The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles Read online

  From the corner, the scowling Adams declared, “And since a decision has been postponed until the Congress is presented with a document, a document we must have! Ipso facto, we require an author. Like Ben, I shun that role with a passion, and defer to you, Tom.”

  “Why?” Jefferson wanted to know.

  “Reason the first—you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. There is too much opprobrium attached to the name of Massachusetts. Reason second, because of my vehemence in favor of independence, I am suspected, unpopular and considered obnoxious.” Adams sounded almost boastful, but Judson had to admit that the statement was correct. “Reason third—and the most important—you can write ten times better than I can.”

  “No more arguments,” Franklin said. “You’re elected.”

  Jefferson sighed. “Very well, I’ll try it. But there are complex questions. What about the condemnation of slavery we discussed? Though I own slaves myself, I think we should include it. But it’s certain to be disapproved by most of the southern delegates—”

  The discussion continued until almost ten, with little settled except Jefferson’s role in preparing the necessary statement for submission to the Congress. After the gathering adjourned, Judson walked slowly back to Windmill Street, savoring the balmy June air.

  He hoped Alice would visit this evening. He was anxious to tell her what had happened today: the appointment of the committee to draft a declaration of separation. He knew she wouldn’t be very interested. But his intense enthusiasm, fed by the mounting tensions in the elegant white room of the State House, had to find an outlet—

  In the deep shadow on the corner opposite his lodging-house, he stopped. On another corner, he saw a man leaning against a brick wall. A very tall man whose features were hidden by the darkness. The man wore a cloak and tricorn and seemed to be studying the windows of Judson’s bedroom—

  There, a lamp burned. Had Alice already arrived?

  Some warning instinct turned Judson’s palms sweaty. He hesitated only a moment before making up his mind. He started across the intersection toward the tall watcher—

  Who promptly wheeled and hurried off down Windmill Street.

  But not before Judson had seen the man’s cloak bell out as he passed under a streetlamp. The lamp revealed something that flashed dull yellow—

  Metal-work. On a pistol in the man’s belt.

  Alarmed, Judson climbed the shaky stairs to his door. He was suddenly extremely thirsty again.

  viii

  Alice seemed in a gay, playful mood. He hesitated to mention the watcher. He wondered whether the man had been there before.

  Judson and the girl drank, then tumbled into bed. An hour later, Alice slept restlessly in the crook of his bare arm. The fragrant air of early summer, turned even more ripe by the smell of the river, stirred the curtains.

  Somehow the lovemaking had had an unusual effect on him. Ordinarily he went right to sleep afterward. Tonight he was tense; but not unpleasantly so.

  Maybe it was the gathering momentum of events in the Congress. Earlier, while they tossed down claret, he’d described his day to Alice, ignoring her obvious boredom. He couldn’t possibly be bored. One way or another, the issue should be resolved in early July when Jefferson’s draft declaration was presented by the committee—

  Musing, he was a fraction late in hearing the stealthy footstep on the landing.

  The door crashed in, the fragile latch booted to pieces by the hulking figure silhouetted against the moonlight.

  “Stand fast in there!” a raspy voice commanded. Alice stirred. “I have a pistol.”

  And so the intruder did. It was the tall man Judson had seen earlier.

  The man took a couple of steps into the parlor. “Light a lamp.”

  Judson hesitated, cold beneath the coverlet.

  “I said light a lamp or I’ll send a ball your way!”

  Judson reached clumsily for the lamp and a sulphur match. In a moment a roseate glow lit the bedchamber. Alice rolled over on her back, muttering to herself. A section of the cover fell away, revealing her breasts.

  Still in bed but with hands braced under him, Judson watched the tall man enter the room. Servant’s livery showed under his open cloak. Lamplight gleamed on the brass-chased pistol. Judson didn’t miss the way the man’s supercilious eyes roved over Alice’s exposed body.

  “Get up and go to the inside wall,” the tall man ordered. When Judson didn’t instantly obey, the servant snarled, “Any further delay and it will be my distinct pleasure to kill you. A regrettable loss for the Continental Congress, eh, Mr. Fletcher?”

  Naked and genuinely frightened, Judson pushed back the coverlet. He walked barefoot to the place indicated.

  “It’s taken a deal of searching to find her,” the tall man remarked. “Months, in fact. We never imagined she’d go into the stews. Where you obviously took advantage of her. Ample cause for an accident, I’d say. However, if you remain quiet you’ll come to no harm.” He sounded as if he regretted the fact.

  The tall man turned and called softly toward the landing:

  “She’s here, sir. It’s safe to come in. Our Virginia gentleman is pacified for the moment.”

  A portly, elegantly dressed man of middle age almost tiptoed through the parlor. He gazed at the restless girl, horrified:

  “My God, smell the wine on her! No wonder she doesn’t wake up—” Face mottled, he swung on Judson. “By heaven, sir, if you’ve debauched her—”

  “Debauched her!” Judson guffawed. The nightmare had turned ludicrous suddenly. “She’s a tavern whore! Just who the hell are you?”

  “Careful how you address Mr. Trumbull,” advised the servant.

  “Yes, but you’ve got the better of me. Who—?”

  “Never mind. We know who you are, and that’s enough.”

  The portly man bent over at the bedside and began to chafe Alice’s wrists. She groaned, thrashed her head from side to side as if resisting the hands on her flesh. Trumbull, Trumbull, Judson’s mind repeated. He’d heard the name before. The Trumbulls of Arch Street were a prominent Tory family. The head of it—the portly man?—owned a large, prosperous ropewalk.

  “Alicia, wake up. Alicia, it’s Uncle Tobias come to take you home—”

  “Alicia?” Judson repeated. “Her name’s Alice.”

  The portly man directed another hateful glance at him. Judson realized he must have been followed for some length of time. Days; perhaps weeks. The naked girl just opening her sky-blue eyes and pushing back a strand of dirty hair was—as he’d suspected—someone other than whom she pretended to be.

  All at once Alice’s eyes focused. She sat upright as if she’d been slapped. Her voice was a mixture of terror and fury:

  “What are you doing here, Tobias? Get away—get out!”

  The portly man paled. “Alicia, cover your nakedness! What am I doing here—?” A gesture to the servant with one ringed hand. The tall man watched Alice with quick alternating glances at Judson. “We have searched Philadelphia for months to locate you! What I am doing here is taking you back to Arch Street. To your aunt, who’s been devastated—driven to her bed!—ever since you disappeared last fall. To find you working in a wharf den and consorting with a man who would destroy these colonies—!”

  The sentence sputtered out. Tory politics and the morality of the well-entrenched made Mr. Tobias Trumbull speechless with outrage. But he managed to seize Alice’s wrist again.

  “I’m where I want to be!” She jerked her hand away. “Leave me alone.”

  “She’s ailing,” Trumbull gasped to his servant. “Robbed of her senses by grief—”

  “Or by drink, and this lecher,” the tall man said, pointing the pistol at Judson.

  “Alicia, you must come home. We’ll find the best doctors—restore you to health—”

  “Get out of here!” Alice screamed in her best riverfront bellow. Then she began to curse Trumbull with oaths that
bleached his reddened cheeks. Even the tall servant looked surprised—and in that moment, Judson moved with long, swift strides.

  The servant swore, leveled his pistol. For one dreadful moment Judson stared down the muzzle. He grabbed the servant’s wrist, cracked it over his leg, caught the pistol and drove his bare knee into the tall man’s groin.

  Judson jumped back as the tall man stumbled against the wall, teeth clenching. The servant recovered, lunged—

  Only to halt as Judson took another long step back and aimed the pistol at his forehead. The servant glared.

  Judson felt harrowingly sober, somewhat ridiculous—nude with a pistol in one hand—and not a little confused:

  “Now before this charade continues, I want an explanation.” To the portly man: “You claim to be her relative—”

  “My wife is her aunt! She is Mrs. Alicia Amberly, widow of an officer in His Majesty’s service and daughter of the Earl of Parkhurst.”

  “Earl?” Judson exploded, slack-jawed from this latest surprise. Alice had covered her breasts and was watching the scene like a trapped animal. She too was sober now, he judged. But still irrational. He had seen those sky-blue eyes glaze like that before—

  He could hardly believe what he’d just learned. Still, if true, it would explain much about the girl’s strange, contradictory personality—

  Trumbull swung to Alice but pointed at Judson:

  “Do you realize what sort of man you’ve fallen in with? One of those political cheapjacks who—”

  “Now I understand why you know so much about me,” Judson interrupted. “I’ve been spied upon.”

  “She has been hunted,” the servant corrected, still furious.

  “For the most humane of reasons!” Trumbull exclaimed. “Sorrow over the death of her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Amberly, caused her to run away. Sickness of the mind made her seek refuge in—squalor, in—”

  Suddenly Alice screamed out, “I ran because my lover deserted me, you stupid old fool! My American lover. He turned his back on me—that’s why I ran—”

  Judson was horrified by the wild brightness in the girl’s eyes. He remembered Alice standing at the pier glass. Was Philip the American she’d loved—?

  Again Trumbull could barely speak: “Alicia—what you’re saying—it’s against all propriety, it’s—obscenity—a symptom of your derangement—” He lurched for her. “You will come home for care, for protection—”

  She spat in the fat Tory’s face.

  Trumbull wiped the saliva from his jowl. For the first time, he turned pleading eyes to Judson:

  “In God’s name, sir—help me!”

  Judson shook his head. “Why? The decision is Alice’s.”

  “Her name is Alicia, you arrogant bastard!”

  “The decision is still hers. You have no right to force her out of here.”

  The servant licked his lips. “He has debauched her, Mr. Trumbull. That’s obvious now.”

  “I am here by choice!” Alice screamed again.

  “Oh, God—child, please—” Trumbull was almost weeping.

  Judson lifted the pistol, gestured toward the door open on the mellow June night:

  “I think you’d better leave. At once. There is no law of which I’m aware that can compel her to go with you. I’m not holding her prisoner. So if she chooses to stay with me, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  Livid, Tobias Trumbull said, “You’ll do nothing to assist me when she obviously needs medical attention?”

  “Nothing,” Judson repeated. “Unless she agrees to it.”

  “No,” Alice whispered, fingers like claws on the coverlet.

  “I—” Trumbull swallowed. Then a bit more determination seemed to infuse his bloated face. “I do have one recourse in the face of behavior such as yours, Mr. Fletcher. Gentleman to gentleman—” The last word seethed with contempt. “I can demand satisfaction.”

  Judson’s eyes raked the wheezing, overweight man. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re not up to a duel.”

  “Please—”

  Alice was moaning now; moaning and swaying back and forth. Judson knew Trumbull was right about one thing: something in the girl’s past had damaged her mind.

  Abruptly, she burst into tears:

  “No more quarreling!” She covered her ears. “Leave me alone!”

  The awful howl turned Trumbull’s face pure white. He glared at Judson again. Behind Trumbull, the servant smiled sardonically.

  “Then you’ll deny me satisfaction?” Trumbull asked. “You’re not only a traitor but a coward, is that it?”

  Stung by the insult, Judson shouted, “Goddamn it, if that’s what you want, send your second!”

  Instantly, he regretted the outburst. It was the wrong thing to do on several counts. Trumbull was a pathetically weak-looking man. Yet accepting the challenge gave Judson a perverse satisfaction, somehow.

  The tall servant bowed. “I will call on you in due course, Mr. Fletcher. Come, Mr. Trumbull—” Gently, he took the shaking Tory’s arm. “—the matter is settled. When you’ve disposed of this gentleman, Mrs. Amberly can be brought home comfortably.”

  At the landing the servant glanced back, still amused:

  “Keep the pistol for a time, Mr. Fletcher. I’ll reclaim it after Mr. Trumbull puts an end to your life.”

  The door with its splintered latch closed.

  Judson stared at the brasswork of the gun. Sick and furious, he flung the pistol on the floor. It skidded, struck the wall.

  He sat down beside—what had they called her? Alicia Amberly? It didn’t matter. He was consumed with terror and pity. Her sky-blue eyes had an almost infantile quality now.

  One hand groped out to touch his chin. She said in a tiny, plaintive voice:

  “No fighting, darling. There’s been too much blood and hurt already, dearest. Promise me—”

  Suddenly she pitched against him, her bare breasts cold; so cold. Her hands worked at his shoulder muscles:

  “Promise me there’ll be no fighting, Philip. Promise!”

  “Alice, I—I’m not—”

  No use. She was crying again. Wild, gulping sobs that told him just how fragile her mental balance really was.

  He became aware of a noise that had intruded at the edge of his consciousness some time ago, but which he only now identified: a thudding from below. The tinker.

  A faint voice demanded to know the cause of the uproar.

  “Nothing wrong,” Judson shouted over Alice’s hysterical sobs. “It’ll be quiet in a moment—”

  “—tolerate no unseemly behavior in my house!” The voice faded.

  Judson stroked the girl’s filthy hair and stared over her shoulder at the pistol lying near the baseboard. Several times he repeated the name by which he knew her. She didn’t answer or even respond, only kept kneading his muscles and crying like a sick child.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Thirteen Clocks

  AFTER THE DEPARTURE of the surprise visitors, Judson threw on a robe and persuaded Alice to drink a bit of the only remedy he had to hand—claret. She held the cup between her work-reddened hands, gulping greedily. She shuddered. Some of the glassy quality seemed to leave her eyes.

  Mightily relieved, Judson saw that she recognized him, and her surroundings.

  “Alice—” Though the name seemed awkward in light of Trumbull’s revelation, he couldn’t use the other with comfort. “—is that man really your aunt’s husband?”

  Her bowed head hid her face. “Yes.”

  “And you ran off from his home in Arch Street?”

  “I was tending my husband who was—wounded while serving in Boston. He died and—please, no more, Judson,” she finished in a whisper.

  “But he said you were an earl’s daughter. Is that true?”

  “It was.” Her mouth twisted. “Once.”

  “Who was Philip?”

  “Stop!” she cried, hurling the cup at his head.

  He dodged.
The cup hit the wall, shattered. Once again the tinker thumped his ceiling and demanded quiet. Judson shouted ill-tempered assurances, then started pacing the bedroom. Alice had bundled herself in the coverlet as if she were extremely cold.

  He saw how everything Trumbull said could be possible. The lines of her face were fine, delicate; or had been, before dissipation blurred them—

  Alice stroked her arm. The flesh was prickled with tiny bumps. “Judson?”

  He faced her, still dismayed by the information that had put a whole new perspective on their relationship. She’d meant next to nothing to him until the moment he discovered who she was, and what had driven her to her present state. Now he felt a new, deep concern. With it, he felt confusion about what to do.

  “I heard a little of what they said, Judson. Talk of dueling—”

  “That stupid uncle of yours wants satisfaction.”

  “Don’t fight him—” She sprang naked from the bed, clutching at him. “Swear you won’t! I’ve brought on too much ruin already—”

  He caressed her hair. “Alice, I haven’t much choice.”

  “You have the choice of saying no!”

  Judson shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because—” He could offer only one rather sour explanation. “—that’s the way it is among gentlemen.”

  Although it was a truthful response, it seemed unsatisfactory. A moment later he understood why. He dared not admit the real truth. Deep in him, something wanted to lash out and maim—

  He was ashamed and vaguely excited at the same time. Christ, how despicable he was!

  “Then you won’t promise—?” she began.

  “The best I can do is try to get the poor fellow to reconsider and withdraw his challenge.”

  “If you face him, would—would you kill him?”

  “He’s fat, slow and twice my age. Yes, I think I would.”

  She stared into his eyes a moment longer, then limped back to the bed, covered herself and burrowed deep into the pillow. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed. The sound of her voice reminded him of Peggy McLean’s on the night of the slave uprising.