The Messenger (41 page)

I wouldn’t fight. But that didn’t mean I would do nothing at all. I turned around and headed back for High Street. I was going back to John. If there was anyone who held any power to free Hannah, it was him.

After returning to his office and making every argument I could think of, he still claimed he could do nothing. The new general, General Clinton, was my only recourse, and he was too busy to consult with citizens. So I spent the next two days pacing the halls at headquarters, making a nuisance of myself, trying to see him.

At least I’d been able to see her. One time more. When I’d tried again, the guard had laughed at me and marched me to the door. I could only hope the food I left had actually been given to her.

On Sunday I was surprised to see John walking down Walnut Street, arms filled with books. Many other officers were doing the same. His young sergeant was trailing him, carrying several portfolios. They dumped their armloads into one of many carts that lined the street. It was already nearly filled to overflowing.

He looked up as I approached. Straightened as he slipped a hand beneath his coat. “I was just coming to see you. Looks as if you’ve saved me the trouble.” His hand reappeared, grasping a pistol.

“What’s this?”

“You were part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“You and she together. You were both spies.”

Do not fight this.

“I don’t know why you’d say that.”

“There was one thing that kept bothering me. I couldn’t figure out why you were always so interested in her. I couldn’t understand what you saw in her. At first I thought you’d given up. Because of . . .” He gestured toward my armless sleeve. “She wasn’t like any of the girls you used to flirt with. And now I know why. So.” He cocked the pistol. “Do you deny it?”

Do not fight.

He may have drawn the wrong conclusion but there was no point in denying anything any longer. “No.”

His face puckered with disappointment and disbelief. “You
are
a spy, then?”

“Yes.”

“Blast it all! Why? You were one of the best soldiers the army had. You could have . . . you could have . . .” His gaze had been drawn to my empty sleeve again.

“I became a spy because I could no longer hold a musket. And I was tired of never quite being good enough. I was ten times the officer you ever were and yet you were the one who was given the commission. I would never have been offered it. Not even if Devil’s Hole hadn’t happened.”

“This is about your
arm
?”

“It was. I’ll admit that I once hated you. I spent years wishing it had been you who’d lost your arm instead of me. But I’ve realized these past months that hate never got me anything at all.”

“How very noble of you.” He’d taken a step closer with every word. And no one in the street even seemed to notice. They all just continued filling their carts.

“Not noble. I finally realized that you weren’t worth it.”

“Well, this puts us in a bit of a bind, doesn’t it? Can’t exactly accuse you of trying to attack me, considering you’ve only got the one arm.”

“You’re going to shoot me? Now?” A tingling began behind my ears and a deathly chill swept over me. But then there came a great and comforting peace. A stillness in my soul.

Do not fight.

“I want to shoot you. I long to shoot you! But I’m a better man than that.” He yelled for his sergeant.

“Sir!”

“Take this spy down to the jail.”

Hannah

When I’d been arrested, I was taken straight to the jail and placed in my brother’s old cell. It was empty, Robert’s body was gone, and the tunnel had been filled back in with dirt. I wished I’d been put in a cell with some of the others, for there in Robert’s cell I was alone.

I had never known terror before. I thought I had, but true terror lived in the darkness where there was no possibility of light, where the rats scuffled at all hours through the filthy straw. I had the presence of mind to think only one thought: I was going to be hanged. How much would it hurt at the end, when I dangled from the noose? How much pain would I feel? How long would it take to die?

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still. When everything within me longed to cry out, to strike out, to do what I could to free myself!

It seemed to me sometimes that I could still hear William Addison and the others, their whispered conversations, their shuffling and rustling through the straw.

I heard coughs come from the men in the other cells. And I heard muffled moans.

At least I could no longer smell the filth. I had tired of standing after that first day and so I had allowed myself to settle down into it. There was nothing else to do, for there was nothing unspoiled down there. There was no clean thing. And there was no hope.

There was only a meager light that seeped through a broken, grime-covered window in the day and an inky blackness that blotted out everything in the night. All the hours passed the same. Without notice, without observation, they merged and bled into each other. Once in a while the guard that used to let me in to see Robert would open the door and throw in a roll. And sometimes the first guard, the one in the outer room, would stand by the door and taunt me.

I saw Jeremiah, twice. The memory of him, of his touch, was almost too much to bear.

I had begun to think that I had been forgotten. But then I heard the scuff of boots coming down the hall. And there was light. It was so feeble I could not see it at first, but as the sound of footsteps came nearer, the reach of the light increased until there was a fumbling at my door. My eyes ached from the sudden brightness. The light was so terrible that I threw an arm up over my face as I withdrew into the corner.

“Who—who’s there?” I did not know whether it was better to have been forgotten or remembered. The door protested movement. And then . . . there were voices. “You don’t have to keep us down here. You know you don’t.”

Was that . . . “Jeremiah?” I lowered my arm, but still I could not see for the light.

“Major’s orders.”

“Aye. But who’s to know if you did or didn’t follow them? No one here will tell.”

Jeremiah’s protests went unanswered, and I could hear him enter the room as the door was drawn shut and the key turned in the lock. “Hannah?”

“Jeremiah?” I could see, but dimly. He was standing over by the door.

As I went to him, he suddenly keeled over and retched. Straightened. “Sorry, I—” He bent and retched again. “How did they—how did anyone survive this?” He wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve.

“It’s why I had to keep coming.”

He looked around in that squalid room, gaze probing the dark recesses. “I didn’t know. If I’d known what it was like down here, I would never have asked you to come.”

As he put his arm around me, I felt tears spill from my eyes. There were so many tears to be shed for the injustice of all that had happened. But there was one thing still to be thankful for. “Had I never come, I would have never known thee.”

As we stood together in the middle of the room, Jeremiah’s gaze traveled once more the length and breadth of it. “If I’d been able to join the honest fight, then I might have been one of them. One of those sad, pitiful wretches. I might have perished here alongside them.”

I put an arm about his waist.

He looked down at me.

“They weren’t to be pitied. They wouldn’t have wanted it.” Of that, I was certain. “There were many opportunities to leave. They freed any who would swear allegiance to the king. Those who stayed did so because they wanted to.”

“No.” Jeremiah was shaking his head. “They didn’t stay because they wanted to. No one would have wanted to stay here. They stayed because their hearts were honest. It was the only thing they could do.”

“Thee must know that they needed us. Brave as they were, they needed people like us, Jeremiah. There’s no shame in what we did.”

We weren’t alone for long. Once again, there came the sound of footsteps, a flare of light, and the squeal of the door. And with them a flurry of profanity.

Jeremiah gripped my hand in his.

“How could anyone survive in this wretched place?” It was Major Lindley. He was accompanied by another soldier, and they were both holding handkerchiefs to their noses. I knew from experience that it wasn’t helping the slightest bit.

“I came down here because there’s not enough time left. There won’t be a trial.”

My heart stopped beating for the space of a moment.

“You told me everything I need to know, Jones, but I still don’t understand why.” He was no longer talking to Jeremiah. He had addressed himself to me. “Why would you pretend an interest in someone like him?”

“Someone like . . . ?”

“You’re a Quaker.”

“I was.” But I’d found what happened when a person valued politics over God and a cause above a person. I’d always known that to Robert everything was personal. I just hadn’t realized that’s the way it was meant to be.

“You want to know how you were discovered?”

I’d assumed that they’d tortured one of the sick men who’d been left behind.

“None of the prisoners would tell us anything. Not one. Did you know that? Not until we started finding the bodies. Until we told them we wanted to notify families.” He stopped for a moment and took in a deep breath through his nose. His face folded as he leaned over and retched into the straw, which caused his sergeant to do the same. He coughed and then dabbed at his lips with the handkerchief. “In any case, it was your own family that gave you away, Miss Sunderland.”

My family? But who . . . ?

“We found your brother.”

Robert.

“He’d been buried in the straw. And he’d been dead for quite some time.”

Jeremiah’s face had gone white and then flushed red. “But—”

I shook my head at him, though I said nothing to the major.

“He’d been dead long enough that you ought to have stopped visiting. And yet they tell me you came every week, even after you should have known.” He smiled. “And they say dead men don’t talk!” He turned his gaze to Jeremiah. “I never figured you for a traitor. Had our roles been reversed, I would have joined your army in an instant. I would have fought beside you, not against you. But . . . I forget.” He gestured toward Jeremiah’s missing arm. “You’re useless.”

“Not useless. I was once. Once, I was just like you. But not anymore.”

“You didn’t used to be so provincial. But I suppose, breeding will show. And there’s none of it—none that I’ve noticed—anywhere to be had in this godforsaken colony.”

“God does not forsake, John. ’Tis man who does the discarding. And the discounting. There is that of God in all of us.” Jeremiah’s use of the familiar phrase resounded in my ears.

“I’ve had enough of you and your army and—and God!” He turned from us to his soldier. “I ought to have them shot.” He faced us once more. “I
would
have you shot, only there’s no time. And I’ll not have my reputation tainted by an unauthorized execution.”

As they left and locked the door behind them, my heart regained its proper beat. I looked up at Jeremiah. “He didn’t mean those things. Thee must know that. He only said them because he was hurt.”

“I didn’t care, not nearly as much as I once might have. Now . . . why didn’t you tell me about Robert?”

Tears threatened again. “What would it have changed?”

“I would have wanted to know.”

“Thee mightn’t have let me come here if thee had known.”

He tipped my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “I wouldn’t have. But still . . . I would have wanted to know.”

“Why? What good would it have done?”

“I could have told you how sorry I was.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out. My chin began to tremble, and I felt the corners of my lips being wrenched downward as if by an unseen hand. “I didn’t—I couldn’t—he died digging the tunnel. It collapsed on him. They didn’t tell me, not at first. But I
knew
.” He opened his arm to me and I came to him. He drew my head to his chest and placed a kiss atop my head.

I clung to him as great, ugly, wrenching sobs tore from my soul. “I couldn’t just leave the rest of them to die.”

“You didn’t. Seven officers escaped. And forty-nine other men.”

“That many?”

“Aye. Thanks to you. And to Robert.”

“He wasn’t the only one who died in the digging.”

“But fifty-six men went free.”

“Why does it always have to be that way? Why do good men always have to sacrifice themselves for others?”

“Because they believe that the rest of us are worth it.”

We moved toward a wall, the one where William Addison had always been, and sat down in the straw side by side. We stayed there for a long while. The window’s dim light faded and finally there was nothing left to see. And nothing left to hear, save the snores of the men in the cells next to ours and the scurrying of rats.

In that place of hopelessness and despair a surprising thought came to me. “Major Lindley did thee a favor: He left us here. There should be no doubt as to thy loyalties now, when the patriots come.”

Jeremiah shifted beside me. “I had not thought of it in quite that way.”

We were silent again for a great long while.

It was Jeremiah who finally spoke. “Does your family know you’re here?”

“I don’t know. They arrested me at Pennington House.” I wondered if anyone had sent a message to my family. “I’m sure they won’t want me now.”

“If I had known at the first how much my proposal would cost you . . .”

“Do not apologize, Jeremiah, or I shall rebuke thee as thee have often accused me of doing in the past.” I heard both a promise and a threat in my tone, but there was a quaver there as well.

“I was not going to. I was only going to ask . . . ?” He lifted his arm, what was left of it, in invitation.

It was the only place I had ever felt safe and I fled to it.

“I have only one arm to offer you.”

“And I have only one heart to give thee.”

The bolt in the door at the end of the hall shrieked. Footsteps sounded against the packed earth and a ring of keys jangled. A door somewhere along the hall was unlocked. “Come out! Come out of there. Let’s go. Come out.”

There were protests and moans, but soon we heard the sounds of many footsteps in the hall. And then another door was opened. “Come out! Let’s go. Rouse yourselves. You’re leaving.”

Jeremiah and I looked at each other. Perhaps there was some hope still.

“Come out. Let’s go.” The call was repeated and the footsteps came closer.

Finally someone in one of the other cells thought to ask what was happening.

“It’s the prison ships for you. General’s orders.”

Suddenly those shouts and the clanking of the keys sounded more like a summons to death than an invitation to freedom.

“They’re not going to take us.” Jeremiah had pushed to his feet and was holding his hand out to me.

Another door was opened. More prisoners were called out into the hall.

“You’re going to stand in the corner over there”—he gestured to the one farthest from the window—“and I’m going to stand in front of you. If they try to make us leave, just be still. No matter what happens, don’t move. They won’t notice you in the shadow.”

“Thee can’t—what are thee saying?”