The Messenger by Siri Mitchell Page A

please: do it from the corner.” I did not stay to know what she would do, but stepped out away from her toward Jeremiah Jones.
    As I approached him, he put a hand up to his hat. “Hannah.”
    I nodded.
    He drew even with me, slowing a bit and extending his hand. As he did so, a piece of paper fluttered from it.
    I bent to retrieve it before the wind could carry it away, and I offered it out to him.
    He took a quick step back, glanced about and then stepped forward, quite close. “That’s for you. To keep.”
    “Oh.” Oh! It must be the message of which he spoke.
    “Deliver it tomorrow. Remember, it’s for Sergeant William Addison. I’ll meet you in the street after.” He was looking at me as if he wanted to say more, but then he moved away, tipping his hat once more. “Godspeed, Hannah.”
    I watched him walk away, wanting to stop him. Cry out to him. I didn’t even know William Addison. How was I to learn who he was? How was I to know what to do? And what did I know about being a spy?

12
Jeremiah
     
    I shook my head as I walked away. She’d tried to hand the note right back to me—in plain sight where any could see it! How could one teach the art of deception when the student denied its very utility? It was like trying to teach an angel to be a devil. But I had to hope for her success. Otherwise it would be both our necks together. At the gallows.
    John Lindley came in for supper that night. He was wearing a look so long he might have tripped over it as he came through the door. “You need a drink?”
    He nodded.
    “Rum?”
    “Brandy.”
    I pulled the cork from a bottle with my teeth and then poured him a bowl.
    “Might need two. Howe’s gone and asked to be recalled.”
    Recalled? That was news. “To where?”
    “England.”
    A recall was long overdue in my opinion. He’d been given time enough to quench the rebellion and hadn’t done it. “You think they will?”
    John shrugged and took a drink. Planting his forearm on the bar, he turned to look around. Then he leaned in close. “Word is, the prime minister is none too happy with him.”
    I could see why. General Washington was only a few scant miles down the road with half his troops laid low by illness. Yet Howe hadn’t managed to roust himself from his mistress’s bed for the two days it would take him to defeat the ragtag army. If I were the prime minister, I would have called for his head long before now. “Who’s to replace him?”
    John picked up his bowl and eyed the bottom of it and held it out toward me. I pulled the cork once more and filled it. “Does it matter? General Howe’s a true gentleman.”
    “When is it to happen?”
    “Before the spring campaign, I suppose.” He was tapping his fingers against the counter now, looking as if he’d rather be talking to someone else. “I just wish something could be done.”
    “You can’t very well recall the request.”
    “No. But . . . blast it all! There ought to be something that can be done to fete the finest officer in the army. Something memorable.”
    I recorked the bottle and stowed it on the shelf behind me. “Write him a play.” The army might have been a den of playactors for all the masterpieces that were being practiced and planned for production down at the theater.
    “A play.”
    “Or some sort of ode in his honor.” An idea was growing in my mind. General Washington was looking for a way for his prisoners to escape. John was looking for a way to fete his general. What if the same diversion could be used to meet both ends?
    “Everyone has written some sort of play. Or other.”
    I’d forgotten: The officer corps seemed to attract nothing but frustrated playwrights. “How about a ball?”
    “We’ve been dancing all winter.”
    All winter. It needed to be something different, then. Something novel. Something . . . that could be looked forward to all spring. “What about—”
    “There he is!” John muttered the words under his breath as he turned