All Other Nights (13 page)

“J
ACOB, NOW THAT I’VE BECOME YOUR WIFE, THERE IS SOMETHING
I have to tell you.”

One of the guests had sneaked out of the house to fetch the police when William first appeared, though by the time the police arrived, there was nothing left for them to do but cart the body away and arrest Philip. Rose had screamed like a baby, clinging to Philip’s legs until the constable had to pry her off of him in order to escort him to the county jail. The guests had departed in a daze; the sisters had surrounded Jacob and an alarmingly stoic Jeannie, and sobbed. It wasn’t until many hours later that Jeannie and Jacob found themselves alone in Jeannie’s bedroom, which Lottie had permanently vacated to share with Rose and Phoebe, and to which Philip had donated his own four-poster double bed. The sisters had strewn white flowers all over the bedspread. But when they were finally alone, Jeannie sat on the bed and at last began to cry herself.

“Jacob, you must know that I didn’t love William. I did once, a few years ago, when I was only a girl and had never met anyone else, but I haven’t now for ages. Really,” she said when she had regained her breath. Her face was red, swollen with crying. “He loved me, of course he did, but I didn’t love him. Please believe me.”

This wasn’t the conversation Jacob had hoped to have on his wedding night, but nothing had gone as expected. He found himself remembering old Isaacs’s advice, and took her gently in his arms. “I believe you,” he said softly.

She sobbed some more as Jacob held her. Jacob thought of old Isaacs and tried to be as patient as he could, tried not to expect anything at all, as he waited for her to speak again.

She slowly stopped crying, and breathed. “Really, it’s true. I didn’t love him,” she repeated.

“I believe you, Jeannie,” Jacob started to say again. Before he could get the words out, she continued.

“I didn’t love him, but I needed him,” she said. “Papa didn’t know it, but William was my contact.”

Jacob held his breath. Could it possibly be? “Your—your what?”

“My contact. He was sending messages for me to the commanders in the camps.”

Jacob knew he had to play the fool. It wasn’t difficult; he was flabbergasted already, by the events of the day and by everything else. And by this time, he was as good a performer as Jeannie. “Messages? What messages?”

“Information about Yankee troops. When they would be coming, where they would be coming from, how many at a time, which generals, where the headquarters were, what kind of armaments, that sort of thing.”

Jacob stammered, feigning shock. “But—but—but how could you know—”

“Lottie,” she said. “Major Stoughton is in love with her, and he’s as pompous as they come. Worse than William, even. He loves to brag. He tells her everything, just to impress her. It never occurs to him that ladies also have brains.” She smiled, with wet cheeks. “Phoebe carved the compartments whenever we needed to hide the messages, and Rose put them into code.”

Jacob was silent for a while, letting his mouth hang open. He hadn’t known these details; he had certainly suspected them at first, but at some point after Jeannie revealed her leg to him, he had stopped suspecting. Now he wondered whose sham this marriage was: his, or hers? His mind raced with possibilities, and suddenly he knew he had to keep up his guard.

“But—but how could you take the risk?” he stuttered, and prayed that his shock was convincing. “Were they—was someone paying you?”

“No one was paying us at the beginning,” she said. “It started this past winter, when the Yankees took the city. William suggested it at first, and then we—we simply did it, because how could we not? With all these people in the house, and with what happened to our mother—really, anyone would have done the same thing.”

Jacob thought of William helping her escape from her father’s house to play Juliet in Richmond, escorting her to another world where she could step onto a stage and prove that she was someone else entirely. He wondered if William had been her equivalent of the three officers, if William had used the same sort of shaming to wear her down. And William had had his own dream too, just as Jacob’s commanders did: conquest.

“The Yankees even arrested me then, but I managed to convince them that it was all a misunderstanding. It’s remarkable what gentlemen will believe when they see a lady’s legs.” Jacob glanced away, his eyes on the bedspread. “Recently they started paying us,” she continued. “I tried to give the money to Papa. I told him it was from needlework I sold to the dressmaker. But he didn’t believe me. He thought I had found another acting job somewhere, with William.”

“He was right.”

“He was furious. He was convinced I was going to run off with William. That’s why he was so excited when you arrived. For a time I thought he had planned it, as if there were some grand scheme to bring you down here just to marry me.”

“Your father didn’t plan anything,” Jacob said quickly. He winced at just how close she came to knowing the truth, and suddenly wondered if, perhaps, she did really know.

“But then I didn’t care how you came here, I was just so glad that you had come,” she said. “I hadn’t known how unhappy I was, how terrible I felt with William always expecting what I would never give him, how awful it was pretending for him all the time, until I met you.”

He should have felt ashamed, he knew. Instead he was overwhelmed with joy. “Jeannie,” he panted. She rested her head on his shoulder, and he stroked her hair, just as he had seen William do it, a lifetime ago, through the front-room window. Her hair spilled onto his hands, liquid warmth flowing between his fingers. A curl wound its way around his thumb, binding him to her.

“Now we have no contact, no one,” she continued. “Papa’s too proud to admit it, but we need the money. Especially now. They aren’t going to let Papa out of jail.”

“Jeannie, of course they will,” he said, and thought of old Isaacs again. “There were dozens of witnesses in the house today. The court will set bail for him, he’ll have a trial—”

“The trial is what I’m afraid of. Papa has a lot of enemies in town. And William was a popular actor. He’s a hero around here, especially since he was wounded,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this for the past few hours, and I keep remembering all the times Papa told people how much he hated William. A jury would be a catastrophe for Papa, and the judge won’t be better. Even bail would be dangerous for him. He would have to find somewhere to hide. I don’t think the court will hang him, but it will be a long, long time before he comes home.”

For the first time that day, Jacob’s shock softened into sadness.
No one knows
, Jacob remembered Philip saying,
how much I’ve done for those girls
. No, Jacob thought, and no one ever will.

“I—I can run the business for him,” he stammered. But that, he knew, wasn’t the point.

“The business is ruined already,” Jeannie said. “You know that. It’s just the boarding house now. And—and our own business, if one can call it that, but now that’s ruined too. We can’t do this sort of thing without contacts who trust us completely. There isn’t any way to continue it.”

Now Jacob’s heart raced. The moment had arrived.
FAILURE IS TREASON
, he remembered. He forced himself to think of where he would have been tonight if he hadn’t been sent to the magical time capsule that was the Levys’ house: sleeping in the mud, then rising at daybreak to move again, chased through the forest like an animal by the enemy, guessing when or whom the next bullet would hit, wondering whether he would live to see nightfall. He thought of the first corpse he had ever seen while retreating through the Virginia woods: a blue-uniformed boy, slumped against a tree, whom Jacob had mistaken for living until he noticed the flies crawling across the boy’s still-open eyes. He thought of standing before the officers, of what he had promised, of what needed to be done.
We know we may depend on you for anything. With no exceptions.
He unwound her curls from his fingers, and spoke.

“There is a way,” he said. “I can become your new contact.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when he wished he had never said them. But it was too late. Jeannie turned to face him.

“You?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and steeled himself. There was no going back. “I know people in the camps.” He thought of Harry Hyams. “I was bringing them rum for months. They all remember me.”

Her face lit up. She was beautiful that way, even more so than before. “Do you know General Jackson?” she asked. “He was William’s contact.” Her voice was full of hope.

Stonewall Jackson! Now Jacob was frightened. He had pictured her passing minor messages to some twenty-year-old sergeant who took the credit for himself. He had never imagined her doing anything at that high a level. How many people had died because of what she had done?

“No, but I know one of his deputies,” he lied, praying that she wouldn’t ask him to name anyone. She didn’t. Instead she listened. “I could explain the situation to him, and pass the messages along for you.”

She looked at him, and suddenly smiled. Her face glowed. “Thank you, Jacob,” she whispered.

Her torn wedding dress was gleaming in the lamplight, darkness luring him beneath her ripped skirt. He reached behind her curls to her neck and back, tracing her skin with his finger, following the line of her spine down to the buttons of her dress. She kissed him, and pulled him down with her onto the flowers her sisters had picked for them. For the rest of that night, Jacob was able to forget his first war.

JEANNIE WAS RIGHT
about Philip. The judge denied him bail, and didn’t even bother to set a date for a trial. Other than his lawyer—someone who used to work for the company, whom Jacob had managed to track down—Philip was barely allowed any visitors. His family was forbidden to him completely, because women weren’t permitted to visit the jail. When Jacob at last managed to see him, more than a week after the wedding, he was astonished to find him in a tiny cell without even a bed or a stool in it, only a floor covered with straw and mouse droppings, which he was sharing with a Negro who lay sleeping in the opposite corner. The sleeping Negro surprised Jacob even more than the cell itself. He couldn’t imagine why they had been put there together. Perhaps the jail was already full; either that, or Jeannie was right about the judge.

The warden shackled Philip, removed him from the cell, and led them both into a locked room with two benches in it. On one of the benches, an old fat guard was sitting, eyes drooping. The room stank of liquor. When the warden closed the door and Philip and Jacob sat down on the bench on the opposite side of the room, the guard glanced at both of them, then slumped down against the wall. In minutes he was snoring.

Philip sat beside Jacob for a moment in silence. Jacob had noticed slaves being transported in shackles around town from time to time, but he had always turned away from them. He had never before been this close to a man in chains. Philip’s hands were locked together and absurdly posed at his groin, like a man about to urinate. His knees knocked against each other from the weight of the irons on his legs. Jacob thought of him as he had seen him just two years ago, at a business meeting in his father’s office in New York, and struggled not to weep.

But Philip, while weary, didn’t seem ashamed. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I want you to know that I thank God every hour that you are with the girls.”

Jacob didn’t know what to say. “I—I’m so sorry,” he tried.

Philip shook his head. “It’s better that I’m here,” he said. “Williams has quite a following. If the judge had let me out on bail, I would have already been lynched.”

Jacob started to laugh, then stopped when he noticed Philip’s face. Until he saw Philip looking down at his knees, Jacob had thought he meant it as a joke. When Philip spoke again, his voice was low and bare. “Jacob, this place is a wilderness,” he said slowly. “I don’t mean the jail. I mean the entire South.”

Philip turned to face Jacob, and squinted. He wasn’t wearing his pince-nez; Jacob wondered if it had been confiscated, if Philip were not only imprisoned but blinded as well. “It’s like the book of Judges: ‘There was no king in Israel, and everyone did as he pleased,’” Philip quoted, in his slight drawl. He tried to gesture with one hand, but the irons were too heavy for him, and his hands sank back into his lap. “It was like that before, but since the secession it’s been made institutional. Savagery is a way of life. Tell me, Jacob, has any civilized person in New York ever settled a score with a duel?”

“Alexander Hamilton,” Jacob said, after a moment. “Fifty years ago. Across the river, on the Jersey side.” He forced a grin. “The more common custom in New York is to bankrupt someone first, then slander him in the newspapers, and then allow him time to despair until he kills himself.”

Philip tried to laugh, a tired, burdened laugh, before giving up. He let out a little groan.

“You should know that when my wife and I first married, I wanted to move north,” Philip said. He moved his knees apart, then let them fall back together again. “To Philadelphia, I was hoping. My brother lives in Philadelphia. But my wife refused.” Jacob smelled sweat and filth on Philip’s clothes, and tried not to breathe in. “Her family had been here since the Revolution. She said she couldn’t abandon their graves. I told her how many graves my parents left behind in Prussia, but she insisted that this was different, that this was hers.” He twisted a wrist inside the shackles. “She was a wonderful person, but she was wrong. She died because of where we lived.” He glanced at Jacob. “I’m sure you heard the story from the girls.”

Jacob nodded, and looked down at his lap. The last thing he wanted was to hear it again. “The girls have always blamed the slave, of course,” Philip said. “Of course the slave did it, and of course that’s what the girls saw, and I know they were too young to think of it any other way. They still are. But I know better. And I blame myself.”

Jacob tried to make his voice firm. “Mr. Levy, that’s absurd,” he said.