The Whiskey Rebels (6 page)

“Do you require that I knock for you?” asked Leonidas, having apparently noticed the gravity with which I regarded this moment.

“No, I believe I can manage.”

“I am quite willing to bear the burden,” he said, “and, with the rain beginning to fall harder, I am even eager to undertake the physical labor required to bring a servant to the door.”

“He’s very cheeky,” I said to Lavien, and then knocked myself. I was, after all, capable enough, requiring only a little browbeating from my Negro to make it happen.

A footman soon opened the door. His livery was rumpled, as though a dirty set of clothes had been thrown on hastily, and he had dark circles under his eyes. I’d seen the look before, and I had no doubt this was a household in distress.

“Captain Ethan Saunders to see Mrs. Pearson,” I intoned with an importance my hatless wet head belied—or at least contradicted.

The footman, tall and rugged in build as was common for his species of servant, looked to me like a stage actor who had only been waiting for another player to speak a line that he might speak his own. Practically biting off my words, he said, “I’m afraid Mrs. Pearson is not accepting visitors at this hour.”

“Of course she is,” I assured him, “as she went to the trouble to summon me, and I have gone to the trouble of answering. You need do no more than go to the trouble of inviting us in and presenting us.”

He looked me over, perhaps for the first time taking in my deplorable condition. “That shan’t happen, sir. Good night.”

The fellow was actually going to close the door in my face. Once a door is closed, it is not an easy thing to get it open again, so I stepped forward, pressed one hand upon the door, and strode directly toward the footman. The primary responsibility of such a servant is to see to the safety of his employers, so he ought to be possessed of a great deal of courage. Nevertheless, surprised, and faced with my alarming appearance, he took a fatal step back. This proved enough for my pair of worthies to move past him. It was an effective ploy, but I had no doubt that, had it not worked, Lavien would have dispatched him with little trouble. I was glad to avoid that outcome, however, as I did not wish to begin my reunion with Mrs. Pearson with the hobbling of her footman.

Regaining his confusion, the serving man stammered a moment and then managed to utter a coherent sentence. “I must ask you to leave. At once.”

“My God, man, have you never had a wet drunk, a Negro, and a Jew call upon Mrs. Pearson before?” I said. “Don’t just stand there. Tell her we’re here.”

“Get out or there will be trouble you shan’t like, violent trouble, sir.”

If this fellow thought he and a handful of kitchen boys were a match for Leonidas and Lavien, he was sadly mistaken. Nevertheless, it all proved unnecessary, for at the end of the front hall a figure emerged, silhouetted by the light of the sconces behind her. I could only see a shadowy form, but I knew her at once.

“It’s all right, Nate, I shall tend to this.”

The vibrating in my chest reverberated through my body. I could feel my pulse in my fingertips. My breath came in short bursts. After ten years, I stood in the same room with the woman I had once loved, once believed myself destined to marry. I wished to rush to her, and I wished to flee. Instead, I held my ground and attempted to conduct myself with the greatest possible dignity for a man so befouled and ill used as I was.

I attempted an awkward little bow, though my middle sections pained me considerably. “Mrs. Pearson, you have summoned me, and here I am.”

She advanced a step and at once became visible. She wore a gown of pale green, perfectly chosen to match the shade of her eyes. Her hair was piled into a bun, from which a few delicate golden-straw wisps escaped, and she wore a prim little bonnet that did no more than suggest the possibility of a head covering.

Once, a month or more ago, near the covered market, I chanced to observe Mrs. Pearson upon the streets as she went shopping with her maid, her two children—a boy and a girl—in obedient tow. It had been fleeting, for I dared not let her see me. In ten years I’d not had the chance to gaze upon her face. When I’d known her, she had been a mere girl of nineteen, but now she was a woman, and the soft features that had made her so pretty had sharpened into beauty: her eyes, wide and liquid; her lips, full and red; her nose, sharp and distinguished. If her loveliness were not enough to move me, I should have been undone by the sadness overlaid upon it, for it was apparent that Mrs. Pearson was a melancholy woman and, indeed, a fearful one. I had not been a student of human nature for so long—it was what distinguished my service during the war—without being able to see such things.

“Captain Saunders, I am sorry to have troubled you, but it would appear I have made a—oh, dear God, what has happened to you?” She stepped into the far superior light of the foyer, and I was pleased to observe that her beauty was unharmed by greater illumination. “You are hurt, sir. Is this because—what I mean to say, are these injuries the result of my having—”

She did not know how to finish, and were she anyone else, I would have let her dangle upon her own words, to reveal what she feared, and I would have as much information as I could. But this was Cynthia Pearson, once Cynthia Fleet, and I would not be the cause of her suffering. “I have had an unfortunate encounter with some rough men,” I told her, “but you may be assured that it has nothing to do with your circumstances. Indeed, I may owe you my life, for had you not sent my man to fetch me, I cannot say how things might have concluded. But that is not important. You must tell me why you summoned me.”

She shook her pretty head. “It is nothing,” she said, and attempted a weak little smile. “My husband has gone away on business and neglected to inform me of where he visits and when he returns. I grew worried and called upon you, as the only person I have ever known who might be able to find him. But now I see that I am foolish. I have no reason to fear for him, and certainly no reason to trouble you.”

“You have assured me several times that your husband’s disappearance does not trouble you,” said Mr. Lavien, “and yet you sent for Captain Saunders, a man with whom you’ve had no contact for more than ten years?”

Mrs. Pearson spun and gave Lavien a most terrible look. I believe she had not seen the little man, for he stood near the door and had—no doubt intentionally—obscured himself behind Leonidas.

“Mr. Lavien, I’ve indicated our conversations were finished.” She turned to me. “I would never have called upon you if I had known you were an associate of this gentleman.”

“We never met before tonight,” I assured her, “and though I owe him a debt, if he is odious to you, I shall remove him at once.” I did not know how I would do such a thing, but I hoped he would not take too much offense at my offering to do so.

She forced a smile. “He is not odious, merely persistent, which can be rather tiresome.”

Lavien bowed. “I do not mean to be so, but I serve a demanding master.”

“Hamilton is your burden to bear, not mine,” said Mrs. Pearson. “And Captain Saunders, you have obviously had a difficult night and would be much better served by going home and resting. I am a silly woman to have begun this business, and I hope you will forgive me.”

“I will forgive you,” I said, “as long as you are being perfectly direct.”

She looked away. “Of course I am.”

“Then why,” asked Mr. Lavien, “did you wonder if Captain Saunders’s injuries were the result of your attempt to enlist his help?”

“I said no such thing,” she said to him.

It was true that she had not, but she had certainly implied it. It was clear, however, that she did not wish us to stay and that no amount of badgering was going to alter her opinion on the matter. There would be time for further contact.

As though seeing my thoughts, Mrs. Pearson retreated a few steps. “I must ask you to leave, Captain Saunders, and not return.”

“Very well.” I thought it wisest to agree as quickly as possible before promises were extracted. The more said, the less able I would be later to pretend to have misunderstood. “Come, Mr. Lavien. We need not belabor the point.”

I held the door open for Lavien and Leonidas and turned back for one last look. “Good night, Mrs. Pearson.”

“Good night,” she said. She caught her breath, as if to say something more, but stopped herself. She blinked once and looked at me very directly. “And, Captain Saunders, it is good, very good, to see you again.”

Was it my imagination, or was there something pleading in her tone, in her looks? I did not think she longed for me or my company but for something else, to communicate something of import. I had loved her father as though he were my own, and he and I had been brought low together because of Alexander Hamilton. I had loved her, and perhaps still did, and now she was married to another man. Those children in the house, sleeping their quiet childish dreams, were meant to be my children. I could not have her or this life, but if she were in danger I meant to resolve it, and I pitied anyone who would stand in my way. I was not like Mr. Lavien, capable of miraculous feats of martial prowess, but I had my own methods, my own tricks, and I was eager to use them.

Joan Maycott

Autumn 1788

A
ndrew and I married. Not immediately, of course, for there was all that courting to tend to, which was interesting and emotionally rewarding enough that I did not wish to rush it, particularly not when it produced such excellent notes in my journal. All those sweet and awkward moments wanted describing: the long talks; the vibrancy of stolen moments in barns, and kitchens, and under a vast summer sky. I enjoyed one marvelous first after another. Less enjoyable, but perhaps equally novelistic, was the tedious gatherings of our families, full of forced conversation and compliments on cheeses and pastries, the excellence of eggs or the sweetness of apples. My mother, delighted at the prospect that I should marry into such a family, with so handsome a man, snapped at me constantly to remove my nose from my books and cease my endless writing in my journal. Andrew, however, loved me for these things. He admired my learning and my ambition. My mother said I was being foolish, for Americans—and particularly American girls—do not write novels. Why, Andrew asked her, should his Joan not be the first? This was a new beginning for a new country, and there was no reason I could not be the foremost woman of letters in the new republic.

At first I worried that I had somehow tricked Andrew into offering to marry me, that I had been too forward with him, that I had confused his emotions. Time, however, soothed these fears. He would greet me always with a decorative carving or a piece of jewelry he had made for me, a bouquet of flowers or even, on occasion, a new ribbon with which to trim a hat. At family gatherings he would contrive some means to secrete me alone, if only for a minute, to steal a kiss, full of passion and desire and a yearning to have me to himself, to take from me all I would yield. When we parted, I saw the yearning in his eyes, and I felt it too. I had begun my dealings with Andrew as a kind of girlish experiment, but it had changed, truly changed, into womanly love.

We spent two years in courtship, attending family gatherings, dinners, and dances in town, once he was able to make do without the cane, though he continued to limp in damp weather or when much put upon. Concerns of money wanted sorting, but his parents did not insist upon a dowry that my family could not afford, for they saw his affection for me and were content that their boy, who had seen so much horror in the war, should enjoy a portion of happiness.

Andrew was the third of three sons and so was not to inherit his family’s farm. This fact caused him some sadness, for he loved to work the land. He had spent little time in cities, but what he knew of them he did not like. Yet I, for my part, had always longed for city life, though I knew it only from novels, and it was my firm opinion that we should move to New York. Prejudices from the war, when New York was the British capital, colored Andrew’s opinion, and he at first resisted, but he had never been an unreasonable man. We were only six weeks married when we arrived in New York City, where Andrew hoped to set himself up as a carpenter—a trade he knew well from the farm and which he had honed during the war, building bunkers and fortifications and redoubts, and then, once he had studied under more capable men, furnishings for officers’ tents.

Our plans met with trouble almost from the first. We had less money than would have been ideal for such a venture, and we could not afford to live in any of the charming old Dutch homes off the Broad Way. Instead, we rented a house between the Collect Pond and Peck’s Slip. This was low-lying land, inhabited by immigrants and the desperate. The streets were muddy, often choked with dead dogs and cats. The horses did not last long before they were stripped of their hide and flesh and hooves. Sometimes, when it was dry, piles of bones could be found stacked alongside the decaying wooden houses. When it was wet, the streets were thick rivers of slow-moving mud that flooded our house. It was a poor place for a carpentry shop, but we could pay for no better. We had, however, our own house and our privacy, and though we could afford only the scrawniest of chickens and the thinnest of cheeses, we made do, happy to be alone and together.