Chapter 14
Bess
10 June 1816
With Andrew Madison showing interest in me, enough that he had called on me every day for the past six days, I began considering what I wanted for my life. There were times I wondered if I was broken—if my father did some psychological damage to my brain when I was a child.
My father began our training when I was seven, and we still lived in England; I just did not know what he was training us for. I was being trained to fight with a sword, to shoot a pistol, to hit with my fists. As I grew older and learned that only men participated in such sports, I thought my father the greatest man ever to live, that he would want his daughter to be the equal of men. After we moved to America and he assembled his team of children, Jack and I helped him to train them in the same arts. Then the real lessons began.
While most young ladies of means were learning how to stitch samplers, speak French, play upon the pianoforte or sing, I was learning how to manipulate grown men with my words, how to know when someone was lying by the look in their eyes, how to pick pockets without being detected, and even how to hold my liquor without getting sick. That one was not a memory I relished.
Never in my life was I so frightened as when my father took me out for my first mission. It was the night of my thirteenth birthday. We had been training to be spies for nigh on a year, and I thought my father was taking me out for a reprieve—a celebration. When he pulled up our wagon in the nearby town and pointed at the tavern telling me what I was to do, my trust in my father faltered. He left me at the door to the tavern, saying he would return in two hours and expected me to have accomplished my task. Then he drove away without looking back.
Being that I was a headstrong child, I was determined to do my task and get away from the tavern long before the two hours were over. I went to the back of the building and entered through the kitchen. No one cared that an unknown girl was walking through the kitchen. I found my target, a smuggler captain, who was across the smoke filled taproom. I stayed out of sight for the men in the room were a disreputable lot. When the smuggler captain rose from his table and stumbled toward the staircase, I saw my chance and followed him up. I went to the door of the room he had gone into, and when I opened the door, he was lying on a small bed. The stench of unwashed bodies and something much worse was rife. I was trembling from head to foot, but forced my feet to take me into the room in silent movements. His eyes were closed, the even rise and fall of his chest soon told that he was asleep. I reached my hand toward his coat, my fingers shaking, my heart beating painfully fast, biting so hard on my lip that I tasted blood. My fingers touched the envelope that was sticking out of his inside pocket and started to pull it toward me.
His hand wrapped around my wrist as his eyes popped fully open. I was startled into immobility as my back hit the bed, and he landed on top of me. It happened within one blink of my eyes and the next. The only part of me that felt like it worked were my eyes that would blink, but not close. They burned as hot tears slowly fell down the sides of my face. I did not know what was about to happen, but I knew it would forever change me.
As soon as his rough hands started trying to rip my dress, I turned frantic. He was not holding my hands down, so I raked my nails down his face, jerking from side to side to find a way to get him off of me. He was saying things that I could not hear, for the blood pumping in my ears. He was momentarily diverted by the blood coming from the scratches on his face, so I used those seconds to focus my mind. I was my father’s daughter; I could find a way out. My mother’s trembling hands when she dressed my hair suddenly made sense, but also what she placed in my hair.
He was trying to rip my bodice again, so I reached up and grabbed the ruby encrusted silver hair dagger. He was leaning on his knees, reaching his hand down to his trousers and not looking at me when I stabbed him between his shoulders. I do not clearly remember what happened after that, only fragments of his screams, my bloodstained hands, the bloody envelope, and a girl my own age hiding me in her room and helping me out the window. I ran the two miles to our house in the woods.
When I walked in with my ripped bodice and my hands stained with blood, my father was seated in his favorite chair—his fingertips together and a pleased smile on his face. I remember my mother’s cries from the corner of the room, but I ignored her. I held the letter out to my father. He took it, looking like I was handing him a sack of gold. I curtseyed then climbed into the loft that was mine and Jack’s bedchamber. I did not wash my hands or change my gown. I lay upon my cot as the events came rushing upon me. Staring at a notch in the ceiling, I realized what I had done. I had survived.
I never told anyone what happened. None of the others would have believed me if I had. The other children worshiped my father. To them, he was a savior who had rescued them and provided them with a place to live, food, clothing, a name. I decided that night while I lay on my small cot that never again would I feel helpless.
After that night, I threw myself into training. I was determined to become the master of any situation that I entered. My father would be my leader, but never again would he be my papa.
The other children never spoke of their first missions either, but they were each successful.
Leo was the only one not trained by my father. When he joined our team, the Phantoms had been working for three years, and he came in knowing everything we did. He rarely spoke of his life before the Phantoms.
When I excelled in everything that my father threw at me, he announced that I would one day take his place. The other deputies were all masters of something, but I was the one most determined to thrive in everything. I never told them that it was not a matter of thriving, but surviving. I did not want to be the leader, but I accepted without comment because I knew that one day I could get out. I could escape the life forced upon me. With my plans in place, all I had to do was wait.
I was fourteen when my father announced that I would marry Ben. I was furious, but Ben was thrilled. Ben and his older brother had been with us since the beginning.
Ben and I spent time alone, and I learned that the marriage had been his idea. He promised my father grandchildren, the future generation of spies in exchange for my freedom. I would be out, and my children would take my place. When I told Ben that nothing would induce me to allow my children to become spies, he smiled at me and told me his plan. As soon as we were married, we were going to run away, to a place that my father would never find.
I loved Ben, but I was not in love with him. What we had was more than flowery words and fluttery feelings. We had a bond of trust; roots entwined that ran deeper than any sentimental feelings. For the first time, I could place my faith in someone else and know that he was going to protect me.
When the war broke out, we were sent to different places, he to Washington and me to Baltimore. Our wedding was put on hold. Jack left the Phantoms to fight in the army, and I was spying against the British. My father had stayed in Philadelphia, training a new group of children who would one day join the Phantoms.
The day of my sixteenth birthday, my father and Ben arrived at the house that Mariah and I lived in with Freddy and his team. My father announced that Ben and I were to be married in one week, and I had never been more relieved. Later that night, Freddy was attacked while on a routine patrol, and we went after the men who attacked him. My father ordered us to split up and search the streets. Ben went one direction and Jack, and I went another. Something inside me screamed to go after Ben when we were a block away.
Without a word to Jack, I turned back. When I found Ben, he was being beaten by a group of what I thought were ruffians. It was the ring they all wore on their right hands that told me who they were. Before I could reach him and rescue him, they shot him. When they heard Jack running toward them, they scattered, but I did not care. Ben died a few minutes later in my arms.
That was three years ago. Now that I was the leader, I could get out, I could leave the Phantoms behind, but w
hen Ben died, something new awoke inside me. A need for justice.
After Ben’s death, his brother deserted us, and my father brought me home to Philadelphia for a few months, but not to grieve. He wanted help to train his next batch of spies. My father died before he could see them made Phantoms. My first act as the leader was to place them in homes with parents who would love them. I wanted to give them a new life. If they mentioned anything about their training, I never heard about it.