The Whiskey Rebels (23 page)

It was far less wet and cold than recent nights and, as the tavern was the sort of place not likely to make a Negro feel at his ease, I asked Leonidas to wait outside. Pushing open the wooden door, I walked into a long low-ceilinged room filled with tobacco stench, wood smoke, and the scent of sausages roasting in fires. The men sat in small groups, huddled around low tables, their feet pressed into the dirt of the floor. Conversation, which had been boisterous but a moment before, at once tapered down as all inside stared at me. The Crooked Knight was the sort of place outsiders sought to avoid.

I went at once to the bar, where a man of exceptional shortness stood upon a box, polishing mugs. I knew him as Leonard Hilltop, a humorless sort with deeply lined skin that looked like carved stone and hollow eyes dark in color and bright with thick swaths of red, visible even in the poor light of that room. In his youth, he had been part of a network in occupied Philadelphia that had passed intelligence, often to me. It did not make us friends but it made us familiar, and there was undeniably trust and respect between us.

“Go back to your drink, you sods,” called the little man. “He’s all right, this one.”

The men did as they were told, and at once the space was filled with the hum of conversation.

“Well, now,” said Hilltop. “That was my first lie of the evening.”

“Let us hope it is the last,” I said.

He snorted. “What is this? You run too big a debt in every other tavern in town, and now you must drink here? A bit of a risk, isn’t it? The men here might not know your face, but they know your name and what you’re said to have done. If I were to tell them who you are, you’d be torn to bits like that there Federalist chicken.” He waved a hand toward the cockfight.

“It’s well I can trust you to keep quiet then,” I said. “In any case, you know the truth. My reputation was fouled by Federalists. Indeed, you told me so yourself those many years ago. You said it was Hamilton that exposed me. How precisely did you hear that, Hilltop?”

“Christ, I can’t recall,” he said. “It was a long time ago. It was just what I heard. Everyone said so.”

I was not hopeful he would remember, but it did no harm to ask. “In any case, I’m sure you can spare a drink for an ill-used patriot. Perhaps that most American of elixirs, which we call Monongahela rye, that drink of border men, hideously taxed by the nefarious Hamilton. Just a single glass of whiskey shall serve my purpose.”

“As you put it so,” said Hilltop with a grimace, like a man who had been outplayed at cards and now must accept defeat. He poured a hearty quantity into a mug and handed it to me undiluted. I tasted it and found it remarkably like that which the Irishman had given me.

I set the glass down. “It’s good, this whiskey.”

“Aye, the best there is.”

“Where do you get it?”

He grinned. “I’ve my sources.”

I took another sip. “Is your source a rugged Irishman with a hairless and leathery skull?”

Had I knocked Hilltop off his stool I could not have astonished him more, and that was certainly my goal. I might have worked the matter over slowly, like a tongue in search of the precise location of a vaguely aching tooth, but I saw no point in it. Hilltop was a suspicious sort, and a direct approach seemed best.

Hilltop had aided spies in the war, but he was not a spy himself and had no training other than to hope what he did went unnoticed, and this was often enough crudely practiced. I noticed his eyes shift to a table where a man sat alone. He was of about forty years, with dark receding hair and a flat, long-mouthed, froggish sort of face. He sat hunched over a piece of paper, quill in hand, and did not so much as look up. Hilltop next glanced near the fire where two men sat in close conversation, working hard to pretend they did not see me. I took in this scene without giving hint to the men or to Hilltop that I did so. Indeed, I was able, over the course of the next several minutes, to reposition myself so I could keep a perpetual eye on these men without letting them know I did so.

“What do you know of him?” Hilltop asked me.

“I know you know him,” I said, “as you’ve not troubled to inquire of whom I speak. I’d like a word with him, and I should very much prefer if he did not know I was coming.”

“What, do you work for Hamilton again?” Hilltop asked me. “After all he done to you?”

It was uncomfortably close to the truth, and I could not afford the luxury of believing I was the only clever man in this conversation. “I have my own business with him.”

“I ain’t seen that man in here in some time,” Hilltop said. “Few months back, he sold me a dozen barrels of this whiskey, and I was happy to get my hands on it. He ain’t been in since, though I did hear tell of him not two weeks ago.”

Hilltop certainly had my attention, though it was not so full as he believed, but thinking me riveted by his intelligence he gave the slightest of nods to the two men by the fire. One of them, the taller and younger of the two, handed something to the shorter and older. Then the first of these men rose and left the tavern. I hated to let him go, but I could only attempt to apprehend one man, and I thought it might as well be the one who had whatever item had been passed off.

“Haven’t seen him,” Hilltop was saying, “not personally, but a week ago a patron of the Knight says he saw him coming out of a boardinghouse on Evont Street, near the corner of Mary, down in Southwark. I don’t know if the Irishman lived there or was visiting, but this man said it was him, all right. I hoped to find him myself on account of wanting to buy more of his whiskey.”

“You know who he is?” I asked. “His name, his business?”

Hilltop shook his head. “Didn’t say much, but he’d been hurt by Hamilton’s whiskey tax, that much is certain.”

The whiskey tax had been approved by Congress as a simple means of helping fund the Bank of the United States. What better way to raise revenues, it had been argued, than to tax a luxury, and a harmful one at that, that many enjoyed? Let the men who would waste their time with strong drink pay for the economic growth of the new nation. This had become a major cause of resentment among the democratic republican types who liked to pass their time, as fate would have it, by drinking whiskey.

The shorter and older man, the one who had been given something of import, now pushed himself away from his table and began to head for the door. Hilltop must have noticed my interest, because he said, “Let me pour you another one, Saunders. Even better than the first, I’ll warrant.”

It was tempting, but I thanked Hilltop, and told him I would be back to collect it soon enough. I moved to the door. The man had his eye upon me, and there could have been no way to move without attracting his notice. He opened the front door and broke into a run. I began to run as well. A large man immediately stepped forward into my path, but I dodged past him, more lucky than skillful, and was out of the tavern and into the cold.

Leonidas was already on alert, and I needed only to point to the running man to send him off in a mighty sprint. I checked behind us, and while the drinkers at the Crooked Knight had been willing to block my passage, they were not willing to venture out into the night in an adventure that did not concern them. Seeing that no one pursued us, I redoubled my efforts. I felt a stitch in my side, but I pushed onward, not because I thought I could overtake Leonidas, but I wished not to be too terribly far behind when the man was brought down.

They turned north on St. John toward Brown Street, where the man headed west. As he reached the corner of Charlotte, Leonidas gave a great leap and tackled the man. He landed flat, with his arms outstretched, and I arrived upon the scene just in time to observe the stranger attempt to slip something into his mouth. I could not see it well in the lamplight, but it was small and shiny. Leonidas did not notice, for he was too occupied in keeping the man down, so, though I was still twenty feet away, my side ached, and I feared I might vomit up the whiskey I’d been drinking, I found strength to dash forward and stomp my foot down upon the man’s wrist.

It did the business, for his hand opened, and out rolled a silver ball, about the size of a large grape. I had not seen one since the war, but I knew what it was immediately, and I felt a chill of terror run through me. Whatever I was now involved in, whatever Cynthia Pearson had become trapped in, was far more dangerous than I had imagined.

I had only just secured the ball when things happened in an astonishing succession. Leonidas slumped forward, letting out a loud grunt. The man under him scrambled backward and ran off down Charlotte Street, and I was once more surrounded by Nathan Dorland and his several friends.

I
t was Dorland and the same three men who had assaulted me outside the tavern in Helltown. I could not imagine how they had found me, but they must have followed us to the Crooked Knight and then out again.

Without taking more than a cursory glance toward Dorland and his men, most of whom had pistols, I slipped the silver ball into my pocket and leaned down to see if Leonidas was hurt. He had been struck in the head with a pistol, and he bled, but not egregiously. He stirred now and rubbed the back of his head and then rose, slowly and deliberately, like a great monster rising from its lair.

“Who struck me?” His voice was calm but full of quiet, coiled menace.

“What, shall you return violence to a white man?” asked Dorland. “Consider yourself fortunate I did not shoot you on sight.”

“Hold,” I said.

“The time for holding is done,” said Dorland. “You’ll not have anyone to rescue you this time, Saunders. You are finished.”

I did not want to be finished. I had Cynthia Pearson to protect, and I had, not quite at my fingertips, the prospect of redemption, of returning to the service of my country. I had the silver ball in my pocket, and I could not guess what mysteries it contained. I had important work before me, and I could no longer afford this game with Dorland. Once his rage and inept thirst for revenge had amused me, because I could pull upon his strings and he would dance. Now it stood in my way, cropping up when I would have quiet and calm. Leonidas had been hurt and might next time, were I to escape to find a next time, be killed. It was all this, and there was another thing. It was what Mrs. Lavien had said to me the night before, that I had become something shameful, but that each new day brought the promise of a new path. Her words reverberated now like a cold blade against my skin, making me awake, alert, terrified. It was for all these reasons, and perhaps others, that I turned to Dorland and said what I said.

“I have wronged you and then ridiculed you for that wrong. I apologize, though I know an apology will offer you little satisfaction. Instead, I offer you what you have long wished for. I shall meet you in accordance with the code duello at the time and place of your choosing. Dorland, I accept your challenge.”

“Well, now,” said one of his friends.

“I never would have thought it,” said another, at almost the same time.

Dorland, however, held up his hand in silence. “Do you mock me?”

“Not anymore. I am done with that, and I won’t place my friends in danger any longer.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Saunders, and if I did, it would still be too late. You had your chance for honor. Now it is time for an ignominious end.”

“That is not your choice,” said Leonidas. “You must honor the code.”

“I’ll not take lessons in honor from a nigger,” said Dorland.

“Then take the lesson from me,” said one of his friends. “He has accepted your challenge. You cannot refuse to meet him on the field of honor.”

“He has no honor,” said Dorland.

“That doesn’t matter,” said another of his friends. “He has accepted your challenge.”

“You must do it,” said the third.

“One moment,” said Dorland. “You are supposed to be with me on this. Macalister, you swore you would aid me.”

“Because he would not duel,” said the first man who had spoken. I recalled him kicking my side in the Helltown alley. “You asked me to be your second, and I agreed. Now he says he will duel, and you must agree.”

Dorland’s plump face quivered. “But he is a veteran of the war. I would have no chance against him.”

“You mean you will not duel?” asked Macalister.

“Let us deal with him here and now,” said Dorland.

And then the most astonishing thing happened. The one called Macalister walked away, and the others followed. Dorland called after them, but they did not look back. There had been four of them, and suddenly it was a dark alley, and Dorland stood alone with me and Leonidas.

“Well,” I said. “This is what I believe is called a reversal.”

Leonidas took a step closer to him, and Dorland ran fast and hard. I cannot even begin to guess when he noticed that no one ran after him.

I
n the war, it often happened that messages of vital import would need to be carried through dangerous lines. Various methods could be employed to preserve the secrecy of the message. It could be written in code, it might be carried by an unassuming courier, it could be well hidden away. But what happens when the courier is captured, as must sometimes transpire? One method was to carry the message, written in a tiny hand upon a tiny piece of paper, housed within a little silver ball. If the courier was captured, he could swallow the ball and then, once free of the British (for he would have nothing else upon his person to incriminate him), could retrieve the ball at his own unpleasant leisure.

That the people involved in this scheme, whatever it might be, used such methods frightened me. Whom did they fear? What must they communicate that required such secrecy?

I dared not open the ball in public, but once Leonidas and I returned to my rooms I pried it open and looked at the tiny parchment inside. It read:

W qcas tfca R. ozz cb eqvsrizs vsfs. Ies qcbhoqhe hc qcbtwfa voa eiegsqhe bc-hvwbu. Kwhvcih vwe wbhsftsfsbqs, PIE kwzz tozz pm aofqv.

“It’s nonsense,” Leonidas said.