Freneau’s face did seem to blanch, but he held his ground admirably, I had to admit. “Captain Saunders, I can do you genuine harm, and I don’t mean revealing your whereabouts to a man who hates you already. I can harm you in ways you would not care to think of, as regards your friend and slave. You know of what I speak. Now, return to me the documents you stole, and we shall forget this conversation ever took place.”
Could he know about my liberating Leonidas? I’d told no one, but I was not so naïve as to believe that such information, like all information, could not be bought and sold, if only someone recognized its value. I felt suddenly frightened. The issue at hand was of an act of generosity I had performed, but I understood full well how Leonidas, if the news was presented in a biased manner, might misunderstand my actions.
Seeming to understand my thoughts, Freneau smiled at me. “It is amazing how a man might visit an attorney and not trouble to learn he is a Jeffersonian in inclination.”
“Whatever he tells you,” I said to Leonidas, “is misleading at best. He cannot have all the facts, so let him speak, and we shall sort it out when the rascal leaves us be.” I attempted to sound confident, but I could not hide from myself the feeling of rapid descent from a precipice.
Leonidas stood again and looked at Freneau. “You have nothing to say to interest me.”
“Oh, you will want to hear this,” Freneau assured him.
“No, I won’t. Go,” Leonidas said.
I smiled at Freneau, seeing I had defeated him. Leonidas’s loyalty would win out over any trivial detail.
Freneau stood. “Very well.” He replaced his hat. “I see I am beaten.” He began to walk off but stopped short. “You must know you are a free man, Leonidas, and have been for weeks. Saunders took the trouble to free you, but he did not take the trouble to mention it?” He turned quickly, as if afraid of some punishment leaping out at him, and departed our company.
Leonidas and I watched him go, carefully avoiding each other’s gaze. It seemed to me impossible, given the momentousness of what was just said, that the others in the taproom paid us no mind, yet no eyes fell upon us, and our crisis came without notice. Men gathered in their clusters and drank and spoke and laughed. Life continued all around us, and yet it seemed we were upon a stage, a great light flooding down on us.
At last I turned to look at Leonidas, whose dark eyes were narrow and bloodshot and intense. “Do not say anything else,” he warned.
I leaned back in my seat. “Do make yourself easy, Leonidas. I had hoped to make this a surprise when our task was completed, but I see I must tell you now in order to avoid any resentment. A greater sense of ceremony would have been welcome, but now this will have to do. Yes, I made arrangements with a lawyer. Congratulations, sir, you are a free man.” I raised my glass to toast him.
It was a bittersweet moment, for I hated to let him go, but his freedom was long overdue. I hoped he would, in turn, look upon me in friendship and gratitude. This was not, I told myself, the end of my connection with Leonidas.
Yet the look on his face remained dark, harsh, unforgiving. He glowered and his breathing had quickened, and I understood something had happened, something terrible and unstoppable. “I have been a free man for weeks, and you did not tell me?”
“Well, I meant to, but then this business with Cynthia arose, and I could not spare you. I thought it best to postpone.”
He sucked in air as though he’d been slapped. “You did not trust me to continue to help you of my own accord?”
I stammered like a man explaining away a whore to his wife. “Of course I trusted you, but it hardly seemed necessary to make any big announcements when we had so much with which to concern ourselves. A month or two could hardly make a difference.”
“You had no right to hold a free man in servitude.”
“I think you are taking this out of context,” I said. “You were only free because I freed you. It’s not as though I captured you in the African jungle.”
“It doesn’t matter how I was freed. I was free and you continued to hold me,” he said, rising to his feet. “It is unforgivable.”
“No, no, no, you are focusing on the wrong things. I have reformed, Leonidas. I have freed you. I understand that this is a confusing moment, but you will sort it out. Sit. Have a drink. Let us talk about your plans.”
He remained quiet, in a pose of consideration. His face returned to its more customary sable, and his eyes returned to their traditional oval shape. He blinked at me a few times. Then he said, “I am going upstairs to collect my things, and then I am leaving.”
“What?” Now I stood. “You cannot leave me now. I am in the thick of it. You said I ought to have trusted that you would remain by my side, and now you threaten me with leaving.”
“I make no threats but a pronouncement. I cannot remain with a man who would use me so. Had you told me before, I would stay, but you did not. Goodbye, Ethan.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he had already turned and I would not demean myself by calling after him like a jilted lover. Instead I sat and poured myself some of Duer’s wine. I sat and waited. I watched as he descended the stairs once more, and I watched as he turned to the door without once looking back toward me. I watched as he walked out into the cold New York night, leaving me entirely alone on the eve of crisis.
Joan Maycott
January 1792
I’d thought to go alone and might well have done so. It was not that I did not trust the man I was to meet. In this whole affair, he seemed to me among the most honorable, perhaps curiously so. It was not a question of fear but one of power. Would it make me seem more powerful, I wondered, to go alone and thus show him how secure I felt, or to bring a man with me and show him I had more men in my orbit than he had seen? In the end, I chose the latter. The time had not yet come-if it were to come-to let him know how few we were. It hardly mattered, for we had achieved much and would, I believed, achieve all. The smallness of our numbers made us adaptable and agile, but to an outsider it might make us appear weak.
In earlier meetings, he had met Dalton and Richmond, so I brought with me Mr. Skye, who accepted the assignment with solemnity. Now it was dark, and we sat in our hired coach-I’d had Skye hire the plainest one he could find-on the side of a quiet street in an indifferent neighborhood. It was modest, but not poor, and by no means unruly. It was one of those parts of town where men labored hard for their few dollars and held to their homes with pride.
It was not yet nine, the hour of our meeting, and Skye and I sat in the dark. He sat perhaps closer to me than he ought to have, and I could smell the scent of him: leather and tobacco and the sweet hint of whiskey that clung to them all, all the whiskey rebels.
“What are his loyalties?” Skye asked, after a long silence. He spoke quietly, almost a whisper, though I did not think such discretion was necessary. I did not think he believed the question necessary either. He spoke so as to have something to say.
“Right now I think he’s loyal to himself,” I said, “which means as long as we continue to pay him, he will serve us. We have to be careful, however, not to push him too far or make him fear that anything he does will hurt someone he cares about. I suspect no amount of money will make him do harm.”
“No, of course not, else you would not have recruited him. His limitations are why you trust him.”
I laughed. “You are wise.”
“And you are impressive. More impressive than I can say.” I felt him take my hand. “Joan,” he said, “so much has happened-to both of us-and I would never imagine that you could put your grief for Andrew aside. Yet you are alive, a vibrant woman, and I should be a strange sort of man were I not moved by your courage and leadership-and, yes, beauty.”