David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

The boy looked very much like Cynthia, with his fair hair and even features and a nose the image of hers. He looked like Pearson too, particularly in the eyes, though his were red with fear and confusion, not his father’s diabolical mania.

Mrs. Pearson stood. “Jeremy,” she said.

“Mama,” he said, very softly, seeming both tired and terrified.

“I told you to leave,” Pearson hissed at me.

I rose to my feet slowly, careful to observe everything with crisp clarity. I saw the whip in Pearson’s hand, I saw the fear in the boy’s eyes, I saw the faded burn mark on the boy’s wrist, and the matching scar on his mother’s. Someone was clearly fond of burning wrists.

“I shall leave the moment I know all is in order here.”

“The ordering of my house is not your concern. My whore of a wife has bewitched the servants. They cannot confront you, for all are injured or frightened or unable to be found. I have therefore taken the trouble to awaken the boy. I shan’t threaten to hurt you, Saunders, since I hear you are too pathetic to mind a sound beating, but the child is another matter. If you are not gone from this house in one minute, I shall whip the boy bloody.”

“He is your son,” I whispered.

“And so I may do as I like.”

Cynthia was pale and trembling, and she held out her hands ever so slightly, from stiff vertical arms. Tears fell down her cheek. She bit her lip. I thought she must be a madwoman by now, gone into some lunatic maternal world of fear for her child, but she looked at me, and when she spoke, her voice was steady and strong and rational. “You must go.” The last word came out smooth and easy, not a command, as in telling me I must leave at once, but as a qualifier. I must leave in this particular instance. The future was another matter.

“Well,” I said to Pearson, “don’t mutilate your heir on my account. I’ve things to do, you know, taverns to visit. The life of a drunkard traitor. Very busy.”

“See that you do busy yourself with your wasted life,” said Pearson. “You were far better off vomiting in alleys than troubling yourself in the affairs of gentlemen. You are too unrefined to travel in the circles you covet.”

“It is interesting you should say that,” I answered, “for when I spoke of that very topic to Miss Emily Fiddler-I mean the aunt, of course, not the niece, for there is no talking to that one, as I need not tell you. In any event, do you know what your good friend Miss Fiddler mentioned to me about the refined circles in which you yourself-”

I made it no further, for Pearson grabbed his son’s tousled hair and yanked hard and mercilessly. The boy let out a horrible cry of pain, and silent tears, to match his mother’s, poured down his face. His face then turned dark and angry, a juvenile reflection of his father’s, but there was more there too. A silent resolve to endure his suffering in silence.

“You will leave my house!” Pearson did not cry or shout or bellow. He screamed. It was the voice of lunacy, of a man who has no sense of proportion or propriety, and it terrified me, for I had no alternative but to abandon these innocents to his insanity.

Then came another voice.

“I am so sorry. I did not mean to intrude.”

We all stood, suspended in time for a moment, as though this mad tableau were something deeply private and personal that had been exposed. The voice had come from the doorway, but it was no servant’s voice. I turned to look at the figure, pretty and perfectly composed, her red lips pursed in the most wicked of smiles, as though she knew exactly what she saw, exactly what she did. No argument, no violence, no reason could have diffused Pearson’s rage. But shame was another matter. She understood the power of shame and wielded it like the whip in Pearson’s hand. It was the widow Joan Maycott.

“Iam so sorry to trouble you,” said Mrs. Maycott, now acting as though she had ventured into nothing more troubling than a casual acting out of a scene from a Jacobean revenge play. “I spent rather more time with the cook than I had intended, and upon hearing voices I thought I would take my leave once more.”

Pearson muttered something that might have been “Yes, yes, very good,” or something to that effect. Then he let go of his son’s hair.

“Well, then, I go. Captain Saunders, I have a coach outside, if you require transport. It is considerably colder than it was earlier.”

I looked over at Cynthia, who offered me the slightest of nods. She knew her husband better than ever I could, and I would have to trust her as to whether my absence or presence would offer her greater security. For the moment, she seemed to believe herself best served by my departure.

I stepped forward, passed Pearson and his poor, terrified child, and stood by Mrs. Maycott. Then I turned around once more. “One of these uncooperative servants you mentioned will give me my coat and hat, I trust.”

“At the door,” Pearson hissed, a voice like air escaping a bladder.

I hardly cared about my coat and hat-but I had turned to take one last measure of Mrs. Pearson. Her husband was facing me and could not see her face, could not see her red lips as she silently mouthed her parting words: Help me.

Once outside, I saw that it had, indeed, grown brutally cold during my time in the Pearson house. I was used to the cold, and it was not such a long walk to my rooms, but I could hardly refuse the offer from Mrs. Maycott. I thanked her once more and helped her into the coach, and we began to ride through the empty night streets, populated only by the watch and drunks and whores and, mysteriously, a man driving a small group of goats, possibly not his own. I was not entirely certain what to say, but Mrs. Maycott saved me from awkwardness.

“I do not envy you,” she said, “being caught in the storm of Mr. Pearson’s fury. I have heard more than once from Mrs. Pearson of his temper, but I never before witnessed it.”

“Nor I. I wish I never had, for I know not what I can do.”

“I have no doubt you will do what you must.”

“And what is that?”

“You cannot leave that lady and her children at the hands of that beast.”

“There is nothing I can do for her. I can offer her no refuge, and she would not take it were I capable. Imagine the damage to her reputation. No one will care what Pearson has done, only that his wife has left him.”

To this she said nothing, as though I were too foolish to engage seriously.

I thought it a good idea to raise another subject. “You mentioned the other night that you know Duer. Do you understand the nature of his business connections to Pearson?”

“No, but I do not know him well. It is, however, possible that it may have something to do with the Million Bank. That is one of Duer’s new ventures, and it takes up much of his time at present.”

“The Million Bank. Do you mean Pearson is going to invest in it?”

“Very likely,” said Mrs. Maycott.

“So he will take the money he borrowed from the Bank of the United States to help launch a rival bank?”

“It is possible,” she said. “Why do you care? You said before that you work for Hamilton, but I know that’s not true. You were merely attempting to rouse Mr. Pearson. And yet I cannot help but wonder if you are a supporter of Hamilton and his bank.”

“You sound so astonished. Would it trouble you if I were?”

“We live in astonishing times,” she said, and her tone suggested she was not answering my question at all, but one she wished I had asked. “We have witnessed the most remarkable revolution the world has ever known, and the establishment of a republican government that has the chance to be the glory of mankind. How can I not be troubled by something that threatens to undermine our national good?”