Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (22 page)

“The ship!”

Anne said nothing, but Grissom went there on his own. “A ship. Yes, that would have been your only course. And then?”

“I was bid to go on to Boston and become a mantua maker.”

“But you didn’t care to.”

“I didn’t.”

Grissom pondered her some more. “You’re wet.”

“I was forced to swim ashore.”

“Swim ashore!”

“I’d been taught.”

“I see.”

For reasons Anne couldn’t entirely unravel she found herself unable, for the first time in a very long time, to meet a man’s eye. She tipped her head forward and allowed her hair to cascade in front of her face, nearer to the fire, as if shaking it out to dry. Grissom allowed her a reasonable space of time, but when he might have expected her to straighten up and she didn’t, he reached out and swung the curtain of hair aside, drawing her face up.

“What else? What else happened? Something’s changed you since yesterday. Something that’s driven you here. Why
did
you come here? ’Tis nine months you’ve been gone. If you came after your old place—”

Anne jerked her face away. “I did
not
come after my old place. I came here to discover why you sent Franklin after me at my sister’s. I know why my sister sent him after me at the ship, but not why you—”

“I didn’t send Franklin to your sister’s.”

“Didn’t you! How did he find me, then?”

Grissom laughed. “Come, you’re not so foolish as to think you could have hidden that child anywhere in this town and remain undiscovered by him. But of course you’re not so foolish. Hence the ship.” Something changed in Grissom’s face. “And something happened on that ship. You’re afraid, and you’ve never been afraid. Was it Franklin?”

Anne gripped the chair and stood, half surprised that her legs held. “If you would consider making me a loan of these clothes—”

“And just what do you think to do now?”

“I’ll get by.”

“Yes, I imagine you will. But as I was about to say before, if you came here looking for your old place, you may have it under certain conditions only. I’ve lost Maria; you were good at your work—”

Now it was Grissom who looked away, as well he might. Anne
was
good at her work. Both kinds. And she knew full well what Grissom’s certain conditions might be. “If you think to have me back in your bed as before—”

Grissom barked out another laugh. “I do not. And neither does my wife, I’m sure.”

The surprise of it carried Anne backward a small step; her weakened legs came up against the seat of her chair and she dropped into it, attempting a last-minute effort to look as if she meant to.

Grissom pointed at the gown she now wore. “Did you think I’d taken to wearing women’s clothes?”

She hadn’t thought. She couldn’t think now. Grissom with a wife! But then again, Franklin had had a wife, and Allgood, and Wilkes, and how many more?

“You mentioned
conditions,
” Anne said.

“Yes, conditions. Here they are. You may take up your old room but only if you occupy it alone. At all times. Do you understand?”

Anne understood. What Grissom could not understand was that whatever fear he’d imagined in her grew tenfold as he spoke those words. If Anne could take no men to her room, it removed any hope of independent means. If no independent means, then she must depend on a single man—this man—to pay her a wage and keep her fed and sheltered. A man with a wife. A man whose wife might catch them out at any time—for Grissom to keep himself away from her altogether was not amongst the possibilities Anne considered—and if the wife caught them out Anne might be sent off again to land just where she’d landed now.

That was Anne’s first feeling—that fear. Her second was so overwhelming that Anne couldn’t at first recognize its nature, couldn’t at first see it for the thing it was: relief. She could be done with it now. No more show; no more heavy, sweaty men to be maneuvered here and there; no more cutting herself into two parts—the one to hide and the other to sell. She could go on as Mary had gone on before she’d met Ezekiel Lee, as Anne might have gone on if she hadn’t met Franklin and his half crown. Franklin would not like to learn that Anne had remained in town, but what could he do about Grissom’s personal choice of hire? Another question must grow out of that one though—what might Franklin try? It would surely be something. And there yet another question grew.

“Why?” she asked Grissom. “Why take me back and cross your friend?”

Grissom’s mouth twitched in either a smile or a grimace or both—Anne couldn’t tell. “I suppose I admire your courage.”

Courage! That Grissom could speak of such a thing just at the moment when Anne felt the greatest lack of it was one knot too many, one that Anne couldn’t begin to untie. She rose. “I accept your conditions. You’ll thank your wife, please, for the use of her gown. I’ll launder and return it as soon as I purchase another of my own. Shall I begin in the shop this morn?”

Grissom stared at her. “Courage, did I say? Perhaps I should have said doggedness.” He disappeared and returned with sheets, a blanket, and a bolster, a wedge of cheese and half a loaf balanced on top. “Eat. Sleep. Get yourself some clothes. I’ll see you in the shop on the morrow.”

28

WILLIAM HAD NEVER LIKED
sleep. Sleep was a risky thing. What if his father came home with a new treat while he slept and decided to give it to the apprentice James instead? What if something awful happened to his mother or father while William wasn’t there to watch and call out for them to beware? When his mother used to put him to bed, he would hold on to her knee in hope of keeping her beside him till he fell asleep; sometimes she stayed, sometimes she didn’t. Anne always stayed.

But here was the other thing William never liked: things that changed, things that didn’t go according to plan. Anne, for example, waking him in the dead of night, or so it had seemed until he noticed it was really half-dark-half-light, but waking him nonetheless with all this talk of a surprise, which for William was in itself a kind of half-dark-half-light prospect. And that particular surprise had begun as dark as surprises come—a strange house with strange people in it, and children far more rambunctious than Franky had ever been.

But then there was the ship. William hadn’t liked the long, dark walk to the water, or even, at first sight, the long, dark ship, so different at night from the sparkle and shine of daylight; he hadn’t liked that Anne disappeared. But then the wonder of it—steering the ship! Talking to a real sailor! It was true the sailor didn’t talk to him long—in fact, he didn’t even stay with William long, allowing him to roam as he liked over the deck in a way that even William’s mother would never have allowed, and it was that thought of his mother that turned William against even the ship. Where was his mother? Where was his father? And then, just as he was about to give in to a most mortifying blast of unsailorlike trembling and tears, his father was there.

His father, clearly unhappy with the sailor, with the captain, and even with Anne, but all that only made his extreme happiness at seeing William shine brighter. They rode home in his father’s carriage, William curled in his father’s lap the entire ride, petted and kissed and squeezed and told stories and promised another wonderful surprise. But William, wiser by then, said, “I don’t like surprises.”

“You’ll this one,” his father said.

And he did.

Pirate—a horse of his own—a thing none of the other boys he knew had yet achieved. Pirate didn’t come till later the next day, but that was all right, because that night and the next morning William’s father
and
his mother spoiled him in the most satisfactory way, and later he was taken to the stable to meet Pirate, and then the very best times of William’s life began.

Each morning before he went to his tutor, William went down to the barn and visited with Pirate; when he came home from the tutor he visited again. He made a lot of new friends by trading rides, but he always sent the other boys away when his father came to take him riding, which his father did a lot at first but then not so often and then almost not at all. All of the extra fussing over William began to fall away too, and after a time the old witch Min took him up to bed most nights before his father had even come home. At breakfast his father would say, “How’s that old Pirate?” and William would struggle to think up some Pirate news that might interest his father: he ate William’s hat, he stepped in a hole in the street and almost threw John Pettigrew, he’d learned to yawn.

William’s father would laugh, or say, “Indeed!” or “Silly old Pirate!” or “Clever old Pirate!” and then leave for his shop and not come home the whole day or night long, or if he did come home he had other men with him, who took William’s father away behind a closed study door.

William loved Pirate, but he loved his father more. One morning he got up early, sneaked away to the stable, opened the door to Pirate’s stall, and shooed him through. He went home, raced up the stairs and into the kitchen where his father sat eating his breakfast, and shouted, “Pirate’s gone!”

That was a wonderful time too. Each morning William’s father took him up behind his saddle and they combed the streets, but Pirate was not to be found. At the end of the week William’s father took him to the print shop, and William was allowed to watch as his father set the types for the advertisement: “Strayed from the Northern Liberties of this city, a small bay mare . . . She, being but little and barefooted, cannot be supposed to have gone far; therefore if any of the town boys find her and bring her to subscriber, they shall, for their trouble, have the liberty to ride.”

In due time Pirate was returned, but William’s father no longer took William to ride; instead he was taken to the print shop to do some job of work that was either hot or smelly or dirty, and in time William balked.

“I don’t
like
working in the print shop,” he said.

“Well, my boy,” his father answered, “it appears you’re not my son after all.”

William didn’t like the words. He didn’t like them at all. He cast a worried look at his father, but the matter was only made worse by the shocked look on his
father’s
face, as if he’d just gotten his hand caught in the printing press. William’s eyes began to fill. He picked up the inking tool. “I shall like the print shop, Papa,” he said.

To William’s horror, his
father’s
eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my Billy,” he said, roughing up his hair. “Remember always, no matter where or who you are, I’m your father and I love you.”

William heard and believed—he did—but he’d also heard and learned; it was not a good thing to disappoint his father.

29

WHEN DEBORAH HAD GAZED
on her rutting husband, her rage had indeed been great—at a husband who was not a husband; at the friend who was not a friend; at the rutting itself, since in it she saw the kind of vigor that had been lacking the last time she and Benjamin had attempted it. If William hadn’t been stolen, Deborah’s rage might have lived a longer, more violent life, but with William gone she’d been so terror struck—for the boy, for Benjamin, for herself—that another, separate, violent emotion consumed her. She’d not loved the boy as she should; God saw, God punished; it was Deborah’s fault that the boy was gone, and at that particular moment, two-pronged blame was too unwieldy a thing for Deborah to manage.

William came back from his ordeal tired, pale, nervous, and full of himself all at the same time; he talked of a house he didn’t like and a ship he did, but he could remember no one’s name except for the vile Anne. Benjamin took care not to vilify Anne, a consideration Deborah appreciated only while she kept her thoughts on the boy and what he’d been through. Later, Benjamin surprised William with his own horse—an uncommon thing in their tradesmen’s circle—but Deborah said no word against it and made much of the boy in her own way, serving up his favorite foods, petting him, taking him up to bed at night instead of leaving it to Min, as before she’d left it to the vile Anne.

As a matter of course, however, after William’s safe return and the resettling of the household, Deborah found herself less able to keep her thoughts fixed on the boy’s ordeal and let them drift to the larger villainy, as she saw it. The questions bubbled forth.

“How long?” she asked one morning at breakfast after William had gone off to his tutor and Min had left them to their silence. “How long were you at that girl? Since the day she first came?”

“My dear,” Benjamin started, “I see no purpose to—” But looking closer at Deborah, he went on. “Only of late. I might add, as well, only after many nights of finding my own bed full.”

“Full of the keeper you set on me.”

“Out of concern for you.”

“Bah!”

Silence, except for the scrape of Benjamin’s silver spoon against the china porringer Deborah, as a token of her husband’s due, had purchased for him. The sound of that costly spoon against the elegant china began to go through her head like the pain she’d once experienced with an abscessed tooth; she reached across the table and swept the porringer to the floor. The china cracked in three pieces; the thick gruel spattered on the floor, the walls, the chairs, and Deborah’s skirt, but none of it touched her husband.

Benjamin stooped to pick up the pieces of the bowl and began to fit them together. “I shall mend it,” he said. “I’m most fond of this bowl. And the woman who gave it to me.” He looked at her. “I know better than to inquire after your affections just now. ’Tis only necessary that you know I’ve held fast to mine.”

“Oh, I know well enough what you’ve held fast to!”

“A drowning man will hold fast to whatever’s near at hand that will keep him afloat, Debby.”

As was the way of it with so many of their arguments, Deborah could call up no matching answer to Benjamin’s poetic rebuff. She left the room.

THEY FIXED ON WILLIAM
during those long days, keeping him between them as if he were a stiff bolster. Benjamin accompanied the boy to the stable at any hour of the day, to ride or to visit his horse; Deborah made sure William stayed with them at the table till the last plate was cleared and sat with him even after he slept, attempting to form up her questions for the next day’s answers.