That wick seemed to me the slowest ever made. It felt as though we waited for long minutes, though it could only have been a few seconds. I lived in fear that the men would see us and come running, they would lose interest and wander off, or sense a trap and flee. I feared that Lavien would misjudge and wait too long. Indeed, the wick grew shorter and shorter, and it took every bit of self-control I possessed not to shout at him, to tell him to throw it, for love of God.
It burned with a fiery glow and a faint hiss, and when it seemed to me that Lavien had waited too long already, he tossed the metal ball so that it landed just before the fire, bounced slightly, and came to rest within the little blaze. I knew not if I should be more impressed with his aim or his cleverness. Had the ball landed before them, they should have seen it and fled. Instead, the three men looked at the fire, certain they had seen something move, yet unable to find any sign of aught new upon the scene. The one-eyed man squatted down and peered into the blaze, bringing his face in very close.
Then came the flash.
The grenade burst in terrible cry of fire and heat and screaming metal. It sent out a rain of fire and dirt and broken branches. Leaves and wet lumps of snow fell from the skies. Birds took flight. Unseen animal feet scurried. I turned away and threw myself to the ground, though Lavien did not move or turn away. He must have known, to the inch, the grenade’s range. When I turned back, Lavien was already standing.
“Give me the pistols,” he said.
I did so, and he walked toward the clearing. Two of the men were dead, beyond any doubt. One body was entirely without its head, another nearly torn in two, missing an arm not to be seen anywhere. The dirt had turned a mottled black, and little mounds of snow were spotted pink with blood.
Astonishingly, Isaac Whippo was still alive. The grenade must have blasted away from him, for he sat upright, holding one arm, dangling and clearly broken, in the other. His face was wet with blood, and one eye was injured and closed, perhaps ruined. I had mocked this man, sought to belittle and humiliate him, and now he rocked back and forth, slowly, deliberately, like an old man with his pipe.
“He might yet live,” I said softly.
“No,” said Lavien. “He won’t.” He raised his pistol and fired it into Whippo’s head.
I turned away, though I saw the flash of the powder and the smoke of the barrel. When I turned back, Whippo’s body lay upon the ground, folded and still. A staggering revulsion coursed through me, for what I had seen and for Lavien, this little fount of heartless violence.
Lavien stepped to me and took me by the shoulders. He made me face him, made me look into his dark eyes, small and hot. “Understand me,” he said in a low voice. “I have now murdered a wounded man. That’s how important this is. It isn’t about money or pride or power. It is about the future of the most audacious experiment in human liberty ever attempted. I do not want this government to do what I have just done. I take it on myself.”
I swallowed. “You Jews have a fine history of taking sins upon yourself.”
He looked in the general direction of the road. “You’re a funny man. Let’s go.”
Ethan Saunders
It was growing dark, but that would not matter, could not matter. We would ride through the night, at a slow crawl if need be, if that would get us to Philadelphia before the trading began. We rode swiftly, clinging to every last second of daylight, and with the violence behind us, the violence I would not permit myself to think of, it did indeed seem as though we could get there before dawn. The roads were good, and there was no sign of rain or snow. We would arrive in time and Hamilton could perform whatever magic was required to calm the City Tavern crowd. It was too late to prevent some damage in New York, but he could send agents there, as well as to the other trading cities, who would buy at Treasury’s direction to stanch the bleeding.
I thought of what we would do, not what we had done. I had no wish to recollect the whiskey men torn apart by Lavien’s grenade, or Isaac Whippo executed, or charming Joan Maycott, who had engineered death and plotted to ruin a nation. I tried not to think of these things, and for the most part I succeeded. I thought mostly of the cold and discomfort and the growing dark. After sunset, as our pace slowed, we took turns holding a torch to light our way.
We rode on in silence, the cold bludgeoning us, numbing us. Our arms ached from holding the reins, from holding the torch. Our legs and backs were stiff and wretched. The skin on the insides of my thighs burned and itched. Onward we rode. I did not take out my watch. I would not. I would ride in the dark as fast as I could, and that would be enough. Knowing that I made good time or ill would not matter to me.
I don’t know that I fell asleep. Not precisely. My mind, however, went elsewhere as we made our way in that slow, deliberate, careful pace. It was black of night, no end conceivable, as though we were to ride in the cold, barren darkness forever. And then, toward the east, I saw the first rouging of the sky.
We had not spoken in hours. Now Lavien turned back to look at me. “We shall be at Hamilton’s office before seven o’clock. We’ve done it, Saunders. We’ve done all that men could do, and that will have to be enough.”
We rode on, picking up the pace with the rising of the sun. In ten minutes, we were trotting. Five minutes after that, we were in a full gallop. The road showed signs of a nearby town, spotted now with farmers’ shacks and outbuildings and a tavern where I wished, dearly wished, we might stop for tea and warm punch and the freshly baked bread that perfumed the air. It was an abstract wish, for what I truly wanted was to complete my task, to take my news to Hamilton and then rest. To eat my fill of food and drink and then lie down and let sleep overtake me and not wake for a day or more. Next I would find Cynthia. And then, with no urgency upon me, with the schemers on the run, wallowing in the filth of their own ruined plots, I would track them down one by one and make certain they knew justice.
We rode hard, leaning forward in our saddles, no longer troubled by pain or fatigue or cold. The chill wind and the beating of the hooves drummed in my ears, but I felt gleeful and giddy. I turned to Lavien. I said, “You know, in the midst of all this madness-”
That was as much as I said, because all went wild and the sky twisted from the top to the side, and the ground corkscrewed around to meet my face in a slap of cold earth that came hard and fast, making my teeth rattle. The blood trickled from my mouth, my nose. I felt the most dreadful of pains, those that come from a blow to the head.
I never heard the shot that killed my horse, but I heard the next one. It must have been only an instant after the one that brought me down, but I was already upon the ground, stunned and feeling pain reach out with its first tentative, exploring tendrils. There was a second crack and Lavien’s beast reared up, threw him off, and collapsed upon him.
I thought how foolish they had been to shoot at me first, but it did not seem to matter. Not yet. And then I remembered that they had a marksman among their number, one of Daniel Morgan’s men, and they’d shot our horses, not us. It could not have been an accident. We’d killed five of their men the day before, and they still took pains to keep us alive. But then again, it occurred to me they could not know. No one could have traveled faster than we had. If news was coming, it was not yet there.
Lavien was upon the ground some fifteen feet ahead of me, his horse atop his lower body. Blood-I presumed the animal’s-pooled around him. He did not move. Lavien lay in the muck of the King’s Highway, perhaps dead, perhaps dying. I was determined I would go to him, and was attempting to clear my head when I heard the voice.
“Can you stand?” asked the voice.
I knew not if he’d been standing there, ten feet behind me, all along, or if he’d approached while I lay in my daze. I could not see him easily in the glare of the sun, but I could determine that he was a large man, riding like an ancient warrior upon his beast. It was the Irishman.