The Whiskey Rebel

Ethan Saunders

It was rainy and cold outside, miserable weather, and though I had not left my boardinghouse determined to die, things were now different. After consuming far more than my share of that frontier delicacy Monongahela rye, a calm resolution had come over me. A very angry man named Nathan Dorland was looking for me, asking for me at every inn, chophouse, and tavern in the city and making no secret of his intention to murder me. Perhaps he would find me tonight and, if not, tomorrow or the next day. Not any later than that. It was inevitable only because I was determined not to fight against the tide of popular opinion-which is to say, that I ought to be killed. It was my decision to submit, and I have long believed in keeping true to a plan once it has been cast in earnest.

It is a principle I cultivated during the war-indeed, one I learned from observing General Washington himself. This was in the early days of the Revolution, when His Excellency still believed he might defeat the British in pitched battle, Continental style, with our ill-disciplined and badly equipped militias set against the might of British regulars. It was the decisive military victory he wanted; indeed, in those early days it was the only sort he believed worth having. He would invite the officers to dine with him, and we would drink claret and eat roast chicken and sip our turtle soup and he would tell us how we were going to drive the Red-coats back at Brooklyn, and the unfortunate affair would be over before winter.

That was during the war. Now it was early in 1792, and I sat at the bar of the Lion and Bell in that part of Philadelphia euphemistically called Helltown. In that unsavory scene, I drank my whiskey with hot water while I waited for death to find me. I kept my back to the door, having no wish to see my enemy coming and because the Lion and Bell was as unlovely a place as Helltown offered-and those were mighty unlovely. The air was thick with smoke from pipes plugged full of cheap tobacco, and the floor, naught but dirt, had turned to mud with the icy rain outside and the spills and spitting and tobacco juice. The benches lay lopsided in the newly made hummocks and ruts of the ground, and the drunken patrons would, from time to time, topple over and tumble like felled timber into the muck. Perhaps a drinker might take the trouble to roll a friend over to keep him from drowning, though there could be no certainty. Helltown friends were none the best.

It was a curious mix there: the poor, the whores, the desperate, the servants run off for the night or the month or forever. And alongside them, throwing dice upon uneven surfaces or hunched over a hand of cards spread across ripped velvet, were the gentlemen in their fine woolen suits and white stockings and shimmering silver buckles. They’d come to gawk and to rub elbows with the colorful filth, and most of all they’d come to game. It was the spirit of the city, now that Alexander Hamilton, that astonishing buffoon, had launched his great project, the Bank of the United States. As Secretary of the Treasury, he had single-handedly transformed the country from a republican beacon for mankind into a paradise for speculators. Ten years earlier, with a single stroke, he had transformed me from patriot to outcast.

I removed from my pocket a watch, currently my only possession of value if one did not account my slave, Leonidas. I had, despite the decisions that had prevailed among the wise drafters of our Constitution, never quite learned to think of Leonidas as property. He was a man, and as good a man as any I’d known. It sat ill with me to keep a slave, particularly in a city like Philadelphia, whose small population of owned blacks numbered in the dozens, and one could find fifty free blacks for each bondsman. I could never sell Leonidas, no matter how dire my need, because I did not think it right to buy and sell men. On the other hand, though it was no fault of his, Leonidas would fetch at auction as much as fifty or sixty pounds’ worth of dollars, and it had always seemed to me madness to emancipate such a sum.

So the timepiece, in practical terms, was currently my only thing of worth-a sad fact, given that I had removed it from its rightful owner only a few hours earlier. Its glittering face told me it was now half past eight. Dorland would have eaten his fashionably late dinner well over two hours ago, giving him ample time to collect his friends and come in search of me. It could be any minute now.

I slid back into my pocket the timepiece I’d taken on Chestnut Street. The owner had been a fat jackanapes, a self-important merchant. He’d been talking to another fat jackanapes and had paid no mind while I brushed past him. I’d not planned to take the watch, nor did I make a habit of such things as common theft, but it had been so tempting, and there seemed to be no reason not to claim it and then disappear in that crowded street, clacking with the walking sticks of bankers and brokers and merchants. I saw the watch, saw it might be taken, and saw how I might take it.

Even then, if that had been all, I would have let it go, but then I heard the man speak. It was his words, not my need, that drove me to take what was not mine. This man, this lump of a man, who resembled a great and corpulent bottom-heavy bear, forced into a crushed-velvet blue suit, had been invited to a gathering the next week at the house of Mr. William Bingham. That was all I knew of him, that he, a mere maker of money, nothing more than a glorified storekeeper, had been invited to partake of the finest society in Philadelphia -indeed, in the nation. I, who had sacrificed all for the Revolution, a man who had risked life in return for less than nothing, was little more than a beggar. So I took his watch, and I defy anyone to blame me.

Now that it was mine, I examined the painting in the inside cover, a young lady of not twenty, plump of face, like the watch’s owner, with a bundle of yellow hair and eyes far apart and open wide, as though she’d been in perpetual astonishment while she sat for the portrait. A daughter? A wife? It hardly mattered. I had taken from a stranger a thing he loved, and now Nathan Dorland was coming to avenge such wrongs, too innumerable to catalogue.

“Handsome timepiece,” said Owen, standing behind the bar. He was a tall man with a head long and narrow, shaped like one of the pewter mugs into which he poured his ales, with wheat-colored hair that curled up like foam. “Timepiece like that might go a way toward paying a debt.” He held out one of his meaty hands, covered with oil and filth and blood from a fresh cut on his palm to which he paid no mind.

I shrugged. “With all my heart, but you must know the watch is newly thieved.”

He withdrew the hand and wiped it on his filthy apron. “Don’t need the trouble, but I ought to send you to fence it now, before you lose it at game.”

“Should I turn the watch to ready, I would not use it for something so ephemeral as a tavern debt.” I pushed my empty mug toward him. “Another, if you please, my good man.”

Owen stared for a moment, his tankard of a face collapsed in purse-lipped indecision. He was a young man, not two-and-twenty, and he had a profound, nearly religious reverence for those who had fought in the war. Living, as he did, in such a place as Helltown, and moving through indifferent social circles, he had never heard how my military career had met its conclusion, and I saw no advantage in sharing information that would lead to his disillusionment.

Instead, I favored other details. Owen’s father died in the fighting at Brooklyn Heights, and more than once had I treated Owen to the tale of how I had met his father that bloody day, when I was captain of a New York regiment, before my true skills were discovered and I was no longer to be found upon the battlefield. That day I led men, and when I told Owen the tale, my voice grew thick with cannon fire and death screams and the wet crunch of British bayonet against patriot flesh. I would recount how I had given Owen’s honored father powder during the chaos of the ignominious retreat. With blood and limbs and musket balls flying about us, the air acrid with smoke, the British slaughtering us with imperial fury, I had taken the time to aid a militia volunteer, for we had shared a moment of revolutionary comradeship that defied our differences in rank and station. The tale kept the drinks flowing.

Owen took my mug, poured in some whiskey from an unstoppered bottle and hot water from a pitcher near the stove. He set it down before me with a considerable thud.

“Some would say you’ve had your fill,” he told me.

“Some would,” I agreed.

“Some would say you’re abusing my generosity.”

“Impertinent bastards.”

Owen turned away and I opened the watch once more, setting it upon the counter, where I might stare at the tick of its hands and the girl who had meant so much to the merchant. To my right sat an animated skeleton of a man in a ragged coat that covered remarkably unclean linen. His face was unshaved, and his nasty eyes, lodged between the thinning brown hair of his crown and the thickening brown hair of his cheeks, stole glances at my prize. I’d seen him come in an hour earlier and slide a few coins across the bar to Owen, who had, in exchange, handed a small parchment sack to the ragged man. Owen did a brisk trade in that greenish powder called Spanish fly, though this man, his magic dust in hand, seemed content to sit at the bar and cast glances at me and my timepiece.

“I say, fellow, you are looking upon my watch.”

He shook his head. “Wasn’t.”

“Why, I saw it, fellow. I saw you setting larcenous eyes upon my watch. This very one.”

“Ain’t,” he said, looking closely at his drink.

“Don’t you speechify at me, fellow. You were coveting my timepiece.” I held it up by the chain. “Take it if you have the courage. Take it from my hands while I observe you rather than skulking in the dark like a sneak thief.”

He continued to gaze inside his pewter mug as though it were a seeing crystal and he a wizard. Owen whispered a word or two to him, and the skinny gawker moved farther down the bar, leaving me alone. It was what I liked best.

The hands of the watch moved. It was strange how a man could find himself in so morose a state. Only a few days before I had considered Dorland’s pursuit of revenge as a vague amusement. Now I was content to let him kill me. What had changed? I could point to so many things, so many disappointments and failures and struggles, but I knew better. It was that morning, coming from my rooms and seeing the back of a woman half a block ahead of me, walking quickly away. From a great distance, through the tangle of pedestrians, I had seen a honey-brown coat and, above it, a mass of golden-blond hair upon which sat a prim if impractical wide-brimmed hat. For a moment, from nothing more than the color of her hair, from the way her coat hung upon her frame, from the way her feet struck the stones, I had convinced myself that it was Cynthia. I believed, if only for an instant, that after so many years and married though she was to a man of great consequence, Cynthia Pearson knew I now lived in Philadelphia, knew where I lived, and had come to see me. Perhaps, at the last moment, recognizing the impropriety, she lost her courage and scurried away, but she had wanted to see me. She still longed for me the way I longed for her.

It lasted but an instant, this utter, unassailable conviction that it was Cynthia, and then disappointment and humiliation struck me just as hard and just as quickly. Of course it had not been she. Of course Cynthia Pearson had not come to knock upon my door. The idea was absurd, and that I should, after ten years, be so quick to believe otherwise testified to how empty was my sad existence.

When Owen returned, I closed the watch and put it away, and then I drained my drink. “Be so good as to pour another.”

Owen hovered before me, shaking his head, his mug handle of a nose blurring in the light of the oil lamps. “You can hardly keep yourself sitting. Go home, Captain Saunders.”

“Another. I am to die tonight, and I wish to do it good and drunk.”

“I daresay he is already quite drunk,” said a voice from behind me, “but give him another if he likes.”

It was Nathan Dorland. I needn’t look, for I knew the voice.

Owen’s eyes narrowed with contempt, for Dorland was not an imposing figure. Not tall, not broad, not confident or commanding “Unless you’re a friend of Captain Saunders, and from the look of you, I’m guessing you ain’t, I’d say this is none of your concern.”

“It’s my concern, because when this wretch is done with his drink, I mean to take him outside and introduce him to a concept called justice, with which he has been all too unfamiliar.”

“And yet,” I said, “I am familiar with injustice. Such irony.”

“I don’t know your complaint,” said Owen, “and I know the captain well enough to trust you’ve got your cause. Even so, you’ll not harm him. Not here. If you’ve a grievance with him, you must challenge him to a duel, like a gentleman.”

“I have done so, and he has refused my challenge,” Dorland said, sounding very much like a whining child.

“Duels are fought so early in the morning,” I said to Owen. “It’s barbarous.”

Owen looked over at Dorland. “You’ve heard it. He has no interest in fighting you, and you must respect that. This man is a hero of the Revolution, and I owe him a debt for my father’s sake. I’ll defend his right to fight or not fight whom he wishes.”

“Hero indeed!” Dorland barked. “I suppose when he is spinning tales of his time with Washington, he may have neglected to tell you the one in which he is cast out of the army for treason. Haven’t heard that one? Ask him if you doubt it. Captain Saunders’s career ended in disgrace, and as to the matter of your father, be assured he tells every tavern keeper in Philadelphia that he fought with his father or brother or uncle or son. Our friend here has given so many doomed men powder, he is like the angel of death.”

Owen’s eyes glistened in the light of the fireplace, and I shrugged, for I had been caught. I would not shy away from an untruth, but it seemed a contemptible thing to lie about a lie.

“I was at Brooklyn Heights,” I said. “I might have seen your father. And no matter what you may hear said of me, I can promise you I was never a traitor. Never.”

My words only served to make Owen more teary. He looked over at Dorland. “Leave now. I don’t want trouble, and nor do you.”

“What does he owe?” I heard the ease of wealth in Dorland’s voice. “I’ll pay his debt.”

Owen said nothing, so I spoke. “’Tis near eleven dollars.” It wasn’t true. I owed less than six, but if Dorland was going to pay for my death, at least Owen should profit from it.

I heard behind me the music of metal on metal, and then a purse landed hard upon the bar. “There’s three pounds of British in it,” said Dorland. “Near fifteen dollars. Now Saunders comes with me.”

I nodded at Owen. “’Tis my time. Thanks for the drinks, lad.”

I pushed myself off the rough wooden stool, and the room turned to a wild and topsy-turvy thing, with the floor leaping up toward me and bar stools taking flight like startled birds. I reflected on the danger of drinking so long without rising-that it is often hard to say precisely how drunken one has become if there is no new movement against which to test oneself. And then I believe I lost consciousness.

T he rain fell hard and cold, rousing me lest I sleep through my own murder. My head ached along the temple from far too much whiskey and from what I judged to be a rather cruel kick delivered to an already fallen man. Very uncivil. Sharp pain jabbed into my ribs-from, I surmised, the ongoing kicks to my side, but in these I found less fault. What is there to do with a fallen enemy but kick him in the ribs? The head, however-that is bad sport.

I gagged on the metallic taste of my own blood and the soot of filthy snow, which was piled high against my face. The blood, I presumed, was mine, as I had no memories of biting anyone. I pushed my face, numb from the cold, away from the snow and saw the alley was wet with rain and mud and horseshit. My pants were wet too, and I could not be absolutely certain, but I had likely pissed myself.

Had this event transpired, it cannot be reckoned the result of fear. I believe this point worth making. I had decided that death was an agreeable outcome and was not only determined to be philosophical, I was philosophical. Life, death: I had no strong predisposition for one or the other. No, if I had pissed myself it was because one of those kicking feet had made contact with my abdomen and pressed into my full bladder. Nothing but anatomy, natural philosophy, human mechanics. There are diagrams in books to explain.

“Get up. You are a disgrace.” The feet stopped kicking. In the heavy rain, Nathan Dorland’s face shone spectrally in the sliver of moonlight that peeked through the cover of charcoal clouds. Dorland’s features twisted into a snarling rage, simultaneously wolfish and petulant, sharp despite his plump, jowly looks. His nose was too long and carrotish, his chin too weak, his teeth unhealthy, and his eyes baggy. Nature had been unkind to him, and so had I. There was no victory in taking liberties with the beautiful wife of an ugly man, and had I known him before I met the lady, I would have restrained myself, for I am not unfeeling.

I managed to gain my feet in slow and awkward motions, my hand sliding in a pile of shit as I tried to gain leverage. A loose nail-rusty, by the uneven feel of it-cut into my palm. Once standing, I remained doubled over, unable to straighten. My hat had fallen off somewhere between the tavern and the alley, and now the cold rain ran down my face, washing the blood from my sundered lip.

There were four of them: Dorland and three friends, all of about his age-perhaps ten years older than I was-and all as plump, as uncomfortable in their bodies, as unlearned in the school of war. These were not men to fear, but I was drunk, they had the numbers, and, most significantly, I had no fight left in me.

Dorland held out his hand, and one of his companions placed within it a military bayonet. “In past days, men carried swords upon their person, but our times have decayed.” He altered his grip upon the blade, weighing it in his hand. He drew close, as did his friends, two of them as near as he, though one hung back. “Have you anything to say before I end your life?”

I cleared my throat. “Dorland, I am sadly disappointed with the man I have become. I am drunk not only at this moment but perpetually. I have had no steady source of income in half a decade, and I am incorrigibly addicted to gaming, so that the money I steal or borrow or, on those rare occasions, earn, is gone as soon as it is in my hands. My clothes are old and tattered and frequently pungent to the nose, and above all of that I believe that during your attack I lost control of my bladder and pissed upon my own person.”

“You think this should make me spare you?” Dorland asked. “Do you think your pathetic condition will stay my hand?”

“No, I only wished to make note of the sort of man your wife admitted to her bed.”

For a moment, despite the dark, Dorland’s face glowed white, a second moon, and then disappeared back into the blackness. I had seen faces contorted with rage before. I had killed men with such looks upon them, but that was war and this was murder, a crime even I considered too base for contemplation.

I’d wanted to anger him, of course. I’d wanted to seal my fate, but even then, having scorned his pride, having insulted him before his friends, I knew I could have altered events. It was but the work of a few words, well-chosen comments to appeal to their mercy, to make them feel grand and gracious. I’d saved myself from worse, for it was my particular talent. It was why Fleet, my mentor during the war, had chosen me to work with him, and it was what he had taught me to refine.

The blade rose high, and I fought hard to keep my eyes open. Better this had come at the hands of the British ten or twelve years ago, when I might have died a hero. Now I was much decayed, but that was the world, after all-a series of things that were not so good as we would wish. I awaited the blow, ready and determined if fearful of the pain. No blow came. Instead I heard a voice call out, “Stay your hand! You’ll not want to commit murder before a witness.”

There, not fifteen feet from our little confrontation, obscured by sheets of rain, stood the massive shape of a man, all silhouette in the downpour and darkness. He stood upon the prop of a broken keg, his greatcoat fluttering in the cold wind, and under the coat his arms were raised as to protect two pistols from the wet.

I knew the voice, but Dorland would not, just as I alone knew there could be no real pistols secreted away.

“This is a matter of honor and not your concern,” Dorland called out.

“If it were a matter of honor, you would be meeting beside the Schuylkill at dawn,” my defender said. “Here are four men setting out to kill a fifth, and I see no honor in it.”

Dorland snorted and wiped rain from his eyes. “What will it cost to be rid of you?”

Poor Dorland, believing his money should answer all, knew nothing of how to regard an enemy, to measure his worth and his means. No, Dorland was a product of Hamilton ’s new America, standing in the shadow of the Bank of the United States, and Dorland’s defiance came from wealth, from his utter assurance that it made him superior to any ball of lead, to any martial prowess. This man with his arms outstretched in the thunderous rain was but one more thing to be bought and sold. Like Dorland’s wife-what was her name? Sally or Susan or something of that sort. Lovely woman. Very red lips.

All at once, the clouds shifted; the rain lessened and a full moon shone above, casting light upon all, including my rescuer, who towered above us, wild and demonic.

“’Tis but a nigger,” said one of Dorland’s friends.

“Hear me,” said Leonidas, for it was indeed my man. “I am a slave, and you threaten the life of my master. I’ve a rare opportunity to kill white men and be excused for doing so.”

I would not have chosen to save myself, but Leonidas was involved, and now I had a duty to him. He would not rest until I was safe, and I would not risk his life.

“’Tis but one man,” said his friend again, “and only a nigger.”

“Begging your pardon,” I interrupted, “but there are, in fact, two men.” This point might have given my enemies greater pause had I not punctuated it by vomiting on my shoes.

“Reckon how you like, then,” Dorland said. “You are yet outnumbered. We are four to your two.”

“Are you certain?” asked Leonidas, his voice quite arch.

“What the devil do you mean?”

“I mean look at me when I speak. Yes, over here; that’s right. What, a Negro is not worth your attention? I mean you miscount.” I could not see his face, but I knew his tone. He spoke slowly, and he drew Dorland’s attention for a purpose. Something had turned. “We are three to your one.”

It had not been so, and yet now, impossibly, it was. I had not seen the third man arrive, nor note what he did-granted, the rain beat loudly, and I was distracted by pain and the rush of blood in my head and a bit of vomiting-and had I not later come to know him, to see what he could accomplish, if I had only known him from this one act, I would have believed him a ghost, some phantom from Hell untethered by earthly laws. He was not there, and then he stood by my side, but it was more than that. Dorland’s three companions were now in the mud.

One lay on the ground clutching his middle. Another pressed a hand to his throat. A third lay flat on his back, his eyes wide, the stranger’s boot on his chest. He held a thin knife, not particularly long, yet I did not doubt its deadliness in his hands.

I stared at this man who stood still with his shoulders wide in a stance of readiness, a bound coil ready to spring. He was slight of build, evenly proportioned, but a little inclined to be short, and, even stranger, he was bearded. I could not be certain in the poor light, but I thought he might be dark of skin, a lascar-looking fellow.

Dorland shook his head at the scene before him, having no greater understanding than I. He set down his bayonet and backed away, his hands out to make clear he would offer no more tricks. “Let him go,” he said, looking at his friend writhing under the stranger’s boot.

Dorland, however, was now no longer in a position to negotiate. Without taking his foot off the chest of the fallen man, the stranger had lashed out and pulled Dorland to him, the way a frog pulls in an insect with its tongue. He pressed Dorland’s back tight to his chest with his left elbow, left hand gripping Dorland’s right hand. The stranger’s own right hand now held his knife to Dorland’s thumb.

“You’re going to feel a hot sting,” he said, “and then excruciating pain.”

He had done so much and so quickly, and I did not know him. I could only presume he truly meant to cut off Dorland’s thumb, and I could not allow it. Yes, Dorland was a fool, and yes, he had thought it a fitting thing to kill me, but he was hardly the first to think that. And I had done him harm. I’d injured him and then refused to meet him on the field of honor. Having his thumb cut off in a Helltown alley struck me as a bit more than he deserved, or, if not, then at least more than I wanted upon my conscience.

“Better to let him go,” I said to the bearded man.

“I think not,” the stranger said. “He’ll likely return to make another attempt.”

“I must insist you let him go,” I said, this time more strongly. “It’s my rescue. I’d like to think I have some say in it.”

The bearded man pushed Dorland away. He stumbled but did not fall.

Perhaps it was the darkness, but the stranger’s expression seemed to me coldly, even frighteningly, blank. He had not been out for blood before, and he was not disappointed now. He had judged mutilating Dorland the best course, and he would have pursued it had I not insisted otherwise. Now, with Dorland away, he released his foot from the friend’s chest and took several steps back from his victims, who were apparently not so badly hurt that they could not struggle to their feet. These were dandified gentlemen with no stomach for street brawling in the mud and rain. A little taste of violence and pain proved sufficient.

“There you have it,” I said. “You may flee.”

Dorland gazed upon me. “Saunders, don’t think our business concluded,” he said, apparently eager to prove the stranger’s point.

“You did not find this encounter decisive?” I asked, then vomited once more.

“You are repulsive.”

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Ladies are known to find me charming.”

He took a step forward but one of his friends, the one who had been struck in the throat, held him back. Dorland grabbed his fallen weapon, and he and his friends hurried off.

Leonidas hopped down from his broken pedestal, sending out a splatter of cold mud, and placed an arm around me, for he sensed it was only with great difficulty that I remained on my feet. “Let’s get you dry and warm,” he said. “Then I’ll present this gentleman, and we shall all have a talk.”

I found the stranger’s coldness unnerving, but I knew a worthy fighter when I saw one, and I owed him my politeness. “I am in your debt,” I said to him.

The man grinned-the first sign I’d seen that he possessed anything like human feeling-and it was a wide, open, likable sort of grin, but also strangely false. It was not precisely insincere but rather had the air of being an afterthought, something he had to remember to do when interacting with human beings in such a way that involved no violence.

“Entirely my pleasure,” he said, and I did not doubt him.

With the stranger lagging behind, perhaps making certain our enemies attempted no late ambush, Leonidas led me limping back into the Lion and Bell. We took a table near the fire, attracting no little attention as we did so. My man shrugged off his greatcoat, hanging it to dry, and then his hat, revealing a round head of closely cut hair. Next he took his pistols and checked the powder. The sight of this big Negro examining firearms caused a few men to gaze upon us with apprehension. Philadelphia white men are more at ease around Negroes than those in southern climes, but the sight of a muscular and broad-backed African checking his pistols is never a comforting sight. No one dared say a word, though-in part because it is unwise to be rude to a large man with firearms, but also because there was something in Leonidas’s countenance that allayed suspicion. He was black as midnight but handsome as Oroonoko, possessed of a natural dignity, and if there was but one Negro in the country you wished to see with primed pistols, surely this was he.

“You did have weapons,” I said. “I thought you were posturing.”

His mouth twitched in the merest hint of a smile. “I should have hated to shoot a hole through my coat. ’Tis a fine bit of tailoring.”

“Why do you have pistols?” I demanded.

“I have to do something with my money, as I am not permitted to purchase my freedom.”

I often had no need of his services, and I let Leonidas hire himself out as a laborer down by the docks. He had saved enough to purchase his freedom at a fair price should I wish to permit it. It seemed to me an unnatural cruelty to ask a man, made a slave through no fault of his own, to have to pay for his freedom.

While I dried myself and let the pain wash over me and crystallize, Leonidas fetched for me more whiskey, for the events of the evening had created a void within me that wanted filling, and soon. He handed me a mug and sat down next to me.

All this time, the stranger stood by in a pantomime of anonymity. He shook off his coat by the fire. He patted his hat against his forearm. He rubbed his hands together.

“Again I thank you,” I said to him. “I never asked for it, but still-very kind.”

He nodded, and I had the distinct impression he grew weary of gratitude.

“You’re fortunate we arrived when we did,” Leonidas said. “You looked quite defeated.”

I met his eye. This notion that you cannot look into a man’s eye while dissimulating is, of course, an utter falseness. I could stare into the eyes of Jesus and tell him I was John the Baptist, and should the chance ever arrive to do so unlikely a thing, I meant to try it, just to see how it would go. “A few more minutes would have set things right. Still, I am always grateful for timely assistance.”

Leonidas turned to the stranger. “May I present to you Mr. Kyler Lavien.”

“Lavien,” I said. “What sort of name is that? Are you a Frenchman?”

The stranger met my gaze with something hard and unflinching. “I am a Jew.”

I suppose he might have been prepared for some unkind words, but he would not get them from me. I have nothing against Jews. I have nothing for them, of course, but nothing against them, nothing against anyone-not Papists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Mennonites, Moravians, Millenarians, or Mohammedans. I have nothing against members of any religion-except Quakers, whom I despise, with all their sanctimonious peace-mongering and property-owning and thees and thous.

“And what is your business with me?” I asked him.

“That is rather the question, isn’t it?” said Leonidas. He looked pointedly at Lavien when he spoke, and I felt very much a stranger to events in which I ought to have been central.

Lavien cleared his throat. “I was outside your boardinghouse when this good fellow left in search of you, because in the capacity of my work I followed someone to your rooms.”

“Whom did you follow, and what is your work?” I said. “My head is too hurt for circuitous answers. Say what you mean, sir.”

“I am employed in the service of your old acquaintance, Colonel Alexander Hamilton. I serve him now in his capacity as Secretary of the Department of the Treasury.”

Despite my pain and drunkenness and general confusion, I felt my senses sharpening. I had suffered a decade of ignominy because of Hamilton, and now here was his man to save me from a vengeful husband. It made no sense.

“What does Hamilton want with me?” I asked.

“That is the wrong question,” said Leonidas. “Ask him whom he followed to your house.”

“Enough of this nonsense,” I said. “Tell me what you do not say.”

“In the capacity of serving the Treasury Department,” said Lavien, “I followed to your home a lady who wished to deliver you a message.”

“What of it? Ladies like to send me messages. I am a good correspondent.”

“This lady,” said Lavien, “I believe is known to you, though you have not spoken with her in many years. Her name is Mrs. Cynthia Pearson.”

All pain, all confusion and disorder, were gone, and I saw the world before me in sharp detail-fine angles and defined colors. Cynthia Pearson, whom I had once intended to marry, the daughter of Fleet-my dead and much-abused friend-betrayed, as I had been, by Hamilton himself. I had not spoken to her in ten years. I had seen her, yes, glimpses upon the street, but never spoke. She had married another man, married for wealth, I believed, and our paths were forever diverged. Or so I thought, for Leonidas and this stranger now told me that this very evening she had come to my house.

“Why?” I spoke to Leonidas, forming my words slowly and methodically, as though being careful with my question might help him produce a more lucid response. “For what reason did she come to see me?”

Leonidas met my gaze and matched my tone. He had been with me almost as long as I had been apart from Cynthia, and he understood the importance of this question. He understood what this must mean to me. “It has something to do with her husband.”

I shook my head. Never had I believed that Cynthia Pearson even knew I lived in Philadelphia, and now she had come to my home, at night, to speak to me of her husband.

Seeing the confusion upon my face, Leonidas took a deep breath. “She believes her husband, possibly herself and her children, to be in some danger. She came to see you tonight, Ethan, to beg for your help.”