The Whiskey Rebels (27 page)

A lesser man would have inquired what, precisely, the deuce she was talking about, but I had ever thought it best to let these things unfold upon their own terms. “May I meet her?”

“Of course.”

She rang a bell.

I had already surmised that while this lady might have been
a
Miss Fiddler, she was not
the
Miss Fiddler with whom Pearson had a relationship. My guess was that this lady was a relative—an older sister or cousin or aunt—who functioned as the younger woman’s bawd.

In a moment a pretty young girl entered the room, looking like a younger version of our hostess. The girl had the same dark hair, the same eyes the color of brilliant summer grass, the same red lips and snowy skin, the same too-narrow nose. She, like the older lady, was a bit inclined to plumpness, but she wore it well, for her weight was well located in precisely the places a man likes a woman to accumulate herself. She wore a simple white gown, low cut to expose her large breasts. She curtsied, saying nothing, gazing upon nothing with a kind of amusement, as though nothing were a perpetual show staged for her entertainment.

I rose and bowed. “You must be Emily. May I ask you some questions?”

She smiled but said nothing. There was nothing rude or defiant in her silence, rather a kind of uncomplicated absence. The serving girl now wheeled in the tea things, and the cart was rickety and squeaked and rattled, producing an atmosphere at once comic and ominous.

“May I ask you some questions about Mr. Jacob Pearson?” I asked the girl.

She curtsied again, but the older woman shifted in her seat as though she too was uncomfortable. She sent her serving girl away with a flick of her hand. To me she said, “Did Mr. Pearson tell you much about Emily?”

“He only spoke of her great beauty,” I said quickly, “and he did not exaggerate.”

“You are a man of taste, sir. You may direct your questions to me.”

The girl now said something that sounded very much like
Peah-soh.
Her voice was deeper than I would have anticipated, and the sound was low and nasal, as sad and dull as a cow’s mournful lowing.

I turned to her. “I beg your pardon.”

Her face opened into a wide grin. “
Peah-soh,
” she keened.

All at once it was clear to me, and I cursed myself for a fool for not seeing it sooner. “My God. Is the girl a simpleton?”

Miss Fiddler did not respond to this vehemence. “I thought you knew. Yes, she was born that way, and when her parents died last year and left her in my care, I knew not what to do with her. But as you can see, she is very pretty, and she does not object to her duties.” She leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “She rather relishes it. You are not going to be one of those men to lecture me, are you?”

There was a depth of inhumanity here that even I found too diabolical to contemplate, but this was not the time for useless lectures. I was getting close to learning something, and along the way I was both elated and horrified to discover that Cynthia’s husband was more of a beast than I could have imagined.

To the elder lady, I said, “I am not one to judge. One man’s monstrosity is another man’s diversion. For my part, Miss Fiddler, I would delight in bedding an idiot—vastly amusing and all that—but that is not why I’ve come. It is on government business, and I do hope that when I come to report my findings to the President and his advisors I have only information to tell him, not the nature of the people who could not help us. You understand me, I think.”

She nodded, now of a more sober deportment. “I see all too clearly what you are after.” She waved Emily out of the room. “Ask me your questions.”

“Did a tall hairless Irishman come here looking for Pearson?”

“He came,” she said, “but there was nothing to tell him. We never do business here, as I told you, so Pearson, other than our first meeting, was never a guest in my home. I explained that to the Irishman, and he left almost at once.”

“Almost,” I said.

“He asked if I would hold a letter for a friend,” she said. “He gave me five dollars to take the note and said I would receive another five when its rightful owner came to collect it.”

“I am the rightful owner,” I said.

She laughed. “I doubt that, as you did not know of the letter before now.”

“Miss Fiddler,” I said, “I presume you will have no objection to giving that letter to representatives of the United States government.”

“Of course I would not, were I still in possession of it,” she said. “But I gave the letter away three days ago to the last gentleman who came in search of it.”

“The last gentleman,” I repeated.

“A slender young man with a beard who also claimed to work for the government. Lavien, I believe he called himself. Is he a colleague of yours?”

Joan Maycott

Winter and Spring 1791

T
hey let the whiskey age in the barrels all winter and then much of the next spring. In summer, while Andrew tinkered with the stills, experimenting with new ways to bring yet more flavor to his drink, Mr. Dalton and Mr. Skye traveled the county, letting men sample their new whiskey. Mr. Dalton’s whiskey boys went even farther to spread the news of this new distillation. They rode from settlement to church to trading post, uncorking their bottles for eager settlers to taste. When autumn came and the rye and corn were harvested, mules and horses laden with grain began to make their way to Mr. Dalton’s operation.

Stills were expensive things. Most men could not afford one, not even a small one, and so the custom was for farmers to bring their grain to a third party who would distill it in exchange for a portion of the proceeds. Virtually everyone who tasted the new whiskey understood that they must have this drink and no other or their grain was wasted. It would trade for more or, for those who wished to make the venture east, sell for more. In turn, Dalton, Skye, and Andrew amassed increasing stores of grain to turn to whiskey, which they could sell or use for trade. Whiskey was the coin of the realm. Like a creature from a child’s tale, they had learned to manufacture precious metals from baser materials.

Dalton and Skye soon found their stills used beyond capacity. More machines had to be purchased. Men said they would wait as long as it took, if only they could have their grain distilled to be so full of flavor. It was not only that the new whiskey was desirable but that the old was now depreciated. Why turn your straw into silver when you could turn it into gold?

For my part, I was busy too. Once I decided that I would place a fictional version of William Duer at the center of my novel, I filled up page after page. The story centered around the evil speculator William Maker and his scheme to defraud war veterans of their pay, and in it I mocked the greed of the wealthy, celebrated the ardor of the patriotic, and bemoaned the conditions of the frontier. Yet the frontier of my novel was peopled not only with ruffians and miscreants but noble souls, patriots swindled by a government tending only to the cares of the wealthy. These fictional men found a way to strike back and set the country to rights. I felt certain, utterly certain, I was doing what I had longed to do, inventing the American novel, writing a new kind of tale, whose concerns and ambitions mirrored the American landscape.

A
utumn turned to winter, and we spent our second cold season in the West. It was hard, for our fireplace and stove could sometimes do little to stave off the brutal western chill, but it proved easier than our first winter, for now the whiskey bought us food and blankets enough to increase our ease. Sometimes Andrew would join Mr. Dalton and Mr. Richmond in a search for desperate winter deer or in a far more ambitious bear hunt. This was a dangerous business—waking a beast from its winter sleep—but at least it yielded us fresh meat. During these excursions, Mr. Skye would often invite me to pass the time at his own home.

Visiting Skye’s house was always a delight, for he had the finest cabin in the settlement. It rose two stories, and having no one to spend upon but himself, he had troubled to furnish it, if not elegantly, then at least comfortably. Through a set of circumstances that were never entirely clear to me, he had purchased the lease for this land from a man who’d been desirous of leaving the area quickly, having incurred the anger of both Colonel Tindall and a band of Shawnee braves. Mr. Skye had come west with more ready cash in his pocket than most men, and he had been one of the few settlers in the region capable of buying the lease for any amount of real specie. Now, each season, he hired four or five workers—usually slaves lent out by their owners—to help him grow wheat and rye and Indian corn for whiskey and vegetables for his own use. He had, in addition, several cows and chickens and half a dozen pigs, and he worked hard each winter to keep them all alive.

While the others hunted—a sport for which Mr. Skye said he’d had no enthusiasm, even as a young man—I would sit with the white-haired gentleman, the only person with whom I could discuss my novel in any detail. I would not let him read any of it—not yet—but I would tell him of the story and its actors, and he would offer useful suggestions. He also presented me with roasted meats and fruit preserves and even eggs, all served with samplings from his precious store of wine. I will not pretend it was not good to taste such things again.

I am not foolish, and I also cannot pretend, particularly when we took wine, that I did not feel Mr. Skye’s eyes upon me in a way not entirely appropriate. But I saw no harm in it. I knew to my soul he would never act upon whatever impulses he might feel, and I enjoyed his hospitality and his conversation. It would have been wrong to deny one another the pleasure of our meetings because he harbored feelings about which he would remain forever mute.

One afternoon, perhaps a bit too warm with his excellent wine, I turned to Mr. Skye, who sat next to me, explaining to me his understanding of the evils schemed by Hamilton and Duer back east. His argument was a convoluted business, not Skye at his best, and while I wished to comprehend his meaning, my thoughts were too jumbled, my disposition too relaxed, to take in his words. Instead, and rather rudely, I said, “Do I remind you of someone, Mr. Skye?”

I had my answer at once, for he turned red and looked away, rubbing his leathery hands at the fire until he could regain himself. “Why do you ask it?”

I had been too free. I drank deep of my goblet of wine, to hide my discomfort, and took some pleasure in the feeling of numbness that spread through me. I finished what I had, and Mr. Skye refilled, and I could not say I was sorry. “It is only that you look at me with a certain recognition. You have from our first meeting.”

“Perhaps I recognize in you a kindred soul,” he offered.

“I have no doubt you do, but I think I recall to you someone from your past.”

“You are perceptive, which I’m sure you know.” He smiled at me, a sad sort of smile, and though I had always seen him as an old man, in an instant I had a glimpse of him youthful and beardless, charming if not precisely handsome. “When I was a young man at St. Andrew’s I had a connection to a young lady in Fife. Her father was a wealthy laird, extremely well placed in society, and my father—well, he was not. It was not a usual thing for someone in my family to attend university. I was very much in love, Mrs. Maycott, but the situation ended in scandal. There was a duel, you see, and the young lady’s brother died. It was for that reason that I fled my native land and came to this country.”

I blame the wine, for I said what anyone would think but few would speak. “They say it was scandal that sent you west once more to our settlement.”

His face revealed nothing. “I am, perhaps, prone to scandal. It is a poor trait, I know.”

“I rather think it depends on the scandal,” I told him.

He blushed, which I own I found rather charming.

“You and I are friends,” I said to him, “and so I hope I may ask you something, as a man. I fear I cannot ask my husband, for it might be too uncomfortable for him to be honest.”

“Of course, Mrs. Maycott.”

“It concerns the attraction men feel for women, something I must understand for my novel.”

He took a sip of wine. “You have raised a subject about which I know a great deal.”

“I know about courtship and love. I understand these things. Your feelings for your lady in Fife, for example. What I cannot comprehend is the attraction felt by men like Tindall or Hendry. They look at a woman with desire, yet they do not love her or like her or even regard her, as near as I can discern, as a person. If it is mere physical release they want, would not one woman do as well as another?”

He sipped more wine. “I wonder if perhaps this is a conversation best not had.”

“We have come so far. We must finish. Do you not think so?” I do not know that I thought so. I knew the impropriety of the subject, but that was what I loved about it. Why should I not speak of what I like with a trusted friend? I knew I could depend upon his goodness, and I saw no reason why I should not take some small thrill in something as harmless as it was illicit. Even so, I knew there was a more selfish reason I pursued this subject. The people I wrote of in my novel held no propriety as sacred, and though their transgressions were far greater than anything I contemplated there in Mr. Skye’s home, I believed I needed to know some small measure of it. I wanted to know the thrill of doing what the world must condemn.