Mary Burton, waiting on tables, offered Caesar a dirty napkin to wipe his face. It was not the first time Clara had expelled Caesar from the tavern. He would come back. He knew she wanted him to come back. They were linked in a strange dangerous way that neither completely understood.
Hughson’s was one of the few taverns that allowed Africans to buy rum at its bar. It was against the law to sell a drink to a slave. It was also against the law for more than three slaves to meet anyplace, even on the street. New York still remembered the African uprising of 1712. But the laws were seldom enforced by the overworked handful of constables who composed the city’s Night Watch.
If Caesar returned before dawn, he would come not to drink but to sell another bundle of stolen silver plate or candlesticks or a dozen yards of cloth. Sarah Hughson would buy them for ten percent of what they were worth and sell them to shopkeepers like Adam Duycinck for three times that much—and Adam would sell them to rich New Yorkers for ten times as much.
It was wrong—it was dangerous. The legal punishment for theft was death—but the law was seldom enforced in New York. In England, it was a different story. The British soldiers from Fort George had told Clara of seeing a hundred people a month hanged in London alone—some as young as twelve years old—for stealing a loaf of bread when they were starving.
Clara heard little about England that inclined her to respect its government or its laws. But she said nothing about the Hughsons’ business in stolen goods with Caesar for a deeper reason. Some sort of rough justice was accomplished by it. The longer she worked at Hughson’s, the more Clara felt she had emigrated to another world where different laws prevailed.
The poor drank at Hughson’s. The rum was the cheapest—and worst—in the city, so raw Caesar swore it was burning his guts out. From the mouths of the Africans and the poor whites—the sailors, the dockworkers, the whores, and schoolteachers like Luke Barrington who were not paid much better than the dockers—Clara heard about a different New York, where there was a daily struggle for enough food and shelter to survive. Those who failed—who became vagrants on the streets—were thrown into the almshouse, a prisonlike building on the northern edge of the city, where they froze and semistarved on miserable food or sweated in the summer months and frequently died from the numerous diseases that raged through the place.
“Clara!”
Shoving his way to the bar was the towering figure of Malcolm Stapleton. He pointed to the New York Gazette. “Has everyone read the bad news from Georgia?” he said. “It’s what happens when your fleet and army lie supine and the enemy can seize the initiative. We should have twenty ships of the line and a hundred transports in the harbor at this moment, ready to attack Cuba. You wouldn’t find any Spaniard within a hundred miles of Georgia. Instead we idle here, our cities open to attack, while the Great Corrupter soothes the king with empty promises of action next year. It’s enough to make a man repent of patriotism or consider himself a damned fool.”
Malcolm’s diatribes against Prime Minister Robert Walpole had long since passed into the realm of hyperbole. But no one disagreed with him. Luke Barrington, the schoolteacher who had just pledged his allegiance to the Spanish king, was silent as a statue. No one was ready to argue with a man of Malcolm’s size and political importance. Although he was under savage attack for his role in the Battle of the Bracken, he remained a leader, even a heroic figure, to many New Yorkers.
His victory in the northern woods had added several inches to his military stature. The governor had made Malcolm brigadier general in command of the state’s militia. He was at Hughson’s to talk up this year’s militia bill. In spite of the declaration of war on Spain, the New York assembly had refused to vote money for a local army. They told the fuming governor they would only do it on explicit orders from the king. They implied that the king and his friends had started this war and they were the ones who should pay for it. It was hardly patriotic and Malcolm and his militant friends were left in the dismayed minority.
Clara served drinks while Malcolm argued with those who saw no point in spending money on soldiers until a genuine French or Spanish threat appeared on the horizon. Malcolm vehemently maintained that an untrained army would be worse than none at all. Finally, the drinkers drifted into the night and John Hughson came downstairs and said it was time to close. Mary Burton got out her mop and pail and began swabbing the taproom floor.
Hughson peered at Malcolm in his stupid way and said: “You’re all wrong about raising men to fight for King George. He ain’t a proper King of England.”
“Who is?”
“He’s living in France at this moment. Charles Edward Stuart is his name.”
Malcolm seized him by the shirt. “What the hell are you talking about, man? That’s treason. Treason to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, to the heroes who threw the pope off the throne of our country!”
“Call it what you want. It’s the truth,” Hughson said.
Malcolm whirled on Clara. “Where the hell is he getting these ideas?”
“I have no idea,” Clara said, dismayed at Malcolm’s passion. She suddenly remembered Harman Bogardus warning her and Catalyntie that no one could be neutral in this quarrel, with its explosive mixture of religion and politics.
Hughson broke Malcolm’s grip on his shirt. He was a match for him in size and strength. “I thought you was our friend, thanks to Clara,” he said.
“I won’t be a friend to anyone who has such dirty ideas in his noodle,” Malcolm said. “My advice to you is wipe them out, fast. Or you’ll be talking to a magistrate.”
Hughson waited in sullen silence while Clara got her cloak and said good night. As Malcolm walked her home to Maiden Lane, he again demanded to know where Hughson had gotten his traitorous ideas. “From his wife,” Clara said. “She was born a Catholic. Her relations were principal officers of this colony before your so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688.”
Malcolm stopped in the street as a sailor lurched by them with his arm around a whore. “Clara—it’s your Glorious Revolution too.”
“That’s so much stuff, Malcolm. It was all about plunder, power. Who would get rich or stay rich. Look who rules England now. Doesn’t Walpole the Great Corrupter prove the whole thing was about money?”
Malcolm struggled to find an answer—and failed. “Where … where did you get these ideas?”
“From thinking. From books.”
“Whose books?”
“Never mind. I don’t like your readiness to arrest everyone who disagrees with you.”
“Do you think the Spanish or the French will let you have your own ideas if they conquer New York? We’ll all become papists or die at the stake with the most hideous tortures you can imagine. I’ll die fighting so it matters little to me. But I loathe the idea of you and Catalyntie and my son at their mercy.”
There it was, Malcolm’s little trinity of devotion, Clara thought mordantly. Did she still want to belong to it? She had begun to doubt it. Perhaps because of what she heard and saw each day in Hughson’s tavern. Perhaps because she could not forget the pain on Catalyntie’s face when Malcolm said good-bye before the Battle of the Bracken. Perhaps because there was someone else who needed her love.
“Clara,” Malcolm said. “I know you told me—”
“And I meant it. I should never have gone back to you. Now you have a wife at home—”
“Is that the only reason?” Malcolm said.
“No,” Clara said.
“Is it Caesar? I’ve heard reports of him visiting you at very unusual hours.”
“No more unusual than your visiting hours,” she said. “I’m teaching him to read.”
“Isn’t that against the law?”
“Damn the law.”
“Clara—I’ve never felt so low. The governor is at his wits’ end with this militia bill. They’re making him look like a fool—and me in the bargain. Our store on the Mohawk is a total loss. Not a trader will come near us. They all curse us for killing th
eir friends. Johannes Van Vorst and the Van Sluydens are on their way to convincing half New York we’re murderers and worse. They play up Catalyntie’s scalping Philip Van Sluyden as if that was the only reason for the battle.”
Clara sighed. She mourned the decline of her warrior lover into this harassed ambitious man, plunged into a world he did not really comprehend, buffeted by its confusions. “All the more reason why Catalyntie needs you. Every time you touch me, I begin to feel it diminishes her.”
“This will be the last time, I promise you.”
“No, Malcolm. Once and for all—no.”
Malcolm trudged into the darkness. In the back bedroom of her house, Clara could hear Adam Duycinck laughing with one of his whores. He was the most popular lover in the city, since he began advertising himself as an expert in preventing conception. He had attracted swarms of customers to the Universal Store, where he gave consultations between sales. Catalyntie and other theoretically respectable women had begun using his techniques.
The rest of the house was empty. Malcolm had persuaded Clara to abandon her nursery for sick and dying prostitutes. He had probably saved her from being accused of keeping a bawdy house and thrown into the street by her irate neighbors on Maiden Lane. Now she boarded two or three of these unfortunate women at Hughson’s or some other tavern.
Upstairs, a voice whispered. “Hello, beautiful.” It was Caesar.
“I’m too tired to give you a reading lesson now,” she said.
“I didn’t come for a reading lesson. I came to find out what you want from me.”
“What do I want from you?” The question was uncannily apt. Did he somehow know she had just refused Malcolm Stapleton’s love, finally and forever? “I think—or hope—that someday we might become lovers. Maybe even husband and wife. We might have our own tavern. We might adopt one of the African orphans in the poorhouse and become a family.”
“How do you expect that to happen when I’m old Vraack’s slave?”
“In a year I’ll have enough money to buy your freedom.”
“So that’s it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think you can buy Caesar. You think you can make him into your nice quiet obedient husband.”
“I can’t imagine you ever being either quiet or obedient.”
Throughout this conversation, Caesar sat on the edge of her bed, a black blur in the room’s darkness. Clara was standing in the doorway. He suddenly stood up and drew her into the room. She realized he was naked. Slowly, methodically, he undressed her. She did not try to stop him. She did not protest. An enormous fate kept echoing in her soul. Caesar was her black fate, as Malcolm had been her white fate.
Naked, she received him into her body like a wife, she mounted him and played the whore, she let his rough hands gouge her breasts, her rump. She was not surprised by his violence. Caesar was a walking cauldron of anger. She could only hope that her love, the most extravagant love she could summon from her soul’s depths, might transform that black anger into acceptance, hope, peace.
When it ended at last with a shiver of mutual bliss, she waited for a sign that they had begun a journey together. Instead, Caesar’s voice came out of the darkness again, as harsh and angry as ever.
“Let’s understand something. Caesar don’t want you to buy his freedom. Caesar ain’t goin’ to be any woman’s bought man. Caesar’s goin’ to win his own freedom in his own way in his own good time. Then we can begin to talk about bein’ lovers.”
“You can’t do it. You can’t conquer a city without guns. Even if you seize it, then what? Caesar—it’s madness.”
“No it ain’t. We’re goin’ to get some guns. We’ll take New York like Hangin’ Belt won the Battle of the Bracken. By ambush, surprise.”
“I won’t help you.”
“I’m not askin’ for your help. But I want an absolute end to your mouthin’ against it—and me.”
Clara said nothing. But her silence was consent.
In the morning she walked to Hughson’s through a spring rain, feeling bewildered. She had been ready to arrange her life in a new way. But Caesar was impervious to the language of love and forgiveness.
At the tavern, buxom Sarah Hughson greeted her with a conspiratorial smile. Clara wondered if Caesar had robbed the governor’s silver. Were they all about to become rich?
“I feel like a new woman,” Sarah said.
“Why?” Clara said.
“I’ve been to confession for the first time in twenty years.”
“To whom?”
“His name is John Ury. He’s a priest.”
“A Catholic priest?”
Sarah nodded. “We must keep it the deepest secret,” she said. “They’d hang him if they knew.”
“What do you do in confession?”
“You tell the priest your sins and he forgives you. It’s what Catholics call a sacrament. Jesus gave his apostles the power to forgive sins and the power has passed down to Catholic priests through St. Peter, the first pope.”
What nonsense, Clara thought.
“The Protestant priests lost the power when they killed the English bishops,” Mrs. Hughson said.
“Will he stay here long?” Clara asked.
“I hope so. He plans to make a living as a tutor. He’s in search of a place to board. Would you rent him one of your rooms?”
“I’d have to meet him first. Does he have a wife?”
Mrs. Hughson shook her head. “Catholic priests don’t marry.”
“Never?”
“Never,” Mrs. Hughson said. “They take a vow of chastity forever.” A man who never touched a woman? Clara found this priest harder and harder to believe. She followed Sarah Hughson upstairs. In one of the tavern’s third-floor rooms, they found a short dark-haired man reading a thick book, the pages of which were edged in gold. He had a slight stoop to his narrow shoulders, as if he carried a perpetual burden. A deep vertical line above the bridge of his nose suggested grief—or care—or intense thought. His mouth was kind, except for a single crooked tooth, which gave him an ambiguous expression. His eyes were dark and hooded, with bushy brows that seemed combative. He was wearing ordinary brown cloth breeches, with a patch above the knee, and a worn brown coat and tan waistcoat.
“Father Ury,” Sarah Hughson said. “This is Clara Flowers. The woman I told you about. Who saved us from ruin.”
“Please don’t call me Father,” Ury said with fierce urgency. “We must break that habit immediately.”
“I’m sorry,” Sarah Hughson said.
Sarah Hughson seemed to vanish from Ury’s field of vision. His dark eyes focused totally on Clara. “My dear. They didn’t tell me you were so young.”
“Oh—I’m not that young,” Clara said.
“You did something worthy of a woman far older, rescuing these good people from debtor’s prison. I’ve spent some time in prison myself.”
“So have I,” Clara said. “That was one of the reasons—”
“I’m not surprised,” Ury said. “So often we must suffer first before we learn to help others. Suffering is God’s chain of grace in this cruel world.”
This was a new idea to Clara. She shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand that kind of god.”
“None of us do,” Ury said. “We can only struggle to obey His teaching, through the example of his son, Jesus.”
“I’ve read about Jesus. He was a good man,” Clara said. “Why do you think he’s a god?”
“Because his life teaches us God’s central message—to accept the way of the cross—the way of suffering—without losing our faith in the mystery of God’s goodness—in the hope of salvation after death.”
The man spoke with such calm assurance, Clara was momentarily speechless. “Do you think you could rent Father—I mean Mr.—Ury a room?” Sarah Hughson said.
Clara contemplated this strange man. Why not? It would be interesting to hear Adam Duycinck argue with him. Adam did not beli
eve there was anything after death but darkness. It would be even more interesting to see if he really lived without touching women. That would truly amaze her.
“Yes,” she said. “I have a room.”
“How much?” Ury said with a wisp of a smile. “I have very little money and don’t expect to make much more.”
“You can pay me whatever you think it’s worth,” Clara said.
“You’re very kind,” Ury said.
“No—just curious,” Clara said.
Outside, the sky had darkened; a heavy rain began to fall. As Clara glanced back, the light seemed to drain from the room and John Ury was suddenly a blurred figure, shrouded in gloom. He might have been a spirit from the other world. Was he evil or good? Clara felt powerful emanations of both forces in the room as she closed the door.
SIX
AS MALCOLM INTIMATED IN HIS CONVERSATION with Clara, by becoming a Seneca again for that passionate moment at the close of the Battle of the Bracken, I had damaged my business reputation and his political career. Our enemies, the Van Sluydens and my Uncle Johannes and his wife and daughters, both of whom had married wealthy husbands, eagerly spread the slander that we had murdered Philip Van Sluyden and his trader friends. Customers deserted the Universal Store. In the next election, one of my uncle’s sons-in-law beat Malcolm for his seat in the legislature.
On the Mohawk, customers for our fur trading store remained scarce. Our enemies among the traders called us “The Negar Store” and accused us of trying to create an African colony that would seize control of the river and waylay whites. Unable to continue paying our black soldiers, we gave them each two hundred acres of land along the river and closed the store. We retreated to New York where I sold the goods for half their value.
Soon we were desperate for cash. With the rising tide of war between the Spanish and the English and the likelihood that France might enter the conflict at any moment, the British navy roamed the high seas, making it almost impossible to smuggle goods from Holland. I was forced to buy English goods from New York importers, and the profits from the Universal Store plummeted.
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