November 27-28 1777
Located in one of the many rows of two and three story tenements abutting the narrow alleys of the Mulberry Ward, the Mermaid Inn was a recent addition to the city’s already abundant diversity of lodging houses, dram shops, and taverns. To acquaint the inhabitants of its presence, and to take advantage of the highly inflated rates of certain commodities and fare, its proprietor very properly ran an advertisement in James Humphrey’s Pennsylvania Ledger stating, ‘those in need of Bed and Board, will find comfortable Accommodations at honest Prices, as well as a variety of spirituous Liquors to hearten the soul…’ Like many of these new enterprises, the Mermaid suffered from the start from the scarcity of provisions and, even more significantly, from a lack of clientele.
It was therefore of no mean consequence when, on that cold and blustery night in November, Jacob Hesselmann retired with his wife to the back room at his establishment, where he made note in his ledger of the receipt of “three guineas in exchange for bed and board for five days and nights, credited to the account of Miss Darvey.”
Hesselmann, his stubby fingers trembling with excitement, lifted the coins one-by-one from the table and held them to the light of the smoky candle. The jingle in his palm brought a smile to the flaccid line of his thick-lipped mouth. “Three guineas, Gerda,” he said to his wife, unable to stifle his laughter. “Three guineas she paid!”
The coins helped him forget his troubles. They helped him forget how, with the drops of sweat sprinkling his brow, he had groveled before the well-dressed young woman. He had offered his assurances. He sympathized, he empathized. Still, the lady was reluctant to part with her gold. The price was excessive, she insisted, for accommodations so lacking in amenities. She demanded wood for a fire; the room, she complained was ungodly cold.
“Where else can you go?” the sturdy Polly Hart entreated.
“Vere else, indeed?” Hesselmann implored, “At so late the hour?”
He acknowledged her reservations; his hands were tied, he explained. Necessity compelled him to fix his rates high or else see his business fail. Prices were inflated all over the city and everyone was plagued with shortages, including fire wood.
At last she relented. Travel had wearied her. She needed rest. And with Polly lighting the way up the darkened stairs, the lady retired, much to the relief of the proprietor of the Mermaid and his wife.
Gerda Hesselmann snatched the coins from her husband and clenched one firmly between her strong teeth. Assured of its authenticity, she pulled the pocket from inside her skirt and dropped the coins in. “So, Hesselmann, a lodger ve have!” She patted the coins on her hip. “And in coin she pays, ja?”
He peered hopefully over the flame. “Tomorrow you go to market, Gerda?”
His wife lost herself in thought. “You see her purse? There is more vere these come from!”
Her husband pursed his lips. “Leave this one alone, Gerda,” he said with timidity. “There is something about her….”
Gerda snorted. “I think my Hesselmann is getting soft.” She patted his hand where it lay on the table. “You got your project, I got my project. I don’t tell you vat to do vere your Mr. Bascombe is concerned, and you don’t tell me how to manage. Is better that vay, ja?”
When he released his breath, Jacob Hesselmann’s lips made a faint ruffling sound. “Of course you are right, Gerda. All the same, I ask you to leave this one.”
* * *
In the little room just off the landing on the first floor, the lights burned brightly with a radiance made all the more brilliant by the clean whiteness of the walls and their wainscoting. Despite the shortages of fuel, a fire blazed in the hearth, casting its warm glow in the full-length beveled mirrors on each of the other three walls. At the green velvet-covered card table on the Oriental rug in the center of the room, Tony Bascombe applied a drop of melted candle wax to the carefully detached seal from a deck of cards and reaffixed the seal to its wrapper. Satisfied that his handiwork was undetectable, even in the light, he placed it with the other fixed decks in a neat stack on the table. He then brushed the pile of paper shavings into his hand and sprinkled them onto the fire.
Returning to his seat, he studied the view in each of the mirrors. He squared the table and adjusted the chairs so that each aligned in the glass. He scrutinized the arrangement. Twice more he modified the setting, each time examining the position of the chairs in the mirrors from his seat in front of the fire. Grumbling to himself, he stood and paced, reviewing and rearranging the side table with its squared case bottles of claret, sack, brandy, and Geneva, and the ribbon twist stemware gleaming on a silver tray. Of course, there would be a bowl of Negus punch, and perhaps sandwiches…but the alignment of the table disturbed him.
The knock on the door jarred Tony from his preoccupation. Casting a glance at the clock on the mantel shelf, his distress intensified. He muttered under his breath. It was not yet six o’clock; he was not yet ready.
“It’s open,” he said, turning to the mirror across from the door.
Feigning indifference but obliquely maintaining visual contact with the door, he straightened his lace cravat and smoothed the black velvet waistcoat over his paunchy middle. As the door swung slowly open, a smile of surprise eased the tension in his face. A young woman poked her head through the widening breach. He caught her eye in the glass and casually raked his fingers through the dark but graying hair along his receding hairline.
“Come to wish me luck, my heart?”
Taking in the brightness of the room with a jaded eye, Polly Hart stepped fully over the threshold. “What need have you of luck?” she said in a throaty voice.
Tony laughed. His hands shook slightly as he poured brandy into one of the glasses. “I have more need of it than you know!”
He downed the glass in one swallow, savoring its calming warmth. While he poured another, he regarded her sidelong in the mirror as she sauntered to the card table and ran her hand lightly over the candle stands in corner cylinders set in an intricate frieze.
“Do you like it?” he asked, unable to hide his disapproving scowl when he found himself inadvertently confronting the reflection of his own puffy face in the mirror. “I purchased it last Tuesday at a vendue sale. At a fair price, surprisingly. But don’t tell Jake, I suspect it’s stolen!”
“That never bothered old Jake! So long as he don’t have to part with too much of his precious gold.”
“It’s my precious gold as well! I don’t need to remind you, Hesselmann and I have entered into a partnership in this.”
“An honest agreement between two honest gentlemen!” With a snicker, she plucked a rewrapped deck of cards from the table and scratched at a blot of candle wax that had seeped from under the seal. “You’re gettin’ careless, love!”
Ignoring her remark, he tossed off the second glass of brandy and tore himself from the mirror. He gently extricated the deck from her grasp and let it drop to the table. His hand lingered on her wrist. “I expect the wagers to be high tonight. If all goes well, my share will be substantial.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred, five hundred pounds… maybe more.”
She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. “No doubt you’ll be lookin’ to be free with yer winnin’s.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.” He slid his finger tip up along the smooth skin of her inner elbow and lightly traced the soft mound of her breast pushed up at the top of her low-cut bodice. “I’m feeling free already.”
She cast him a coquettish smile. “I can think of someone who’d take that as a welcome sign.”
“Suddenly I can think of nothing else!” He cupped his hand over the fullness of her breast and drew her close.
“Rose Albright’s had her heart set on a tumble with you for weeks now.”
He laughed as, beaming triumphantly, she dropped into one of the chairs.
“Cruel bitch!” he teased. “Rose is it? See if I don’t take her up on it…just to spite you!” He pulled up a chair beside hers. “On second thought, why must I settle for wilted produce like you and Rose, when I see that the frau has stocked her larder with fresh fruit?”
Still smiling, Polly Hart inclined her head in question.
“The one you escorted upstairs just now.” Tony settled back in his chair, his long, fine fingers entwined over his middle. “She had on a rich looking cloak. Red as an apple, soft as a peach. Unfortunately, I saw nothing of the parcel beneath the cover. But if the outside is any indication, this one is ripe and sweet.”
Polly’s laughter burst forth, deep and hearty. “Too green for your liking, love! Shake the tree as hard as you want, you’ll not dislodge that one. Straitlaced she is, a proper lady…or so she’ll have us believe.”
“Double-dealing hypocrite! You’re showing your own shade of green.”
“Besides, she says she’s married.” Polly picked at her finger nails.
“All the more reason to bet on the odds.”
“Ask Jake if you doubt me. I brought her in myself. From down by the Crooked Billet. She’d nowhere else to go.”
“A lodger?” he said in surprise. “Do you mean to say Jake has finally got himself a paying guest?”
“A gull more like! If I know the frau, she’s got other plans for your peach.”
He sighed in mock disbelief. “This place has become a veritable haven for gulls.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yourself included?”
He laughed to himself and returned to the mirror, grabbing his black velvet coat from the back of his chair. “The world is made up of gulls. But not everyone has been blessed with the wherewithal to recognize it…or to admit it.”
She helped him slip into his coat. An air of wistfulness settled over him as his attention settled once again on the reflection of his face in the glass.
“Why don’t you run along now? I expect Jake will want to examine his investment before the gulls descend.”
She started to go, but restrained herself when she observed the growing displeasure with which he regarded his image. A derisive sneer had replaced the playful smile that had graced his soft, full-lipped mouth. His violet-colored eyes hardened with an aspect of self-loathing that appeared to smolder in the bright candlelight.
“What d’you intend to do about tonight, then?” she asked quietly. When he made no attempt to respond, she shrugged and continued toward the door. There she hesitated, turning back with a hopeful grin. “You still feelin’ generous? You want me to wait?” He forced a smile and met her gaze in the mirror. “I’ll be waitin’ for you, love.” And she winked and blew him a kiss.
* * *
Jacob Hesselmann rustled his newspaper and, muttering indignations in his native German, turned the page. The sound nettled the quiet engulfing the circular table in the middle of the empty taproom. With a sleepy glance in his direction, Polly Hart rolled her head in her arms on the table top and let the pile of silver coins she had scooped up slip one-by-one through her fingers. Tony, disheveled but jubilant after his night of indulgence, looked up from his deck of cards and laid his pocket knife beside the smoky candle at his elbow.
“Vat is it, Jake?” Tony said with a smile. “Has Cheneral Howe issued an edict against social clubs?”
Hesselmann rustled his paper with increasing agitation. “Ach!” He rattled on under his breath.
Polly shifted her head toward Tony and blew him a kiss. He playfully pinched her cheek.
“Is outrageous!” Hesselmann exclaimed under his breath. “Salt at twenty-five shillings a bushel! Butter at five shillings a pound!”
Tony picked up his knife and continued shaving the edges off the face cards. “Why complain? With your share of last night’s winnings, surely you can afford it.”
Hesselmann peered over the top of his paper. “I vorry all de same! How long can ve keep doing this? Sooner or later they find us out.”
Tony shuffled the deck. “I wouldn’t worry about that. No one left unhappy last night. Even if someone were to grow suspicious, nothing can be proven. Here, let me show you a trick.”
“You know I never play at cards.” Hesselmann ducked behind his paper.
Tony cut the deck and glanced with approval at the card at the top of the stack. The ace of clubs.
“Ach! Foraging. They are forever foraging, these soldiers. So many cords of wood, so many head of cattle they bring into the city from the countryside…and still ve are without fuel to burn and there is no fresh meat to be had! Here! It says here they are selling horse meat at the market and calling it beef! Tearing down fences. Anything that can be burned…houses, furniture…. Gott in Himmel!”
“Come on now, Jake, choose a card.” Tony fanned out the deck and thrust it under Hesselmann’s paper. Jake swatted it away. “Then you, my heart.” He offered the deck to Polly. “Pick a card. Any card will do. Now, look at it carefully, but don’t show it to me. Put it back…anywhere in the deck, it doesn’t matter where. I will now reshuffle. As you can see by looking at my eyes, this requires a great deal of concentration. Now….” With great deliberation, he drew a card from the deck and showed her. “Is this your card?”
Polly squinted at the queen of hearts and shook her head.
At that moment a tall, lanky young woman emerged from the room behind the bar and grille with two tankards of hot cider. She placed one before each of the men. Hesselmann remained absorbed in his newspaper; Tony took a swallow.
“Thank you, sweet Rose.” Chagrined, Tony scowled at the card. “Are you certain this is not your card?” Entranced, Rose Albright leaned over Tony’s shoulder. “Look again. Still certain it’s not your card?”
“I told you once,” Polly said with a laugh. “I’m not daft!”
“Blow on it.” He extended the card face down toward her. She gave him an impatient look. “Go ahead, blow on it.”
Polly shrugged and complied. Hesselmann poked his head over the newspaper, as Tony placed the card at the top of the deck and thumped it once with his fingertips. He waited a moment, then flipped it over. “Two of spades! Is this your card?”
Polly’s eyes widened. “Strike me dead! How’d you do that?”
Tony shuffled the cards and smiled a devilish grin. “Filer une carte. Otherwise known as ‘the slip.’ Takes years of practice.”
Hesselmann rattled his paper in annoyance.
Rose leaned farther over Tony’s shoulder. Polly poked her in the ribs with her elbow. “How’d ye say ’twas done?” Rose drawled, rubbing her side.
“He cheats, you skinny bean pole.”
Tony cut the cards. “Correction, my lovely. I don’t cheat.” Again he drew a face card from the top of the stack. “I conjure.”
“And I’m the Queen o’ England!”
Rose pouted. “I be no bean pole!” She sniffled, stuffing a strand of greasy hair into her dirty mobcap.
Polly laughed out loud and playfully slapped Rose’s buttocks. “Then surely I’m the Queen o’—”
Without lowering his paper, Hesselmann smacked his hand once on the table. Instantly, the two women fell silent. Tony smiled and blew a kiss at Polly. Rose continued to pout.
“Rose,” Hesselmann began from behind his paper, “I thought this morning you and my vife you go to market.”
Rose sniffed and drew the back of her hand across her runny nose. “We was goin,’ Mr. Hesselmann, but…but….” She glanced uneasily over her shoulder in the direction from which she had come. She lowered her voice. “But the lady…the lady lodger….”
Tony glanced up with interest. Jacob Hesselmann lowered the paper. Rose met his startled eye with hesitation and wrung her dirty apron.
Looking down at the floor, Rose continued. “She come down…for pen and paper, the lady did. To do some writin.’ And when the frau…Mrs. Hesselmann charged her two and six for ’em, well, the lady she didn’t take kindly to it. In a temper she was…about the rates. Said the charge for room and board was high enough. She wasn’t about to give over no two and six for paper and a bit o’ rancid ink! That’s what she said.”
The sound of card shuffling filled the morning silence. Polly picked at her fingernails. Hesselmann set his paper to the table. “She goes too far, my vife,” he said under his breath. He rose, with the intention of mediating the conflict just as an addled Gerda Hesselmann, a large basket on her arm, bustled in from the back room.
“Polly!” she barked. “De lady is going out. See that there is plenty of hot vater vhen she returns. A bath she wants. Rose, ve are late! And you, Hesselmann, sweep out de pantry.” When her gaze settled on Tony, a spurious smile eased the harshness in her face. “Good morning, Mr. Bascombe, no vun told me you spent de night here.” She shot a glowering glance at Polly, who froze for an instant in fear before Gerda released her from her sights and whisked from the room with Rose in tow.
Tony shuffled the cards and cut them. He turned up the queen of spades and nodded with satisfaction. “So, Hesselmann,” he said. “I hear you have a lady lodger? I wonder what she could have done to upset poor Gerda so.”
“Stay out of this, Tony,” Hesselmann mumbled, folding his paper before setting it on the table. “Go on, Polly, you heard vat she said. Better get to vork.”
Alone in the taproom, Tony rewrapped the altered deck and reaffixed its wax seal. Sipping intermittently at his cider, he began shaving the edges off face cards from another deck when the approaching rustle of lady’s skirts arrested his attention. He glanced up just in time to catch a glimpse of a woman in a red mantle hurrying from the back room toward the door. He stood and turned as she breezed past him. She paused, long enough for her gaze to meet his, long enough for him to recognize the bewildered look that flashed in her eyes.
For an instant, he detected her desire to speak. He sensed the confusion that swept over her. It swept over him as well. And then she was gone.
But that look remained with him long after she had left the taproom. There was something uncommon about the woman’s face, something that struck him with the inexplicable sense of familiarity. He tried to dismiss it, for he was certain he had never seen her before. Yet, even as he resumed altering the cards, his thoughts bristled with the memory of those violet-colored eyes staring at him in wonder and disbelief.
* * *
The image of the man’s violet eyes and the remarkable shape and alignment of his face and features stayed with Anne throughout the length of her journey from the Mermaid Inn to Black Horse Alley. Clouded pictures from the past added to her confusion. Time and distance had done much to distort all recollection of both the living and the dead whose likenesses lined the dimly lighted passages of Esterleigh Hall. Yet, there was something in Tony Bascombe’s face that sparked images of her father to flash through her mind. How strangely the same, and yet so different. She could not trust her memory.
At the offices of James Humphrey’s Pennsylvania Ledger, her consternation over the price of placing an advertisement removed from her mind all thought of Tony Bascombe’s appearance. All became insignificant when she reluctantly parted with twelve shillings in return for the assurance that her notice would appear, prominently displayed, in the next two editions. But only in condensed form to accommodate her dwindling finances.
It was of little consolation that she escaped the printer’s offices with less than two shillings remaining in her purse. That sum would have to sustain her until her father could be found. But with the price of nearly everything double and triple their ordinary values, it would not last long. Would that Peter had not been so free with Mr. Reade’s funds! She could have managed with her old cloak and shoes.
It did her no good to worry over things beyond her control. Mercy Van Allen’s necklace gave her hope and comfort, and as she followed Gerda Hesselmann’s directions to the Coffee House at Carpenter’s Wharf, her mind brimmed with thoughts of Peter.
“I have been informed,” she said to the man behind the bar, “that it is possible to post a letter from here to someone beyond the city limits.”
Puffing stolidly on his clay pipe, Reuben Barnhill leaned across the bar while a swell of voices rose in response to the vendue master’s description of the next shipload of goods to be sold at auction. Merchants and sutlers—some sitting, some standing—clamored to be heard, doing their best to outbid each other for the cargo of provisions and necessaries they would in turn sell from shops at inflated prices. Barnhill listened in amusement to the uproar before turning his sights on Anne.
“Did you say you had a letter?”
“Yes,” she said eagerly, drawing a folded sheet of plain paper from the pocket inside her skirt. She moved closer and leaned across to him. “It’s for my husband. He’s at Whitemarsh with General Washing—”
“Indeed, I have,” he interrupted loudly, a look of panic flashing across his face. He glanced sidelong in both directions. “Please, come this way and I will gladly show you…although I must warn you, it’s not for sale!”
Anne gazed wide-eyed at him, as he bolted through the passageway, took her by the arm, and all but hauled her off her feet. Passing through the crowded public room, she soon discerned the cause of Mr. Barnhill’s anxiety. He smiled and nodded to the red-coated soldiers standing guard over the proceedings, who barely took note of him or of his ruddy face suddenly gone ashen.
“My dear lady!” Mr. Barnhill sighed and leaned heavily against the door to his warehouse, mopping his face with a calico handkerchief. “You would do well to think before you speak! One does not mention such things in public places without severe repercussions!”
Her knees buckled at the thought of her indiscretion. The strong aroma of coffee and cocoa beans stacked in burlap sacks filled her with a sudden queasiness. All at once, she could not speak, but sank down upon a barrel, as memories of Captain Taylor and the brutal loyalist major chilled her to the marrow.
“Forgive my bluntness,” Barnhill said softly, taking note of her mortification. “It is for your own safety that I warn you. One hears every day of some poor soul uttering innocuous sentiments which are invariably interpreted as treasonous.” He heaved a sigh. “It’s obvious you’ve not been long in our fair city, or you would have exercised greater caution…especially in the presence of our red-coated friends in there.”
“I am beholden to you.”
“I’m sorry. I did not mean to frighten you.” He smiled. “But I must admit, I was frightened myself! Now, how may I be of help to you?”
Anne looked down at her lap. Appalled, she discovered the letter crumpled in a ball in her fist. As she smoothed it out, her hands continued to shake. “My husband…. I was told I might….”
His smile dissolving, Barnhill observed her with circumspection. “Whoever it was advised you was thinking, no doubt, of the packet ship that sometimes carries the post between here and New York.” When she glanced up in dismay, Barnhill considered her expression, then moved to the window and carefully pulled aside the canvas shade. For a long while, he looked out over the wharf below. “It isn’t common knowledge,” he began quietly, “but there are…other arrangements.” He motioned her closer. “Mind you, I don’t officially countenance these arrangements, but I will point out to those with a pressing need to contact a loved one, that there is at least one person I am aware of who might be of help to you. There she is.”
He pointed down over the wharf, where crowds of civilians hungrily watched the newly arrived schooners and merchantmen being emptied of cargo. Anne looked hard over the groups of blue-jacketed naval men scurrying to and from dories moored to the landing, the tattered peddlers hawking their wares, and the gangs of waterfront roughs heckling and tussling with each other. Armed marines restrained the crowd from becoming disorderly, while two broke ranks to chase after a ragged urchin, who appeared to have picked someone’s pocket.
Aloof from the action, a woman of indeterminate age, with a black patch covering her left eye, sat against the wall of a warehouse jutting out onto the wharf. Dressed in a dirty black cloak, which fluttered on the breeze, she tended a smoky fire contained in a blackened kettle. Even the ruffians seemed to sidestep the shabby woman as they elbowed through the crowds. Children recoiled at the sight of her, and men at arms gave her a wide berth in passing.
“She calls herself Mom Sackett,” Mr. Barnhill confided. “Don’t be put off by her appearance or her unmannerly ways. It’s all show for the benefit of his majesty’s representatives. She’ll see that your husband receives his letter.”