The Tale of
the Jersey Devil:
Misinghalikun
by Summer J. Wood
Dear readers,
Having been unable to get an agent or publisher for over four years, I decided I'd rather have people actually read my work then wait forever for a break and have it collect dust.

Please note, according to United States Federal law, this material was COPYWRITTEN the moment I wrote it.  Therefore I have full ownership and authority over it.  Please do not steal my ideas or words or copy and paste any part of the novel on your own site or use for your own use.  I have full proof that I wrote it and will take legal action if necessary.

Also, please note, this is not professionally edited for grammar, spelling, or historical accuracy (although I try to make it accurate as possible within a writer's artistic license).  :P  Please e-mail me with any comments or critiques.  Contact information follows the conclusion of the prologue and each chapter.

Thanks and I hope you like it!
Chapter 1:
     Adeline Severns slouched, resting idly, on a small stool at a chopping block in the bustling kitchen of Philadelphia’s City Tavern.  She stared at nothing in particular as one does when deep in thought.  People moved around her, knives tapped, and broth boiled but she was unaware of any of it.  One of the main cook’s apprentices skinned a rabbit on the wooden counter top in front of her.  The dead animal had a coat of mottled brown and white fur, fit enough for a garment.  As he peeled the skin back, a smooth pink and lavender, sinewy surface revealed itself from the inside out.  She all of the sudden realized that she did not know what was done with these skins, whether the tavern keeper sold them or not.
     She had just fed the rabbit and its companions leftover scraps from the kitchen the day before, carrot ends and wilted cabbage leaves.  Yesterday it was an adorable, cuddly, lively little thing that hopped in its cage and wiggled its whiskers as it ate, and now it was stiff, dead, and grotesque. 
     What a terrible thing to be dead.  Death, in its mission, did not leave one of life’s creatures any token or memory of its former self or compensation for what it selfishly and arrogantly stole, save the soul.
     If the dead animal had a soul she could not see it.  Death hid it from prying eyes just as life did.  What is the purpose of having a soul if there are no assurances to the living that the dead have such a thing, when all those that are dead appear to be when they pass on is what humans have given the unceremonious title of corpse?  And that decays into something even fouler no less.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, people with names and character and dreams became just that and worse. 
     If Adeline did not understand the purpose of a soul, she had even more questions with the purpose of living itself.  If not for losses of her own, she might not have acquired such an early and remorseless attitude towards that which can come at any time, any place.  Death had no empathy in taking a child’s mother, her mother.  Nor did it care that her family would become destitute when it stole her father away.  If death should have knocked at her door, she would have willingly obliged. 
     She often doted on the difficulty of coping with her existence as time progressed and everything changed but the hapless circumstances that augmented throughout the past decade of her life.  She had not been born to the well-to-do upper class nor had she been born into the inescapable clutches of poverty, but it was difficult to stay in a comfortable situation once their misfortunes developed and then doubled and then tripled.  Somehow her family had fallen from being somewhere right in the middle of society to the virtual bottom of the ladder. 
     Not somehow, she knew how it had happened.  She did not understand why it had to happen though.  It was not death that stole, but God.  Death was merely an instrument he played to get what He desired, while all along He dismissed what those He created desired. 
     She rested her chin on her hand as she stroked the fur of a third rabbit lying in front of her like the lifeless remains of a human waiting to be laid in their coffin, except this little creature would not be devoured by the earth, but by hungry men.
     It was soft, and still warm.
     She was too weary to think on the poor creature any longer as the apprentice, with a few elegant slashes of his knife, gutted the rabbit of its internal organs and then began skinning yet another. 
     Allowing her overtired eyes to slip beneath her eyelids a moment, her ears picked up on the resonant mixture of clanking pewter mugs and soft murmuring, interrupted every so often by the loud exclamation of a mid-morning now turned mid-evening drunk, coming through the room’s door.  Cooks and other servants whirled around her but her attention was lost on them as other thoughts crept into her mind and evolved into a string of still more thoughts. 
     Although the kitchen was busy as usual, it was not as hectic as the dining and gathering rooms on the three open floors of the building.  She was just glad to break away from the swarming of people everywhere about the tavern and the city in general.  She would have preferred to work at home like her stepmother doing laundry and other odd little house-ridden jobs but the wages were too meager to support the three remaining members of her family.  She would end up doing those little jobs when her stepmother was too ill or fatigued to finish them. 
     Working in City Tavern, which was often doted by patrons as the best offering of cuisine in the entire Western Hemisphere, was a fair prospect for a young woman, especially an impoverished woman, when most women were refused positions in an otherwise male dominated world.  Her employer was dubious at hiring her in the beginning; he had reservations about her status in a restaurant funded by the more affluent patricians of the city.  He showed pity on her as he knew her father before he passed away, and perhaps saw something in her that would be pleasing to the eyes of the men who frequented his establishment.  She was grateful for his compassion although as a woman, she earned an amount far less than men in the same position earned.  That she was a woman and not a man did not estimate her wages as much as the fact that she was a native among immigrants who would work for far less than man or woman.  She wished she did not have to work at all, colonial-born or not.
     It would not have been so difficult if her eldest brother had not left.  He was of age to earn a living for them and in actuality this should have been his voluntary duty. 
     If only he had not run away and had stayed to help them when they needed him most.
     If only she could have married like so many other women that were years younger than herself. 
     Her life was filled with if onlys.
     If only a woman could earn a proper living.
     Dozens of trades enticed her, but never would she be permitted to pursue one.  She could never be a sea captain or lawyer or anything interesting. 
     Of course most women were only too glad to leave such intellectual situations to men.  Politics and all the responsibility and planning that came with running a business or even a city were overwhelming to those females who had enough trouble caring for a few children let alone hundreds perhaps thousands of strange men and women.  She was not even sure what exactly it took to run a city.  She might have had an easier time of it if she had been permitted to go to school. 
     Adeline did think about it when she was at leisure to do so.  Such leisure also persuaded her that she might have been just as happy, perhaps more so, to do just those things which women are professed to do by men.  There was little wrong with keeping house and raising children, it was after all what kept the spokes on the wheel turning, much more than being a silly tavern keeper, tobacco farmer, or constable.  One day she wished to have a family of her own, if circumstances allowed it, those being if a man would marry her.
     She was assured of one thing though, that there were more than enough duties to take care of in the tavern, especially as of in recent times.
     The representatives from the various colonies had been frequenting Philadelphia for several years now but there were more about now than ever.  Business had been brisker than usual.  It had been an ordinary tavern when its doors first opened to patrons two years ago.  Soon after those regulars who were well to do city printers, silversmiths, and merchants, had been joined by dozens of the colonies’ most famous and infamous political sharpshooters.  Although she could not distinguish one colony’s representative from another, she knew in general their business and purpose in Philadelphia.  City Tavern was often their first stop, even after a long journey from either as near as Delaware or as far as Georgia. 
     Something was brewing inside the walls of City Tavern as of late, other than the brown ale. 
     The young maid’s weariness, however, did not stem from the political inequities between an Empire and its adolescent colonies but rather from the unremitting duty that came with having to help with her family’s expenses.  If she had thought about rising above her situation like men do, now she wanted nothing more than a man to care for her so that she may not have to work at all. 
     It had been not quite a year since the sudden death of her father.  Doctor Evans said it was acute heart failure that did him in.  Her stepmother said it was heartbreak from seeing his eldest son and his namesake, John, run away to join the ranks of the colonial roughnecks known from Lexington to Williamsburg as minutemen, ready at a minute’s notice to counter any British hostility.  Her father witnessed a similar behavior in his youngest son whose impetuous impatience inspired him to one day duplicate his elder brother’s treasonous actions. 
     John would talk for hours about the Sons of Liberty and how he would become one of them even if it meant leaving his family behind.  The British were to be ousted from this side of the Atlantic.  Tyranny was to be absolved.  The colonies would decide for themselves what was to be taxed, who they would trade with, what land was to be taken charge of.  He had become quite obsessed with the propagandist idea of ridding the continent of British.
     Their father had fought briefly but loyally with the British infantry stationed in the colonies against the French years ago on the frontier, until a leg wound had given him leave to return home.  Adeline had only been a child then but with the man of the house gone and her birth mother very ill.  She had taken to maturity naturally like bird to flight, as anyone would do so in order to survive day to day and get by with just the most basic necessities.  Even John had cared for them then, working as a gravedigger’s apprentice.  It was that service that sanctioned in their father a devotion for the country he spilled blood for.  A devotion that in light of the Crown’s actions in Boston and throughout the colonies was undeserving in the eyes of the younger John Severns.  He would display devotion of a different brand, against the Crown.  Whether or not it was the right thing for the family was of trivial concern.  It was the right thing for him.
     Samuel, their younger brother, only dreamed of doing the same.  His older brother had become as much a hero to him as a general to his soldiers, commanding them to a brave and valiant end with raised sword through a field of armored horsemen and archers wielding longbows.  This is how Adeline imagined Samuel felt, playing with his miniature, crudely made soldiers and horses that John had whittled from scraps of firewood.  If he started to believe those feelings, he may leave as well when he became of age.  He was but a child, thirteen years of age and he was entering those years that led to adulthood, his childhood fancies clouded his judgment, preventing his common sense from growing up with him.  If he had any common sense, it would most likely be the dangerous kind that had been recently circulating in a particular political pamphlet.
     She tried to tell him that war was not as grand as writers and rebels would make it.  He did not listen.  Why should he listen to a woman when he had a brother, who being a man, knew more and was not a servant to the wealthy but a servant to the cause of liberty? 
     Her father had this fear as well, that not one, but both sons should become sick with a treasonous fever forsaking national and familial ties and leaving them all. 
     He had started drinking, a mug or two of rum, two maybe three nights a week, but after John left, it soon became three or four mugs every night and then into the daylight hours as well.  There was no changing his habit.
     Alas, the Severns had all agreed on one thing: that their father’s own end had been brought on by a lifetime of overindulgence of the liquid kind.  A phrase that Adeline often heard from like-minded riffraff in the tavern was that rum gets a man’s heart started in the morning.  What they forgot to mention was that it can stop it at night.
     Like fish to water, her father had been readily drawn, to spirits of every variety as times became hopelessly too intolerable for him to bear.  He had a healthy appetite for liquor and ale all his life but there are certain occasions of last resort in a person’s life that drive them to excess, and her father was not immune to these vices. 
     It was one more miserable let down after another.  The premature death of his first wife, little in the way of employment opportunities due to rising immigration as well as his own failing business ventures, with war on the horizon that he did not agree with, and his own children’s disenfranchisement with anything to do with the old country.  How his second wife desperately reminded him of his duties day after day, but he had little in the way of strength and will to accept any of it. 
     He had discovered and embraced more unobtrusive ways to escape the deluge of the nagging, poverty, and dejection. 
     The point of no return for Mr. Severns’ misery had been without a doubt his son, John.  To have his eldest boy run away left more burden on himself to provide for the family, even if then there was one less mouth to feed. 
     “What in the Great Lord’s creation had persuaded your brother to pick up a musket against the mother country, God only knows!” her father would exclaim with vigor to his empty jug of rum, shaking his callused fist in frustration at the complacent but indifferent moon.  To see his son commit this act of treason against Mother England by joining Washington’s Army was vexatious to his mental coherence.  “If I ever see that boy again, it will be the end of him, God be damned,” he would pronounce before he passed out, his loud snoring and liquor tainted breath capable of waking the dead, but amazingly not himself. 
     Adeline would have been more than merely content to rattle off an entire list of reasons to her father not only for John’s treason as he called it, but for the entire family’s support of the cause.  She had grown a distaste for the British aristocrats who immigrated to the city and with their riches and Old World mentality claimed social sovereignty.  She saw them get in and out of their carriages as she walked home from work each night, such massive baubles on their powdered wigs, she wondered how they kept from tipping over.  She had once seen a woman wearing a wig as large as a poodle and as fluffy, too, with little ships placed upon it, as if they were having some sort of sea battle right on her head.  And this in the colonies, thousands of miles from the places in which such sinful excesses originated and thrived.
     She caught pieces of their conversation, “Lady this” and “Lord that;” it was quite nauseating.  But how could she really criticize what she herself may have been, she was after all the granddaughter of British born subjects.  There were actually many nice people from England she knew from the tavern, including its keeper.  Immigrants who had been as staunch a supporter of separation as those that had been here long enough to feel the discontent firsthand many times over. 
     Perhaps she was jealous of aristocratic recreation and privilege. 
     To be free from want was freedom indeed.
     This was a freedom she had never known even before her family’s misfortunes, and could only hope with the greatest optimism of her daydreams to experience someday.  She had always hoped that one day she would not have to dream anymore and everything would fall into place, but as she grew older, it became ever more apparent that all she had were her dreams.  Life as she knew it had taught her that much in the very least.
     Perhaps John was caring for them by running away to the Continentals.  He could help procure freedoms none of them had imagined or had even known they had wanted until it became fashionable.
     She heard pieces of conversation from other sorts of people, too.  The sort that were they to be overheard by the wrong person, they would without a doubt be put in the stockades.  It was this sort of talk that gave her hope that these colonies may be so much more than what they were and maybe she too could be more than she was.  It was easy to get caught up in the excitement, the possibility of it when so many others partook of these ideas.
     She kept such hopeful sentiments to herself.  She had not wanted to add anymore heartache to her Loyalist father or make any more appealing the bottle that he so inexplicably clung to as if it were the umbilical cord that nourished him as a tiny babe in his mother’s womb.
     It was lucky for her and the family that he was not a violent drunk as she had witnessed first hand on many occasions not only at the tavern, but throughout the city in general.  Mr. Severns refrained from lashing out in a drunken anger on them, although Adeline and her younger brother Samuel had been no stranger to his cane once and again.  The elder Severns was not a bad man, but if he did become so incensed, he would not cease from demonstrating it.  It had been several years at the very least that Mr. Severns took such action as he was so deeply submerged in the bottle that he had not the inclination to give them much thought at all anymore.
     It was punishment enough having to clean up after the old man.  As he drank more and more heavily, he became less and less coherent, vomiting on himself and in the apartment.  If Adeline could go more than a day without having to wash stains out of bed linens, it was a good day for her.  It had almost been a godsend that her father should pass on, rest in peace as it were.
     How painful it was to watch him self-destruct before their eyes, even more so for Samuel who with his best friend and brother gone and living with only two others who were women, had no male figure to learn from.  It would take a lot of instruction to make him forget what he saw in their father and even more to explain to him that running away was not a possibility for one so young and full of promise.  His energies could be put to better use learning in school than carousing and war.
     Mr. Severns’ own past gave him legitimate reason to be distraught with them though, she supposed.  But all of the disappointment in the world should not have been enough to force a man to disregard his familial duties, to not care for those that did stay.  Why John’s life meant more than hers, Samuel’s, and her stepmother’s was beyond her comprehension. 
     The truth of the matter was that it should be her, a young, uneducated girl, who took the weighty responsibilities upon her shoulders that her father and brother had despairingly shrugged off.  He had once been a good man.  Perhaps some people just do not have the strength of will to move forward over obstacles thrown in their path.  The weight of the burden becomes too heavy and strength is replaced by weakness of every kind, body and mind.
     Now, God willing, with her father long laid cold in the ground and her elder brother probably suffering a fate no better, Adeline adjusted to her charge by serving food and drink to the better and lesser citizens of Philadelphia, more than occasionally accepting the playful pats and sinful glances that came with the territory of being a young woman working for a living in a tavern, albeit, a fine one.   
     That is all she had done since she was that young child, survive with the most minimum bare essentials.  A small apartment for shelter, the cheapest food, and the cheapest materials for making their own clothing among other things.  Sewing needles were a precious commodity to any woman, but some women most certainly did not throw a fit if they should lose one between the floorboards.  Adeline however, would become as frantic as the mother of a lost child when her needle disappeared.  More often than not it was Samuel teasing her, when he had taken it a third time, she finally found a place out of his reach.  She had been using the same sewing needle for the past five years; that was how frugal she had learned to become.  It was her earnings that paid for such things.  Her father, when he managed to find a situation here and there, reinvested his earnings into the local taverns.  Her stepmother was no better, spending her own meager earnings on trifles she never really needed. 
     Once in a while an old friend or neighbor would give Samuel a new shirt or Adeline an old dress or ribbons or this and that for which she could not express in words her gratitude.  She herself could never afford such things with most money going for rent, food, taxes, Samuel’s schooling, and a portion of her wages set aside for proper attire at the tavern.  Her frugality had become a talent to her; one that she embraced humbly for without it, she and her family would have been ruined long ago and she might have joined her mother and father in the ground.
     “Chicken and bread pudding!” Adeline heard bellow off of the walls of the kitchen; she was startled from her brief reflections.
     She hastened to her aching feet and delivered the hot dish to its hungry patron on the upper floor.  As she was doing so she could feel the discreet stares of hungry men washing over her body as if the flow of her skirts around her legs was just as entertaining as a Walnut Street puppet show caricaturing the King; there for their own enjoyment as they played cards or jested. 
     Soberly she realized that things could be much worse as they were for many women who had to resort to much more than just being a visual amusement in order to survive on their own, no family to help them along.  At least Adeline still had her family, small as it was.  Else, she knew not where she would be.  The city brimmed with all of the pestilence that came with crowded stagnant society.  With this position, she not only paid expenses but could at least save a little bit of money for an emergency should her step-mother’s illness be provoked or heaven forbid she lost her employment.  Most importantly she was able to keep her dignity as well as her virtue. 
     How she longed to live in open country, though, without the clamor of carriages and horse hooves over cobblestones, without the constant chatter of people and more people, and especially without the putrid stench of manure, sewage, and refuse.  The concept of living on a farm was as exotic to her as living in the city would be to a farmer.  She imagined fresh air, and a hint of flowery perfume in spring, not unlike the gardens in the city when the wind blew the right way.  And, without the nuisance of the large society that flocked around every corner.  She would have liked to have lived in a smaller town, met a farmer if bad luck did not prevail, and lived a simple yet fulfilling life.
     Although, she would not mind if one of the younger men in the tavern or city take notice of her.  After all she was nearly half past twenty years of age and very warm to the idea of having her own family, her own household, maybe even love.  Townhouse or farm, she did not care anymore.  It was the loneliness that she wished to avoid more than anything now.  She could feel as the months passed an anxious desperation to not end up a spinster like so many other hapless lone women she saw that inadvertently did.  She knew she would not find it in a patron though, for what man of means that supped at the tavern would consider one of its servants in matrimony? 
     She knew her place.  She knew it very well. 
     One man who was not bothered by her status did take notice of her, an Englishman, in the British Army that she met on several occasions in the past year.  Her emotions were so far removed from him that she could not bear to entertain such notions of courtship with him, should he inquire officially.
     Then again she thought, perhaps she should accept his advances, if not for her sake then for her family’s.
     Samuel could go to proper school, her mother would have proper medicine and she would not have to work her fingers to the bone anymore, and all of them could have something more than a one room apartment.  She could have her own house and go to market and buy what she wanted rather than what she needed. 
     Walking back to the kitchen to place an order she had just taken; she felt a sudden chill wash over her frame, the little hairs on her arms stood on end.  She turned around and saw why.  A silver haired man had opened up one of the windows to yell down to a friend on the street to come up and join him for a quick toddy of rum. 
     Adeline laughed to herself.  The work could be tough, but there was seldom a dull moment in this place.  She had to admit to herself that the men were as much amusement to her as she was to them.  Who needed operas and theater when there was City Tavern?
     Things could be worse. 
     As she turned to head back to the kitchen, she caught glance of a young man she had not seen in the tavern before or even in the city although that was not impossible; the city was large.  She could have sworn he had not been there a few moments ago.  She imagined that he blew in through the window, or she had been too tired and busy to notice particular faces.
     He sat alone in a corner, reading over a black leather folder of papers in front of him, although she did not know how he could read with the only light available coming from a candle on the table adjacent to his.  He reached for his mug without taking his eyes from his papers. 
     If he had a mug, then he had been waited on, and had been there before she took notice.  It was dark; perhaps that is why she had not observed him before.  She contemplated offering him a candle so he could see better but found she was reluctant to disturb him or she just did not have the confidence.  She continued with her tavern duties.
     Her shyness, especially around young gentlemen, young handsome gentleman rather, often prevented her from doing the most basic things that to any other might be rather natural.  To her, well, it was almost as if her mind was paralyzed.  If only she were bolder, these verbal utterances and gestures would have revealed to people that she was kind and thus would have been in her best interest.  She felt that her inability to talk to people sometimes led them to believe she was above them, or they were not worth her time which coupled with being a mere servant may have struck as even more loathsome.  Words had a tough time coming to her.  Her mind could never think of the right thing to say in a stranger’s company. 
     She had been successful enough to procure those things that were necessary to survive, but anything more than that eluded her capabilities time and time again.  Maybe she would have been married by now if she were not so reserved in her character.  No matter how much she wanted to speak or act sometimes, her shyness usually kept her true feelings locked inside herself, the key never to be found.  It could be on the ocean floor of the Atlantic for all she knew in which case, she was doomed to spinsterhood. 
     She usually took little note of the young bachelors in the tavern as she was used to being ignored by them, even if she could manage a smile or a few words here and there.  She began to believe deeply that God must have placed in her a light that only men could see, a light that warded them off as a blessing wards off evil.  Although Adeline could not fathom what in her was so evil as to keep her a spinster for the rest of her natural life. 
     And there was God again, not satisfied with taking her family members one by one, He was sure to make her life as unhappy as possible.  But why her?  She had gone to church well enough, although she more and more detested going.  She was losing love for everything she used to hold dear to her as the loneliness and heartbreak of seeing lesser women, younger by ten years even, become wives and mothers, increased.  This drove her like a whipped horse to resent such things more and more as days turned to months and months to years, every year hopes trampled by time without result, without reward. 
     She would become so overwhelmed with the fruitless futility of her life that she could not even eat.  She would stare for many moments at the food on her fork and just not have the will to lift it to her mouth though her stomach rumbled with hungry anticipation.  She thought about giving up, but when she saw the sunlight stream through the wave of glass in the crossed panes, she discovered in her temperament a hopeful reserve of energy to take her through the day that followed.
    Perhaps God had no play in such events and her resentment was to be blamed not by some deity but by chance alone.  Was she in the wrong place at the wrong time?  Had she lived on the other side of the world, would she have had any more luck in finding a mate?  She doubted it.  It was a sorry lot for her that whether by God’s will or the way of the universe, she was to walk the earth alone, forever.  She would never love or more depressing, never be loved.
     Once in a great while she could sense some regard and now she felt as she did when a cool breeze had blown through moments before.  Only this was not a cool chill but warm, like when one stays out in the sun and heat on a sweltering summer day too long, becoming faint.  Someone was watching her; somehow she could sense it, feel it.  Her shoulders tensed.  She did not like being watched.  It only made her more guarded even when she discovered it was the man she admired earlier.  When her back was turned she could feel his eyes on her yet when she turned back around he quickly pulled his gaze away.  
     As she waited on a table, she met his eyes in the window’s reflection, an odd spherical glow shown in them as if he were an animal.  It must have been the reflection only and the intimacy of his stare, this time he did not stop himself, which flustered her and now it was she who turned her gaze away.
     On her way down to the kitchen, Adeline stopped and stood on the other side of a doorway so as to hide her body but be able to peer from behind the wall through the door’s opening.  She did not know why, but she felt the necessity to look on him a moment.  There was something mesmerizing in his dark countenance.  Other men slapped their knees and walked from table to table whispering and joking but there he was, silent as the grave and still as stone.  As she studied him with a careful eye, she decided he was not only handsome, but the most handsome man she had ever seen, which with all of the comings and goings of young men in the tavern and in the city in general was remarkable. 
     He dressed in black, except his hose which were white.  He did not wear a peruke like many of the other men of means but wore his hair natural.  It was dark, pulled back with a white ribbon, the only other color he wore besides black.  Perhaps he was a man of religion wearing all of that black, she thought.  Catholic perhaps, all kinds of religious sects sought opportunity in America now, even Jews.  His eyes were likewise dark, although they showed the oddest reflection.  His face was softly angular and elegant for a man, his forehead had a slight slope to it.  Adeline was mesmerized; she did not know that a man could possess the same beauty as a woman.  Her heart pounded with an anxious rhythm inside her ribcage. 
     Yes, she could love someone, but she knew, in the back of her mind that such a man would never love her in return, nor even give her a moment’s notice.  She had sensed his eyes on her but as she thought about it, it came to her that he was only looking at her out of curiosity or horror as one feels the necessity to look at a carriage accident or dead mutt on the street.
     She had seen young handsome gentlemen in here all the time although many of them soon lost their physical appeal when they opened their mouths.  Something stood out in this one that kept her mind fluttering much like her heart.  She finally pried her attention away and continued down to the first floor, back to the kitchen, back to work.
     If only he would be the one that was a reward for suffering through what she had suffered.
     “Adeline,” she heard a familiar voice sing.  “I know what thoughts are crossing your mind right now,” she giggled.  “Or should I say your heart,” the young woman playfully jabbed at her corseted bosom.
     Adeline, embarrassed, pushed her hands away.  Sarah was her dearest friend, but she could not help but feel jealous of her friend’s ability to communicate so openly.  She longed to have such a playful personality.  She could have even flirted with the handsome man upstairs, offered him that candle and maybe a little more than that.  But, she was not Sarah and only fretted at the envy she held of her best friend’s boisterous nature.
     Sarah had loved and had been loved many times.  No, she was not married, but she had been adored, admired, loved.  And Adeline never, and was it not better to have been loved for a moment than not at all, ever?
     Adeline suddenly realized she did not know how Sarah could have known about this man she had taken notice of, unless Sarah had been watching her, too.  Perhaps it was Sarah and not the man upstairs who she felt watching her.  This made her feel even more embarrassed and more fixed in disregarding the entire affair.  Adeline’s pulse slowed as she became less enthralled with men and more aware of her immaturity.  “I do not know of what you are referring to Sarah,” Adeline said with a bit of impish indifference to her friend. 
      “Oh, but you do, she insisted.  “He towers at least two furlongs above any other man in the city.  Why, I dare say he is almost as tall as my General Washington himself!” Sarah ventured with a nostalgic look.
      Adeline had heard this creative boasting before.  The entire tavern took note of Sarah’s distorted recollection of a brief meeting she once had with General George Washington not so long ago in New Brunswick while she visited a sick aunt.  Although from her boisterous nature it can be gathered that Sarah had visited more than an aunt in her brief visit to an area near the New Brunswick encampments.  By the good graces of God, Sarah had managed to be invited to a dance at which Washington himself was in attendance.
     It was true, when the General had supped at the tavern, he had shown a predilection towards Sarah but truly her younger counterpart’s obsessive behavior was unremitting.
      Adeline answered her friend’s overly dramatic nostalgia with an impassive pose. “Still, I do not know of what, or whom you are speaking.  Furthermore, a seat at the farthest end of George Washington’s supping table does not make him your general.”
      “I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle but it was not at the farthest end.  He was at the head and I was but several settings away from him.”
      “Several settings being equal to the farthest end of the table.”
      “No!” she said as if she had just gotten the biggest insult of her life.  “I tell you he was but a few settings away, his blue eyes sparkling like diamonds...” she reminisced.
     Adeline sighed.  “Well, I suppose if Martha was apt to lending you her opera glasses, I am certain you did see his eyes sparkle.”
      Sarah winced but recovered enough to continue boasting.  “I shall have you know that all the while the musicians were playing ‘Lilies of France’, he could not but keep his eyes off of me.  You should have seen the old cow’s miserable contempt at her husband taking in the true beauty the colonies have to offer,” she said gesturing to her own full figure with characteristic finesse. 
     Suddenly she cowered next to Adeline.  Excitedly she whispered, “There he is, there he is!”
     “Who?” Adeline managed through her fluster, but she knew whom; she could sense his dark eyes on her as he walked down the stairs, as if they emanated the heat of the sun only on her.  She turned and looked at his approaching figure.  He paid little attention to the other patrons and servants who squeezed past him on their way up, but rather eyed Adeline totally and unabashedly.  Her bodice seemed a little snug; she turned away though she wanted to return his gaze and despite her wanting to forget him just moments ago.  Just as she had gathered the confidence to turn around and get one last look at him before he departed, all time stood still and her mouth dropped open with a confounded gasp.
     “Good evening sir!” Sarah said coyly and rather loudly followed by a curtsy so deep that Adeline was sure anyone within eyeshot could see all the way down to the Indies.
      Adeline turned her astonished eyes just in time to catch his gaze change from Sarah to herself.  Horrified, she quickly disappeared to the next room dragging the lascivious Sarah with her.  “Good evening, ladies,” she heard as the door close behind them. 
     It was not to her liking to be so modern and forward as her best friend was.  “God’s teeth, Sarah.  Show a little restraint for heaven’s sake.”
     Sarah gave an unidentifiable look and then sighed.  “Oh, I am just trying to ignite a little spark for you.”  She straightened out her skirts.  “After all, I did you a great favor, I got him to speak to you.  You should be thanking me.”
     “Sarah.  He said ‘Good evening, ladies.’  And in any case, he addressed you, not I.”
     “He said it to the both of us, and more directed to you to be sure.”
     “No, he said it to the one that showed him a great many charms,” Adeline did a mock curtsy.    
     “Ladies, Ladies.  Please.  I have very important men starving around here.  Now stop your bickering and get back to work.”
      Adeline shook her head at the sneering Sarah and headed back to her tables, resolving to not think on anything but her duties the rest of the night.
      As Adeline walked home upon the end of her shift, her ears picked up on the clamorous sounds of excitement echoing from the edges of the waterfront, around Front or Water Street.  Voices cried out followed by the hollow concussion of a gunshot fired into the air.  Then, more inaudible voices carrying on, a blood curdling screech, a woman perhaps although she had never heard a woman emit such a scream as this. 
     She was aware that it was not safe to dawdle in the streets at night, but decided that she really must see what all the commotion was about.  If there were a commotion, guards would be posted or patrolling nearby, which would make her if anything a bit safer than if they were not. 
     If or when there was something newsworthy, she had never been around to witness it but always had it read to her by her brother or heard about it second or third-hand from someone at the tavern.  She had nothing even exciting to bring home from the tavern even with all of Congress there.  They had only ever eaten there and when they did speak in their hushed tones, Adeline had to hurry away to serve or fetch something else.  Now when she arrived home, she would actually have something sensational of her own to report to her stepmother and younger brother. 
     However, she arrived to the crowd of onlookers, only to discover that whatever they had witnessed before to induce such tumult, was now gone.  Papers and other debris littered the street as if a storm had blown through.  A cart lay overturned and everyone was jabbering about what they had seen.
     A crowd of men forming a circle around a woman, of ill repute it appeared, that had fainted peaked Adeline’s curiosity as she wondered what the woman must have seen or heard to cause a fainting spell.  Perhaps it was the woman she heard scream, although she could not imagine such an ear shattering screech come from the fragile woman she saw lying there now.  Adeline watched as a young man fanned the woman’s face with both hands grasping an issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine.  Another man took her pulse at the wrist while talking to another man holding the woman against his lap.  Adeline could not make out what they were saying but it seemed as if one of them was a physician. 
     Looking around her, it was mostly men, young and old, rich and poor, this time of night that lingered on the street, some pointing to the moon, some whispering excitedly, and some even crossing their chests in the sign of the cross or wringing their hands in a prayerful motion, and there were one or two flapping their arms in the motion of wings.  A few people hung their torsos out of the windows above the street spying the disturbance below them. 
     As usual, she could not find the courage of voice to bring herself to ask a stranger what had occurred nor did she see anyone she was acquainted with.  She had expected that perhaps a brawl had broken out; after all it was the waterfront.  But she had seen no injured persons about or having just been pulled apart or the like nor was there a fire or carriage accident she could see, although a thin film of smoky fog drifted upwards, dissipating over the rooftops. 
     From catching a word here and there: animal, wings, fire, howl, devil; she gathered that it was indeed enough to cause a woman to scream and faint.  From the sounds of the banter, it could almost be enough for a man to faint as well.  The fear was audible in all voices, quivering with baffled anxiety, some claiming it an omen of impending war.
     She decided she had tarried long enough and even wished she had not investigated the commotion at all.  As she turned she noticed several youths pointing and snickering at an Indian.  And then she felt as if she were being stared at, watched as she was in the tavern, by that man but it was not the same.  She felt apprehensive of it now, maybe because of the collective fear of those around her.  She glanced around but did not see him amongst the crowd although somehow still, she felt his presence.  It warmed her, and she even felt drawn to what felt like some sort of power emanating but although she could feel it, she could not discover the location of its source especially among the crowd of bystanders nor could she shake off the fear she also felt of it.  The feeling disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared. 
     The crowd was dissipating and she wanted nothing more but to be in the comfort of her family.  She usually walked briskly from work but now she picked up her pace and almost ran until she reached the safety of her own home. 
      When Adeline arrived home, breathless from fleeing the scene, she found her brother asleep in his small cot and her stepmother in a deep sleep, her loud snoring not even disturbing herself from her slumber.  She had without doubt nodded off while working on a pair of mittens she was knitting in the event that her stepson would return home.  The mittens would most likely end up in a crate under their bed that contained a dozen other knitted and sewn articles for him.
     Her father said Henry the Eighth had done it. 
     She did not know to what he was referring but after a few moments he elaborated for her.
     “He married a seasoned woman to take care of him in his old age.  And that is exactly what I have done, married your stepmother to take care of us,” he had explained.
     But now, who was to take care of her stepmother but her stepdaughter.
     Adeline, careful not to wake the poor woman, laid a blanket over her.  And after undressing herself and taking care not to mishandle the nicest clothing she had, her work attire, she laid down beside her stepmother.
     As she lay in bed next to Mrs. Severns, her thoughts turned to her older brother.  Where is he?  Is he sleeping?  Is he alive?  Adeline missed him and her father as well.  She missed them terribly to be sure, but not only did she miss their companionship but simply what would now have been the luxury of having a man around the house to take care of them.  Her younger brother was coming of age to take on that role but he lacked the compassion necessary for a grown man to do a grown man’s duty.  If he would ever possess it, she doubted very much, for he had no man to learn it from and those men he did learn from did not possess such a characteristic at any rate.
     If only she could find a husband, her mother and herself might not have to work so hard to make ends meet.  It was a selfish thought and she was ashamed for thinking it. 
     She did not want to marry for the sake of marriage and comfort, she had hoped in all of her childish daydreams for love.  Perhaps instead of praying for a husband, she should pray for love. 
     She felt her face flush in the darkness of the room as she thought of the man in the tavern today that had so tugged with determination at her mind.  Again she felt shameful, to think so gratuitously of someone she did not even know. 
     Perhaps that is what love is, she pondered.  How could she possibly know what love is?  How could she know what it was not?  Perhaps he tugged not only at her mind but also at her heart. 
     She sighed.  He is not tugging at anything.  You do not want to be an old maid.  You want a husband and that’s the only reason why you are thinking of a strange man you are sure to never see again she told herself. 
     Enough.  Mother and I can get along just fine without a man, she thought.  After all, there was not one man of those she knew who had ever been their solid foundation.
    Adeline had had enough of false hopes, she was going to take control of her own life and not rely on unreliable men who drink themselves to death and abandon their womenfolk to fight some undeclared war.  With her thoughts finally all her own, she turned on her side and despite a rope under the mattress being uncomfortably loose, she drifted off to sleep.


                                                       Chapter 1 continued


                                           Any comments or critiques?
                                         wermosguidetohuttese@yahoo.com