WE RODE INTO PITTSBURGH THE NEXT EVENING. DESPITE LYELL’S forebodings we had not met any dangers since leaving Mr Harris to rot in the woods, though that had not prevented fear from consuming my thoughts. I ate little, and drank too much of the local apple whiskey – first to numb my fears, then to numb the effects of the earlier draughts. By the time we arrived my head felt as though it had been jammed in the chamber of a cannon, and my limbs were stiff as teak. It was not just the riding: the weather had turned bitterly cold, offering up winds which tore through my greatcoat and rains which sleeted all heat from our bodies. When we reached Pittsburgh it seemed there was nothing in my veins save ice and liquor.
After so many travails, we had little difficulty finding our destination. Pittsburgh was a small town set on a promontory at the junction of two rivers, and it was not hard to obtain directions to the inn. I felt no relief at having arrived, for the town exuded an ominous welcome. High, wooded hills rose around it on all sides, and the houses were blackened by the heavy coal which smoked from every chimney. The unpaved streets were ankle deep in mud, and though the hills gave some protection from the wind they did not keep the rain from falling in sheer, oppressive columns.
At a crooked street corner, near the western end of the town, we found what we sought. After so many weeks I had difficulty believing that I stood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, staring at a white-bricked building whose handsome sign proclaimed it to be M’Culloch’s Inn. Perhaps I should have paused to reflect on the moment, to savour the fact that I had come so many thousands of miles through such hazards to deliver my package safely, but with the rain drizzling down the back of my neck and my feet sinking ever deeper into the roadstead, I did not. Handing my bridle to the groom I hurried inside, not even troubling to wipe the mud from my boots. My hand groped in my pocket, felt the packet and pulled it forth. It was sprayed with weeks of mud, and a small splash of blood which may well have been Harris’s, but the seals were intact and the knots secure. I held it before me like a votive offering. For all Nevell’s instructions to learn its contents and thwart the conspirators, at that moment I simply ached to be rid of it.
A girl, a pretty young thing in a blue smock, appeared in the hallway before me. She looked disapprovingly at my haggard attire, and the dirt I had dragged across her threshold.
‘I require a room and a bath,’ I told her, though so much was evident. ‘Then you may fetch me Mr Tyler, and inform him that Martin Jerrold has arrived with a package for him.’
She nodded, and ran into an adjacent room. When the door reopened, a stout, red-headed man with a full beard and whiskers appeared.
‘Mr Tyler?’ I said.
‘William M’Culloch.’
‘Ah. I wonder, might you introduce me to Mr Tyler? I understand he is lodging here.’
Mr M’Culloch ruminated on this. ‘Mr Tyler,’ he repeated at length.
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Comfort Tyler?’
‘I believe so.’
‘You’ve missed him.’
I almost dropped the package into the pool of mud and water at my feet. ‘What?’
‘Left yesterday.’ And then, thinking I still did not understand: ‘He’s gone.’
A darkness overwhelmed my soul, and it was all I could do to keep from falling to the floor and sobbing under my coat. Lyell faced the reverse with sterner resolve. ‘Did Mr Tyler leave any indication where he might be found?’
The innkeeper gave him a cool stare, bridling at his brusque tone. ‘Not for any Mr Jerrold.’
‘For a Mr Lyell, perhaps? Or a Mr Beauchamp?’
‘My, but you’ve a few names between you.’
He paused, pondering the three bedraggled travellers making a mire of his hallway. I half expected him to send for his horsewhip and drive us back out into the storm, but, like his fellow Pittsburghers, he had not come to this remote settlement in the farthest reach of civilization to turn away custom.
‘Will you be taking a bed for the night?’ he asked.
‘That depends as to whether I have business to keep me in Pittsburgh,’ answered Lyell. ‘At present I see little to delay me here.’
M’Culloch crossed to a dark-stained sideboard by the wall, picked up a pewter tankard, and fished inside it with his fingers. He withdrew a creased piece of paper which he held just beyond our reach.
‘We may require a room after all,’ said Lyell.
M’Culloch handed him the paper. Lyell unfolded it, scanned it then passed it to me.
If any man comes asking for Comfort Tyler, send him to call on Mr McMeekin at the West Street jetty. He will know where to find me.
It was written in a neat hand, and dated the previous day. I looked to M’Culloch, who evidently knew its contents.
‘There’s no gain going to the jetty tonight. McMeekin won’t have the boat loaded until tomorrow afternoon. You’ll find him in the morning, sure enough, and he’ll take you to Mr Tyler.’
I did not like this talk of boats – the thought of having to endure still more travels to seek out the elusive Mr Tyler was almost too much to stomach. But Lyell was satisfied.
‘We will take two rooms, and find Mr Tyler in the morning.’
Though I heaped coals on the fire before going to bed, it was a cold night I spent at M’Culloch’s Inn, and little better in the morning. We could walk the streets without fear of losing our shoes, but only because the frost had frozen the mud solid, and at the riverbank a veneer of ice was creeping out into the fast-flowing stream. This late in the season there were few boatmen who would brave the river, and we had little trouble finding McMeekin’s boat. It was a strange craft, though, as I was to learn, typical of the American interior. At first sight, it did not look much like a boat at all, for drawn up on the shore it resembled nothing so much as a long, low hut whose far end had subsided into the river. It must have measured about sixty feet, with a rudimentary cabin running most of its length which allowed only short decks at front and stern, loaded with casks and long, steel-banded chests. No concession had been made to grace or manoeuvrability, for her bows were as straight and square as her sides. There did not appear to be any means of propulsion.
A short, thin man was standing on the muddy shore, hammering at a portion of the hull and smoking a clay pipe.
‘Are you Mr McMeekin?’ I hailed him.
My words interrupted him in mid-swing. His hammer caught the trenail sideways and catapulted it from its hole.
He swore. ‘Who are you?’
‘We are looking for Mr Tyler.’
He tapped the bowl of his pipe on the hull. ‘Lots of folks looking for Mr Tyler – and some he’d be particular fond of not seeing. Besides, he’s gone. Left two days back.’
‘I know. I was told you might direct us to him.’
‘Might do, if I knew your business. Then again, if I knew your business I might not.’
‘You would certainly take us to him if you knew our business,’ said Lyell.
‘What’d that be then?’
‘We have papers for him. From overseas. And money,’ I added. ‘We could pay you well to take us to him.’
‘I don’t need your cash,’ said McMeekin. ‘If Mr Tyler don’t want to see you, then no money’s going to get you there on my boat. And if he do, well, then I’m going that way anyhow.’
‘He will want to meet us,’ I insisted. ‘We have come all the way from England to see him.’
That drew the boatman’s attention. ‘From England? And you said you’d some papers for Mr Tyler?’
‘A package.’ I began to reach into my coat, but the boatman waved me to stop.
‘No need to go wavin’ it all about. How many seals it got on it?’
‘Three.’
‘And what’re they of?’
I could have drawn those seals in my sleep. ‘A letter “A”, an anchor, and a bird.’
McMeekin nodded. ‘Good enough for me. But I can’t take you to Mr Tyler.’
‘What?’ Having shown so much of our hand, Lyell was in a dangerous humour. ‘We will not suffer you to sport with us, Mr McMeekin. We have proved our good faith; if you do not reciprocate you will find us dangerous enemies.’
Even the laconic McMeekin was taken aback by Lyell’s ferocity. ‘I wasn’t fixing to be no wiseacre.’ He knocked against the hull. ‘My boat’s not ready. I need some trenails to fix her, and they ain’t coming ’til this afternoon. If you can wait for tomorrow, I’ll gladly give you a passage to the island.’
Whether from a desire to please or some unforeseen difficulty, McMeekin had been overly optimistic. When we sent a boy from the inn to enquire after his progress next morning we were told it would need a further day at least before his repairs were accomplished. It necessitated another day in Pittsburgh, and that tried my nerves still further. We none of us dared leave the inn for fear of being recognized by our enemies; we moved between our rooms and the parlour, always wrapped in warm cloaks and keeping close to the fire. A miserable bunch of puritans we must have seemed to Mr M’Culloch. Months of forced intimacy had exhausted our conversation, and after the scourges of the road we no longer felt the strength or need for idle pleasantries. Lyell stayed in a high-backed chair reading a series of some local newspaper, while I sat opposite sipping whiskey and staring into the fire, wondering why neither seemed to warm me. Behind us, Miss Lyell played her solitaire incessantly at the table. Ever since the business with Harris she had become quite antisocial, her eyes dull and her face still. I did not blame her: it was a horrible thing for any man to kill another, even in extremity, and a hundredfold worse for a lady. I tried to convey my sympathy, to tease out her melancholy, but my every enquiry met a curt response.
At last, on the third morning, word came from McMeekin that he had procured all the trenails he needed, hammered them into his boat and made her ready. Even Miss Lyell was encouraged by the news. We packed our chests, which had arrived by wagon from Princeton, and hurried down over the frozen streets to the waterfront. The ice seemed to have encroached another foot into the stream, but the boat had been launched into the water and now bobbed beside the jetty. Four boatmen were about her sides wielding wooden poles, while McMeekin himself stood on the roof holding the end of a long steering oar which sloped over the rear deck into the river. He waved as he saw us.
‘It’s as well you come when you did. River’s freezing fast – might not’ve been able to go if we’d left it longer.’
‘Then there is no time to lose.’ Lyell swung his leg over the side and stepped onto the boat, causing it to rock alarmingly. His daughter hitched up her dress to follow, and in an instant two of the crew had abandoned their poles and rushed to assist her.
McMeekin tipped his hat. ‘Welcome aboard, miss. We’ll have you down to Mr Tyler in no time.’
I was standing on the jetty about to board when suddenly I felt as though I had been punched in the face by one of those long poles. Tyler. I patted my hands over my coat, then tore it open and reached inside, feeling frantically in the pockets. As I had feared, the bulge which had sat against my chest for the past month was gone.
‘What are you doing?’ snapped Lyell, poking his head from the cabin doorway. ‘Will you keep us waiting until we are embedded in three feet of ice?’
‘I must go back to the inn,’ I mumbled. ‘I have left something in my bedroom.’
‘Dammit, Jerrold, this is no time for delay. If you have forgotten your razor or your boot polish you may doubtless procure a replacement down river. You—’
Ignoring him, I turned and ran back into town, slipping and skidding on the icy streets. When I reached the inn I did not ring the bell but raced straight up the stairs to my room. The door was open, and I could hear a tapping within. It was the girl, one of M’Culloch’s daughters, on her knees by the fireplace sweeping out the grate. She looked up at me in surprise as I burst in.
‘Did you lose something?’ she asked. Ignoring her, I crouched beside the bed and ran my hands under the mattress. Internally, I cursed myself with a thousand condemnations, and some of the anguish must have shown on my face for she added, with concern, ‘Do you want me to fetch the doctor?’
My fingers touched a lump between the bedstead and the mattress, fastened round it, and withdrew it. There it was, the faded address still legible on the oilcloth. Mr Tyler, M’Culloch’s Inn, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. How could I have forgotten it at this ultimate stage, having brought it so far? At that moment every shred of scorn and obloquy my uncle had ever hurled at me seemed entirely justified.
‘That is all,’ I explained to the girl.
I backed out of the room and hurried down the corridor, eager not to antagonize Lyell with further delay. I met M’Culloch on the stairs.
‘Mr Jerrold.’ His eyes narrowed, and there was a hostility in his tone which I had not noticed before. ‘I thought you had gone.’
‘I had. I forgot something in my room and returned to retrieve it.’
‘There were some men called for you just after you left.’
In my haste I had begun to edge past him; now I stopped still. ‘Which men?’
‘A sheriff and two magistrates from Greensburg. Said the corpse of a man’d been found in the woods thereabouts – shot through the head. Said they’d made enquiries, and he’d been seen in company with two Englishmen and a woman on the road to Pittsburgh. Wanted to know if I’d seen them about my inn.’
I gripped the banister tight. ‘What did you tell them?’
M’Culloch’s face stiffened and he stared me hard in the eye. ‘I’m a lawful citizen, Mr Jerrold, and I don’t hold with murder. I told them I had a party of Englishmen and a woman under my roof, but that they’d gone this morning. They wanted to know where you went, and I said I didn’t know but I thought you might be making down river.’
‘Thank you, Mr M’Culloch.’ Touching my hat, I tried to squeeze by, but in an instant M’Culloch’s arm had shot out and blocked my way.
‘I wouldn’t want it said I harboured a murderer, nor let him escape.’
I drew myself up as stiff as I could muster. ‘Mr M’Culloch, I can assure you that I am no murderer. As for the body, perhaps it belongs to some brigand. Perhaps he fell in with these innocent Englishmen, befriended them and then, in a lonely place, attempted to rob them and defile their fair companion. If, to defend her honour, they confronted the villain, and if, in the scuffle, a shot was fired, might they not pause before consulting the authorities? Far from home and ignorant of local custom, fearful lest the dead man’s friends pursue them, might they not hide the corpse and allow that natural justice had been served?’
M’Culloch’s arm still blocked my way, but his gaze was less certain. ‘Was that how it happened?’
I chose not to answer. ‘You have daughters, Mr M’Culloch. Imagine one of them on her knees in the forest, begging the cold-hearted villain to spare her virtue, her shame, and him laughing in the face of all entreaty. What would you do?’
M’Culloch considered this so long I could have kicked him down the stairs. A clock in the hallway below ticked out the seconds, and I wondered how long Lyell would wait for me, or whether he would abandon me in Pittsburgh. And what if the sheriff returned to this house?
‘Did anyone see you enter just now?’ M’Culloch asked.
I shook my head.
‘Then let no-one see you go. If I were you, I’d be gone from the state of Pennsylvania by nightfall.’
He lifted his arm. Nodding my thanks, I ran down the stairs and out of the front door, pulling my hat low over my face as I reached the street. Fortunately the cold had made high collars and tightly wrapped scarves the fashion of necessity, so I did not stand out as I hurried back to the boat. Lyell was standing on the foredeck to greet me.
‘I trust your ensemble is now completed? Perhaps you would like to acquire some fine Pittsburgh ironware, or a lump of coal to take home to your sweetheart, before we go.’
I vaulted onto the deck. ‘We must leave now,’ I gasped.
‘I am glad you have discovered urgency.’
‘They found Harris’s body. There are men in town seeking us.’
That stopped his sarcasm. Turning to McMeekin, who was smoking his pipe on the roof of the cabin, he began clamouring that we must be away this instant or there would be the devil to pay. McMeekin rose and took his steering oar, the crewmen cast off the mooring lines and poled us out, and presently we were in the current and gathering speed.
I looked back. With few boats on the river the dockside was almost deserted, but a few stevedores and porters were out plying their trade. None of them seemed to pay us the least attention: if we were braver than most travelling at this time of year, there was nothing otherwise remarkable about our boat, and it was too cold to stand around gawping.
I was just ready to seek the warmth of the cabin when a movement on the receding shore caught my eye. Three men had run out onto the jetty and were standing at its end, their black cloaks billowing in the breeze. They were too far distant for me to see clearly, but as they waved their arms and gesticulated I fancied they were pointing at us. Even as we rounded the first bend in the river and drew out of sight, they were still there, watching.
I went below.
Whatever other lies he had told us, Mr Harris had given a faithful description of the river: it was like a turnpike through the countryside, with farms and settlements in abundance on the flat land either side. Each had its own landing stage from where the inhabitants could hail the passing river traffic, but we steered clear of them, for both shores still lay within the state of Pennsylvania. The innkeeper’s warning was hot in my ears. For the most part I kept inside, huddling by the brick fireplace in the middle of the rudimentary cabin. Even so, I could see our course through the open door, and it baffled me. At first we seemed to be going west, then north, then west again, and then almost due south, until I worried that presently we would come clean about and see the smoky air of Pittsburgh rising before us once more.
On the second afternoon, one of the crew thrust his head into the cabin and announced that we had passed beyond the borders of Pennsylvania. With some relief – the chimney smoked terribly, and I had borne a cruel headache for the past few hours – I ventured on deck. The river was high, and the boat scudded along at a pace I would not have expected from her squat frame, though it seemed to owe little to the crew. They stood at her corners with their poles, occasionally planting them in the river to fend off floating debris or sandbars, but otherwise untroubled. Atop the roof, McMeekin still stood by his steering oar.
‘Where are we now?’
The boatman pointed to larboard. ‘That’s Virginia. Opposite’s Ohio.’
The names meant little to me. ‘And this river?’ I was struggling to remember Harris’s geography lesson.
‘This here’s the Ohio River.’
‘That’s a pretty name.’ Miss Lyell had followed me out of the cabin and stood by the bow with her shawl pulled tight around her shoulders. ‘Does it mean anything?’
‘It’s an Injun name, miss. Means the River of Blood.’
If I had doubted the wisdom of fleeing headlong into the American wilderness with little notion of my destination and a horde of enemies in pursuit, this latest information made it a still more dismal prospect. It was no great feat to imagine my own blood feeding the river’s hungry current – indeed, the image was rarely far from my thoughts. I looked around with renewed apprehension. Beyond the ribbon of civilization which clung to the banks, steep hills rose above the valley, their slopes covered in a skeletal forest unbroken by any road or pasture.
‘We seem to be moving with some haste,’ Miss Lyell observed. ‘Yet I see no sail or oars. Is it really just the flow of the river which drives us?’
The boatman nodded, his jaw chewing up and down on a wad of tobacco. ‘Can’t outrun the river, I guess – leastways not at this time of year. She’ll get us where we’re goin’ quick enough.’
I noticed a certain deficiency to his method. ‘But how do you return up river?’
There was a brief delay as the boatman dug in his pole and pushed us clear of some eddy in the water, though I could see nothing on the surface. ‘You could cordelle her.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Well, it’s a durn sight easier explainin’ it than doin’ it. You take thirty men and a rope, fix it to the boat, and pull for your life.’
‘All the way up the river? But Mr Harris said it was a thousand miles long.’
‘The Ohio’s a thousand – the Mississippi adds another thousand or so if you’re comin’ up from N’Awlins.’
‘Where?’
‘N’Awlins. Noo Or-Lee-Ans,’ he enunciated, thrusting out his lips like a cow. ‘End of the river, but for the delta.’
‘And you haul these boats back two thousand miles against the current?’ A life in the sultan’s galleys hardly seemed more arduous.
‘Naw – ain’t no point. Too much hard work.’ The boatman gave a sly grin at my evident confusion, and spat his tobacco into the river. ‘Boat ain’t worth above sixty dollars – you’d spend more’n that paying your crew to come back.’
‘Then how …?’ For a moment, I imagined an endless fleet of these flatboats flowing out of the river to drift forever around the oceans.
‘We sell the boats in N’Awlins and break ’em up for the lumber. Then we walk back.’ He looked around with an exaggerated smile, taking in the scenery like a witless tourist. ‘Yes, sir: a ride down this river’s a one-way trip.’
After that I did not speak much to the boatmen, save to establish that we were not ourselves bound two thousand miles to New Orleans. Mr McMeekin laughed: no, he said, we were merely going three or four days down river to the island where Mr Tyler could be found. I was not so certain: it seemed equally probable that we would reach this island only to find Mr Tyler recently departed, that we would continue down this river forever one stage behind him until eventually we dropped off the edge of the continent.
Each day, the farms on the riverbank grew more infrequent, and the occasional towns smaller. The river grew wider, and the current stronger. Our only diversion was choosing whether to stay in the dark, smoky cabin or to go out into the freezing air where our cloaks were soon coated in ice. Nor was my humour improved when, one afternoon while McMeekin was napping in the cabin, I snuck out onto the rear deck and examined his cargo. The casks were mostly filled with provisions – salt pork and flour and beer – but the long, steelbound boxes I had observed on our first meeting were another matter. Darting glances all about to see that I was not observed, I lifted the lid and stared down. Eight muskets sat in the casket, neatly interleaved. The gleaming oil on their barrels looked untouched.
I stepped back and stared around. I counted twelve of the boxes – almost a hundred guns. Even by the standards of America, where men carried rifles as their counterparts in London might carry handkerchiefs, that seemed excessive. And though I was no marksman, I knew enough to recognize the difference between a rifle and a musket. The farmers and backwoodsmen of this country needed guns which could fell foxes and pheasants and the occasional Indian with a single shot. Rifles, with their superior range and accuracy, were perfect. Muskets, with their poor range and rapid fire, were weapons for an army.
‘I thought you’d be interested in these, Lieutenant. Do you approve?’
I spun about. McMeekin had emerged from the back door of the cabin and was holding a taper to his pipe, trying to light it. He grinned at me.
I tried to hide my terror. ‘They are … very fine.’
‘That’s not but the last batch, mind. There’s plenty more already on the island.’
‘Really?’ I let the lid drop shut, flinching at the bang.
McMeekin was still staring at me expectantly. ‘Do you think they’ll do?’
‘Oh yes,’ I assured him. If you wanted to equip an army they would do very nicely indeed.
‘The colonel said we could always get more down river.’
‘He’s probably right.’
McMeekin smiled. ‘He usually is.’
It was dusk on the fourth day of our journey when we reached the island. We had been bearing south, but a bend in the river brought us round due west. The winter sun was sinking directly before us, its last rays painting the sky a delicate confection of pinks and violets. Standing at the front of the boat wrapped in my greatcoat, I had to lower my eyes for fear of being blinded; all I could see was a few dozen yards of water shimmering ahead of us.
‘Will we make a halt for the night?’ I asked McMeekin.
He did not answer. He had given his steering oar to one of the crew and was perched on a barrel staring intently into the distance.
‘There she is.’
Shading my eyes with my hand, I followed his gaze. A little way down the river, about a mile distant, the waters parted around a narrow island in mid stream. It was hard to see with the sun, but I thought I could discern a broad, white building against the dark curtain of trees beyond.
‘Blennerhassett Island,’ said McMeekin.
‘Who lives there?’
‘Mr Blennerhassett.’
As we drew nearer, and the sun dipped lower, I began to make out more of the house. I could scarcely credit my eyes. For the past few days we had seen only timber barns and farmhouses; now, perched on an island at the very edge of civilization, we were confronted with a fantastical construction, a two-storey mansion in the Palladian style which could have graced any estate in Surrey or Hampshire. A wide pediment capped its frontage, and at the sides two graceful colonnades led out to the wings. There was even a gravel walk leading up to its front door. With the last flashes of sunlight probing through the trees behind, and the windows beginning to glow yellow with lamplight, it was like some homely vision of paradise. I hardly dared blink for fear it would vanish; I barely even noticed when Miss Lyell sidled up next to me and put her arm through my own.
‘What is this place?’ she breathed. Her cheeks were red as cherries in the winter chill, and her hand cold to my touch. Absent-mindedly, I began stroking it to warm her.
We were evidently not the only ones to have discovered it. Half a dozen boats were moored by the shore, and I could see campfires burning on the open ground behind. The smell of roasting meat drifted across the grey water, and with it the sounds of voices and laughter and singing. Suddenly, I was very hungry.
We drifted nearer, until we were level with the end of the island. Then, with much heaving on the poles and shouting from McMeekin, we brought our bow around and turned across the current. Two of the crew leaped into the water and splashed ashore with ropes, winding them around posts and hauling furiously to bring us in. There was the merest ripple of a shudder as we touched the bottom, and a soft grating as our bow slid onto sandy soil and came to rest.
Forgetting all decorum, I jumped over the prow and ran up the beach. Three figures were standing there, watching us: a man and a woman with hands clasped before them, and a negro butler in a frock coat and breeches, carrying a tray of steaming glasses of wine. He stepped smartly forward, proffering them to me, and I took one unthinkingly.
‘Welcome,’ said the woman. She was tall and slender, little older than I, with wild dark hair and luminous eyes. Her black cloak was buttoned up to her chin against the cold, yet if anything it only served to accentuate her beauty. ‘We hoped you would come tonight.’
‘Did you have a good journey of it?’ the gentleman beside her asked. He had a hooked nose and a fragile face, his hair falling in tumbling curls about it. He leaned forward to peer at me as he spoke, and though a pair of round-rimmed spectacles was perched on his nose he still gave the impression of not seeing me clearly.
‘Are you Mr Tyler?’ I asked.
‘No.’
My face fell.
‘I am Harman Blennerhassett,’ he said. ‘Welcome to my island. ‘Mr Tyler is awaiting you inside the house.’