The Messenger (4 page)

Father was speaking. “Perhaps this time in jail will remind Robert of his testimony.”

Mother’s hand was fingering her pocket. I was certain she had Robert’s letter hidden there inside. “We must pray that it is so.”

I would pray, but I could also act. “I can take the hired girl and try to visit in the morning. They ought to allow me to leave some broth or some whey.” If I were there first thing, perhaps I might also be allowed to see him.

“Broth or whey . . . ?”

“Something of sustenance in case he was wounded in the capture.”

Father shook his head as he frowned. “He’s in that sorry place because of the choices he made. We cannot forget the Yearly Meeting’s admonishment: We must have nothing to do with this ungodly conflict. ’Tis rebellion that placed those soldiers where they are. It’s up to those who enticed them into this conflict to find a way to succor them.”

“But—”

“We can pray for his soul. But he gave himself over to those rebels; now those rebels have the charge of keeping him.”

I woke at the night watchman’s call of two o’clock, trembling. Though I slept under cover of several blankets, my back pressed up against my sister Sally’s, my limbs had gone stiff with the cold and my bones ached from it. Though I pulled the sheets up over my head, and though I pulled my knees up to my chest for warmth, I shivered for the rest of the night as if I were sleeping outside in the snow.

That morning my fingers were numb with cold. As I went down the back stair to breakfast, I nearly stumbled. My feet had gone numb too.

Mother gave a cry when she saw me. “Thee are near to blue!” She laid a kiss upon my cheek, gasped, and then grabbed at my hand. “Such cold thee have!” She turned toward the hired girl. “Sadie, draw a chair up to the fire!”

Mother wrapped scarves around my neck and piled cloaks upon my shoulders, but nothing helped. And as I sat there, a burning restlessness grew inside of me. Finally I shed the cloaks, keeping only my own. Pulling it tight at the throat, I fled the warmth of the kitchen for the door.

“But where are thee—?”

“Out.” I had to get out.

I nearly ran right into the colonel’s Hessian as I pushed through the door, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to give him any of my time because I needed . . . something. And I needed it desperately. But I didn’t know where it was, and I didn’t know how to find it.

Eventually I made my way to the new jail at the corner of Sixth and Walnut Streets. I hid my nose in my cloak against the stench that wafted from the broken windows and tried to close my ears against the cries that came from inside. But finally, as I stood there, my restlessness eased. It was then I understood what I ought to have known from the beginning.

It was Robert.

I was feeling Robert’s pain. I was numb with Robert’s cold.

Waiting until the sentry marching duty in front of the jail had turned round the corner, I ran toward the iron fence that ringed the building. I shouted toward one of the broken basement windows. “Can anyone hear me?”

There was no faltering, no ceasing of the groans or cries, but there seemed to come a shifting somewhere down there in the dark.

“Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?” I pulled my cloak up around my nose again, to stay the stench from my nostrils.

“Who’ve you come for?” The voice that answered was sepulchral in tone.

“I want—I needed—is there a Robert Sunderland in there?”

“What’ve you got?”

“I . . .” The sentry had not yet reappeared, but I feared he would soon round the corner and see me.

“Any food? Have you a blanket?”

I hadn’t anything at all. “I can bring one.”

“You’ve nothing? Nothing at all? Then what did you come for?”

“To see my brother.” With those words that desperate need inside me eased again.

“What’s his name, then?”

“Robert Sunderland.”

“You’ll have to wait . . .”

Wait. I wished I could have, but the sentry didn’t grant me that luxury. I fled across the street and pretended an interest in the cobbler’s wares. When he finally turned once more, when I could return to the window, no one answered my call.

But I knew now what I had felt. It was the same thing that had woken me in the night. It was my brother. He needed me.

Jeremiah

I had tried my best to forget about the tailor’s desertion and the general’s demand, but morning’s light proved me unsuccessful: I’d dreamed of the two gentlemen all night. Leaving the windows curtained, I stirred the fire and held a taper out to the coals. Once the wick flared I returned the candle to its holder on the table. Pulling the tailor’s crumpled message from the pocket of my waistcoat, I set a weight upon one corner and then smoothed it out with my hand.

It was written upon a scrap of paper in script so miniscule I had to squint to read it.

Consisting of a series of words and numbers, the message could only be decoded with a key. And that, the tailor had said, could be found in a book. Thomas Paine’s
Common Sense
. I had to admire the fellow who had figured that out. Nearly every household was bound to have a copy—even in occupied Philadelphia. The patriots revered it and the Tories mocked it.

I took a piece of foolscap from the desk drawer, then readied my ink and a quill.

Consulting the book, I managed to decode the message, but it was tricky work, made trickier by a guttering candle and the lack of fingers on a second hand by which to mark my place in Paine’s work. After an hour’s labor the message lay before me, transcribed.

Sergeant William Addison to undertake escape from new jail. A tunnel started at southwest corner and dug west for 53 feet will allow escape opposite Southeast Square.

Southeast Square! And if they failed to dig due west? They’d find themselves excavating a cemetery.

Advise how long will take.

This message required an answer, which in turn required coordination and repeated communication with the prisoners. Didn’t General Washington know the trouble the last escape had caused them? Now they couldn’t even be visited by family members. Not unless General Howe himself granted permission. Who could wonder that the tailor didn’t want any part in it? And more, who could blame him?

I crumpled both messages and threw them into the fire. The flames teased at them—curling the ends, poking at their middles—before devouring them. I closed Paine’s book and put it back on the shelf, then pushed back the curtains at the windows.

Outside, snowflakes were being driven sideways by the wind. I knew what it was like to be exposed to such weather. A garrisoned soldier has little to distinguish himself from an imprisoned soldier. Perhaps he is free to go where he wants within the garrison, but who would choose to wander far in conditions such as these?

Poor, miserable prisoners. I couldn’t assume they had any food, any fire, or any blankets. Though surely they had straw, and walls to keep out the wind. There had to be some way to aid in their escape.

But there wasn’t.

It was no use trying to pass a message in from outside the jail. No letters tied about stones and thrown at the windows. Sentries guarded the jail at all hours. Nor was there any use trying to shout a message to the prisoners. It was rumored there were traitors among the prisoners, placed there to recruit spies to the Loyalist cause. There was no way around it: the only way to pass a message was from the inside. And that was someplace no presumed Loyalist like me would ever go. Even if I could think up some reason, Howe’s orders were to let no one in without a pass. And passes were only issued by him.

Poor wretches.

The longer they stayed in that jail, the more likely they were to die there. A sad fact of army life. It wasn’t the bullets and cannons that killed a man. It was the illness, the damp, and the cold. Death by prolonged misery.

I took myself downstairs and tried to busy myself with the accounts of the daybook before dinner was served. But I was soon driven from the comforts of the fire and the numbing smell of liquor by foul memories. Retrieving my cloak, I went out into the storm. Leaning into the wind, I walked the four blocks to the jail. Even in this weather it looked as smug and sanctimonious as the officials who had built it. But judging from the stench borne on the wind, those righteous people hadn’t thought about the practicalities of what happened when three dozen men were crammed into rooms meant for eight or ten.

Was that . . . ? I stepped closer. Peered at the window nearest me, one that provided light to the basement. It was broken. I blinked. Put my hand up to brush away the snowflakes that had collected on my lashes. Aye. It was broken. As was the one next to it. And the one above it. In fact, every window I could see through that driving snow was shattered. And walls alone could not keep a wind as stiff and pernicious as this one away from the inmates. I wished I could do something about it. I wished I could help those prisoners escape. But it could not be done.

The tailor was right.

It was getting too dangerous to meet up with egg-girls and exchange messages at the market. The militia patrolling the city was beginning to pay attention to such things. But worse, General Washington was no longer allowing farmers to slip through the lines with their goods. The army at Valley Forge needed their supplies too much.

It was impossible.

While I stood there feeling ineffectual and utterly useless, a form turned the corner from Fifth Street and made its way toward me, cloak drawn up under the chin, hood riding low across the forehead. As it neared me, a gust of wind pried off the hood. A gloved hand reached out to catch it, but finally gave up, letting it ride at her neck.

The Sunderland girl. With that self-righteous look all Quaker girls seemed to wear. She glanced up as she neared me.

I sneered at her.

She lifted her chin and looked as if she might walk right on by.

Walk right on by that deplorable, reeking jail and all those prisoners shut up inside. Walk right on by a man who had done his duty, who had
fought
for things. Things those Quakers didn’t deem as worthy as their principles. Principles were fine enough, for those who had them, but what about all the colonists who had died in the French and Indian Wars? What about all those men who’d been massacred at Devil’s Hole? And what about all the people who would have died had the rest of us not risen to the task those Quakers disdained?

Sunderland.

I cursed that name. Her grandfather had been among the worst of the peacemongers in government during the wars that had savaged the countryside. I had no arm, thanks to him. Thanks to
them
I’d been left with a ghost of a hand that ached abominably even though it was no longer there.

“Hey! Did you know there are people in there? Prisoners?—
men
?—rotting in that jail right beside you?” I felt a perverse and overwhelming desire to provoke her into speaking. To make her say something, anything. As if that could make up for what had been taken from me. I snorted, though I hadn’t meant to.

She stopped.

Turning, she took a step back toward me. Though she couldn’t have struck me in the nose if she’d leaped at me, she looked as if she wanted to do that very thing. If I wasn’t much mistaken, the girl had a temper. But while there was anger glittering in her eyes, teardrops had frozen to her lashes.

“Aye, I do know! Thee needn’t be so surly about it. My brother is there among them. At least . . . I hope he still is.” Her glance swept beyond me, toward the jail, then came back. She looked as if she wanted to say something more, but then she closed up that prim little mouth of hers and walked away, leaving me standing there feeling heartless. And cruel.

There had to be a way.

I took to walking about the city, ostensibly to visit the market. What little there was of it. But truly to walk around that jail, to try to figure out a way to get inside.

Over time I began to observe a pattern. Whenever I was heading toward the jail, the Sunderland girl seemed always to be walking away from it. We were both of us drawn to that place of despair. I had no doubt that she, like me, wanted nothing more than to get inside. She would have been scandalized to know what I might have done had I been granted access.

When I walked into the tavern Saturday evening, supper was already being served. Among the soldiers gathered to eat was John Lindley. “Jonesy!” he cried as he spied me. Holding up his bowl, he lurched toward me. “One more drink.”

“You’ve already had about three more drinks by the look of you.” Which wasn’t a bad thing at all for my accounts.

“Congratulate me. I’ve been promoted.” He placed an elbow on the bar as I took the bowl from him. “At least that’s what they say. But
I
say I’ve been gulled. It’s a staff job.”

Staff job. I saluted him. “It’s the War Office for you now, for certain.”

“But it’s not in Howe’s office. I’m to sit one floor below.”

I tried to hide a smile. He’d always been so keen on glory. It gave me the bitterest of pleasure to see him win a promotion to a staff job. No battlefield awards for bravery could be earned by sitting in an office administering the general’s papers. “You’ll use it to your benefit. You’ve always been good at that.”

He leaned back with an angelic smile. “I
am
good at that, aren’t I? Know what I did while I was back in England?”

Probably caught the clap. “I’ve no idea.”

“I found myself an heiress.”

I raised a brow as I filled his bowl with brandy. Passed it back.

“Daughter of Mr. Arthur Spotsworth, merchant prince. She’s plain as a board and pink as a pig, but she’s got ever so much lovely money to make up for it.”

“Words said at leisure have a way of coming back to bite those who so misuse them.”

He dismissed my warning with a florid wave, swaying as he tried to keep his feet. “Doesn’t matter.” He took a swig from the bowl. Swallowed. “We’re to marry just as soon as I return.”

I took the bowl from him and added some more. “Felicitations.”

“Can you envision me, a married man?”

“You’ll be as grand as the bride is rich.”

“Aye. And that’s the point of it all, isn’t it?”

The point of it all. Perhaps it was—for people like him. I thanked God that I didn’t have to worry about things like marriage and dowries. What girl with any sense would settle upon a crippled man? It seemed God had saved me from worse fates than I had known.