The Messenger Read online

  Cursing myself as a fool, I tugged on my breeches and pulled on my coat.

  I arranged with Bartholomew to deliver the bag of grain for Hannah to Pennington House. I took myself out, as was my habit, in between the service of dinner and the preparation for supper. My steps were listless, my direction aimless. My phantom of a hand was still with me. It surprised me still that when I looked down, I could not see it hanging out from beneath my cuff. Though had I seen it, I might have cut it off to spare myself such torture.

  When Hannah Sunderland approached, I was immune to her finer qualities. ’Tis possible that I might have even glared at her.

  She gave the impression of smiling, though she wasn’t. It had to do with her eyes and the way they glowed. “I’ve news!”

  “Then spill it quickly. I haven’t much time.”

  The glow in her eyes turned into a bright, hot flame. And it was directed straight at me. “Thee needn’t be so cross. I’ve done nothing thee cannot approve of. And they moved Robert to a different room; he’s with William Addison now.”

  I found myself waiting for an expression of gratitude, which she did not know to offer. I’d confused my twisted lie with the truth. Feeling foolish made me churlish. “Excellent. And you delivered the message.”

  “I did.”

  I nodded. At least she’d finally got one thing right. “Next time you visit, ask how far they’ve dug that tunnel.”

  She put a hand to my arm. “I thank thee.”

  I shook it off. “For what?”

  “For the grain. And for including Robert in the plan.”

  That, I could take some credit for. But I didn’t. I turned on my heel and walked away. My armless arm was throbbing and stopping to talk to Hannah had only increased the pain.

  Walking down the street, I paused in front of the tailor’s shop and surveyed his wares. John was right. Yellow was in fashion. And apparently so was blue. I used to care about such things.

  The tailor spied me in the window. Waved at me to come in.

  When I did not do his bidding, he opened the door for me himself.

  “I’ve come to a decision, Mr. Jones. If you’re going to continue to frequent this place, then you’re going to have to order a new suit of clothes. Or two. I can’t have you standing about in coats ten years old. You’ll scare my clients away.”

  He pulled me into the shop, took out a measure, and started to work. Grunting, he assessed the span of my shoulders.

  I struggled to hold myself straight.

  “Nothing like a suit of new clothes to improve the man. I’m surprised those you wear haven’t fallen apart.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I wear at the King’s Arms. No one can see through all that smoke in the dim light.”

  “But they can see you when you walk the streets . . . a certain girl best of all.” He winked as he said it.

  I batted his hand away from my waist. “She’s Quaker.”

  He shrugged. “And so were the Chews and the Shippens. But they aren’t now.”

  “Just between you and me . . .” Should I tell him? He’d gotten out of the spying business, hadn’t he? But why should there not be one person besides me who knew the truth of it? He’d put his measure away and was intent upon making notations in a book.

  “You’ll need a new waistcoat, a new coat, and new breeches. And some new shirts as well.”

  “The old ones do just fine.”

  He pulled at my arm and revealed the worn edge at the turn of my cuff. “Just fine for a beggar. Which you decidedly are not.”

  The tavern was doing a brisk business. It was frequented by soldiers who paid for their drink with gold. Doing well? I was doing spectacularly. “There’s no reason for extravagance.”

  “What’s your hesitation, man? Most men in your situation would be proclaiming their status all over town! And if you did, you’d soon be invited to the finest tables and the best parties.”

  “They don’t interest me.”

  “They used to.”

  Aye. They had. Back when I was intent upon amassing money and status. But now I had what I needed. I didn’t want anything from society anymore.

  His face softened, and he looked at me from beneath his brow, lips pursed. “I can make you a coat that won’t keep sliding from your shoulder.”

  “To remind people of all that I have lost?”

  “You do your best to remind them anyway.” He straightened my collar as he spoke and put me all back together. “I would suggest something in yellow.”

  “Please. By all means, so I’ll stand out among this crowd like some canary bird. Then they can all look on as I go about my spying business.”

  “Ah. ’Tis what a man might think. But the British are funny that way. They’ll never expect treachery of a man who dresses himself in the latest of modes. They can bring themselves to do nothing but admire him. Whereas a man wearing a suit of clothes a decade old . . . well, the best to be expected of him is treason. They mock us colonials, you know.”

  I knew.

  “I’m not talking about clothes, Mr. Jones. I am speaking of strategies.”

  He was wise, even if he was a peacock. I let him talk me into three new suits. One of a color he kept calling English blue, one of some sort of green, and one of bright yellow. He sent me on my way many pounds poorer and with the suggestion of seeing a wigmaker.

  17

  Hannah

  It was my third visit to the jail in as many weeks. I was wearing an extra pair of hose and had a bag of barley suspended, in a sling that Doll had fashioned, beneath my petticoats. Within my basket were nestled a wedge of cheese and a small pot of butter. I was hoping to buy some extra time from the guards.

  The first of them took the cheese. The second, the butter. I waited, with as much patience as I could muster, outside the cell door in the hall.

  “Robert Sunderland.” The guard cracked the door.

  A rustling came from inside, but no reply.

  “Robert Sunderland!”

  A faint, piteous cry rose up.

  “Let me go in.”

  The guard shook his head and then spit into the room. “I can’t do that.”

  “Let me in!”

  “Can’t. No mixing with the prisoners allowed.”

  Far more concerned about Robert than my own safety, I pushed past the guard into the room. Stepped right over men lying on the floor until I reached the safety of the far wall. I doubted the guard would want to come in after me. But as I exulted in evading the British guard, I realized I had landed myself in the middle of a den of rebels. I shivered.

  “Come out!”

  “I will not.”

  He looked around, the same as I did, and he must have come to the same conclusion. None of the men seemed to pose any threat. Of the ten . . . twenty . . . that I counted, more than half were prostrate. The others sat hunched against the walls with seemingly very little inclination to do anything at all but try to keep themselves warm.

  The guard swore and then drew the door shut, locking it behind him.

  “Robert?” I could not see well enough to make out features in that dingy, gloomy place.

  “Hannah?” A spindly arm reached out toward me from the floor.

  I knelt beside him and put my hand to his forehead. He was hot and his hair was dampened with sweat. “Robert?” I could not keep the fear from my voice.

  “It’s the putrid fever.” The voice came from over against the wall. “That’s what they all have.”

  “All?”

  “All the men lying on the floor.”

  “It’s my head, Hannah. It hurts so badly.”

  I pulled at the knot of my cloak. Removing it from my shoulders, I rolled it into a pillow and then eased it beneath his head.

  “. . . so thirsty.”

  “Is there no ale?” I could hardly see in the dim light.

  “No.” That same voice again.

  “Water?”

  “None.”

&n
bsp; “Then thee should ask for some!” Weren’t these the same sort of people that had arrested my father? What had become of their boldness? I reached out a hand to the man lying beside Robert. I felt his forehead and then that of the man beside him. “They’re all burning with fever. They need broth. And some bread.” I appealed to that faceless voice by the wall.

  “You can ask, but you won’t receive.”

  Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? “Is there a jug?”

  “By the door.”

  I rose, stepping over the men as I made my way to the door. When I found the jug, it was empty. “Keeper!”

  I heard the scrape of a chair down at the far end of the hall.

  “Keeper!”

  “I’m coming.” He didn’t come quickly and he seemed to take great pleasure in stopping to pound upon all the other doors along the way. At last I heard the jingle of a key and the rasping of the bolt against its hasp.

  “So you’re done, then. Didn’t last long. What did I tell ye?”

  “Bring me some ale or some water.”

  “Water! And who do you think you are? Queen Charlotte? If those rebels want water, then they’ll have to get it themselves. That’s what the agreement is. Each army provides for its own.”

  I pushed him aside, stalked down the hall, and shoved aside the chair he’d been sitting on. When the other guard pulled the door open, I exchanged the prisoners’ empty jug for his own.

  “Wait—what? Stop there! You can’t—that’s mine!”

  “There are twenty prisoners down that hall who don’t have a drop of anything to drink and they’re burning with fever. They can’t go fetch what they need. Thee can.”

  “But—”

  I didn’t wait for his reply but marched back down the hall.

  “Hey! That’s me jug!”

  The second guard stumbled to keep up with me. “You can’t go in there.”

  “I just did.”

  “I’m not supposed to let you.”

  “Thee already did.”

  “You can’t be with the prisoners.”

  “Open the door.” I might have considered breaking the jug over his head, but Robert needed the water more than the guard needed sense.

  He fumbled with the keys, glaring at me as he opened it, but open it he did.

  I set the jug on the ground and knelt beside Robert. “I’ve some drink for thee.” There was nothing in that cesspool of a room to use to cool his face, so I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, wet the hem, and daubed the sweat from his forehead.

  I moved around the room, helping the sick prisoners to drink before I offered water to those sitting along the wall. By then there was little left. And by the time I had washed the faces of the ill, my handkerchief was warm from their heat and plenty soiled.

  With Robert resting easier, I turned my attentions to the escape. “Where is William Addison?”

  One of the men at the wall made a feeble movement. “I’m here.” The owner of the voice that had been answering me from the shadows. His red-rimmed eyes squinting, he winced as he stepped into meager light that filtered down from the window. He was paler than he ought to have been and he favored one of his legs as he stepped toward me. The tattered tails of his shirt hung low.

  He straightened as he approached, though the effort seemed to cause no little pain. “Forgive me, miss. I would’ve liked to have dressed for entertaining.”

  “Thee mustn’t—”

  “But we ate the last of my breeches on Thursday.”

  “Ate—?”

  “Don’t worry yourself. They were buckskin. You could close your eyes and almost imagine it for salt pork. Except we didn’t have no salt.”

  Another man laughed, though I had found no humor in William Addison’s words.

  “And it wasn’t pork either.”

  I lowered my voice as I gathered my skirts and stepped close. Tried not to react to the foul odor that had rolled from his mouth. “How does work go on the tunnel?”

  “The tunnel!” He snorted. “Look around you, miss. Over half my men are down with the fever. The other half are near to dead of hunger.”

  “Thee mean to say that . . . ?”

  “We have not begun.”

  They had not even begun! But . . . “Thee are already nearly a month behind!”

  “A month behind. What do you think it’s like in here? There are no days or weeks or months. There’s only eternity. And we live it one agony at a time. This is forever.”

  “No.” No. I would not let it be forever. Robert had to escape, and he needed these men in order to do it. “What do thee need? If thee had the men, what else would thee need to accomplish the work?”

  “What do . . . ?” He looked at me as if my language were incomprehensible.

  “What do thee need? I can try to get it for thee.” What would men have to have in order to dig? “A shovel? Or a pick?”

  He laughed outright. The light slicing through the shards of the window made a grid of his face. “We need food. And some blankets. We need wood for a fire. If you want us to pick up a shovel, you’re going to have to keep us alive long enough to do it.”

  “Time’s up!” I could hear the jangle of the guard’s keys as he neared the door.

  I pressed the handkerchief into William Addison’s hand and took one last look at Robert. Stay thee alive. Before the door clanged shut, I looked back and had one last glimpse of those piteous, miserable faces.

  I’d thought I had saved Robert when I’d agreed to carry messages into the jail. I hadn’t counted on him getting sick. I needed to find a way to keep him alive until the tunnel was finished, and in order to do that I had to make sure it got started.

  Doll was waiting for me at the corner. She stepped from the shadows at my approach, making a face that I soon realized had to do with the filth that ringed the hem of my skirts, and the number of things that I no longer had in my possession.

  “Where’s your cloak?”

  My cloak could not matter. “They’ve next to nothing to eat in there. Still!” How had they survived this long?

  “You surprised at that?”

  “How can General Howe incarcerate prisoners and then not feed them?”

  “The same way you people make folks work and then not pay them.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t say nothing.” She fell into step just behind my elbow with a dour twist to her lips.

  “My family doesn’t own any slaves.”

  “And yet you still manage to use one.”

  I blushed at her accusation, for it was nothing but the truth. I might not own Doll, but I was the beneficiary of her aid. Without her I could do none of what I had done. But the truth demanded an accounting. If our Meeting had chosen to take a stand against slavery, then I must attempt to hold with it in the letter as well as in the spirit. “Thee are right. This should not be. I will not require thy service any longer.”

  “Davy sure do. And so do Mrs. Pennington.”

  Even if I were to use Doll, what I was asking her to do was far beyond the bounds of what my aunt would condone. Far beyond what I would ever ask of any free woman or any friend. “But they would not require thee to aid me in these endeavors. In fact, they would insist, and quite rightly, that thee not. I must honor my beliefs and theirs as well. When I leave the house to come here on seventh days, I insist that thee not come with me.”

  “Well, now.” She cocked her head as she looked at me. “What you going to do when your mama find out what you’re about?”

  “I shall tell her the truth.”

  She smiled. “I like to see that.”

  “I will.” I knew I would have to sooner if not later, for the truth was always bound to come out. “And I shall tell thee too, right now. I am helping my brother, and several of the other prisoners, to escape.”

  She began to laugh. And then she began to howl. “I never heard nothing funnier than that!” she said at last, swiping at her tears with the cor
ner of her apron.

  “I am.”

  She put a hand to her waist. “How?”

  We had not yet got so far from the jail that I felt safe in talking. “I would rather tell thee later.”

  “Well, this slave has had enough of your foolishness. You can tell me now or you can tell Davy later. It make no matter to me.”

  “I’m carrying messages—”

  “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How you carrying those messages?”

  “In my pocket.” I put a hand to it as I spoke.

  “In your pocket! Just waiting for someone to take them out and read them?”

  “I pass them to the person in the jail.”

  She muttered something under her breath. Shook her head. “You need me to make you some secret place to put those. Someplace they ain’t never going to find it. And how are they going to get out of that jail? With those guards walking all around?”

  “They’re going to dig a tunnel.”

  “A tunnel! With what? A teaspoon?” I heard what she muttered that time. “Lord have mercy! You folks is madder than Moses!”

  It was mad. As well as terrifyingly dangerous. And Doll was entirely right not to want any part in it. “So thee see why I have to keep on visiting. It’s the only way to ensure that my brother escapes.”

  “Oh, I can see why. I can see things getting a lot more worse before they start to get any better. That’s for sure.”

  “But I don’t want thee to help me. I can choose whether to place myself in danger, but thee cannot.”

  “Oh, I’ll help you. It’s the funniest thing I ever heard, you being a spy an’ all.”

  “Hush!”

  “Don’t you worry none. No one would believe me if I told them!”

  “Thee can’t tell—”

  “I won’t. You with your proper ways and your strange ideas. And besides, you don’t know the difference between what’s true and what’s truth. I’ll help you. Someone gots to. If you want to keep alive.”

  I didn’t know whether I should be insulted or encouraged at her words. But I put aside my feelings for more important matters. “I need to get them more food.”