The Messenger (42 page)

“They’re not taking you.”

“But—” Fear grabbed at my stomach. I clutched his hand. “They can’t take thee.”

“They can. They probably will. But they won’t have you.”

“I don’t want to stay if thee are not here.” Panic began to claw at my throat.

“Listen to me!”

I stilled.

He cupped his hand to my face. “You’re the only one of us worth saving.”

“That isn’t true! I want to come with thee. I would rather perish by thy side than live without thee. ” He would not free me from the corner, so I threw my arms about him and wept into his unyielding back. We waited there in the darkness as the footsteps drew near.

But they never came for us.

We had been forgotten.

A jail abandoned by men was worse than one filled with them. Without the sounds of those souls in misery, we could hear people passing on the street outside. We heard the rumble of carts and the clop of horses’ hooves. We heard rats, many more than we had been hearing. And there was a constant dripping somewhere in the dark.

My head was beginning to feel as if it were trying to float away from my shoulders, and my throat was so dry that I could no longer swallow. I began to shiver and I wandered in and out of sleep.

Eventually, Jeremiah roused me. “Listen.”

There were footsteps again. And then—thank God!—the shriek of the door at the end of the hall. “Is anyone there?” A voice called out into our darkness.

I opened my mouth to answer, but Jeremiah stopped me. “If we tell them we’re here, they might throw us onto the ships with the others.”

“Anyone there?”

The footsteps were joined by another pair. They scuffed slowly toward us, pausing along the way. We heard doors being pushed open.

“We never treated their men so poorly!” The voice was heavy with judgment.

“General Washington agreed to an exchange!” And that voice sounded of outrage. “How are we going to tell him there’s no one left to trade?”

General Washington. They sounded as if they were going to talk to him . . . as if they actually knew him.

“The blackguards. I hope they rot in hell!”

Beside me, Jeremiah shouted out. “We’re here! Two of us were left behind.”

“Who—? Where are you?”

“Here!” He got up, strode to the door, and began to beat against it. “In the last cell.”

“How could anyone survive down here? Just a minute. We need to find a taper. We’ll have you out in no time.”

I joined Jeremiah at the door, holding on to his hand, and together we waited for the light we knew would soon come.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Revolutionary War. I can date that interest to a particular time and place: the gift shop at Valley Forge in 1976. That’s when my parents bought me a copy of
Patriots in Petticoats
. It’s a book filled with stories of female revolutionary spies. I will always be thankful to Patricia Edwards Cline for writing a book that taught an eight-year-old that girls can participate in history too.

Historians believe that when the Revolutionary War started, one-third of the colonists supported the patriots, one-third remained loyal to the crown, and one-third had made no decision either way. The British army was the mightiest army on earth. In funds, soldiers, and equipment, they vastly outnumbered the colonists. The war was Britain’s to lose and they did an admirable job of it. Many of those who had cheered when the British army marched into Philadelphia cheered even louder as it left.

The condition of the patriot army at Valley Forge the winter of 1777/78 was truly pitiful. It was a miracle the colonists ever won the war at all. The patriot army starved at Valley Forge because the quartermasters charged with supplying the troops were not given the resources with which to do it. The Continental Congress refused to believe that things were as dire as General Washington claimed. And even when they were persuaded things needed to change, they were only willing to offer worthless continental paper money in payment. Pennsylvania’s colonial government might have helped, but they didn’t feel the need to canvas the countryside for supplies. Their philosophy decreed their fellow countrymen would offer supplies freely from the goodness of their hearts, even as the British army was paying for its supplies in gold. It wasn’t the weather that killed so many soldiers that winter. They starved to death from greed, ineptitude, political inertia, and lofty philosophies.

In 1778, Philadelphia was the fourth largest city in the British Empire. They were only a ship’s journey behind in news, fashions, and letters from London. Like many in the colonies, Philadelphians considered themselves upstanding British citizens. Which makes what happened at the Walnut Street Jail even more incomprehensible.

Although there was a flurry of visits to the jail’s prisoners when the occupation first began in October, those visits quickly tapered off as food became increasingly difficult and expensive to come by. In fact, the historical record only indicates that one person visited regularly, outside of General Washington’s appointed advocate. She was a black woman. Historians are divided on whether she was enslaved or free.

From what is known of General Howe, he never would have condoned the cruel treatment by the jailers. He and General Washington corresponded all winter long about how best to care for prisoners on both sides of the lines. One of the difficulties lay in the era’s convention that the welfare of the prisoners was the fiscal and physical responsibility of their own army. If supplies weren’t allowed to pass the lines, then the prisoners didn’t get anything to eat. In fact, there was a three-week period early in the occupation during which prisoners received nothing at all.

Captain Cunningham was all too real. Reports of atrocities followed the man wherever he went. Unfortunately, in times of war, such atrocities were easily overlooked. But we can see his descendants at work today whenever we allow ourselves to treat others as second-class citizens. Intolerance, xenophobia, and prejudice provide the training that make things like the Walnut Street Jail, the enslavement of millions of Africans, the Holocaust, and the Rwanda and Darfur massacres possible.

If the prisoners did not die of their wounds or through slow starvation, diseases like putrid fever (typhus), dysentery, and smallpox killed them by the hundreds. By April 1777 (nine months before this story starts), nearly two thousand soldiers had already been buried in potter’s field in Southeast Square, most of them prisoners from the city’s jails and hospitals.

There were at least two escapes from the Walnut Street Jail. The first took place in December. After that, General Howe allowed no communication with the prisoners. The second escape was the one undertaken by the prisoners in this novel. Fifty-six men escaped that night in May. And when their absence was discovered, the bodies of five men who had died digging the tunnel were found buried beneath the straw of their cell.

Undoubtedly there had to have been coordination between the patriot camp and the prisoners inside the jail. Could it have been the work of a Quaker spy? Perhaps. At least one other Quaker spy operated during the occupation of Philadelphia. Lydia Darragh’s story makes for fascinating reading, though her concern was for an enlisted son rather than a brother. And she seems to only have operated during a period of weeks rather than months.

Hannah Sunderland and Jeremiah Jones are figments of my imagination, but someone very much like them must have helped in the escape. It was timed, just as I wrote, to coincide with the festivities of the Meschianza. As officers feted General Howe, Captain McLane created a diversion at the lines, which allowed the prisoners to escape.

Earlier that spring, a prisoner exchange had been discussed with the British, but the Continental Congress was more interested in one-upmanship than in saving soldiers’ lives. They appointed men to the congressional committee with explicit instructions to avoid an exchange by any means possible. After haggling over details, rules for the exchange were finally agreed upon by both sides. Unfortunately, General Howe’s replacement suffered from impatience and sent the patriot prisoners off in prison ships before the exchange could be transacted.

People of common sense in every era since the Revolutionary War have always wondered what possessed a handful of British majors to plan such a spectacularly lavish party for a general who had failed to quench the rebellion. I like to think they were encouraged in their folly, though I have no proof of it. There is a legend that Peggy Shippen (Benedict Arnold’s wife-to-be) was kept from attending the Meschianza by her father. He’d been persuaded by a group of Quakers that the Turkish costumes supplied for the event were immodest. Always known for her histrionics, her sulk that day must have been magnificent.

Major John André was one of the masterminds behind the event. His sketches of the Meschianza’s costumes are still available, and the report he made in a letter to
Gentleman’s Magazine
about the festivities was widely read, and roundly mocked. He was well liked by both sides during the war. He was a gentleman’s gentleman and a ladies’ man. He was also General Benedict Arnold’s handler. He would leave with the British when they evacuated Philadelphia, only to be captured in New York two years later. On October 2, 1780, he was hanged as a spy.

The British army did indeed leave in a hurry. After a month of whispered rumors and expectations of a withdrawal, the actual leaving was accomplished almost overnight. Elizabeth Drinker, a Quaker diarist of the period, noted on June 19:

last night it was said there was 9,000 of the British Troops left in Town 11,000 in the Jersyes (sic): this Morning when we arose, there was not one Red-Coat to be seen in Town; and the encampment, in the Jersys (sic) vanish’d.

When the patriots entered Philadelphia on the heels of the British evacuation, devastation greeted them. The northern part of the city was completely destroyed. Those who had abandoned or had been forced to give up their homes to quarter troops very often found them looted. Quakers’ possessions had been especially targeted.

It took weeks to clean out the filth in the city’s public buildings like the hospital and the State House. In such places, as in the private homes they had commandeered, the British had taken up the practice of punching holes in the floors at the ground level and then sweeping excrement and other waste into the basements. The once beautiful and elegant city was overcome by depredation, filth, and the constant swarming of flies. The reason for the third amendment to the United States Constitution used to be unclear to me, but after researching this book, I have a much better understanding of its significance.

Once the city and its government were stabilized, the corruption and social whirl began anew with the very same set of leading families. Many of the ladies of the Meschianza went on to marry patriot officers, though most of them would consider that evening in May 1778 the high point of their lives. Through old age, they looked back on those British officers and the British occupation with nostalgia.

Reprisals came swiftly once the patriots retook the city under the command of General Benedict Arnold. The first order of business was evening the score. Under the new regime, suspected British collaborators were jailed. Some were even hanged. It was not unknown for Washington’s spies to have to produce proof of their true loyalties to avoid being lynched.

Scientists have long remarked on the ability of twins to share emotions, dreams, and even pain. Hannah’s special link with her brother is based on true incidents.

Phantom pain, as scientists now understand it, occurs when a limb has been amputated and the brain mixes or rewires its signaling as it remaps the body. Many times phantom pain is associated with nerve damage from an amputation that has been poorly executed. The pain can be described as a shooting, boring, stabbing, or burning sensation. Some amputees experience it rarely, others on a daily basis.

The names for those enslaved at Pennington House were chosen from among the rosters of George Washington’s slaves at Mt. Vernon.

The Society of Friends is a Christian movement that originated in seventeenth-century Britain. Originally called dissenters, they reacted to societal and political upheaval by trying to reform the church. They were nicknamed Quakers when their founder, George Fox, was brought before a judge, who noted that they bid everyone tremble at the Word of God. In spite of heavy persecution, Friends in England sent scores of missionaries to the New World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—men and women both. They traveled up and down the eastern seaboard and pushed inland to the frontier in order to spread the Gospel. Their creed was simple: God was willing to communicate with any person directly. The emphasis was not on hearing
about
God, but on hearing
from
God.

Though Friends ordained no preachers, they quickly fastened upon an effective organization. They met together weekly, on first day. Monthly they met with other Meetings in the local area. Quarterly and yearly they sent delegates to Meetings of groups from increasingly larger geographical areas.

In 1681, Friend William Penn convinced the King of England to take care of the dual problems of the kingdom’s Quakers and a royal debt owed the Penn family by granting him the charter for Pennsylvania. For nearly a hundred years, the Quaker-led colony was able to coexist with the Native American population by treating them with respect and integrity. But the French and Indian Wars of the 1750s challenged the Friends sitting in the colony’s legislature to either compromise their pacifist principles or to withdraw from public life. They chose the latter and their influence over the colony’s laws and politics soon disappeared.

Friends were the first faith to advocate against slavery in America. They became active members of the Underground Railroad in the nineteenth century. Whenever possible, they taught former slaves to read and write and care for themselves in preparation for freedom. For Friends to have taken the stand they did on not visiting the prisoners in Walnut Street Jail seems uncharacteristically callous. But after having watched the radical element seize control of the government and experiencing firsthand the devastating consequences of war, it’s not surprising that they decided to wash their hands of everything associated with it.

The Society of Friends is still active throughout the world, though it is not generally aggressive in seeking converts. The faith developed without a creed. Traditionally, Friends believed that Christ—not the Bible—was the Word of God. Though Friends initially never expected a message from Christ to contradict the Bible, emphasis on the Inner Voice has led to an increased reliance on revealed truth and personal testimony. In some branches of the faith, it is possible to encounter Quaker Buddhists, Quaker Agnostics, or Quaker Pagans at Meeting.

Friends believe that there is that of God in everyone, in women as well as in men. It is one of the few faiths that allowed women to preach and teach from its very beginnings. They call themselves Children of Light, proclaiming that Christ’s light within will reveal the state of the heart.

In America there have been many examples of religions that preach the person of God as a wrathful avenger. There have also been many groups that emphasize the person of Jesus and seem to preach a cheap grace. In the history of America, the Society of Friends was one of the only faiths to emphasize the person of the Holy Spirit. They believed, quite literally, that if one could just be still and learn to listen, the Holy Spirit would make His voice heard.

The concept of the Trinity seems very esoteric and irrelevant in today’s world, but it seems to me that only a faith embracing each person of the Trinity can save us from imbalance. While love without faith offers no hope, faith without love offers no mercy. We must have both faith and love or run the danger of discovering that, in the end, we have nothing at all.