Here Comes a Candle

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  She had her answer ready. “No, I’m from Boston.”

  “Ho! I thought as much. One of them tarnation Feds are you?” But his tone was as friendly as ever, merely more inquisitive. “Well now, ma’am, do you reckon those New England states of yours are really going about to secede from the Union?”

  “I hope not.” Odd to realize that she really meant it. “But what’s the news today, sir? I’ve heard nothing.”

  “I thought not, or you’d not have been walking the country roads alone. By all I hear the redcoats will be here any time now. Did you hear the explosions yesterday? That was Commodore Barney blowing up his flotilla of gunboats so they wouldn’t be captured. Gunboats!” He spat expressively. “Where are our frigates, that’s what I want to know? What’s Jemmy Madison been doing all this time? Barney’s a fine man—everyone knows that—but what use are a pack of gunboats against the British Navy? Well—we’ve seen. And now, what’s left but Washington? It stands to reason. By all reports they camped night before last at Nottingham—well now, I reckon that’s not more than thirty miles from the village.”

  “Village?” she was puzzled.

  “Washington. Of course, you’re a stranger: a village in a swamp, they call it, and just about right too. Look!” He slowed his horse as the road emerged from trees on the crest of the ridge they had been following. “There!” He pointed with his whip. “There’s the mighty capital of these United States. I don’t reckon it looks much like Boston, does it?”

  It was hardly the moment to tell him she had never actually been into Boston. Besides, she was absorbed in the view of winding river with blue hills beyond and, this side, a scattering of houses here and there among the trees. “That must be the Capitol?” She pointed to the largest building she could see, far off to the left, white and conspicuous on its hill.

  “Yes—and not finished either! And if you look this way”—he gestured with his whip—“you might get a glimpse of the President’s palace through the trees. Palace they call it, but I reckon Mrs. Adams—or Dolly Madison come to that—ain’t found it any bed of roses. I guess Congress was plumb crazy when it voted to move down here. You can call that half-done building the Capitol—and Goose Creek the Tiber, too—but it don’t make the place anything better than a village in a swamp, and like to remain so. Who in their senses would live here if they could help?” And with this rhetorical question he whipped up his horse and started down a long slope among trees through which Kate could now see, here and there, an isolated house.

  “Oh yes,” he replied when she commented on this. “There are houses all over among the woods. Lonesomer, I reckon, than living on the frontier. Well,” he explained, “you expect to be lonesome there. But tell me, ma’am, where am I to set you down?”

  “Oh!” She should have been ready for this. “Wherever suits you. I’m most grateful...”

  “No, no.” They had emerged from the trees on to a much broader street crowded with every possible kind of vehicle. “Just what I expected.” He sounded almost pleased. “The place is in a panic. I’ll not leave a Boston young lady to walk a step she don’t have to in a crowd like this. So, where will suit you, ma’am?”

  “You’re very good. Well then, if it’s not too much trouble, could you take me to the principal hotel?” On their journey, Jonathan had always stayed at the best hotel in town.

  “The chief one?” His answer was discouraging. “Well, you see, ma’am, there’s so many, Washington being the kind of place it is. There’s Long’s, and Tomlinson’s—would it be either of those?” And then, as she shook her head doubtfully, “Well, I reckon the best thing I can do is set you down at Flood’s on Pennsylvania Avenue. I’m for the Navy Yard myself, so it won’t be taking me out of the way.”

  “Oh, thank you!” They were moving much more slowly now, weaving their way through the throng of miscellaneous vehicles, all piled high with boxes and bundles.

  “It don’t look much as if there’s been good news, I calculate.” He slowed his horse on a wide, poplar-lined avenue. “There you are, Flood’s Hotel, ma’am, and good luck to you.”

  She jumped down, thanked him warmly, and then, feeling an odd little qualm as he turned away into the throng of vehicles, squared her shoulders and went into the hotel. It was a big place, its downstairs rooms so full of vociferous people that it took her some time to attract the barkeeper’s attention, and she was grateful, as she waited, for the experience she had had of American hotels, and the confidence it gave her that she would be courteously treated.

  Imagine arriving alone at a similar hotel in London! There, she would have been the object of scornful looks and sotto voce comment; here, men automatically moved aside for her and even seemed to be trying not to spit on the skirts of her gown.

  How odd to realize now, at this moment of crisis, public as well as private, that she liked it here. And horrible to think that the confusion around her, the panic-stricken families in the streets, were all because of her own people, the invading English.

  But here was her chance at the barkeeper. She swallowed a lump in her throat and asked him if Mr. Penrose was staying in the hotel.

  “Penrose? No, ma’am, I guess we ain’t got no one by that name here.”

  Absurd to have been so hopeful. She asked the man to direct her to Washington’s next largest hotel. “I know this is supposed to be the best.”

  “Well, ma’am, the place is full of them,” but at least the compliment had caught his sympathy, and he reeled off an alarmingly long list of names and addresses. She thought, at the last moment, of asking whether Mr. and Mrs. Manningham and their daughter were staying here, but again he shook his head. That, too, would have been too easy. Anyway, she told herself, back in the hot and crowded road, it was not much use finding Sarah until she had Jonathan’s support. But, oh, Sarah, what is happening to you?

  The sun blazed down; the air was heavy with the threat of thunder; the streets were more crowded than ever. The bag that had seemed so tiny when she packed it this morning now dragged on her arm. If only she had dared ask for a room at Flood’s Hotel ... But with merely two dollars ... She must find Jonathan before anything else.

  She had heard about the long distances between houses in Washington and was now to prove it the most painful way. The heat of the dusty streets burned up through her thin shoes. Most of the roads were unpaved and rough; houses tended to stand well back so that even when she thought she had reached them, there was a rough carriage way to be plodded over. Her head ached unmercifully. She visited four more hotels and two boardinghouses, and received the same answer at each. “Mr. Penrose of Boston? Sorry, ma’am.” But each one had a further suggestion, a boardinghouse, perhaps, run by a friend.

  All the time, as she trudged from house to house, her sense of urgency was mounting, exacerbated by the panic around her. After the eighth blank, she sat down, a little giddy from heat and headache, and made herself think. There must be some other way. Delving deep back in memory, she tried to remember everything Jonathan had said about Washington. Surely, at some point, he must have mentioned where he had stayed?

  Suppose it had been with friends. What hope was there then of finding him, what hope for Sarah? She could see now that it would be useless to appeal for help to the forces of law and order. At the best of times, she had heard, Washington had a curious police system all its own. Today the very idea was lunacy. To be talking of one kidnapped child, when the whole place was simmering with panic ... No, whatever she did, would have to be on her own.

  She had rested enough. The pain in her head was a little easier, but she made herself take a piece of stale bread out of her bag and eat it. There had been no inspiration, no memory of a friend, or an address; she would just have to go on, doggedly, as she had been doing.

  At the fifth place she tried, the barkeeper was unusually helpful. “There’s a little place on F Street,” he said, “where a lot of the Boston Feds often go ... Quiet, you know—you might try there.”
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br />   It was a long walk back to F Street, but at least the heat was going from the sun now, and the crowds were less. Many people had already left Washington; others, no doubt, were indoors packing up. The slackening of the panic seemed to suggest that an attack on the city was not imminent. She had heard all kinds of rumors, as she waited for attention in one inn after another. The English had turned back to Baltimore after all; they were still at Marlborough; they had turned off the Washington road and were on their way to Alexandria ... Nobody really knew anything; not even, with any certainty, where the American forces under Winder had got to. “At least, there’s been no battle,” she heard one man say. “They’re so near, we’d have heard it.” And, “Trust Winder to avoid a fight if he can,” said another.

  She had been searching now for nearly five hours. Soon, mere exhaustion would compel her to give up for the night. Would her two dollars buy her supper and a bed at Washington prices? They probably would, she thought, unless the panic had inflated things beyond reason. Tomorrow would have to take care of itself.

  The Hotel on F Street was set far back in a wood lot, so that she passed it once without realizing it was there. As she struggled wearily up the carriage way and saw the pleasant white frame house with its big screened porch, she thought that it did, in fact, look the kind of place where Jonathan might stay.

  Indoors, too, it was quieter than most of the places she had visited. The bartender was at her disposal at once. “Mr. Penrose, ma’am? Mr. Penrose from Boston?” Her heart gave a great leap; he spoke as if the name was at least familiar. “Why, yes, ma’am, he was here all right, but he left us Saturday morning. Went out to Bladensburg to dig fortifications with the rest of them—and about time too! And I reckon he must have meant to spend the night there. Hey! What’s the matter?” He caught her as she swayed, and helped her into a chair. “Here”—he poured from bottle to glass—“drink that. You won’t like it, but it’ll do you good.”

  It was pure fire, and she gulped and shuddered and felt almost instantly better. “That’s the dandy,” he took the glass from her shaking hand. “I reckon you never tasted straight Kentucky bourbon before. Now: Mr. Penrose. He was here, sure enough, but when he’ll be back, with things as they are, God knows. Wait a minute, though. I guess there was something ... a message, surely ... Now where would I have put that?” He rummaged on a shelf behind the bar and finally came up with a piece of paper. “That’s it.” He was pleased with himself. “Never forget a face and never lose a message, that’s me. He said, if anyone should come looking for him, they were to get in touch with his lawyer: Mr. Hillingford—lives quite a ways up 16th Street. I doubt you’ve strength to walk there tonight, ma’am, and hackney carriages aren’t to be had today, not for love or money. You’d best spend the night here, I reckon. We’ll contrive to fit you in somehow. There are enough rats have run already to leave room for a friend of Mr. Penrose’s.”

  “It’s very good of you”—when she remembered her forlorn appearance, she thought it quite extraordinary—“but I must find Mr. Hillingford as soon as possible. I feel wonderfully better for that fire-water of yours. So if you’ll just set me on my way...”

  “Not before you’ve had something to eat. You can spare the time for that surely. No need to wait for tea: my wife will rustle up something for you right away, if your errand’s so urgent.”

  So it was fortified by a scratch meal of fried ham and hominy grits that she started back on the long walk along F Street and up 16th. The landlord had advised against trying to short-cut across lots. “You’ll lose yourself, sure as shooting,” he said, “and this is no night for a young lady to be wandering about alone. The looters will be out among the empty houses. I don’t like the feel of things in town tonight, and that’s for sure. So whatever you do, ma’am, keep to the streets and keep going.”

  It was good advice. Night fell faster down here in Washington than she had been used to at Penrose. The shadows were long already, and the air pleasantly cool at last. She felt the bourbon, for which the landlord had refused to take payment, still burning through her as she walked as fast as her sore feet would let her along the rough pavement of F Street. It was much less crowded now, but when she got to the President’s house, she found it still surrounded by a loosely moving throng, mostly of young beaus in newfangled long pantaloons and high, light-colored hats. Among them moved brightly clad women, in daring décolleté. There was loud talk, and laughter, and she could see, here and there, bottles being passed from hand to hand. As she threaded her way as inconspicuously as possible through the fringe of the crowd, she heard an odd phrase here and there: “Eat, drink, and be merry,” said one. “Let Jemmy fight his own wars,” said another, and then moved aside as a sweating horseman pushed his way through the crowd. “Did you see who that was? Monroe himself: they say he’s been out scouting the enemy.” The girl with him laughed. “He’s welcome,” Kate heard her say as she hurried past into the comparative quiet of 16th Street.

  Lights showing here and there made it seem darker than it was. But she quickened her pace just the same. The landlord had been right; this was no time to be benighted. A little shiver of pure panic ran through her at the thought that Mr. Hillingford, like so many others, might have run for it. But, no, she would not let herself think that. At last, this should be the house. And—there were lights in the downstairs windows. With a sigh of relief, she turned wearily in at the entrance and began to think what she should say.

  She had to lean for a moment against the doorway to steady herself before she lifted the big brass door knocker and let it fall with a disappointingly feeble effect. Nobody came. No sound of life or movement inside the house. Could it be abandoned after all, the lights left burning to discourage possible looters? No: absurd. She had not knocked loud enough: that was all. She tried again, achieving this time a tattoo that would wake the dead—and shivered uncontrollably at the thought.

  And still no sound, no movement inside. With darkness, a little wind had sprung up: she could not stop shivering, with cold, with fatigue, with everything ... How long was it since she had knocked for the second time? Too long, that was certain. It was not her own plight that gave her this feeling of urgency; it was the knowledge that Manningham and Arabella had had almost twenty-four hours’ start now. And she had no idea what they would be doing. Suppose they had already succeeded in joining the English forces? It did not bear thinking of. Knocking again, louder than ever, she reminded herself of two sources of hope. One was Arabella: would she venture into the no-man’s-land between the two armies? Surely not if she could help it. And the other was Manningham’s own position: so far as she knew his exchange had not yet come through. To rejoin the English without it would be to mark himself for all time as dishonored. And yet, odd things had happened, she knew, about exchanges in this war.

  It was no use standing here dreaming. No one was going to answer the door. She moved stiffly along the front of the house to peer in at a lighted window. A dining room, with the remains of a meal still set out on a polished mahogany table. And nobody in sight. Well then ... back to the other side of the front door, where another lighted window showed her a room full of books; a desk; and, near the window, a high wing chair with its back to her. And someone sitting in it. A pair of feet were stretched out onto a convenient footstool. Jonathan? Absurd: the legs wore old-fashioned black knee-breeches and buckled shoes. Mr. Hillingford surely. Enjoying an after-dinner nap? Why frighten herself with other possibilities? A band of looters ... a scuffle and a blow ... She would be hysterical in a minute. She rapped on the window as sharply as she dared, and was rewarded by the slightest possible stirring of the feet on the stool. Mr. Hillingford was asleep. She rapped again. No use. Mr. Hillingford was dead to the world. What next? The window was securely locked. So was the one in the dining room. Around at the back, the house was in darkness and more difficult to explore. Mr. Hillingford’s servants must have left after serving dinner. How long before he woke up?

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sp; She remembered how the Rock Creek house had been broken into. Break the window with a stone: a hand in to turn the catch; child’s play. Child’s play? Oh—Sarah! It would be safer at the back, where it was dark, but much easier at the front, with the light to help her. She picked up a stone and went to the front gate to look up and down the dark street. Not a soul stirring.

  It took a surprising amount of force to break the dining room window, but she managed it at the third, trembling try, wrapped her hand in her shawl, and reached in through the jagged edges to turn the lock. After that, it was comparatively easy. The whole bottom half of the window ran up smoothly; she dropped her bag inside and climbed in after it.

  As she did so, the door of the room swung open. “Hands up, or I fire.” Mr. Hillingford had waked at last. He was holding an immense, old-fashioned blunderbuss in shaking hands, and peering at her myopically over it. He was a very old man, she saw, disappointment mastering every other emotion. What help could he be?

  ‘Don’t fire.” The blunderbuss was shaking alarmingly, and she hurriedly raised her hands in the air. “I’m not a burglar.”

  “A lady housebreaker!” But he lowered the blunderbuss slightly. “I thought I’d seen everything. Invasion and a lady housebreaker. Well, well, well ... and on a night like this, too. What in the world am I to do with you, ma’am?”

  “Just listen to me, please.” She stood very still, watching the gun in those alarmingly uncertain hands. “I’m not a housebreaker. I’m a friend of Jonathan Penrose.” As she said it she thought with something like horror, that, after all, this might be the wrong house. Suppose the bartender had misdirected her; suppose this old man had never heard of Jonathan.

  He lowered the gun to point it shakily at the floor. “A burglar friend of Jon Penrose? Just fancy that. Poor Jon, he never did have much sense about women.” He tried to bow to her, found the gun in his way, looked at it, puzzled, as if he could not imagine what he was doing with it, propped it in a corner, and finished the bow. “Delighted to make the acquaintance of any friend of my friend Jonathan’s, ma’am. Pray, do come in—oh, you already have.” He looked baffled all over again at sight of the window behind her. “Take a glass of something with me, and tell me how I can serve you. But first, if you will not think me unpardonably inquisitive, do you always enter your friends’ houses by the window?”