I remained silent, trying to think of everything and blot out all memory and to do both these things at once. While I considered this revelation, too astonished and angry to speak, Leonidas made polite conversation. I looked over at Hamilton, hardly knowing what to make of the long patrician face before me. For ten years I had hated this man as the author of my ruin, and when the country, at least the Jeffersonian part of it, began to hate him as well, to make him the central agent of corruption in our government, I could not help but feel that, at last, the universe had aligned itself with my perceptions of it. Now, it seemed, I hardly knew anything of the man.
When I turned my attention to his conversation with my slave, it seemed they were talking of my troubles with my landlady.
“And this happened the same night Mrs. Pearson contacted him?” Hamilton was saying. “That does sound suspicious. Captain, I cannot pay your way in the world, but I can send a representative to speak to your landlady and ask her, on behalf of the government, to give you three months to set your affairs in order. Will that be sufficient?”
“It is kind,” I admitted grudgingly, though I attempted not to sound sullen. One never likes to see a man he is used to hating prove himself magnanimous. “I am grateful, but I must ask you again to put me to work, to make use of my skills.”
“Your skills are formidable, and I could use a man like you,” he said, “but I cannot have you inquiring into something involving these people to whom you are so nearly connected. Not only will I not engage your services, I must ask you to have nothing to do with the matter. Stay out of Lavien’s way.”
“You cannot expect me to ignore Mrs. Pearson’s distress,” I said.
“You will stay away from her,” he answered, his voice becoming harsh.
“I understand there is a gathering in a few days at the Bingham house,” I said airily. “I’m sure the lady will be in attendance, for she and Mrs. Bingham are good friends. Perhaps I shall tend to her there.”
“Damn it, Saunders, you will stay away from Mrs. Pearson in this inquiry. This is not a game. There are spies everywhere, and there is more at risk here than you can imagine.”
“Spies? What, the British? The Spanish? Who?”
He let out a long breath. “The Jeffersonians.”
I barked out a laugh. “You are afraid of a member of your own administration?”
“Laugh if you like, but Jefferson’s ambition knows no bounds, and he would do anything-destroy me, the American economy, even Washington’s reputation-if it meant advancing his own ends. Have you never looked at his vile newspaper, the National Gazette, written by that scoundrel Philip Freneau? It is full of the most hateful lies. Have you so forgotten the past that you think no ill of maligning Washington?”
“Of course I have no patience for insults against Washington,” I said. “I revere him as a patriot ought. But that is beside the point. As near as I can tell, you wish me not to help Fleet’s daughter because you fear Jefferson. Perhaps I should speak with him.”
“Stay away from him,” said Hamilton. His voice was now nearly a hiss. “Stay away from Jefferson, from Mrs. Pearson, and from this inquiry. I will not allow your curiosity to risk everything I’ve attempted to accomplish.”
Everything he had attempted to accomplish? There was clearly much more happening here than he would admit, and I knew I could not convince him to tell me. Instead, I tried to show myself reasonable. “Then put me to use on another matter,” I said. If he did so, he would pay me, which would be of great benefit, and then I could inquire into whatever I liked.
He shook his head. My willingness to change the subject appeared to ease him considerably; the redness in his face lessened and his posture became less rigid. “Captain, I wish I could do so, but look at you. It is not ten in the morning, and you are already besotted with drink. You are terribly disordered. Give me a few hours to clear up the business with your landlady, and then go home, rest, and consider your future. In a few months, come see me. If you are in better order, we can talk about a position at that time.”
“I am hardly the only man in Philadelphia to take a drink in the morning,” I said.
He leaned forward. “I am not a fool, Captain. I know the difference between a drinker and a drunkard.”
I thought to rise and announce my indignation, but I did not feel it. I could be besotted with drink and still best Lavien or anyone else he thought to employ over me. I had no doubt that events would soon prove it.
Joan Maycott
Spring 1789
Our meeting with Colonel Tindall left me feeling as though the earth itself had been taken apart and set back together, though not precisely the way it had been before. We came out of his house, stunned and stiff, as though from a funeral. The sky was shockingly blue, the way it so often seems in its brightness to stand in counterpoint to our own inner turmoil, but over Pittsburgh a cloud of smoke and coal fire hung like a vision of perdition. To add to this effect, we found Reynolds waiting by a pair of mules, which had our possessions already loaded. He looked us over, perhaps attempting to evaluate how we had chosen with Tindall. Then he laughed.
“Hendry and Phineas’ll be here soon. They’ll take you out to your plot. I can’t go with you.” He looked out to the expanse of wilderness. “I ain’t made to feel welcome.”
Andrew said nothing, allowing the silence to cast its own withering retort.
“I got to get back east to my wife,” said Reynolds, as though we were all old friends. “She’s pretty, like yours. It don’t suit for a man to be too long away from his wife.”
Andrew remained silent.
“Look here, Maycott. Let me give you some advice. I know we ain’t got along on the way out here, but I had to keep order, and that’s what I done. Don’t mean I got anything against you. And the way things are with Tindall, don’t think I don’t know. I say, so what if he wants your wife? What does it signify? He’s an old man, probably can’t do much anyhow. Why not give him what he asks? You get something for it, and it don’t really cost you anything.”
“Would you prostitute your wife?” Andrew asked.
He shrugged. “Depends on what was in it for me. If I was in your shoes, it’s what I’d do. I ain’t been put up to this by Tindall. I’m just telling you what I think.”
He put out his hand for shaking, and when Andrew did not take it he shrugged and walked across the grounds, disappearing into the stables.
We waited there an hour until Hendry and Phineas appeared on horseback. They provided ragged horses for us to ride, and soon we were upon a dirt track through the wilderness, well beaten and pocked with hoof marks and old manure.
We rode through barren landscape for more than half a day. The land was thick with oak and sugar maple and chestnut and birch trees, surrounded by brambles and boulders and rotten logs as large and ornate as monuments. Animals too; we saw deer scatter and bears off in the distance, and the occasional wolf loped along our path, mouth open in lazy defiance. There were other wild things too. Along the barely discernible path, from time to time, we passed clusters of cabins and dirty, ragged people who stopped their toil to watch us. One-eyed men looked up from their fieldwork or tree felling or tanning. The women stared like feral things, their faces sun-blasted and soulless, their bodies twisted and bent, far more terrible in appearance than the most wretched creature I’d seen in Pittsburgh. I understood without being told that, though life in the West might be hard for men, it was doubly so for women. Once the hunting and farming and clearing were done, a man might settle down with his whiskey and his twist of tobacco, but a woman would still be cooking and mending and spinning. I feared in my heart that I should become one of those broken, horrid things. I did not tremble to lose what men called beauty, but I feared the loss of my spirit and humor and love of living, the things I believed made my soul human and vibrant.