Infernal Revolutions (34 page)

Saul laughed with joy and relief, and I felt even sadder to think that my pioneering work in mental warfare had been undone at a stroke.

‘Sweet dreams, Lover Boy!' called Verne Placquet gloatingly, staying behind to search the barn further. ‘And don't worry about Sophie – I will take care of her. Good and proper.'

I turned to attack the loathsome lout, but was held back by my captors.

‘Temper, temper, Lobby!' laughed Verne, after an initial look of panic had swept across his face. ‘But get it out while you can. You won't need that six feet under. Goodbye. Goodbye.'

The crowd outside the courthouse bayed so loudly for blood that the leader of the Supreme Executive Council of Hackensack was forced to interrupt the proceedings.

‘Shut that window, Henderson, we cannot hear ourselves speak.'

Half-Cock Henderson did as he was bidden, the noise level decreased slightly, and the prosecution continued.

‘So you have no rank of note within the British Army, you are not an official observer, you have no diplomatic immunity, and you have no aristocratic connections. May we conclude then, Mr Oysterman, that you are a spy pure and simple?'

I was tired of lying, and so depressed that it gave me a pleasure of sorts to sign my own death warrant.

‘Indeed you may, Sir. Though truth be told, I am more simple than pure.'

‘Yet you do not seem stupid.'

‘Oh but I am, your worship. I am very stupid.'

‘A stupid person would not give such an answer.'

Something about this exchange rattled my memory box, but I could not immediately identify the source of the perturbation. Perplexed, I carried on.

‘Then I gave the wrong answer.'

‘His wits have gone,' I heard one of the committee members whisper to his fellow hanging judges. Heard but did not see, for my eyes were fixed on a painting of Hackensack Green that hung on the wall behind the prosecutors. Taunting me with its memories of Sophie, it was a powerful reminder that Paradise was well and truly Lost now.

‘Presumably your friend Mr Lickley is a spy too?'

My mind came back to earth at the mention of my friend's name.

‘Oh no, he is not. He is most definitely a bookseller, and had no idea that I was spying for the British.'

The committee members, for some reason, chuckled amongst themselves at this remark.

‘Where is he now, do you know?'

‘We parted on Muster Day. He went his way; I went mine.'

‘Heartbreaking,' mocked the interrogator, ‘Still, I am sure you will both meet again in a better place.'

The scene of all this unpleasantness was a sunlit room on the first floor of the County Courthouse, a handsome building which Dick and I had admired a month earlier. Across the walnut desk from me sat four grim-faced Citizens – Josiah Fripp, Ebenezer Meatyard, William Stanton, and Nathaniel Blowfield, the arbitrary nature of whose power appalled me. After all, who were they, with sins as great if not greater than mine, to judge me? Guarding the door were Half-Cock Henderson and the now even more ominously named Destiny Looms. On the desk lay the tools of my trade: three tentatively-nibbled hoecakes, a clay pipe, a pouch of tobacco, a pistol, a spyglass, scraps of poetry (which were examined as if they were coded messages), and a pair of Sophie's stockings, shamefully stained. The main evidence – the coded papers of Mr De Witt and the related page of
Dolly Potter's New Continental Cookery
– was in the hands of the chief prosecutor, Ebenezer Meatyard, who was clearly the biggest Whig in Hackensack judging by the obnoxious arrogance of his manner, the cutting nature of his words, and the rotund protuberance of his belly. Indeed, he looked as though he could do with the same enema I had just been given, which had damned near blown my sphincter out, and left me temporarily bandy about the legs. It had also left someone with the unenviable task of sifting through the rubble for evidence of hollow silver bullets. This someone, it soon became apparent, was Saul Pipe.

‘Nothing found, Mr Meatyard,' he announced, entering the room in a decidedly groggy manner. Indeed, the dog was very pale, and looked as though he had been copiously sick in the recent past. A whiff of effluence followed him in, as though some was still stuck behind his fingernails. Immune now to both smell and authority, he proceeded to pick his nose with rapture.

‘Thank you, Corporal Pipe.'

‘
Lieutenant
Pipe.'

‘What's that?'

‘
Lieutenant
Pipe,' Saul insisted hotly. ‘I was promoted this morning for volunteering to examine this reprobate's excrement.' He looked at me with disgust, even though to my mind gratitude was more in order, if what he had said was true. I wondered how many other promotions were riding on the back of my demise.

‘Whatever,' said Mr Meatyard, waving him away like the nasty smell he was.

‘So, Mr Oysterman – no military secrets lurking in your stools.'

This was stated in tones of congratulation, and I felt strangely pleased, as though I had been given a clean bill of health. He spoke on, Godlike.

‘Indeed, were it not for these papers, and one other little item staring us all in the face, I should say you were no spy at all, but an amiable buffoon caught up in a world whose workings are too deep for your understanding. As for your admissions of guilt, I thought they could be taken as the perverse rantings of a feeble mind. Many inadequate creatures readily admit to crimes they have not perpetrated, merely to endow themselves with a glamour in death that they did not possess in life – to be, indeed, Heroes Of The Scaffold. Alas, that one little item, as it always does, settles everything, and proves that my usual methods of assessing human nature fail utterly when practised on the wily cunning of spies.'

I glanced around me, as in the appropriately-named game of I-Spy, wondering what this mysterious One Little Item could be. None the wiser, I looked back at the committee, and saw their eyes switching from me, to the wall on my right, and then to me again, as if comparing me with something there. I half-turned to follow their gaze, and found my eyes resting on one of the gloomy portraits that lined the walls of the room. These I had taken to be portraits of long-dead colonial nonentities, mere time-serving administrators, hence not worth a glance; but this one, if I was not mistaken, necessitated closer inspection. It looked for all the world like the portrait Eloise De Witt had painted of me at Hoboken, so I rose to look at it more closely. Astonished, I found that ‘twas me right enough, my features and my demeanour of chronic frustration captured by the artist with equal fidelity. Next to me in the rogue's gallery, I then saw, was Eloise's painting of Dick, all swagger and lust for life. Even some of the other portraits looked familiar, perhaps of men I had seen in New York, or on the convoy over. Ominously, some portraits had been turned to face the wall, causing my heart to beat even faster. I staggered, and had to be held upright and given water.

‘Surprised, Mr Oysterman?'

I had not thought it possible to feel worse than I already did, but this further revelation of human falsity and turpitude quite undid me. I wanted to be out of the world, and have done with the despicable human race once and for all. Eloise De Witt, a Rebel Spycatcher! I could not believe it, and I shuddered as I recalled all the attention I paid to her, and all the emotion I wasted on her. Still, at least now I was unshackled from my spying chains and free to speak as an Englishman at last. I composed myself, and issued forth on a waft of bravado.

‘Surprised, yes, and saddened that grown men should take so much evident pleasure in the arraignment of another. You toy with me like dogs with a bone. The outcome of this trial – if trial is what it is – was inevitable before you even saw me. Yet still you subject me to the most outrageous treatment. Hang me, by all means, but take note of how I die – bravely like an Englishman – because it will not be long before you follow me on that same Dangle into Eternity, perhaps on the very same gallows. You are the real traitors, gentlemen, not I. You have been led astray by wandering fires, and you have rebelled against your King and the laws of nature in the process. Therefore I do not accept your authority or your decisions; you are damned traitors all, gentlemen, and you will be punished as such in the Halls of Eternity, by the most Thunderous Judge of All, our Dread Lord.'

This was all blather, of course, and I was making it up as I went along, but the words began to take on a life of their own, until I did indeed feel quite righteous and patriotic. I could not let the scoundrels think they could treat an Englishman with impunity, so I decided to end my rant with a jibe I knew would terrorize them.

‘The year 1777 looms, gentlemen, like Destiny here, and how ominous and gibbet-like all those 7's do look!'

I had gathered on my travels that superstitious fear of the year 1777 was endemic amongst the Rebels, but it did no harm to remind them of it at every opportunity. Indeed, the rawness of their nerves on this point was made evident by the sudden fumbling for pipes and tobacco of all four committee members, a sight which afforded me a temporary spasm of pleasure. They soon recovered, though, and before long were back on their mad hobbyhorses, expounding their distorted views of the world with a righteousness that turned my stomach. Their theories and utopias, mostly lifted from John Locke and all involving crackpot notions such as universal white male suffrage and universal white male education, quite exasperated me. Even if they managed to bring them about one day, who would want to live in a world with such humourless, boorish pedants like these in control? In natural antithesis, my mind drifted back nostalgically to dirty dystopian England, where people were too busy drinking, rogering and coveting money to know or care about political equality. I remembered with advantages the squalor of Portsmouth, and the glory that was Nutmeg Nell – thoughts of whom reminded me that I had not written to her yet, as her other lovers had done. Indeed, I had not written to anybody, and suddenly I had a desperate yearning to scribble letters to everyone I had ever known. I desperately hoped I would be allowed pen and paper, and sufficient time to put my affairs in order before the fateful day.

‘So when are you going to hang me?' I blurted out rudely, interrupting some soliloquy in which words like Equality and Opportunity flourished like weeds in manure. For all their insensitivity to the sufferings of others, they noted the desperation in my voice easily enough, and played upon it greedily.

‘As soon as we get authority from the New Jersey Committee of Safety.'

‘And how long will that take?'

‘The time it takes for a rider to ride to Amboy and back.'

I looked at them blankly, and persisted.

‘And how long will that take?'

‘Tut, tut, Mr Oysterman, how badly the British prepare their spies these days; no wonder we're catching you by the bucketload. Amboy is thirty miles away; time taken depends on the zeal of the rider. Our own Jonathan Bunn is no Paul Revere, but he doesn't stop at every tavern along the way either. You have two days, let us say.'

‘Good,' I said, much relieved, ‘Then I have time to write my farewell letters.'

‘Considering your trade, Mr Oysterman, and your previously expressed desire to see us hanged with you, I don't know if we can allow you the use of pen and paper. Who knows what coded messages your letters will contain?'

‘There will be nothing in them of that nature, I can assure you, gentlemen – you have my word as an Englishman on that score. Besides, you have my code book.'

‘Oh dear, Mr Oysterman, how many times must you have given your word as an Englishman in the course of your career, only to take it back cynically when the needs of the spy arose? Still, as you rightly say, we do have your codebook. Though even if it were still in your possession I doubt your intellectual ability to compose a heart-rending farewell note that also contained hidden information about us. Frankly, Mr Oysterman – though you are not such a fool as you would have us believe – we do not rate your talents highly. The notes of yours in our possession are appallingly transcoded; a child of five could have done better.'

I nodded humble acknowledgement.

‘We are not cruel men, Mr Oysterman. We will grant your request for pen and paper – but bear in mind that our experts will examine the contents before you are allowed to seal them.'

I heaved a vast sigh of relief.

‘Though whether you will be able to see to write anything in our dark little gaol is another matter…'

They could not resist their little gibes, for all their loathsome highmindedness. Still, I was grateful for small mercies, and keen to get writing, however bad the conditions that awaited me. First, however, there was the howling mob to be negotiated, or so I thought. As I was led down the stairs manacled by the wrists, it became apparent that the mob had turned out not for me, but for the latest auction of frontier land, which was taking place in the room below us. Only a few of the vile Sisters of the Revolution had got wind of my situation, and though they tried to hit me with their frying pans, their attempts to exhort their fellow citizens to similar action went largely unheeded. A few turned to look at me with a curiosity that was soon satiated, and several managed a half-hearted spit or shake of the fist, but most kept their attention firmly fixed on the possibility of winning the land lottery. Somewhat disappointed at my lack of pulling power, I nevertheless shook my head with pity at the poor deluded fools, seeing them with a clarity given only to those who had not long to live. Indeed, it struck me that I would not be in the hole I was now if I had possessed such an ability earlier. Perhaps sensing my despair, a Quaker came up to me and pressed a pamphlet into my hand with the words ‘For thee, Brother.' I thanked him before looking at the title, which was
Quaking At The Knees: A Quaker's Guide To Death
.

‘Have you not the
Quakers Guide To Escape
, Brother?' I asked, handing it back to him. The attempt at gallows humour was not appreciated. Offended, the righteous Quaker stomped off, muttering something about the godlessness of the times, and death being the Great Escape anyway. Truly, I was sick of the sight of them all, and desperately hoped my prison cell would be a solitary one. It was with trepidation therefore, that I was brought at last to Hackensack Gaol, and handed over to a stocky aproned man of surprising cheeriness. After a few catcalls from prisoners whose own cells afforded them a grandstand view of all proceedings, I was led ten yards down a dark, dank, unevenly-floored passageway.