The Whiskey Rebel

They turned north on St. John toward Brown Street, where the man headed west. As he reached the corner of Charlotte, Leonidas gave a great leap and tackled the man. He landed flat, with his arms outstretched, and I arrived upon the scene just in time to observe the stranger attempt to slip something into his mouth. I could not see it well in the lamplight, but it was small and shiny. Leonidas did not notice, for he was too occupied in keeping the man down, so, though I was still twenty feet away, my side ached, and I feared I might vomit up the whiskey I’d been drinking, I found strength to dash forward and stomp my foot down upon the man’s wrist.

It did the business, for his hand opened, and out rolled a silver ball, about the size of a large grape. I had not seen one since the war, but I knew what it was immediately, and I felt a chill of terror run through me. Whatever I was now involved in, whatever Cynthia Pearson had become trapped in, was far more dangerous than I had imagined.

I had only just secured the ball when things happened in an astonishing succession. Leonidas slumped forward, letting out a loud grunt. The man under him scrambled backward and ran off down Charlotte Street, and I was once more surrounded by Nathan Dorland and his several friends.

I t was Dorland and the same three men who had assaulted me outside the tavern in Helltown. I could not imagine how they had found me, but they must have followed us to the Crooked Knight and then out again.

Without taking more than a cursory glance toward Dorland and his men, most of whom had pistols, I slipped the silver ball into my pocket and leaned down to see if Leonidas was hurt. He had been struck in the head with a pistol, and he bled, but not egregiously. He stirred now and rubbed the back of his head and then rose, slowly and deliberately, like a great monster rising from its lair.

“Who struck me?” His voice was calm but full of quiet, coiled menace.

“What, shall you return violence to a white man?” asked Dorland. “Consider yourself fortunate I did not shoot you on sight.”

“Hold,” I said.

“The time for holding is done,” said Dorland. “You’ll not have anyone to rescue you this time, Saunders. You are finished.”

I did not want to be finished. I had Cynthia Pearson to protect, and I had, not quite at my fingertips, the prospect of redemption, of returning to the service of my country. I had the silver ball in my pocket, and I could not guess what mysteries it contained. I had important work before me, and I could no longer afford this game with Dorland. Once his rage and inept thirst for revenge had amused me, because I could pull upon his strings and he would dance. Now it stood in my way, cropping up when I would have quiet and calm. Leonidas had been hurt and might next time, were I to escape to find a next time, be killed. It was all this, and there was another thing. It was what Mrs. Lavien had said to me the night before, that I had become something shameful, but that each new day brought the promise of a new path. Her words reverberated now like a cold blade against my skin, making me awake, alert, terrified. It was for all these reasons, and perhaps others, that I turned to Dorland and said what I said.

“I have wronged you and then ridiculed you for that wrong. I apologize, though I know an apology will offer you little satisfaction. Instead, I offer you what you have long wished for. I shall meet you in accordance with the code duello at the time and place of your choosing. Dorland, I accept your challenge.”

“Well, now,” said one of his friends.

“I never would have thought it,” said another, at almost the same time.

Dorland, however, held up his hand in silence. “Do you mock me?”

“Not anymore. I am done with that, and I won’t place my friends in danger any longer.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Saunders, and if I did, it would still be too late. You had your chance for honor. Now it is time for an ignominious end.”

“That is not your choice,” said Leonidas. “You must honor the code.”

“I’ll not take lessons in honor from a nigger,” said Dorland.

“Then take the lesson from me,” said one of his friends. “He has accepted your challenge. You ca

“He has no honor,” said Dorland.

“That doesn’t matter,” said another of his friends. “He has accepted your challenge.”

“You must do it,” said the third.

“One moment,” said Dorland. “You are supposed to be with me on this. Macalister, you swore you would aid me.”

“Because he would not duel,” said the first man who had spoken. I recalled him kicking my side in the Helltown alley. “You asked me to be your second, and I agreed. Now he says he will duel, and you must agree.”

Dorland’s plump face quivered. “But he is a veteran of the war. I would have no chance against him.”

“You mean you will not duel?” asked Macalister.

“Let us deal with him here and now,” said Dorland.

And then the most astonishing thing happened. The one called Macalister walked away, and the others followed. Dorland called after them, but they did not look back. There had been four of them, and suddenly it was a dark alley, and Dorland stood alone with me and Leonidas.

“Well,” I said. “This is what I believe is called a reversal.”

Leonidas took a step closer to him, and Dorland ran fast and hard. I ca

I n the war, it often happened that messages of vital import would need to be carried through dangerous lines. Various methods could be employed to preserve the secrecy of the message. It could be written in code, it might be carried by an unassuming courier, it could be well hidden away. But what happens when the courier is captured, as must sometimes transpire? One method was to carry the message, written in a tiny hand upon a tiny piece of paper, housed within a little silver ball. If the courier was captured, he could swallow the ball and then, once free of the British (for he would have nothing else upon his person to incriminate him), could retrieve the ball at his own unpleasant leisure.

That the people involved in this scheme, whatever it might be, used such methods frightened me. Whom did they fear? What must they communicate that required such secrecy?

I dared not open the ball in public, but once Leonidas and I returned to my rooms I pried it open and looked at the tiny parchment inside. It read:

W qcas tfca R. ozz cb eqvsrizs vsfs. Ies qcbhoqhe hc qcbtwfa voa eiegsqhe bc-hvwbu. Kwhvcih vwe wbhsftsfsbqs, PIE kwzz tozz pm aofqv.

“It’s nonsense,” Leonidas said.

“It’s a cipher,” I told him, “and a fairly simple one. This is quite clearly what is called a Caesar code, so named because it was allegedly invented by Julius Caesar himself. Each letter stands in place of another. If you can break one letter, you can usually break them all.”

“How can you do it?” he asked.

“It can always be done, merely by finding patterns common in writing,” I said. “Given time, a simple Caesar code can always be broken, which makes them of limited value. This one can be broken more easily than most, however. The people writing this code are not nearly so clever as they wish to think themselves, and they made a number of mistakes. There are, for example, a limited number of words in our language that consist of two letters that can be reversed to make another word. I am guessing on and no. And look at this: a word of a single letter. It must be A or I. And all these words end with two identical letters. It is likely that Z is an S or an L. Bring me a pen and paper. There you go. Also, they are foolish enough to use I as a discrete word, which gives me everything I need to break the code.”