Benjamin Franklin's Bastard: A Novel

by Sally Cabot

  “Perhaps if we talked of it again in a year—,” Deborah began, but John Rogers shook his head.

  “I’m not so young as to have a year to waste.”

  “But my daughter is.” Deborah’s mother had come through the door. “She’s young and unused to the idea as yet. Surely another month or two could be allowed her.”

  “I could not object to a month.”

  The talk went back and forth, Deborah saying little, until belatedly she realized just what it was they talked of—not a renewed suit in a month but a marriage in a month. Deborah leaped up from her chair to correct the plan while she could, but her mother turned on her such a bright smile of satisfaction that Deborah could see in it the clearest reflection of the reverse—the face she would be staring at across her mother’s hearth if she chose to remain at it single yet. She also saw the hatter’s shop. She turned from her mother’s smile to Rogers and saw that he waited on her word, understanding that nothing could be settled until she said it herself; Deborah’s mother talked on, and still John Rogers watched her and waited. Perhaps after all it was not such a poor prospect, life with a man who would grant her her own mind? Indeed, if she kept Benjamin Franklin out of it, this man would measure up well against the rest, and, as her mother repeated again and again, Benjamin Franklin was indeed out of it.

  “A month,” she said.

  DEBORAH’S MOTHER AGREED TO a dowry she could ill afford, culled out of the sale of the remaining inventory at her husband’s carpentry shop. Deborah’s mother offered no money for wedding attire, but Deborah didn’t object—she’d already discovered the sum of her assets lay in a full figure and a fresh face that would show up just as well in her unadorned lavender bombazine and navy cloak. The justice of the peace said the necessary words over them in the parlor, and Deborah’s mother made a roast of the last of the freshly slaughtered pork. After he’d cleaned two plates, John Rogers stood up, swiped his hair behind his ears, said his thank you to Deborah’s mother, and pointed Deborah to his cart. He hoisted her trunk in after her and geed his horse into the street; Deborah turned to say a last word to her mother, but the night was cold and her mother had already gone back inside the house. Looking at the door of the place where Deborah had lived the whole of her life, she began to think that perhaps she’d given up a known thing for an unknown thing without sufficient thought, but it was, as her mother would certainly have told her if she’d voiced the idea out loud, too late.

  Rogers’s house was on Warren Street, at the far end of Market, the houses growing smaller and darker as they progressed. Rogers spoke little on the short ride and made no grand announcement of any kind as they entered. Deborah didn’t particularly mind, as she’d occupied herself with her own thoughts, or perhaps better said, with one particular thought: Would Rogers be able to tell that another had already explored parts of her he might well expect to explore first? A memory of her last time between the sheets with Benjamin caused her to flush with double shame—at the act itself, and at thinking of Benjamin Franklin hours after she’d wed someone else.

  Rogers handed her down at the door, raked the trunk across the threshold, grinned at Deborah, and pulled her up the stairs. Two closed doors greeted her at the landing and Rogers opened one of them, unleashing a cold, damp draft. Deborah would have liked a few more words with her new husband, or better yet, a cup of tea, but neither was offered, and Deborah, feeling herself already in the wrong, made no fuss.

  It turned out not to matter. There was, Deborah discovered, a not-polite way to bed a woman, and if Rogers noticed any lack in her it didn’t slow him. He fell asleep, woke and kneed her legs apart again, drained himself, slept again. Deborah now saw the great advantage of remaining chaste till marriage—the night would have been a good deal less disappointing if she’d had no comparison to make.

  The second disappointment was her new husband’s empty pantry. Deborah managed their breakfast out of toast from an old crust of bread and the dregs of beer from the beer barrel; she offered them up to Rogers with what from her mother would have sounded like apology but from her came out as accusation: “Your pantry needs stocking.”

  “Gray’s has my account,” Rogers said, the only words he’d spoken to her since she’d arrived at his house. He swiped his hair behind his ears again and left for his shop.

  LIVING WITH ROGERS PROVED to be little different from living alone, and alone, Deborah turned to her thoughts. That her thoughts were too often of Benjamin Franklin she knew to be wrong, but she didn’t care. Her thoughts, at least, were hers, and she’d do with them as she liked. The first sign of deeper trouble came a month into her marriage when Deborah put a sack of Indian meal on the counter at Gray’s and was told that John Rogers no longer had an account. Deborah told Rogers that night.

  “I’ll square it,” he said, and went out.

  That night Deborah learned another new thing—that there was something besides Benjamin Franklin’s good nature that could be brought home from a tavern—but when she went to Gray’s the next day there was no trouble over the account; it was another month before she discovered from Gray’s store that all her purchases were now being charged against her mother’s account. Deborah returned home, went straight to her husband’s desk, and prized it open without compunction, hunting out his ledger book. Deborah was not good with words, but she was good with numbers, having helped her father from time to time in his shop, and she could soon track the spending of the entire dowry she’d brought with her to her marriage, as well as the long list of remaining debts. She closed up the desk and sat long in thought. As affairs now stood, the only advantage to her marriage to John Rogers went all to John Rogers, with her mother forced to keep the pair of them at her own expense. Deborah thought longer, and could see only one way to improve her state as well as her mother’s: She climbed the stairs, packed her trunk, and wrestled it back down the stairs with greater ease than she’d wrestled it up. She found a cart boy at the corner and gave him a coin to take it and her to her mother’s house.

  Her mother heard the racket and came out into the hall. “What in heaven is this?”

  “We’re done with Rogers,” Deborah said, “and you’d do well to inform Gray before he takes all you own to pay off the man’s debts.”

  “What!”

  Deborah explained. And explained again. Her mother was the sort who had her own idea of a thing and didn’t like to give it up; in the end she went out to Gray’s and came back the color of sour milk, apparently drained of ideas altogether.

  “What are we to do? You still bear his name.”

  “He may keep his name,” Deborah said. She climbed the stairs to her old room, opened the window, and breathed in the cold, healthful air.

  SOON AFTER DEBORAH’S FLIGHT John Rogers disappeared, and in time the rumors began to fly around Market Street from every point on the compass. John Rogers had a wife in London. John Rogers had fled to the West Indian Islands to escape his creditors and had taken a third wife. John Rogers was dead, beaten to a pile of bones by one of his creditors. Or the third wife. At first Deborah didn’t care where he was or whom he was with or, indeed, whether he was alive or dead—her earlier rage had washed away under a crashing wave of relief—but after a time Deborah realized that what had happened to her husband had to matter to her. If she had no proof of his death, if she had no proof of that London marriage, Deborah was herself as near dead as any living woman could get. She had no husband, but neither was she free to marry another unless she could afford to legally investigate either the first wife in London or the possible death in the West Indies. The dowry for Rogers had taken all that the Reads owned in the way of assets. Any legal fees were as beyond Deborah’s grasp as the tops of the masts that lined the Delaware River.

  DEBORAH’S MOTHER BEGAN TO have difficulty on the stairs, and with the washing, and with balancing over the fire to lift the skillet; she began to tremble as she worked her needle. Deborah took on the main of the chores, settling her mother
in her chair with some wool to wind or some dough to knead; at night she helped her to bed and returned below stairs to sit alone with her sewing. The relief that had washed away her anger over John Rogers was in turn washed away by a hopelessness that had heretofore been entirely alien to her nature. She got out of her bed and did her chores and her nursing but didn’t go out beyond what was needed; she could see the looks on the faces she passed, as if she were lame or disfigured. Nothing moved her until one day on her way back from her errands her eye happened to fix on the masts dissecting the sky.

  Deborah walked toward the water. From a distance the river looked still, but as she drew closer she saw how fiercely it ripped into its bank, that she was the thing that was still. She wondered what happened when a still thing hit a moving thing, where the still thing might end up. Benjamin would have known; Benjamin was a strong swimmer, had even experimented with paddles on his hands and feet to make him an even stronger one. He’d once hitched himself to a kite and let it drag him across the pond, testing the power of the wind against a few sticks and pieces of paper.

  “But how did you get back?” Deborah had asked.

  “Paid a friend sixpence to carry my clothes around the pond and walked.” Benjamin chatted on about this and that amazing thing he’d discovered about wind and water as he blew across the pond, but Deborah only wondered that as he’d walked home wet and cold and short an entire sixpence it hadn’t occurred to him how foolish it was.

  THERE MUST HAVE BEEN a dozen ships lined up along the river, but every one sat with sails furled, as stagnant as Deborah, having long since discharged its passengers and cargo—if Benjamin Franklin had been aboard any one of them he certainly hadn’t come looking for her. Deborah stared down at the angry current again, so dark and rough she couldn’t see bottom, and shuddered. She should go home—her mother grew nervous when Deborah left her alone too long—but she felt too old and achy and worn out to even make the turn against the wind. She was seventeen and finished.

  3

  Philadelphia, 1726

  WHEN BENJAMIN FRANKLIN RETURNED to Philadelphia, Deborah Read discovered it only along with the rest. Philadelphia had grown in his two years gone—it was not uncommon to see forty masts at one time against the river skyline. An upholsterer, a clock maker, and three new taverns had all sprung up along Market Street; the Scots-Irish had almost caught up to the Quakers in numbers, although not in money or influence. Deborah, watching all the new bustle from her window, one day spied the familiar mane of hair, the wide shoulders, the rollicking gait. She stepped back, hands flying to loosen her apron, but he walked on past her house without stopping. The hot flush of mortification was followed by a realization so cold that she shivered from it: She was no longer of account. But how could she be? Franklin would have heard of her marriage and seen it for the tar pit it was.

  A number of weeks passed before Deborah saw Benjamin Franklin again. Her mother required her constant attention, and she found it easier to send a boy to do her marketing; this was what she told herself, but the truth was, she hid. After a time, however, the old itch drove her back into the street, and it wasn’t many days before they passed each other face-to-face. He appeared to have gained in size, as if all he’d experienced in London had added an extra inch to his height, an extra few inches to his already broad back. As he walked he was engaged in intense debate with another man, so it was understandable that he would smile, nod, dip his head, and pass without slowing. This was Deborah’s first thought; her second was a rage so hot it burned her teeth. She whirled around. “Mr. Franklin!”

  He turned, smiling yet. The gentleman with Franklin touched his arm and moved off. Franklin stopped smiling. He took a reluctant step toward Deborah. “Mrs. Rogers.”

  “Miss Read,” Deborah said.

  Franklin looked over his shoulder as if in hunt of a friend. Finding none, he turned back. “Indeed, I heard of your abandonment, and I am truly—”

  “Then you heard wrong,” Deborah said. “I left my husband, if he ever was, and I left his name with him, long before he fled. I only stopped you now to ask if you received my letters. Two, it was. Fearing the first one lost, I wrote another. I’d like to know if two got lost. If they did, I’ll not waste more paper on letters.”

  Franklin’s face danced through a series of changes that Deborah discovered she could read better than she could read any book: surprise, guilt, something like admiration if not quite the thing itself, and, last, calculation. But he was, after all, an honest man. “Two letters did not get lost,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Deborah said. “In that case, perhaps one day I’ll chance another.” She moved off.

  THE NEXT TIME DEBORAH came upon Franklin he was walking briskly ahead of her in a northerly direction, as if he’d just come from dinner at a tavern and was on his way home, or as if he’d seen her first and turned away. His being in front of her for several blocks, she could watch who he’d become, how he had a word of greeting for nearly everyone he passed, how nearly everyone moved on with a new smile, or an old smile made bigger; if he happened to pass two people walking together, their talk grew more animated after he’d gone by—talking of Franklin, no doubt.

  The fourth time Deborah saw Franklin’s unmistakable form ahead she felt all the fire that had seen her through their previous meeting wash out of her; she’d done well then, letting him see she was not yet beaten down by him or Rogers or anyone else, but now she couldn’t summon a single word of address that could match his. Deborah crossed to the other side of the street, and they passed as if they’d never met.

  IN TIME, DEBORAH DEVELOPED a public face of indifference whenever she saw Franklin or whenever his name came up in her hearing, but in private she found she was far from indifferent. She even took some poor comfort in the fact that her mother had been wrong about Benjamin Franklin and she had been right, but she took less comfort in the fact that the man’s rise took place right there on Market Street, where she was forced to watch. He opened a print shop that at once began to thrive, which no doubt gave him some new ideas about his worth. Rumor traveled Deborah’s way that he’d made a marriage offer to a relative of his landlord but had overreached himself with a demand of a hundred-pound dowry and was rejected. The next rumor Deborah heard was that Benjamin Franklin, the runaway printer’s apprentice, was now the owner and editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

  The paper was, of course, a great success. As word of its growing influence swept up and down the street, Deborah found herself taking a queer pride in it and, queerer yet, a sense of some small claim to it. She’d done nothing but believe in Benjamin Franklin, but surely that must have counted for something in his life; indeed, if she were to look back over her own life, there were times when that seemed her only accomplishment. She watched Franklin’s name leap from mouth to mouth until all Philadelphia seemed to ring with it; she expected daily to hear of his marriage, Franklin now being one of Philadelphia’s brighter prospects, but she heard no such news. She believed she knew enough of the man to know that he must be seeking—and no doubt finding—physical comfort from someplace, but if he did, she heard no name attached to it.

  4

  Philadelphia, 1730

  SHE WAS NAMED ANNE, for the queen. From what she came to know of Franklin in later years, she knew he no longer approved, but back then he delighted in a king or a queen as much as anyone else. He delighted in many things—the heat of the fire on his back; the rich, greasy slice of goose on his tongue; the kick of the cider as it slid down his throat. She supposed that was part of what drew people to him—his childlike delight in things. In them. Simple enough, when you thought of it.

  She saw him first at the hanging. She’d been to the butcher’s for soup bones when she saw the cart with the two boys seated on their coffins in the back of it. One of the boys was crying uncontrollably, the other was murmuring to him in a voice too low for Anne to hear the words, but the tone sounded brave and she decided to follow the cart to see h
ow he managed. The bells had already begun to toll, and by the time Anne and the cart arrived at the prison the crowd had gathered into thick knots. The cart reached the hanging tree and pulled up close under it; the ropes were thrown over the beam and the sheriff addressed the boys. Anne didn’t hear the sheriff’s words but she saw the brave boy shake his head, the sheriff speak again, and then she heard the brave boy shout back: “What would you have me say? I am innocent of the fact and it will appear so before God!”

  That was when Anne noticed Franklin, standing at the front of the crowd but also standing out from it—taller and handsomer than most, with thick hair the color of dark gold and curious gray eyes, a strong face and stronger shoulders, taking down the boy’s words in a small notebook. The sheriff raised his voice and began to read, the death warrant Anne assumed, until she fixed her attention on the actual words of it. Reprieve! At the good news the brave boy’s courage failed him and he fainted. Franklin—although she didn’t know it was Franklin then—was one of the first to reach the cart, and with one strong arm swept the boy off his coffin and into the street, laying him in the dirt; it would seem a poorer location to some, but Anne approved of it.

  ANNE HAD BEEN SERVING at the Penny Pot two months when she next saw Franklin. She’d been driven to the tavern the same way every girl her age ever was—by hunger—and by the fact that she’d seen the sign in the window of the Penny Pot and in none of the other taverns: GIRL WANTED. Not the Penny Pot, her father said, but her mother paid him no heed; by then Anne’s father was good for nothing but coughing blood into a pewter cup, and Anne’s mother had gotten used to leaving the few words he managed to offer unanswered. Anne minded her father’s words better—studied them, in fact—even copied them as best she could, hearing in them something finer than those she heard elsewhere in the house; her father had once been a tutor at Philadelphia’s finest school for boys until the consumption struck. But in the case of the tavern, Anne took her mother’s tack. What did her father know of hunger? Anne saw to it that he got first pick at whatever food her mother managed to push together—a watered broth, a meatless pie, a thin custard. Anne never begrudged her father his lion’s share, nor did she begrudge whatever small child wasn’t still at breast being fed next and on up through the seven—but it did prove to Anne that if she wanted something better for herself she’d have to go out and get it for herself.