The Messenger (17 page)

I’d been scowling? Well. I fixed a smile upon my lips, thinking that perhaps I would feel better in the telling of it. “My father forbid me to see him—”

Polly’s hands flew to her breast. “So you’re star-crossed lovers!”

“We’re not—” I sighed. “In any case, I saw him one last time to tell him, and he insisted that I disregard my father’s wishes.”

“But of course you must!”

Hadn’t she just promised to agree with me? And to curse Jeremiah Jones’s stubborn foolishness? “I don’t see why I should—”

“Because the course of true love never did run smooth. Don’t you see? It just proves that you were meant to be together!”

“All it proves is that the man is pigheaded, and that he won’t listen to reason!” And besides, there was no true love. “I can’t fancy him, Polly. He isn’t even a Friend.”

She waved aside my words as if they didn’t even matter. “How utterly romantic!”

“ ’Tis not romantic. ’Tis—”

“Oh, but it is.” She returned to her chair and picked up her mirror again. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you find some way around it all.”

“I don’t want a way around it. I mean to honor my father’s wishes.”

“Then you go about honoring them, and I’ll go about finding some way around them.”

“But I don’t want thee to!”

“Of course you do. If you didn’t, you would never have told me about it.”

I was certain Friends weren’t meant to feel as if they wanted to strangle their cousins. “I only told thee because thee insisted upon it. And thee promised that thee would agree with me and then thee didn’t.”

“Because you were wrong. But don’t worry. I shall make it all come right.”

I gave up speaking about it. Polly had a memory like a sieve. The less I spoke of the incident, the sooner it would be forgotten.

Jeremiah

What a waste! I rolled from my side to my back and stared into the dark. A delightful evening spent in the company of Miss Pennington and her many friends, watching them all dance, dispensing comments I didn’t mean and pretending to sentiments I didn’t feel. I don’t know why I’d gone. Hannah had been quite clear about her intentions to obey her father. I hadn’t really expected her to be there, though perhaps I’d hoped. Her presence made the evenings at Pennington House tolerable.

I’d have to tell John to stop scheming invitations for me. But I had discovered, through overheard conversation, the date when the army intended to fete General Howe. May eighteenth. Generally I heard enough soldiers’ gossip at the King’s Arms during the day that I didn’t need to go looking for it at night. And certainly not at a dancing party.

I’d missed Hannah, though.

I’d had conversations now and then throughout the evening, most of them fueled by compliments. Just like in the old days. The insincere kind were always the easiest to offer. What had I said to the Pennington girl? Something about her gown being a shining vision of all that was right in the world. In fact, the satin had been much too gaudy and covered with far too many fripperies for my taste. And the height of her wig had been ridiculously extreme.

Used to be that my taste, like hers, had been dictated by the latest modes from London. But I’d come to appreciate a simpler aesthetic. Come to value fine fabrics rather than an abundance of trimmings and lace. If I was to pay a compliment to any one at all, I would give one to Hannah. The problem was I hadn’t yet come by the way to say it. How did you tell someone that being with her soothed your soul and made you feel as if you wanted to be a better person? There were no words to put to such thoughts. Besides, she wouldn’t be interested in pretty compliments. The plain and honest truth. Those were the only kind of words that seemed to matter to her.

I don’t know why I bothered to think of her at all.

It was that thought that finally pushed me on toward sleep—thinking about why I ought to stop thinking about her. And it didn’t really work. I dreamt about her all night. I awoke to feelings of comfort and a cozy warmth that I remembered from years past. I don’t know why I should have. If I’d dreamt of Hannah Sunderland, then surely she must have been yelling at me for some reason or other.

I tried to put away all thoughts of her, but the night’s fancies had brought my missing hand back to life. And so I blamed her for it. As many times as it had happened, I had never become accustomed to that phantom pain.

As a result, my words had more bite than was normal. I’m afraid I yelled at my barkeeper and at the stable hand. I even yelled at the cook herself. But it had the satisfactory effect of keeping the staff away from me. I was able to nurse my morning ale in private.

And plan for the day’s intrigues.

Today I needed to find the egg-girl. There’d been no sign of her the last time I’d gone to the market. I also needed to figure out some way to pass Hannah messages that wouldn’t require arranging a meeting.

Returning to my room, I locked the door and secured the curtains. And then I sat down to encode a message to General Washington.

Though I had learned to do many things with my left hand, dexterity at the finer things still eluded me. As I wrote out my message, I paused once. Twice. Swiping at the sweat that damped my forehead.

My elegant script, gained from long hours of practice at the hand of a demanding schoolmaster, had been taken from me along with my arm. He would surely have caned me if he had seen the scrawl of a script to which my penmanship had been reduced. I could only hope it would fall into the hands of someone with enough patience to interpret it.

I crossed out a particularly illegible word and began once more.

My quill broke in the middle of the word.

Blast it all!

I plunged the quill into my water basin to release the ink from the tip, then gnawed on it with my teeth to bring back the point. A splinter of the bone poked into my gum in the process.

Sitting down once more, I dipped it back into the ink and completed the word. Dabbed at my forehead.

I finished not long after the clock downstairs struck eleven.

General Howe to be feted night of 18 May at Joseph Wharton’s Walnut Grove. Fine night to meet our friends. Advise of meeting place.

But I was not yet done with my work. It was one thing to write a message, but another thing entirely to pass it on.

I folded it into the smallest square that I could. The difficult part would be to pass it to the egg-girl without being seen to do it. I’d almost dropped the message I’d passed before. I didn’t want to tempt fate a second time. With the weather improving, the market was busier that it had been, which meant there were more eyes watching the goings-on.

At one point I’d had a looking glass for shaving. I stood in the middle of my room, trying to think where I might have put it. I rifled through my highboy chest of drawers with no success. Considered my trunk. At the very bottom, my hand fell upon the smooth wood of its turned frame. I drug it up through stacks of clothes that I never planned to wear again. Pairs of gloves. Embroidered waistcoats. Detritus of a life I no longer lived.

Propping the looking glass up against my water pitcher, I set it at an angle so that I could see my pocket. Placing my basin atop my writing desk, I pretended it to be the recipient of my endeavors.

I dropped the note into my pocket and then set about getting it to the basin, undetected.

The first attempt ended in miserable failure. I dropped the note just as soon as I pulled it from my pocket. The second try went no better. I ought to have succeeded at the third, but the glass showed me the reflection of the note as I pulled it from my pocket. The trick of it was to keep it hidden within the hollow of my palm while somehow maintaining a natural ease of movement.

If only I didn’t have such a large hand!

One might have thought that a perfect blessing for work such as this. But my fingers were too inclined to clumsiness and my palm both too large and too shallow at the same time.

I took a bottle of rum from the mantel and poured myself a drink, downing it as I paced the floor. What a poor excuse I was for a spy. It might be easier to convince the tailor to take up his old position than to train my hand for a task for which it was so ill-suited.

But this message was important, and I was the only person who could start it on its way to General Washington. I stood in front of the looking glass once more. Took a deep breath. Let it out in a sigh. I would practice all day if I had to. In fact, I ought to have done so long before. I had been treating my hand as if it were its fault the other had been cut off. What I should have done was train it to take the other’s place.

Now I was paying for my lack of foresight.

I worked at passing the message for over an hour. Accomplished it three times in succession without revealing even a corner of the paper. Finally I left it atop the overturned basin, satisfied with my mastery of the task.

I sighed with relief.

And then I picked it up once more, pretending to be the egg-girl who would receive it. Opened it to admire my handiwork . . . only to discover that the sweat of my labors had smeared the words beyond recognition.

I could hear the cook’s daughter serving dinner by the time I finished with my labors and descended by the back stair. I left by way of the public room, unwilling for her mother to catch me and start in on complaining.

It occurred to me as I approached the market that the egg-girl might not be there. That I might not be able to pass on my message. In that case, there would be no remedy and no passing of messages this day. She was my only contact with General Washington.

It was with great relief that I spotted her blue cart. And with great anxiety that I saw John walking right toward me. I couldn’t pretend not to have seen him.

He’d already seen me. “Just the man I need!”

“You’ve been looking for me?” Had he seen me leave the tavern? To come straight here? I’d have to do a better job at hiding my destination.

“No. I’ve been looking for a present for Miss Pennington.”

A present? “Then you need some sort of bauble or trinket.” She was that kind of girl. “Go on up to Mulberry or Sassafras Street. Try one of the shops along there.” And do it now!

“Anyone can buy a fan or a length of ribbon. I thought, perhaps, that food would be a more appreciated gift.”

I might have applauded his noble turn of thoughts had it been any day but today. In a city lacking most things, food was a luxury indeed. But . . . “Why do you want to buy her a gift? It’s not as if you’re courting her.”

His gaze dropped, became fixed on his shoes. “A man has to do something to pass his time in this miserable town.”

“If you give her a gift, she will think you’re courting her.”

“Let’s just say that I wish I were courting her.”

“She can’t tell wishes from your Brunhilda in London. John! You can’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”

“We’ll be gone this spring. It’s all in fun. She knows it’s all in fun.”

I doubted very much that she did. “What if she were your sister?”

“Then I’d very much regret the dreams I’ve been having about her of late!”

When I spoke, it was through my teeth. “What I mean to say is, what would you think of some soldier who made love to your sister in this manner, even though his affections were pledged elsewhere?”

“His affections? There you err. My affections are mine to keep. ’Tis my life that is pledged to the heiress in London. In any case, the only appealing thing about your question is that I have no sister. Hence I really couldn’t say what I would think. Or not.”

“You’re an abomination.”

“And your morals are becoming rather tiresome. You’re such a colonial! And I mean it in the worst of ways. I would never have imagined it of you.”

And neither would I have. Not from the perspective that a dozen years earlier had provided. At that moment I had been just like John. And it was for that reason, I suppose, that I couldn’t entirely abandon him to his folly. “I just wish you to be the gentleman I know you are capable of being.”

“A gentleman! Even my own mother never sounded so prim. You’ve become positively proper.” He said the words with an air of good cheer, but as I walked into the market he followed me.

I considered delaying my visit to the egg-girl, but my hours of practice—and the prospect of wearing that ghastly feather—had delayed my departure from the tavern too long. If I risked waiting much longer, the girl might leave.

As I approached the cart, John continued his chatter. My palms grew sweaty at the thought of what I was about to do in front of the keen-eyed gaze of a British major. Within the cover of my coat’s pocket, I flexed my fingers, found the message, and closed it up within my palm. I could not bobble this pass. Not today.

The egg-girl nodded a greeting as she cast a leery-eyed glance toward John. “Can I get you something, then?”

“I was wondering . . . do you have any more of those quail eggs?”

“Quail eggs!” John was peering behind her, at the cart. “Those would do.”

I tried to shoulder him away. “She brings them for me. As a special request.”

“I might have some . . .” She slid a glance toward John again and then raised her brow at me.

I shrugged.

Pressing her lips into a firm thin line, she brushed aside some straw and pulled out a small basket. “A half dozen.”

I slipped her a coin, along with my message. She quickly plunged her hand into the depths of her pocket. And kept it there as she eyed John.

I nodded. As I was turning to leave, John grabbed my arm to halt me. Had he noticed? Had he seen?

“I say, can I get some of those as well?”

The egg-girl looked at me, unease making her eyes grow wary. “The gentleman bought all I had, sir.”

“Then we cannot call him a gentleman, can we?”

“Come along, John, you’ve more to do than harass poor country girls.” I didn’t wait for him to follow, but turned and walked away.