Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution (46 page)

Sophie
frowned.
 
"What of me?"

"Mrs.
Barton is ordered to Major Hunt's cabin."

Edward wanted
David and Mathias out of earshot while he questioned her.
 
She rolled back her shoulders.
 
"Well, then, I certainly hope to join
you gentlemen on deck afterward."

They filed
out.
 
She waited for her companions to
exit the corridor before she knocked on Edward's door.

At his
invitation, she entered a cabin the size of those aboard the
Gloria Maria
to find him perched on a stool before a desk.
 
He set down his quill, rose, inclined his head to her, and resumed his
seat without expression.
 
The deadlight
let in a bit of daylight, but a candle on the desk conferred the hue of fresh
blood to his coat.
 
She closed the door
and waited.

He laid the
paper aside, pulled a clean sheet from a portfolio, and dipped his quill in the
inkwell.
 
"For the record, please
state the full names of your daughter, your sister, and a third blood relative
in addition to their spouses' names and where they reside."

Next of
kin.
 
She swallowed, wondering when the
diameter of her throat had shrunk.
 
"My daughter is Elizabeth Anne Sheridan nee Neely.
 
Her husband is John Clark Sheridan.
 
They reside in Augusta.
 
My sister is Susana Margaret Greeley nee St.
James.
 
Her husband is John Roger
Greeley of Alton.
 
And my cousin is
Sarah Margaret O'Neal nee St. James.
 
Her husband is Lucas Hezekiah O'Neal.
 
They live in Augusta."

His quill
scratched across paper.
 
He replenished
the ink.
 
"Your full name?"

"Sophia
Elizabeth Barton nee St. James."

Finished
writing, he laid down the quill and sprinkled fine sand upon the document.
 
Then he turned to her and crossed his
legs.
 
"On Saturday June 24 in
Havana, Cuba, Lieutenant Fairfax was witness to you, David St. James, and the
now-deceased Jacques le Coeuvre, delivering emeralds to Don Antonio Hernandez,
an enemy Spaniard.
 
Lieutenant Fairfax
witnessed you telling Don Antonio that you had accepted the jewels from his
nephew, Don Esteban, one of three known spies prepared to intercede with the
Spaniards in the interest of the Continental Congress.

"Lieutenant
Fairfax also confirmed our intelligence reports that Don Diego Alejandro
Gonzales, also present during your meeting yesterday, was impersonating a
Gálvez in a hoax to assess whether the American rebellion was organized enough
to deserve formal support in King Carlos's court.
 
Fortunately for His Majesty King George, the fouled delivery of
the emeralds will confirm the rebels' disorganization to the Spaniards.
 
However, your possession of a coded message
and translated cipher and your participation in the delivery of the emeralds
are sufficient evidence to identify you as a rebel spy and mandate your death
upon the gallows.
 
Have you comment in
your behalf?"

"I'm not a
rebel spy."

"I knew
you'd say that."

"You know
I'm not a rebel spy."

He pushed up
from the desk in anger.
 
"No, I
don't know that!
 
What I've
seen
is that a woman that I loved — a woman I fancied marrying — rejected my offers
of protection and apparently fell in with rebels."

"Marriage?
 
Yes, perhaps you fancied marrying me.
 
I don't doubt you wanted me for your
mistress.
 
But while you and I enjoyed
each other's company here, in America, such an arrangement never would have
worked for us in England.
 
You've
realized that, but perhaps it makes it easier for you to accept if you envision
me a rebel."

He tightened
his lips, granting her assertion weight.
 
"If you aren't a rebel, why did you sail to Havana with the
emeralds and meet with enemy Spaniards instead of waiting for me in St.
Augustine?"

"I
couldn't give you the stones.
 
They
weren't King George's any more than the Congress's.
 
The name Don Esteban gave us was that of his uncle, Don Antonio.
 
Unless Lieutenant Fairfax lied to you, you'll
see in his report that we delivered the stones to Don Antonio,
not
to
Don Alejandro, and it was Don Alejandro whom the rebel couriers were supposed
to present with the emeralds.
 
However,
we four operated under the assumption that the emeralds were part of Esteban
Hernandez's inheritance, meaning their only rightful owner was another
Hernandez family member.

"Edward,
this had nothing to do with the American War.
 
It had everything to do with the personal integrity of each of us.
 
We could have divided the wealth among
ourselves, returned to Alton, and been quite well off for many years, and no
one besides us would have been the wiser about how we came by such fortunes."
 
She shook her head.
 
"But we couldn't do that.
 
We're honest human beings, each of us, and
sometimes an honest human being must look past convention of law to complete a
duty that he or she knows is right, deep in the soul.
 
Sometimes the law is
wrong
.

"I
understand what the evidence looks like against us.
 
I know how far you've bent convention to grant us comfort in our
final days, and I thank you for it."

His sapphire
eyes burned from a face gone too pale.
 
He walked from her, hands clasped behind him, and faced the bulkhead in
silence, staring as if he saw the ocean through it.
 
At least a minute elapsed before she heard his voice, low, and
while he spoke, she sensed he'd forgotten her presence and thought aloud,
voicing issues he'd struggled with a long time.

"This war,
this damned war.
 
What a waste.
 
We don't want to be here killing our
brethren, and we don't want to spend another day in a land that resists us with
every natural weapon it can unleash."
 
Bitterness tainted his tone.
 
"The casualties are men and women of integrity.
 
The survivors are fanatics with no sense of
decency.
 
It isn't justice."
 
He glanced at her.
 
"Have you read that Declaration of Independence?"

"Yes."

"A
masterpiece of philosophical persuasion.
 
I agree with the Congress on many grievances.
 
But why should I agree with them about anything?
 
Doesn't that make me a traitor?"
 
He pressed his right palm to the
bulkhead.
 
"Across that ocean, many
members of Parliament sympathize with the colonists.

"And I
hear regret in the Declaration, voices of delegates who didn't want to sunder
ties with Britain: 'We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity,
and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these
usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and
correspondence'."

Edward turned
back to her.
 
"Men of the Congress
and Parliament hold the same values dear to them, yet they're at each others'
throats, labeling each other godless heathens.
 
This war sucks the blood from everyone, no matter the color coat we
wear.
 
Years from now both sides of the
Atlantic will still be weakened from its feeding.
 
We have all cast ourselves to it as oblations.
 
I see no way out of it."

She took a step
toward him.
 
"Go back to
England.
 
Speak in Parliament.
 
Tell them what you've told me just now."

"I spoke
my mind in Parliament last year."
 
He shook his head, the movement diminutive, as if to emphasize the
extent of his influence within Britain's government.
 
"They told me to reseat myself."

"Return
and try again.
 
Yours isn't the only
voice of reason.
 
Surely they must hear
you someday."

"My voice
is too small by thousands of acres, one generation, and at least two
titles.
 
It's best heard at the local
level among the common people."

Sadness swept
her — not for herself, but for Edward, a natural statesman with talents ignored
and unrecognized by his peers.
 
"Yours is a voice of justice.
 
In Alton we listened to it for four months and felt far more
secure."
 
She walked to the desk,
picked up the paper scripted with information about her kin, and showed it to
him.
 
"But is
this
the
justice you administered in Alton and Hampshire?"
 
He stared as if she'd struck him.
 
"Is it the justice sought by the
Congress or even that administered by much of Parliament?

"No, I
think it's something else."
 
Bitterness infiltrated her tone.
 
"How did the Declaration word it?
 
'Under absolute despotism, it is the right and duty of the people to
throw off such government and to institute new government'.
 
Could this be one of those grievances where
you and the Congress agree?"

"I take
your point.
 
I believe we're finished
for now."

"Of course
we are.
 
Much as His Majesty courted the
illusion that the American colonies would always be content as dependent
children of Britain, we courted the illusion that I might be content as your
mistress.
 
But you've realized it cannot
work — not for us, and not for Britain and the colonies."

In the dimness
of the cabin, emotion on his face folded into inscrutability.
 
She jiggled the paper.
 
"What do you call this: duty?
 
An order?
 
Honor?
 
I realize that you're a
man of duty and so must complete what you believe is your duty.
 
In a few days, I will go to the gallows with
my head held high — not because of politics, but because I was guided by my
conscience and am an honest woman.
 
In a
few days, it will be over for me, but I suspect you'll spend the rest of your
life sorting out this duty, order, and honor."

His expression
thawing, he returned to the desk, removed the paper from her hand, and spread
it flat with care.
 
"Always
outspoken and forthright, never deceptive: Sophie Barton."

"Please
understand that I never meant to hurt you."

"I know
you didn't."

Tension mounted
across the space between them.
 
She felt
the impulse to embrace and comfort him, and from the sentiment sifting into his
face, he wouldn't have resisted.
 
But it
was as if a pale wall had materialized between them, a barrier that dissuaded
their meeting in the middle.

He rolled his
shoulders back.
 
"As I said, we're
finished for now.
 
Accept the escort
outside, take some fresh air up on deck, and send Mr. St. James or Mr. Hale
down to see me next."

Lost for
words, she stared at him.
 
Then she let
herself out of the cabin and sought her escort.

Chapter Thirty-Six

PREDAWN THE
FOLLOWING Thursday morning, Sophie awakened to feel the
Zealot
at anchor
east of St. Augustine.
 
She lay still
and, with calm and thankfulness, experienced what she believed to be her final
morning on the earth — appreciation for Edward's clemency, awe and delight for
the bond she shared with David, and gratitude for the gift of trust, joy, and
ecstatic union she had discovered with Mathias.
 
Then she woke her companions.

They lit the
lantern, dressed, assembled gear and waited for the inevitable knock on the
door.
 
It came minutes later, along with
a breakfast of biscuits and tea and the order that they be ready to leave in a
quarter hour.
 
On deck in the sunrise,
she regarded the distant coquina walls of Castillo de San Marcos.
 
Just fifteen days earlier they'd sailed
forth from St. Augustine aboard the
Gloria Maria
.

The prisoners
were lowered into a gig with Edward and Fairfax and rowed across the Matanzas
River.
 
No longer limping, Fairfax paid
them the same regard he'd grant a load of lumber.
 
Not being an object of his attention felt liberating, a blessing.
 
In contrast, Edward's face was sunken and
gray.
 
Demons had stolen sleep from his
eyes and crushed his soul.

At the wharf,
the soldiers from Alton met them and escorted the prisoners — minus possessions
except clothing on their backs — to jail.
 
One of three prostitutes sharing Sophie's cell scratched at scabs on her
arms.
 
The fifth woman in the cell was
an Irish pickpocket who reminded her too much of Mary, the St. James's servant.
 
David and Mathias shared the company of
eight drunks sleeping off a night of vandalism.
 
The other cells were full of male inmates.
 
The jail stank of sweat, piss, and puke.