Pampering was apparently one of those words Sophie didn’t quite grasp the meaning of. Instead of the licorice tea and biscuits Creighton had come to expect when he was ill, she brought him a pot of vile-tasting stuff—green tea, she told him, with a dose of powdered willow bark to ease the pain in his head. She seemed to be under the impression that he had fainted and struck his head on the washstand. Creighton smiled to himself; clearly Franklin was no slouch at lying, either, when the occasion called for it.
Even after he added several spoonfuls of honey, the tea was difficult to get down. When he complained, Sophie replied, not very sympathetically, “Eh bien, life is like that, n’est-ce pas? Without suffering, there is no improvement.” There was little doubt about where she’d come by that bit of wisdom.
“I was already suffering,” Creighton pointed out grumpily. But he had to admit that the potion did make his head hurt less. He wasn’t ready to start slinging type forms around anytime soon, however. “What about the newspaper? Don’t we need to distribute it?”
“Oh, non, that’s taken care of. We have a troupe of creole boys who sell them on the corners of the streets.”
The thought of several hundred people poring over and discussing something he had helped to print gave Creighton an unfamiliar sense of satisfaction. Though he had never considered taking up a trade of any sort, aside from gambling, he could almost imagine himself being a printer.
That evening Dr. Franklin appeared with a copy of Roderick Random and read aloud from it, by the light of a myrtleberry candle, for nearly an hour. Sophie declared that she had trouble taking in so many English words at once, but she stood in the doorway for a long time, listening. It was a far cry from the raucous evenings Creighton had spent in taverns with his rakish companions, and yet he was sorry when the old man yawned, closed the book, and bid him good night.
The following morning, Peter stopped in to see how he was faring. Franklin had obviously told him the same lie he’d told Sophie, for the giant crouched and examined the base of the washstand.
“What are you looking for?” Creighton demanded.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that, if it’d been my head, it would have broke the washstand. I guess yours an’t as hard.” He stood and produced a deck of cards from his pocket. “I thought you might be bored, and I’ve heard you’re fond of cards.”
Creighton grinned and arranged his pillows so he could sit upright. “I am indeed.”
Peter lowered his huge frame onto the chair carefully, as though afraid it might collapse under him. “Dr. Franklin thought you might like chess better, but I’m no good at that. It makes my head hurt.”
“I didn’t suppose that you Yankeys would be fond of such a complex game.”
Peter kept his eyes on the deck of cards he was shuffling. “You don’t think much of Americans, do you?”
It would have taken too much effort to lie. “No.”
“Pardon me if I sound rude, but why did you come here, then?” Creighton didn’t answer. “Dr. Franklin says he thinks maybe your family disowned you. Is that it?”
“Something like that.”
“You’ve no call to be ashamed. To tell the truth, that’s the very reason my father had to leave. Him and my grandfather quarreled, and he knocked the old man senseless with a whiffletree.”
Creighton stifled a laugh, and put a hand to his aching head. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s not really very funny. So your father was born in England?”
“Half the Americans you meet was born there.” He dealt a hand of cards to each of them. “See here, when you’re feeling better, why don’t I take you to the Café and introduce you around. You could have a drink with the fellows, and maybe play a few hands of cards. What do you say?”
Disagreeing would have required too much effort, too. “All right,” Creighton said, just so Peter would drop the subject.
They spent a reasonably pleasant hour or two playing commerce. Peter was not the sort of companion Creighton would have chosen if he’d had a choice, but the giant was amiable enough. Besides, Creighton would probably have welcomed any company at all. It kept him from having to think about his uncle.
He had tried to tell himself that the colonel was right, that his presence would only have made the escape more risky and difficult. He had even half convinced himself that once the men reached English territory, Gower would send someone to rescue him. But some things can be seen most clearly in the darkest hours of the night, and as he lay awake that night, Creighton found he could lie to himself no longer. If he ever hoped to escape from Louisiana, he’d have to do it on his own.
By his third day of idleness, Creighton had his fill of it. When Dr. Franklin asked if he was up to a bit of proofreading, he readily agreed. He wished now that he hadn’t also agreed to join Peter and his friends at the Café. They were sure to prove insufferably dull compared with his cardplaying companions back home. But he still felt indebted to Peter for having gotten him in trouble over the lost pistol. So when the giant came to fetch him, he reluctantly let himself be taken off to the Café des Exiles.
In England, the image of the typical Yankey was much like the French image of the Kaintock—an unlettered, uncivilized lout who, though really not much account as a fighter, was far better at fighting than at thinking. Franklin had proven that not all rebels fit that mold. Still, Creighton had supposed that the old man was just some rare exception to the rule.
Though most of the Patriots he met that evening wouldn’t have fit in very well at a society soirée in England, they were far from being backwoods buffoons. Before the war, a number of them had been wealthy landowners in Virginia or Maryland or the Carolinas; others had been prosperous merchants in Boston or Philadelphia. Several had been educated at Oxford or had sent their sons there. A few had actually lived much of their lives in Britain; one of these, a fellow named Tom Paine, had been in America only three years.
Like Creighton’s old companions, these men were fond of ale and cigars. According to Paine, the clouds of smoke discouraged mosquitoes, and the strong drink helped make you oblivious to them. The Patriots also proved surprisingly good both at cards and at conversation. But their bets were far lighter and their topics of conversation far heavier than Creighton was accustomed to.
The knights of the tavern were known to wager several pounds on a single hand; the Americans seldom put up more than a few pence, or the equivalent in deniers or reales. During one round of betting, Tom Paine casually pulled forth a hundred-dollar paper bill and tossed it onto the pile. The others laughed and hooted until, grinning, he withdrew it. Creighton leaned over to Peter. “What was that about?”
“Continental money. ’Twas put out by the United States government—while the government lasted. It’s as useless as an old almanac now.”
Creighton’s friends back in Bristol had little use for politics or morals; the talk at the Café des Exiles, though it touched on many things, never strayed far from these two issues. Between hands of cards, a man named Burr was holding forth on what he called “the Indian situation.”
Creighton gathered that there were two main groups of Indians in the area—the Chickasaws and the Choctaws. The Choctaws had traditionally been allies of the French, but Burr was concerned that the British were buying their loyalty with gifts of food, weapons, and other trade goods. “Already there have been Indian raids on Cote des Allemands and on some of the outlying plantations. How long, gentlemen, before they attack New Orleans?”
A large-nosed fellow whose name Creighton couldn’t quite recall—Poultry, or Mouldy, or something of the sort—nodded gravely as he raked in his winnings. “Burr’s fears are well founded. The Brits did the same thing in Carolina. The governor and his military aide decided they’d pass out muskets to the Cherokees.” Creighton’s attention turned abruptly from the card game to the conversation. The Carolina governor’s military aide had been none other than Colonel Gower. “Then they proceeded to convince the Indians,” Mouldy-Poultry went on, “that us Back Country Patriots were their enemies. They’d surely have wiped us out to a man, except we were warned that the redskins were coming, and were ready for them.”
“Didn’t I hear that it was a Brit who brought the word to you?” asked Paine.
“It was. Which goes to show, I guess, that they an’t all bad.” Mouldy-Poultry assembled the deck of cards and began shuffling it. “He was a major in the British army, as a matter of fact—though you’d never have guessed it, except for the uniform. He was a good-looking, good-natured fellow, soft-spoken and quick to laugh. I remember him well because he was the one decent Englishman I’ve met.” Mouldy-Poultry glanced at Creighton. “Present company excepted, of course.” The man scratched his prominent nose. “Come to think on it, bub, his name was the same as yours. Brown. Harry Brown.” He dealt a hand to each of the players.
Peter laughed. “What about that? Any relation, Creighton?”
Creighton didn’t reply. He automatically picked up his cards, but couldn’t think what to do with them. He felt as though he’d been struck hard on the head again. Could there have been more than one Major Harry Brown stationed in Carolina?
Paine said, “Did the Brits ever find out it was this Brown fellow that warned you?”
“They did,” said Mouldy-Poultry. “And I’m ashamed to say it was one of our boys that told them, in exchange for a few pounds and a pardon. They court-martialed the major, of course, and shipped him off to Florida to hang. They knew better than to do it in Charles Town, for we’d have done our best to save him.”
Creighton threw down his cards. “I’m out,” he managed to say, then strode from the room, his head throbbing, his eyes smarting with tears. Outside, he was assailed at once by mosquitoes, but he ignored them; they tormented him far less than his own thoughts. He had always believed that his father had died honorably, fighting bravely against the rebels. It was what Colonel Gower had told him and his mother.
But it seemed that the colonel had only been trying to spare his sister the shameful truth: Her husband had been hanged for aiding the enemy. That explained why, when Creighton had asked about his father’s death back in Charles Town, Colonel Gower had put him off. And of course his uncle had another motive for withholding the truth. It had been his idea to arm the Cherokees and send them against the Back Country settlers. That meant he was also responsible, at least indirectly, for Harry Brown’s fate.
By now, nothing Gower did, however despicable, would have surprised Creighton. But how could his father, who had always preached to Creighton the value of honor, do something so dishonorable as to help the enemy?
The night before Harry Brown departed for the Colonies, they had talked about duty and loyalty. As he sat watching the major polish his saber, Creighton had said, “Be sure to kill as many Yankeys as possible, will you?”
His father had given him an odd look, almost reproachful, and said, “I hope it won’t come to that.”
Creighton was taken aback by this. “You’re not afraid to fight them, are you?”
Major Brown considered a moment. “No,” he said finally. “I just hope we may find a way yet to settle our differences without shooting one another.”
“Then why are you going?” Creighton demanded, distressed by his father’s obvious lack of rancor toward the hated Yankeys. “Why don’t you resign your commission?”
The major tested the keenness of the saber with his thumb and, satisfied with it, slid it into its sheath. “I’ve sworn loyalty to my country,” he said. “If it goes to war, then I’m bound by duty to go with it.” Creighton was sure his father had meant those words, and believed them. And yet, when his loyalty was put to the test, it had failed.
He heard heavy footsteps coming up behind him, and a moment later Peter said, “Creighton? Is something wrong?”
Creighton swiped at his tear-filled eyes and cleared his throat. “My . . . um . . . my head is hurting again.”
“I an’t much good at reading people, but you seemed upset back there.” When Creighton didn’t reply, the giant said hesitantly, “I was only joking about you being related to that British major. I vow, I didn’t mean nothing by it. ’Twas a stupid thing to say.”
“No,” Creighton said faintly, almost inaudibly. “You were right. He was my father.”
“Your father?” Peter walked beside him in silence for a minute or two before he settled on something more to say. “I’m sorry. It must have been hurtful, being reminded of—of all that.”
“It wasn’t a case of being reminded. I never knew. I thought he died in battle, not at the end of a rope.”
“You sound as though you’re ashamed. But you shouldn’t be.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” Creighton demanded. “He was a traitor!”
“A traitor? Because he wouldn’t sit by and let the Indians massacre a parcel of innocent men and their families?”
“You can hardly call them innocent. They were rebels.”
“In their sympathies, I warrant you. But they hadn’t taken up arms, and they hadn’t taken no English lives. They were hunters and farmers, not soldiers. ’Twas the governor who was at fault, not your father. Your father did what his conscience told him to. By my lights, that don’t make him a traitor; it makes him a hero.”
There was that word again: conscience. As far as Creighton was concerned, it was in the same league with mosquitoes—an infernal nuisance, one that could not be chased away for long, no matter how hard you tried.
———
As he had on so many other nights lately, Creighton lay awake for a long while, trying to sort out his thoughts and his feelings. He was no more used to it than he was to doing manual labor. Back in Bristol, the world had seemed simple and orderly. Every person, place, and thing could be neatly classified: A person was either upper-class or lower-class, English or not English; a place was either civilized or uncivilized; a thing was either good or bad, right or wrong.
But since he’d left England, the boundaries between those categories seemed to have grown indistinct. Or maybe they had just shifted position, the way the Mississippi River sometimes did. Theoretically, everything east of the river was English territory and everything west of it belonged to Spain. But Franklin said that each time the river flooded, it cut a new and slightly different path, so land that had been on one side of the river was now on the other.
Back home, Creighton had always been comfortably certain which side of any given line he was on. But the flood of events in which he’d been caught up had left him floundering, uncertain which shore to swim to. He longed for that old certainty, that world in which things were painted so clearly in black and white.
Perhaps that was why, in the weeks that followed, he threw himself so wholeheartedly into his duties in the printing shop. In that small world, everything seemed clearer: black print on white paper, seeking out words that were wrong and making them right.
He still made mistakes of his own from time to time. When he was allowed to ink the type for the first time, he absentmindedly laid the roller down on Sophie’s stool. Luckily, she discovered it before she sat down. It was lucky, too, that this was her week to practice tolerance. Though she hadn’t quite mastered humility yet, Franklin thought it best for her to move on to something less challenging, and return to humility later, when she had reached a higher level of enlightenment.