A tall man in a blue coat manifested himself on deck, flanked by two sailors. He looked closely at Denys, nodded, then, catching a glimpse of William, started back as though he’d seen a demon.
“One soldier,” he said sharply to Denys, catching him by the sleeve. “One, they said! Who’s this?”
“I’m—” William began, but Denys kicked him in the ankle. “His friend,” William said, nodding casually at Denys.
“There’s no time for this,” Denys said. He reached into his breast and withdrew a small, fat purse, which he handed over. The captain, for so he must be, William thought, hesitated for a moment, glanced suspiciously at him again, but took it.
The next instant he was hurtling back down the gangplank, propelled by an urgent shove in the back from Denys. He hit the quay staggering, but regained his balance at once and turned to see the ship—it looked like a small brig, from what he could see through the mist—draw back the gangplank like a sucked-in tongue, cast off a final line, and with a rattle of shrouds and a snap of filling sails move slowly away from the quay. In moments, it had disappeared into the grayness.
“What the devil just happened?” he asked. Rather mildly, all things considered. Denys was breathing like he’d run a mile under arms, and the edge of his neckcloth was dark with sweat. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that the ship had gone, and then turned back to William, his breath beginning to slow.
“Herr Weber has enemies,” he said.
“So does everyone, these days. Who is Herr Weber?”
Denys made a sound that might have been an attempt at a wry laugh. “Well … he’s not Herr Weber, for starters.”
“Are you planning to tell me who he is?” William said impatiently. “Because I’ve got business elsewhere, if you haven’t.”
“Besides looking for a girl, you mean?”
“I mean supper. You can tell me who our recent friend is on the way.”
“HE HAS A few aliases,” Denys said, halfway through a bowl of chowder, thick with clams. “But his name is Haym Salomon. He’s a Jew,” he added.
“And?” William had eaten his own chowder in nothing flat and was wiping the bowl with a chunk of bread. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t think why it should. Salomon. Haym Salomon … It was the word “Jew” that supplied the missing link of memory.
“Is he Polish, by chance?” he asked, and Denys choked on a clam.
“Oh, he is.” William raised a hand toward the barmaid and pointed at his empty bowl with a gesture indicating that he’d like it refilled. “How did he escape being executed in New York?”
Denys coughed, gagged, and coughed explosively, scattering the tabletop with bread crumbs, soup droplets, and a large chunk of clam. William rolled his eyes, but reached for the beer pitcher and refilled their mugs.
Denys waited until the fresh chowder had been brought and his eyes had stopped watering, then leaned over his bowl, speaking in a voice barely loud enough to be heard over the banging of cannikins and blustering talk in the taproom.
“How in God’s name do you come to know that?” he said.
William shrugged. “Something my uncle said. A Polish Jew, and he’d been condemned to death as a spy in New York. He was rather surprised to hear of him alive, and here. So,” he added, taking a dainty spoonful of chowder, “if that’s who your little friend is—and rather plainly he is—then I’m rather wondering just who—or rather, what—you are, these days. Because Herr Weber is plainly not in the employ of His Majesty.”
Denys drank the rest of his beer deliberately, brows knitted as he considered William.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter that you know; he’s already out of reach,” he said at last. He belched slightly, said, “Excuse me,” and poured more beer, while William waited patiently.
“Mr. Salomon is a banker,” Denys said, and having evidently made up his mind to tell William more or less the truth, went on. Born in Poland, Salomon had come to New York as a young man and made a successful career. He had also begun to meddle—very cautiously—in revolutionary politics, arranging various financial transactions for the benefit of the new Congress and the emergent revolution.
“But he wasn’t as cautious as he thought, and the British did catch him and he was indeed condemned to death—but then he got a pardon, though they put him on a hulk in the Hudson and made him teach English to Hessian soldiers for eighteen months.” He took another gulp of beer. “Little did they know that he was urging them all to desert—which a good number of them actually did, apparently.”
“I know,” William said dryly. A group of Hessian deserters had tried to kill him during Monmouth—and came bloody close to doing so, too. If his wretched Scottish cousin hadn’t found him in the bottom of a ravine with his skull cracked … but no need to dwell on that. Not now.
“Persistent fellow, then,” he said. “So now he’s here, and as there don’t seem to be any Hessians around to be traduced, I assume he’s gone back to his financial tricks?”
“So far as I know,” Denys said, now all nonchalance. “Good friend of General Washington’s, I hear.”
“Good for him,” William said shortly. “And what about you? As you’re sitting here telling me all this, am I to assume that you also are now a personal chum of Mr. Washington’s?” William was, in fact, not really surprised to be hearing these things.
Denys drew out a handkerchief and patted his lips delicately.
“Not me, so much as my stepfather,” he said. “Mr. Isaacs is a good friend of Mr. Salomon’s and shares both his political sentiments and his financial acumen.”
“Is?” William said, raising his eyebrows. “Didn’t you tell me that your stepfather had died and that’s why you’d dropped the ‘Isaacs’ from your last name.”
“Did I?” Denys looked thoughtful. “Well … a good many people believe he’s dead, let’s put it that way. It’s often easier to get certain things done if people don’t know exactly who they’re dealing with.”
The fact that he, William, plainly didn’t know whom he’d been dealing with was becoming painfully obvious.
“So … you’re a turncoat, but you haven’t bothered actually taking it off and turning it inside out, is that it?”
“I think the actual term might be intrigante, William, but what’s in a word? I began working with my stepfather when I was fifteen or so, learning my way around the worlds of finance and politics. Both those threads weave through war, you know. And war is expensive.”
“And sometimes profitable?”
Something that might be offense rippled under Denys’s placid expression, but vanished in a small gesture of dignified dismissal.
“My real father was a soldier, you know, and he left me a comfortable sum of money, with the stipulation that I should use it to buy a commission—if I should turn out to be a boy, that is. He died before I was born.”
“And if you’d been a girl?” William began suddenly to wonder whether Denys might have a loaded pistol in his lap, under the table.