by David Liss
Ethan Saunders
All the world wished to be at the Bingham gathering, and I was not invited. This was of no moment, for I had no doubt getting in would be the easiest thing in the world. As I approached on Market Street I observed the lanterns lit all along Bingham’s mansion. Here was one of the jewels of the city, a private residence of remarkable splendor and taste, hardly less massive and grand than the Library Company building. For those Europeans who believed America to be a country of fur-clad man-beasts, possessing nothing of arts or subtlety, I should defy them to see our finest architecture, of which this house was certainly an example—a monument to American sturdiness, modesty, and opulence.
A queue of coaches made its slow, important way through the circular path along the front of the house, but I would not join with them. Instead, Leonidas and I went around back to the servants’ entrance. Much to our surprise, this was locked. I had anticipated a busy stream of servants moving in and out, among whom we could be lost, but apparently the Binghams had prepared long in advance.
Leonidas asked not my plans nor made snide remarks upon my lack of preparation. He knew me too well to think I would regard this locked door as any sort of impediment. I reached into my right boot, in which I kept a hidden pouch containing several useful lock picks. I found the one best suited for the device before me, and within a minute the lock sprang and I turned the knob. Replacing the picks in my boot, I pushed open the door. Here we found a dozen or more cooks, chefs, and servers hurrying about not in chaos, but with a kind of mechanized determination. Upon the stoves, steam billowed forth. From the ovens came fiery blasts of heat. One woman set pastries upon a white porcelain tray. Another used a massive pair of tongs to pull small fowl from a pot of boiling water. Into this fray we ventured, and I commenced a lecture to Leonidas on the proper placement of cheeses, a lecture that lasted the breadth of our stroll through the kitchen. If anyone considered it remarkable that a man should walk through this room lecturing a Negro on the art of serving food, no one mentioned it to me. Thus, emerging from the kitchen, we found ourselves in the massive house, where we had only to follow our ears and ascend a set of stairs to reach the main body of the festivities. Thus settled, I sent Leonidas to find where the other servants were gathered.
There were several dozen guests in attendance, and in addition to the room that had been cleared to create a space for the dancers, the revelers were spread throughout three large rooms that appeared to have been furnished with such gatherings as this in mind. Each room contained pockets of chairs and sofas, so guests might sit and converse, and every chandelier, sconce, and candleholder was stuffed with a fat taper, lighting the room so that it seemed almost daytime. In one room, several tables had been set out with cards for gaming. Wine and food was served freely, a trio of musicians played in one corner, and our beautiful hostess, the incomparable Mrs. Bingham, beautiful and elegant, enfolded in her massive nimbus of golden hair, flitted from guest to guest. In the ballroom, the great and important and pompous of the city, and so the nation, turned about with elegance or clumsiness.
I minded neither the candles nor the food nor the fiddlers nor even the dancing. I was less comfortable with the company, for here was nearly every man of substance in the city. There was Mr. Willing, president of Hamilton’s bank. There the great windbag John Adams, the vice president, with his agreeable wife, Abigail, by his side. Missing, much to my simultaneous disappointment and relief, was the great man himself, Washington. It was said he avoided such gatherings, for he alone had to forge the public role of the President and knew not if it would be too frivolous for the leader of a republican nation to attend a gathering of this sort. It was for the best, I decided. In my fallen state, how could I face a man revered by all, and by me more than any other?
However, there was Hamilton, standing next to his wife, Eliza. I had flirted with her many years before, but if she recognized me, she made no sign of it. She was still vaguely pretty, but she’d grown a bit plump and dowdy, having given birth to so many children I believed even the parents had lost track. The two of them bred Federalists like rabbits. It was an easy enough thing to mock him, but when I observed the happiness with which she looked upon her husband and the comfort he took when he held her hand, I felt keenly why I was in that room. I was there for Cynthia and for all I had lost, all that had been denied me.
I took a goblet of wine from a passing servant and acted as though there were nowhere else in the universe I belonged so well. I wished above all things not to be noticed, for there were many men in that room whom I did not know well but who might yet recognize me, might yet recall my name, my face, and the crime of which I had been accused. I wanted to do what I must before being generally seen.
I was not to be so lucky, however. I had only begun to scan the room when I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to face Colonel Hamilton himself, with Eliza still by his side. Diverting her gaze for a moment, she smiled at me. “Captain Saunders, it has been many years.”
I bowed to her. “Far too many, and yet while I have aged, you look no different than when last I saw you. I trust you are well?”
So went our exchange of nothings. She, politely, made no mention of my having been disgraced since I last saw her. Very polite woman. After a moment of this, Hamilton excused himself from his wife and pulled me a few feet away. “What are you doing here?”
“I did not mention I was invited? It’s strange. You know, sometimes I think we are not so close as we used to be.”
“Saunders, I don’t want you muddling things. You have no business here. I don’t want you making enemies.”
“What do you care if I make enemies or no?”
“I don’t want you making enemies for me,” he clarified.
“Oh,” I said, noting that his eyes moved past me to nearly the other end of the room where stood a man of about the same stature of Hamilton. He had red hair and a handsome face that beamed with pleasure, in no small part, I thought, because he was surrounded by a small group of men who appeared to hover over his every word.
“Why, that’s Mr. Jefferson,” I said, more loudly than Hamilton would have wished for.
“Please leave,” Hamilton said.
“You know,” I said, “if you did not wish Jefferson and his minions to associate the two of us together, all you had to do was ignore me. Now here we are in close conversation. Looks quite bad for you.”
“That is the least of my worries,” he told me. “I want you to go.”
Across the room, Jefferson appeared to note Hamilton’s attention, and the Secretary of State offered the Secretary of the Treasury a stiff bow. As Hamilton returned it, the hatred between the two seemed to me an almost physical force, as solid as steel, as hot as the sun. If a man had stepped between their searing gazes, he would surely have been incinerated.
Jefferson looked away, and I turned to say something to Hamilton, but he too had walked away, having wasted, perhaps, enough energy on me already. I could not help but think there was something of a kindness in his words, as though he had asked me to leave for my own good rather than his own, and I wondered if I ought to take it to heart. I continued to wonder as I crossed the room, and I might have kept on wondering to the point of departure if I had not observed the man I had come to molest.
Huddled with a small group of men was Mr. Duer, and his rugged associate was nowhere to be seen. I took a glass of wine from a passing servant, finished it, found another, and began to approach the speculator.
I had not gone more than a step or two before I was joined by Mr. Lavien, who moved along as though we had been by each other’s side all night. “Shall we?” he asked.
“I did not think you were invited,” I said.
“I know for certain you were not,” he answered.
We strode toward Duer, who was engaged in conversation with a trio of men, two of whom were unfamiliar to me, though I recognized the third as Bob Morris, perhaps the wealthiest man in America, in whose Philad
elphia mansion George Washington lived and worked. An unapologetic speculator, Morris had grown rich off the Revolution and even richer in its aftermath. Even this capacious cormorant hung upon Duer’s every word.
Now that I had a chance to study him, Duer appeared even smaller and more fragile. He was as delicate as a statue made of glass, and his little body suggested smallness the way the night suggests darkness. I had the distinct impression of towering over him, though he was only slightly shorter than Lavien. Finely dressed in a trim suit of navy blue velvet with bright gold buttons, he was a dandyish-looking fellow, whose hair was cut into one of those unnatural short bobs then fashionable. It looked for all the world as though someone had dropped a pyramid of hair, from a great height, to land upon his head.
Upon seeing us, Duer turned to his companions. “Gentlemen, if you will excuse me. Even at such a pleasant gathering as this, there are unpleasant duties to which I must attend.”
His courtiers disappeared, and we had the great speculator to ourselves. He prepared himself to say something dismissive, something intended to introduce and conclude our conversation in a single stroke. I understood the look of determination upon his face, and I jumped in just as the corners of his mouth twitched. I would not let him take a position from which he would find it hard to retrench.
“I am sorry,” I said, before he could utter a sound, “if I approached you too abruptly the other day, sir. Allow me to say I have long admired you, if only from afar. I am also sorry if you have been troubled in the past by this fellow Lavien. He is troublesome, I daresay.”
“In the capacity of serving his master, yes, even though his master is an old friend of mine. Even so—”
“Even so,” I interrupted—always a risky move, but I aimed to show Duer I was more his man than he was himself—“there is a time and a place for everything and this is not the time for pushy Hebrews to be troubling men at so glorious a gathering. Do you know, Mr. Duer, that he has not even an invitation to be here? I know, it is scandalous. Oh, don’t look that way, Mr. Lavien, if we were to insert ourselves into a secret gathering of the high Pharisees, I am sure we would be made to feel as unwelcome as we must, alas, make you under these circumstances. So be so kind as run along, there’s a good fellow. Find yourself some unleavened bread and perhaps something porkless to put upon it.”
Lavien, who never betrayed a feeling without first calculating its efficacy, now wore upon his face a mask of anger and humiliation. We had discussed nothing in advance, but he allowed me to pursue my course without hesitation, and I could not help but think how well it would be if our partnership could be formalized. What great work we could do for our nation! I watched as he wandered off, demonstrating his fictional chagrin with countenance and body language. I, for my part, set aside my glass of wine.
“What is your connection to that man?” Duer asked me.
“Oh, it is a silly thing, really,” I said. “I have, through a series of obligations with which I shan’t trouble you, decided to look into the disappearance of Mr. Pearson—a favor for a friend of a friend of the gentleman—and that man Lavien has set himself as my rival. I believe he attempts to curry favor with Colonel Hamilton, and it is a most irritating thing to look upon. Now, I admire Hamilton as much as the next man, but he has been curious in his choice of whom to employ and, if I may be so bold, whom not to. Those first few months, when you were taking charge of things at Treasury, were the most productive, I think.”
He bowed. “You are kind to say so.”
I was quite astonished to discover how prone he was to flattery, but I knew it was a hand that must not be overplayed. “Not at all, not at all. Now, if you don’t mind, a question or two. I promise to make it quite painless, and you may always decline to answer. An easy thing between gentlemen—Christian gentlemen, I should say.” That we together could have the joy of drawing a circle on the ground in which Lavien could not step was enough to satisfy Duer.
“I shall do my best to help you,” he said.
“So good of you, but no more than I expected. Now, to the matter of Pearson. Can you tell me more about your dealings with him?”
“Oh, it is no great secret,” said Duer. “He and I did some little business together, and though Pearson was desirous of doing more, he was never to my taste. Our paths crossed most significantly over a matter of property. He had some investments in a project of mine to buy and sell and hold leases on the western border of this state.”
“You two dealt with war debt, did you not?” I affected an easy attitude, concealing the disgust I felt for a man who would cheat veterans out of their promise of payment when they had held on to their promissory notes for a decade or more.
“Among other things,” he said. “The profit in war debt has, of course, diminished since the Assumption Bill passed, but it was a way to make a little money a few years back. Now the money is to be had in government issues: bank scrip and other ventures.”
“Like the Million Bank in New York,” I proposed.
He studied me closely. “I have heard of that bank and I suppose it may be as good as any, but I have no specific knowledge of it. How came you to know of it?”
“A cousin in New York is an investor and urged me to invest there as well. He said it was a significant opportunity.”
“Any bank, if it prospers, is a good investment, and now that Hamilton has launched the Bank of the United States and plans the opening of more branches, I presume we shall see many more such institutions in this country. But while they can be an excellent investment, they can also be quite treacherous, like anything else. Witness your friend Jack Pearson. Nothing can be sounder than government six percent issues, but he has ruined himself in them.”
I thought about what that woman, Mrs. Birch, had said, that the house she rented from Pearson had been sold precipitously. I could not affect surprise, however, lest I alert him to my ignorance. Instead, I chose a kind of easy familiarity. “Is not ruined a bit strong? I understand there have been some reversals, but surely nothing so bad as ruin.”
Duer smiled, showing his canine teeth like a victorious predator. “Oh, he’s quite ruined. The world doesn’t know it yet, and if you count yourself a friend you shall not put it about, but it is the truth of the matter.”
What could it mean? What could it mean for his disappearance, for the efforts directed against me, for the unknown agenda; perhaps most important, what could it mean for Cynthia that her wretched husband, whose only worthwhile quality was his money, was ruined? To Duer I said, “Is that why he has vanished?”
Duer made a strange noise in the back of his throat. “It’s not a good vanishing he’s effected. Is that not Pearson over there, speaking to that very fat gentleman?” He turned slightly, and it seemed to me he did so in order to avoid being seen.
I glanced across the room to where Duer had been gazing and saw that it was indeed Jacob Pearson, drinking a glass of wine and nodding solemnly, but in no way gravely. He looked nothing at all like a man under a cloud of financial ruin. Standing only a little way removed, attached to the conversation but in no way a participant, was Cynthia.
I looked at Pearson, then Duer, then Pearson again. Duer must have sensed my dilemma, for he tittered almost girlishly. “You want Pearson, I know, but you are not done with me. I see I’ve misjudged you, Saunders, but this is not the place to discuss business. Come see me tomorrow at the City Tavern. You may, upon the conclusion of trading, ask me what you like.” He bowed and withdrew.
I hardly heard what he said. There, before me, was Pearson. Cynthia had been threatened to protect whatever secrets he held. Hamilton had unleashed the monstrous power of his man Lavien to find him. Now, here he was, in the most elegant private home in the city, and I could not think what to do about it. Even so, I must do something.
I had not even found a way to take a step forward when Lavien appeared by my side. “I saw him first,” he said, and began walking. I roused myself and began to walk as well, unable t
o catch up. It felt to me like a metaphor.
Joan Maycott
Spring 1791
The response to the whiskey tax was universal: We would not pay. The tax was foolish and ill-conceived, and sooner or later the politicians in Philadelphia must recognize that fact. When Tindall sent Hendry to our cabin to tell us that we owed a hundred and fifteen dollars, Andrew shook with rage, and Mr. Dalton, who owed an equal amount, was tempted to take his gun to Empire Hall that day, but Mr. Skye talked sense into both of them, or what we thought was sense at the time.
Another meeting was held at the church, and little was agreed upon but that this was more eastern indifference to the plight of men upon the border. They let Indians murder us and refused to send their soldiers, they allowed speculators to toy with our lives, and now we must pay them to do it. Anyone with a still—anyone who brought his grain to a still—would suffer from this tax. What was immediately clear was that the tax would drive smaller distillers out of business and the only benefits would go to wealthy men back east and large-scale distillers like Tindall, who had cash and could shoulder the tax. The excise had been promoted in Philadelphia as hurting none and benefiting all, but it benefited only the wealthy, and it did so upon the backs of the poor.
Amid all this, life went on. I continued to withhold from Andrew the news of my pregnancy, preferring to wait until my fourth month—a milestone I had never before reached. I worked on my book, kept the house, and prayed that the whiskey tax would somehow disappear. Two or three times I slipped onto Tindall property to help nurse Lactilla, who returned to health remarkably well. I felt not precisely guilt, but I believed that Tindall might not have been so quick to anger had I not been in the room. In a strange way, I believed he had shot her for my benefit. I said none of this to Lactilla. I brought her fresh cheeses and milk eggs, though she needed none, and cloth to change her bandages. She lay upon her bunk, her face a collection of red welts. She would smile at me and say, “Missus Maycott, you just nothing but goodness,” but I knew it was not true. I was not goodness at all. I was something else. I tended to Lactilla not because I thought myself responsible, but because I could not endure the thought of a world in which this poor creature must undergo such suffering without a commensurate response in kindness. It wasn’t goodness, it was a kind of rage, a burning need to do something before things slipped into a darkness from which none of us could ever emerge.
