The Whiskey Rebels (38 page)

“And why are you here at all? Can it be a man like you has been invited here? I must ask Mr. Bingham what he means.”

I saw no need to answer this implied threat. If he wished to issue a challenge, I could certainly answer it. “There’s been considerable speculation about your absence,” I said. “Some have talked about your properties in Southwark, and others of your interest in the Million Bank. Surely you can shed some light upon the subject?”

“I suppose my wife has been talking. Let me tell you something.” He put one of his enormous hands upon my shoulder. I did not like the feel of it. “There’s more to wish for in a wife than beauty. That is my advice to you.”

My stomach clenched at this mention of his wife. I could not let it go unanswered. “You have strangely large hands,” I said. “It’s as though they’ve been flattened by a great stone. You’ll forgive me for talking freely, but I also like to say what I feel. What is the advantage of being disgraced if a man cannot speak his mind?”

He studied me, looking me up and down, his sharp nose bobbing like a blade. “I think this conversation has taxed me long enough. Now I must away to look for Mr. Duer.”

Pearson wandered off, and it occurred to me that I had not seen Duer since our conversation. Could it be, I wondered, that he did not want to see Pearson? Duer appeared to have no interest in or respect for Pearson, yet Pearson spoke of seeking out the speculator the way one speaks of seeking out a friend. Those answers would have to wait, for here and now I could pass the time in gazing openly upon Cynthia.

I watched her now speaking with Mrs. Adams, the Vice President’s wife. My brief conversation had only confirmed to me how hateful was Pearson and how unhappy Cynthia must be in her life with him. She was right, of course, that I could not simply take her away, but neither could I leave her. I would have to conceive of some alternative, and I would have to do so soon, because each day she spent with him would be a torment to me.

“You appear lost in thought, sir.”

I looked up, and there was the woman I had seen with Cynthia and Anne Bingham. She wore a much simpler gown than did Cynthia, looser, longer arms, higher neck. The material was of a plain pale red, but it looked marvelous well upon her. She was a brown-haired beauty with large eyes, penetrating in their gray intensity, like clouds threatening snow.

She stood next to a man of my own age who, though not very tall or very distinguished, with his receding hair, yet held himself in an ad-mirable manner. Here was a man the ladies enjoyed, and who enjoyed the ladies. He had something of a swagger I could not help but approve.

“Captain Ethan Saunders, at your service,” I said to them both.

“A pleasure to meet you, Captain,” said the man. “Colonel Aaron Burr, though now I suppose I am to be addressed as senator.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Senator Burr. I have read much of you in the papers. You have made quite an enemy of our Secretary Hamilton in New York.”

He laughed. “Hamilton and I are friends from many years back, but he is every inch the Federalist, and New York is increasingly republican and anti-Federalist in its outlook. Nevertheless, I like to think that men might be opposed politically and friends socially.”

“I do love an optimist,” I said. “And is this lady Mrs. Burr?”

“Mrs. Burr is not here at present. I am afraid I only just met this delightful lady, yet I will take the liberty of introducing you to Mrs. Joan Maycott.”

I bowed.

“Now that you are in good hands,” the senator said to the lady, “I must beg your leave to speak to some of my brothers of the Senate. I hope I shall see you more, Mrs. Maycott.”

He took his leave and left me with the woman, and I could not say I was displeased. She had that vivacious look that suggested she should be good company. There was more to her too. She had a command in her physical presence, a kind of authority that, in her own feminine way, reminded me of the most accomplished and successful of military men. Strange though it might be to say, I had never met anyone, man or woman, who so immediately put me in mind of Washington himself.

“You did look lost in thought, you know,” she said to me.

“I am a thoughtful man,” I said.

“Was it something to do with Mr. Pearson? You will forgive me for asking, but I saw you in conversation with him. Is he a particular friend of yours?”

“I know him from many years ago,” I said. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“I am friends with his wife,” she answered.

“Then you know he’s been missing.”

“Oh, he told me he was in New York,” she said. “But perhaps I ought not to have said as much. I was under the impression he did not wish people to know it.”

“Then he has been thwarted. How sad for him.”

She laughed. “I enjoy my pettiness with a dose of wit. You do not like him?”

“I love wit and may endure pettiness, but he strikes me as cruel, which I cannot abide,” I answered.

“I think perhaps you know his wife from many years ago too.” From another person this might have seemed impertinent beyond endurance, but there was something so clever and endearing in how she spoke these words that it doused all impropriety.

“She and I are old friends.” I turned to look at this beauty full on, and she met my gaze most boldly. Here, I thought, might be an agreeable consolation to my confusion with Cynthia. “Do you live in Philadelphia, Mrs. Maycott?”

“I live here, though I travel much.”

“You enjoy travel—with Mr. Maycott, perhaps?”

She looked directly into my eyes once more, as though leveling an accusation. “Sir, Mr. Maycott is dead.”

“I am sorry for that, madam.”

“That is merely something one says.”

“Mrs. Maycott,” I said, to my strange interlocutor, “I cannot help but feel you believe we have met before, or that you expect me to have some knowledge of your circumstances.”

“I don’t believe you do, sir. Mr. Duer tells me, however, that you inquire into Jacob Pearson’s business, and that you do it for Hamilton. Is that so?”

I did not pause. I did not wait so much as an instant, for I would not show surprise that she had previously spoken of me or knew anything of my business. I would act as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “You know Mr. Duer?”

“There are so many here,” she answered. “One may meet everyone. But I must ask you, as there is much consternation about Hamilton’s policies: Are you an enthusiast of his?”

“I do not work for or with Hamilton, though my interests may be intersecting with his.”

“Tell me, Captain. Have you any thoughts on the whiskey excise?”

“I am no friend to excise taxes,” I said, keeping all inflection from my voice. Nevertheless, I set down my glass on a nearby table and scanned the room for Lavien. Pearson’s disappearance and the whiskey tax were bound together—there could be no doubt of it, not when my inquiry into the matter had faced opposition from the hairless western giant, the man with superior whiskey as his calling card. I did not know if therein lay the link to the threat against the bank, but I hardly cared about the threat against the bank. I only cared that this woman appeared to be telling me that she had some knowledge of Pearson’s disappearance and thus a connection to Cynthia’s safety.

“I believe we have much in common, sir,” she said. “We are both caught up in events larger than ourselves, and we must make choices that we sometimes find unsavory if we are to do what is right.”

I attempted a smile. “What events are you involved in, madam?”

She leaned closer. “I cannot speak of them now. Not here. It is too soon and too public.” She gazed across the room and, indeed, William Duer was looking at us most pointedly. “Would you be willing to meet with me again, sir? Have I given you sufficient reason to do so?”

“A man need never look too hard to find a reason to meet with a pretty lady.”

“I do not know that I am vulnerable to flattery,” she said, not unkindly.

“Shall we make an effort to find out?” I asked.

“That sounds most delightful.”

“When shall we talk again?”

“Have you an engagement for two nights hence?”

I bowed. “I am yours to command.”

“I am so pleased.” Coming toward us once more was Jacob Pearson, now alone, Cynthia being across the room speaking with the beautiful Mrs. Bingham. Mrs. Maycott reached out and grabbed Pearson’s wrist. “Mr. Pearson, would it be an imposition if I bring a dear friend to dinner the night after next?”

He looked at me and was unable to contain his surprise, but then seemed to recollect himself, or perhaps Mrs. Maycott. “You may, of course, bring anyone you like. Unless it is this man here. I cannot like him.”

“Such wit,” she said. “Certainly it is Captain Saunders. We both look forward to the evening.” Mrs. Maycott paused not a moment, but took my arm and led me away. “You see, nothing is more easily effected.”

“I am not certain I will be made to feel welcome,” I said.

“And I am not sure either of us cares. I, however, will have the pleasure of offering consternation to a man I do not like, and you will have the opportunity to pry further into his business. We shall both, in the end, be made happy.”

Joan Maycott

Spring 1791

T
here were days lost. I do not apologize for that weakness, though when some remnant of clarity returned to me, when I escaped the deepest fog of grief, I vowed I would never again give in to such madness, not on any account. They were days when my enemies ate and slept and prospered and advanced their goals, while I did nothing, and in doing nothing I aided them, for that is how it is when faced with evil men. One must either resist or, in varying degrees, collaborate.

The day after he was murdered, we interred Andrew in the churchyard. Several men from the settlement unceremoniously hauled Hendry’s body to town and dumped it in the mud of Pittsburgh, as it deserved. I took no pleasure in the contrast. After Andrew’s funeral, my friends guided me to the isolated hunting cabin shared by the men of the settlement. They told me it was important not to remain in my own home, that it had been damaged, though not destroyed, in the fire. I was too lost in my own confusion to inquire of the details.

At first my grief was so great I was like a woman sleeping with her eyes open, seeing all about me, understanding none of it. Then at last, after some days, I began to emerge from this first numb stage of grief, though what came next was worse by far, for I understood the enormity of what had been wrenched from me. I had lost my Andrew, I had lost our child, I had lost my work, my home, my purpose. In this whole universe, nothing was left that meant anything to me. It was as though some great hand had come and wiped away all that had ever given me cause to take a breath.

I could do little more than weep and clutch my knees to my chest and lament. Mr. Dalton and Mr. Skye, for reasons I did not yet understand, spent long periods of time in the hunting cabin. When not out in search of game, the Irishman stomped about the cabin in a rage, swearing vengeance, clenching his fists, ripping off bites of his tobacco twist as though he could rip off Tindall’s flesh by doing so. Mr. Skye, in his far more subdued manner, sat by my side. He made perpetual efforts to feed me venison broth and bits of buttered corn bread, and it was by his efforts that I did not starve.

When Mr. Skye grew too tired or restless to tend to me, Jericho Richmond sat in his place. I took comfort in his silent company, yet there was a darkness in his gaze too. His brooding wood-colored eyes hung on me—in pity, yes, but something else.

Once I turned to him and said, “I am dead now. I have lost everything.”

“You are not dead,” he said. “But you are different.”

I looked away, for I did not wish to hear more.

“Be mindful of it,” he said. “You have sway over these men.”

I had no wish to be careful or thoughtful or anything else, and after he spoke these words I found I did not love Mr. Richmond’s company. It was Mr. Skye who proved my most attendant nurse. I welcomed his presence but refused, at first, his ministrations. I would shake my head and push away his spoon when he tried to feed me. Oh, I was cruel to him. I called him names, a withered old man who knew nothing of what I had lost. Unlike him, I could not simply sail to distant shores when my life lay in ruins. I felt nothing but regret and self-hatred even as I spoke the words, yet I could not stop them, and so I only wept more. Mr. Skye, that good man, nodded in understanding and offered me another spoonful of soup. In the end, I ate.

On what I believe was the third or fourth day, I began to shake off the greatest torpidity of grief. That is not to say I no longer felt grief keenly or was no longer weighed down by it. On the contrary, I knew it would kill me, and I would welcome death, if I did not find some means of converting my sorrow to something of purpose. I sat up straight and looked at Mr. Skye, who had been sitting and gazing out the little cabin’s window. “Something must be done about Tindall,” I said.

“It is not for you to do,” he answered.

“And why not? Did he not take everything from me? Am I to be content to lie quiet? I will travel to Pittsburgh and swear out an arrest on him.”