The Messenger

by Siri Mitchell

  “No.”

  He blinked. “I’m only asking for one.”

  “And I can’t give you even one.”

  “When did you become such a disagreeable cur?”

  “Look, I’ve my own affairs to worry about. I’m trying to get back in with Miss Sunderland’s family.”

  “Oh! Say no more. Miss Pennington told me all about her disagreeable uncle.” He winked as he turned off toward Fourth Street. “I think I’ll take your suggestion and look for something on Mulberry Street.”

  I walked back to the tavern with quaking legs and a pull in my gut. Passing that message in John’s presence had been much too dangerous.

  21

  Hannah

  Breakfast had been served on seventh day and eaten with no help from any of the slaves. At least not for us. Father had insisted that Mother do our serving. And when Doll moved to take away our plates, Father gathered them himself and broke two of them in the process. It was one thing not to wish to encourage the practice of enslavement. But another thing entirely to try to avoid it in a place such as Pennington House.

  I hesitated in dressing that afternoon. My gown could not be too fine, for my calls would include a visit to Robert at the jail. I had already explained away my sudden insistence upon wearing my best cloak. I simply told Mother I had given my other one to someone in greater need of it than I. It was nothing more than the truth. Sighing, I pulled a gown from my trunk, shook out the skirt, and examined the hem. Somehow Doll had managed to remove every sign of last week’s visit. Not a speck, not a smudge, not a smell lingered.

  I took off my gown and wound one of my sheets around my middle. I planned to stow my extra night cap beneath my hat. But then I was left in a quandary. William Addison had requested a shovel.

  Doll had scavenged a rusted-through shovel head from the rubbish pile. It was up to me now to figure out how to smuggle it into the jail. I pulled it from its hiding place within my trunk. It was much too big to fit into my pocket and it was too bulky to secure with my garter. The rust had eaten a hole through its neck . . . perhaps . . . I pulled a leather thong from my trunk and threaded it through the hole. Lifting my petticoats and skirt, I tied the thong about my waist, letting the shovel head dangle between my legs. It was heavy and I would have to forgo the bag of grain this week, but if it would hold, it might just do. I practiced walking, promptly banging the inside of my knee against its edge. I tried again, more slowly and with my legs further apart.

  It felt odd.

  And it probably looked odd as well.

  But as long as the thong stayed fast about my waist and hidden beneath the fullness of my skirts, no one should suspect anything. I met Doll out back and we walked around to the front gate together. As we walked, I began to fall into an awkward, if regular, rhythm of walking.

  “What you got under there?”

  I glanced at her. “Thee don’t want to know.”

  “I do too want to know. If you going to be walking the streets like some kind of rheumy old goose, I ought to know what’s going on.”

  “It’s the shovel. I’ve got it beneath my skirts.”

  “The shovel? You got that under there!” She looked the length of me as if wondering where, exactly, it was hiding. “If those men don’t manage to escape, it won’t be because you didn’t help them none!”

  We had come out onto Walnut Street, joining the throngs of citizens and soldiers. “Let’s not talk about that.” I hissed the words over my shoulder at her. She still had the annoying habit of walking one step behind me.

  When we reached the jail, I left her on the corner and mounted the steps. After showing my pass to a guard, I was led to the door to the basement. As I walked down the stair, hand on the rail, I felt a loosening of the thong around my waist.

  Just one minute more.

  If it would hold until I made it to the cell, then all would be fine. But when I reached the bottom of the stair, there was no guard in sight.

  “Keeper?” My call echoed in no one’s ears but my own, and the door to the guard keeper’s room had been padlocked. The thong gave once more, leaving the shovel to hang at my ankles. Perhaps it was a blessing that no one was there. I set my basket on the stair, meaning to lift my skirts and draw the thong tight, but the door above me opened at that moment and the lumpen form of the guard appeared.

  “You again?”

  He eased his bulk down the stair, a hand to the rail. At the bottom he paused beside me, straining for breath.

  Hurry!

  He hitched his belt up over his wide girth and then ambled over to the door, taking a long moment to find the key in his pocket. Once we gained entrance, he shuffled behind his table and then hefted his bulk into his chair. “I don’t mind saying that I was hoping you’d visit today. I was feeling a bit peckish.”

  I pulled a wedge of cheese from my basket and set it before him.

  He broke off a hunk right then and shoved it into his mouth. “I don’t suppose you have any bread for me? To go with it?”

  I shook my head. I did have bread, but it wasn’t for him. It was for Robert.

  “Shame. Haven’t had any in months. Least none that’s good enough to mention.”

  “May I see my brother now?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Of course.” He rose with a sigh and then knocked on the door.

  As I moved toward it, I felt the thong give way altogether. The shovel landed between my feet, biting into the bone at my ankle. I swallowed a cry. At least it had only fallen on packed earth. Had it been paved with stone, my secret would have been discovered for certain.

  “You going in or did you change your mind?”

  “I . . . just . . .”

  He was waving a hand in front of his face against the stench that had blown into the room through the door.

  The moment I moved, the shovel would be exposed, and there was no good reason to offer for having hidden one beneath my skirts.

  He shrugged and began to shut the door. “Don’t blame you for changing your mind. Their own mothers wouldn’t recognize the sorry wretches.” He gestured toward the basket. “You can just leave the rest of what’s in there for me. With me. I’ll make sure he gets it.”

  I was quite sure that he wouldn’t. In any case, I had no intention of abandoning my basket. “No. I do want to see him. It’s just that . . .” If I couldn’t advance toward the door, neither could I retreat and go back up the stair. Either movement would reveal what I had tried so hard to hide. “I don’t . . . I wonder, could you go see . . . are they—I mean is he still in the same cell?”

  “The same cell? I suppose he would be!” He called to the guard, who sat on the other side of the door. “You haven’t changed anybody round, have you?”

  “No.”

  If only I could get him to leave the room! It wouldn’t take but a moment to pull the thong tight once more. He turned toward me. “No. So are you staying or going?”

  Could I pray to God for help with a deception? “I’m . . . going.” My glance fell to my basket. “I’m going to offer thee some bread to go with that cheese.” If food would take him back to his table and make him turn around for just one moment, then it was worth the giving of it. I pulled the loaf from the basket and offered it to him, mourning the fact that I was taking it from Robert’s own mouth.

  A smile lit his face. “Cheese with bread.” He held the loaf up to his nose, sniffing at it. “Better than what the army feeds us.” He turned toward his table.

  I had just one chance. I slipped my hand beneath my cloak, into the slit in my skirts and jerked hard on the thong where it had given way. Keeping my hand there, hidden, I walked through the door.

  Robert was none better, though he was sitting by the wall instead of lying on the ground. My cloak had been passed to another man. William Addison shielded me and ordered the others to look away while I untied the shovel and pulled the sheet from my middle. Robert saw my basket, lifted the cloth out entirely, and shook bread crumbs into his han
d.

  “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll try for a blanket.” I didn’t know that I would be able to find one, however. The army had forcibly requisitioned all they could find—and all they could steal—from the citizenry. “But . . .” I removed my hat and handed him the nightcap. “I brought this. I had to give the bread to the guard in order to bring the shovel in. And I had to leave behind the grain in favor of the shovel . . . I’m sorry.” Sorrier than he could know that I’d had to choose the general welfare of the soldiers in that room over his own. I couldn’t keep tears from leaking into the corners of my eyes. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t care about the rest of them. I mean . . . I did. I had to in order that they could save my brother. But they were the kind of people who had always despised Quakers. Who probably, if truth be known, despised us still.

  When I came out, I expected to find Doll waiting for me at the corner. She wasn’t there. I walked past Fifth Street and still found no sign of her. I turned around and started back the way I’d come. That’s when I saw her. She was a flurry of blue- and red-colored skirts, beating her hands against a soldier who had her pinned up against a wall in the shadows. My legs began to shake and I fought nausea as I remembered one of Father’s captors trying to do the same to me.

  Doll cried out, wrenching me to my senses.

  “Let go of her!”

  The soldier looked at me with a sneer. “What’s it to you?”

  Rage overcame my shaking. “She belongs to me. Now take thy hands off!”

  He planted an indecent kiss on her lips before releasing her. Doll smoothed down her skirts and put a trembling hand up to her head scarf.

  “Did he—?”

  “He didn’t do nothing nobody ain’t done before.”

  “He didn’t hurt thee?”

  She glowered at his back with narrowed eyes. Spit into the dirt in his direction.

  “Has that . . . happened before? While thee have been waiting for me?”

  “Some of them soldiers think any Negro standing around at corners got nothing to do but please them.”

  I took her words as a yes. “Thee ought to have told me!”

  “He the only one been so shameless about it.”

  Guilt at having subjected her to such indignities mixed with the shame I felt at saying what I had and for the lie I had spoken. “I didn’t mean it, Doll, about thee belonging to me.”

  “I certainly don’t belong to him.”

  “This is too dangerous, leaving thee on the corner standing about. There are too many soldiers here.”

  “They not all as bold as that one. And I’d of bit his nose right off in another minute.”

  It wasn’t right that my decision to help Robert should place any in danger other than myself. “Thee mustn’t aid me anymore.”

  “Who’s going to walk with you? And who’s going to clean you up after?”

  “I’ll care for myself.”

  “Who’s going to know whether you come back out of that place if nobody know you go in?”

  “Thee know where I go on these afternoons. If ever I shouldn’t return, thee must tell my father where I am.”

  “Davy says I gots to go with you.”

  “Davy doesn’t know what I do.”

  “You need someone to help you and that’s the truth. That Mr. Jones can tell you what to do all he want, but he don’t know, do he? He don’t know what it is he asking you to do.”

  It had become a common occurrence: people asking me to do things without knowing the import of their requests. The next day, on first day, Betsy Evans pulled me aside on my way into the Meeting House.

  “I know thee have been visiting the jail.”

  I pushed the hood of my cloak from my head, releasing a cascade of snowflakes as I did it. Why should I not speak truth to Betsy? “Aye.”

  “I have to know: Is he well?”

  He was not well. None of the men were. But what was the point in telling her? In telling any of the Friends? What would they have done about it? “He asked me to pass on his greetings.” Or he would have had there been any time. I knew he would have.

  Her eyes grew shiny as she blinked back tears. “When thee see him next . . . could thee tell him . . .” There was something going on behind her eyes, something happening in her soul. “Could thee tell him that I . . .”

  Be courageous, Betsy!

  “Could thee tell him I wish him the best?”

  My spirits fell as if those words were meant for me. They were trite, insipid words, words that could be spoken to any man or woman, but words that would never be whispered to a heart’s beloved. She might as well have asked me to bid him farewell.

  22

  Jeremiah

  It was dinnertime on Thursday and the soldiers weren’t quiet as they went about their eating. After being confined to the barracks with the foot of snow Sunday’s storm had left behind, and after watching it dissolve and then flood the streets during the previous day’s rain and fog, they were more restive than normal. A group of them had brought their piper along and ordered him to play. Unfortunately he was too young yet to be any good at it. And he was much too loud. I hadn’t quite caught what John had said to me.

  “You want me to go to the wharves with you? Why?”

  “Because I command you to do so. In the name of the King.”

  “You couldn’t command a whore to give you a smile.”

  He sniggered. Raised his mug in my direction.

  “And if the King knew you at all, he would have you drummed out of the army in a thrice.”

  “Perhaps. But don’t tell General Howe that. He thinks me a wonder. But do come.”

  “I’ve business to tend to. Books to keep. Soldiers to feed.”

  “Even God himself took a day off.”

  I eyed him as I closed up the daybook. If truth be told, I was rather touched by his concern. And the weather was fine; the rain and fog had disappeared and the sun was making promises of the spring to come. “All right, then.”

  He downed the last of his ale and grinned. “You won’t regret it!”

  As we got to the wharf, I could see why he’d been so eager to enlist me. Miss Pennington awaited us, looking pretty as a portrait in a green striped gown with the skirts caught up at the sides. One hand grasped a parasol while the other was clapped atop a straw hat. She wore no cloak. Wishful thinking for the month of February, but who could begrudge anyone their wishes this fine day? She was the very picture of spring. And accompanying her was Hannah.

  Her eyes widened as she saw me.

  I doffed my hat and grinned.

  She had turned to Miss Pennington and was whispering in her ear. Her cousin took her hand in her own, seemed to tug on it. The wind blew their words to us as we approached. “Nonsense! You knew nothing about it. And if anyone should say anything, I will go to Uncle myself and tell him he’s being a brute. Besides, I invited you. To accompany me.”

  “Clearly thee knew that he would be here.”

  “And what is that to you or me? Though now that they are here, we might as well enjoy their company.” She fluttered a handkerchief at us, smiling gaily.

  John saluted back. Whispered under his breath, “You can thank me later.”

  I would indeed. Right after the prisoners had escaped from jail. I would have bowed to Hannah, but I knew it would only incur her displeasure. And on this day of unfettered sun and warm breezes, when we could meet in public instead of some dark alley, I was willing to do almost anything but endure her scowl. I nodded instead.

  She hesitated for a moment before returning the gesture.

  I took a step closer as John pulled Miss Pennington away toward the end of the wharf. “We might as well take advantage of this opportunity. To talk.”

  She looked at me as if I had spoken a blasphemy.

  I offered up the arm I had. When she would not take it, I bent down to speak into her ear and I seized her arm as I did it. “They think we’re lovers. We might as well act like it. At least then
they’ll afford us some privacy.”

  “My father—”

  “Said no arranged meetings. This one may have been arranged, but it was not arranged by us. I am just as astonished as you are.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  I steered her away toward John and Miss Pennington. “If you looked at me as if you weren’t going to strike me, it might not make them suspect that we are any other than what they think we are.”

  Her lips curved in a demure smile. I only wished it were a smile of true pleasure.

  “Since they think that they are doing us a favor, may I suggest that we use this opportunity to arrange a place to leave messages?”

  “But ’tis so deceitful. Allowing them to think . . .”

  “That we are lovers? It is not our fault. And knowing you, I’ll wager you’ve protested the idea once or twice.”

  She flushed.

  “People will believe what they want to. So you might look at me as if you’ve found something in me to admire.”

  She turned to look straight at me. “There is much to admire about thee.”

  That was better. She looked as if she actually meant it this time.

  “Thee are resolute and brave and kind.”

  “Kind! You don’t have to sound so persuasive. They can’t hear you.”

  “I am not given to flattery. I am simply stating the truth.”

  Well, that was something. “I’ve a plan for the messages. We must continue the habit of walking in the afternoons. Only, when I have a message to pass, I will stop at Peterson’s Bookstore and leave it between the leaves of a blue-covered volume of Aeneid. If you time your walk to mine, then it shouldn’t be but several minutes before you can go into the shop and retrieve it.”

  “Thee want me to recover it in plain sight?”

  “If you cannot do it, then we can arrange to meet as we did before.”

  She looked at me. I could not interpret the struggle taking place behind her eyes. Finally she spoke. “I will do it. But I would be rude indeed if I kept asking to see a particular volume and did not ever buy it. The man runs a business concern, not a lending library.”