“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.
“The money would have been my marriage portion, and doubtless I’d now be the wife of some rich, boring merchant who beat me once a week, fucked me once a month, and otherwise left me to my own devices.”
Despite his wariness, William laughed.
“My mother wanted me to be a clergyman, poor woman.” Denys shrugged. “As it is, though …”