Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  We arrived at the fort at dawn. In the grey half light, its frowning bulk seemed enormous. But Malcolm said it was not much of a fort. If the French brought heavy cannon down the lake in ships, they could pound the masonry walls to rubble in a few days. Captain Hartshorne was not exaggerating the weakness of the place.

  “No wonder the French can’t wait for war to start,” Duycinck said.

  “Why should there be a war?” I asked, as we hauled the canoes ashore.

  “There’s always been a war between us and the French here in America,” Malcolm said. “They know it, we don’t. We keep hoping it will go away. While they build more and more forts and gunboats and shower the Indians with presents.”

  “They can’t compete with English goods—so they’ll try to drive us out of the fur business with guns?”

  “Exactly,” Malcolm said.

  “I don’t see why they can’t negotiate peace,” Clara said. “There are enough furs for both sides.”

  “But if one side or the other wins, they can set the prices as they please,” I said.

  “Your grandfather said monopolies were bad,” Clara said.

  “Not if you have the monopoly,” I said.

  “Monopoly has nothing to do with it,” Malcolm said. “It’s a war between liberty and enslavement, between Protestant freedom and Popish tyranny.”

  We did not realize we were renewing the international argument that Clara and I had first heard from our tutor, Harman Bogardus. We still could not believe it would embroil our lives. For the time being, there were other concerns that soon distracted us at Oswego. With the gloating approval of the other fur traders, Commissary Willem Van Schenck served me and Clara with a writ charging us with violating the treaty between the government of New York and the Iroquois. We were to answer it in the Court of Common Pleas in Albany. If found guilty, we faced heavy fines and other punishments.

  “Those damned witches deserve a lot worse than a fine,” shouted a familiar voice in the crowd. I soon located the ugly face of our would-be murderer, de Groot. Two of his men were with him. They shouted incendiary nonsense about me and Clara being the slayers of their friends. Malcolm roared an angry rebuttal to this slander. For a few minutes, it looked as if there would be a riot, which might have ended in bloodshed—probably ours. For all his size, Malcolm was outnumbered twenty to one.

  Captain Hartshorne rushed to our rescue with a half dozen men behind him. “There’ll be no drumhead justice while I command this fort,” he said. “These people have broken no law nor killed anyone except in selfdefense. Get back to your business.”

  Growling, the mob returned to their huts, leaving de Groot and his confederates nonplussed and deserted. “You’ll hear from me one of these days. My voice will speak from the muzzle of a Brown Bess,”30 de Groot snarled.

  Malcolm thrust the muzzle of his rifled gun in de Groot’s chest. “Here’s a look at how you’ll be answered,” he said.

  How could we have survived without this man? I wondered. By now, Clara and I would have been robbed, raped, and murdered. My brain raced ahead to future years. Was there some way I could retain Malcolm’s services? I could not imagine finding any other man who would risk his life for eighteen shillings a day to help me grow rich. Scarcely had this thought winged through my head before it was answered by the Moon Woman’s sardonic voice: He’ll do it for Clara—and no one else.

  The next day, we prepared for our trip back to Albany. We had twelve packs of furs, weighing a hundred pounds each. I could not find a single bateauman who would work for me. They all sided with de Groot and the traders. I was about to despair when Little Wolf staggered out of one of the huts. He and his friends had spent their pay on rum. Two of them had lost their muskets and powder horns at dice. They glumly accepted my offer of four shillings a day to paddle us to Albany.

  Before we departed, Malcolm insisted on making a full report to Captain Hartshorne of their encounter with the French gunboat. The captain was not pleased. “Do you realize you may have started a war?” he said.

  “You know as well as I do if we went to Frontenac, we would never have seen our pelts again,” Malcolm said.

  “You took that risk when you elected to trade in the villages,” Hartshorne said. “You better get on your way to New York as soon as possible. I’m sure the French will be here trying to arrest you for murder before the next sunset.”

  “I’m sorry to leave you the headache, sir,” Malcolm said. “I’m obliged to you for the great kindness you’ve shown me since I came here.”

  “Would there were a few more patriots like you in America,” Hartshorne said. “We’d be far more ready to deal with these arrogant frogeaters.”

  I was fascinated by this conversation. It was an educational glimpse of how much the English feared and hated the French. At least as interesting was the way Malcolm seemed to look upon the captain as a kind of father, and Hartshorne regarded him as a sort of son. It was not unlike the way the Senecas adopted a captive or a wanderer into a family to replace sons or daughters who had died. In the white world, where men defied their fathers and roamed off to the frontier on their own, it was equally logical for a young man to look for a second father.

  And a wife? No, men did not go to the frontier in search of a wife. In search of a woman—or many women, perhaps—but not a wife. For a moment I was seized by the heaving, strangling desire for Malcolm that the Evil Brother could now invoke in my soul whenever he chose. Was the Evil One trying to tell me I might find my heart’s desire in the word wife? Somehow I doubted it. But I did not forget it.

  Malcolm made no secret of his admiration of Captain Hartshorne as we began our journey to Albany. He told Clara and me how much he had learned from him, not only about soldiering but about England. Malcolm’s father had a placeman’s view of the crown. He thought only of how much money he could get from the government. But in England there was a party of high-souled honest men who called themselves patriots. They struggled, mostly in vain, to resist the rule of the king’s first or prime minister, Robert Walpole. He was the ultimate placeman, corrupting everything. Malcolm set himself firmly in the Patriot Party. He wanted to be a patriot in America.

  I pretended to be impressed by this oration. Clara certainly was. But I doubted the virtue of these patriots. Already I had concluded almost everyone in this world looked first to his own advantage. It was true among the Senecas and among the whites. Warriors fought for fame and booty and the admiration of women. Sachems loved power. Women yearned for the greatest warriors. In the white world, power begot money and money begot power and everyone hungered after both. I was determined to get my share, and I did not much care whether that made me less than a patriot. But for the time being I held my tongue and pretended to admire Malcolm’s noble ambition.

  Across Lake Oneida and down Wood Creek to the portage and along the Mohawk we paddled, eight hours a day, camping at night in the woods with huge fires to keep the wolves at bay. We could hear them howling and snarling in the trees, only a few yards away. Occasionally Malcolm fired his gun at them. Little Wolf and his friends thought this was a waste of powder. They knew wolves never attacked a human unless he or she was alone. For all his talk of fighting in the woods, Malcolm knew little about the ways of the wilderness.

  By now it was August—summer in its glorious prime. Above us the sky was a dome of cloudless blue. The trees and grass along the river brimmed with green glowing life. The river itself was a shining ribbon of light in the beating rays of the sun. By noon, it also became a tunnel filled with thick moist waves of heat. Paddling, Malcolm stripped to his waist, like the Indians. Soon his massive torso gleamed with sweat. I yearned to touch him, to run my hands, my lips, down his gleaming flesh.

  Clara and I, paddling as hard as any of the men, were even more sweaty in our long dresses and underskirts. It was white stupidity—this insistence that women had to cover their whole bodies with cloth at all times. On the morning of the third day, I said: “I’m
going to dress like a hunting woman.”

  In the spring when the hunting women returned from the winter camp with the trappers, they paddled beside them in the canoes, wearing nothing but breechclouts. I cut one of my skirts into strips of cloth and fashioned a breechclout.

  Clara watched, frowning. “He still won’t be willing,” she said.

  She snatched the shears out of my hand, stripped off her dress and petticoat, and made herself a breechclout. My heart clotted with dismay.

  We emerged from our tent, both wearing breechclouts and nothing else. Malcolm Stapleton and Adam Duycinck almost choked on the tea they were drinking beside the campfire. “Ho!” said Little Wolf in Seneca to his friends. “Here is a good sight for our eyes in the dawn. Wouldn’t you like to get one of them alone in the woods?”

  “I’ll take both of them,” said one of his fellow warriors.

  “What’s so strange?” I said. “You’ve seen hunting women before.”

  “Will you behave like hunting women for us?” Little Wolf asked.

  “No,” I said.

  For another eight hours we paddled down the river through the thick warm air, while dread gathered in my soul. When we camped that night, Malcolm ignored me. His eyes sought only Clara. After a hurried supper of dried beef, corn bread, and tea, Clara walked away from the fire. In a moment she was only a blur against the dark shine of the river. Malcolm followed her. After a while, I could not bear it and went down to the water’s edge. There was no trace of them.

  Then I heard the sounds from the trees: the small cries, the violent breathing of desire. Clara had overcome her dread of another child. I turned and stumbled back to the campfire. I touched Little Wolf on the shoulder and said: “Maybe I will behave like a hunting woman after all.”

  In the trees on the other side of the camp, Little Wolf soon grunted above me. Are you satisfied? I asked the Evil Brother, as the warrior thrusted and thrusted, occasionally growling like a cougar. Is this what you want me to become?

  No, said the Evil One. I have much more ambitious plans for you. You will not become a whore. Whores don’t grow rich. This is a mistake. You must bide your time and win him by becoming respectable. Of course, you will always be a whore in your heart. That is the fate of any woman who pledges herself to my service.

  We are agreed once more, my dark master, I whispered, as Little Wolf filled me with his seed. What would I do if he gave me a child? An Indian bastard would prove everything New York already thought about me. But the Evil Brother would not permit it.

  I thanked Little Wolf in Seneca, as I had thanked the other warriors who had taken me into the woods around Shining Creek. The Moon Woman was always grateful for the smallest male attention. Back in our tent, I stared into the darkness until Clara returned.

  “Was he willing?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Clara said.

  She was silent for a long time. “But it wasn’t the same,” she said. “It will never be the same again.”

  She began to weep—great choking sobs, as if she were mourning her own death. Why wasn’t this good news? the Moon Woman asked herself. Wasn’t this exactly what she had been hoping for? Of course it was, mocked the Evil One.

  With a cry, I flung myself across the narrow tent and embraced Clara. We clung together, rocking back and forth, both weeping, for a long time. “Pray for us,” I whispered. “Pray to the Master of Life. Somehow you can save us both. Ask him to help you forgive me. Ask him to help me forgive myself.”

  SIX

  THE NEXT DAY WE PREPARED TO resume our journey in an exceptionally morose mood. Malcolm Stapleton responded with curt monosyllables to Duycinck’s attempts at conversation. Clara and I were at least as downcast. The only cheerful traveler was Little Wolf. He considered his enjoyment of the white hunting woman last night a tribute to his manhood. The rest of the warriors gazed hungrily at the Moon Woman, wondering if they too would get a turn.

  They soon learned the Moon Woman had become Catalyntie Van Vorst again. I hauled out my purse and paid them all off. We were only a dozen miles from the falls of the Mohawk at Schenectady and the river’s swift current would carry us there without lifting a paddle. I thereby saved a day’s pay. For good measure, I subjected them to a lecture from Clara, exhorting them not to go home via Oswego and lose their wits and their money at rum and gambling. They stalked into the forest, subdued warriors all.

  “If we ever have a war up here, I’m going to stick close to you two,” Duycinck said. “You’ll browbeat the entire Iroquois Confederacy into burying their hatchets before they can get close to my scalp.”

  Clara and I put on our dresses and petticoats again and resumed our civilized identities. At Schenectady, I hired three wagons at the usual outrageous prices to lug our skins the final sixteen miles to Albany. There we found more malice awaiting us. Willem Van Schenck, the commissary at Oswego, had sent two men in a swift canoe to carry his writ to the sheriff of Albany County and that dignitary was waiting for us on the docks.

  He was another Dutchman—a huge fat fellow named Roelof Janse Van Maesterland, with the gold chain of his office clanking around his neck. “You will haf to surendar dem furs and yourself for seizure, damn you,” he thundered. “Vat’s a fine-lookin’ young wommens like you mixin’ met dem scum at Oswego for, riskin’ yer immordal soul for miserable pelts?”

  I decided to bow as low as possible before this fearsome figure, who I perceived was not very intelligent. Reassured by the Evil Brother, I had regained my devious self.

  “I’m a poor orphan, trying to make her way in a cruel world,” I said in Dutch. “Oh, Your Honor, don’t send me to prison. Let me carry these furs to New York and sell them so I can pay a lawyer to defend me. I broke no law of God or man, I swear it.”

  I wept pathetically and told Sheriff Van Maesterland how all the traders at Oswego had persecuted me because I was Dutch. “Everyone of them is a damned Englishman,” I said. “You should have heard the things they called me—Dutch whore was among the mildest insults. I appealed to Willem Van Schenck to stand by me but I fear he’s been corrupted by their pounds sterling—and a habit of toadying to that English officer who rules the fort.”

  The dismay on Clara’s face made it clear that she knew I was telling prodigious lies, even though she did not know enough Dutch to understand them. “Is dis true?” Roelof Janse Van Maesterland asked Clara. “Yer midstress vas insulded by dese traders?”

  Clara managed to swallow the assumption that she was still my slave. “Oh yes,” she said. Insults had unquestionably been exchanged.

  “Sooch demmned insulds I vill not condone to a voman of Dutch blood, no madder vat her bad judgment is,” growled the sheriff. “I vill get dis writ nolle prossed31 dis day or my name is not Roelof Janse Van Maesterland!”

  He lumbered off to the courthouse. Duycinck, who had followed the whole conversation in Dutch, gazed at me in awe. “She’s the only woman I’ve seen who’s a match for your stepmother,” he said to Malcolm. “She could lie the devil out of his pitchfork.”

  I was tempted to shove the little Dutchman into the Hudson. The last person I wanted to be compared to was a woman Malcolm loathed. But I had more pressing problems. In an hour Roelof Janse Van Maesterland was back with another man, far younger and much more intelligent. He was unquestionably Dutch, with clever blue eyes and hair as blond as mine.

  “Dis be my nedphew, Nicholas Van Brugge,” the sheriff said. “He’s a counselor at de bar. He vill defent you for nodding.”

  “I will pay full fees the moment I lay hands on ready money,” I said. I still had fifty pounds in my purse but I thought it better to play the helpless female.

  “Dat bastard Oloff Van Sluyden vill not dismissed de charge,” the sheriff said. “Maybe now I remember your name I suspect why. Dat man and his whole family ist a bunch of demmned scoundrels!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked in Dutch.

  “I mean I remember an evil thing that happened to your father and mot
her on the Mohawk,” the sheriff replied in Dutch. “There are people in this town who thought the Van Sluydens were parties to that crime. But proof was totally lacking. They will have to answer to God for it.”

  “I’m too young to remember what my uncle is talking about,” Van Brugge said in English. “But it’s become a sort of secret scandal here in Albany. These people have controlled the fur trade with the French in Canada for a long time and they’ve never wanted any competition from the west. They fought the proposition to build a fort at Oswego. They continue to harass it in every way they can.”

  It made murderously perfect sense. I whirled and spoke to Clara in Seneca. “They know the men who killed our parents. Now we know them too. We must find a way to kill them.”

  Clara shook her head. “It happened too long ago.”

  “It happened yesterday,” I hissed.

  Malcolm Stapleton understood enough Seneca to grasp this part of the conversation. He said nothing but I could see he was more inclined to side with me than with Clara.

  I thrust aside this hopeful observation and concentrated on my current dilemma. Plaintively, I brushed tears from my eyes and asked Nicholas Van Brugge what we should do. Did the Van Sluydens control the courts of Albany? I gave him a heartbreaking rendition of our nasty dismissal when we sought Oloff Van Sluyden’s help against de Groot and his confederates.

  “They have considerable power. But it’s not absolute, thank God,” Nicholas Van Brugge replied. “We’ll ask for a three-judge panel to hear your case.”

  We spent the night in the Crown Tavern, Malcolm and Duycinck sharing a room, while Clara and I slept next door. We spent much of the night arguing about whether we should seek revenge on the Van Sluydens.

  “How do we know any of those who are still alive had anything to do with it? It happened almost twenty years ago,” Clara said.