Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (21 page)

Anne took in the mate’s clear, hard eye above the false smile and saw the life she’d so carefully constructed begin to fade like a candle flame at sunrise, the world roll over, leaving her at the bottom instead of the top, the person begging instead of being begged. The rest blurred, swam, flickered. He went at her forever, turning her from raw to numb, and then there was the captain again. Anne’s limbs began to tremble; she would admit it: She was helpless against these men. She braced herself for another assault, but the captain said only, “Fix yourself.”

Anne didn’t move, her limbs weren’t ready; she refused to let the captain see her shaking.

“Fix yourself!”

Anne sat up. She lifted her fingers, and although they felt as if they quivered like cats’ tails, she saw they were steady enough. She pulled her clothes into place. She smoothed and reknotted her hair. She slid her legs to the floor and stood; her legs were steady too, and so were her eyes as she stared back at the captain; her long practice at acting hadn’t been for nothing after all.

The captain left. The new man came through the door so hard after him that Anne blinked to make sure she wasn’t making up the switch in her mind. No. He stood even taller and broader inside the confines of the cabin, the boy even smaller, clinging to his father’s jacket like a kitten.

“Well, my dear,” Franklin said. “Here we are again.” He looked around the room, selected the captain’s best chair, and sat down. He kept William on his lap, the boy shrinking against his father’s waistcoat as if knowing himself too big to be sitting there, as if afraid that were he noticed he’d be pushed away and ignored. All this Anne could see in him because she’d seen it before, and it pinched her heart every time. Franklin reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, intricately carved wooden horse, which he handed to William; the new toy diverted the boy’s attention from his father at last.

Anne said, “Who told you where I was? Allgood?”

“Allgood!”

“Grissom, then.”

Franklin’s brow knitted. “Your sister Mary told me where you were. But only for a price. Like you, isn’t she?”

Mary was nothing like Anne, but only because she didn’t need to be. “What price?” Anne asked.

“That you wouldn’t be arrested and sent to prison. That I find you new work.”

“I’m able to make my way.”

“Yes, you are.” Franklin looked her over with closer attention. “But do forgive me if I observe that you’re beginning to look somewhat the worse for it, my dear. You can’t enchant us all forever, you know.”

He shifted William, reached into his pocket, and drew out a paper, folded and sealed. He held it out to Anne. “You wish to go away; I shall be overjoyed to help you in that endeavor. I have a friend at Boston, a mantua maker; carry this letter and she’ll find a place for you in her shop.”

Anne looked at the paper. She looked at William, twirling his new toy about in his fingers, his head nestled against his father, as oblivious to Anne as he appeared to be to the conversation. She’d cost herself this boy, but she wouldn’t leave him again without at least attempting to improve his condition over what it had been. “What assurance can you give me of the safety of someone who is of great concern to me? What steps will be taken regarding that person’s care?”

Franklin lowered his voice, and it changed to a thing Anne had never before heard—something dark, cold, viperish. It even brought William’s head out of its nest to look at his father with large eyes. “The only danger that has come to someone who is of great concern to
me
came this night, when I discovered him climbing up onto a gunwale unattended. Now you may take this letter or not, but you’ll take your passage aboard this ship; if you attempt to leave it before it sails, the captain has been instructed to call the sheriff. Is that clear, or are you a greater fool than I imagined?”

Fool.
Oh, how that word stung! She looked again at the paper in Franklin’s hand, thicker than a mere letter should be, perhaps with a supply of paper money enclosed. She would have liked to say she didn’t need it—that she didn’t need Franklin’s money and connections and she didn’t need Mary’s meddling—Mary, who’d had a dress to wear and soup to eat only because of Anne’s willingness to take what came her way and make something of it. Anne had managed to keep her pride while she did it too, but only because most every man she’d ever met had been a fool.

Anne took the paper. She reached out one last time and stroked William’s fine, fair hair, but he didn’t even lift his face from his father’s waistcoat.

27

ANNE SAT IN THE
captain’s cabin and made a fierce effort to collect herself. She knew she had little time; she was surprised the captain hadn’t already burst through the door, claiming his next charge against her fare. She attempted to erase the image of William’s face turning away from her and struggled to call up Franklin’s words; she needed to concentrate on a certain few of them, like
mantua maker
and
Boston
but she heard instead
gunwale.
Was Ezekiel Lee right? Was she the mad one? Was Franklin right, that the only true danger had come to William when Anne had brought him aboard this ship? Certainly Deborah’s great lapse at the wharf could be called nothing worse than what Anne had allowed this night. Perhaps Franklin was right that Deborah would never purposely hurt the boy. Anne would need to believe this if she were to depart with any peace of mind for Boston.

Boston. Anne ripped open the seal on the paper Franklin had given her and discovered folded inside it two pound notes. The letter was headed,
To Mrs. Jane Bellamy, at Frog Lane, Boston,
and began
Honored Madam.
It went on to plead with this Mrs. Bellamy to find the bearer a situation in her shop. Unlike Allgood’s letter, it said nothing of Anne’s character one way or the other. It was signed,
Ever your Friend and Servant, B. Franklin.
Anne looked again at the words in the heading—Frog Lane, Boston—and discovered she misliked them. She found frogs repulsive; she didn’t know this Boston, or anything of mantua making; come to that, she didn’t know anything of Franklin’s good faith. Philadelphia was where her family lived. Philadelphia was where the shipwright and others like him lived, people she could rely on for subsistence, by one or another means. On the other side of it, Franklin had spoken at least one true thing: She couldn’t enchant them all forever. There was blackmail such as she’d used on Allgood, of course, but thus far it had not proved successful. The additional Boston advantage was that Anne was not known and could, indeed, make a new name for herself if she desired. Anne pondered the thing back and forth for a time, but soon enough realized all such musing counted for little.

William was in Philadelphia. So Anne must be.

Anne put the pound notes into her pocket; she gripped Franklin’s letter between thumbs and fingers, about to rip it up and discard it in the river, but then reconsidered; for once, Franklin had affixed his name to a document, and it might yet prove useful to her.

Anne’s next difficulty was going to be extricating herself from the ship unnoticed. She sat still and listened; she heard more than one tread on the deck above her, and even one would likely be enough to stop her unless she could think of something cleverer than she’d managed thus far. She tried the captain’s door and it did indeed crack open, but only to expose her guard, a sailor too young to be whiskered but already thick muscled, leaning against the wall just outside the companionway. He leaped upright. “Get back in there, you cow!”

Anne cast deep into the well of her evaporating reserve and managed to draw up what she could only hope was at least a shadow of her old smile. “Come with me, sir?”

“Get inside or I’ll put you inside in pieces!”

The argument was a strong one. Anne retreated, closed the door, latched it from within. She examined the cabin again. The hatch above would no doubt bring her out onto the deck and right into the middle of those treading feet; the hatch could be of no use to her. The cabin also contained a small-paned window, but on the water side, away from the dock, with nothing below it but deep, cold water. The window was no use to her. Anne turned and turned about, a new kind of panic growing in her, a new kind of helplessness that had for a long time been entirely foreign to her. She couldn’t pick and choose her own space, she couldn’t pick and choose what man to use or how to use him or even to come or to go; she was trapped, waiting for whichever man came next through that door. Anne’s skin grew damp, her hands trembled; she turned and turned around the captain’s cabin, looking for any opening, any tool to fight her way free; she spied the window again, and thought, again; it was the only chance for her.

Anne pulled a locker below the window and climbed up on it. She pushed out the glass and looked down at the water.
You see what the water is? It doesn’t sink you, it carries you!
But carry her where? Anne looked to the far shore and could just make out the dark line that was New Jersey.
In the middle the river rages too strong for any man . . .
Not New Jersey, then. Anne wiggled her shoulders through the window and looked left and right; the ship was tied to the dock, but the dock didn’t help her—it stretched deep out into the river and rose too high for her to reach it from the water. It must be the Philadelphia shore, then, not a dark line, but a row of dark squares—warehouses, shops. It looked a great distance away, but the waves were gentle and appeared to roll, if not directly to shore, then not away from it either.
Always best to cut across the tide, not against it . . .
But could she swim such a distance? It was one thing to do so with Franklin’s strong hands hovering near; if she grew fatigued before she reached the shore, she might float all she liked but she’d only float . . . where? To some piece of shore farther along. She might be lost but at least she’d be off the ship, away from the captain.

Anne lowered herself down until she was seated on the locker. She removed her shoes, but not her stockings; she removed the money pouch from her pocket and tied it around her neck. She removed her heavy skirt and bodice but kept on her shift; she climbed up on the locker, wormed her way into the window till her weight was balanced half on each side of the sill and hovered, listening for a noisy moment. When an argument erupted on deck, she kicked with her legs and flew through the air, downward till she hit water. The cold shocked the breath out of her, but so did the fact that she continued to plunge downward. The water
didn’t
carry her.

Paddle your hands! Kick your feet!
Anne paddled. Kicked. She began to rise, and just as she decided she wouldn’t ever be allowed another breath in this life, she broke the surface. She gulped air and water together, coughed and kicked harder, till her mouth rose higher above the water. She rolled over and floated, as Franklin had taught her, till she’d stabilized her breathing, then rolled again and struck for shore.
Paddle your hands! Kick your feet!
Anne worked her limbs as hard as she’d ever worked them, but the shore grew no closer; she felt herself sinking beneath the surface. She rolled and floated again, swallowing more water, but it gave her another few inches of air in her lungs; she flipped over and thrashed toward shore again.

Over. Breathe. Over. Kick and paddle. Her knee struck bottom first, but her feet wouldn’t keep under her. She crawled onto the sand and lay on her back, panting like an overheated dog, until she found strength enough to open her eyes and look around her. She’d come up under the wharf, which would have been fine with Anne if it weren’t for the company. Rats. Refuse. How hard she’d worked, only to end again where she’d begun, amongst the same dregs she’d kicked through every day of her life at Eades Alley! But Anne had gotten herself out of Eades Alley and she could get herself out of here. She looked about and the first thing she saw was the dark square of the sign in front of Grissom’s upholstery shop.

Franklin knows nothing of my coming here tonight. I did so only in hope of preventing a further tragedy . . .
What had it all meant? Anne had barely heard it when Grissom said it, and she could barely think it through now, but as she thought over the whole of Philadelphia she could think of no other door she could knock on half clothed and sopping wet, at an hour still considerably shy of dawn. Perhaps she hadn’t made a friend of Peter for nothing—Peter, who slept on the shop floor.

BY THE TIME ANNE
reached the shop she was shaking so hard that only a touch of her knuckles on the glass rattled the pane. She tried to see into the dark and seek out Peter’s form, but she could make out nothing of the floor at all. She clenched her fist and rapped harder on the glass—once, twice, a third time—but the light that finally came at her came from the stairs that led to Grissom’s rooms and not from the shop at all.

Grissom loomed behind the lantern, hair flying loose, shirttail dripping out of his breeches, legs bare; he peered out, fumbled the latch, threw open the door. “God in heaven! What have they done to you? Get in, will you, before the whole street wakes.”

Anne didn’t—couldn’t—move.

Grissom reached out and caught her by both arms, half lifting her into the shop and ahead of him up the stairs. In his kitchen he pointed her to the chair near the banked fire and gave it a stir with the poker; he climbed the stairs to his chamber and returned with a blanket and, remarkably, a woman’s flannel gown and shawl. He left the room and Anne changed into the dry clothes, transferring her money pouch from neck to pocket. When Grissom returned he’d done something better with his own attire, but his hair still flowed loose, glinting like escaped flame in the light of the fire. He sat across from her and studied her in silence for a time.

“How is it you come here in this state?” he said at last. “Must I assume things did not end well?”

“They did not.”

“The boy?”

“His father caught up with us at the ship and took him home.”