Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution

by Adair, Suzanne

  "Ye gods. How did the three of you come by the stench of rotten fish?"

  David cocked an eyebrow. "I suspect that spending six hours in the hold of that schooner would confer similar redolence on anyone. Do we reek too much for the brig? Well, please do turn the hawse pipe on us. I can hardly stand the smell myself. Five days hence, even the hangman will thank you for it."

  Edward curbed appreciation for David's vivacity from his expression — a difficult maneuver when even she wanted to laugh with black humor. "I daresay he shall. For tonight, however, if I am assured your utmost cooperation, I shall part with orthodoxy and ask the captain where I might lodge the three of you that you might remedy the problem of that reek with some amount of privacy."

  David inclined his head. "Many thanks, Major. I shall comply with all your demands."

  Gratitude wandered across Mathias's face. "As shall I."

  She mustered all the sincerity she could. "I promise."

  Edward's nod was curt. "Bring your gear and follow me."

  ***

  In a closet adjoining Edward's cabin, the three took turns bathing and washing hair and clothing, tasks impeded by the cramped conditions. They didn't complain, however, not when they, ears pressed to the bulkhead, overheard conversation between Edward and the ship's captain.

  They never discerned enough detail to make them viable informants for the rebels, a condition intentional on Edward's part. But while the Zealot slipped past Key Largo and the Biscayno Reef and found the Gulf Stream on the night of June 24, the names of Charles Lord Cornwallis and Continental General Johann de Kalb figured in the adjacent cabin. The prisoners learned of Cornwallis's activity fortifying a base in South Carolina from which the redcoats could subdue the Carolina backcountry — and of the Congress's desperation to halt him, wolverine in the South. From nearly a thousand miles away, the thunder of something damned monstrous brewing in South Carolina was already audible.

  The three whispered of it, wondering what other than British victory could result from a ragtag Continental encounter against well-fed redcoats. Convinced that they were rebel spies, Edward had instilled those very speculations in them. Spies mustn't go to the gallows believing that their actions mattered in the great scheme of things.

  Discussion of the war subsided, then they each spoke a special memory of Jacques le Coeuvre into the darkness, spilling tears again and bidding him adieu as best they could. Jacques wouldn't have wanted a fancy wake. But the belly of a British ship-of-the-line didn't strike Sophie as a seemly place to tell the Frenchman goodbye.

  David dropped off to sleep, having squished himself against one wall of the closet out of courtesy. Against the background of his slumbered breathing and the Zealot's creaking, Mathias drew Sophie atop him, and they bade each other a silent, sad adieu to the rhythm of the ship's swaying in the Atlantic Ocean. The speculation about military action in South Carolina had served as a shield against the crush of reality. But in the naked aftermath of lovemaking, as they kissed away each other's tears, they were certain — certain as the sun would rise a few hours later in the eastern sky — that they would never know the outcome of the American War.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ON DECK SUNDAY morning, the Zealot's captain read from the Bible while sailors and soldiers shifted about, sails stretched in the briny breeze, and the mangrove-covered coast of southern East Florida slipped past to leeward. He recited the Articles of War to remind sailors of offenses such as mutiny and sodomy that they were forbidden to commit. Then Sophie, David, and Mathias were escorted back to the closet by the two soldiers who had delivered breakfast and swapped out their chamber pot and lantern.

  The closet was in disarray. Their belongings had been ransacked. Sophie seized her haversack and emptied the contents on the deck. No cipher, translations, or Confessions.

  "Jolly. Now they've proof we're rebel spies."

  She sighed, miserable. "Would that I'd thought to destroy the messages after committing them to memory."

  David shook his head. "Would that any of us had thought to do so. What fools we are. I hardly see how we're worth the noose."

  Mathias signed for silence. The tread of boots to the end of the corridor was followed by a rap at the major's cabin door. David groped for his pocket watch. "Seven o'clock," he whispered. "It's Fairfax with his report."

  They pressed their ears to the bulkhead, privy to the conversation. "At ease, Lieutenant. How's your injury?"

  "Well enough, sir."

  "You're fortunate the arrow wasn't poisoned."

  "No time," whispered Mathias. David mouthed, "Too bad."

  "Sir."

  "I require a moment to read this. Remain while I do so."

  Realization shot through Sophie. She blurted a whisper. "Fairfax doesn't know we're in here. Major Hunt's the one who searched our belongings."

  A smuggler's brazen smile swaggered across David's mouth. "Dunstan, laddie, you've botched the job. You let spies escape, and you didn't search your captives. For shame. What will your next commander say?"

  Mathias grinned, too. "Slovenly job in Havana, Lieutenant. We shall withhold that promotion for awhile."

  They sniggered. Edward's cabin stayed quiet about five minutes. Then stool legs squawked on the flooring. "Let's go for a walk on deck, shall we, Lieutenant?"

  "Sir?"

  "I require your clarification of some points in the report, and I should like fresh air in the process."

  The prisoners pouted at their door while the two officers exited and walked past the guards. David voiced their shared sentiment. "Dash it all. Hearing the major's evaluation of Fairfax would have brightened the rest of my short lifetime." No doubt Edward had figured the same.

  The morning dragged with little to stimulate them. Mid-afternoon, they were served salted beef, Pease porridge, hard biscuits inhabited by weevils, and stale beer — a stark contrast to their meals aboard the Gloria Maria. They amused each other by tapping their biscuits and seeing whose weevils scurried out the quickest.

  Minutes after they'd finished the meal, a knock came on the door. Mathias opened it to a soldier at attention. "The captain requires Mr. St. James and Mr. Hale on deck for fresh air."

  Sophie frowned. "What of me?"

  "Mrs. Barton is ordered to Major Hunt's cabin."

  Edward wanted David and Mathias out of earshot while he questioned her. She rolled back her shoulders. "Well, then, I certainly hope to join you gentlemen on deck afterward."

  They filed out. She waited for her companions to exit the corridor before she knocked on Edward's door.

  At his invitation, she entered a cabin the size of those aboard the Gloria Maria to find him perched on a stool before a desk. He set down his quill, rose, inclined his head to her, and resumed his seat without expression. The deadlight let in a bit of daylight, but a candle on the desk conferred the hue of fresh blood to his coat. She closed the door and waited.

  He laid the paper aside, pulled a clean sheet from a portfolio, and dipped his quill in the inkwell. "For the record, please state the full names of your daughter, your sister, and a third blood relative in addition to their spouses' names and where they reside."

  Next of kin. She swallowed, wondering when the diameter of her throat had shrunk. "My daughter is Elizabeth Anne Sheridan nee Neely. Her husband is John Clark Sheridan. They reside in Augusta. My sister is Susana Margaret Greeley nee St. James. Her husband is John Roger Greeley of Alton. And my cousin is Sarah Margaret O'Neal nee St. James. Her husband is Lucas Hezekiah O'Neal. They live in Augusta."

  His quill scratched across paper. He replenished the ink. "Your full name?"

  "Sophia Elizabeth Barton nee St. James."

  Finished writing, he laid down the quill and sprinkled fine sand upon the document. Then he turned to her and crossed his legs. "On Saturday June 24 in Havana, Cuba, Lieutenant Fairfax was witness to you, David St. James, and the now-deceased Jacques le Coeuvre, delivering emeralds to Don Antonio Hernandez, an enemy S
paniard. Lieutenant Fairfax witnessed you telling Don Antonio that you had accepted the jewels from his nephew, Don Esteban, one of three known spies prepared to intercede with the Spaniards in the interest of the Continental Congress.

  "Lieutenant Fairfax also confirmed our intelligence reports that Don Diego Alejandro Gonzales, also present during your meeting yesterday, was impersonating a Gálvez in a hoax to assess whether the American rebellion was organized enough to deserve formal support in King Carlos's court. Fortunately for His Majesty King George, the fouled delivery of the emeralds will confirm the rebels' disorganization to the Spaniards. However, your possession of a coded message and translated cipher and your participation in the delivery of the emeralds are sufficient evidence to identify you as a rebel spy and mandate your death upon the gallows. Have you comment in your behalf?"

  "I'm not a rebel spy."

  "I knew you'd say that."

  "You know I'm not a rebel spy."

  He pushed up from the desk in anger. "No, I don't know that! What I've seen is that a woman that I loved — a woman I fancied marrying — rejected my offers of protection and apparently fell in with rebels."

  "Marriage? Yes, perhaps you fancied marrying me. I don't doubt you wanted me for your mistress. But while you and I enjoyed each other's company here, in America, such an arrangement never would have worked for us in England. You've realized that, but perhaps it makes it easier for you to accept if you envision me a rebel."

  He tightened his lips, granting her assertion weight. "If you aren't a rebel, why did you sail to Havana with the emeralds and meet with enemy Spaniards instead of waiting for me in St. Augustine?"

  "I couldn't give you the stones. They weren't King George's any more than the Congress's. The name Don Esteban gave us was that of his uncle, Don Antonio. Unless Lieutenant Fairfax lied to you, you'll see in his report that we delivered the stones to Don Antonio, not to Don Alejandro, and it was Don Alejandro whom the rebel couriers were supposed to present with the emeralds. However, we four operated under the assumption that the emeralds were part of Esteban Hernandez's inheritance, meaning their only rightful owner was another Hernandez family member.

  "Edward, this had nothing to do with the American War. It had everything to do with the personal integrity of each of us. We could have divided the wealth among ourselves, returned to Alton, and been quite well off for many years, and no one besides us would have been the wiser about how we came by such fortunes." She shook her head. "But we couldn't do that. We're honest human beings, each of us, and sometimes an honest human being must look past convention of law to complete a duty that he or she knows is right, deep in the soul. Sometimes the law is wrong.

  "I understand what the evidence looks like against us. I know how far you've bent convention to grant us comfort in our final days, and I thank you for it."

  His sapphire eyes burned from a face gone too pale. He walked from her, hands clasped behind him, and faced the bulkhead in silence, staring as if he saw the ocean through it. At least a minute elapsed before she heard his voice, low, and while he spoke, she sensed he'd forgotten her presence and thought aloud, voicing issues he'd struggled with a long time.

  "This war, this damned war. What a waste. We don't want to be here killing our brethren, and we don't want to spend another day in a land that resists us with every natural weapon it can unleash." Bitterness tainted his tone. "The casualties are men and women of integrity. The survivors are fanatics with no sense of decency. It isn't justice." He glanced at her. "Have you read that Declaration of Independence?"

  "Yes."

  "A masterpiece of philosophical persuasion. I agree with the Congress on many grievances. But why should I agree with them about anything? Doesn't that make me a traitor?" He pressed his right palm to the bulkhead. "Across that ocean, many members of Parliament sympathize with the colonists.

  "And I hear regret in the Declaration, voices of delegates who didn't want to sunder ties with Britain: 'We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence'."

  Edward turned back to her. "Men of the Congress and Parliament hold the same values dear to them, yet they're at each others' throats, labeling each other godless heathens. This war sucks the blood from everyone, no matter the color coat we wear. Years from now both sides of the Atlantic will still be weakened from its feeding. We have all cast ourselves to it as oblations. I see no way out of it."

  She took a step toward him. "Go back to England. Speak in Parliament. Tell them what you've told me just now."

  "I spoke my mind in Parliament last year." He shook his head, the movement diminutive, as if to emphasize the extent of his influence within Britain's government. "They told me to reseat myself."

  "Return and try again. Yours isn't the only voice of reason. Surely they must hear you someday."

  "My voice is too small by thousands of acres, one generation, and at least two titles. It's best heard at the local level among the common people."

  Sadness swept her — not for herself, but for Edward, a natural statesman with talents ignored and unrecognized by his peers. "Yours is a voice of justice. In Alton we listened to it for four months and felt far more secure." She walked to the desk, picked up the paper scripted with information about her kin, and showed it to him. "But is this the justice you administered in Alton and Hampshire?" He stared as if she'd struck him. "Is it the justice sought by the Congress or even that administered by much of Parliament?

  "No, I think it's something else." Bitterness infiltrated her tone. "How did the Declaration word it? 'Under absolute despotism, it is the right and duty of the people to throw off such government and to institute new government'. Could this be one of those grievances where you and the Congress agree?"

  "I take your point. I believe we're finished for now."

  "Of course we are. Much as His Majesty courted the illusion that the American colonies would always be content as dependent children of Britain, we courted the illusion that I might be content as your mistress. But you've realized it cannot work — not for us, and not for Britain and the colonies."

  In the dimness of the cabin, emotion on his face folded into inscrutability. She jiggled the paper. "What do you call this: duty? An order? Honor? I realize that you're a man of duty and so must complete what you believe is your duty. In a few days, I will go to the gallows with my head held high — not because of politics, but because I was guided by my conscience and am an honest woman. In a few days, it will be over for me, but I suspect you'll spend the rest of your life sorting out this duty, order, and honor."

  His expression thawing, he returned to the desk, removed the paper from her hand, and spread it flat with care. "Always outspoken and forthright, never deceptive: Sophie Barton."

  "Please understand that I never meant to hurt you."

  "I know you didn't."

  Tension mounted across the space between them. She felt the impulse to embrace and comfort him, and from the sentiment sifting into his face, he wouldn't have resisted. But it was as if a pale wall had materialized between them, a barrier that dissuaded their meeting in the middle.

  He rolled his shoulders back. "As I said, we're finished for now. Accept the escort outside, take some fresh air up on deck, and send Mr. St. James or Mr. Hale down to see me next."

  Lost for words, she stared at him. Then she let herself out of the cabin and sought her escort.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  PREDAWN THE FOLLOWING Thursday morning, Sophie awakened to feel the Zealot at anchor east of St. Augustine. She lay still and, with calm and thankfulness, experienced what she believed to be her final morning on the earth — appreciation for Edward's clemency, awe and delight for the bond she shared with David, and gratitude for the gift of trust, joy, and ecstatic union she had discovered with Mathias. Then she woke her companions.

  They lit t
he lantern, dressed, assembled gear and waited for the inevitable knock on the door. It came minutes later, along with a breakfast of biscuits and tea and the order that they be ready to leave in a quarter hour. On deck in the sunrise, she regarded the distant coquina walls of Castillo de San Marcos. Just fifteen days earlier they'd sailed forth from St. Augustine aboard the Gloria Maria.

  The prisoners were lowered into a gig with Edward and Fairfax and rowed across the Matanzas River. No longer limping, Fairfax paid them the same regard he'd grant a load of lumber. Not being an object of his attention felt liberating, a blessing. In contrast, Edward's face was sunken and gray. Demons had stolen sleep from his eyes and crushed his soul.

  At the wharf, the soldiers from Alton met them and escorted the prisoners — minus possessions except clothing on their backs — to jail. One of three prostitutes sharing Sophie's cell scratched at scabs on her arms. The fifth woman in the cell was an Irish pickpocket who reminded her too much of Mary, the St. James's servant. David and Mathias shared the company of eight drunks sleeping off a night of vandalism. The other cells were full of male inmates. The jail stank of sweat, piss, and puke.

  An hour after Edward left to learn the city's protocol for rebel spies, Sophie glimpsed Fairfax through the door grate, pacing in the front room. Another hour passed, and he departed the jail, leaving the soldiers from Alton with the jailer and his assistants.

  Not until after ten did the lieutenant return. He marched straight back to the cells. "Attention Mr. St. James, Mr. Hale, Mrs. Barton. Due to a backlog in processing criminals, the justices of St. Augustine cannot hear your cases and schedule your executions for at least three weeks. It behooves us to transport you to Georgia so we may complete the business with due haste." He paused. "I trust you find the news as distressing as I. Therefore, I insist upon having your utmost cooperation in the matter."