Remember the Morning

by Thomas Fleming

  At the Hague, we met a fat cheerful older woman, the Countess Van Osteen, who greeted Philip with great affection. She had read about me in Vondel’s paper but assured me she did not believe a word of it. The countess talked in brilliant spurts of sarcasm and wit about the probability of war in Europe between the Catholic and Protestant powers. The Spanish were prodding the French into it, hoping they would demolish the Netherlands. The Dutch were depending on the English to protect them, in the name of Protestant solidarity. “We certainly can’t protect ourselves,” she said. “Our so-called government is a joke.”

  Tesselschade Hooft agreed. She explained to me that the Prince of Orange was more figurehead than ruler. Fearing tyranny, when the Dutch won their independence from Spain they had left most of the power in the hands of the cities, who frequently chose to ignore the Hague’s feeble attempts at guiding the country. “Politics bores us. We prefer to make money—or love,” Tesselschade said.

  “At my age, money is more interesting,” the Countess Van Osteen said. She began quizzing Philip Hooft about the best buys on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

  On the way back to Amsterdam, Tesselschade told Catalyntie that the countess had been a great beauty in her youth. “Philip’s father was one of her lovers.”

  Philip Hooft gazed longingly at me, his frog’s eyes pleading. See? they groaned, I am asking you for nothing truly forbidden. Over the past three months, I had almost grown sorry for him, watching him endure the icy irreversible loathing with which his wife regarded him. However, in the best Dutch tradition, I did not permit pity to interfere with business. I used Philip’s name to obtain a line of credit from the Bank of Amsterdam to finance the Mohawk River store, as well as to buy two thousand pounds of luxury merchandise for the Universal Store in New York City.

  As I bought my goods at shops and warehouses in the port section of the city, I saw women from the speelhuisen or “musicos” where men went for the satisfaction they could not obtain from their wives. Like most prostitutes, they were sad tattered-looking creatures by day. Was Philip reduced to these women? I wondered. But I remained firmly anchored to the resolution I had made that morning in the Hooft Bank on the Dam.

  Finally, the last of my goods was safely stored in the hold of The Orange Prince. It was time to depart. I had decided to sail with Captain Van Oorst after all. I had said nothing to the Hoofts about his fondness for young men—and this had restored our relationship to something approximating an armed truce. The longer I stayed in Amsterdam, the less fault I found with his advertising me as an acquiescent Indian princess. Everything in this vast commercial city had a price.

  Rarely did the Hoofts invite people to dinner without the prospect of improving some moneys. Vondel’s paper was wholly owned and financed by Philip Hooft. He used it not merely to further his erotic ambitions but to spread news that made his speculation in currencies and commodities and investments in cargoes more likely to succeed. A Vondel-pushed rumor of war between Spain and England sent the price of grain soaring, doubling the value of the bank’s investment in this year’s Baltic fleet.

  Politics both in Holland and England were viewed entirely in commercial terms. The Protestant succession, the English Patriot Party, were amusing—or annoying—excrescences to the main point: profits on land and sea. England’s corrupt prime minister, Robert Walpole, against whom Malcolm Stapleton and his friends railed in the name of patriotism, was a hero in Amsterdam. Philip Hooft praised the way Walpole had ignored for years now the demands of the Patriots for war against Spain for seizing British ships and abusing British seamen in the Caribbean. With the largest merchant marine in the world and no army or navy worth mentioning, the Dutch wanted war with nobody. As they saw it, only fools and fanatics fought wars, which multiplied death, debt, and taxes—and interfered with business. On this point Philip and I were in hearty agreement.

  On the day I sailed, Tesselschade Hooft revealed how much she knew about the inner drama of her American guest’s visit. “I can’t decide whether I should thank you or chastise you for failing to requite my husband’s passion,” she said in her aloof way.

  “Do you really wish I had?” I asked.

  “I suppose I would admire you less,” she said. “But I would have understood. He would have showered you with guilders. He calls out your name in the night. I’ve never seen him so obsessed.”

  “I would have admired myself less.”

  “Are you sure your husband has been faithful to you all these months?”

  “We can’t be sure of anything in such matters,” I said. “But I hope so.”

  “I hope so too, for your sake,” Tesselschade said.

  Those last words coiled around my throat and burned there like the switches of a thornbush for the entire voyage back to New York. Sailing on a springtime ocean, we scarcely saw a single angry wave—but that only made me more anxious. By the time we sighted the looming highlands of New Jersey, I could barely think about anything but Malcolm Stapleton crushing me against his huge chest with a welcoming kiss.

  I left Captain Van Oorst unloading the ship in Sag Harbor—yes, I was still a smuggler—and hired a horse and chaise that took me to the Brooklyn-Manhattan ferry. Rushing up the muddy garbage-strewn streets to our brick house on Depeyster Street, I found only Shirley, our African cook, and my son, Cornelius Hugh Stapleton, with his nurse, Bridget. The two servants were both cooing over the baby, who was sitting up, gazing with alert but puzzled eyes at this strange lady looming over him. When I picked him up, he burst into tears and reached for his nurse.

  “Aw now, Hughie darlin’, it’s all right,” Bridget said.

  “Hughie?” I said. “That’s not his name.”

  “It’s what his father calls him. I don’t think we could break the habit now,” Bridget said.

  “Where is his father?” I said.

  “Like as not he’s at Hughson’s.”

  “Go down there and tell him I’m home,” I said.

  In ten minutes Malcolm was in the hall calling: “Catalyntie?”

  I handed the baby to Shirley and ran to meet him. My kiss was violent enough to meet any standard of romance—but the ferocity all came from me. He barely responded with any force of his own.

  I clung to him, burying my face in his shirt. “I thought of you every night,” I said. “Did you think of me?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  The words were flat, perfunctory. There was no vibration of desire in them. My heart struggled to accept the inevitable. He was a man, after all. He had gone to the whores to relieve his need. What else did I expect? Still, Tesselschade Hooft’s thorny words tightened cruelly around my throat.

  Malcolm decreed a dinner party to welcome me home. Adam Duycinck, Clara, her partners, the Hughsons, Guert Cuyler and his wife, and two Patriot assemblymen friends and their wives joined us for a merry feast. We had something to celebrate besides my homecoming. Governor Clarke had settled my lawsuit against my uncle resoundingly in my favor. Johannes Van Vorst had been ordered to pay the full value of Cornelius’s property in cash—and the Mohawk lands had been wrested from the Van Sluydens and restored to me.

  “You’re a bloody princess!” Adam Duycinck howled.

  “The question is—shall we live to spend the money,” Malcolm said.

  “Why shouldn’t we?” I said.

  “Haven’t you heard? We’re at war with Spain.”

  I listened, bemused, as Malcolm discoursed passionately on the way the Patriot Party had finally embarrassed Prime Minister Walpole into declaring war. A sailor named Robert Jenkins, who had been seized by the Spanish eight years ago during a Caribbean melee in which they had severed his ear, had appeared before Parliament calling for revenge, with the ear pickled in a jar. The uproar in the newspapers had been so severe, Walpole had been forced to declare war on the unrepentant Spanish.

  Now the question was how hard the “Great Corrupter,” as Malcolm and other Patriots persisted in calling Walpole, would fig
ht the war. Would he abandon the exposed American colonies to the depredations of the Spanish fleet—or would he take the offensive and seize the Spanish islands of the Caribbean? Malcolm hoped New York would play a leading part in such an assault. He was calling for a militia bill to raise an American army that would be ready to sail as soon as the British fleet arrived to transport them to the Caribbean. He had sent messengers to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, urging them to join New York in this warlike measure.

  Listening to my husband and his excited friends, I could only imagine how they would be viewed at a dinner table in Amsterdam. I could hear Vondel or Philip Hooft dismissing them as naive idealists, colonials hopelessly out of touch with Europe’s reality—and menaces to business in the bargain.

  Clara had little to say during the dinner. She and her partners, the Hughsons, did not seem enthusiastic about the war. “I’ve never seen a war do much but drive up the price of bread for the poor,” Hughson said. Clara seemed more interested in persuading New York City’s Common Council to give more help to the poor—which the cost of fighting a war would prevent. She talked of several people who had frozen to death in unheated rooms during the bitter cold of January and February.

  Finally, the guests departed and Malcolm and I were alone. I kissed him boldly on the mouth and whispered: “That party could have waited until tomorrow night.”

  “I thought you’d want to celebrate the good news about your lawsuit,” he said.

  “There’s only one thing I want to celebrate,” I said.

  In bed, I readied myself for the usual swift, almost violent assault. He was still my heart’s desire—that was the only thing that mattered. I would not insist on niceties. But a different man took me in his arms. The bedroom gladiator had vanished. He kissed me softly, tenderly, and said: “We must become more like lovers. Don’t you want that?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, barely disguising my amazement.

  Instead of a swift fierce conquest, there was a slow dreamlike mixture of kisses and caresses, a minuet instead of the throbbing drums of an Eagle Dance. When he entered me, he was gentle, almost meditative. Slow careful thrusts were followed by more kisses, more caresses. I began to puzzle over the mystery of this transformation. What explained it? I had expected the old mixture of anger and lust. Now I began to wonder if I preferred it. This gentle dance was lasting too long; my blood was barely stirring.

  No, there was a rising tide of desire, it lapped at the edges of my mind. But it never engulfed that restless entity as he came with a small groan of satisfaction. In that instant I found the answer to the mystery of my new lover-husband. He had gone back to Clara. He was loving his wandering wife with some if not all of the tenderness, the gentleness he had learned in Clara’s arms.

  As he drifted off to sleep, I lay there, stunned, bewildered—and finally enraged. I did not want Malcolm Stapleton’s tenderness on Clara’s terms. It was a borrowed commodity, something I could never regard with an iota of pride or satisfaction. Should I accuse him now? Shove him out of my bed forever? That was what I was tempted to do. I was ready to revoke my agreement with the Evil Brother. Surely this was a violation of our contract!

  In his mocking way, my dark companion offered me his rueful wisdom. I would lose far more than I could ever hope to gain if I furiously denounced Malcolm. I should play this game as a sophisticated Amsterdamer, rather than a naive American.

  In the morning, I returned to Sag Harbor and hired a dozen wagons to transport my smuggled goods to Manhattan. I paid Van Oorst and told him about the declaration of war. Would it interfere with future voyages to Amsterdam? He shook his head. The Spanish navy was a lackluster affair. But if the French came into the war on Spain’s side, that might upset things at sea.

  Back in Manhattan, with the goods safely in Cruger’s warehouse, I headed for the shop. Adam Duycinck was there, waiting on a customer. The woman left without making a purchase. A discouraged Duycinck told me business had been poor since Clara left. The place needed a woman’s touch.

  I barely listened. “When did Malcolm go back to Clara?” I said.

  “Has he?” Duycinck said. “It’s news to me.”

  “Liar,” I said.

  I strode over to the Broadway and found not a sign of Clara in Hughson’s Tavern. At the house on Maiden Lane, a slattern of a girl answered the door. She was no more than sixteen but she had slut all over her shifty-eyed face.

  “Where is Miss Flowers?” I said.

  “Upstairs.”

  I brushed past her and mounted the familiar narrow stairs. In the front bedroom, where I had slept, I found Clara giving a drink to a shrunken, red-haired woman who lay gasping and groaning in the bed. It was Cicely, the Irish whore who had been the first object of Clara’s charity.

  “What the devil is going on here?” I said.

  Clara shut the bedroom door and stepped into the hall. “She’s dying,” she said. “The pox has eaten her insides away.”

  “And the creature who answered the door is another whore?”

  “That’s Mary Burton. She’s trying to reform. She’s indentured to the Hughsons. I let her live here to keep her out of temptation.”

  “Clara! This is a respectable street. Do your neighbors know what you’re doing?”

  “Oh yes. They don’t like it. They’ve got a complaint against me before the Common Council.”

  “You’re in no position to make enemies.”

  “Because of my color?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll take that risk.”

  I flung aside my cloak. “I’m not here to argue about that. Though I think it worsens what I am here to say.”

  “I’ve gone back to Malcolm. Who told you?”

  “No one. I figured it out for myself,” I said. “There are no secrets in the bedroom.”

  Clara pointed downstairs, suggesting Mary Burton might be listening. We retreated to Clara’s bedroom, where she displayed a disconcerting mixture of guilt and defiance.

  “You’re partly responsible—what you said to me about marrying him if you were lost at sea. You’ve been gone six months. Malcolm was so miserable—I went to Duycinck about my infirmity. He told me I’d probably never have another child. No one his mother aborted ever conceived again. To make sure he gave me some secrets from an old book of his mother’s—by some ancient Greek doctor.”

  “Why don’t you lie? Tell me you heard I was dead?” I raged. I did not know how to deal with this mixture of adultery and pity.

  “Would you rather have had him go to whores?”

  “Yes!”

  “They’re all diseased. The pox, the clap—do you want him to bring those things into your bed?”

  “I’d rather risk them than put up with your insufferable condescension!” I cried.

  “What are you talking about?” Clara said, honestly bewildered. “I don’t consider you my inferior.”

  “You do! You always have! You always will! For you I’ll always be the Moon Woman.”

  I began to sob. I had just made the most terrible confession of my life. I had admitted to myself and to Clara that those years of derision in Shining Creek had half convinced me I was an incomplete woman, a freak of nature. Ironically, Clara more than anyone could trigger this demoralizing sensation—and the rage it stirred in me.

  Clara threw her arms around me. “Catalyntie! Don’t you remember how I tried to protect you from that cruelty?”

  Tears trickled down Clara’s cheeks. I saw her pain, different but no less real than my own. “Listen to me,” she said. “Malcolm loves you for his son’s sake—and for your own sake. He and I love each other in a different way—but it isn’t going to last. He wishes he was still the man I loved at Hampden Hall—and I was the simple adoring Indian girl. Eventually he’ll realize we’ve both changed. In a few years I won’t mean anything to him. He’ll be completely yours.”

  “No he won’t. He’ll always love that vision of you and him in the wilderness—even t
hough it almost killed you.”

  “Perhaps,” Clara said. “Neither of us can do anything about that. Try to share that much of him with me.”

  “I could have come home rich. There was a man in Amsterdam who would have given a hundred thousand guilders to sleep with me. I let you talk me out of it.”

  “You won’t regret that,” Clara said.

  “I was so proud of myself. Now I think I was a fool.”

  “You won’t—in time.”

  As we talked, I began to realize something more remarkable than resuming her love affair with Malcolm had happened to Clara. There was a new authority in her voice, a new confidence in her manner. I was meeting the Clara who had created her own freedom, a reality infinitely more profound than the legal fiction I had purchased for her.

  “Hey, beautiful,” said a dark voice downstairs. “Got a minute for a good story?”

  I followed Clara out on the landing. Downstairs in the hall stood a tall muscular African with the sharpest features I had ever seen. His nose, his mouth, his chin, seemed carved out of blackest basalt. He had slitted, harshly intelligent eyes. Mary Burton had let him in. Her slattern’s mouth wore a welcoming smile.

  His sudden appearance had a notable effect on Clara. Not a little of her coolness vanished. She seemed unnerved by his mere presence. “I’m visiting with my friend Mrs. Stapleton,” she said. “Catalyntie—this is Caesar. John Vraack’s Caesar.”

  “Oh yes,” I said, recalling his performance in the courtroom four years ago.

  Caesar went on his way. “I hope to buy his freedom,” Clara said, still agitated. “He has … abilities.”

  “If I remember correctly, they were closer to agilities,” I said. “He seemed mostly expert at climbing in second story windows.”

  “He lives dangerously—because he has no hope,” Clara said. “Would you—enslaved to a wretch like Old Vraack?”

  Everyone in New York knew and disliked John Vraack for his bad temper and second-rate bread. “Probably not,” I said. I was not prepared to give more than a tiny fraction of attention, much less sympathy, to Caesar. I saw nothing remarkable about him visiting Clara’s house.