The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles Page 17

  He poured more claret for himself—that seemed the only antidote to this muddled situation—and crawled into bed with her.

  He pulled her close, tried to comfort her. Gradually her hysterical crying moderated and she fell asleep. Somewhere toward the hour when the stars paled, he did too.

  When he awoke after sunup, his head aching, she was gone.

  Every trace of clothing—every indication that she’d been in the room had disappeared, except two:

  A strand of hair he found clinging to the still-warm bedclothes. And the tall servant’s pistol gleaming in a ray of morning sun.

  ii

  News arriving in Philadelphia during June’s balmy weather heartened the patriots. The British flotilla at Charleston had been repulsed and heavily damaged, thanks to the accurate, steady fire of the Americans entrenched in a fort of palmetto logs on Sullivan’s Island in the harbor.

  And members of Congress began to converse in whispers about Roderigue Hortalez et Cie., a mysterious private trading company just organized in France. The company had one express purpose: to speed shipments of war materiel, including barrel after barrel of vitally needed black powder, to the colonies.

  Some speculated that King Louis XVI, no friend of Britain, had callously seized an opportunity to strike at his country’s traditional enemy via the Americans. If that were the real reason for the abrupt birth of the peculiar firm, no one loyal to the colonial side would quarrel. Dr. Franklin reported to a few confidants that similar covert assistance might be forthcoming under the auspices of Charles III of Spain.

  But what heartened the patriots most was a hope:

  If France had moved with such dispatch to aid the Americans in secret, perhaps, with careful diplomacy, the French might be persuaded to openly ally themselves with the rebels. Franklin thought it not impossible at all. And he expressed complete willingness to take advantage of the centuries-old European rivalry.

  But whatever the outcome in that area, the long-term prospects for the war looked a shade less grim now that Hortalez et Cie. was operating under the personal direction of a most unlikely manager—the author and court wit, Beaumarchais.

  Judson absorbed the news in the corridors of the State House, or in whispered conferences in the great white chamber that grew more and more sultry as the weather warmed. The windows still remained almost completely shut as the Congress labored on, awaiting the completion of the draft declaration by the committee.

  Concern for Alice had somewhat lessened Judson’s interest in the cause. He was drinking heavily again. He spent a large part of his time searching the city for the girl. But she had left the waterfront tavern where she worked and dropped completely out of sight.

  The days dragged. There was no communication from the Trumbull household. Then Francis Lightfoot Lee took Judson aside and politely informed him that the challenge by the Tory ropewalk owner had become a choice item of gossip in the city. On behalf of Judson’s friends among the delegates, Lee hoped—trusted—some settlement less scandalous than a public duel could be worked out.

  Judson promised to do what he could. He penned a careful note which he dispatched to Arch Street. In the note, offered to entertain Mr. Trumbull’s reconsideration of the challenge. A day later, Judson’s landlord handed him an answer when he returned from the State House.

  He questioned the landlord:

  Yes, the person who had delivered the reply was tall; and damned arrogant for a servant. Judson broke the elaborate wax seal and unfolded the parchment. He read the note, then crumpled it and threw it away.

  Far from accepting Judson’s offer, Mr. Tobias Trumbull re-stated his demand for satisfaction more strongly than ever. The unfortunate Mrs. Amberly could not be located anywhere. The Trumbulls feared for her safety—and blamed him. Therefore Judson would please take steps to choose a time, a place and the weapons by which they would settle their quarrel.

  iii

  In the middle of the final week of June, there were signs of incredibly hot weather soon to come. On the afternoon Judson called at the rooms Tom Jefferson rented in a large brick house at High and Seventh Streets, the air had a hazy gray quality, minus any trace of wind.

  The normally tidy parlor which Judson had visited on several occasions was a litter of crumpled foolscap. The young Virginian sat by a window, his beloved viola and some compositions by Purcell and Vivaldi gathering dust on a table nearby. One of Jefferson’s arms was draped laconically over the back of his chair. A quill dangled from his inky fingers.

  Across the room, Dr. Franklin occupied a settee. He acknowledged Judson’s entrance with a cordial nod, then poked a finger at the sheet he’d been scanning:

  “Tom, I find this wordy—‘we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.’ Wouldn’t ‘self-evident’ serve as well?”

  “Yes, that’s good, scratch it in,” Jefferson answered. He sounded tired and indifferent. Franklin picked up another quill, dipped it in a well and made the correction.

  Noticing Judson’s rather awkward pose at the parlor door, Jefferson laid aside the portable writing-box of highly polished wood that had been resting on his lap. He had designed the miniature desk himself, folding top and all. He lifted his long body from the chair, stretched, yawned.

  “I only want to complete the damned thing and get on with the debate,” he said. “Will you join me in tea this warm afternoon, Judson?”

  “If you have it, I’d prefer something stronger.”

  Once more that vaguely accusing expression flickered across the Virginian’s face, on which summer sunlight had brought out a considerable number of freckles. But he nodded politely, poured a glass of Madeira, his forehead glistening with sweat. Then Jefferson helped himself to tea from a pot.

  Franklin tossed aside the foolscap sheet, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, massaged the bridge of his nose:

  “I would say we are approaching a finished draft.” To the other man, with a smile: “What brings you here, Judson? Some additional thoughts for Tom to put in?”

  “No, it’s a personal matter.”

  “Well, before you launch into it, have you any final opinion about including a passage referring to slavery?” He indicated the discarded sheet. “Tom’s still pushing for it.”

  Judson’s brows hooked up as he sipped. The Madeira eased his edgy feeling. “You’re talking about a passage condemning slavery?”

  Jefferson nodded. “An instrument of oppression permitted, not to say encouraged, by His Majesty.”

  “It’s going a bit far to blame the king for the blackbird trade, isn’t it? He may permit it—but we practice it.”

  Jefferson stared out the window at the clatter of High Street. “Aye, a point. And my own hands—and my conscience—are dirty on that score.”

  “If we include it, I predict the declaration will be voted down,” Judson said with conviction. “Dickinson and his friends are fighting us for every vote. Even stated in temperate language, an anti-slavery clause would sink us for good.”

  “I loathe the trade,” Franklin said. “I organized the first anti-slavery club in the whole of this city. But I agree with your assessment, Judson.”

  “I’m still not prepared to strike it out at this stage,” Jefferson warned them.

  Franklin’s eyes narrowed. “Nor ever?”

  “Only if it becomes crucial to success or failure.”

  Heaving his bulk up from the settee, Franklin mopped his neck with a kerchief and picked up his coat of brown velour. He draped it over his arm, saying:

  “It will, Tom, never fear, it will. Gentlemen, I’ll leave you to your private business.”

  As Franklin departed, Judson helped himself to another drink. He felt sure the Pennsylvania scholar knew why he’d called—and had deliberately absented himself from the discussion. The entire Congress knew about Judson’s predicament by now.

  “Tom, I’ll come right to it. I’m going to face Trumbull.”

  “Didn’t Francis Lee speak wi
th you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And urge you to reconsider?”

  “I sent Trumbull a letter agreeing to forget the matter. In reply, he insisted we go ahead. We’ve arranged it for the third of July, in the morning, someplace up the Delaware. I come to you as a friend, Tom. I know very few people in Philadelphia, and I need a second.”

  Unhappily, Tom Jefferson ran a hand over his clubbed red hair. With a look that sent Judson’s hopes plummeting, he answered:

  “In other circumstances, I might do it. Now—it’s impossible.”

  “Because of the reasons you mentioned back in January? The moral outrage it might cause—?”

  Jefferson agreed with another nod. “You realize what may happen if you go ahead, don’t you, Judson? President Hancock is well aware of the trouble. He has again made his feelings—his strong feelings—known to me. If you persist, in all likelihood you’ll be quietly asked to withdraw from the Virginia delegation. I’m afraid I’d have to support that request. I’m sorry, Judson, but I fail to see how some tavern trollop is worth—”

  White-lipped, Judson cut him off: “We needn’t debate the details.”

  “Yes, we very much need to debate them. Damn it, Judson, no one among your close associates—least of all those of us from your home colony—can understand why you let yourself be drawn into such a shabby business. A futile, purposeless encounter over a woman who—”

  “Tom, that’s enough.”

  “On the contrary! You’re being obstinate. You act damned near driven to this!”

  Judson turned away. “Maybe I am.”

  “Well, it’s a shameful waste. One day you’re in the thick of things, working, debating, using your considerable intellect—the next, you’re off swilling down so much strong drink you make Franklin look like a temperance lecturer! I puzzle over it, Judson.”

  Cold-eyed, Judson said, “Why bother?”

  “Because—in a short time—” An eloquent shrug. “—you’ve become a friend. I try and try to understand what flogs you to these excesses—”

  “So do I,” Judson replied with a bitter smile,

  “Have you found any answers?”

  “Only one—and that not very satisfactory. I’ve concluded that in this world, certain men are stronger than others. The weaker ones are unable to accommodate themselves to normal behavior—and finding themselves not fitting the pattern, they’re destroyed by the situation. Or destroy themselves—”

  “Are you sure that’s not merely the wine talking?”

  “No.” He tossed off the rest of the Madeira. “My father. On numerous occasions.”

  “It’s idiotic to surrender to that sort of defeatist philosophy.”

  “I’m a misfit, Tom. I always will be. Recognizing that, I’ve at least carried out one of my father’s wishes.” Judson’s eyes grew bitterly amused. “He cautioned me against ever marrying, since if I did, I’d surely pass along my waywardness to generations of helpless, suffering grandchildren—”

  “Nonsense. You’re indulging in self-pity.”

  Judson smiled again, this time with utter charm. “But that goes with being a misfit.”

  Jefferson refused to be diverted: “If we bring about independency, Judson—if we can finish this war soon—”

  “A pair of mighty tall ifs.”

  “Granted, granted. But think of what’s to be won! All the chances you have to break out of this—this pattern you claim you despise—”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you have any notion of the size of this continent, Judson? We’re only crouching on the edge! It stretches from the Floridas to Hudson’s Bay, and beyond. Out west, past the Ohio, the French fur traders have traveled a river that beggars the imagination! The Sieur de La Salle named it the Colbert but the Indians call it Big River. Misi Sipi.” He was striding now, caught up in his vision.

  “We’re getting off the subject, Tom.”

  “No, no, we’re not! This land mass is huge! Bountiful as well. Who knows the full extent of the wealth it holds between that big river and the Pacific? I tell you the Spanish are doing their best to learn the answers—with their presidios and missions in what they christened the New Philippines. Imagine if even a portion of that territory were ours! If the foreign flags came down—the lions and castles of Leon and Castile flying right now in the southwest—the area they’re coming to call Tejas—think of the opportunity for settlement! Agriculture and commerce! The general increase of human knowledge! All I’m saying to you, Judson, is that with such vast lands still contested in the west, no man should feel hemmed in by his immediate surroundings. By the Lord, I don’t intend to be. Before I die, I mean to see a scientific expedition walk that whole wilderness to the Pacific!”

  After a moment of silence, Judson said, “I understand a little of what you’re saying. One of my good friends has already traveled past the Blue Ridge. Sometimes I’ve thought I belonged out there with him—”

  “Who is your friend?”

  “George Clark.”

  “George Rogers Clark?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He’s already made a distinguished name scouting with the Virginia militia. But leaving the opportunity in the west aside for a moment—”

  “Yes, because the idea’s unrealistic. I’ll never get there.”

  Judson’s emphatic statement checked Jefferson before he could begin another sentence. His enthusiasm vanished, replaced first by a look of regret, then by an expression faintly stern and righteous:

  “Very well, that may be so. But no matter what his condition or location, a man grown to adulthood is at least called to exercise self-control.”

  “That’s another lecture I’ve received from my father.”

  Jefferson gnawed his lip. Then:

  “In short, you won’t try to moderate your behavior? Keep your eye on greater possibilities than what’s up a skirt or down in the bottom of a glass?”

  “I try.” A pause. “I always fail.”

  “Does that mean you won’t reconsider the Trumbull matter?”

  “At this late hour—I can’t.”

  “Not even in view of the probable consequences? Hancock will almost certainly insist you withdraw and return to Virginia.”

  “Let him.”

  “Judson, what are you trying to prove about yourself?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “To whom are you trying to demonstrate your independence? Your manhood—?”

  Judson set the Madeira glass down, noisily. “I’m in no mood for subtle discourses—”

  “Nothing subtle about it,” Jefferson waved. “I see you as you can’t see yourself. Sometimes you permit your essential nature to shine through. A good mind, moral courage of the highest order. Then you seem to lose sight of those qualities. Or quell them deliberately. I think only a man overcome with loathing for himself acts that way. You’ve mentioned your father—is he the one you’re constantly—?”

  “Good day, Tom.” A muscle in his neck bulging, Judson started out.

  “Wait! Listen to me! You’ll destroy yourself, trying to prove something that doesn’t need prov—”

  The slam of the door shut out the rest.

  Judson rushed down the stairs toward High Street, noisy with wagons rolling in from the country laden with farm produce. The astute Mr. Tom Jefferson had struck into depths Judson didn’t care to plumb. Very uncomfortable depths—

  As he walked through the hazy gray afternoon, ignoring several stares directed his way—the forthcoming duel was a town scandal—an image of Alice loomed in his mind.

  The Trumbulls had driven her to her pathetic state. That angry conviction was validation enough for what he meant to do.

  The image of Alice dissolved into another. His father—

  Yes, Jefferson had struck much too close to the truth. Whatever the causes, he was poisoned by a frequent, almost wholly uncontrollable desire to defy convention, or any authority; to cho
ose one road when he knew another was the accepted way—

  Who was to blame? As if it mattered any longer! Or would change anything—

  Instead of returning to committee session, he turned in at the first available ale shop and lost himself in the airless gloom, safe for a while from the reality of the world outside. It wasn’t long before his inner world was similarly deadened and remote.

  iv

  Thunder shook the State House. Bursts of lightning glared like infernal fire let up from the bowels of the earth. The storm ripped across Philadelphia, slamming rain against the tightly shut windows and reverberating through the chamber where John Hancock again occupied the presidential dais.

  The air in the room was boiling. Judson’s face streamed with sweat. He swatted at one of the mammoth horseflies that had somehow invaded the chamber to bedevil the perspiring men listening to John Dickinson defend his position:

  “—and I therefore cannot in conscience support the resolution yesterday debated by this Congress sitting as a committee of the whole with Mr. Harrison as chairman—”

  The fuzzy-sounding voice irritated Judson. He was starting to sober up, and didn’t feel at all well. He wanted to leave, find a tavern, quench his thirst.

  Exactly what day was it? He’d lost track—

  With a jolt he realized it was the second of July. Tomorrow, unseconded, he’d face Trumbull. Perhaps the steady approach of the day of the duel was what had kept him in a constant stupor for the past week. That, and no word about Alice; she had utterly vanished.

  He blinked, feeling more bilious by the moment. He changed the position of his chair noisily. He was aware of the disapproving stares of the Lees and George Wythe at desks nearby. Even Jefferson, nervously fingering a copy of his completed draft declaration, appeared less than friendly. Dickinson’s damnably boring voice droned on.

  Judson slouched, dull-headed, callously indifferent. To hell with all of them. He had no business in this lofty gathering. He was exactly what Angus Fletcher had always said he was. A wastrel—