The Messenger (6 page)

“Fine,
Hannah
. There are over a hundred men in that jail. Every day they linger, they risk death in dozens of ways. Camp fever, typhoid, smallpox . . . starvation.”

My heart faltered within me.

“My message suggests a way of escape.”

Hope took flight in my stomach. “From the jail?”

“Aye.”

Isn’t that what I’d just wished for? Although, if I were caught . . . ? The memory of the soldiers arresting my father returned. And with it the nausea that always accompanied it. I feared another encounter with men, no matter their political persuasions. Besides, what was it the Yearly Meeting had decided? “An escape would free those soldiers from the consequences of taking up arms against the king.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I suppose, if successful, that it would.”

“I would not be helping any man’s soul by allowing him to escape the consequences of his rebellion.” Isn’t that the way the pronouncement had been phrased?

His face had grown dangerously hard. “I’m not asking you to save anyone’s soul. I’m simply asking you to deliver a message.”

“I cannot do it.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“I mean I can’t.” Not for the benefit of some sanctimonious rebel soldiers. I wanted no involvement in things that did not concern me. I just wanted to see Robert and provide him with the things he needed. Father had trusted the rebels to understand his peaceful ways just as he now counted on the king’s soldiers to protect his property. Both had failed him. I could allow neither side to consider me a friend to their cause.

He sent me a piercing glance. “It’s because you’re afraid, isn’t it? I don’t know why I expected anything else from a Quaker. You’re so afraid of breaking the rules that you won’t even risk delivering a message in exchange for a pass to visit your brother. Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

“I always mean what I say!”

The corner of his mouth twitched up in what I would have called a smile on any other man. “That’s not the same as saying what you mean, though, is it? Meaning what you say is much easier.”

“Why can thee not understand?” I wasn’t afraid of breaking the rules. Friends seemed able to do nothing else these days. What I feared was the punishment for breaking the rules. “I just—” He was right: I was afraid. But I wasn’t about to admit it to him. And besides, he’d already walked away.

I conspired to go calling with Betsy that week. It wasn’t difficult, as Mother had taken to bed with a catarrh. I was able, after returning Betsy to her house, to spend a few minutes at the jail before returning to my own. On third day, as I spoke into the basement window of the prison, I finally received news of my brother. “Aye, he’s here. Over down across the other side.”

“Can’t he come speak to me himself?”

“It’s a jail, miss!”

“I’m sorry. It’s just—”

“Said, ‘Could you get him a blanket.’ And some food. We all need food.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ve been trying. He’s well, though?”

“As well as anyone can be in this hellhole filled with lice and vermin.”

“Can thee tell him—?”

“Hey! You there!” The sentry had already changed directions and was headed back my way.

I turned, pulled my hood low over my head, and walked away just as quickly as I could. It took three blocks for me to catch my breath and by then I was home.

Mother was sitting in the parlor, the pierced-tin foot warmer at her feet, a cap pulled down over her ears. “Out again? In this weather? Thee will catch thy death!”

I felt my cheeks color with guilt. “I just needed some air. And Betsy wanted to go calling. I can’t stand . . .” I indicated the front rooms with a lift of my chin. The front rooms the colonel and his staff had taken over.

“I know it. I just don’t . . .” Mother was wringing her hands. “Sometimes I wish. . . . If he weren’t quite so . . .”

“Abominably and unspeakably selfish.”

“Hannah!”

I wished I could learn to keep my thoughts to myself. It was true what I’d said to Jeremiah Jones: I meant the words I said. “That’s what he is. He’s selfish.”

“And so are we all in our own secret ways.”

Why did she have to be so infuriatingly . . . right? I took a generous breath of air in through my nostrils. As I pressed my lips together to keep from speaking, I realized I was doing that often of late.

“Hannah? Hannah!” The words invaded my dreams. They sounded as if they were spoken from a great distance. “Hannah?” Sally’s words seemed to grip me, pulling me from the night’s imaginings. “Hannah!”

“What is it?” I was used to the little ones waking me, though it never failed to vex. But Sally usually slept quietly beside me, in the bed we shared.

“I can’t sleep.”

I sighed. Neither could I. Not anymore. Not for the hour it would take now to find my dreams once more. “Why not?”

“There’s too much noise.”

My senses came to the alert. “Where? In the alley?” Our neighbors had had their andirons stolen just the other night.

She shook her head. “Out there.” She nodded toward the door.

“In the hall?” I slipped from bed and took up a candlestick. The weight of it would provide a deterrent to any thief. “Thee stay here in bed. Pull the covers right up over thy head. Stay warm.” And safe. I drew the blanket up over her as I spoke. “I’ll go see what it is.” I hoped I would reach Father before I ran into whoever was out there. I prayed God would see me safe.

Jeremiah

John Lindley, a married man.

That thought had taunted me for the better part of a week. I had once assumed I would be a married man by now. With a wife to keep me warm at night and children to look after me in my dotage. I’d never set my cap for an heiress. Not like John. I’d just wanted someone to spend my life with. And I’d never thought that dream too grand, that goal too lofty. Not until the massacre. ’Twas then I realized what great things I’d demanded of destiny. And only then I realized destiny would not bow to my demands.

For want of an arm I’d had to give up my ambition of a commission as a regular in the British army. I’d returned to my childhood home when I ought to have been establishing my own. For want of that same arm I’d been unable to stop a careening carriage that had tipped itself over and killed my father. My mother slid into a decline soon after and died of what she called a lonesome heart.

But how ironic was fate!

Had my youthful wishes been granted, I would this moment be fighting with the British against the patriots. As it was, I would give nearly anything for the chance to take up arms against them.

I turned the last drunk out of the tavern. Redistributed the chairs. Scattered the ashes in the hearth. I put the cook’s girl to work with a broom and then went back into the kitchen where her mother, Mrs. Phippen, was supervising the putting away of the pewter.

She glanced at me. “It’s over there.” She gestured toward a pot that still hung over a mostly dead fire.

I walked over and peered inside. The remains of the night’s offerings. Boiled mutton. I scraped the bottom of the pot with a ladle and emptied what came up onto a plate. I set it on the sideboard. Taking a few crackers from a box, I put them into my pocket, then chose several apples from a basket and put them into the other. I picked up the plate and took myself toward the back door.

“It’s cold enough to kill a bear. Don’t know why any man would want to eat outside.”

I had no intention of doing so, having had my supper hours earlier. But what the cook didn’t know would only vex her. I stepped out into the puddle-pocked backyard. Most of those puddles had frozen over from the cold, and twice I nearly slipped as I walked over toward the well. Once I reached it I set the plate on the well’s wooden frame along with the crackers and the apples. And then I sat down.

It didn’t take but a moment for a lad to appear.

Clad in a ridiculously large coat and a pair of indecently short breeches, he limped toward me on bare feet. He sent me a sullen look before he inspected the feast I’d laid out before him. Put the crackers into one of his own pockets, the apples into the other. “Fanny’ll thank you.”

I hoped she’d do more than thank me. I hoped she’d eat them. “How’s the babe?”

Bartholomew shrugged. “It eats and cries and sleeps.”

“And your mother?”

He shrugged again but he didn’t say anything.

That couldn’t be good. Mrs. Pruitt had been lingering at death’s door for weeks. Her presence was the only thing that had allowed her children the luxury of the hovel they called home. Bartholomew took up the plate and sniffed at it. “It’s burnt. That cook of yours must be in a mood.”

Mrs. Phippen, moral arbiter that she was, always seemed to be in a mood. I suspected she’d chased Bartholomew away from the yard more times than I wanted to know. “We’d more mouths to feed than normal. It’s cold, but there’s no weather to keep them away. I had to scrape the bottom of the pot to find anything at all.”

If Bartholomew was grateful for the favor, he didn’t say so. He never said so. “Them redcoats is a fair-weathered lot.”

I couldn’t disagree.

Apparently he’d decided the mutton was fit enough to eat, for he finally sat down beside me and tucked into it with relish.

“You ever go up by the new jail? The one on Walnut Street?”

“No. The poor beggars don’t have food enough for themselves. No hope in finding any there for us.”

If anyone could figure out a way into that jail, it was an urchin like him.

“You passed the request I gave you to the commissary?”

He nodded.

“Did he say anything?”

“What was there to say? You promised him coin, didn’t you? For the flour?”

I had.

He threw a shrewd glance at me. “I suppose the army’s already paid him for it.”

I looked at him with newfound appreciation. That’s what I had supposed as well.

“And you’re offering him coin for it just the same as they did. That’s twice he’s been paid for the same flour.”

I didn’t mind encouraging graft where I could. Not if it placed the redcoats at a disadvantage.

“And then them soldiers come into the tavern and pay you for what ought to be theirs by rights.”

Aye. That was pretty much the way of it.

“So the commissary makes his money, you make your money.”

I reached into my pocket and took the coins from it that I’d promised him. “And here is yours.”

It disappeared even as I placed it into his palm. But he stayed to finish the rest of the meal. Then he patted his pockets, nodded at me, and walked away into the night.

I glanced at the sky. Stars glittered back at me.

If I could say nothing else at all about my life, at least I could say this: I could see those stars. The prisoners sitting in the Walnut Street Jail could not. If a man was condemned to sit in the cold, if he were fated to starve to death, at least he ought to be able to see the stars.

“While you’ve been out there gazing at the stars, some slices from my pies have gone missing. I roused the stable boy so he could tell you what I think about it.” It was quite clear the cook thought the lad had taken them.

Like most of the city’s population, the boy had a family that needed his wages. With flour costing ten times its worth and butter all but vanished, I didn’t know how anyone who went about their business honestly could afford to eat. “The boy’s got to eat while he goes about his work. It’s part of his pay.”

Her eyes raked his small form with suspicion.

“Haven’t you been feeding him, Mrs. Phippen?”

“I’ve been giving him what he deserves.”

Plainly that wasn’t very much in her vaulted opinion. I looked him over myself.

His eyes dodged mine.

“I won’t begrudge the lad a piece of pie or two. For work well done.” I only hoped he’d be smart enough not to take a whole pie. I wouldn’t be able to dismiss that sort of theft so easily. I clapped the boy on the shoulder and walked up the back stair to my room.

No fire brightened the hearth, but there was no need. No reason to linger in the frigid air. Once my head found my pillow I expected sleep.

Only it did not come.

I kept thinking about Bartholomew. And the stable boy. I could not help all the ragamuffins I wanted to—God only knew how many of them there were in the city. And I could not help but feel pity for the prisoners who were probably just as hungry. If only the Sunderland girl had agreed to my plan.

Hannah
.

She wouldn’t have been my first choice in a ballroom filled with prospective dance partners. Back when I frequented them. Back when I had my choice of the girls. She was pretty enough, of course. There was something to be said for the fire that flashed in her eyes. If only I could convince her to throw in with my plan. But what more could I do? What more could I say? She said she was worried about souls? Maybe I should offer her mine.

I could not keep from smiling into the darkness. What a miserable and unwelcome gift that would be.

The very definition of selfishness.

Aye. That was me. I suppose the Quaker in her made her say it. That was one thing a person could depend upon: that a Quaker would say exactly what was meant.

And she meant not to like me.

Though I couldn’t blame her for it.

If truth be told, I didn’t much like myself.