Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  “You don’t believe in God?”

  “Let me say I have grave doubts about His existence.”

  “Exactly my state of mind.”

  “How alike we are,” he said, taking my hand.

  Again, warmth, desire, flooded my flesh. But I was sensible enough to realize it would be foolish to capitulate immediately. “My aunt tells me your plighted troth means nothing,” I said. My tone was light, implying I did not believe Aunt Gertrude.

  “Your aunt knows nothing of the heart. That’s why she has two simpering idiots for daughters.”

  This more or less coincided with my opinion of Anna and Esther. I began to see Robert Nicolls as more than a potential lover. He was an ally in this strange white world, where respectability was such a strict religion.

  But I still could not stop thinking about Grandfather’s estate. “How much did Mr. Fowler pay for this place?” I asked him.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “Money bores me.”

  In my bemused state, this sounded brave—even vaguely heroic. Perhaps it meant he had so much money, he never had to think about it.

  That afternoon, as we voyaged back to New York in the sunset, Robert led me to the prow of the royal yacht and slid his arm around my waist. “Where can we arrange to meet?” he said.

  “For what?”

  “To explore our hearts. They’re so much alike. It would be a shame to part without them touching.”

  “If we were in the village of Shining Creek, and you were a warrior named Racing Deer or Sleeping Fox, I would know exactly what to suggest. But we’re living in New York. You know what you must say first.”

  “Don’t you want my heart to compel the words from my throat? That would be far more likely to happen in the midst of our exploration. Whatever the result, it will all be done in perfect secrecy and safety to your reputation.”

  His lips nuzzled my neck. “Secrecy is the true womb of love,” he said.

  I saw the dimension of the siege that was about to begin. If I were a betting woman—outside the trifling sums I risked at whist—I would not have laid a very heavy amount on my ability to withstand his weaponry.

  “Where is your friend Stapleton these days?” I asked, trying to change the subject. “From what I hear, you and he were inseparable in times past, prowling the midnight streets in search of Cyprians.”13

  Robert replied with a shrug. “He’s become a mystic, communing with the woods and waters of New Jersey.”

  That night, at the Van Vorst supper table, I asked my uncle how much he had gotten from Fowler for my grandfather’s Long Island estate. “Good value, I assure you,” he said, in an irritated voice.

  “How much,” I said, as politely as I could.

  “It’s none of your concern, I assure you!” he said.

  “If it isn’t my concern, whose is it?”

  “Mine—and mine alone, as your estate’s executor. The law gives me the exclusive right to deal with such matters. I haven’t time to explain real estate values to a moonstruck girl.”

  “Moonstruck?”

  “Or sunstruck,” Aunt Gertrude said. “Esther tells me you retreated to the prow of the governor’s yacht and permitted his son to take liberties with your person.”

  “I did no such thing!” I said. “He put his arm around my waist—that was all.”

  “Others thought as he bowed his head above your breasts he was doing a good deal more.”

  “Damn you for a gossiping bitch!” I said to Esther.

  “That is enough of your foul talk!” cried Aunt Gertrude. “I begin to believe you’re beyond redemption.”

  “If you and your daughters are saved, madam,” I said, “I will happily forgo sharing such a salvation.”

  “Go to your room!”

  Once more I found myself alone and hungry in my bedroom. I began to see myself as marooned in this house by these pious schemers as Clara in her enslavement in New Jersey. The conviction that my uncle was planning to cheat me of my inheritance grew powerfully in my mind. What better way to outmaneuver him than to win the support of the most powerful man in the province, the royal governor, through his son? Bitterly, I thought—even if Robert Nicolls loved and abandoned me, he might at least feel compelled to win me justice before a court of law. I would soon learn to my sorrow that passion and money are a poisonous mixture.

  FIVE

  AT HAMPDEN HALL, CLARA’S DAYS SETTLED into a placid routine. She spent the morning trying to teach Jamey Stapleton how to read and figure. It was slow work. The boy could not grasp the simplest addition and subtraction remained a mystery to him. He saw no point to any of it. “A soldier doesn’t need to know bloody arithmetic,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to be. A soldier!” Obviously he had been talking to his older brother.

  Malcolm Stapleton spent the morning hours on horseback, riding across the huge manor with Luther, the African overseer, to inspect outlying farms. In the afternoon he studied—or pretended to study—his father’s lawbooks. Most of the time he gazed longingly out the window at the sun-drenched countryside.

  Occasionally, Clara helped Duycinck bring his master’s financial ledgers up to date. She swiftly learned George Stapleton was a wealthy man—with very little money. He owned thousands of acres of land in New York and New Jersey. He sold timber from the forests and wheat from his farms and charged fees for his services as a lawyer. But his profits were devoured by the need to pay huge amounts of interest to men in England who had loaned him the money to build Hampden Hall. Each year he fell deeper and deeper into debt.

  “All these great Americans live the same way, owing more than they make in a twelvemonth,” Duycinck said. “No wonder they worship Mother England. She owns them, lock and stock.”

  The thud of hooves, the rattle of carriage wheels on the circular drive announced a demonstration of Duycinck’s wry remark. From a pearl grey carriage descended Georgianna Stapleton in a fawn-colored traveling dress, followed by her husband, George Stapleton, and a fat red-faced man whom Duycinck identified as Henry Nicolls, the royal governor of New York and New Jersey.14 He looked to be as much a warrior as his fat old master, King George. With them was the haughty man called “Judge” at the peace council—the same man who had denounced Clara on her Sunday visit to the Bowling Green—Daniel Horsmanden.

  Behind these primary guests came a half dozen other carriages and several wagons full of baggage. From the carriages stepped a dozen ladies in similar traveling dresses, without hoops, and gentlemen wearing long coats to protect their clothes from the dust of the road. Everyone sipped iced tea while the Stapletons, including Malcolm, circulated among them, chatting and laughing.

  Inside Hampden Hall, the African house servants had shed their shabby everyday clothes and were wearing dark red livery. The house gleamed from days of scrubbing and dusting and polishing under Duycinck’s nervous direction. Although Clara had no uniform, the little Dutchman shoved her into the ranks of the servants marshaled by the main staircase as the governor and his entourage entered the house. Everyone bowed and said in unison: “Good morning, Your Excellency!” The great man rewarded them with a smile. Clara had helped Duycinck rehearse this performance for most of the previous day.

  That night, a five-piece orchestra, imported from New York, filled Hampden Hall with music. Clara watched the assembled ladies and gentlemen parade down the center of the west wing ballroom beneath two huge candlelit chandeliers. Georgianna Stapleton led the way on Governor Nicolls’s arm; behind them strode George Stapleton escorting another lady. The women were wearing satin and velvet gowns woven with pearls and brocade; their faces were as painted as any warrior’s but the red, the white, the inky black on their eyelashes, created beauty, not terror. The men were no less splendid in waistcoats and breeches of a half dozen brilliant colors. The musicians struck up a sonorous minuet and the dance began.

  For Clara it was dreamlike, a pomp she had never imagined. It gave the white world a new aura of power and mystery.
What was the purpose of all the stately bowing and prancing and circling, the delicate touching of hands with the barest of smiles? Was it a magic ritual that reinforced their power? She watched from the sidelines, offering punch and champagne to the guests as they rested from their exertions.

  When Judge Horsmanden took a glass from her, he paused to study her intently. “Are you the Van Vorst slave? The one who caused such trouble?” he asked. “The Seneca from the peace council?”

  Clara declined to answer him. “A good thing you didn’t come before me,” Horsmanden said. “You would have gotten a hundred and fifty lashes.”

  At midnight the guests proceeded to the dining room for a feast. Red wine and white wine flowed, and a dozen courses, from cold salmon to clear soup to chicken pies to great chunks of roast beef and pork, were tasted but seldom consumed. Toasts were drunk to the king and queen, First Minister Walpole, Governor Nicolls, and a dozen other personages and topics, such as “Death and Destruction” to France and Spain. As Clara removed plates and poured wine, she felt Daniel Horsmanden’s eyes on her. He was sitting next to Georgianna Stapleton and several times she overheard him talking about her.

  “Much too beautiful to …”

  “Such flowers should be plucked before they …”

  Mrs. Stapleton laughed in a throaty, somehow ominous way. At the end of the night, she and most of the ladies and gentlemen were quite drunk. George Stapleton was among the drunkest. Malcolm and Duycinck half carried him from the dining table to his bedroom. Mrs. Stapleton watched him depart with the enigmatic smile she reserved for almost everything—and beckoned Clara to her side.

  “Let the others finish the housekeeping,” she said. “Judge Horsmanden will be waiting for you in his room on the second floor. The third door from the stairs on the right.”

  “What does he want?” Clara said.

  “What do you think, booby?” Mrs. Stapleton said, as a flushed Governor Nicolls staggered across the dining room to slide his arm around her waist. “He’s very attracted to you.”

  “Are you talking about me?” the governor said, with a smile so twisted it looked like a Seneca false face.

  Perhaps all these whites wore false faces of their own clever making, Clara thought. Perhaps that was why they never worried about telling the truth to each other.

  “Your attractions are less visible, Henry dear,” Mrs. Stapleton said. “But no less potent.”

  The governor laughed in a grunting way and pressed her against him. “Go. Now!” Mrs. Stapleton said to Clara.

  At Horsmanden’s door, an inner voice told Clara not to knock. But she heard Duycinck and Malcolm warning her never to cross Georgianna Stapleton. Clara knocked. Horsmanden flung open the door. He had a glass of wine in his hand, although his slack mouth suggested he was in no need of it. He was wearing a long red velvet night coat.

  “Ah, the Princess of Sheba,” he said, slurring his words.

  “What is it you wish, sir?”

  A candelabra filled the room with flickering light and shadow. In the center of the tan Turkish carpet was a huge bed, hung with green drapes, creating a cavern of darkness. Clara was suddenly certain that if she entered that cavern, she would disappear forever.

  Horsmanden drained his wineglass. “Don’t you understand what Mrs. Stapleton said? She owns you. Take off your clothes and get into that bed.”

  “You’ll have to kill me first.”

  His hand whirled out of the shadows to smash her in the face. The blow flung Clara against the door. She groped for the handle, screaming with pain and terror. Horsmanden seized a fistful of her hair and dragged her toward the bed.

  “Judge Horsmanden! Your … Your Honor. What are you doing?” Malcolm Stapleton said. He stood in the doorway, a candle in his hand.

  “Your mother sent me this bitch with her compliments—”

  “Let her go.”

  “What?”

  “I said let her go.”

  “Well well well. I didn’t know you were in the business of giving orders to your elders.”

  “My stepmother doesn’t own this woman. She has no right or authority to dispose of her to anyone.”

  Malcolm lifted Clara to her feet and led her into the hall. “Go to bed, quick,” he said.

  Muffled cries and shouts of laughter echoed from other bedrooms. The Stapletons’ guests were all enjoying themselves. Clara fled upstairs to her room and spent the rest of the night dreading the sunrise. The guests assembled for a late breakfast, as sedate and decorous as they had seemed while dancing minuets last night. No one paid the slightest attention to her except Daniel Horsmanden, who confined himself to surly stares—and Malcolm Stapleton, whose gaze was far more anxious.

  At the end of the meal, Horsmanden spent several minutes talking to Georgianna Stapleton in a low voice before she left the dining room. Upstairs, Mrs. Stapleton summoned Clara to her bedroom as she dressed for an afternoon of fox hunting. “You’ve insulted the governor’s closest friend,” she said. “Your value to this family has declined to the vanishing point.”

  An hour later, in the kitchen, Duycinck caught Clara’s wrist and whispered: “Why the devil didn’t you listen to me? It’s only a matter of time before she’ll have the master sell you to the West Indies to keep her in humor and give your friend Catalyntie money and an apology. Meanwhile you’ll be working in the sugarcane fields under a sun that’s hotter than the devil’s breath.”

  For the next three days, the Stapletons, the governor, and their friends drank and ate in the same royal style. They fox hunted and shot grouse and other game birds in the woods, and whiled away the evening hours at cards. George Stapleton seemed to make a point of getting drunk early each night, giving the governor unimpeded access to his wife. Judge Horsmanden ignored Clara, devoting most of his time to dallying with a pretty redhead from another New Jersey manor.

  Early in the morning of the fourth day, as the guests were preparing to depart, Georgianna Stapleton summoned Clara to her room and told her to pack her trunk. “We’re selling you to Judge Horsmanden,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll learn to be more complaisant, once you’re his property.”

  Weeping, Clara fled to Malcolm and begged him to help her. “You won’t be sold,” Malcolm said.

  He strode down the hall to his stepmother’s room. Clara hovered near the door, listening to the angry voices. “Madam,” Malcolm said, “I seldom try to challenge your power over my father. But in this matter I will. Let me remind you, considering my father’s declining health, as the firstborn son in a few years’ time I’ll be the owner of this estate. I’ll be in a position to do you much good—or ill.”

  “Don’t be so sure of what you’ll be in a few years,” Georgianna Stapleton said.

  “This land was bought with my mother’s fortune!” Malcolm shouted.

  “Piffle. You’re talking piffle as usual. But if you prefer this girl to your chance to study with the one man in New York who could teach you English law, so be it. I’ll indulge you.”

  “Simply tell him she’s not for sale!”

  “I’ll tell him you forbade me.”

  The stricken look on Malcolm’s face as he emerged from the room told Clara he felt the price he had just paid to protect her might have been too high. Clara was swept by gratitude—and pity. He reminded her of warriors like Bold Antelope when they tried to argue with her grandmother or one of the tribe’s wily old sachems. A warrior was a simple creature, unable to win a war of words.

  For a day Malcolm avoided Clara, spending all his time out of doors. She resumed teaching Jamey Stapleton, who seemed to have receded from the slight progress he had made in their first two weeks and stared at the figures on the page as if they were evil spirits. Mrs. Stapleton intruded to check his progress and pronounced Clara a failure as a tutor—as well as a woman of pleasure.

  She gazed at Clara with her diminished, diminishing smile. “You don’t realize what an opportunity you failed to grasp, my dear,” she said. “O
nce a woman beds a man, he becomes remarkably complaisant. You could have been a free woman, with money enough to live in comfort, in a year’s time.”

  Clara wrote WHORE on a piece of foolscap and asked Jamey if he could read it. “Whore?” he said. “That’s what Bertha calls you, Stepmother.”

  Georgianna slapped him in the face. “Tell Bertha she’ll get fifty lashes if I hear of her saying such a thing again,” she said.

  She whirled on Clara. “I will have you sold to the West Indies by next spring, or I’ll go there myself.”

  The next day, Malcolm invited Clara to join him for a horseback ride. She said he would have to teach her how to control a horse. By noon she was confidently managing a big roan stallion named Trumpeter. They cantered off to the Passaic River to admire the turbulent stream as it plunged over its series of falls. Clara told Malcolm of a much greater falls in the country of the Senecas, on the Niagara River. The water fell hundreds of feet with a roar that could be heard for miles.

  Malcolm talked passionately of his desire to see such a wonder. He yearned to roam the continent, the whole world, and sample its marvels. That was another reason why he wanted to become a soldier. The British Empire fought its wars in Europe, Africa, the West Indies, distant India.

  Subsiding, Malcolm stared past her at the white water cascading over rocks and shallows. For a moment Clara pitied him again. She saw how miserable he had been since boyhood, raised by a woman who did not love him, with his father absent most of the time pursuing profits in New York City. That vision somehow made it easier for her to lean toward him and say: “I had a dream last night. We were in the forest together. Your lips were on my mouth.”

  He gazed at her with eyes full of pain. “I’ve had the same dream, five nights running.”

  “Perhaps it’s time for us both to fulfill our heart’s desire.”

  For a moment Clara wondered if she were committing an evil act, lying to this love-starved boy/man, using the ancient wisdom of ondinnonk to deceive him. She told herself it was only half a lie. She pitied him as much as she needed him for protection against his stepmother. Her false face love would be a gift that could only do him good. It might even bring him happiness.