The Whiskey Rebel

Ethan Saunders

I had considered it a possibility that I might see her-not a realistic possibility, but within the realm of the conceivable. Yet, upon seeing her, I could not imagine a response other than to stand frozen, staring, then to look away, then to stare. Her gown, sky blue with swirling yellow designs, revealed her still-marvelous figure to advantage, having a low neckline and sleeves to just above her elbows, exposing her fine white skin. Her pale blond hair was piled high in the fashion, and atop it rested a prim little cap with yellow feathers stretching upward, a blue ribbon, which matched the gown itself, billowing down.

I had seen her in fine dresses before, of course, though when she had been younger they had been less stiff, less formal; they had been the simple if elegant dresses of a lovely girl, not complex fabric cages of European origin. Then she’d been a soft and charming young lady, a foot still planted in girlhood, but now she had turned into a woman, stony and commanding in her beauty.

Lavien walked toward them, came within ten feet, and then turned back to me. “I’ll not speak to him here,” he said.

“Why not?”

“It ca

This could not long hold my attention, not while Cynthia was in the room. She did not see me. Jacob Pearson, however, did. He looked up and met my gaze, and turned, most desirous of speaking to his wife. It had been many years since I’d seen him, but I had no difficulty in recognizing him. He was perhaps six or seven years older than myself, though the years had been more unkind to him than I flatter myself they had been to me. His hair had turned white, and lines had exploded around his eyes. Deep crevices had formed in his cheeks, and his teeth were yellow-those he still had. For all that, he retained some of the rugged handsomeness he had possessed a decade earlier, and though he was clearly Cynthia’s senior, the two of them together did not have the comical aspect of some couples in which the husband is significantly older than the wife.

Pearson looked at me, and there was something cloudy in his brown eyes, bloodshot and tired-looking. I watched while he pretended not to have noticed me and reached out with his hand-thick with veins and unusually large-to grasp Cynthia’s arm, digging into her flesh with his yellow fingernails. I saw her white flesh turn whiter and then red. She blanched, closed her eyes for a moment, and then nodded very briefly.

I was too far away to hear what he said, but I could see from the cruel shape of his lips that he said terrible things. I knew too that his soul was tainted with a blackness that frightened me. It is easy to look at the man who has married the woman you love and see only evil, but this was not simple prejudice. I knew what I looked at, and I hated it.

I was stepping up before I knew it, and I understood at once that had I not caught myself, had I not reestablished communication with my own mind, I would have strode forward and pushed him down. For an instant I imagined the room full of politicians and dignitaries would delight in seeing this man fall to humiliating injury, yet I realized at once that to find pleasure in this scene a man would have to know that Pearson was a fiend. To the uninformed, it might appear as though I simply delighted in knocking men over, and in such circumstances the world would no doubt turn against me.

Before either of them saw me approaching, I turned away. I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing servant and drank it down angrily. Then I went to do what I did best: I would set things in motion.

Think you it is easy to get a well-known and beautiful woman alone, away from her husband, at so public a gathering? Think you that, in the company of dozens of guests and nearly as many gossipy servants, a man can just pull such a woman aside into a private closet? It would not be easy for any ordinary man-at least I suspect it would not. I ca

Here is how I went about mine: I had Leonidas request one of Mrs. Bingham’s servants to inform Mrs. Pearson that the lady was needed most urgently in the library. It would work, I thought. All would be protected by a buffer of supposed Negro ignorance, each servant claiming to believe that he or she had only passed along what was believed to be true.

I sent the message and went to the library to await the arrival of the lady. I stood by the fire, leafing through a volume on the late war, until the doors opened and a troubled-looking Cynthia Pearson rushed inside.

Upon seeing me, she was struck still and silent. Then she opened her mouth and would no doubt have called out her surprise, but recalled the doors were open. Instead of saying something, she closed the doors. I believe it was good that she did so. It gave her time to think, or perhaps it gave her time to cease thinking and allow her heart, and the memory of past emotions, to, if not eclipse, then at least take the stage along with other more reptilian designs.

“My dear God,” she said.

With the door closed, she took three or four purposeful steps toward me but stopped well short of the usual conversational distance. She folded her hands before me, as though she were about to sing an Italian aria. “I was told I was required for an urgent matter.”

“You have been told the truth,” I said.

Cynthia’s blue eyes flashed something meaningful, though I knew not what, and she turned away from me. She strode purposefully toward the doors. Before pulling them open, she turned back to me. “I asked you not to contact me. I begged you not to. You ca

“What does it matter? All centered upon your husband’s unexplained absence, but he is absent no more.”

“He returned last night and would say nothing of where he’d been-only that he had traveled on business. I tried to tell him that the government man, Lavien, was looking for him and that others had come, told me terrible things-”

“The men who warned you not to speak with me?”

She nodded. “I don’t know what transpires with my husband. I don’t know who it is that threatens me, but I know my duty, even when it is to those who do not deserve it. Why have you called me here like this, in so improper a ma

“Cynthia, you asked for my help. That you have been threatened into retracting your request does not relieve me of my duty.”

“Have you been asked to speak to me in these familiar terms?”

“No,” I admitted. “That was entirely my idea.”

She shook her head. “What is it you hope to accomplish, Captain Saunders?”

What indeed? I hardly even knew. Did I want an apology or an explanation or a return to those days when I was young and had so much before me? I said, “I want to know why you married him.”

She turned quite pink and her mouth formed a delicate O. I ca

“Is it the mark of maturity that one sets love aside?” I took the glass with much gratitude.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

She said it with such venom that I felt foolish and ashamed to have put her in so difficult a position, and I was prepared to tell her so. I knew not why I was there-in that house, in that city. I knew not why I had not been able to live my life since the close of the war, but I would not be so base as to drag this lady, this stranger, into my sadness.