The Messenger (12 page)

“I’ll buy one.”

She raised a brow as if I’d said the wrong thing.

If I had, I didn’t know it. She expected me to buy more than one egg at that price? Is that what people with purple feathers in their hats were supposed to do? Pour out their coin as if it were water?

“If you’re interested in something special, I have some quail eggs in my cart. I know they’re your favorites.”

My favorites. That must mean she had a message as well. Of course she had a message for me! She was wearing a red-colored advertisement on her cap. I nodded. “I had a taste of them once at my tailor’s and I’ve never forgotten it. Thank you for keeping it.”

She looked at me sharply.

“Them. The eggs. Thank you for keeping them.”

“There’s not many I’d go to this trouble for.” She reached back into the cart beneath the straw, pulled out a handful of diminutive eggs, and offered them to me.

But . . . I didn’t have anything to put them in. Another false move. Shopping at the market without a basket. Had those guards been paying any attention, they might have arrested me as a spy right then. As it was, the other vendors had noticed. And they were smiling.

Hopefully it was at my stupidity rather than my artlessness.

“I suppose . . . I could put them . . .” In my coat’s pocket? I reached beneath my cloak to open it up. Leaned toward her so she could place them inside.

She frowned, but she did it.

As I took the money from my other pocket, I palmed my message. I tried to give it all into her hand at once, but the message fell from my palm, threatening to flutter to the ground.

She plucked it from the air between us and then glared at me.

I opened my mouth to apologize and then realized it would only succeed in drawing attention to ourselves. “Do . . . you come often? To market?”

“Not as often as I’d like. Those rebels haven’t been kind in letting me through their lines.”

“So . . . ?”

“You’ll just have to keep an eye out. For the blue cart.”

The blue cart.

I walked through the streets, feeling as if the eggs were burning a hole in my pocket. When I reached the King’s Arms, I went round the back and up to my rooms. Behind closed curtains I shed my cloak. After shaking the rain from it, I let my coat slide from my shoulders. I stirred the embers in the hearth and then took the eggs out one by one, setting them on my desk. Then I felt in the pocket for the message.

There was nothing there.

Moving closer to the fire, I peered inside the pocket, but my fingers had not lied. It was empty. I’d been so sure . . . she was wearing a red ribbon. I thought back on our conversation. Remembered her words, her actions. She’d had a message, and she’d delivered it. I was certain of it. But how had she done it?

I looked at the collection of eggs. Picked them up, each in turn, looking for something, anything, but there was nothing there. She’d passed me a message. She had to have. Only I couldn’t find it. God rot the tailor and his cowardice! I wasn’t meant for spy work. I didn’t mind passing information on when I heard a thing or two, but how was I to know how to pass the messages themselves? Now I’d have to go back to the tailor’s.

Perhaps . . . was anything written on the shells? I lit a taper and then held them close to the light, one by one. Nothing. They were so small that it would be hard to find the space to write anything at all.

I took another look at the egg I was holding. At one end was a hole so small I’d failed to notice it. Setting it on top of the desk, I crushed it with my fist. Pushed the fragments away to reveal a small splinter-sized note. It took me a try or two to unroll it. And another while to figure out how to keep it from rolling in on itself as I read it. There weren’t many words so it didn’t take long to decode the message:

Still awaiting reply. How many guests are expected? When?

How many guests? I didn’t have any idea. Were they hoping to empty the whole jail? When would they arrive? It would take some time to dig beneath a prison wall and tunnel under the street, wouldn’t it? But how much time? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything at all. What I needed was a report on the tunnel’s progress. I needed to send Hannah back into the jail with another message. And this time she would need to bring out a reply.

Hannah

I did not know that hell had taken up residence on earth. I had not known there could be such a place as this, filled with filth and all manner of foul odors. I held the neck of my cloak to my nose as I waited for the guard to inspect my pass.

It was not only the smells that made my heart quake within me and assaulted my hope. It was the moans and the hacking coughs that issued from the door bolted in front of me. And it was the way the torch on the wall seemed incapable of spreading any but shadowed light.

“Robert Sunderland, eh?”

“My brother.” I tried my best to remain unobtrusive, not wanting to give the guard any reason to transfer his attentions from the pass to me. I might have drawn in deep breaths to calm my racing heart, but to do so would have been to risk retching.

The guard folded up my pass and handed it back to me. “Don’t know why the general would allow a girl to go about in all this mess.” He rose from the chair, hiked up his breeches at the back, and spit into the corner. “Let me see what you brought.” He grabbed for the basket I held, rifling through the linens, inspecting the bread, the bottle of wine, and the wedge of cheese I’d taken from the house. As he passed the basket back to me, he kept hold of the cheese.

“ ’Tis for my brother!”

“He won’t miss it.” He looked me in the eyes as if he dared me to say anything else.

I did not. For though Major Lindley had issued my pass on General Howe’s behalf, clearly neither of them held any sway down here. If I was going to be allowed to visit Robert, it would only be in payment for pleasing this man. “Please, enjoy it.”

“Oh, I will.” He nipped off the end of the wedge as he tugged at the bolt on the door. A rodent ran out when he pulled it open.

I gasped and clutched at my skirts.

The guard laughed, then called through the door, “A miss here to see her brother. General’s orders.” He bowed and swung the door wide as though inviting me into one of the finest homes in the city.

An icy draft struck me full in the face, swept past my neck and ruffled my skirts, carrying with it all kinds of rank smells. I tried my best not to gag. The door shut behind me as a candle flared to life. The face behind it leered, as if a girl who wanted to see her brother was every bit as suspect as the prisoner.

I clutched the basket to my chest. “I’m to see Robert Sunderland. By order of General Howe.”

“I don’t know who the prisoners are, miss. I just keep the keys to the place. Robert Sunderland, you say?”

I nodded.

“An officer is he?”

“No.” At least I didn’t think he was. He hadn’t ever said.

“I’ll ask round.” He lurched down the hall, taking that small haven of light with him, stopping to bang upon each door. “Robert Sunderland in there? Robert Sunderland?”

Finally there came a feeble response. I didn’t wait for the guard to come back down the hall to escort me. I flew toward the taper. “He’s in there?”

“So they say.” He jammed a key into the lock, wrestled with it, and then pulled the door open. “Robert Sunderland?”

Looking over the guard’s shoulder, I could discern nothing beyond the reaches of the candle’s poor light. But I could hear plenty. I heard sniffs and coughs, the sounds of swatting and scratching. The patter of raindrops, high up, against the broken windowpane. And a dismal drip-dropping of water beneath as the torrents found the floor.”Robert?”

“Hannah?”

I nudged past the guard toward my brother’s voice.

The guard caught me by the arm. “Can’t go in. Not allowed.”

“But I’ve things for him.”

“Hannah! Is that thee?”

He forced me back behind him. “No mixing with the prisoners.”

“Then let him come out.” I needed to see him!

He pushed me back into the hall and disappeared inside, reappearing a moment later, dragging Robert by the elbow. My brother collapsed into my arms.

“But—he’s sick!”

“Not so bad as some of the others. I’ll give you two minutes.” He retreated down the hall, taking the light with him. Robert was here, yet those feelings of gnawing hunger and bitter cold had not yet abated. I took up one of his hands in mine. His flesh was chill; to clasp his fingers felt like grasping at bones.

“Thee came.”

I helped him to the wall where he sunk to the floor. I knelt beside him. “Of course I came. Just as soon as I could. I had to get a pass first.” I held the bottle of wine to his lips.

He swallowed and then he took another drink.

“I brought bread. And some linens.”

He didn’t take any of them. Instead, he took up my hand in his. “Do they know I’m here?”

I didn’t have to ask of whom he spoke. “Yes.”

“Do they know thee are here?”

“No.”

“It was the right thing to do, joining the army. Thee know that, don’t thee?” He squeezed my hand so hard I feared he’d crush it.

“Yes.” It had been the right thing; I’d never doubted it. “But . . . I worry for thee.” And even more now than before. How could anyone survive such deprivation?

“It’s the same here as it was in camp. No blankets. No wood.” He’d let his head fall back against the wall.

No blankets? “But are they feeding thee?”

“Never enough. Twice, three times a week.”

What? “But General Washington isn’t letting any food come into the city. Most of the farmers haven’t been to the market in months. It’s because the general’s keeping it all for thee! Thee were supposed to be the fortunate ones!”

Robert began to laugh, but it ended in a spasm of coughing. “If he’s taken it all, one thing’s for certain: He’s not sharing.”

I didn’t understand. How could the soldiers in the rebels’ camp be in such dire straits if they were keeping all the food for themselves?

He put a hand out toward the linens. “For me?”

“Aye! All of it is for thee.” If only I’d known he had nothing. I’d been worried about whether he had linens to wash himself when I ought to have wondered if he had a blanket or shoes.

“Two minutes!” I heard the guard start for us and could see the specter of the candle as he approached.

Robert squeezed my hand once more. “Tell Betsy . . . tell her . . .”

I bent to embrace him. “Thee must—” What? Take care of himself in this foul and odious place? It was plain he could do nothing on behalf of himself.

“Time’s up.” The guard grabbed Robert by the elbow and pulled him to standing, unlocked the door, and tossed him inside. Then he held up his ring of keys and gave it a jingle. “I’ve food for any who will change sides and fight for the King.”

Was the guard trying to bribe them into discarding their loyalties?

I heard my brother groan and then cough. Heard others join in coughing along with him. How many of them were there in that cell?

None replied to the guard’s offer. He shook his head as he locked the door. I followed him down the hall, passing ten doors before we reached the end. Just how many prisoners were they keeping in this jail?

When we gained the end of the hall, the guard knocked on the door. The bolt shrieked as it slid through its casing, and then the door swung open. The first guard greeted me, licking his fingers. “So you saw him, then.”

“I did. I shall come again, soon.” I said it more as a promise to myself than to warn the man.

He shrugged. “It’s nothing to me. But bring more of that cheese with you next time. I liked it.”

I met Doll at the bottom of the jail’s steps. We were not two paces from the place before I retched. I retched until my stomach had no more to offer and then I retched some more. The guard marching sentry duty saw me, and he turned before he had walked the length of his circuit.

Doll sighed as she unfastened the apron beneath her cloak. She handed it to me. “Don’t know what good comes from going into a place like that. Just look at the hem of your gown. And your shoes. Mercy, but you stink!”

I took one deep shuddering breath, trying hard not to think of the things that I had heard and seen. But it was no use. “They keep prisoners down there in the basement like . . . like animals!”

“We got to clean you up before you go back into the house. Davy finds out I let you go someplace like that, it’d be my head along with yours. That’s for certain.”

“They’ve no food. No fires.”

“We’ll clean you up in the stables.”

“Who knows how many of them there are!”

“I can fetch another of your gowns, and if we do it quick, ain’t no one going to see us.”

“Aren’t thee listening? Don’t thee hear what I’m saying?”

“I’m hearing that you good and mad. And plenty scared. But this is a war, not one of you folks’ tea parties. People’s dying. You don’t know cruel until your family be taken to live ten miles away from where you are. So when you’re ready to start talking ’bout things I can do something about, then I’ll start to listen.”

When you’re ready to start talking about things I can do something about . . .

I had been charged to do something for someone. I’d gone down into that pit of misery to see Robert. But with the sheer horror of the place, with the slim margin of time I’d been allowed, and with the dreadful condition of my brother . . . I’d forgotten to do what I’d agreed to. The message for William Addison was still tucked away in my pocket. And I dared not think what Jeremiah Jones would have to say about it.