Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  It would be a difficult case, Van Ness warned. With the governor known to be Mrs. Stapleton’s protector, few people would be willing to testify against her. But the governor’s tenure was rumored to be expiring. Without the power of his office, she might be far more vulnerable. We parted with handshakes all around and optimistic words about future triumphs.

  I waited a day—which I spent conferring privately with Cuyler and Van Ness about my case against my uncle. Guert Cuyler had discovered that my father’s Mohawk lands had been sold to Oloff Van Sluyden for half their value—and the Van Sluydens had become major customers of the New Netherlands Company, exporting almost all their Canadianbought furs on Johannes Van Vorst’s ships. Clearly, Uncle Johannes was a man who would do anything for money.

  I hurried to Malcolm Stapleton’s room in Hughson’s Tavern and found him alone, reading a copy of his father’s will. I thought of the despair in which I would have plunged if he had sailed to the West Indies and tears poured down my cheeks.

  “What’s wrong now?” Malcolm said.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I sobbed. “My attorneys tell me I’m liable to be driven from the courtroom by that story in the Gazette. Even with the retraction you’ve obtained, they say my reputation is ruined and this will weigh heavily in a judge’s decision. The court may regard me as a person without moral standing—a vagrant—and deprive me of everything I rightfully own, just as your stepmother has deprived you.”

  “I never heard of such a thing,” Malcolm said.

  “It’s not a certainty,” I said, pretending to be telling as much of the truth as possible. “But they say my chances would be vastly improved if I married a respectable man. Where can I find a husband after a story like that?”

  Malcolm was mute. “It’s not the only reason I should marry, Mr. Van Brugge says. He claims it would be a great advantage in doing business with Oswego traders and shippers like that bully Philip Van Sluyden. Men always think they can take advantage of a single woman. They almost have a compulsion to cheat her. A woman with a husband is much more formidable.”

  Malcolm remained mute. Was he beginning to glimpse where the conversation was going? If so, his face betrayed nothing. I retreated several steps, as if I was far too unworthy even to hope that he would consider for a moment what I was about to say. I was bowing as low as possible, perhaps lower than any woman should bow. I was in the grip of the Evil Brother—and my heart’s desire—which began to look more and more like the same thing.

  The city bawled and racketed outside Malcolm’s open window. I lowered my eyes until they rested on that enormous chest, the huge arms, the massive thighs of this creature I valued more than riches, more than honor, pride, or the truth.

  “Would you—could you—consider marrying me?” I said in the hushed voice of a penitent in a church. “I know I’m not a very lovable woman. But I would be a good wife to you. I can bind myself to that promise. I know you’ll always love Clara—I understand that. I’d even understand it if you felt compelled to go to her at times.”

  Mute. The man remained mute, expressionless. His eyes were opaque. The city clamored outside the window. Was this the Evil Brother’s ultimate mockery? If he said no, I vowed to go directly from this room and fling myself into the East River. I refused to endure another moment of existence, knowing Malcolm would tell Clara, Duycinck, a dozen drinking friends what this outrageous slut Catalyntie Van Vorst had proposed to him.

  “If I married someone else,” I resumed in an even more abject voice, “he might dispute my promise to pay your legal fees. That would pain me greatly, to think we would not have a chance to see justice done on your behalf—when the injustice was committed partly through my fault. I think I would rather lose my own suit against my uncle than see that happen to you.”

  I raised my eyes. Malcolm Stapleton was standing up. He pushed himself away from his chair in an odd lumbering gesture as if he was too paralyzed with astonishment to walk properly.

  “Miss Van Vorst,” he said. “Catalyntie.”

  It was the mere pronouncement of my first name. He had never spoken it before. It had been either “Miss Van Vorst” or “You.” I flung myself against that massive chest. “I also love you,” I whispered. “I love you. Love you. In spite of Clara.”

  “Of course I’ll marry you,” he said, taking my hands.

  My mind went blank, my body emptied of flesh, blood, bone. I was a dry husk of bewilderment. The Evil Brother had fulfilled his promise. Where were the gusts of joy, the thunder peals of happiness? Was it because I knew that the Evil One would now exact his payment? Or was it Clara’s voice, hissing: never?

  EIGHT

  BACK IN OUR HOUSE ON MAIDEN Lane, I made tea and set about convincing Clara that she should be glad Malcolm Stapleton was going to marry me. “Isn’t it best to face the truth? You could never marry him, Clara. If you oppose us, he might change his mind. You’d be condemning him to a miserable existence. There’s nothing more pathetic in this world than an aging bachelor. And a bankrupt in the bargain. He has no head for business. Unless he regains his estate, he’s ruined.”

  “Malcolm is free to do what he pleases, with whom he pleases,” Clara said.

  I winced at the contempt in her voice. But I could not stop myself. “He isn’t free. He still loves you, Clara.”

  I could see how delicious those words were in Clara’s ears. She could see it almost destroyed me to say them. “He chooses a strange way to express it—marrying you,” Clara said.

  “Oh, Clara.” My throat filled with genuine tears. “Surely you know I love you too. I’d give my life—almost—to prevent what’s happened. But—”

  But it has happened, I could all but hear Clara thinking. Malcolm has chosen the Moon Woman’s white skin over my brown skin. Catalyntie Van Vorst’s money over Clara Flowers’s wounded love. The white world, where money ruled everything, would praise his shrewdness—if they ever bothered to examine the exchange. To them it was mere common sense. A man had to consider his self-interest above everything else.

  I gulped my tea and struggled to mitigate the brutality of this conclusion. “There’s advantage in it for you, too. You’ve got not one but two loyal friends who’ll never abandon you, if they have a shilling to share. I swear that, Clara. If I took another husband, he might not let me help you. The law gives a husband great control of his wife’s property.”

  “You’re going to give Malcolm control of your money?”

  “To some extent. There’ll be a marriage settlement, of course. You remember what my grandfather said about keeping control of money that’s rightfully mine.”

  Liar liar liar. I could hear the word raging in Clara’s throat like a war cry. For a moment she wished us both five hundred miles away, out of this painted parlor with a portrait of Cornelius Van Vorst on the wall, back in the forest where Seneca justice ruled. Instead of a gold-rimmed Sèvres teacup, there was a bone-handled knife in her hand. She had her Seneca sister by the hair, threatening to cut her open from her lying gullet to her libidinous crotch.

  No, no, no. Clara struggled to affirm her faith in the Master of Life. He was the father of the savior, Jesus, the Jew whose sayings had stirred her so profoundly. I say unto you, forgive your enemies, do good to them who hate you. What a marvelous dream of human life he proposed. But would it ever be more than a dream? She had yet to see anyone in the white or red or black world who practiced his superhuman precepts.

  “Promise me this,” Clara said. “You’ll never ask Malcolm to commit a crime in your name.”

  “Why would I do such a thing?”

  “Because you hate people. You wish them dead.”

  I accepted the rebuke. “I promise.”

  “One more thing. You won’t make him a mere mercenary. Use your money to help him became a true soldier, a patriot.”

  I hesitated. Clara knew I thought patriots were fools. But I did not really care what Malcolm did, once he left my bedroom. “I promise,” I said.<
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  “Not a promise. Swear on the blood of our parents. Swear on their dead faces. Swear on your grandfather’s grave!”

  “I … I swear,” I said, intimidated, almost frightened by her fervor.

  “All right. You have my blessing on your marriage.”

  “Truly a blessing, Clara?” I said.

  “Not truly. But as close as I can come to it now.”

  “Not a curse—I couldn’t bear a curse, Clara. I want you to take back that never you flung at me in Albany.”

  “I have no power over that word,” Clara said.

  It was arranged. Guert Cuyler drew up the marriage settlement. He was my attorney, and he naturally saw things from my point of view. The agreement stated that I would retain control of the as yet undetermined value of my inheritance, to the amount of one hundred thousand pounds. This was more money than the richest merchant in the colony of New York was worth but Malcolm signed the document without a hint of demur.

  We were married on a Saturday afternoon in September at the altar of the New Dutch Reformed Church on Nassau Street. I wore white like a virgin bride and invited a half dozen friends of my grandfather to attend. I made no secret of viewing the ceremony as a chance to restore or at least repair my reputation. Clara sat in the church wondering what the Senecas would think of such elaborate nonsense to certify a woman’s virginity. They would find it especially amusing in this case, when the entire community knew it was nonexistent.

  Malcolm invited many of his own and his father’s friends, but pointedly omitted the governor. By this time Guert Cuyler and Peter Van Ness had challenged George Stapleton’s will. Van Ness was preparing to go to England to study at the Temple Bar, and would hire a London lawyer to pursue the suit there. There was no hope of winning the case here in New York. The governor had the power to create a special chancery court with himself as its chief judge. It had jurisdiction over any case he cared to choose from the dockets of other courts.

  The city buzzed with the news of the Stapletons’ assault on the governor’s mistress. Several of our invited guests made excuses rather than risk His Excellency’s wrath. At the wedding supper at the King’s Arms Tavern, Clara sat opposite us, her expression mournful, as if she were at a funeral instead of a marriage. Malcolm betrayed his guilt by talking exclusively to her and barely saying a word to me. When toasts were offered to true love and perfect happiness, he gazed into her eyes as he raised his glass.

  At last, the wedding couple went home to their rented house on Depeyster Street. I had left Clara in the house on Maiden Lane, with Adam Duycinck for a boarder. He was to be in charge of keeping the books for the store I hoped to open on Pearl Street as soon as possible. No doubt Clara lay in her lonely bed, trying to imagine—and then forbidding herself to imagine—what was happening in the redbrick house on Depeyster Street.

  She would have been pleased, on the whole, by the scene that unfolded. Infuriated by Malcolm’s attention to Clara, I berated him the moment we stepped in the door. “I can endure the knowledge that you still love her,” I said. “But must you make a public statement of it?”

  “I was only trying to make Clara feel at ease,” he said.

  We went to bed in less than a loving humor. I tried to rescue the night by telling Malcolm I forgave him. He curtly insisted he had done nothing that needed forgiveness.

  By this time, if there had ever been anything of that ingredient called romance in the air, it had dissipated. We were closer to a quarrelsome married couple in a satire by Plautus. Malcolm could only remember the perfect bliss of his year of love with Clara. He abandoned our bed and sat in the kitchen, gloomy as a bear in winter. I pursued him, horrified to find myself the Moon Woman again. I tearfully promised I would learn to hold my tongue, I would please him in everything. He almost certainly thought I was lying but he returned to the bedroom.

  “Will you tell me something?” he said, looming over me. “Why don’t you realize how beautiful you are?”

  Those were the most bewildering words I had ever heard. They sent my heart leaping toward the stars—and simultaneously plunged it into the icy depths of the Arctic Sea. He was paying me a marvelous compliment and simultaneously withdrawing it. Wasn’t he saying that he would always consider me a slut? A beautiful woman did not scheme and sidle to ensnare a man. A beautiful woman allowed a man to love her—she did not solicit his ardor like a whore on the Broadway.

  “Perhaps … if you told me that in a kinder way … I might begin to realize it.”

  “I’m not a complete fool—though I know you’re inclined to think I’m one—I wouldn’t marry a woman who …”

  He let the words trail off. What was he going to say? A woman who disgusted him? Another compliment to treasure. At least I had escaped—no doubt by inches—that fate. I stopped his blundering mouth with a kiss. “I told you I loved you,” I said. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  I could see it did not mean a great deal. “I need you in my arms. I need you and need you and need you,” I whispered. “Without you I have no hope of happiness. Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

  Having seen what made me happy—money and more money—he could not swallow this extravagance. But he felt compelled to pay me some sort of compliment. “I wanted you—that day on the lake. When you took off your clothes, I almost felt you were obeying my secret wish.”

  His kiss was serious. Mutual lust would be our bond. In my heart I knew it would be a temporary one—but the Moon Woman was used to taking the best offer she could find. The Evil Brother had only promised to deliver Malcolm to my bed—he had said nothing about love. In a desperate act of faith, I told myself I would outwit the Evil One. Somehow, somewhere in the indefinite future I would persuade Malcolm to love me. Meanwhile there was this magnificent male body to enjoy—and the knowledge that he desired me, he found me beautiful.

  But She-Is-Alert could not stop her perpetually vigilant mind from noticing the same lack of tenderness that had pained her in the lake. There was more enthusiasm, perhaps. After all, he had made a pretty good bargain from his point of view and as an honest man he was more than willing to fulfill it. But there was an element of force, of rough willfulness in his lovemaking that gave our union a hint of a contest. I sensed that with every thrust he saw himself somehow subduing me—an idea I subtly resisted even while I struggled to banish the thought, to let him fill me with pleasure and more pleasure.

  In the end there were sighs and groans of animal relish—a sense that we were joined in a way that satisfied some parts of our souls. But I had imagined an eagle’s swoop of triumph and delight. I was left earthbound—not a complete surprise for someone who was born to be a creature of the city. Yet memories of my forest girlhood had left a kind of window of random freedom, of wildness, in my soul in which I wanted my husband to join me.

  The Evil Brother had fulfilled his promise. I struggled to convince myself that I was satisfied. Wrapping my arms possessively around him, I began telling Malcolm what I saw as our joint future. “The first thing we’ll do is run Uncle Johannes out of politics,” I said. “You’ll stand against him for the legislature and beat him silly in the vote.”

  “How will I do that?” Malcolm said. “He’s held that seat for fifteen years. It was your grandfather’s seat before his.”

  “We’ll convince the voters he’s not a patriot. He’s selling out the king and the colony by trading with the French in Canada. We’ll condemn him for voting against funds for the fort at Oswego.”

  “We need someone to say those things,” Malcolm said.

  “Why not you?”

  “I’m no politician. I can’t make a speech.”

  “You can learn. You can learn to make a soldier’s speech.”

  I was remembering my Seneca days again—listening to the warriors boast of their prowess, their eagerness for battle. A warrior could not match a sachem in debate. But he could thrill and arouse listeners with his ferocity, his readiness for war.

 
; “Meanwhile we’ll track down the guilty parties in my parents’ death. The next time we go to Albany, we’ll lure one of the Van Sluydens into the woods and torture him until he confesses the whole affair.”

  Malcolm recoiled in horror. “You can’t torture people! Clara warned me you’d have ideas like this.”

  “We wouldn’t really have to torture him. Just threaten him enough to make him confess.”

  “It’s still a crime. Clara—”

  “Damn Clara! What did you do—ask her for permission to marry me?”

  “We talked about it,” Malcolm said.

  Outside in the street, some drunken sailors began quarreling with the Watch. They flung obscenities at each other. Dogs began barking and nearby house owners leaned from their windows to shout for quiet. Mr. and Mrs. Stapleton lay side by side in their bed, stiff with antagonism. I was discovering that possession was nine tenths of the law in business and war but not in marriage.

  The next day Guert Cuyler filed papers with the court, contending that Johannes Van Vorst had sold his brother’s Mohawk lands for a fraction of their value in order to curry favor with the Van Sluydens in the fur trade. He demanded the restitution of the full five thousand acres or their current value. He also sued for payment in cash of the sale price of Cornelius Van Vorst’s New York house and the real value of the Long Island property—rather than in New Netherlands Company stock, which Johannes could manipulate as he pleased. For good measure he had a political friend file a bill in the assembly, calling for the creation of a special chancery court to oversee the administration of minors’ estates—with the governor specifically excluded from its bench.