The Messenger Read online

  Even if he were, no Friend would go. It was forbidden. To aid a soldier in any way was to support his cause and that we could not do. Our sole purpose was peace and the capacity of man to maintain it. Yet what if Robert had been wounded? Surely an exception could be made in that case, couldn’t it? To be so set on peace in a time of strife was a terrible trial to the soul.

  “They say the prisoners are starving . . .” Sobs overcame her words.

  “Surely they’re not starving. General Howe could not refuse them food.” Could he?

  “I don’t know what to hope for. Not now.”

  Hope. A good Friend would hope that through this tribulation Robert would come to his senses, renounce his actions, and return to the faith. But a sister, or a true friend, would hope—pray, even—that Providence would allow him some sort of comfort or some kind of mercy. That he might receive no penalty, no punishment for his sins. But what sort of sister or friend could pray for mercy when the soul was in danger of eternal damnation? “It will turn out. All will be well.” I took Betsy’s face between my hands and kissed her on both cheeks.

  She held up a trembling hand to mine. “All will be well?”

  “Aye. Thee will see.”

  “I just . . . I don’t know what to think.” She seized my hand and squeezed it before giving me a tremulous smile as she turned to leave.

  “What can he be thinking?” Father had roared the words across the table last autumn after reading the letter Robert had left behind when he’d joined the rebels. Once he had flung it from his hand, Mother hastily pulled it from the table. It had disappeared into her lap. “Of all the foolish—” He pushed to his feet and stalked from the room, leaving his chair upturned in his wake.

  I knew what Robert had been thinking. I knew exactly why it was that he had gone.

  It had to do with Fanny Pruitt.

  We had fled the city for the summer house the spring past because Father had thought it safer. And it had been for us. But not for Fanny, the hired kitchen girl. One morning when he’d gone out to saddle his horse, Robert had found her, bloodied and beaten, hiding in the stables. He’d coaxed her into the house and enlisted me to tend to her.

  She would not speak—and never did speak so far as I knew—about what had befallen her. But as her belly had swelled with child toward summer’s end, it became quite clear what had happened. And the fits she went into whenever she saw a British soldier pass by on the road told us who had done it. We couldn’t keep her in service, of course, though Robert had protested strenuously against Father’s dismissal of her. When we had moved back to the city in August, someone else had been found to replace her.

  It was Fanny Pruitt who had made Robert take up the rebels’ cause as his own.

  I knew what he was thinking; I’d always known what he was thinking. At nineteen years, his decision wasn’t a rebellion of youth and it wasn’t a fascination with arms or some misguided search for adventure. It wasn’t any of the things that the Friends in Meeting had later decided upon in explanation.

  I knew the reason was Fanny, because he had told me so.

  “I heard it, Hannah. That night I heard her. There was a terrible mewling outside as if some poor kitten had gotten lost and couldn’t find its way back to its mother. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t do anything about it. I’m a Friend; I’m not supposed to. I pulled my pillow over my head and willed myself back to sleep.” He spoke the words with a regret sharpened by guilt.

  I laid a hand on his arm. “It’s not thy fault, Robert. It wasn’t thee that—”

  “Did it?” He looked at me with eyes just as gray as my own. “No. But what am I to do now? How am I to look at her? How can I walk by Fanny Pruitt every day of my life knowing what I allowed to happen?” He beseeched me as if I might have some answer. “It isn’t right what those soldiers are doing.”

  Of course, I argued with him. “The rebels do the same. The very same things, Robert. They steal and rape and plunder under protection of the name of General Washington. Thee know that they do.”

  “Aye. But to my way of thinking the British ought to hold themselves to higher standards. They’re here to keep the peace, Hannah. They’re here to enforce the king’s law. If the king doesn’t care that his soldiers molest innocent country girls, if he allows such crimes to go unanswered, then he’s no king for me.”

  “The king doesn’t even know Fanny Pruitt!”

  “But there are ten thousand in these colonies just like her. And if he cannot protect the meek and the poor, then why should I obey him?”

  “Thee cannot just choose whom to serve, Robert! ’Tis treason. And worse, ’tis rebellion!”

  “And what of the king? He’s a tyrant. What of that?”

  I could feel his fury, his outrage, his anger. I had always felt what Robert did. And so I understood that to him, the conflict had become personal. But then he always took everything so personally, as if it were he himself the king had somehow misused. It wasn’t two days later that he slipped out of the house at night. He hadn’t a musket to take with him, but he’d packed what he had: his plain, unadorned coat and his uncocked, wide-brimmed hat. He hadn’t been thinking of kings or war or anything else. He’d been thinking of Fanny Pruitt.

  As I stood there watching Betsy go, I took in a shaky breath of winter air and then gave it back with a swirl of frost. I walked back into the parlor and found the colonel had finally put those long legs of his to use and left us. In his absence, Father had gathered the family together. I sat in a chair, took up little Jonah, and put him on my lap.

  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.<
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  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.

  4

  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.