The Whiskey Rebel

Ethan Saunders

Later I would be unable to say what I meant to do. Nor did I know why I was allowed to do it alone. I left Clark ’s in a blur of movement, and it seemed to me I did not walk but was transported by some unknown magic to Fourth and Spruce, outside Pearson’s house. Neither Lavien nor Leonidas had come with me. I never asked either of them, but I believe they concluded it was something I needed to confront on my own, in my own way, without words of caution or prudence.

Later I would chastise myself, not because of what happened but because of what might have happened. I am no Lavien, no master of martial prowess, but I did not fear Pearson. Perhaps I ought to have. He had killed in cold blood. I never had. I ought to have taken time-a day or two, perhaps-to consider what I wanted and then determine how to accomplish it. That would have been the correct approach, but I had no patience for it. Had I taken more time to consider-even five minutes-I would have reached one single inescapable conclusion. I could not allow Cynthia to live with him another day. No, not another hour. The time for caution was done.

As I approached, the house looked quiet, still. It was late afternoon-too early to see lights in the windows-so I do not know what would have given the house a lively look, but something seemed to me absent or missing. I took an instant to consider, came to no conclusion, and went forward.

I did not trouble myself to knock or ring. I tried the front door, found it open, and entered. I had made it only five feet into the hallway when I was approached by the surprised footman. In my mind I saw myself grabbing him, throwing him down, striking him, but I restrained myself. He was called Nate. I remembered that. I also remembered that he, like the rest of the servants, was loyal to Cynthia.

“Captain Saunders-” he began, but said no more. I had not cut him off with words, but he saw my face. I felt the rage burning on my skin. I cannot imagine what I must have looked like.

“Where is he?” I felt as though my teeth bit the words from the air.

“I am sorry,” he said, his voice unsteady. “That is to say, he is abroad, if it is Mr. Pearson you mean. He is not here at present. I am sure if you return some other-”

“Damn you, where is he?” I took another step forward. He took a step back.

The poor fellow actually cringed. He worked for Pearson, lived with him day after day, and yet he cringed before me. I did not like it; I did not feel powerful or dominating. I felt like an avatar of rage, something not myself, and I did not care. I believe I might actually have hurt the poor fellow had things not suddenly changed.

“He’s not here, Ethan.” It was Cynthia who spoke. She was at the end of the hall, standing in the gloom, the space where the darkness of the hallway did not yet meet the light of the parlor. Were it half an hour later, the sconces would be lit, but now all was twilight, and she was little more than a silhouette, partially turned away from me. “He is gone. Again.”

I balled my fists and unclenched them and stepped forward, but Nate stood in my way, which I thought courageous under the circumstances. On any other day, at any other time, I would not have wagered an egg for my chances against a strapping footman such as he, but not that moment, and he knew it. He feared me and he stepped in my way.

“Please keep your distance, sir. You are not yourself.”

It was true enough. I looked past the tall fellow to Cynthia. “Where has he gone?”

“I don’t know. He did not say, only that he was going, and he did not plan to soon return. What has happened, Ethan?”

I could not answer. I knew not how. “To New York again?”

“I did not know it was where he went before.”

I thought to say that was what Mrs. Maycott told me, but I thought better of it. “I must find him. I cannot tell you why. Not yet. But I must find him.”

She took a step forward. “I don’t know where he’s gone, but he seemed-he suggested he would be away again for a length of time. He did not expect to be home soon. He had his valet pack several suits, and he left hours before dawn.”

The New York express coach, no doubt. I would have to go to New York. There could be no more delaying it. I would find Pearson and then-then I knew not what. Kill him? It was not my way. Bring him to trial? With what, a single British spy as witness-one who had only told us what he had under threat of torture and mutilation?

“Cynthia,” I began. I moved toward her, but she stepped back.

“No, Ethan. You must stay away.”

Can she imagine that would have deterred me? Did she imagine she sounded as though there were some issue of propriety? I did not believe it. I pushed past the footman and came to her. She retreated but did not run away, and so she stepped into the light of the parlor, and I saw what she meant to hide. She had been holding the left side of her face toward me, and only now did I see the right, mottled with red and purple and blues. He had struck her in the eye. Her husband had hit her in the eye as though she were a drunk in a tavern.

I cannot say I was filled with rage anew, for I had no more room for anger. If anything, my fury became purer, sharper, more easily directed and controlled. I would find him and I would stop him. I knew not how, but I would do it.

“Cynthia, you must leave him,” I said, my voice calm and quiet and nothing but reason. I was mad with rage, but I would not let her see it. “Why did he hurt you?”

“Because he was angry,” she said. “He has been angry since the night you dined with us. He had good cause to be angry, I suppose. But then, so do I. I know I must leave him, Ethan, but how can I? He is a devil, but you have seen what happens to a woman who lives upon the street, without money to her name. You have seen what happens to her children. Is living with one madman not better than subjecting my children to the scorn and abuse of a thousand strangers?”

I stepped closer now. The secret of her bruise was exposed, and there could be no reason to insist upon my distance. I took her hand, though I knew, and I believe she knew, I would attempt no further liberty. Even so, the warmth of her touch astonished me, as though I really understood for the first time since seeing her again that she was a living, breathing woman, not merely an animated memory. She was Cynthia, whose hair I might feel tumble into my hand, whose face I might caress, whose lips I might kiss. Not that I believed I would, but the sheer physical truth of her staggered me.

“Cynthia, what would you have me do? I cannot leave you be. I must do something to protect you and your children. Tell me and I will do it.”

She turned from me but did not attempt to pull her hand away. After a moment, she squeezed it tighter. “There is nothing to be done,” she said.

“Yes, there is,” I said.

She turned back to me and pulled her hand away. “No,” she whispered. “No, Ethan, I cannot let you speak so. I don’t know if you mean a duel or something more nefarious, but I do not ask it and cannot countenance it. I hate him, but he is the father of my children, and I could not live thinking I had some part in such a thing.”

I took her hand back. “I do not suggest it, but there must be a way to be rid of him without resorting to the unthinkable, and I shall find it. I shall go to New York and confront him there, and I shall resolve this.”

“How?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, restrained. She did not believe I could do such a thing, and yet there was something akin to hope in her eyes.

“I have no idea,” I said with a slight smile. “But I will surely think of something.”

“Please wait a moment.” Cynthia left the room and came back a moment later with an envelope. “I hope I do not insult you or take liberties, but I know your means are limited. You must have some money for your expenses.”

“I cannot take it from you,” I said.

“It is his money.”

“Oh. That’s another matter.” I took the envelope and put it in my coat. “It’s not greed, you know, but the pleasure of using his own money to defeat him.”

S omewhere between the time I’d taken her hand and she left to bring me the envelope, Cynthia’s footman had disappeared, giving us such privacy as we would like. I cannot report we much exploited it. I understood she felt far too vulnerable for me to declare my love, and I don’t believe she required any such declaration to feel it. Instead, she wished me well, and, holding both her hands, I wished her the same. I dared not tell her of her father, not now. First I would rid her of her husband, and then I would tell her. I could not endure the thought of her having to live with Pearson, even to speak to him, knowing who he was and what he had done.

I could not think, however, how I would rid her of her husband. I had spoken the truth to her. I was not a murderer, and despite what he had done to Fleet, I could not kill him in cold blood. Were I to ask him to duel, I have no doubt he would reject me, even as I had rejected Dorland. It would be the rare husband who accepted a challenge from his wife’s admirer.

I would go to New York on the express coach leaving in the small hours of the morning. I would find out everything I could about Pearson: what manner of business he was involved in, how it connected to Duer, and how it connected to the plot against the Bank of the United States. And once I knew everything, I would determine how to convince him to trouble his wife no more. Perhaps it would even be enough to destroy him while still preserving his money for his wife.

I was walking I knew not where when a thought came to me. I considered how much easier it would be simply to duel, how I had avoided doing so with Dorland, and how even Dorland, who had challenged me, seemed disinclined to duel. And then, at once, a question of no small significance occurred to me. If he was so disinclined to duel, why had Dorland challenged me?

Of course, there could be a thousand reasons. He may have believed his honor demanded it, and he may have been convinced I would not accept the challenge, but he did not know me very well. He only knew that I had served in the war, and what man, cowardly and so disinclined to duel, would risk to challenge a man he knew to be a soldier?

Suspicions gathered in my mind, and though I ought to have left him and his poor wife alone, I did not hesitate to approach his house and ring the bell. When his man answered, I said that I must speak to Mr. Dorland, and for the sake of decorum, I would do so outside his house rather than inside it. My intention here was of sparing his wife the discomfort of seeing me, particularly in her husband’s presence.

I hardly believed the man would answer my summons, but indeed he came to the door, and if rather reluctant to step out of it, he remained slightly behind his footman, who was a good head taller. He peered out at me, his fleshy face pale. “What is it, Saunders? Why do you trouble me at my own house?”

“For God’s sake step outside, Dorland. I have no intention of harming you, and what I have to say is for your ears alone. Our business cannot be the business of those belowstairs.”

“It is not a trick?” he asked.

“You have my word as a gentleman.”

“You are not a gentleman,” he said.

“Then you have my word as a scoundrel, which, I know, opens up a rather confusing paradox that I have neither the time nor inclination to disentangle. Now step outside and give me five minutes of your time, and I’ll not trouble you again.”

I believe it was my impatience that carried the day. Had I been more unctuous and less urgent, he might well have been too cautious to leave his lair. My unwillingness to use any art must have bespoke my sincerity. I would have to recollect that trick for the future, I decided.

He stepped cautiously down his stoop and stood facing me, a good three feet away, close enough to admit conversation, too far for me to make, as he supposed, any sudden moves. He must have confused me with Lavien, for whom three feet would be as nothing. For me, it only made conversation more trying.

“Dorland, why did you challenge me to a duel?” I demanded.

“How can you ask me that?” Much of the rage he had demonstrated in our previous encounters, and which I had mocked, was gone. Now he seemed only saddened.

“I do not ask why you believed you had cause. I ask you why you chose to challenge me. Was it your own notion?”

He swallowed and looked away, then back. “Of course.”

“Who put you up to it?” I asked, my voice gentle. “Who suggested that you challenge me?”

“Must someone have suggested it?” he asked, but he had, with several signs and gestures, already answered that question.

“You are wasting my time, Dorland, and trying my patience. Who suggested it?”

“Jack Pearson,” he admitted. “It was he who told me about you and my wife, and it was he who told me to challenge you. He said you would never accept, and then I would be free to take revenge as I saw fit.”

It is strange. I ought to have been outraged, but I’d already learned that day that Pearson had stolen Cynthia and murdered my best friend, so this news could offer me no new anger. If anything, I felt victorious, for I had pulled from the fabric of the universe this thread of truth, and I had yanked upon it. Life offers such small triumphs. We must rejoice where we can.

“I have only begun to suspect the depth of Pearson’s villainy in deceiving you, Dorland. He had his own reasons for wishing to be rid of me, so he told you horrible falsehoods about your wife to prompt you to attack me. Only think of it. A man willing to ruin another’s domestic happiness in order to commit a vicarious murder.”

Dorland now came closer. “One moment,” he said. “Do you mean to say that you and my wife-I mean, that-that you-”

“Oh, just say it, Dorland. Were she and I together? No, of course not. I have addressed her more than once, and she is lovely, but how could you ever doubt so good a lady as your Susan?”

“It’s Sarah,” he said softly, his mind elsewhere.

“What do I care about her name?” I asked. “You ought to pay more attention to her goodness and less to her preferring to be called one thing or another.” It is well that Dorland was not so good at detecting a lie as I was. I saw no reason why I should not offer the lady this small comfort. I had made her life uneasy. Perhaps I could, with little effort, restore it.

“Why did you not say so before?” he asked me.

“Because you annoyed me,” I told him. “You threatened violence, and then you performed violence. I saw no reason to put you at your ease, but I was wrong, for it harmed your wife, and she had done nothing to deserve it. I was foolish, and for that I am sorry.”

He now stepped even closer and gave me his hand. “I must thank you,” he said. “I wish you had told me sooner, but I cannot tell you the joy this news brings me now.”

We shook hands and Dorland rushed inside, no doubt to see his good lady and apologize in a thousand ways. I could only hope the woman was clever enough to hold her tongue and accept.

I turned to head back to my rooms to prepare to leave the coming morning on the express coach, which departed at 3 A.M. I now had a new dilemma to ponder on my voyage. Even before I had met Kyler Lavien, before I had troubled myself with William Duer, heard from Cynthia, or known of a plot brewing against the Bank of the United States-before all of this, Pearson had been plotting to kill me. It was time to discover why.