by David Liss
It lasted but an instant, this utter, unassailable conviction that it was Cynthia, and then disappointment and humiliation struck me just as hard and just as quickly. Of course it had not been she. Of course Cynthia Pearson had not come to knock upon my door. The idea was absurd, and that I should, after ten years, be so quick to believe otherwise testified to how empty was my sad existence.
When Owen returned, I closed the watch and put it away, and then I drained my drink. “Be so good as to pour another.”
Owen hovered before me, shaking his head, his mug handle of a nose blurring in the light of the oil lamps. “You can hardly keep yourself sitting. Go home, Captain Saunders.”
“Another. I am to die tonight, and I wish to do it good and drunk.”
“I daresay he is already quite drunk,” said a voice from behind me, “but give him another if he likes.”
It was Nathan Dorland. I needn’t look, for I knew the voice.
Owen’s eyes narrowed with contempt, for Dorland was not an imposing figure. Not tall, not broad, not confident or commanding. “Unless you’re a friend of Captain Saunders, and from the look of you, I’m guessing you ain’t, I’d say this is none of your concern.”
“It’s my concern, because when this wretch is done with his drink, I mean to take him outside and introduce him to a concept called justice, with which he has been all too unfamiliar.”
“And yet,” I said, “I am familiar with injustice. Such irony.”
“I don’t know your complaint,” said Owen, “and I know the captain well enough to trust you’ve got your cause. Even so, you’ll not harm him. Not here. If you’ve a grievance with him, you must challenge him to a duel, like a gentleman.”
“I have done so, and he has refused my challenge,” Dorland said, sounding very much like a whining child.
“Duels are fought so early in the morning,” I said to Owen. “It’s barbarous.”
Owen looked over at Dorland. “You’ve heard it. He has no interest in fighting you, and you must respect that. This man is a hero of the Revolution, and I owe him a debt for my father’s sake. I’ll defend his right to fight or not fight whom he wishes.”
“Hero indeed!” Dorland barked. “I suppose when he is spinning tales of his time with Washington, he may have neglected to tell you the one in which he is cast out of the army for treason. Haven’t heard that one? Ask him if you doubt it. Captain Saunders’s career ended in disgrace, and as to the matter of your father, be assured he tells every tavern keeper in Philadelphia that he fought with his father or brother or uncle or son. Our friend here has given so many doomed men powder, he is like the angel of death.”
Owen’s eyes glistened in the light of the fireplace, and I shrugged, for I had been caught. I would not shy away from an untruth, but it seemed a contemptible thing to lie about a lie.
“I was at Brooklyn Heights,” I said. “I might have seen your father. And no matter what you may hear said of me, I can promise you I was never a traitor. Never.”
My words only served to make Owen more teary. He looked over at Dorland. “Leave now. I don’t want trouble, and nor do you.”
“What does he owe?” I heard the ease of wealth in Dorland’s voice. “I’ll pay his debt.”
Owen said nothing, so I spoke. “ ’Tis near eleven dollars.” It wasn’t true. I owed less than six, but if Dorland was going to pay for my death, at least Owen should profit from it.
I heard behind me the music of metal on metal, and then a purse landed hard upon the bar. “There’s three pounds of British in it,” said Dorland. “Near fifteen dollars. Now Saunders comes with me.”
I nodded at Owen. “ ’Tis my time. Thanks for the drinks, lad.”
I pushed myself off the rough wooden stool, and the room turned to a wild and topsy-turvy thing, with the floor leaping up toward me and bar stools taking flight like startled birds. I reflected on the danger of drinking so long without rising—that it is often hard to say precisely how drunken one has become if there is no new movement against which to test oneself. And then I believe I lost consciousness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID LISS is the author of The Whiskey Rebels, The Ethical Assassin, A Spectacle of Corruption, The Coffee Trader, and A Conspiracy of Paper, winner of the 2000 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. He lives in San Antonio with his wife and daughter and can be reached via his website, www.davidliss.com.
The Devil’s Company is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by David Liss
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