by David Liss
“Stole from your bag?” I asked. “Good Lord, am I now a thief?”
“You stole them, and I want them back, and if you don’t return them to me you shall be very sorry, sir. I have given you but a hint of the harm I can do you.”
Leonidas poured himself a glass of wine. He was, of course, usually abstemious in his habits, but he knew well enough how to affect a cool demeanor to menacing effect. “Mr. Freneau, please take my advice,” Leonidas said. Even I found his calm unnerving. “Stand up and leave. We have nothing of yours and nothing you want. If Captain Saunders feels threatened, he will call upon me to protect him. You do not want that.”
Freneau’s face did seem to blanch, but he held his ground admirably, I had to admit. “Captain Saunders, I can do you genuine harm, and I don’t mean revealing your whereabouts to a man who hates you already. I can harm you in ways you would not care to think of, as regards your friend and slave. You know of what I speak. Now, return to me the documents you stole, and we shall forget this conversation ever took place.”
Could he know about my liberating Leonidas? I’d told no one, but I was not so naïve as to believe that such information, like all information, could not be bought and sold, if only someone recognized its value. I felt suddenly frightened. The issue at hand was of an act of generosity I had performed, but I understood full well how Leonidas, if the news was presented in a biased manner, might misunderstand my actions.
Seeming to understand my thoughts, Freneau smiled at me. “It is amazing how a man might visit an attorney and not trouble to learn he is a Jeffersonian in inclination.”
“Whatever he tells you,” I said to Leonidas, “is misleading at best. He cannot have all the facts, so let him speak, and we shall sort it out when the rascal leaves us be.” I attempted to sound confident, but I could not hide from myself the feeling of rapid descent from a precipice.
Leonidas stood again and looked at Freneau. “You have nothing to say to interest me.”
“Oh, you will want to hear this,” Freneau assured him.
“No, I won’t. Go,” Leonidas said.
I smiled at Freneau, seeing I had defeated him. Leonidas’s loyalty would win out over any trivial detail.
Freneau stood. “Very well.” He replaced his hat. “I see I am beaten.” He began to walk off but stopped short. “You must know you are a free man, Leonidas, and have been for weeks. Saunders took the trouble to free you, but he did not take the trouble to mention it?” He turned quickly, as if afraid of some punishment leaping out at him, and departed our company.
Leonidas and I watched him go, carefully avoiding each other’s gaze. It seemed to me impossible, given the momentousness of what was just said, that the others in the taproom paid us no mind, yet no eyes fell upon us, and our crisis came without notice. Men gathered in their clusters and drank and spoke and laughed. Life continued all around us, and yet it seemed we were upon a stage, a great light flooding down on us.
At last I turned to look at Leonidas, whose dark eyes were narrow and bloodshot and intense. “Do not say anything else,” he warned.
I leaned back in my seat. “Do make yourself easy, Leonidas. I had hoped to make this a surprise when our task was completed, but I see I must tell you now in order to avoid any resentment. A greater sense of ceremony would have been welcome, but now this will have to do. Yes, I made arrangements with a lawyer. Congratulations, sir, you are a free man.” I raised my glass to toast him.
It was a bittersweet moment, for I hated to let him go, but his freedom was long overdue. I hoped he would, in turn, look upon me in friendship and gratitude. This was not, I told myself, the end of my connection with Leonidas.
Yet the look on his face remained dark, harsh, unforgiving. He glowered and his breathing had quickened, and I understood something had happened, something terrible and unstoppable. “I have been a free man for weeks, and you did not tell me?”
“Well, I meant to, but then this business with Cynthia arose, and I could not spare you. I thought it best to postpone.”
He sucked in air as though he’d been slapped. “You did not trust me to continue to help you of my own accord?”
I stammered like a man explaining away a whore to his wife. “Of course I trusted you, but it hardly seemed necessary to make any big announcements when we had so much with which to concern ourselves. A month or two could hardly make a difference.”
“You had no right to hold a free man in servitude.”
“I think you are taking this out of context,” I said. “You were only free because I freed you. It’s not as though I captured you in the African jungle.”
“It doesn’t matter how I was freed. I was free and you continued to hold me,” he said, rising to his feet. “It is unforgivable.”
“No, no, no, you are focusing on the wrong things. I have reformed, Leonidas. I have freed you. I understand that this is a confusing moment, but you will sort it out. Sit. Have a drink. Let us talk about your plans.”
He remained quiet, in a pose of consideration. His face returned to its more customary sable, and his eyes returned to their traditional oval shape. He blinked at me a few times. Then he said, “I am going upstairs to collect my things, and then I am leaving.”
“What?” Now I stood. “You cannot leave me now. I am in the thick of it. You said I ought to have trusted that you would remain by my side, and now you threaten me with leaving.”
“I make no threats but a pronouncement. I cannot remain with a man who would use me so. Had you told me before, I would stay, but you did not. Goodbye, Ethan.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he had already turned and I would not demean myself by calling after him like a jilted lover. Instead I sat and poured myself some of Duer’s wine. I sat and waited. I watched as he descended the stairs once more, and I watched as he turned to the door without once looking back toward me. I watched as he walked out into the cold New York night, leaving me entirely alone on the eve of crisis.
Joan Maycott
January 1792
I’d thought to go alone and might well have done so. It was not that I did not trust the man I was to meet. In this whole affair, he seemed to me among the most honorable, perhaps curiously so. It was not a question of fear but one of power. Would it make me seem more powerful, I wondered, to go alone and thus show him how secure I felt, or to bring a man with me and show him I had more men in my orbit than he had seen? In the end, I chose the latter. The time had not yet come—if it were to come—to let him know how few we were. It hardly mattered, for we had achieved much and would, I believed, achieve all. The smallness of our numbers made us adaptable and agile, but to an outsider it might make us appear weak.
In earlier meetings, he had met Dalton and Richmond, so I brought with me Mr. Skye, who accepted the assignment with solemnity. Now it was dark, and we sat in our hired coach—I’d had Skye hire the plainest one he could find—on the side of a quiet street in an indifferent neighborhood. It was modest, but not poor, and by no means unruly. It was one of those parts of town where men labored hard for their few dollars and held to their homes with pride.
It was not yet nine, the hour of our meeting, and Skye and I sat in the dark. He sat perhaps closer to me than he ought to have, and I could smell the scent of him: leather and tobacco and the sweet hint of whiskey that clung to them all, all the whiskey rebels.
“What are his loyalties?” Skye asked, after a long silence. He spoke quietly, almost a whisper, though I did not think such discretion was necessary. I did not think he believed the question necessary either. He spoke so as to have something to say.
“Right now I think he’s loyal to himself,” I said, “which means as long as we continue to pay him, he will serve us. We have to be careful, however, not to push him too far or make him fear that anything he does will hurt someone he cares about. I suspect no amount of money will make him do harm.”
“No, of course not, else you would not have recruited him. His limitations
are why you trust him.”
I laughed. “You are wise.”
“And you are impressive. More impressive than I can say.” I felt him take my hand. “Joan,” he said, “so much has happened—to both of us—and I would never imagine that you could put your grief for Andrew aside. Yet you are alive, a vibrant woman, and I should be a strange sort of man were I not moved by your courage and leadership—and, yes, beauty.”
I resisted the urge to pull my hand away from his. I could not afford to offend him, to make him feel ashamed. I must be honest also and say that his attentions were not without their appeal. Skye was older than I was, but charming and learned and attentive. He never bristled at my leadership. Andrew, for all that I loved him, had regarded me with a mixture of admiration and tolerance. He humored me as much as he admired me. Skye, though it pained me to admit it, understood me in many ways better than my husband ever could have.
Yet I could not imagine giving my heart over to another man. Something had been taken from me when Andrew was murdered, and I did not want my armor pierced. And there was more. I did not know what would come, but I knew I must be unfettered. Those around me had broken all the rules of human decency to bring me low, and I would not be bound by any rules in striking back at them. I would not be deterred, not by loyalty nor affection nor love, from doing what must be done. Most of all, I did not want him because I did not love him the way he loved me, or believed he did. I wanted his friendship and loyalty and affection, but I wanted nothing more.
“You know it cannot be,” I said to him. “You are in my heart, and I am in yours, but that is as far as we may go. There is too much, far too much, that lies before us.”
He removed his hand and said, after a moment of attempting to master himself, “Will revenge bring us happiness?”
I let out a bark of a laugh. “It is too late for happiness. Revenge shan’t bring it. If I am to speak honestly, I do not think it will even bring satisfaction. How can it? Revenge is the emptiest of enterprises, do you not think so? Days and weeks, perhaps years, to plan and execute, and then, once it is over, what have you? It is put together as meticulously as the artist crafts his work, but there is no painting or sculpture or poem to stand as testament to the labor. There is only the sensation, and that sensation must always be hollow.”
“Then why do you do it?” he asked. “Is it only for the money you hope to earn?”
“I should like the money,” I said, “but it cannot motivate me. I do it for the same reason you do—because it is my duty. Having conceived of it, having understood it could be done and that it ought to be done, not doing it would destroy me.”
“Doing it may destroy us as well.”
“Yes, it may. But that sort of destruction I can accept.”
I parted the dusty curtain of the coach and saw him emerging from his little house. A few minutes sooner might have avoided the conversation with Skye, but I suppose it was well to have it done with. I had turned Skye away but not hurt him. That should keep him content for a little while.
Out the window I saw the man approach the equipage with a cold determination, a man in perfect control though full of perhaps violent emotions. His stride was easy enough, however, as though I were there to take him to an appointment he anticipated with pleasure, or at least contentment. He opened the door and folded his large body into the coach. He nodded to me and Skye, and then took a seat across from us. He was a handsome man with good teeth, perfect and easy in his manners. In a new nation of rough men and rugged manners, it seemed ironic that in him I should find so complete a gentleman.
He looked at Skye. “Yet another associate.”
“He is with me,” I said, “but I’ll refrain from introducing him. I prefer to avoid names where I can.”
“I’m sure that is sound.” He waited a moment, then said, “I suppose it was inevitable you would come for me.”
“We do pay you, and quite well,” I said.
“And I do not complain, though I harbored the hope that I might continue to be paid well in exchange for doing nothing.”
“I must say I hoped the same,” I said, “but things are changing.”
He took a deep breath. “What is it you ask of me?”
“I want regular reports,” I said. “I want them sent every day. I want to know what Saunders is up to, what he plans, what he knows, and what he believes he knows.”
He took in a deep breath. “I don’t much like it.”
“You should have thought of that before.”
“Suppose I simply choose to defy you?” he said.
Mr. Skye leaned forward. “That would not be the wisest course.”
I shook my head at the man, vaguely coquettish, vaguely maternal. “It is too late for that, don’t you think? You are a man who believes in the value of keeping his word. Is that not why you are here? Captain Saunders did not keep his word to you. He promised to emancipate you, and yet he has not. He does not deserve your loyalty.”
“No,” said the slave called Leonidas, “he does not deserve it. And yet it is surprisingly hard to let it go.”
“You know who we are,” I said, “and you know what we have promised. Our enemies are his enemies, it is just that he does not know it, and if we deceive him, it is only to prompt him to do as he would choose himself, if he but knew all.”
He nodded. “I’ll do it, but if I think he will come to harm, I will not help you. If that is the case, I shall tell him everything, and then I shall be your enemy.”
“You are more loyal than he deserves, but I think you’ll find that we deserve it as well. When it is all over, you shall see. We will be reconciled.”
Leonidas nodded again. Without another word, he departed from the coach.
Through the curtain I watched him return to the house, for I wished to be sure he did not try to follow us, and Skye watched me watch him. That is, I suppose, why we did not see the man approaching from the other side of the carriage. He opened the door and joined us, taking Leonidas’s seat almost before we knew he was there.
I knew the scent almost before I knew the face, and in an instant I thought how very ironic it was, for to itemize the odors, they were nearly the same as Skye’s—tobacco, whiskey, animal hides. But there was more too. This man stank of old sweat, of clothes infrequently changed, of urine and alley assignations. He carried about him the coppery smell of blood and an indescribable but instantly recognizable scent of menace.
Even in the dark I could make out the wide swath of scar that stretched across his face. “Well, if it ain’t Joan Maycott and John Skye,” Reynolds said. “I hope I ain’t interrupting anything too important or private. I hear talk about you, Skye.”
“How did you find us?” Skye asked. His voice rose in excitement and fear. He had not learned, as I had, to mask his emotions. Give no power, no authority, when it is yours to withhold.
“I’ve been following your lady friend here for some time, trying to figure out what she’s about. It ain’t been easy, and I’ll be honest with you, I still don’t know what you are up to. I couldn’t get close enough to the coach to hear much.”
“So you know of nothing against me,” I said. “Now, I suggest you get out of the coach before I inform Mr. Duer how you’ve treated me. He will not love to hear of this rudeness.”
“Duer?” Reynolds waved a hand in the air. “He’d be through with me if he knew, no doubt about it, but you won’t tell him. I don’t know what you’re about, but I know you don’t want him to know you’re having secret meetings with Saunders’s darky. Things ain’t what they seem, Joan. They ain’t at all. Now, I don’t care much. I admire a pretty and clever woman; my own wife is plenty pretty but not so clever. On the other hand, I don’t much admire Duer. Never have. But he pays me, so you see my difficulty. If only I had some—shall we call it incentive?—to keep me from mentioning what I seen.”
“What sort of incentive?” Skye asked.
“I think a hundred dollars ought to keep my c
uriosity buried.”
“For a hundred dollars, I’d want your curiosity buried forever.”
“Forever is one-fifty. Bit more. One hundred only gets you a temporary situation.”
I did not like it but had no choice. “Give me a few days to get the money, and I shall pay you the larger sum. I hope, however, you are as good as your word. We can deal with this amicably and financially so long as no one is exceptionally greedy, but if you think this a well you can return to again and again, I cannot answer for your prospects. As it is, I will need to conceal this arrangement from some of my allies, men who are not so willing to seek compromise as I. I conceal it, you understand, for your benefit.”
“I take your meaning,” he said, “and I will call upon you again soon. Good evening, madam; Skye.”
He departed the coach, and I ordered the driver to move on lest we get more visitors. Skye said, “He will not be content. Not for long. There is no forever for a man like Reynolds.”
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
“Then why did you agree?”
“Because I hope one hundred fifty dollars will buy us at least a little more time. And when he asks for more, we will give him more. If he asks for two hundred or five hundred, we will give it to him, as long as it is likely he will remain quiet.”
“He has too much power over us,” Skye said.
“We have one advantage, however. He does not know we need only a little more time. We have to hope his greed and his belief in his own cleverness give us the time we need.”
It was a new year, and I believed that Duer, Hamilton, and the Bank of the United States had only a few more months left. They did not know it, but the ice beneath them was cracking, and all would soon fall into oblivion.
