And then? He had not thought it through. When he saw her, perhaps he’d know.
He was halfway down his second, somewhat sour pint – Did no one in this damned land know how to brew a decent ale? – when she appeared, just as the bell in the nearby church tolled midnight. Anton Hervey was with her, cloaked against the weather. André was merely in his shirt and waistcoat, shivering while he made his farewells from the doorway.
She leaves him, Jack thought, and the young gentleman escorts her home. And I will see her there! I will have an answer to her behaviour this night. As Jack was pulling on his greatcoat, he saw André close the door, Louisa take her companion’s arm, and the two begin to walk up the street. Yet as Jack finished his last button and reached for his hat, he saw them halt no more than fifty yards away, just past an alley entrance, under the wooden shutter of an ironmongery. He watched Hervey kiss her gloved hand, then retrace his steps, walk past the house, around a corner. Then, at the same moment the Ensign disappeared, someone else emerged from the dark mouth of the alley – a man in a black cloak and hood, this pulled down so far that only his jaw was exposed. He took Louisa’s arm, and the two began to hurry away down the street.
Of course. As Jack hurried from the the tavern, he cursed himself for every kind of an idiot. Miss Reardon would be preserving her reputation! She could not stay with André – for that was whom the man in the black cloak undoubtedly was – not in a houseful of officers. They were not going to her lodgings, not with her mother there. They were going to a third place where they were unknown, where their secret, and her honour, would be safe.
Now he was in this deep, he had to know the limit of it. He would follow them wherever they went … And then what? A duel? Playing the role he’d despised Tarleton for on another snowy ground? Or kill them both, then fall upon his own sword? ‘Put out the light, and then put out the light.’
He did not know what to do. So he followed the couple ever deeper into the tangle of ill-lit, filthy streets that made up this poorer quarter of Philadelphia. Still did not know when he stood opposite the house they’d entered, the one with the notice on the door that said, ‘Clean Rooms – One Shilling and Sixpence.’ It was only when a lamp was lit in one of those ‘clean rooms’, when a grubby drape was pulled over its window, when he did finally know, that he remembered something; and remembering, he turned instantly, putting his back to the lowered curtain and the shadows moving behind it, went down the street, almost the way he had come. Not quite. Her lodgings did not quite lie the way he had come.
He had to know how much of a fool he was. And what he’d remembered was that Louisa kept a diary.
She had taken over a fled Rebel’s small but well-appointed house, almost a cottage, in a quiet street filled with many similar ones, not far from the theatre. Jack had been of a party that had escorted her home one night but as far as he knew, no one had ever been admitted inside – her mother’s illness, somewhat hysterical in nature, did not allow for visitors. She had said that Nancy, her maid, had been allowed to join her from Saratoga and also lived there. She had hired two other servants locally but these had their own dwellings and left at day’s end.
An invalid and a servant. With luck, both would be asleep by now and in their own rooms.
The new-fallen snow made a soft surface for his boots; no gravel to betray him, just an almost inaudible squeak. He circled the house twice. A lamp above the front door set for the mistress’s return was the only light, but the moon, near full, darted among the snow clouds and Jack could see his way tolerably well, indeed could wish it a little darker for his purpose. But the rear of the house had an overhanging ledge that put the door and windows on the lower floor in sufficient shadow. Like many rear entrances the owners had not thought it necessary to furnish that door with expensive glass. It was quartered in wood panels and one had been recently replaced, though not yet treated for the weather. Taking out his penknife Jack used the blade to scrape away the softer wood around each steel tack. It took some minutes before the panel came out. Reaching in, he blessed both the negligence of a maid who had left a key in a lock and his longer than average arms that could reach the bolts above and below.
It was even darker inside and he had no wish to stumble around. So he slipped out again, went to the front of the house, and removed the oil lamp glowing there. Back in the kitchen – for that was what the lamp revealed it to be – he took off his hat and gloves, thrusting both into the coat’s ample pockets. Then he slowly opened the kitchen door.
There was little to disturb the silence, aside from the creaking of the house in the wind, the ticking of a clock down a corridor. He followed it, noted the hour. Not even half past midnight. Louisa and André would be … about their business for some time yet. She is worth the hours, he thought bitterly.
He became angrier, bolder. A dedicated listening at the few doors gave no sound of sleepers within, so he tried them all. The rooms beyond consisted of a water closet, a handsome dining-room and parlour, and a room with a chaise longue, with chairs laid out as if for a party. There was a desk, but the drawers were all unlocked and empty, save for some playing cards and two old newspapers. He had no choice but to mount the stairs to the first floor where the occupants of the house had to be sleeping.
There were three doors up there. Again, he listened at the first, again heard nothing, so he carefully turned the handle and discovered a cupboard only, filled with blankets and basins. The second door opened on a small bedroom with just a bed and an armoire, in the drawers of which were some clothes, maid’s pinafores, and headscarves. It was Nancy’s room but without a Nancy in it. Blessing whichever soldier was occupying the maid’s time, Jack moved to the third room, the one, he now presumed, that Louisa must share with her mother. He had no wish to startle an old and infirm lady, but he hoped that what Louisa had told him of her was still true – she took a thousand drops of laudanum a night and could not be woken from their effect till long after dawn. All he had to do was slip in, find the diary, slip out …
The door creaked, making him wince. Nevertheless he pushed it full open, held the lamp into the room …
No one. There was no one there. The bed’s coverlet was pulled down, as if it expected its occupant. Nancy had done her work before taking her pleasure; a small fire glowed behind an iron guard. But of the invalid mother there was not a sign.
He had no time to worry about that. Pushing the door to, he began searching; such an intimate treasure had to be well hidden. So it took him near two minutes before he found it, just where a diary should be – on the blotter on the desk, a pot of ink to its right, a metal-tipped dipping pen in a stand to its left.
He held the book up. It was the same Louisa had taken on their journey, a thick tome, wider than his spread fingers and longer. It was unusual, for it had soft covers, bulging as if filled with down that was trapped between the green linen covering and the card of the book proper. A golden clasp locked its middle, no key in its tiny hole. He turned the journal this way and that, not opening it yet. In fact, now he had it in his hands, he found the urge that had brought him to it had almost vanished. What could be written inside to make him feel better? That she had loved him once perhaps and her feelings for him had died, that he had been replaced in her affections by another? Or that she never had, that it was just one of many such amours she used to while away her time?
He had his anger back. The lock provided no resistance to it.
The hand was bold, the blue letters slanting to the right across the thick, cream paper, great loops on the L’s and S’s, curlicues on the tip of each Y. She was profligate with her words, for the paper was of the very finest, as expensive as could be purchased, yet she left great gaps between each line, almost a line’s depth for each.
He turned from the labour to its content. The dates were scrupulously marked, even if she did not write every day. This diary commenced after their arrival in Quebec and their first parting, had been begun sometime when he was aw
ay with St Leger and she was on the march with Burgoyne.
An entry drew his eye. It followed a long description of the country through which they were passing, from Ticonderoga down. It was written just south of that fortress.
How that fellow still runs so strangely in my head, though I know he should not. How did he ingratiate himself into my heart so quickly? He is far away, risking all sorts of dangers. Let heaven bring him safely away from them and once more to my side.
How long had she known André? She had said he was an old friend. It was entirely possible that they had met in New York before she came to England. Likely, in fact, for he had been on General Howe’s staff at least that amount of time. But surely, Louisa’s behaviour towards himself, on board the ship, afterwards, could not have been so … so encouraging if she was still longing for an older love in André?
He flicked on, came to a page where the writing was not so measured, nor the tone.
I can hardly see the page for tears. News has come. He’s dead, dead, de—
The last word was cut off, just so, the next entry a turgid description of a dinner hosted by Burgoyne, each course described in full. But ‘dead, dead, de …’ Did she hear that André had died and was mistaken in the report? Or was there another lover, whose name he was yet to discover?
Then something made him pause. His passion was making him see things only one way when he had trained himself to consider every option. And a tiny hope still smouldered, the flame of which he’d not, despite his misgivings, quite extinguished. Had his jealousy so misled him that he could not now see the truth?
He turned the pages more swiftly, seeking a date.
They had raised the siege at Stanwix on 23 August. He was bitten the same day, saved by MacTavish, was taken by Arnold three days later, escaped from him two weeks after that, more, returned to Burgoyne on the evening of the battle, 19 September …
19th September, 1777. He has returned. He is not dead. Jack. My Jack.
He stared at the word, the name, could not quite take it in. Wanting to more than anything, not wanting to … for what was he doing in the room of a woman who did indeed love him, or had, at the very least, and thus could again, desecrating the very basis of love – her trust – by reading her most intimate thoughts? How could he atone for that?
And yet the vision came, of a curtain dropping in a grubby lodging house …
He could not help flicking on. There was only one entry from the forest, cryptic, short:
Here, beneath the trees, I could, if he would but … I called him a fool but he is not. I am.
The entries from Philadelphia came near the end of the book. She would have to buy another soon. Perhaps that could begin his atonement, to plead the recklessness of his passion then scour the shops of the city for a journal even more lush than this? But one entry, as he read it, pleased him less.
He is returned, again. I had given up all hope, had reconciled myself to duty alone. And yet, here he is. What can I do now?
There was a mark on the page there, the ink blotched.
Ay, let my tears fall. I weep for an answer.
An answer to what? Had she presumed him dead? If so, had she mourned as she had said then transferred her affections to someone else? Jealousy returned instantly … yet could he blame her? She was young; men died in war. What this truly meant was that her love for him had only ended when she was sure he was dead. She had grieved twice; perhaps it was too much. But, if it yet smouldered, could it be revived, like a fire log at daybreak, with his breath? Despite … whatever was occurring with André that night!
He turned the page more to the light to gaze upon the teardrop. And it was in the glimmer of the lamp that he saw something sitting within the stain. He turned the book one way and it disappeared; another and … yes, there it was again. A number – 2 – sat in the middle of the smudge. It was a phantom, barely there, and nothing else showed on that page or any nearby. But he could not make it go away once he’d seen it.
The number was written in invisible ink.
He could not allow his mind to focus on what this might mean. It could be a game with which Louisa amused herself. Perfectly normal people wanted their secrets hidden. Was not a diary a place for that?
There were different methods of reading such ink markings and he set about trying the easiest. But held close to the fire grate, the book produced no more glyphs, so heat would not bring it forth. It was not lime juice then, nor milk. The fact that a tear had displayed it, however faintly, meant that something in the tear – the salt perhaps – had done so. But remembering his own use of such inks, he thought that unlikely to be the full answer. This was more sophisticated, a chemical. He would need an acid of some kind; but where was he to get one in the night, with the clock downstairs just striking one and Louisa perhaps on her way home even now?
He looked around. The bedroom had the usual furnishings. An empty basin stood on a table at the side, a jug full of water beside it. Beneath the bed, the edge of a chamber pot held up the coverlet’s uninterrupted fall to the floor. He looked on the bed, thought of going to the kitchen, rooting for lye there or …
His stare returned to the chamber pot. At the same time, by association, his mind went to his bladder, to the pints and the rum he’d had that night. On the thought came action. He unbuttoned his breeches, stooped, filled the vessel near to halfway. Then he carried it to the desk, set it down beside the diary. Cursing himself, unable to stop, he ripped away a corner of a page. The quality of the stationery, before a sign of indulgence, of luxury, now meant something else; for invisible ink only took well on the finest vellum.
He worked carefully, mixing the contents of the chamber pot with water in different strengths in the basin, trying a little on an eye brush he’d found on the dressing table, spreading it beneath one letter on his scrap at a time, pouring out the basin when no effect was achieved, starting again. After five attempts, numbers and letters began to appear in the gaps between the written lines. Certain of his proportions now, he made as much of his ‘revealer’ as he thought he’d need, sat down at the desk, and began.
Invisible ink appeared only on certain pages, swiftly ascertained by a stroke of the brush down their length. The ones that did had a lot of writing, as cramped as that in blue was luxuriant. It was in code but it was a code that Jack had already broken once on board the Ariadne. He did not trouble to transcribe it all, one page was enough to show that the writer had noted the strength of certain regiments in the city, the level of their morale, which Loyalist Commanders were wavering, could be bought, blackmailed, seduced. From that one page alone, he was sure the book would yield up a pretty exact rendering of General Howe’s entire command.
He sat back, rubbed his eyes. He still did not want to believe it. Closing the book, he pressed his finger into the sponginess of its cover. On a whim, snatching up his penknife, he slashed the point down and across. The linen parted and his fingers did indeed encounter goose down, but underneath it lay something else. Jack’s fingers closed on an edge of material. Slowly, he extracted it, laid it on the desk, spread it out.
It was the decanter-shaped mask, the one ‘lost’ on the road to Saratoga, and as soon as Jack saw it, he groaned. The replica mask he’d created from a handkerchief did have a similar shape to this original. But it was different in one important detail. His copy had not had the small flap, almost a curling tail, that came off the bottom and to the left. There was a cut in that tail that would isolate further words, another key part of the message.
Jack had kept one of the fair, exact copies Captain Money had made. It was in his coat pocket along with certain other papers. Fetching it now, he unfolded it, lay it down beside the diary, laid the silk mask atop it. He was pleased to see he had at least gotten the main part of the letter. But it was the tail that came, of course, with the sting:
Dear Coz.
Have you lately seen that cur Will Piper? He owe me
5 pounds and so his vile attempt t
o avoid me is contimtible.
I mean therefore to push ahead with your order, for because
I riecievd on Hudson’s looms a delivery of fine cloth. Shall
make coats then go fort’sell ’em. Give kind’st to my financee,
Marge. I see her in two or three weeks but it will seem no more
nor less than three thousand.
Yr. Affectionate Coz.
T. Rhodes
He stared at the new words isolated: ‘but less than three thousand’. Clinton had stated that he was coming with too few men to make a difference. He was advising Burgoyne to retreat, without taking the responsibility of ordering him to do so.
Jack picked up the paper, scrunched it into a ball, hurled it into the corner of the room. This betrayal had cost Burgoyne his army. It might yet cost England the war. All caused by the theft of such a little thing, this small piece of silk, by one agent known as Diomedes.
Jack picked it up, ran it over his fingers, then crumpled it again, stowing it in the pocket of his waistcoat. He would save it for the General. When his conduct of the campaign was questioned at the court martial – the surrender of an army would certainly require one – the stolen mask would be proof of just how treacherously he had been undermined.
The bedroom door creaked behind him. He had not heard the tread on the stair but he heard it now as someone quietly entered the room behind him.
He did not turn. ‘Diomedes,’ he whispered. The spy who’d helped lead Burgoyne to disaster, who now sought to do the same to Howe. The spy he’d vowed to see dead.
‘Hello, Jack.’
He turned then, to the voice, to the woman standing in the doorway. One gloved hand lay on the edge of the frame. In her other, she held a pistol.
– SEVENTEEN –
Entr’acte