Curly fixed a false grin on his face and said to Will, “You carryin’ more coin?”
Frank snapped the club again, this time right off the top of Curly’s knit cap. “I said stand down, you son of a bitch. Leave him alone.”
Curly pulled off the cap, revealing a head as shiny bald as a binnacle, and rubbed a knot on the top of his skull. “Wall-Eye, some night I’m gonna kill you.”
“If you do, Old Man Corliss won’t ever let you sail on one of his ships again, ’cause he likes a clean wharf and clean sailors.”
Curly headed back to the corner, but stopped when Will said, “Hey.”
“What?”
“Did you sail on the Pretty Eve?”
Curly turned. “And if did?”
“I’ll buy you that drink.” Will handed him the mug and put a coin on the bar.
Curly drained the first mug, plunked it down, and snatched the second before Will could touch it.
No matter. Will’s mouth was cotton-dry but not from thirst. Best to ask his questions and get out of there. “Do you know North Pike?” he asked.
And for the first time, the fiddler missed a beat.
Curly brought his face close to Will’s again. “What’s North Pike to you?”
“My brother.” Will knew that was a mistake as soon as it was out of his mouth.
Curly grabbed him, while the two in the corner—one as big, both as ugly—pushed away from their table. “That son of a bitch took my job. And he cheats at cards. And he owes me money—”
And with a loud crack, the barkeep’s club landed again on the Curly’s head. This time, Curly collapsed. Then Wall-Eyed Frank told Will to get out.
“Just tell me where I can find Corliss,” said Will.
“We’ll take you.” It was one of the other sailors, coming toward him.
Wall-Eyed Frank pulled a musket from behind the bar. “Stand down,” he said to the sailors; then he told Will, “In the shadow of the church steeple, yellow house, white fence. And tell Corliss how hard I work to keep a clean wharf.”
THE STEEPLE OF Trinity Church poked into the clouds lowering over the town. Will went toward it and was soon climbing a gentle hill. The yellow house with the white fence was easy enough to find, even in the dark. It was a grand house—two full stories, with dormers and six-over-six windows, not a house that a Pelham farm boy would have visited, but Will had been to Boston and New York and Philadelphia, so no Newport house would impress him.
He could hear voices coming out of the window to his left—two men and a woman, arguing. Words like “West Indies molasses,”
“godless Niggers,” and “Rhode Island rum” were flying like fists.
Will shook the rain from his tricorne, brushed it from his shoulders, and dragged the bottoms of his shoes across the boot scraper. As for the mud splattered over his stockings, there was nothing to do. He banged the knocker, and the conversation stopped, followed by footfalls in the foyer, then the front door popping open.
“Yes?” The man was tall and long-faced, with dark hair tied in a queue and side whiskers almost to his chin.
“Good evening, sir. My name is William Pike. I’ve come a great distance in the … in the hopes of seeing Mr. Corliss.”
“Pike, did you say?”
Will heard an accent. He had met a Frenchman in Philadelphia who sounded much the same. He said, “Yes, sir. Pike.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He looked Will over, looked behind him to see if anyone was hiding in the shadows, then opened the door. “Please to wait here.”
Yes, thought Will, a Frenchman who worked for a rich man, if the Turkey carpets, tall-case clock, and flat-glass mirrors in the foyer were any indication.
The Frenchman’s voice rumbled in the next room, stopping at the word, “Pike.” The female voice said, “Pike?” The older man said, “Good God! Not another one!”
A moment later, Will was in the library, looking into the face of Thornton Corliss. He had expected a big man, but Corliss was small and gray, dressed in breeches and waistcoat of black.
The real presence was the young woman standing by the bookcase. She was slender, not yet twenty, with dark brows that gave her face a kind of proud ferocity, even in repose. And her long neck enhanced the angle of her chin, which she held as if to announce that she thought herself the better of anyone in the room.
“Stop staring at my daughter,” Corliss snapped at Will.
“It runs in the family,” said the Frenchman. “Aye,” grunted Corliss. “Now, Mr. Pike, what do you want?”
“I’m looking for my brother.” Will returned his gaze to Corliss, though he felt the eyes of the girl and the Frenchman boring into him.
“North Pike?” said Corliss. “He was here last night.”
“Mr. Corliss, he does not speak to his sailors,” said the Frenchman. “But your brother said he had a thing of value for us. And he has done us good turns.”
“Good turns?” said the girl. “He stopped a mutiny on your slave ship.”
Corliss looked at Will. “We were busy arguing when you knocked.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, sir,” said Will, “but my brother has spoken highly of you.”
The Frenchman laughed at that.
Will had already decided he did not like the Frenchman’s attitude, and he was liking it even less.
“Your brother came here after the Pretty Eve docked.” Corliss shot a glance at his daughter. “We sent him on his way.”
The girl raised her chin. “You were very impolite, Father. He said he had a gift, something that would stand you in good stead throughout Rhode Island.”
Will asked the girl, “Did he say what the gift was?”
“Is that any of your business, m’sieur?” asked the Frenchman.
“If it’s what I think it is, he stole it from me,” said Will. “I want it back.”
“He told us it was the new Constitution,” said Corliss. “He said that since Rhode Island opposes stronger government, I’d gain favor if I gave it to our lawmakers, so they might study it, find its flaws, and prepare to fight it when it’s offered to the nation.”
Just as Will had suspected.
“I told him I didn’t want any part of his document,” Corliss went on. “It’ll have no rule over me. Now or ever. And that’s how most Americans feel.”
“It’s my hope that most Americans will change their minds,” said Will. “But if their opinions harden before the drafting is complete—”
“Mr. Pike,” said Corliss, “your brother doesn’t care a fig about most Americans or their opinions. He was trying to ingratiate himself. He’s sweet on my daughter.”
“Father!” cried the girl. “I have no interest in him, or”—she glanced at the Frenchman—”anyone else in breeches.” Then she stalked out of the room.
Corliss watched her go, then shuffled over to his desk and sat. “ ’Tis a mistake to discuss business with one’s daughter, Mr. Pike. We ship rum to Africa, then transport slaves to the plantation owned by M’sieur Danton’s family in the West Indies, then carry molasses back to Rhode Island, so our distillers can make more rum. My daughter considers it a crime.”
“No crime,” said the Frenchman. “Only good business, n’est-ce pas?”
Will did not offer his opinion. He did not think they would like it.
“Good business,” said Corliss “That’s my goal. So I don’t care a fig for politics, either, and I don’t care where your brother has gone, so long as he’s gone from here.”
“Your brother, he say that if men in the capital of Rhode Island do not want his gift,” the Frenchman added, “there are men in the capital of Massachusetts who will.”
“So it’s to Boston you should go,” said Corliss. “But since you seem more cultured than your brother, we’ll offer you lodging for the night. And perhaps you’ll offer us a few stories. Tell me, have you met Washington?”
“Is he still a—how do you say—bungler?”
“Bungler
?” said Will. “General Washington?”
Corliss explained that Robert Danton had been on the staff of General Rochambeau when the French came to Newport. He had met Washington and had been unimpressed.
Another reason, thought Will, to dislike the big Frenchman.
THORNTON CORLISS MADE more noise asleep than awake.
Though Will was in a room at the back of the house and Corliss was in the front, Will could feel the floor vibrate with the sound of snoring.
But even if the house had been silent, Will could not have slept for the questions swirling in his head. How would he find his brother in Boston? What would he do if his brother had sold the document? How would he ever show his face again in the places that mattered?
His ambition had been to leave a mark. Rufus King had given him a chance. And his own brother had ruined it. The only mark he would leave now would be as ephemeral as the circle of a hawk in the sky, or worse, as indelible as a tattoo. He might as well go home to Pelham and forget his dreams … or go to sea like his brother … or …
He tried to clear his mind so that he could sleep. Instead, the face of Washington appeared, telling him to protect the Constitution with his life.
He tried to drive Washington out by ruminating on his father’s philosophy that men might not always be what God intended them to be but most were decent just the same. Recent events had called that wisdom into question. So he tried thinking about something a young man thought about often—young women.
And the young woman he conjured was Eve Corliss. He imagined kissing her, pressing his lips to the side of her neck, untying her bodice, touching her breasts. In a moment, she was naked in his mind’s eye, as naked as the pictures he had seen in sketchbooks, of voluptuous women with rouged lips and risen nipples and tendrils of dark hair between their legs.
And he was doing in his mind all that he yearned to do with his body. This brought a bodily response that drained every thought from his head and in a few moments led to a physical release that allowed him at last to sleep….
HE DID NOT expect that the girl in his imagination would stay in his bed. Or that she would take on weight and warmth as he slept. Or that she would shake him awake him later in the night. But she did.
He tried to speak “What—”
Her hand, wet with real perspiration, clamped over his mouth. She whispered, “I know where your brother has gone.” Then she took the hand away.
Will sat up and looked into the eyes shining in the dark. She was right there, under the covers, in her nightgown.
She leaned toward him, her breast pressing against his arm.
“You … you shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Your father will shoot me.”
“If you want to find your brother, get dressed. I’ll take you to him.”
“Is he here? In Newport?
“He’s gone to Boston.”
Will lifted himself on his elbow, though at that moment, he could have lifted himself on the member rising between his legs. “Where in Boston?”
“I won’t tell you. I’ll take you.”
“But—”
“I’ll take you. Or you can find him yourself.”
He rolled toward her, and she twitched away, which was for the best, because he didn’t think he could control himself much longer.
He said, “Your father won’t let you go to Boston with me.”
“Neither will Danton. He wants to marry me and unite my father’s company with his family’s plantation in the Indies.”
“Marry you? He must be ten years older.”
“And I don’t love him. So I’m going to your brother.”
“Then you are sweet on him?”
“Sweet on him? Sweet on him?” She managed to fill her whisper with indignation. “I love him. And he loves me.”
And for all the other emotions roiling him, Will Pike let out a burst of laughter. He knew that his brother never loved any woman … for long.
But Eve Corliss did not seem a girl who was used to having anyone laugh at her. She rolled back to him and pressed herself against him, so that his hardness met her softness….
That stopped the laughing because Will’s breath suddenly caught in his throat. He looked into those glistening eyes and pressed against her. Then he pulled back. And she pressed forward … and he pulled back … and she pressed … and he pressed … and—God help him—he let his hands slide down her back and bunch her nightgown and …
Her whisper was hot and moist in his ear, “Take me with you or I’ll cry rape right now. Say you’ll take me, then try to run, and I’ll cry rape as soon as you’re gone. And who in this house would not believe me, when I told them of your nightshirt, all damp from what you’ve been doing with yourself? Proof of your depravity.”
FLEEING WITH THE daughter of Thornton Corliss was a bad decision that looked even worse in the dawn drizzle. They had put twenty miles between themselves and Newport, crossed the Sakonnet River by ferry, and were moving through the woods north of Fall River, Massachusetts. And Will was wishing he had stayed to face a cry of rape.
Eve was riding her own horse, a dappled gray filly. For Will, she had taken a big black gelding out of the barn. And though the night before she had demonstrated the most feminine of wiles in her ability to manipulate him, daylight made her seem more a girl than a woman, which only heightened Will’s resentment.
“You don’t think they’ll catch up, do you?” she asked.
“How could they catch up? You said the household didn’t rise until six.”
“What time is it now?”
He pulled out the gold watch that had once belonged to Nathan Liggett. “It’s half past six. Ten minutes ago, it was twenty past. Ten minutes before that, ten past.”
“So they’re on the road now,” she said. “So we should be riding faster.”
“We’re going plenty fast for horses on a long trip,” said Will.
Her answer was to kick her filly into a canter.
He reined his horse and watched her. She wore good boots, hiked her skirts, and sat astride like a man. He expected that she could ride rings around a farm boy who knew more about the plow than the bridle.
But she went only a short distance before cantering back. “You’re hoping I’ll ride too far ahead, so you can slip away, aren’t you?”
“And be charged with horse theft in addition to rape?”
She gave him a smile, as if to say that she was proud of her plan and perhaps surprised that it had worked. The expression made her seem even more girlish.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Seventeen,” she said.
“Why, you’re younger than I am.”
“Old enough for my father to marry me off to Danton. And old enough to run.” She kicked her horse closer. “We need each other, Will Pike. We’re allies. We can be friends.”
“All right. Just promise not to ask what time it is every ten minutes.”
“I promise, but we must go faster, because Danton will be coming after us.”
“Because he wants to marry you?”
“No. Because you’re riding his horse.”
IT WAS WELL after dark when they passed through the fields and fens of Roxbury and came at last to Boston Neck.
Up ahead, the lights of the city shimmered in the showery rain, and a string of flaming cressets lit the way along the Neck. Will Pike had never been happier to see journey’s end, because Eve Corliss had not stopped talking since morning.
She had talked through her childhood, her adolescence, and was now telling Will about the birth of her conscience. “Would you like to know the date?”
“All I asked was when you met my brother,” muttered Will.
“I’m coming to that. But … do you know what the Triangle Trade is?”
“Yes.”
“And your opinion?”
“An abomination.”
“Then you see why I couldn’t stay in that house another moment.”
; “I thought you left because you’re in love with my brother.”
“I abhorred the Triangle Trade before I loved your brother. So I abhorred him before I loved him, because he shipped on the Pretty Sarah…. Such an abomination to name a slave ship after my mother…. The Pretty Sarah left Newport in March. She dropped rum in Africa, took on slaves, and turned back to the Indies.”
They were on the Neck now. The smell of low tide rose off the Back Bay.
She made a face. “Boston stinks.”
“Most cities do,” he said. “Finish your story … if you can.”
“Halfway home, the crew decided to seize the Sarah, kill the captain, and sell the slaves for themselves. They asked your brother to join. He told the captain instead.”
“My brother sides with authority?”
“He said the only thing worse than authority was no authority.”
“Henry Knox would agree with that.”
“Who’s he?”
“Never mind. Keep talking … as if I could stop you.”
“Your brother helped the captain put down the mutiny. They locked the mutineers in the fo’c’sle and finished the voyage, which put my father in debt to him.”
“So your father made North a first mate?”
“He offered North the job on the Sarah. But North said he wouldn’t go back to Africa, as he didn’t hold with slaving if there was a better way to make a living.”
“A man of principle, he is.”
“That’s when I decided I liked him. Then he asked for the mate’s position on the Pretty Eve.” She laughed. “Later, he told me he wanted it because he wanted to be closer to me … because I was the Pretty Eve.”
“A man of charm, too.”
“More charmin’ than you know.”
“So he charmed his way right into Curly Bill’s job?”
“He made Curly Bill mad. He made Danton mad, too.”
“He has a skill for that.”
They were halfway across the Neck and had not passed a person in either direction. The rain was falling more heavily and the flames in the cressets, fed on piles of pitch-soaked logs, were hissing and sputtering.
Suddenly they heard the sound of riders, coming hard.
The Lost Constitution Page 10