The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles Read online

  Sometimes she made oblique jokes about a mysterious background in better circumstances. But Judson’s questions about it always went unanswered. In fact he knew nothing about her except her one name, Alice, and that she worked serving the riffraff who frequented a particularly disreputable tavern near the docks. He’d stumbled into the place one night after Christmas, feeling especially blue with memories of Seth McLean’s wife. In his stupor, Alice’s flaunted body appealed to him. A direct proposition led to a quick coupling upstairs in a sleazy room under the eaves—for a fee. Half of it, she said, went to the landlord.

  Still a bit drunk, he’d invited her to come to his quarters in Windmill Street some evening. For no fee. Two nights later, at two in the morning, she arrived. He’d seen her at least twice a week since.

  Alice carried the cups of claret back into the bedroom, handed him one, neglecting her tugged-down blouse, a casualty of their embrace. The half-circle of one rouged nipple showed like part of a flower. Alice toasted him, drank what he guessed was a full cup in four quick gulps.

  “No trade tonight?” he inquired, mildly cynical.

  “Nothing Peggy can’t accommodate.”

  Judson paled. “Who?”

  “Oh, the other slut the old bastard’s hired on—a stupid wench from Jersey. Peggy’s this fat—” She pantomimed the measurements. Judson wiped sweat off his forehead and lay back on the bed as Alice went on, “When she’s with a customer, you can hear her grunting all the way downstairs. Disgusting,” she declared with a sniff.

  Then she laughed, harshly. Judson studied her beautiful blue eyes and wondered again whether she was quite sane.

  Alice plumped down beside him. “I give the customers something more refined, don’t I, love?” Drinking with one hand, she teased his groin with the other. “It costs you nothing—and in exchange, I get to sleep in a bed that isn’t crawling with bugs. A lovely bargain, I’d say—”

  “If you despise that place so much, why do you work there?”

  “Oh, reasons,” she said with a vague wave of the cup. “Where else should a poor countryman’s daughter work?”

  “I’ve never been convinced you’re just a poor countryman’s daughter, Alice.”

  “Then what am I?” she teased, tossing her head. Her hair glistened with that greasy sheen he found repulsive—when he was sober.

  “A very attractive young woman who, for some inexplicable reason, chooses to stay wretchedly dirty when she’d glow like the sun if she bathed—”

  “Pooh,” Alice replied thickly. “Bathing’s for rich folk.”

  “—and who,” Judson continued with mock seriousness, “drinks somewhat more than is good for her—”

  “Now that’s a fine comment from a chap who tosses it down the way you do.”

  “Well, I’m not trying to kill myself with it.”

  Alice’s slightly glazed blue eyes glowed oddly. “You’re not?”

  “Alice, tell me who the hell you are. What are you running away from? A husband? An indenture contract?”

  “Nothing.” She repeated it, louder: “Nothing. Listen, Mr. Fine Judson Fletcher—I could ask the same of you!”

  He looked away.

  “Oh, come on love,” she said, more softly. “What’s made you so cross with me this evening?” She reached past his thigh for the pamphlet. “Is this the reason for the chilly reception?”

  “There!” he exclaimed. “‘Chilly reception,’ Tavern trollops don’t command such fine phrases—”

  Examining the pamphlet’s flyleaf, she ignored him:

  “Oh, I see what it is. The book everyone’s reading. We even had a helmsman tonight who had a copy. A lot of foolishness—just like the business with those dreadful old men at the State House. Why do you bother? Of course, if you hadn’t come from Virginia to waste your time at that silly Congress, we’d never have met, would we, love? I’d still be tossing around in that nasty straw every night—instead of sharing a tidy bed. And sporting with a genuine gentleman—”

  One hand between his legs, the other, with the cup, dangling down as she crooked her arm around his neck, she rubbed her mouth slowly back and forth across Judson’s. Flicked her tongue along his upper lip. He smelled the wine, and her heat:

  “We are going to make love, aren’t we, Judson? You’ve improved your mind sufficiently for one evening, haven’t you? Brains aren’t everything—” Her hand grew bolder. “Master Cock-and-balls needs his exercise too—”

  Damn, how she worked on him! Someone, somewhere, had taught her amorous skills in fine detail. He pressed his mouth tight on hers. They kissed a long, langorous moment, her tongue licking at his teeth, wet, sinuous—

  But even embracing, he couldn’t escape the past.

  His hands constricted roughly on Alice’s waist as he shoved her down on the bed. She dropped the empty cup and wrapped her arms around his neck. The cup thudded on the carpet. He heard the pamphlet slide off as well—

  He didn’t care any longer. She’d slipped her blouse down so he could kiss her breasts. The smoky smell of her skin excited him beyond all reason.

  “Wait, wait, love. A little more wine first,” she gasped, darting away.

  Flushed, he stood up. She found the cup and walked into the dark parlor, her blouse pushed all the way to her waist. He heard the decanter clink. He tugged off his throat-stock, his linen shirt. He really didn’t understand why he wallowed with this girl who meant nothing to him. Nor did he understand her. Each had built a wall beyond which the other was not permitted.

  But penetrating the wall wasn’t necessary for their main amusement. He dropped his breeches, then his underclothes. Why the hell did it matter who she was? Physically, she hid nothing.

  She had left her clothes in the parlor. She came out of the dark with long, langorous steps, her sky-blue eyes shining bright as the crystal of the decanter in her right hand. Her breasts bobbed at each step. Her lower belly glowed like finespun gold. Her body had a pale beauty that couldn’t be marred even by the rings of dirt on her neck and forearms.

  Standing next to the bed, Alice caressed the stem of the decanter in a lascivious way. She gazed at Judson’s hips and smiled at the production of the desired response.

  “I’m not the only one with mysteries, love,” she giggled, seating herself on the bed. She cooed with mock disappointment as passion drained out of him suddenly.

  “What do you mean, Alice?”

  “I saw how you turned white when I mentioned the name Peggy.”

  “Like hell I did!”

  “Who is she, darling? Your mistress in Virginia? A wife you’re hiding from me? I don’t honestly care, I’m just curious—”

  His hand stabbed out. “Give me a drink.”

  “La, what a rude-tempered swain you are!” She held the decanter out of his reach. Swain, he thought. Too educated by half to be only what she pretends—

  And yet, she played the part. She spilled some of the decanter’s contents over her rouged breasts, letting the claret trickle down over her white belly. She sprawled back and uttered one of those wild, unnerving laughs that made him question whether she was of sound mind. What unhappy occurrence in the past had driven her to this unchecked, uncaring recklessness—?

  Touching herself, she whispered, “Drink your fill, love.”

  Swiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he bent toward her.

  Soon the rickety bed was creaking in steadily increasing rhythm. Alice raked him with her broken nails and cried her urgency with filthy street language. The decanter discarded on the carpet dripped the last of the claret onto Paine’s pamphlet. The book lay open to that final page bearing just seven words, forgotten now; stained by the wine—

  THE FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA

  iv

  The mild Pennsylvania winter faded under a mellow sun and the first balmy breezes off the river. Crowds on the streets grew more numerous as the temperatures moderated. Whether the Philadelphians wore the brocade of the
wealthy or the craftsman’s homespun, the livery of servants or the rags of youngsters hawking flowers or papers or fragrant bread up and down High and Chestnut Streets, chances were excellent that if they hadn’t read Tom Paine’s Common Sense, they had an opinion about it, or had heard of it at very least. As they’d heard the astonishing tidings couriers brought in from Boston:

  By night, General Washington had fortified the Dorchester Heights with cannon brought from Fort Ticonderoga by his chief of artillery, a Colonel Knox. In a short span of hours between one sunset and the next dawn, two thousand men had performed the herculean task of digging earthworks and moving the weapons into place.

  And just in time.

  General Howe had planned to break out of the city. American intelligence had picked up definite word of an impending attack. But a violent storm prevented it. Then all at once, Washington’s guns stared down on the rooftops. By the morning of the seventeenth of March, Boston was empty of the king’s soldiers. All had been loaded aboard ships and evacuated to Halifax along with at least a thousand Tory families. From Halifax, it was said, a major British thrust would be mounted.

  Among the patriot faction in Congress, there was jubilation. The Continental army, conceived and authorized by the Philadelphia body, had won its first significant victory. If not on a battleground, then in the hearts of its partisans.

  But fear mingled with the elation. Where would Howe strike? There was little doubt that he would strike. American remained “in rebellion.”

  Even more reason to declare independence, the radicals argued in the large and lovely white room of the State House. It was time to unite the thirteen colonies for a concerted effort against the Crown; a war unhampered by hesitation. A war to secure American liberty forever.

  The conservatives still shrank from it. What was needed, Judson’s fellow radicals agreed, was a resolution to force the issue.

  v

  Alice continued to visit Judson regularly. After that night in January, no more questions passed between them about the origins of the other, or about motives for the liaison.

  Judson knew his own demons and strongly suspected that Alice had hers. But he decided that trying to force those demons into the light would probably serve no purpose. Would only cause trouble, in fact, since Alice seemed set on keeping them bidden. So he took pleasure in her highly sexed nature and at the same time worked to control his drinking. The results proved satisfactory. No more warnings were issued by Tom Jefferson, who treated him cordially again, though it plainly required effort. Jefferson’s mother had died of an apoplectic seizure the end of March, and immediately, the tall Virginian began to suffer violent headaches that left his face bleached with pain.

  For Judson, life was somewhat easier. When he held Alice in his arms after an hour of lovemaking, he slept deeply, free of dreams of Seth McLean’s wife.

  The Congressional committees labored from early morning till late in the day. One session in early April ran particularly long. Judson didn’t arrive back at Windmill Street until shortly before midnight. As he opened the outer door, he saw a lamp burning in the bedroom—and Alice, standing in front of the ancient, flecked pier glass.

  He called her name from the dark parlor but got no response. He started forward, heard her voice, pulled up short.

  Quite drunk, Alice was watching herself in the mirror. She touched her bare body now and then. Tears ran down her cheeks. Her slurred words stunned and frightened him:

  “Philip? Why did you go? Why didn’t you love me enough, Philip?”

  He crept back to the outer landing. There he made sufficient noise to attract her attention before he reentered. He didn’t let on that he had seen her haunted face.

  Or heard her speaking some lost lover’s name as if her heart would break.

  vi

  From the south came alarming news. British vessels with troops aboard were cruising the coast of the Carolinas, obviously intending to launch an attack. The rebellion was no longer solely a Massachusetts problem, but an American one.

  In Congress, the radicals continued to press their case in lengthy debates. Finally North Carolina empowered its delegates to support a declaration for independence. And at a meeting of the Virginia House of Burgesses in May, that colony followed suit. Even as riders on lathered horses brought word to Philadelphia that the British flotilla had dropped anchor off Charleston, South Carolina, and that an armed strike under the joint leadership of General Clinton and the newly arrived General Cornwallis was imminent, the ranking member of Judson’s delegation rose to introduce a resolution.

  Feeling a deep sense of pride because Virginia had finally provided the means for Congress to act, Judson sat with the other delegates and watched the handsome president of the body, John Hancock. On the wall behind Hancock’s desk hung a drum, British swords and banners captured at Fort Ticonderoga. With appropriate protocol, Hancock recognized Richard Henry Lee.

  Scowls appeared on the faces of John Dickinson and his fellow conservatives. They knew what was coming. To Judson, the morning light pouring through the chamber’s tall windows had a luminous quality.

  Having been recognized, the patrician Lee began to read the resolution modeled after the one adopted in his native state:

  “The resolution embodies three propositions, the first being as follows. That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states. That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved—”

  The room was stuffy. Sunlight glared on the windowpanes, shone on the brass fittings of the chamber’s two fireplaces. Men coughed, shuffled their feet, glanced at the narrow openings at the tops of the windows as if longing for more air. The windows were kept almost completely shut at all times, to prevent the frequently loud debates from being overheard in the street.

  Despite the heat, the discomfort, Judson was suddenly aglow with a sense of purpose—of counting for something—that he had never experienced before.

  While Lee continued to read, Judson glanced at Tom Jefferson. He sat hunched over, his palms pressed against his cheeks and his fingertips covering his closed eyes. Judson assumed he was suffering from another of the headaches that had afflicted him almost constantly since his mother’s burial in Virginia. Across the chamber, Dr. Franklin kept his eye on John Adams, who sat with arms folded, taut, ready to spring up for the inevitable debate.

  To Judson, never a religious person, the June morning had power to cleanse his soul. It was, somehow, a bright and sacred occasion—

  Which rapidly degenerated into noise and rancor as proponents and opponents shouted to be recognized in order to debate the issue posed by the resolution.

  vii

  “Damme, sirs, I’ll prepare no document designed for approval by a group!” Benjamin Franklin declared three evenings later, over coffee and tea cups at The Sovereign near the State House. “I can forsee the surgery that’ll be done upon it.”

  “Ben, don’t be so confounded stubborn!” John Adams said.

  “On this, I will be stubborn. Let me tell you a story—”

  “I hope it’s pertinent,” Adams snapped.

  “Extremely. I once knew a fellow here in Philadelphia who desired to open a hatter’s shop. He put hours of energy and effort into designing and finishing the most important feature of such a shop—the signboard for attracting customers. He meticulously painted a hat on it, and the inscription ‘John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money.’ Then the poor fool consulted his friends. One said that because of the drawing, the word ‘hatter’ was superfluous. Out it went with a stroke of the brush! Someone else said that ‘makes’ should be deleted, since people who purchased hats didn’t give a damn who made ’em. ‘Ready money’ was wasteful wordage—everyone knew Thompson never extended credit. Thus his precious board was reduced to ‘John Thompson sells hats.’ Ah, said another hel
pful soul, but who will be dunce enough to believe you’d give ’em away? So all the hours of work and thought produced nothing more than a worthless piece of wood with all of its legend brushed over, save for ‘John Thompson’ and the hat drawing, which was poorly done in the first place. Spare me from editorial congresses of any sort!” Franklin concluded cheerily.

  “I’ll yield the labor—and the later discomfort produced by the disemboweling of every other phrase—to our more eloquent and hardy gentlemen of Virginia.”

  “Not me, doctor,” Judson declared when Franklin looked at him. He wished for a good drink of rum, instead of the weak tea he’d ordered. “I’m a poor writer at best.”

  “Then you, Tom.” Franklin’s curious spectacles with lenses of two different thicknesses flashed back the lamplight. “I’ll be of what help I can, but you have both the skill for the writing, and the young man’s vigor to withstand the editing.”

  Pursing his lips, Adams said, “But naturally you’ll interject a few ideas.”

  Franklin beamed. “Naturally. Correcting others is easy. What do you say, Tom?”

  Jefferson looked doubtful. From his waistcoat pocket he pulled a scrap of paper and laid it on the table. “My forte is composition of a particular and limited kind, gentlemen.”

  That produced laughter. Jefferson’s spell of headaches had passed, and he didn’t mind a joke at his own expense. His friends knew he was notorious as a maker of meticulous lists: the daily weather in Philadelphia; the delegates and where they stood on independence, day by day and week by week; or the list he’d just shown them. Leaning over, Judson saw that it itemized Jefferson’s current living expenses.

  As he put the list away, Jefferson added, “I’d really prefer not to carry the whole responsibility—”

  “Damme, we have a committee, a committee!” Adams thumped the table; “Appointed this very day—!”

  Franklin shook his head. “A committee never accomplishes anything save the wasting of time and the destruction of sound ideas. The committee can submit the draft, but one man must write it. Else we’ll never debate and vote by the first of the month.”