Remember the Morning (43 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Remember the Morning
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Clara knew that Ury was using Caesar to realize his vision of a colony for English Catholics under French protection. He had convinced himself that God was guiding him to this glorious destiny. “I think it's a sign. God is sending us reinforcements at just the right moment,” Ury said. “These men from
Golden Mermaid
are battle-tested warriors.”
“Just what I said!” Caesar cried, slapping him on the back. “We should track them down and recruit them. You can help us, Father. Ain't one of your pupils the son of old Cruger?” John Cruger was the city's chief trader in slaves.
Caesar had no interest whatsoever in Ury's Catholic colony. He had disdained Ury's attempts to convert him. Once he became king of New York, Caesar planned to discard Ury and the handful of white Catholics who had joined the conspiracy. He was sure he could persuade the French and Spanish to reward him with an escort of warships for the fleet he would assemble from the merchant ships at the docks. The grateful allies would convoy them back to Africa, where they would establish an independent country, ready and willing to trade for profit with everyone except the English.
Listening to both men—Ury in her house on Maiden Lane, Caesar at the tavern—Clara felt more and more like she was a spectator at an oncoming catastrophe. All she could do was pray each night for a sudden end of the war, which would remove the crucial element in the plan—the early arrival of French and Spanish aid. Neither God nor the Blessed Virgin seemed to be listening to her. Watching the impact of the news of the uprising aboard
Golden Mermaid,
she began to feel the whole city was in the grip of the Evil Brother. For some reason she did not understand, the Master of Life had turned his face away from New York.
“You still ain't got enough guns,” John Hughson said scornfully. He saw himself as a realist who remained skeptical of the whole scheme—while insisting he was ready to join them if they followed his cautionary advice.
“We got more guns than you bought for us, and better ones,” Caesar said. “Them old bird guns you got us from Yonkers was a waste of money.”
“You should have a gun for every second or third man. Pikes for the rest,” Hughson said.
“We got knives for the rest. All kinds of knives,” Caesar said. “They're better than pikes for close work. We got a plan to take care of the governor, too. We'll get more guns soon enough. Cuffee and me's plannin' a couple of big grabs.”
Caesar and Cuffee had intimidated or persuaded house servants
throughout the city to help them steal everything from silver to cash from their masters' homes. The newspapers were full of stories about an “epidemic” of thievery. The Common Council had voted extra money to bolster the Night Watch. But Caesar was confident he could outwit these haphazard guardians of the law. Caesar's stolen goods were the real motive for Hughson's participation. He was making a lot of money reselling them.
Back on Maiden Lane later that night, Clara knelt at her window to pray. But no voice spoke from beyond the stars. Nor did her prayers travel there. All she could see was the circle of African faces in Hughson's, their eyes aglow with Caesar's talk about freedom and power. Why didn't she denounce him as a fool and a fake? Why didn't she tell the Hughsons and Ury what Caesar really had in mind? Why did she listen and say nothing, night after night? She was free—free to leave New York, go to another city, to a farm on Long Island or in Westchester County. But she could not speak, she could not act. Those African faces were like a mad river, sweeping her into a wilderness of doubt and dread. The memory of her night with Caesar, listening to him rhapsodize about the lost Africa of his boyhood, was like a hand at her throat. No wonder her prayers were stillborn.
The next day Clara went down to the Roosevelt wharf to watch the sale of newly arrived slaves. About a dozen merchants and traders climbed aboard
Golden Mermaid
and the Africans were led out on the deck in small groups and carefully examined by the bidders. A crowd of whites and blacks assembled on the dock to see the men who had killed at least thirty white sailors. Around her Clara heard several whites saying
Golden Mermaid's
cargo should all be shipped to the West Indies.
“They're a pack of murderers,” one man said.
“We've got enough to do, trackin' the ones we've got,” his friend agreed. Clara recognized them. They were both members of the Night Watch.
On board the ship, there was a great deal of agitated argument between the first and second mates of the
Monmouth
and John Cruger, the city's cadaverous chief slave trader. “What's up?” a spectator called to one of the
Monmouth
's sailors, who had angrily stalked away from the argument. From the whistle around his neck, he was the ship's boatswain's mate.
“You damned Americans are tryin' to cheat us, as usual,” the boatswain said. “That walkin' corpse there claims the niggers is only worth half the goin' price because they've got blood on their hands. Says no one here will buy'm.”
“I hope he's right,” said one of the Night Watch.
Clara suddenly lost interest in this argument. Catalyntie Stapleton
was going up the gangplank to
Golden Mermaid
's deck. No one else in the crowd paid any attention to her. She was greeted warmly by
Monmouth
's first mate, now the acting captain of both that ship and
Golden Mermaid
. Clara reminded herself that they had just spent six or eight weeks on the Atlantic together. But the sight of her Seneca sister hobnobbing with men who had deprived almost two hundred Africans of their freedom after they had miraculously regained it stirred a sullen disapproval in her soul.
After more argument, the sellers and buyers agreed to turn the auction into a “scramble.” The same per capita price was set for all the Africans. At a squeal of the boatswain's whistle, the buyers rushed on deck and grabbed as many of the blacks as they wanted. Some wound ropes or chains around a half dozen. Others grabbed one or two and dragged them off the ship. Quarrels erupted over the biggest and healthiest looking prospects. Anger mingled with greed on more than one white face. John Cruger was busiest. With the help of several assistants, he soon had more than fifty Africans on the dock, coffled and manacled. As they passed through the crowd on the way to Cruger's warehouse, a number of whites cursed them. One man spit on them.
As the last of the Africans vanished down Pearl Street, the first mate walked to the rail and called: “We are now takin' bids on
Golden Mermaid.
A conference with His Majesty's Judge of the Admiralty, the Honorable Daniel Horsmanden, has assured us of our ownership and he stands ready to approve a transfer to the highest bidder.
“Four thousand pounds, New York money,” called George Fowler.
“Four thousand five hundred,” said Johannes Van Vorst.
“Five thousand,” Fowler said.
“Six thousand,” said Johannes Van Vorst.
There were no other bids. After calling once, twice, three times for another round, the first mate declared
Golden Mermaid
“sold to Mr. Van Vorst.” A murmur of admiration swept through the crowd. It was a vivid demonstration of Johannes Van Vorst's wealth. All Clara could see was six thousand pounds in the hands of sailors who had massacred and subdued those forlorn Africans as they struggled to sail their captured ship to freedom.
As Clara stood there consumed by this desolating thought, Catalyntie poured a shower of Spanish gold dollars into the hands of the acting captain. She was paying for her passage. Two sailors lugged her trunk down the gangplank. Clara began to see everything through a penumbra of darkness. As she walked back to Maiden Lane, the darkness slowly changed to another color. She realized it was red, the color of blood.
Suddenly Caesar was there, speaking to her through the red haze. He had a sack of flour on his shoulder. “Did you go to the scramble?”
“Yes.”
“Who bought most of them? Cruger?”
“I think so.”
“Good. We've got friends inside Cruger's warehouse. His foreman, Little Richard, is with us.”
“How can you do this without guns?”
“We'll get guns.”
“How much money do you need?”
“I don't know. Maybe a hundred pounds.”
“Come with me,” Clara said.
She still saw Caesar through the red haze, although it was a bright fall afternoon. Blood drooled down his forehead over his cheeks as if someone was pouring red paint from the sky.
He followed her down Maiden Lane to her house. All was cool and silent inside. She led him upstairs to her bedroom and dragged a trunk from under her bed. At its bottom was a metal strongbox. She handed it to him.
Caesar put it on the bed and opened it. At least two hundred gold Spanish dollars clustered there. “Jesus,” he said.
“He has nothing to do with this,” Clara said.
Caesar began laughing. It began as a basso bellow and rose at the end to a shrill near contralto. He picked up the box and poured it on the bed. “I want to take you now, on top of the money.”
“No,” Clara said.
The red haze was in the room, heaving and bulging against the walls, as if they were underwater. “Yes,” Caesar said. “I want to make it mean something. I want it to be more than money. I want to make it holy.”
“No!” Clara said.
His mocking use of
holy
horrified her. She saw the Evil Brother beneath his skin, grinning at her.
“Then I don't want your fuckin' money, Clara. Do you understand? I don't want it without you.”
“You've got me. But I can't do that.”
“Why? Because Malcolm Stapleton owns that part of you? You're African down there, Clara, just like everywhere else.”
“I hate him,” Clara said. “I hate his wife. I hate them all!”
“So do I. Why won't you do it with me?”
Clara stared past Caesar at the statue of the Virgin. She could not tell Caesar the truth about himself. He would laugh at the idea of being possessed by the Evil Brother. Caesar followed her gaze and picked up the statue.
“Who's this? One of Ury's gods?” Caesar said. “There's no god mixed up in this, Clara. Except maybe that fellow they call Satan.”
“Take the money, please!”
Caesar shook his head. “I can steal that much in a month. Watch me.”
He swaggered out of the house. Clara flung herself facedown on the golden coins and wept and wept and wept. Eventually it was twilight and John Ury was standing over her.
“Clara—what's wrong?”
“Father, stop them. Don't let them go any further. Stop Caesar!”
“I can't. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do it.”
“The Watch knows something. They're going to catch him.”
Ury sat down beside her on the bed and stroked her dark hair. “Clara, Clara, have faith. Whatever our destiny, Jesus will be with us, even as he stood beside the blessed martyrs of a thousand years ago in ancient Rome.”
She saw how hopeless it was, how ready he was to welcome failure, if he could embrace it like a Christian hero. He was a spent man, hunted across England to this raw continent, yearning to defy his Protestant foes one more time—even if his defiance was hurled from the gallows. His indifference to her body, to all forms of pleasure, was a kind of despair. He was in the grip of the Evil Brother, just as much as she was. Who had let this prince of darkness into their lives? What was at the root of those Africans in their chains, of Caesar's rage, of the Hughsons' frantic trafficking in stolen goods?
Money. The love of it, the perpetual hunger for it. Who personified this cold insatiable lust? Catalyntie Van Vorst Stapleton—the woman who had purchased the name, the allegiance, of the only man she had ever loved. If she and her kind lived to rule America, this would be a continent drenched in blood. Perhaps these money worshippers had to die now, to prevent that destiny. Perhaps a lesson had to be cried from the rooftops of this tormented city. Perhaps that meant more than love, more than the sisterhood of the Senecas. But the vision of Catalyntie, of Malcolm, of little Hugh, murdered in their beds or in the streets, horrified her.
“I feel destruction descending on us, Father,” Clara said. “Not salvation. Destruction!”
Father Ury continued to stroke her hair. “When I'm with you, Clara, I feel the beat of angels' wings.”
A
NXIETY CLUTCHED MY THROAT WHEN I heard the front door slam and little Hugh cry: “Papa!” I struggled for self-control and walked to the door of the room I had fitted out as my office. In the dim hall Malcolm looked even bigger than usual. Hugh, clinging to his neck, seemed like some elfin creature.
“Hello, Husband,” I said.
“Hello, Wife,” he said in a wary uncertain voice.
I went down the hall and kissed him briefly on the lips. Remembering the insults we had exchanged when we parted in London, I thought it best to make the first move. He seemed surprised—and moderately pleased. Slinging Hugh over one shoulder, he followed me into our Queen Anne parlor. Cornelius Van Vorst's portrait smiled from the wall.
Bow down, bow down
, he whispered.
“How did things go in Holland?” Malcolm asked. “When you didn't write, I feared the worst. Did you get the money?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I had to borrow it in my own name from the Bank of Amsterdam. My friend Hooft has quit the banking business—”
“Why did you stay four months?”
The question flustered me badly. Had he heard something? “I … I thought it was best if we parted for a while.”
Malcolm sat down and perched Hugh on his knee. “That may have been a good idea.”
“We both said extreme things in London. I'm ready to forgive and forget, if you are.”
“You've got more to forgive, I'm afraid. I acted like a madman.”
“There was tremendous provocation. I understand that now. I did a great deal of thinking about us in Holland.”
You're doing beautifully, you haven't said a word of truth yet
. It was the Evil Brother, mocking me as usual. I glanced up at Cornelius's portrait and suddenly prayed:
Help me, wherever you are.
“What did you conclude?”
“We're well matched, in spite of our bad beginning. In spite—”
I hesitated because of Hugh. But the little boy was not listening. Malcolm
was tickling him. He was giggling and squirming, trying to escape his father's grip.
“In spite of Clara.”
Malcolm nodded. The name did not seem to stir him. “I've thought about us too, up there in the woods,” he said. “A kind of destiny or fate or whatever you call it seems to have brought us together. When I think of the odd chances that played a part. I wasn't planning to go to that Indian peace council where we met. Nicolls talked me into it at the last minute. So many other things—”
Was he thinking of the Eagle Dance? I felt a rush of desire. What better way to start again? “At Elizabeth White's wedding breakfast, I sat next to the most ribald old lady—her aunt. She had racy stories about all the great folks. She told me when the Duke of Marlborough came home from one of his campaigns in Flanders, he used to pleasure Lady Sarah on their bed without even taking off his boots.”
A slow smile spread across Malcolm's mouth. Had he been thinking similar thoughts? “What about this young fellow?” he said.
“Peter can take him down to see the ships. They can both use the exercise.”
“I want you to come too, Papa,” Hugh said. He did not understand what was passing over his head but Peter was a frequent companion on his outings.
“We'll go tomorrow. We'll see every ship in the harbor,” Malcolm said.
Mollified, Hugh permitted his mother and his nurse to put on his walking shoes and a jacket. He and Peter were soon out the door. I led Malcolm up the narrow stairs to our bedroom. Fall sunshine spangled the blue damask curtains and the sky blue hangings of the big canopy bed. As we undressed, I almost could not believe the ease with which I was achieving my goal. The raging man I had known in London seemed to have vanished. Had I learned some sort of magic in Philip Hooft's arms? It was hard to give myself credit for the transformation.
“My God, you're as beautiful as ever,” he murmured, cupping his hands over my breasts.
I ran my hands down his massive arms and back. He stirred the same rampant desire. It was radically different from the elegiac sweetness I had felt for Philip Hooft. I was loving more than a man here. Malcolm evoked the wilderness of my girlhood, the raw vitality of rushing rivers and forested earth. I felt the throb of the seasons, the power of the wind, the beat of the rain in his arms. I had been right to come home. This man was my life as well as my love.
“Take me, take me,” I whispered. “I'll never stop wanting you.”
What followed was a mixture of tenderness and savagery. Affection—it was too soon to call it love—mingled with desire. There did not seem to be any lingering anger on either side. The coming was deep and mutual, not as wild as I remembered it, but I felt a need for a certain restraint because of the child in my womb. Malcolm seemed more than satisfied; he cradled me in his arms and called me “Cat” and kissed my pulsing throat.
It was done. I was safe from public disgrace—and I had managed it without humiliation. As Malcolm caressed me with surprising tenderness, I juggled numbers and dates in my head. The baby would be born in seven months, if I remembered correctly when I stopped menstruating.
Not high romance—and it had its negative effect. I had to learn again and again that souls mingle in the bedroom and the smallest alteration in feeling was detectable. Malcolm sensed a kind of withdrawal that made him wary. Was the old devious Catalyntie returning, now that he had satisfied her? I struggled to reassure him that my new sweetness was real. I told myself it
was
real. I had learned it in Philip Hooft's arms and I would use it here.
“Husband,” I murmured. “How dear that word has become to me. I want to make
wife
mean the same thing to you.”
“I want that,” Malcolm said. “I want us to reach a new understanding, a new sympathy. I want to share with you my new thoughts about myself—and our country.”
He recapitulated his turmoil, his near despair over his political discoveries in England. The extreme rottenness and savagery of their system of plundering the nation without regard for the feelings or welfare of the common people. How could a soldier, motivated by patriotism, serve such a gang of pirates? Only when he returned to New York did he realize that there was still a source of hope in his life.
“It was here, in the sight of America itself, in contemplating it on the map—the immensity of it—the reach of the continent that awaits our sons and grandsons—that I realized there was still a place that patriotism could serve,” Malcolm said. “We can resist the English spirit of plunder, we can make a fresh start in a virgin land—and perhaps eventually rescue the mother country itself from her rottenness.”
I thought this was the most arrant moonshine I had ever heard. I saw little or no difference in the rapacity of New York merchants and London merchants—or Amsterdam merchants, for that matter. The same animosity toward the rich permeated the lower classes. My visit to England had produced a very different view of the future. As soon as possible, the Americans must separate from the British or be devoured by them—reduced to the status of conquered provinces, like Ireland or Scotland.
But I said nothing to contradict my visionary husband. Instead, I told
him the similar prophecies Major James Wolfe had made about America's future while I was nursing his wounds in Amsterdam. “This gives me a purpose too,” I said. “The stronger we become in a business way, the better we can stand up to them.”
“Yes, but you must promise me an absolute end to such tricks as smuggling and bribing customs officers. I want us to raise a standard to which every honest man can repair.”
“Of course I'll promise. With a merchant like Chesley White behind me in London, I have no need to stoop to such things.”
There followed an uneasy silence. Were we both recognizing that we were talking more like the officers of a corporation than lovers? Ruefully, I began to see the impersonality of Malcolm's new view of me. I was his American wife, his political and business partner. Love, personal love, had very little to do with our new arrangement. That emotion was still reserved for Clara. Could I bear it? I wondered. Even more ruefully, I realized I had little choice.
We went back to talking business. I asked him about the New Jersey lands. Had he taken possession of them?
“Yes. But we'll have to borrow a devil of a lot of money to restore them. My stepmother did nothing but suck cash out of the farms through an overseer. The poor Africans are half starved, the big house a ruin. The barn roof fell in and they've used the ballroom as a granary.”
“This only makes it all the more imperative for me to get down to business at the store,” I said. “We have a huge debt to pay off.”
The next morning, I hurried to the Universal Store. Adam Duycinck was on hand to display the books, which made unhappy reading. The goods I had shipped from Chesley White's London warehouses were not selling well. Before they arrived, Adam and Sophia Cuyler had done little but sell off the merchandise on the shelves. When they ran out of an item, they were afraid to sign bills of exchange to restock it—so fearful had I made them with my laments about imminent bankruptcy before we sailed to England. As a result we had lost dozens of our best customers who would not be easily regained.
A few minutes after I finished examining the books, we were interrupted by two agitated visitors. Rebecca Hogg was a short stout woman with a round fat face and haughty manner. She ran a small general store on the corner of Broad and South William Street. With her was a tall, long-nosed, more agreeable woman named Anne Kannady who sold candles not far away. “I'm here to report a burglary,” Rebecca Hogg said. “The useless constables we pay with our tax money are doing nothing to catch the thieves.”
Mrs. Hogg's shop had been broken into sometime last night. It was the tenth burglary she had heard about—she suspected the authorities
were concealing the real number. She had lost over forty Spanish dollars, silver, linen, and assorted goods worth another ten pounds. “Some of the Spanish money was peculiar. Square pieces of eight. I hope you'll keep a lookout for it,” she said.
“Of course we will,” I said. I was being polite—and sympathetic. It seemed unlikely that any of our goods would be paid for in that kind of small change. Most of our sales were to the wealthy and charged to their accounts. Bills were sent to the buyers' husbands each month.
“We think it's the Africans,” Anne Kannady said. “It's time we banished them from the city. They do nothing but make more money for the rich. Or help them live in ease.”
“There are some free Africans as honest and respectable as you or I am,” I responded with not a little warmth. “My friend Clara Flowers, for instance.”
“Doesn't she run Hughson's Tavern?” Rebecca Hogg said. “How can you call her respectable? Half the customers are whores and the rest are the very people we're talking about. Slaves that are breaking the curfew laws and like as not plotting their next heist.”
“I don't think you have any right to say such things, Mrs. Hogg. I resent them—in Clara's name.”
“She's running that place with your money, from what I hear. Some people will do anything to make themselves rich,” Mrs. Hogg said.
The usually good-natured Anne Kannady grew alarmed. “Mind your temper, Rebecca. Mrs. Stapleton is one of my best customers.” She smiled nervously at me. “She's very upset over her losses. It's a great deal of money to her.”
“I'm upset over the way some supposedly respectable people are ready to defend thieves and blackguards,” Rebecca Hogg said.
She stormed out of the store, leaving me speechless. Adam Duycinck looked haggard. I suddenly remembered what he had told me about the Hughsons' dealing in stolen goods. “Do you know anything about this?” I said.
“Not a thing!” Adam said, almost jumping out of his skin.
“Have we lost anything to these burglars?”
Sophia Cuyler shook her head. “I ordered double padlocks for our doors. Mrs. Hogg is right about the number of break-ins. It's well over twenty. My husband tells me there's been even bigger thefts out of the warehouses. Someone stole sixty firkins of butter from John Vergereau's a month ago.”
“Sixty firkins! That's three thousand pounds!” I said. “What could burglars do with that much butter?”
“Sell it to some enterprising ship captain in the dark of the night,” Adam said. “They'd clear two hundred pounds at least.”
“Let's put three padlocks on our doors,” I said. “These fellows are serious.”
 
At Hughson's, Clara was supervising Mary Burton in a thorough cleaning of the taproom. Mary was supposed to mop the place after they closed each night. But she often begged off in her whining way, claiming she was too tired. In the morning, she would sleep late and escape the chore. Two days of this and the floor would be a mess of crusts and broken glass and burnt tobacco. Mary was whining as usual, claiming her back was sprained, her elbows practically broken from carrying heavy trays.

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