by Dara Horn
At last Jacob spoke. “You were still in prison three months ago?” he asked. Months and years had melted away for him; he could no longer remember how much time had gone by.
Philip sighed, a deep defeated breath. “Jacob, my trial was a nightmare. The incident apparently didn’t pass muster as a proper duel. The prosecutor came up with character witnesses, old clients, neighbors with grudges, people I hadn’t spoken to in years. I didn’t know it was possible to be that humiliated. I was sentenced to twenty years for murder of the second degree. I was probably lucky it wasn’t more. The Union secret service saved me. I suppose I ought to thank you for that.”
Jacob noticed that he stopped short of actually thanking him. But now Jacob was the prisoner in the dock. He was silent, awaiting judgment.
“I saw Charlotte when we were exchanged,” Philip said.
Jacob watched as Philip swallowed, his heavy eyebrows drawing together, a knot of worry tightening at the base of his forehead. Jacob tried to think of something to say, but Philip continued before he could say a word. “I saw her, but I couldn’t speak to her. We were both in chains, and surrounded by guards.” The image sickened Jacob, but Philip forced him to listen. “She looked horrid. It was frightening. She was wearing rags, and she was so—so thin. Her skin was almost translucent. But what frightened me was the way she looked at everyone. She was so angry, so full of fury. I almost didn’t recognize my own child. When you’re a father, you always imagine them as children, you picture them running toward you, throwing their little arms around your legs. It’s—”
He turned away from Jacob, looking at his fingers in his lap. Jacob tried to think of something to offer him, some way to begin begging him for absolution. But Philip had more to say. He had been planning it for years.
“There is something many women know instinctively, but few men ever understand,” he said, “which is that raising children is one of the only things you can do with your life. My wife taught me that years ago. One can devote oneself to a cause, but what cause could be worth more than a child?” Now he was looking straight ahead, gazing at the white marble steps as they turned yellow in the late afternoon light. “Dying for a cause is the last resort of those too weak to live for one. That’s something my daughters never understood.”
Jacob heard, beneath his words, everything he hadn’t said, everything he refused to say. Lottie was a proxy for another daughter, for an unnamable grief.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Jacob said.
Jacob saw him blinking, and waited.
“For a long time I used to curse you,” Philip said at last. “I cursed myself, too, for being foolish enough to let you in. I knew why you had come, almost from the beginning. But I—I saw how the girls changed in your presence, how happy you made them. It was so exhilarating, to see them that way. I had forgotten it was possible.” Jacob pursed his lips, and felt his remaining eye watering as Philip continued. “As a result I became a bit delirious. I had the notion that you would be exceptional somehow, that you would give up whatever glory or respect you were after for something that mattered more. Of course there are no exceptions. You did what you were told to do. I suppose you had to. What sickens me is that I was naïve enough to expect something different from you.”
Jacob looked down at his knees. For an instant he thought of defending himself, of explaining how he had tried to save Jeannie even if he had turned Lottie in, how he had at first even tried to save them both by keeping the evidence to himself, how Lottie had been the one who had wanted him dead—but he understood now that all his half-measures had been pointless. He rubbed at his scars.
“Eventually I forced myself to understand that all of it might have happened just as easily without you, or that without you it might have been even worse, if such a thing were conceivable,” Philip said. “I know now that it was all the girls’ fault, or my own fault—that I failed as a father, that I failed to protect them, or to prepare them. But I can’t even tell you how many months I spent praying that God would exact revenge on you.”
“He did,” Jacob said.
Philip indulged a long glance at Jacob’s eye patch, at his cane, at the distorting scars on the right side of his face and neck. Like all cripples, Jacob had become accustomed to people deliberately looking away from him. He was surprised by how much he relished having someone look, at last, at his damaged body. “How were you wounded?” Philip finally asked.
Jacob paused, reminded of the hansom driver. What could he say? “During a prisoner exchange,” he replied.
Philip smiled, a cruel smile. “‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,’” he quoted. He removed his spectacles, rubbing at the lenses with his handkerchief. It was intended to seem like a casual gesture, but Jacob saw how hard he was rubbing at nothing, trying to distract Jacob from his shuddering hands. At last he put them back on his nose, and glanced down at his lap.
“I haven’t been able to find out anything about what’s become of the girls. Not Charlotte, nor—nor any of them,” Philip said slowly. Here it was, Jacob knew. He listened as Philip paused, gathering strength. “My brother told me that he read in the newspaper that Eugenia—” Philip paused, swallowed. “That Eugenia—that she—she—” He swallowed again, before adding, “—perished in prison.”
He glanced at Jacob, registering his lack of surprise. Philip had expected him to know. For a long time Jacob said nothing, afraid of what he might say, and afraid that saying it would make it false. But Philip spoke first.
“Perhaps you are wondering why I am even speaking to you now, if I know that,” he said, and glared at Jacob. “For that sort of retribution, I would need to ask God to remove your other eye too, along with your heart.”
Jacob couldn’t endure Philip’s eyes. He bit his lip and blinked his own good eye, rubbing it with the back of his hand. Those who believe in a hell in the afterlife cannot possibly imagine what it means to be damned while still living, he thought, the unrelenting torture of the conscience. For eternal suffering, nothing more is necessary.
“The only reason is that I don’t believe it,” Philip announced. “I won’t believe it. I haven’t even said Kaddish for her. I won’t until someone proves to me that it’s true, even if I have to wait until this entire war is over. Even if I have to wait for the rest of my life. I know it’s a delusion, but I—I indulge it. It’s all I can do.”
Jacob looked at him again, afraid to speak. Philip was crouching with his elbows on his knees, pressing the heels of his hands against his brow. He glanced at Jacob briefly, with a slight sneer. “I had an absurd thought when I wrote to your father. I foolishly believed that seeing you would ease my suffering somehow, or even put it to rest. I don’t know why I thought such a thing. You are irrelevant to me, utterly irrelevant. I only want my daughters back, and that you cannot give me.” Jacob cringed, but Philip’s eyes were closed, pressed against his hands. He was in another world. “Foolish girls, all of them,” he muttered. “But I only blame myself.”
Jacob looked down at his own lap, which was now in the shadow of a tall oak tree behind them. Since the injury, his vision often failed him at odd moments, his single eye unable to take in the full revulsion of the world, and his mind would substitute memory for life. Now his hands in his lap blurred, and a bright pale space expanded between them. In that instant, seated outside the Philadelphia exchange, he suddenly held Abigail’s letter before him, the paper stiff and certain in his hands, the words dark and crisp and clear in Abigail’s handwriting: three weeks after you have surely been sealed in the Book of Life. At last he dared.
“I think Jeannie is alive,” he said.
Philip raised his head, and turned to look at Jacob. For the briefest of instants, a light moved across his eyes. But it disappeared just as quickly as it had come. His face darkened, and he stared at Jacob, seething, barely able to contain his rage. “Don’t do that to me,” he said, his voice cold. “You have no right.”
> Jacob shook his head, panicked, suddenly believing it. “I have a reason to think so,” he said. “I—”
“You have no right,” Philip repeated.
Jacob could see how Philip was struggling to control himself, to keep himself from strangling him on the spot. Philip’s hands were pressed against his thighs, his fingers clutching his knees. But Jacob couldn’t help himself. He asked, breathless: “Do you have family in Mississippi?”
Philip’s brow unknotted itself, his wrinkled face easing, as though Jacob had changed the subject. When he spoke, his voice was light, curious, puzzled. “My wife’s sister Sarah. She died about five years ago.” He looked at the air in front of him, as if searching for a face in a crowd. “Her husband was killed in a battle over there. I really pitied the children,” he added, his voice distant. Then he turned back to Jacob. “Why do you ask?”
“I met them when I was with Grant,” Jacob said.
“Really?” Philip asked. Then his face darkened again, the fury returning. “Why should I believe you,” he muttered, without making it a question. “I have no reason to trust anything you say.”
“Their name was Solomon. The children were Abigail, Franklin, and Jefferson,” Jacob replied, his memory racing. “There was another son named Washington who had died. The father was killed at Shiloh. They owned a tavern in a town called Holly Springs. The daughter looked like yours.”
Philip watched Jacob, alarmed and baffled, and mustered the courage to speak. When he did, he could barely form the words, releasing them under his breath. “Why are you telling me this?”
Jacob swallowed. What could he possibly say? That he had had an entire love affair with Philip’s niece? “I saw a letter in their home,” he finally said. “It was addressed to Jeannie, in Richmond. I shouldn’t have read it, but I—I did, and it said she was living there with an aunt.”
“Rachel Cardozo,” Philip murmured, astounded. He was no longer speaking to Jacob, but rather to whatever phantasm was appearing before his eyes. “My wife’s youngest sister.”
“I suppose so. The letter said ‘Aunt Rachel.’ And it said that they had heard from Jeannie a week after Yom Kippur, with her new address in Richmond. That would have been a week after her arrest.”
Philip hovered on the edge of his seat, his mouth hanging open.
“There’s something else I ought to tell you,” Jacob said slowly. “The last time I saw Jeannie, she—” He stopped, strangely embarrassed, until he remembered that he had no reason to be. “She told me she was expecting.”
Philip turned to Jacob, stunned. Then he stared at his knees.
“Mr. Levy, I never should have accepted the mission that I took on against your family, and you should never forgive me for it,” Jacob said. “But I shall forever be grateful to God that it brought me to Jeannie. I shall regret everything else I’ve done for the rest of my life, but I shall never regret marrying her. I love your daughter, Mr. Levy. I still do.”
Philip pressed one eye with the heel of his hand. For a long time Jacob listened to him breathe. When he finally spoke, his voice was dark and cold.
“You think you know what devotion is,” Philip said. “You think you understand what it means to dedicate your life to something. To risk absolutely everything for it.”
Jacob looked at Philip and imagined him in prison during the last two years, stooped in a dark cell stained with mouse droppings, wearing irons on his legs. Then he imagined him in the front room of his house at his daughter’s wedding, standing in his top hat and tails, raising his revolver in his hands as Jeannie crouched on her knees. He imagined him as he must have been during the years when he had known him only as a cheerful business client: presiding alone over a dinner table full of daughters, forever working, forever giving and forgiving, forever curbing their every foolishness, never once revealing his own grief. And then he imagined him in that same front room, years before, wrestling a shotgun out of the hands of a slave woman over the bleeding body of his wife, with Lottie and Jeannie and Phoebe and Rose as little children cowering on the floor.
“I do,” Jacob replied.
Philip examined Jacob’s scarred face, judging. Jacob submitted himself to his judgment, unafraid. And Philip sentenced him.
“Then go there, Jacob. Go down to Richmond and find them.”
Jacob stared at him, condemned. Philip leaned forward and took hold of Jacob’s knee, clutching it with an impossibly strong grip. Jacob winced, his whole body wrinkling into a tight cringe of agony. Philip did not notice, or did not care.
“I can’t go back behind the lines,” Philip said. His voice was heated, urgent. “There isn’t any way for me to get there, and even if there were, someone would find me and put me back in prison. But you can go. You must go. I am ordering you to go.”
Jacob was still reeling from the pain in his knee, unable to think through the implications of what Philip had said. When he did, he saw how absurd it was, impossible. “How could I ever do that?” he finally asked. “Even the army isn’t desperate enough to want someone like me.”
“The army isn’t, but the secret service might be,” Philip replied. He was animated now, revived and frantic. His eyebrows bristled as his spectacles slipped down his nose. “Surely you can find some way to make yourself indispensable to them again.”
Jacob felt the pain beginning to dissipate, replaced by the dull ache of shame. “Look at me, Mr. Levy,” he said at last. “Do I look like I would be indispensable to anyone?”
But Philip rejected his plea for pity. He was a man with a cause. “That is precisely what would make you indispensable,” he said. For a fraction of an instant, the giddy eagerness in his voice reminded Jacob of Jeannie. “You appear utterly harmless. People avoid looking at you. With your face like that, no one will even recognize you, unless they really look.” Now Philip was clutching Jacob’s knee with both hands, knocking his cane off his lap. “You have to convince them to take you back.”
Jacob looked at him, foundering in his seat without his cane to hold on to. “I don’t have anything to offer them,” he stammered.
“Don’t make excuses,” Philip spat. His hands were lighter on Jacob’s knee now, but his eyes were hard and unrelenting, fixing Jacob in place. “You’ve been back at the firm for a year already. Half the people in this business are either scoundrels or traitors. Think. What have you heard that might be useful?”
“I don’t—” Jacob began to say. Then he remembered the hansom driver. He looked back at Philip and asked, “Do you know a man at the exchange named John Clarke?”
Philip straightened, at last removing his hands from Jacob’s knee. Jacob breathed, pure physical relief. “Everyone knows him,” Philip said. “He owns a securities firm with his brother-in-law in New York. Why?”
Jacob was about to pull the ring from his pocket, but thought better of it. Suddenly he remembered what he had been trained to do, a lifetime ago: reveal nothing. “I would like to meet him,” he said. “It would be in reference to—to what you are suggesting.”
Philip peered at him, pushing his pince-nez back up on his nose. For a moment his brow wrinkled, as though he were about to ask Jacob a question. “He’s in Maryland now,” he said. “He’s been there for the past month. His wife’s family is there.” He rubbed at his mustache, thinking. “But you don’t need to meet him. His brother-in-law in New York owns half the firm. Speak to him instead. Assuming it’s something about the firm, of course.”
“Yes, about the firm,” Jacob said.
“His brother-in-law in New York is Edwin Booth. Have you heard of him? He owns the firm with John Clarke, but he’s mainly an actor.”
“The name sounds familiar,” Jacob said. “What else do you know about them?”
Philip eyed him, curious. “Only what everyone knows. Clarke’s wife and brother-in-law are from Baltimore, but their father was from England. The father had a wife in London, but he ran off to Baltimore with a flower girl. It’s an open secret that
the children are all bastards. You’ve probably heard of the father. Junius Booth.”
“Of course,” Jacob said, startled. Junius Booth was a household name even for someone Jacob’s age; he was the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation. He had died years ago, but as a child Jacob had once seen him perform in New York, in the role he was most famous for, Richard the Third. The man himself was apparently a raging alcoholic, his personal life an advertisement for classical tragedy. But no one who had seen him perform could ever forget it.
“There’s another son, too, who made a fortune in the theater, and he and another actor bought an oil drilling company here in Pennsylvania. But they sold off the entire company last month,” Philip said. “If you ask me, it was a strange sale.”
“Why?” Jacob asked.
“Because the drilling concern was very profitable, and it’s foolish to liquidate assets like that when the market is as volatile as this one, unless one needs the capital for some kind of urgent opportunity. I don’t need to explain this to you. His brother-in-law ought to have advised him against it.” He drew his eyebrows together again as he pursed his lips. Jacob had often seen him in this pose in his office in Virginia, as he watched his own firm collapse. “I’ve heard that they send a lot of money to Canada,” he added.
“Everyone keeps money in Canada,” Jacob huffed. In his year of burial in his father’s account books, he had noticed that this was true.
Philip shook his head. “I’m not talking about investments or promissory notes. I’m talking about gold.” Philip leaned the side of his head against the palm of his hand, his elbow perched on his knee. Jacob had often seen his daughters in this same childish posture, thinking, planning. “There was a rumor on the exchange that the gold was coming from Richmond. I wouldn’t have any idea how to corroborate that, though.” He looked back at Jacob with his eyebrows raised, like a child hoping for approval. “Is any of this useful to you?” he asked. “I will tell you anything that’s useful to you.”
