The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (60 page)

“Mistress Anne will tell you.”

“No, you tell me.”

“There—there seems to be fairly certain evidence that the officer—well, the one who came to the house the night you left isn’t—” She couldn’t continue.

“Daisy, go on! Isn’t what?”

“Isn’t dead.”

Cold fear, cold and slashing as the March rain, ravaged him as he swung into the saddle and headed the mare down the half-thawed road to Concord.

He saw O’Brian’s horse tethered outside the colonel’s house but pushed on without stopping. He clattered over the footbridge and through the center of the village to Wright’s. The mud outside bore marks of the recent arrival of a coach.

Daisy’s news had struck him with stunning force. And yet, reflecting as he dismounted, he realized that it was a turn of events he might have foreseen. He could not remember a single second during the haste of that bloody night on Launder Street when he had paused to determine whether Roger Amberly was indeed dead. He had assumed the bayonet stroke to be fatal.

The error could be fatal to him in turn.

Boots dropping clumps of mud, he stalked into the tavern. The landlord directed him up to the front suite of rooms. He burst into the gray, chilly parlor to see Abraham Ware hauling one of three trunks to one of the bedrooms.

Just throwing off her damp travel cloak, Anne turned. Her eyes grew wide. “Oh—
Philip!”

He was not even conscious of crossing the threadbare carpet to wrap her in his arms and hold her.

“Anne, Anne. I’ve waited for word—!”

After a moment, they separated. He was alarmed to notice how wan she was. Despite the joy of the reunion, she acted oddly ill at ease.

Looking fired and peaked himself, Lawyer Ware harrumphed as he returned from the bedroom.

“Conditions have grown so bad in Boston, there was no way we could prudently communicate with you, Philip,” he said. “The couriers do dangerous work—and have enough on their minds without the burden of personal messages.”

“I was astonished to hear you were in Concord,” Philip told him.

“It took a deal of finagling and some clever forgeries to come up with the papers that got us across the Neck.” Ware indicated the trunks. “That’s all we were allowed to bring. As to the rest—the house, the furnishings—well, the soldiers or the damn Tories have no doubt looted the place already. But it was run or face possible arrest for my activities. Only Warren insisted on remaining behind, and Revere—to coordinate the spying on the soldiers.”

“We’ve heard Gage is getting ready to move against the towns,” Philip said.

“He is. To seize the stores. There’s supposed to be an authorization on its way by ship from the Colonial Secretary, Dartmouth.”

“We’ve heard that too.” Anne was watching him with a strange, bleak expression he couldn’t fathom.

Ware rolled his tongue in his cheek, continued, “Warren will arrange to get Paul and some others out with a warning if Gage moves. That’s his plan, anyway. We’ve come to what Sam Adams wanted all along. Though it may be the only way, God take me, I’m frightened to my bones.”

“How is Mr. Edes faring?” Philip asked.

“With difficulty. Distribution of the
Gazette’s
all but forbidden. When Ben and I talked last—two days ago—he was starting to dismantle his press. He hopes to smuggle the pieces and a few fonts of type across the Charles. Perhaps to Watertown. He and Revere are holding conversations about money—”

Philip frowned, failing to understand the reference.

“The printing of it!” Ware exclaimed. “Should war come, the colonies will need their own financing. Paul’s already drawing designs for the bills. But we’ve news of more direct concern to you, lad—” His protruding eyes harbored a new respect. “Concerning the officer who met an untimely accident in my parlor. Annie told me everything about it, of course.”

“Daisy said there was reason to believe the man didn’t die.”

“Good reason.”

Ware plumped himself on a rickety chair and peered gloomily through the yellowed lace curtains at the rain on the roofs of Concord.

“Thanks to Annie, we were prepared when other officers from the Thirty-third called at Launder Street. My daughter had rehearsed Daisy well. And the officers were careless enough to admit they had questioned some of our neighbors first. They told us Amberly was seen knocking at our door. Daisy lied valiantly. Said Lumden disappeared that morning—I gather he’s safe at her father’s farm?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Daisy told the redcoats she’d shown Amberly the equipment Lumden left in the barn. After which, he went away. She and Annie stuck to the same story although each was questioned twice more. I don’t think either of ’em was fully believed—”

“I’m sure of it,” Anne put in.

“The only saving factor was, Gage hasn’t started torturing suspects for information. As yet! Maybe it’s the influence of that American wife of his. The mysterious circumstances surrounding Amberly’s whereabouts later might have helped keep us free of trouble, too.”

Philip still couldn’t fathom that strange, unblinking look on Anne’s face. Her color had faded badly. Gray half-circles of fatigue showed beneath her eyes.

“What mysterious circumstances?” he asked.

Anne replied, “Amberly was apparently found where you left him. Unconscious but not dead. He was removed from Boston a few days later.”

“Removed!”
Philip exclaimed. “Wasn’t he put in a military hospital?”

“He should have been,” Ware said. “And he was—at first. But someone interceded on his behalf. To arrange more suitable care.”

“Explain what you mean.”

“According to a lad on Revere’s committee of mechanics whom I asked to keep watch and pick up information, Amberly—still in bad shape, mind—was loaded into a private coach by several men unfamiliar to my informant. Servant types, the boy thought. But not wearing a livery. The coach went out across the Neck with no hindrance.”

Ware’s mouth turned down, sour. “Evidently it’s still possible to purchase special medical privileges, just the way prisoners in England purchase extra food, better quarters—and the way that damned fellow purchased his commission! Someone learned of his plight. Arranged for him to be attended elsewhere than in the military hospital—where he’d more likely die than recover. They’re pest houses. The so-called surgeons are no better than butchers. It’s all damned curious—”

He gave Philip a challenging look. “But Annie’s brought you something whose outward appearance suggests it may serve to explain.”

“What is it, Anne?”

“A letter.”

“Which we didn’t open,” Ware advised. “The contents are your affair. Give it to him, Annie. I’m going down to the taproom and try to unfreeze my veins with some flip.”

A moment after the door closed, Anne walked to the smallest trunk. She unlatched it, raised the lid. Among the folded articles of clothing Philip saw his mother’s casket, Gil’s wrapped sword, even the green glass bottle of tea. He was touched by the care with which Anne had obviously packed them.

She produced the letter from the bottom of the trunk, passed it to him.

Sealed with wax but bearing no sigil, it showed signs of much handling. The address, in a delicate, unfamiliar hand, read
Mr. Philip Kent, Esq.,
and was written in care of Ware’s home in Launder Street, Boston.

He looked up. “How did you get this, Anne?”

“A private courier brought it to the door. Only hours before we loaded the trunks into the chaise.”

“You mean you didn’t see my name in the usual list in the paper? You didn’t go down to the postal office for it?”

Anne shook her head. Her voice sounded hollow as she said, “Someone spent a great deal of money to hire a messenger and have it delivered faster than the regular service would have.”

Somehow, then, Philip had an eerie sense of fate working. The plain room all gray with rainy light suddenly became a place where the gale winds of chance could reach and storm around him. He didn’t know why he felt frightened holding the wrinkled letter. But he did.

He broke the wax hesitantly, unfolded the sheets inside. As he began to read the finely-inked lines, a lump congealed in his throat. The room seemed to blur.

The top of the letter bore the words
Philadelphia City,
and a recent date. The salutation was a hand from the past that clawed and held him remorselessly:

My darling Phillipe—

After much difficulty encountered in strenuous ocean travel, I have arrived here at the home of my Aunt and her Husband, Mr. Tobias Trumbull of Arch Street. I write this to you in secret, by the candle’s light. In the next chamber Roger lies abed, barely conscious and perhaps already in the thrall of death.

Before he took ship from England with his regiment, we had agreed that, in the event military duty in the colonies resulted in any serious injury, he would if possible communicate with my cousin by coach mail or private post rider. No matter their location in the Empire, the army hospitals are known to be places where death for the badly wounded is a virtual certainty, due to unclean conditions, poor physicians, and such like.

During a brief wakeful period after he was discovered lying stabb’d in some publick thoroughfare and conveyed to one such hospital—

She
knew!
Philip thought, the hand of the past tighter now, making him breathe hard, and with strain.

—he managed to pay for a rider to Philadelphia. From here, my good Aunt Sue dispatched a private coach northward to bring him back. Many bribes were necessary to effect this departure. But as funds are never lacking to Roger, it was accomplished. My Aunt forwarded the dread news to me on the first fast packet. I have come to Roger’s side, landing in Philadelphia Harbor only yesterday. Last night my husband was awake long enough to talk with me a while. He survived the journey over the rough roads, though barely, and—

The next words were underscored with quick slashing lines.

—he named his assailant. He told me where and how the act was done.

He spoke both your new name and the older, more sweetly familiar one by which I have addressed you. And so, my dearest Phillipe, I come to write the truth of my heart—I have never forgotten Quarry Hill, nor can I. I tell you from the depths of my Soul that I want nothing more than to see you. Speak with you. Be close to you—yes, I admit without shame—as close as we once were.

Horror crawled over Philip for a moment. He imagined her bent by a candle in some dark, musty room that smelled of a suppurating wound.

I do not know whether my husband also named you his assailant before he was borne here. From all I can gather, I do not think so. Perhaps, in his weakened state, he was first concerned for his own welfare, and communicating with my Aunt.

But I have no assurance. If there is never a response to this, which I am sending to the Street in Boston City whose name Roger breathed out last night, then I will know.

Yet if by some miracle this letter finds you, I beg you come by any swift means to Philadelphia City so that we may meet and speak. You will be safe from any reprisals, believe that if you ever loved me. I only desire your sweet presence again. For though I may be damn’d eternally for writing it, my husband is what I knew him to be long ago. A cold, empty man. To marry him was folly which I have long since regretted. I beg you to answer my plea, Phillipe. Take all precautions you deem necessary. But come even if we may meet only for a day.

As token of my good faith and undying love for you, I close by telling you that I have asked the doctors attending my husband to make certain he receives heavy draughts of an opiate to relieve his sufferings—and also to prevent him from again speaking your name, which I alone heard in the privacy of his room last night. My Aunt and her Husband do not know of you, of that much I am positive. For God’s sake come, my darling!

The letter ended with more savage underscorings of the last six words, and a single shattering signature—

Alicia.

Shaken as never before, Philip looked at Anne.

She must have guessed it was something like this, he thought. Her face was a study in pain as she took the letter from his numbed hand and began to read it.

A
T THE END, ANNE
re-folded the sheets, put them down on a small table, turned to stare out the window. When she spoke, her voice had an edge to it:

“And what will your response be, Philip?”

He couldn’t tell whether she spoke in anger or sorrow, probably because he was so unsettled himself. The letter had reached across the years to rouse emotions he hadn’t felt so acutely since Quarry Hill.

Anne sensed his uncertainty, spun to face him. He was again aware of how pale she’d grown. Was she ill, refusing to tell him—?

Her suddenly scornful look shocked him out of all such speculation. “She’s a proper lady, isn’t she? Arranging to meet her lover while her husband lies in the next room—perhaps dying. And she’s going to drug him in case he should wake and interrupt the proposed assignation! Oh, yes—a woman of fine principles!”

“Anne—”

“You haven’t answered my question. Are you going to run to her, the minute she commands?”

“I don’t know.”

“My God. You’re actually considering it!”

He stood speechless—accused.

“Philip, do you know how far it is to Philadelphia? Will you travel almost four hundred miles just to let them arrest you?”

“Arrest—? I don’t think that’s part of her plan.”

But he had to admit it well could be. Possibly Roger wasn’t in serious condition at all. Perhaps he was recovering, and had prevailed on his wife to help set a trap for the one who had brought him to grief.