The Messenger Page 22

“Caught what?”

  “The putrid fever.”

  She frowned. “No.”

  “If there is, just say . . . that it’s going around.” He eyed me. “No one knows I wrote that pass. I want to keep it that way.”

  I certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  Miss Pennington pouted. “Don’t you trust me?”

  He smiled. “Not for a moment.” He pulled her hand up around his arm. “Shall we dance?”

  They walked off and left me in my chair against the wall, planning what I was going to tell Hannah when I saw her the next afternoon.

  Whatever words I’d had failed me as Miss Pennington left me alone in that bedroom. Hannah was so very ill. Why had no one warned me! Her face was pallid. Dark circles had made ashen hollows where her eyes had once been. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. She was sleeping. And peacefully, by the sound of it. She didn’t need me to interrupt her. I turned toward the door.

  “Jeremiah.” Her whisper reached out and touched my heart.

  I turned back toward the bed.

  She reached out a hand to me.

  I took it up as I sat in a chair beside her bed. “They told me you have the fever.”

  She tried to smile. “It doesn’t feel like it. I’m so cold.” She was quivering beneath her blanket. I looked around for another one, but there were none. I took off my blue-colored coat and laid it atop her.

  Tears began to seep from her eyes.

  “No. Don’t! Don’t cry.” I hadn’t planned on her crying. I didn’t know what to say now. She’d always been one to berate me. If only she’d yell at me, I’d know exactly what to do.

  “Thee are such a gentleman.”

  Her small hand was so cold. I wished I had another to cup it in. “Not such a gentleman as you’d think.” I had too many thoughts in my head to be accused of that particular vice. They mostly had to do with her soft, lovely eyes. And her mouth.

  “I mean . . . thee are not a Friend.”

  I’d been accused of that before and I had tired of it. “And neither are thee!”

  She smiled. Or tried to.

  “I mean: neither are you.”

  She frowned, making me want nothing so much as to smooth her cares away. “I meant to say, there is no peace about thee.”

  “There will be once the British leave.” I had tried to make her smile, but I failed.

  “ ’Tis not a lack of opportunity. ’Tis a lack of . . . of . . . serenity.”

  “But we’re the same, you and I. Outcasts. You don’t have your faith anymore, and I . . .” Well. Enough said about me.

  Tears had made a trail from her cheek to her neck. “We are not the same at all. A woman of peace persuaded to join a rebellion, and a man of war frustrated because he must use less violent means.”

  “But—”

  “I feel nothing but confusion when thee are near.” She said it as if she wished it weren’t so. And those pitiable tears kept coming. If her hand weren’t so cold, I might have let go of it to fish for my handkerchief.

  “Truly? I’d thought . . . I mean . . . since I’ve known you . . . I feel much less troubled.”

  “Then I am glad.” She glanced away. Sighed and closed her eyes.

  This was it? This was all the time there was? But there was so much more to be said! Only . . . what should I say first? Should I tell her how much I depended upon her? How proud I was of her? How she was the finest woman I’d ever had the chance to meet? Should I thank her for making me feel like I could be more instead of less? For making me think I could be a man again? Perhaps . . . I should just start with the truth. “I love you, Hannah Sunderland.”

  Her only response was a dainty snore. Then a soft sigh.

  “I love you.” I’d spoken those words but once and now the only thing I wanted to do was repeat them forever. I watched her sleep, keeping her hand warm until Miss Pennington came for me.

  That night, for the first time in a long time, I prayed. I even knelt beside my bed to do it. I was hoping God might tolerate a prayer from me if it was on behalf of someone like Hannah Sunderland.

  Please help no harm come to her. On account of me.

  Because that wouldn’t be fair. Of all the injustices in the world, that would be the worst. That a woman like her would pay the price for a wretch like me.

  We are not the same at all.

  She was right. We weren’t. But she was only looking at the places we’d come from. I was more interested in the place we’d gotten to. It’s not that she didn’t love me. Not necessarily. And it’s not that she didn’t want me. It’s that she wanted her religion more. But, dash it! Couldn’t she see she didn’t have it anyway? She may have been a Quaker once, but she wasn’t a Quaker anymore. I sighed, thinking of her small, cold hand in mine. Thinking of how I’d wished I could do more than just sit beside her bed and hold it.

  Who did I think I was, hoping for some kind of ordinary life? I was no longer an ordinary man. But dash it again! She’d made me hope. Made me believe. If she’d been a man, I’d have made her answer for it. But she was just a small, pretty, indescribably infuriating . . . possibly dying . . . woman. And she held my heart between those small, chill hands.

  33

  Hannah

  I was ill with the putrid fever for a week. Even when I was awake, I had the impression that I was dreaming. I kept catching the scent of Jeremiah at the oddest of times, and I could not seem to shake the impression that he was holding my hand. Seventh day came far too quickly.

  When I tried to rise from bed that afternoon, a sweat broke out behind my ears and my legs threatened to collapse beneath me. It took most of my strength to creep down the back stair. The little left me was nearly used up in my search for Doll.

  As soon as I found her, she put an arm about my waist and turned me right around. “It’s not my place to tell you no, miss, but that’s what I’m telling you. You can’t be going back to that jail. Not after you just got done with the fever.”

  “I have to go, Doll.”

  “You don’t got to do anything.”

  “I want to go.” I truly did, but my body didn’t seem to understand what my head wanted it to do.

  “What happens if you catch that fever again?”

  “If I don’t go, then who will?” What if the men needed something? Or what if General Washington wanted to pass them a message? Worse, if I didn’t go, the guards might discover that Robert had died. I took a cautious step forward. I should go; the men needed the food. But I was so terribly tired.

  “You don’t look well.”

  “I don’t feel well.”

  Doll stepped back toward the house and tried to take me with her. “The only place you going is back to bed.”

  “I have to go.” I tried to wrest my arm from her, but I didn’t have the strength. “Please!”

  She gave me a long look and then she sighed as she threaded her arm through my own. “If you going down in there, then I’m going too.”

  I might have argued with her, but I couldn’t find the words. When we got to the jail, I showed my pass to the guard. But this time, instead of waiting, Doll walked up the steps with me. I tried to free my arm. “I don’t think—”

  “I don’t think you should be doing this at all, and look where all that thinking got me.”

  I showed the pass to the guard stationed in the hallway and he opened the door to the basement stair. I started down, Doll holding on to my arm, but he stopped her.

  “The pass is only for Miss Sunderland.”

  “Who is sick as a dog and ought to be in bed right now, only she think her brother is going to starve to death unless she feed him. So if you’re going to let her go down there, you might as well let me, because sure enough it’ll be me carrying her all the way back home. You want to do that?”

  He frowned as he scratched at his jaw. Finally he nodded toward the stair and let us both go down.

  The guard at the bottom brightened when he saw me. “You’
re late. I thought you weren’t coming today.”

  “She shouldn’t have, she’s that sick.” Though Doll was muttering, she made sure I heard her well enough.

  I removed the cloth that covered my basket and held out a wedge of cheese, but when the guard moved to take it, Doll slapped his hand away. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking food from the mouths of those poor souls! Either you about to have a child or you been eating somebody else’s food atop your own.”

  The guard stood there, mouth flapping open. I might have enjoyed the sight if I hadn’t been so bone-achingly weary.

  “You going to let her see her brother or would you rather watch her faint right here?”

  “I—”

  “Go on!” She gestured toward the door even as she supported me with her arm.

  The guard let us through, and the second guard took us down to Robert’s room.

  “Lord have mercy.” Doll clung to me as if afraid she might be left behind.

  William Addison came right up to me as we entered. “You look . . . are you all right?”

  “I’ve had the putrid fever.” And if the lightness in my head were any indication, I had it still. I’d forgotten just how terrible the stench and the squalor were at the jail. Now that I knew about Robert, I could discern the smell of death as well. Over in the corner, where none of the men sat, I heard a scrabbling in the straw. Doll must have heard it too, for she stepped even closer to me.

  I handed my basket to William Addison and whispered into his ear as he took it. “Is the tunnel almost done?”

  He sighed. “We thought so. But that candle of yours showed us we were digging in the wrong direction. We’d turned ourselves around and headed back for the jail. Tunnel caved in twice more. We lost two men and we’ve twenty-five feet still to dig.”

  Twenty-five! “But thee have only five more weeks.”

  “We’re digging as fast as we can.”

  “That night is thy best chance at escape.” It was perhaps their only chance at escape.

  “Don’t you think I know that!”

  I began to frown, but then winced at the headache it induced.

  “They sent that provost away. Gave us a new one.”

  “Is he . . . ?”

  “He’s better than the other.”

  God be praised.

  He glanced away over my shoulder at Doll and then leaned closer still. “Do you think you could pass a message for me?”

  Today? I could barely manage to keep myself standing.

  “If they could give us even a couple more days . . .”

  I didn’t know how they could, but there could be no harm in asking.

  “That’s some evil place!” Doll paused as we left the building and spit on the steps twice.

  “Which is why I have to help them escape.”

  “They’s death down there. I could smell it. And you’ve been going there every week!” She shook her head as if such a thing were unthinkable.

  “Could thee . . . ?” I held out the basket toward her. That was the sign for Jeremiah. I had to leave the message today; I didn’t know if I would be well enough to do it tomorrow.

  She took the basket from me as she took my arm. “We got to get you right home and back to your bed.”

  “I have to go by the bookseller’s.” Though it was just down the street, it seemed as if it were ten miles away.

  “Don’t make me say what I’m not allowed to say. You know I’ll say it! You don’t have to do nothing but sleep.”

  “I don’t—I mean—” I let her trundle me down the street. Halfway to the bookseller’s I realized I had nothing to write a message on or with. So we walked by both the bookseller’s and the King’s Arms, Doll carrying my basket and me hanging on to her arm.

  Once we got back to Pennington House, she helped me out of my soiled gown and then into a clean one. Somehow she pushed me into the house and pulled me up the back stair. And then—finally—I was able to collapse onto my bed.

  I did not leave it for two days.

  Life went on around me. I heard the children patter up and down the hall. I heard Polly come and go. One night I even heard shouting from the dining room, but I could not bring myself to care what it was about. Later, Aunt and Uncle stopped in the hall outside the bedroom door.

  “If it weren’t for you, I would toss him out into the street!” Uncle sounded more angry than I had ever before heard him. “If he landed on his head and it knocked some gratitude into him, so much the better!”

  Aunt made some soothing sounds.

  “A man ought not be proselytized in his own home!”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s not to be borne. And not by those self-satisfied Quakers. They’ve never liked me, and Sunderland is the worst of them all!”

  “They couldn’t see what I did. They didn’t know you like I did.”

  There was a long pause in which nothing was said at all. And then finally: “I was never good enough for him. I own more ships than anyone in the colonies, and I’m still not good enough for him . . . for them.”

  “You’re good enough for me. Come.”

  Their footsteps continued on down the hall, but I must have fallen asleep, for I never heard them come back.

  On the fifth day I awoke to the spatter of raindrops on the window. I rose without any ache in my head and dressed without any pain in my limbs. I felt as if the power to live had been granted me once more.

  After breakfasting with the others, I caught Doll in the hall. “I need to go out this afternoon.”

  “Only place you’re going is back to your bed.”

  “I have to leave a message for Jeremiah Jones.”

  She frowned. “This about those prisoners?”

  “Yes. Can thee meet me at quarter until four?”

  She didn’t answer one way or another, but she did meet me out in the garden. She took my basket from me without my even asking and she took up my arm in hers.

  “I’m fine.” I tried to free myself from her.

  “You not fine until I say you fine.” She screwed up her mouth in that obstinate way of hers and didn’t say another word as we walked to the bookseller’s.

  I had feared that Jeremiah might not see us, but he was outside the tavern when we passed. He even touched his hand to his hat. A smile might have betrayed me and I know for certain that a flush lit my cheeks.

  There were several customers at the store when we entered. I tried to be as unobtrusive as I could, but when I asked for Aeneid, I felt as if I had shouted my request.

  “Aeneid?” Did he have to repeat it? “Let me see . . .” I watched as he tapped several books on the spine. “Ah! Here it is.”

  Pretending to admire its cover, I turned it over to look at its back. When the bookseller returned to help one of his other customers, I slipped my message inside the leaves. When I felt enough time had passed, I laid it on the counter and smiled my thanks at the man.

  Doll lit into me the moment I joined her on the street. “Now. We going right back to the house and you going back to your bed. But the next time you get up, you gots to get your father to stop doing all those things he been doing.”

  “What’s he been doing?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Only trying to help Davy and I do our jobs. He tried to serve the mister and missus their dinners the other night. Only he broke Mrs. Pennington’s good china—again—while he did it. And then Mister shouted at him that if he going to live in the house, he got to respect the way of the house.”

  “He’s only doing what he does because he believes that thee—and all the others—should be freed.”

  “He entitled to his opinion, but he got no right to make life harder for us.”

  “He’s not trying to make it harder! He’s trying to make it easier.” I put a hand up to my head as I spoke. That throbbing pain was returning.

  “He’s no servant, that’s for sure. We had to re-do everything he been doing. It made the work twice as
hard.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

  “Don’t matter what he mean. What matters is what is. You remember when he want to pay us all?”

  I nodded.

  “What do you think Mister did after that?”

  It must have been something terrible from the way Doll was looking at me. “He did something?”

  “He get after us about who it was complained to your father that we ought to get paid.”

  “But that was Father’s own idea!”

  “That’s right. But that’s not what Mister think. You tell your father to stop meddling in other people’s work.” She was shaking her finger at me. “It’s not right.”

  “He didn’t mean to meddle. He was only trying to do his fair share. Everybody’s work increased when we moved in.” I knew Father’s ways were wearing on Uncle Edward’s nerves, but I didn’t understand why Doll seemed so set against him. He was only trying to help them.

  “We don’t need no more slaves. We got enough slaves already. He got to mind his own work while we mind ours.”

  “I didn’t realize—”

  “That’s how you folks always are. You look at us and you think we poor Negroes. That we don’t know what we want. Well, we people too! And it don’t help to have you folks pretend to be something you not. You be who you are and we be who we are. Sometimes you can’t do for others. They got to figure out how to do for themselves.”

  We walked on in silence while I considered her words. I came to the conclusion that she didn’t know what she was talking about. How could any slave not want help? How could any person not want to be freed?

  34

  Jeremiah

  Thank you, God!

  I’d seen Hannah pass on the street three days before. Though the Negro woman had carried her basket, she’d left no message at the bookseller’s. If truth be known, I’d almost forgotten to go to the bookseller’s altogether, so pleased was I to see her out walking. Polly had told me she’d recovered, but I hadn’t dared to believe it until that moment.