the south, but still the tongue-probings and finger-circlings continued, and I was elevated and fired off four more times, until I sagged in my seat, limp, wet, and crick-necked.

‘Less tense now, sweetie?' said Sophie, as she grabbed the loose reins.

Hardly able to sit upright in my saddle, I confessed that I was.

‘Good. That makes two of us. Nothing like sexual intimacy to break the ice between people. Not, I hasten to add, that there are many people I want to break the ice with.'

I could not help but think that this was good news for George Washington, whose forces in New Jersey were weak enough as it was. But I kept my counsel; indeed, I had little choice, for my faculty of speech had been disabled to such an extent that I could manage little more than a mumbled ‘Far now to go, my dear?'

‘Oh, a couple of miles, perhaps. Another half an hour and you'll be stretched out on the softest hay in Bergen County.' Adding, mysteriously: ‘But there I go, bragging again.'

‘No, not at all,' I said. ‘'Tis good to have local pride in one's harvesting.'

Sophie squeezed my thighs and laughed.

‘Tch, you are funny, Harry. ‘Tis a wonder no woman has snapped you up before now.'

I shrugged my shoulders modestly, an unconsidered trifle.

‘I mean,' Sophie burst out passionately and unexpectedly, jerking me back into life. ‘What's wrong with those New York women? Are they all whores? Are they all blind? They make me so mad, squandering their opportunities. If I lived there, I would have visited your shop every day, just to get a glimpse of you. After a while I would have plucked up courage and devised a way of making you notice me – perhaps by getting you to reach up for books on the highest shelves, so that I could see the cut of your breeches at the same time. In a word, Sir, you would have been under siege, because good things are worth fighting for.'

This was laid on a bit thick, but ‘twas nevertheless a pretty thing to say, and it gave me tremendous pleasure. I warmed to Sophie even more now that I knew my initial instincts about her had been correct. Etiquette demanded that I underplay my fictional achievements.

‘You must remember, Sophie, that a bookseller in New York is as low a creature as an ostler here. I am, or rather was, surrounded by merchants, lawyers, Crown officials, commissioned officers, lottery winners and aristocratic drones – men all fabulously rich and, in many cases, impossibly handsome. Women, naturally, passed me by.'

I thought this a sublime remark, showing sympathy and understanding with the real needs of women everywhere, but it just
riled
Sophie.

‘Oh, so you have to come out here and make do with cripples like me, is that it?' said Sophie, with great heat. ‘Small fish, small pond.'

‘No!' I cried aghast. ‘No! ‘Twas not what I meant at all.'

‘Well it sounded like it.'

I realized I would have to quibble like a lawyer if I was to recover the lost ground, and I sighed at the vast amount of energy I would have to expend in the process, when already I was drained to the lees. Truly, I felt like crying. With another girl I would not perhaps have bothered, but as Sophie seemed worth making the effort for I managed to rouse myself to explain, reason, flatter, cajole and generally grovel, until I was quite worn out. Eventually Sophie's heavy breathing began to subside, and shortly afterwards harmonious relations were at last fully restored. The only drawback was that I couldn't speak for the rest of the journey, being tired to the point of fretfulness. Sophie must have sensed this, for she responded by singing me a medley of Colonial lullabies. These were so strange and disconcerting, however, that they only increased my fretfulness, and I was mightily glad when our destination finally hoved into view, and the chance of sleep loomed large.

I slithered from my horse in a most ungainly fashion, tottered, then braced myself to help Sophie down. Despite my tiredness, I was able to swing her to the ground with some panache, though this show of gallantry was somewhat undermined by the plaguey squelchings coming from my sodden breeches. Sophie, however, either did not notice or did not care. Set up on her stick she led me by the hand to the barn door, which she creaked open with practised aplomb to reveal an interior as dark as a tomb; or, indeed, a womb.

‘After you, Harry,' she said, herding me in with her stick, Little Bo Peep-style, as though to join a flock of other booksellers.

‘Is it safe?' I enquired, taking a few tentative steps into the blackness, and inhaling the heavy smell of warm hay, which, though inviting, I feared might trigger my latent asthma.

‘It is if you don't step on a gintrap,' said Sophie, bending down to reach for something inside the door.

This caught me completely by surprise, and I froze mid-step, remaining in that position – balancing precariously – until a taper was struck, and a lantern flared into light. Even then I was too terrified to speak in case the vibrations of my voice set one snapping into the air.

‘Oh Harry,' said Sophie, holding the lantern up to my face, the better to see the sweat pouring off my brow. ‘'Twas just my bitter joke. There are no traps in here, my dear; nor gin, for that matter.'

‘Sure?' I said, lowering my foot gingerly despite the evidence of my eyes.

‘Sure,' said Sophie, leaving me to my imaginary horrors and blithely going off, lantern swinging, to inspect the dimmer corners of the barn. ‘For…' the voice was distant and muffled, ‘…even if one had been left lying around accidentally, one of these rats would surely have sprung it by now.' There was a crack of stick hitting wood, and a cry of ‘Begone, varmint!'

I thought at first that she had discovered a cache of Verne's friends, up to no good, but the rat that came careering around the corner on two legs confirmed that it was indeed the murine marauders that she was talking about.

‘Rats then, eh?' I said conversationally, examining a ladder that led to a hayloft. ‘I'll bet they're not as big and nasty as the ones on the….on the….' I drew up sharp, on the edge of a precipice.
Twinkle
, and I would be over.

‘On the what, sweetie?'

‘Er…on the wharf in New York.'

Sophie sighed romantically.

‘Sounds like everything is bigger and nastier in New York. I'd love to live there.'

‘I don't know,' I blarneyed, trying to recover my verbal and physical poise, ‘I think you're more of a Philadelphia girl myself.'

‘Describe a Philadelphia Girl, Harry, and I'll tell you if I am one.'

‘Refined, elegant, cultured, beautiful. A different parasol for every mood.'

I knew this was ridiculous even as I said it; I was still confusing my idealized version of feminine beauty with the imperfect yet captivating piece of flesh and blood before me.

‘No,' she said, kicking sorrowfully an old crate, out of which a cat's head emerged enquiringly. ‘I'm not a Philadelphia Girl then.'

‘You underestimate yourself, Madam.'

‘I am not underestimating myself,' Sophie replied with some asperity, ‘I am simply being realistic. Now, Sir, get up that ladder and get your clothes off.'

I had often dreamed, back home in Brighthelmstone, of a girl saying this to me free of charge, but my recent experiences with Nutmeg Nell and Eloise De Witt had somewhat soured the expected thrill. Still, I supposed it was better than being told to impale myself on a rusty bayonet, and I offered only token resistance.

‘May I enquire of your motives, Madam, before I accede to such a demand?'

‘My motives, Sir, are purely humane. You must be uncomfortable in your sodden breeches. There, also, no rats can reach us.'