by David Liss
I shall therefore tell my story and explain how I came to be an enemy to this country and the men who rule her. I do so with the full expectation that even if these words are read, they will find few sympathizers. I will be called a base and treacherous woman, diabolical in my unnatural resistance to the paternity of nation. Even so, there will always be those who have lived through what I have, similar or worse—for I know there is worse—and they will understand. It is small compensation, but there is no other for me.
I was born under the name of Joan Claybrook, and I lived on lands near the town of Albany in New York. My mother was one of six children from a poor family, and my father had come to this country from Scotland an indentured servant, so they set out upon the adventure of life with few advantages. But they struggled, and land was cheap, and by the time of my birth they were possessed of a moiety of property upon which they farmed wheat and barley and raised some cattle, occasionally pigs, and always a prodigious number of fowl. We would never have, and never aspired to, true wealth, but my family had reached a state in which we had no fear of starvation, and, at least before the war, we managed to save more each year than we spent.
I had one older brother and two younger, and, the family being well situated—quite overstocked, really—with heirs and farm hands, my parents, and my brothers too, were most indulgent of my whims. I was disinclined to farmwork and, as the only girl child, found my family tolerant—unwisely tolerant, some would say—of my wishes. It was not that I did not have responsibilities. By my estimate, I had far too many, but they only asked of me what they could not do without. I tended the chickens and collected their eggs. I kept them fed and cleaned their coop. I did a bit of spinning and sewing. Beyond that, I read.
It is to be expected, I suppose, that simple folk such as my parents, who grew up with little more than their letters, who had neither time nor money for reading, would have discouraged these pursuits. Perhaps they ought to have, but they were kind people and they found my love of books and reading charming—perhaps as Dr. Johnson found charming the dog that walked upon its hindquarters. They bought for me what they could and cultivated friendships with people of means in Albany, people who would be willing to lend me books of history and natural philosophy and political economy. I hardly cared what it was, so long as it imparted knowledge. I would sit outside on fair days, by the fire in foul, and I would forget there was a far smaller world around me.
By the time I was twelve I had read Hobbes and Locke and Hume. I knew Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments enough to quote chapter and verse, and his Wealth of Nations nearly so well. I had read Macaulay’s history, and Bolingbroke’s essays, all of The Spectator. I had read—in translation, of course—Herodotus and Thucydides and Homer and Virgil.
My father quizzed me, though he was little read himself. Over meals I would tell him of the follies of Xerxes or of how Zeus suffered when made to stand by, powerless to stop the death of his son Sarpedon. He found these tales—those from classics and histories—far more interesting than the thoughts of Hume or Berkeley, and this desire of his that I tell him stories might have colored his choice of books for me. So it seemed when I was sixteen, and he brought home a book that changed everything. Of course, I knew all about fanciful tales; I had read the epic poems of antiquity, and I had read Milton and Dryden, the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe and Jonson. But this—this was something else entirely.
Even today, though I’ve read it more times than I can count, I sigh a bit to name it. It was called Amelia, and it was a novel. Inevitably, I had come across references to novels in my reading—in magazines and occasionally in pamphlets and works of philosophical discourse—but they were always dismissed as frivolous things for silly women, composed by silly women or disreputable men. So conditioned was I to regard novels as trivial nonsense that when my father put Fielding’s three volumes in my hand, borrowed from a merchant he knew in town, it took considerable will to smile and act, in some small way, appreciative. My efforts proved insufficient, however, for my father’s countenance fell.
“Don’t ye like it?” His eyes went wide and slightly moist. He was a proud man, broad-shouldered, with strong though strangely flat hands and more than his share of physical courage, but he found my reading mysterious and vaguely frightening. I could see he thought he had made a foolish error, embarrassed himself before his clever daughter, perhaps even offended her, or even—for who knew how these matters of books worked?—done her harm.
“I—I don’t know, not having read it,” I said. Then I smiled at him, smiled as he deserved. “I shall let you know anon.”
Had he not looked so sad, I should almost certainly have set it aside as something unworthy of my notice and returned it unread after a few days. Now, however, I felt obligated to give Fielding my attention. So it was I began to read. Perhaps it was my good fortune that the first novel I read should be so unusual of its kind. Novels so often concerned women looking for husbands, but in this book, the principal couple was already married. The hero, William Boothe, endures debt, imprisonment, the temptation of lust, and the guilt of adultery, while Amelia, his loving wife, struggles to preserve her family in the face of ruin and reprobation. I wept for its pathos, and I wept upon its conclusion, not only for the depth of the emotion it produced in me but because it was over.
By the time I finished reading, my father knew he had brought me something I loved. I recall that I sat in the field behind the house, the sun warm though not hot on my face, the completed final volume on my stomach. I stared at the misty blue of the sky, and I had the strangest thought of my life. Never before, as I read books produced by the ancients, books of philosophy or history, essays written by men of this very century, had the notion of writing myself ever possessed me. What could I write about when I knew nothing but what I read? Now everything was different. Why could I not write a novel? I could not hope to produce anything of Amelia’s majesty, but I could surely produce something.
I set my too-willing and indulgent father upon his task. He was to borrow every novel he could find. I read them all: Fielding’s other, lesser works, Joseph Andrew and Tom Jones; Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. I read the bawdy humor of Smollett, the social explorations of Burney and Heywood and Lennox, the sentimental nonsense of Henry Brooke and Henry Mackenzie. I made copious notes on each, quantifying what I loved and what I hated. When my empathy for a character led me to weep or laugh or fear for her safety, I spent hours determining by what means the novelist had effected this magic. When I cared nothing for suffering and loss, I dissected the want of craft that engendered such apathy.
By the time I was seventeen, I believed myself ready to write a novel of my own. The only obstacle was that I had not, myself, experienced enough of the world to describe life with the novelist’s verisimilitude. I had read, but I had not lived. I was determined that I should do so, not only for the sake of my craft but because I was now old enough to understand that books might not, by themselves, be enough for me forever.
One afternoon, near the end of the war, before the peace was made official but subsequent to the surrender of Cornwallis, I was in town with my father and Theodore, my elder brother, when I happened to see a pair of gentlemen emerging from a tailor’s shop. One was older, clearly the father of the younger, for they shared the same long face, patrician nose, and penetrating eyes—though I could not see their color from the distance, I marked their glowing intensity. The younger man moved stiffly and with the aid of a cane. He seemed to wince with each step. Despite these grimaces, however, I knew he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, with his fair hair and kind face, angelic in its proportions, both revealing and reflecting the world around it like a cold, still lake. Granted, when I say his beauty exceeded all others, I own my life had been sheltered, having come of age during a war in which many young men had been off fighting, or hiding that they might not be made to fight, or imprisoned upon suspicion of fighting for the wrong
side. I had not seen many young men, and fewer still in other than a state of desperation, but this one was indeed beautiful, and had I gazed upon a hundred thousand of the finest specimens of the sex, I do not know I should have seen one I liked better.
I asked who he was.
“That,” my brother said, “is Andrew Maycott.”
I remembered him, for their farm was not far from ours. He had been four years younger last I saw him, hardly seventeen, and I had been thirteen, no more interested in men than I was in military tactics. He had matured in those years, and I even more so. Perhaps he felt a stranger’s eyes upon him, for he turned to look at me across the street, and our eyes met. He leaned upon his cane and tipped his hat to me—to us—and I felt—well, I hardly knew what. I became light-headed and weak and terrified, and yet I was determined to know him better.
I thought to speak of it to my father. He was indulgent and should no doubt have done all in his power to arrange a meeting of the Maycotts and our family, but I had no wish for that sort of introduction. I had no mind to make small talk with his farming parents. More to the point, such a conjoining of two farming families did not seem to me sufficiently novel-like, at least not in the best sense. I did not want my story to begin with a quotidian gathering of Squires B, and Western. Far better I should do something of note, something replete with adventure and strong feeling and new sentiment.
To that end I took Atossa, a spotted mare who was my favorite, and rode the five miles to the Maycott farm. Perhaps I ought to have been apprehensive, for I knew what I planned was quite scandalous and would anger my parents. I was calm, however, for even at its worst my parents’ anger was mild, and I spent my time imagining how, when I returned home, I would makes notes that would later provide detail for my novel.
I arrived at the farm and approached the house. The Maycotts had more land and wealth than we did, and if it was not a great deal more, it was enough for them to hold themselves above us and for us to consider ourselves humbled in their presence. The house itself was a large and handsome thing of two stories, all recently whitewashed, neatly tucked in a sheath of sheltering maples. None of us had fared well during the war, for it was hard to profit when there was so little money in circulation, and it was a sorry thing to grow crops when they might be appropriated by the enemy to feed its army or appropriated by our own troops and paid for with worthless promises. Nevertheless, the Maycotts had kept up appearances, and as I approached the house I felt like a frumpy rustic approaching the lord’s manor. My dress, a homespun nut-colored thing, was clean enough, and my plain bonnet was neat and not overly discolored, but indifferent for all that. I had longed for a new ribbon to wear on such an auspicious occasion, but there were no new ribbons to be bought—and if there had been, we would not have had the money. Under my bonnet, such as it was, my mass of unruly brown hair was pinned as neatly as nature and impatience would allow. I had been careful to wash my hands before leaving, and my fingernails were free of dirt.
I had planned a speech to give to the servant who answered the door, but I was never afforded the opportunity. I had not yet knocked when I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned to see Andrew Maycott himself, hand upon his cane, coming with some difficulty up the path.
Leaning upon the cane, he bowed slightly. “Good afternoon, miss.” His smile was correct and polite, and there was nothing ungentlemanly in his words or his manner, and yet I felt his eyes linger upon me. I enjoyed the feeling.
I straightened my posture. “You are Andrew Maycott, the very man I’ve come to see.”
“Why, I believe it’s Joan Claybrook,” he said, shifting his head this way and that, like some collector of curios who has come upon a new and exciting specimen. “I remember you when you were a little girl.”
“Which I am no longer,” I said, hoping to sound more confident than I felt.
He made no effort to hide his amusement. “I don’t think there is any room for discussion on that score.” There was nothing lecherous in his tone, but he flirted, I could have no doubt of it. His attentions distracted me, and I did not wish to be distracted. I wished to be the one who distracted, who made the rules, but now, so close to him, I found it hard to keep my thoughts clear.
“Does it hurt—your wound?” I kept my voice calm and even, no easy thing when my pulse pounded in my ears.
“It is painful sometimes,” he said, “but I will not let that keep me from doing what I like, and I am told it shall abate by-and-by.”
I smiled to best disguise my anxiety, and then, taking what I hoped was a surreptitious deep breath, I said, as airily as I could, “I shall not wait for by-and-by. Let us take a walk.”
I astonished him, I could see as much. He shifted a bit, and did a charming stammering thing, and then swallowed hard. “Miss Claybrook, I do not think it would be proper for me to take a private walk with a young lady.”
Perhaps I might have been stung by this rebuke. I might have attempted to retrench, to recast what I had said, but I felt no shame or remorse, and the absence of regret gave me courage. “Oh, rabbit proper. You’ll walk with me, won’t you?”
“I do not think your father will thank me for it,” he said. “Why do you not come in for some maple wine with my sister?”
I did not like this suggestion, and my tone revealed my irritation. “I haven’t come for your sister. I came for you.”
“Then you shall prosper,” he said, “in having the both of us.”
All at once, I found I was no longer performing. I did not act bold, I was bold, and I liked it. I put my hands on my hips. “Mr. Maycott, I have no interest in stilted conversation with your sister. I wish to talk to you, and I am sorry to see you are afraid to walk with a young lady.”
“I merely consider your interests,” he said, both surprised and amused, “even if you do not. Perhaps the impropriety of what you propose has not occurred to you.”
“I believe, sir, in making my own propriety. If you do not come with me, I shall tell the world you did, so there is nothing to be gained by demurring.”
He laughed, and his blue eyes mirrored the sky. “I see you have quite defeated me. Let us take a short walk along the road, then.”
“I should prefer privacy. The woods.”
“And I,” he said, holding up his cane, “prefer to depend upon well-packed earth.”
I could not argue with this requirement so I compromised, happy, so very happy, that I would now be walking with this beautiful man who had been, I must think, charmed and not appalled by my speech. We took a few steps, and Mr. Maycott began to comment on the fineness of the weather, on how even now he could not quite believe he was safe from the terror and tedium of war. Then, perhaps feeling awkward at his own seriousness, he changed to more agreeable topics. He spoke of how good it was to be home, of the simple pleasures of living upon his family’s land—and, he said, of resuming old acquaintance.
Of course I found all of this interesting, and I loved to hear him speak, and in particular I loved to hear him speak of his feelings. He was more open and direct about such things than any other man I’d known. And yet, I was impatient. I wanted to speak of the two of us, of this moment, of what I had done to make it possible. At last I said, “You do not seem shocked by my addressing you as I’ve done.”
“Would you rather I were shocked?” he asked.
“No, of course not. I am only surprised. Pleased, of course, but surprised.”
“There has been a Revolution,” said Andrew. “A king has been replaced by the people. It can hardly be surprising if other changes follow.”
He looked at me, calm and easy, and yet his eyes were distant, as he considered the implications of his own words. Later, I would come to see this as the moment I fell in love with him. He was so glorious to look at, so strong and well formed and elegant, and yet contemplative. He took me seriously, regarded my words as thoughtfully as I could want. I felt no one had ever before truly listened to me.
I searched fo
r the right words. “Sir, I am in need of a sentimental encounter. I saw you in town, and I thought I should like it if you were to begin courting me.”
He had seemed beyond shocking, yet this shocked him. “Miss Claybrook—”
“Given our new familiarity, it would be better to call me Joan.”
“Miss Claybrook,” he repeated, “if I did not know better, I should think you had just arrived here from some distant island, or newly freed from captivity with the Indians. If I were not a man of honor, you would be placing yourself in grave danger.”
“Then I depend upon your being a man of honor. I do not suggest anything untoward, Andrew. Men court women with a great deal of regularity, and it is perfectly acceptable. It is possible that, once we spend some time together, we may discover that we do not like each other well enough, so that will be the end of it. I only propose we find out.”
“But this is not the way it is done. You are obviously a clever girl and know that.”
“What happened to the Revolution?” I asked.
He laughed. “Perhaps you have outsmarted me.”
“Oh, there is no perhaps about it, but I have no doubt you will have your revenge.”
He bowed. “You are too kind.”
“I am just kind enough.” I was thoroughly myself now. He and I were comfortable, and his beauty ceased to frighten me. It charmed me and thrilled me, but I began to feel at home in its presence. “The truth is, Andrew, that I hope someday to write a novel, and I thought it might provide for an interesting experience if I were to make bold with you.”
He blinked at me, like a sleepy cat. “You speak to me this way so you can turn our conversation into a novel? You do not really wish me to court you?”
“Oh, of course I do,” I said. “But my being so direct was, I admit, a sort of experimentation, for I require some experiences. I have had too few. Come, pray don’t be cross. I should not have spoken to you thus if I did not like you.”