David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“I shall listen to your offer,” Andrew said, “and if I think it sound I shall consider it. I am not going to agree to any theoretical proposal. To do so would be foolish.”

Tindall pounded the butt of his fowling piece against the floor several times, like a judge banging his gavel. “Enough of your insolence. I ain’t got the time for it. Here is what I offer you, though you’re fortunate I still give you the chance to take it. I wish that Mrs. Maycott may attend me here once a week, and maybe stay the night. ’Tis no great thing; it’s an insubstantial thing, if you know that word. In exchange, a substantial thing may be yours.”

Andrew remained silent a moment longer. I could not imagine that anyone faced with this blunt and diabolical demand would surrender to it, that there were men and women so low in the world, and in their sense of their own worth, that they would agree to these terms as though they had agreed to the price of a pound of flour. Images of the blunted and weathered inhabitants of Pittsburgh came to my mind, and I wondered if these people were capable of agreeing to anything at all. It seemed to me that, once so defeated by life, they would do nothing more than submit the way a lamb submits to be shorn.

Andrew stepped toward the colonel, and so bold was his determination that the old man set down both deeds and tightened his grip upon his fowling piece. “The proposal you make concerns my wife. Why, then, do you present it to me?”

Tindall at first did not stir and then he cleared his throat. With his free hand, the one not clutching the gun, he stroked the stubble on his chin.

He let out a little bark of air, something like a laugh, I suppose, in the same way that a drab brown moth is something like a resplendent butterfly. “How modern of your husband. What say you, Mrs. Maycott?”

Andrew looked at me, but I did not meet his gaze. Instead, I smiled at Tindall as though he were a peddler who had not yet shown us his best wares. “I am sure the plot of land for which we have contracted will prove sufficient.”

“You and Duer may have cheated us,” Andrew said, “and you may relish that fact, but that does not make us your slaves nor you our master. We shall turn dross into gold and never depend upon the favors of men like you.”

Andrew walked back to me, took my arm, and led me toward the door.

“You may not later change your mind,” Tindall said. “I won’t have my tenants switching their plots. It would cause”-he waved his hand about in the air-“discontent.”

“I am not your tenant,” Andrew said, turning to him. “I have purchased this land, inferior though it may be, outright. You and I are both landholders and so equals.”

“And perhaps we would be if you owned the land. I do find it sad, so very sad, when low people who know not their way around a contract sign one without first inquiring of a lawyer. You are, I am told, a carpenter by trade, yes? You would despise someone, I think, who attempted to construct an armoire out of his own imaginings of how it must be made without seeking experienced advice. You have not purchased the land. You have purchased the right to occupy the land and pay me ground rent.”

I looked at Andrew. Could it be true? Ground rents were generally inexpensive, and held for very long periods of time. Ours, I would later discover, as was typical of the sort, was for ninety-nine years. Each quarter for that period we were to pay our landlord ten dollars, rather expensive for a ground lease, let alone one in so remote a location. So long as we paid, we retained possession and could sublease or even sell the right to occupy, though at the end of the ninety-nine years, ownership would revert to the landlord.

I now saw the extent to which we had been deceived. We had given up all we had, not to own land but to occupy and pay rent upon a worthless plot of forest. To make it yield value, and so be able to raise the money needed to pay our rent and not lose our property, we would have to clear the land and increase its worth. Tindall and Duer had discovered a way to profit while turning worthless holdings into a valuable estate. And surely we were not the first. Others had been cheated thus, for there was a whole community of victims under Tindall’s command. None who had been cheated had found redress, for Tindall and Duer continued their scheme, and that could only mean one thing: that the law, the principles of the republic for which Andrew had fought, had already been abandoned. The men back east could not or would not protect us.

“You’ll be taken to your plot,” Tindall said. “You may have occasion to wish you had accepted my offer. As I said, it will not come again. There is, however, the matter of quarterly rent, and if you find that you cannot pay, and you risk losing your land, we may then talk again.”

It was as though he were a candle that had been blown out. He remained in his chair, his weapon in his hand, but his eyes went cold and empty, and I had the strange feeling that Andrew and I were now alone. We opened the door and departed without escort.

Wearing tolerably clean clothes, washed in my basin and then dried by the fire, I slipped quietly down the stairs early the next morning. The sun had just come up, and if I could avoid the serving woman, I had no doubt I could escape the house without enduring awkward conversation with its inmates. The memory of my encounter with Mrs. Lavien still felt as raw and vulnerable as a new wound. It was not simply the shame of having been exposed, of having treated so shabbily my hosts’ kindness, it was the notion that these antics were somehow alien to me now. Something had changed. My new proximity to Cynthia Pearson’s life made my behavior unseemly even to myself, and Mrs. Lavien’s cruel words still rang in my ears.

My plan was a simple one: I would obtain a few coins from a careless gentleman on the street, take my breakfast in a tavern, and meet Leonidas as planned. When at drink, I can be clumsy, but that morning I moved as quietly as a cat on the hunt. No floorboards creaked under my weight, no stairs groaned at my descent. Even so, when I reached the ground floor, Mr. Lavien leaned forward in his chair in the sitting room. He saw my position-hands out for better balance, feet at sharp angles to test the stairs for weaknesses that would betray me-and met it with one of his thin, vaguely predatory smiles. I had accepted his hospitality, allowed him to feed me, serve me drink, introduce me to his family. I sent him out into the cold night to hunt down my slave. In return I had attempted to seduce his wife, and now he sat grinning at me, looking like a serpent before it lashes out at a cornered and frozen mouse.

“Shall we go take some breakfast?” he asked.

In a nearby tavern, crowded with laboring men in early morning silence, I sat next to Lavien at a poor table-too close to the door, too far from the fire. He ate buttered bread and pickled eggs. I made an attempt at some bread as well, but concentrated more upon the beer.

I took a deep drink. “I suppose you want to speak about the incident last night.”

“What, the one with my wife? What have you to say?”

I let out a sigh. “Look, I apologize for attempting to take liberties.”

He shrugged. “It is no more than I expected. Your reputation in such matters precedes you, and there was never any danger of your doing anything but becoming embarrassed, which I see has occurred.”

“You don’t care that I might have seduced your wife?”

“Oh, I would have cared about that. It is not what happened. You thought you might seduce my wife, and that is another matter, for in reality you could have achieved nothing.”