The Once and Future Spy (18 page)

S
now’s great-aunt Esther was ninety-two years old, so she claimed when she was invited to give her age. Clicking dental bridges
with the tip of her tongue, she held court from the head of the kitchen table, a thick knitted shawl draped over her shoulders
to hide her fragility, a brightly colored scarf draped over her head to cover her baldness. “Don’t be so polite—help yourself
to more,” she instructed the Weeder, pushing a serving dish in his general direction. She hiccupped once, brought her arthritic
fingers up to her mouth and held her breath for a moment. Then she edged her hand away and waited with wide eyes to see if
she would hiccup again. When she didn’t a sly smile illuminated her face. “If there’s one thing that doesn’t impress me it’s
politeness. You know what they say? They say politeness doesn’t put butter on parsnips. I don’t have the faintest idea why
anyone would say that but they do.” She lost her trend of thought, turned sharply to Snow and demanded, “Where was I?”

“You were talking about politeness. You were saying it didn’t put butter on parsnips.”

Esther seemed surprised. “I said
that!
I must be mad as a hatter.” She turned back to the Weeder. “Some folks think I am, you know. Mad as a hatter I mean. The
way I see it life is a loop. You start off stark raving sane, moving yourself around like a piece on one of those racetrack
board games that were the rage back in the twenties. You
get to the point where folks begin to suspect you’re a bit weird, you keep on moving round, you come to the part where they
think you’re off your rocker, and further along they’re whispering about whether to commit you or not, that’s how crazy you
are, and you keep going on round till you reach the place where you’re certified mad as a hatter, and then whoops, you’re
over the starting line and back into sanity country, ‘cause in your madness you see things more clearly than the folks who
are reckoned to be sane. Which is where I’m at now, young man, and what I see”—Esther fixed the Weeder with her unblinking
mischievous eyes—”is you’re running from something. Own up, young man. I saw you peeking through the blinds when you got here,
you did it again when you came down to supper, but that wasn’t what tipped me off. What tipped me off was your eyes. They’re
brimming with fear. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, being afraid. In my experience, which is considerable, folks who are afraid
lead fuller lives. Personally I understand fear; fear runs through my body the way sap runs through a tree. I live in fear
that each day will be my last on God’s earth. Well, I can’t, knock wood, complain. I’ve lived more than most. And loved more
than most. And been loved more than most.” She glanced tenderly at the ancient fox terrier snoring away at her feet. The dog
had lost all its hair because of a skin disease and was as pink-skinned as a newborn pig. “I like to try and imagine what
visions are flashing through her head,” Esther said, watching the dog’s legs and tail twitch. “I expect she’s remembering
some juicy rabbit that gave her a run for her money.” She hiccupped again but disregarded it. “I hope to God I twitch in my
sleep,” she said with sudden vehemence. “I hope to God I’m remembering some of the juicy rabbits I’ve chased in my time.”
She shrank tiredly back into her chair, smiling, clicking a bridge. “I hope to God I’ve got a chase or two left in me.” A
faraway look came into Esther’s eyes. She let her tongue toy with the bridge for a while, then turned absently toward Snow.
“Where was I, dear?”

“You were saying that Silas here is running from something.”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Esther insisted.

Snow nodded.

“You know who he’s running from?”

Snow nodded again. “It’s someone named Nate. The thing you have to understand about Silas”—Snow looked across the table at
the Weeder, discovering a truth as she heard herself say it—”is that he’s running slowly enough to make sure he gets caught.”

Esther hiccupped in exasperation. “That sounds like something fraught with meanings. I don’t know as I have the stamina to
poke under the surface of things anymore. I’ve got another question for the both of you.” She looked slyly from one to the
other. “Are you two sleeping together or apart?”

Snow blushed and said “Apart” just as the Weeder, without thinking, said “Together.”

Once again Esther fixed him with her unblinking eyes. “She’s got the rights of it and you’re just hoping the wish will become
parent to the act. Fact is you’re not intimate enough to sleep together. The way I figure it, you can be intimate without
being sexual but the vice versa is a natural disaster for everyone concerned. Course the young folks today don’t see things
quite like that, but when they’ve put as many years under their belts as I’ve put under mine they will. Good Lord, I do go
on, don’t I? If folks are destined to be lovers time is the one thing they have going for them—they don’t have to
rush
. They can afford to let nature take its course, which is one of the great luxuries of life that has been more or less discarded.
Clocks have been speeded up. Everyone’s in a mad rush, though they don’t have any idea where they’re going. Folks are so busy
getting nowhere fast they don’t bother to communicate anymore.”

Esther’s tongue pried a bridge loose in her gums and snapped it back into place. “In my experience,” she said, scraping back
her chair, pushing on its arms to raise herself into a standing position, “the more intimate folks are, the more they have
a tendency to communicate in codes. Are you interested in codes, Mr. Sibley?”

The Weeder stood up. “As a matter of fact I am.”

Esther indicated with a jerk of her head that she expected the Weeder to follow her into the living room. “Tell me about it,”
she ordered. She brushed him away when he tried to take her arm and, swaying slightly, started toward the door. The Weeder
turned back to help Snow clear the table but she waved him away too. “This is what you came for,” she said.

“Where was I?” Esther asked as the Weeder settled onto the couch next to her.

“You asked me about my interest in codes.”

“Did I? I don’t remember that. But that’s as good a place as any to pick up a conversation. Truth is I don’t sleep when I
go to sleep.” Here she cackled at a memory. “My father, may he rest in peace,
used to say old age was a shipwreck but it’s only in the last twenty years that I understood what he was getting at. Since
sleep is out of the question I like to keep the conversation going as long as possible. So, young man, I invite you to tell
me about your interest in codes.”

“I’m interested in one code in particular,” the Weeder said. And he told Esther how his man Nate had arranged with A. Hamilton
to send back information using coded phrases taken from Addison’s play,
Cato
.

“My father was something of a Revolutionary War buff,” Esther remarked. “He would have loved to hear your stories about Nate.
He was mighty proud of the fact that his great-grandfather was one of the first killed by the British—he was shot dead leading
his men against the North Bridge at Concord. My father’s grandfather was born during the Revolution. I remember my father
boasting about how his great-grandmother once helped an agent of General Washington’s. …”

“His great-grandmother would have been Molly Davis,” the Weeder said excitedly.

Esther clicked a bridge into place in surprise. “Now how would you know about Molly Davis?”

“And the agent she helped was my man Nate.”

“Your man Nate, who you’re running away from but slow enough for him to catch up with you?”

The Weeder smiled, nodded. “Did your father ever mention Nate’s name in connection with Molly Davis?”

Esther thought a bit. “Don’t remember him ever talking about Nate, to tell the truth. But I remember him describing the arrival
of General Washington’s agent in Flatbush. Molly, I’m embarrassed to admit it, had a slave—”

“John Jack.”

“That’s the one. John Jack. He happened on someone spying on her through the window. He rammed a gun into the small of the
man’s back and marched him around to the front door.” Esther leered lecherously. “Your man Nate, if he and the agent were
one and the same, was a
voyeur
, young man!”

“How did your father know so much about Molly Davis?” the Weeder asked.

“I suppose he learned some of it from his father and grandfather, and some of it from Molly’s penny notebook.”

The skin on the Weeder’s face tingled. “What became of this penny notebook?”

Esther said, “Why, I imagine it’s still tucked away in that old sailor’s chest of his in the attic. Do you want to take a
look at it?”

Speaking very quietly the Weeder said, “I’d jump at the chance.”

Here, at last, is the part where my man Nate meets Molly Davis:

I
SEE HIM AS DISTINCTLY AS IF I WERE
walking alongside him as he made his way down the spine of a dirt lane that cut under the heights of The New Lots to the
village of Flatbush. The night would have been as bright as a night with a sliver of a moon can get. A warm, damp breeze was
probably blowing in from the Atlantic, making the planets appear swollen and near enough to touch. A shower of meteorites
blazed high overhead, leaving long fading fingers trailing across the heavens. On either side of the lane, fireflies filled
the dark fields with thousands of pinpricks of light as they flashed urgent coded messages to each other. So Nate would have
imagined then; so I imagine now.

Nate, dressed in coarse breeches and an old coat with deep pockets, carrying his wooden shoemaker’s kit strapped to his back,
was roughly halfway between The New Lots and Flatbush when his ears caught the drumbeat of hoofs. He scurried into the underbrush
in time to avoid a lobster patrol, Grenadiers, judging from their high bearskin hats silhouetted against the stars. They passed
close enough
for Nate to hear the brass matchboxes fastened to their chests tapping against the brass buttons of their tunics.

Several miles down the lane he found the farmhouse that A. Hamilton had described—it was on the outreaches of Flatbush, the
second house down from the communal barn with the date “1747” carved over the double doors. As a matter of prudence, Nate
decided to scout the house before announcing his presence. He could hear the notes of a pianoforte coming from a front room,
but he couldn’t make out who was playing because the shutters had been fastened for the night. Weaving between the fireflies,
Nate circled around to the back of the house. Nearby a dog howled and several other dogs farther down the lane took up the
cry. The barking ceased as suddenly as it had started. Nate spotted a faint light where a back shutter had been left ajar.
He climbed over a fence and crossed the yard to the shutter. All the panes of the mullioned window behind the shutter but
one had been replaced with animal skins stretched and oiled. Nate pressed closer to the single pane that remained. He found
himself looking into a small bedroom. Against one wall was a narrow truckle bed covered with an indigo blue quilt. In the
middle of the room was a naked woman. She was standing in a low tin tub filled with water, her profile toward Nate, her nose
and mouth covered with a bandanna soaked in camphor, the pungent odor of which reached Nate outside the window. A whale oil
lamp with a floating wick was set on the floor next to the tub and its flame projected flickering shadows of the woman as
she sponged herself in the tin tub.

Staring at her shadow dancing on the wall and ceiling, Nate surely caught his breath and leaned forward. The skin on his face
must have tingled. He would have followed each movement she made, oblivious to everything else in the world. I can see her
in my mind’s eye reaching for a towel folded over the back of a settle chair. I imagine her about thirty years old, with incredibly
pale skin and (over the bandanna) eyes that conveyed shyness or sadness. Or all of the above. Her dark hair would have been
cut short and parted in the middle, with wisps curling off negligently from her sideburns. Her shoulders would have been bony
and narrow, her breasts small and jutting, her stomach flat, her pubic hair a tangle of damp curls. Throwing the towel over
a shoulder, she stepped from the tub and walked with a slight limp (her leg had been broken in a fall from a horse and badly
set) to a mirror hanging on the inside of a door.

Watching the woman as she studied her reflection in the mirror, taking in the lean line of her back, her buttocks, her muscular
thighs and calves (it turned out that she covered the equivalent of twenty miles a day spinning on her “walking wheel”), taking
in her bare ankles and her bare feet, Nate surely lusted after her as he had never lusted after anyone or anything in his
life.

Contrary to published reports, my man Nate was no archangel. The fact of the matter is he had never set eyes on a naked woman
before. He had imagined one often enough; had peeked with his classmates at sketches of the female body in medical texts at
Yale; had once sweet-talked a girl into taking off her stockings and slippers and wading in the Connecticut River with him;
had been mesmerized by the memory of her bare ankles and her bare feet for months afterward. But the vision that confronted
him now transported him to a different level of existence. He felt lightheaded. He heard his heart pounding. He sensed an
erection forming and instinctively thrust it into the side of the house. (I know you are out there, Nate, lurking in the crevices
of your myth, squirming as I approach. I’m getting uncomfortably close, aren’t I, Nate?)

He would have been content to stand with his nose pressed to the pane of glass and his erection pressed against the wall,
watching the naked woman for the rest of his natural life if he hadn’t felt the business end of a blunderbuss stabbing into
the small of his back under his shoemaker’s kit. In the darkness behind Nate someone chuckled quietly. “Figured as how them
dogs wasn’t howlin’ for nothin’. Ol’ equalizer’s loaded with buck ‘n’ ball,” a Negro voice announced. “Jus’ move a muscle,
ol’ John Jack, he gonna cut you into two peepers ‘stead-a one. Now go’n lift them hands a yours straight up.”

Nate raised his hands over his head and froze.

“Now you gonna start yerself walkin’ real slowlike ‘round to the front door, which is where a gentleman, which is what you
sure as hell ain’t, would-a come to in the first place.”

Nate risked a glance over his shoulder, made out the tall Negro holding the blunderbuss and did as he was bid. He reached
the front door of the farmhouse, pushed it open with the toe of his shoe and stepped into the room. A woman bent with age,
wearing a thick knitted shawl draped over her fragile shoulders, sat on a stool in front of the pianoforte, nodding and singing
as she played what Nate
recognized as an old English nursery rhyme. An old dog twitched in his sleep at her feet.

Here is her song:

If buttercups buzz [she sang, off-key] after the bee;

If boats were on land, churches on sea;

If ponies rode men, and grass ate the cow;

If cats should be chased into holes by the mouse;

If mommas sold their babies to gypsies for half a crown;

If summer were spring and the other way round

Then all the world would be upside down.

And thumping on the keys with her arthritic fingers, the old woman started to repeat the refrain:

Then all the world would—

Suddenly she caught a glimpse of the Negro pointing his blunderbuss at a stranger. Her eyes widened. Her mouth worked, but
no sound emerged. Then she found her vocal cords and screeched, “Molly! Come quick! John Jack’s gone and caught himself a
rebel!”

A door flew open. The woman who had been sponging herself in the tub stood under the lintel, one hand raised and touching
it. She was wearing a man’s flannel dressing gown buttoned up to her neck. Her feet, visible beneath the hem, were still bare.
The bandanna that had been over her mouth and nose was gone, but she still reeked of camphor.

“Found ‘im peepin’ thru the winda,” John Jack reported. He prodded Nate in the back. “Who went, an’ said anythin’ ‘bout you
lowerin’ them hands’a yours down?”

Nate’s hands shot up again. He addressed the young woman. “You must be Molly Davis.”

“What do you want from me?” she asked from the door.

“What I want,” Nate told her, “is polite intercourse.”

The woman measured Nate with her sad eyes for a long moment. Presently she asked, “What is your name?”

Nate told her. She hesitated, then indicated with a jerk of her head that she expected him to follow her into the bedroom.
John Jack and the ancient woman exchanged looks. John Jack shrugged and
lowered his blunderbuss. Nate let his hands sink of their own weight to his sides, thrust them into the deep pockets of his
waistcoat and plunged past Molly into the bedroom, into the odor of camphor. She followed him and closed the door. He turned
to face her. The tin tub half-filled with water stood like a lake between them.

Once again he saw her standing naked in the tub, saw the curve of her breast as she reached for the towel, and he had trouble
collecting his thoughts. “I have a letter,” he finally managed. “For you. From A. Hamilton.”

Slipping the wooden shoemaker’s kit from his shoulders, Nate sat down on the settle chair, took off his right shoe and removed
a folded letter from its hiding place between the inner and outer soles. Stepping around the lake Molly accepted the letter,
scooped up the whale oil lamp from the floor and walked with an almost imperceptible limp to the bed. She placed the lamp
on a night stool, sat down on the edge of the mattress and slit open the seal with the edge of a fingernail. Moving her lips,
sounding out each word, she read the letter. “We must burn this,” she said, looking up at Nate. “I will help you in every
way I can.” Her eyes avoided his. “Is it true you were spying on me through the window?”

Nate reddened. “I wanted to be sure I had the right house.” He nodded toward the bandanna soaked with camphor, neatly folded
on a side table and, hoping to change the subject, asked, “Why do you breathe in camphor?”

Molly said, “A woman in the village told me that a handkerchief soaked in camphor and held to the nose five minutes each day
will prevent the yellow fever, beside purging the nasal passages and the lungs. You smile at things you don’t understand.
It does you no credit. Back in Ireland they have a saying—what butter and whiskey won’t cure there’s no cure for. But I don’t
hold with that. I believe in herb plasters and quince juice and lily roots and a salve made of opium and honey. It is well
known that arsenic taken in small doses cures indigestion. The resin of a dragon tree calms the swelling that comes from gout.”
Molly became aware of Nate’s eyes riveted on her. “Why do you stare at me? Because you saw me without clothing? You must be
very innocent. Are you tongue-tied? Say something.” Molly’s eyebrows glided toward each other, her mouth stretched into a
suggestion of a smile, though it seemed to Nate to be the kind of
smile that was an alternative to tears. “To start with, tell me where you are from.”

“Connecticut.”

“Where in Connecticut?”

“Coventry.”

“Are Connecticut folks still hot for the war?”

“Lukewarm would be more like it,” Nate told her. “In some townships they were obliged to pick names from a hat to fill the
quota of recruits for the summer campaign. Some whose names were picked paid substitutes to take their place. I heard of one
man who sent his black slave in his place.”

“A good victory will change all that,” Molly said confidently. “Do you know about the lobsters landing at Kipp’s Cove on Manhattan
Island?” When Nate shook his head in surprise she added, “John Jack came in from the Brookland Heights with the news this
afternoon. Seems like the lobsters went across in barges from the New Town Creek on the fifteenth. The Continentals holding
the beach cut and ran as soon as the lobsters turned up. They say General Washington was almost taken as he tried to rally
his troops.”

“What happened to General Putnam and the men holding New York City?”

“They’re supposed to be working their way along the Broad Way toward the Haarlem Heights and Washington’s main body. If the
lobsters haven’t already occupied the city, they soon will.”

Nate allowed as how the military situation looked bleak. Molly agreed. Nate explained why Washington had dispatched him behind
the British lines. “He figures he’s got to hold out on the Heights for a good month or two if he’s going to pull his regiments
together for a retreat. He sent me to find out if Howe plans to give him the time he needs.”

Molly stood up. Once again her shadow danced on a wall behind her. “I know the western reaches of the Long Island like the
palm of my hand,” she said. “I used to picnic with Isaac at the New Town Creek. We will start off first thing in the morning.”

“We? Who said anything about you coming along?”

“The roads are crawling with lobster patrols and Tory roadblocks,” Molly said. “You’ll be less conspicuous if you’re with
a woman. I can say I’m taking you back home to whip the cat. The lobsters will wink at each other and whisper snide comments,
but the chances
are good they’ll let us go on.” Before Nate could disagree she started for the door. “Be careful what you say in front of
my great-aunt,” Molly instructed him before she opened it. “She’s a diehard Tory and always mentions Farmer George in her
prayers. So do I—I damn his soul to burn in purgatory till the end of time.”

Molly prepared a glass of warm milk laced with honey for Nate, found him a spare blanket and installed him on a pallet on
the dirt floor of the larder. Returning to her bedroom, she pulled a document box out of her dowry trunk, unlocked it with
a key she kept hidden in a crack between two floorboards, pushed aside some legal papers (her marriage certificate, the deed
to John Jack) and removed the diary she had been keeping in a penny notebook since her marriage. She flipped to the entry
recording the death of her husband, Isaac. “Ambufh’d by greef,” she had noted on a page stained by tears. “Life seems not
worth living.” She turned to the last blank page, dipped a goose quill into a jar of ink and carefully printed out the following: