“Forget me. I’m going to die,” Clara said. “I’m perfectly resigned.”
“You’re not going to die,” Malcolm said. “We’ll find a lawyer for you in another colony—Pennsylvania, New Jersey.”
The Hughsons went on trial first. They were convicted and Clara spent nightmarish days and nights listening to their sobs and groans as their execution day approached. John Hughson discovered prayer and one night he had a vision of an angel descending to rescue them from the hangman’s cart. Perhaps it was God’s way of sustaining him. If so, his wife Sarah was not convinced. She cursed God and John Ury, blaming the priest for their fate.
Ury spent his time preparing a speech he planned to give from the gallows. He had no hope of evading death—though he intended to try. He said God expected everyone to do his utmost to sustain life. At his trial, the jury debated less than ten minutes before bringing in a guilty verdict.
That night, Ury rehearsed his speech for Clara. Like the Hughsons, he repeatedly insisted he was innocent of any connection with the plot—a strange avoidance of the truth. Only one line in the speech rang true: “This is one of the dark providences of the Great God in his wise, just and good government of this lower earth.”
The more Clara thought of the Great God, the darker and more impenetrable He became. He was certainly not the Master of Life, the benevolent creator of the forests and the rivers and the lakes of her girlhood. He was also not the Evil Brother, who so easily triumphed over the Master of Life when they contested for supremacy in the wilderness of the human heart. The Great God transcended both these beings in a gloomy immensity shot through with only glimpses of light and hope.
First the Hughsons and then Ury went to the gallows on the edge of the Common. Among the Africans, a steady stream went to the same place; others such as Antonio and several of his fellow Spanish slaves went to the stake. Judge Horsmanden sentenced almost all those accused by Cuffee or by Mary Burton of having an active part in the conspiracy to that fiery fate. Each prisoner received a jury trial but it was little more than a formality. Jurors barely left the box before they were back with guilty verdicts.
Three times, while this grisly process ground out death, Clara was brought to Judge Horsmanden’s chambers for another interrogation. Each time she was guaranteed a reprieve if she would name Catalyntie Stapleton as a conspirator. The hatred Catalyntie had inspired in her uncle, Johannes Van Vorst, was bearing terrible fruit. Of course Clara remained silent each time, in spite of being threatened with death at the stake.
One night in July, almost five months after the fire in Fort George, Mary Burton visited me and Malcolm. She was a celebrity, feasted and petted by Johannes Van Vorst and Judge Horsmanden and their friends. But they declined to pay her the hundred pounds she thought was due her for revealing the conspirators. They accused her of sheltering Clara and me—“the Indians”—as many people in New York now called us.
Mary plaintively described how hard she was resisting their pressure. But they had the power to refuse her the hundred pounds if Horsmanden, in his capacity as trial judge and chief investigator of the conspiracy, ruled that she was not completely “forthcoming.” Never in her life would she be so close to that much money. What was a poor girl to do? Mary sobbed.
“Tell the truth,” Malcolm said.
“How much do you want?” I said.
“To save your friend—the least I can expect is a hundred and fifty pounds,” Mary said. “If I save her I’ll save you too.”
Mary was a slattern but she was not a fool. Malcolm Stapleton paced the floor in agony. Finally he made up his mind—and said what I feared he would say.
“Get out of here. We’ve got a good lawyer coming from Pennsylvania to defend Clara. I’ll testify in court that you tried to solicit a bribe. That will prove your word is worth nothing.”
“Nothing is what your word will be worth—against mine,” Mary said and flounced out of the house.
I struggled for calm. There was no point in berating Malcolm. “I think we should give her the money,” I said.
“No!”
“What does it matter, whether she lies for us or the other side? It’s all lies. When are you going to quit your dream of an honest government? It doesn’t exist and never will—in America or England or anywhere else.”
“It will,” Malcolm said. “Clara gave me that dream. I won’t let you dirty it again.”
The next day, Judge Horsmanden announced that Clara’s trial was set for the following day. Malcolm asked for a week’s delay to bring their attorney from Philadelphia. Horsmanden blandly denied the request. “There are plenty of good lawyers in this province you can hire in an hour,” the judge said.
When Malcolm told him he had tried in vain to hire one of these good lawyers, Horsmanden said the refusal spoke for itself. No one in New York had any doubt of Clara’s guilt. Besides Cuffee, a dozen other Africans, in desperate attempts to save their lives, had named her as a conspirator at Hughson’s.
That night, without consulting Malcolm, I sent Adam Duycinck to the Fighting Cock, the inn where Mary Burton was living. I armed him with a hundred and fifty pounds and the promise of another fifty pounds when and if Mary left New York to take up permanent residence elsewhere. The next day in court, she astounded Horsmanden by again denying that Clara was a conspirator.
But the judge was not so easily defeated. He paraded a dozen men to the witness box, some of them the court secretaries who had taken confessions from Cuffee and other Africans, others prisoners from the cells below the courtroom, ready to say anything to save their lives. Clara made no attempt to challenge any of this testimony.
The jury found her guilty. A delighted Horsmanden declared they had convicted the “secret chief” of the conspiracy. It only remained to root out her white confederate. “It is patently impossible for anyone of African blood to have conceived so clever a scheme,” he declared. “We have already rooted out the white papist side of the conspiracy. Only the white Indian side remains.”
He sentenced Clara to be burned at the stake the following day. The crowded courtroom cheered. When Malcolm and I left City Hall, we were pelted with insults. Back in our house on Depeyster Street, Malcolm slumped disconsolately in a chair. I paced the floor.
“We have to save her, no matter what it costs us,” I said.
“How?” Malcolm said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Bribe the governor?”
“He wouldn’t dare reprieve her. There’d be a mob in the streets yelling for his scalp.”
Malcolm rose to his feet. For a moment he seemed to fill the room. “There’s only one way,” he said. “She told me when I tried to persuade her to speak out early on that I cared more for my reputation than I did for her. I’ll have to prove she’s wrong.”
“You’ll be an outlaw!” I said.
“So be it.”
Not for the first but perhaps for the last time I had to face the bitter truth that Malcolm loved Clara more than he loved me. I could have used Hugh against him—and the child that was swelling in my belly. I was now at least eight months pregnant. But I also faced the melancholy truth that I loved Clara too and was ready to sacrifice everything I had struggled to build here in New York—my store, my business reputation, my dream of establishing the Stapletons as one of the city’s first families.
“Tell Duycinck to have a boat at the foot of Nassau Street at eleven o’clock with my gun and fifty rounds of powder and ball,” Malcolm said. “Give me half of all the cash you’ve got. We’ll go up the Hudson until dawn and then strike out across country for the Delaware. We’ll go up that to the Susquehanna. Will the Senecas take her back?”
“Yes. If her grandmother is alive, without question. I think they’ll take her anyway. But what will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think I can bear never seeing you again!”
Malcolm kissed me with surprising tenderness. “I’ll value those words, no matte
r what happens,” he said.
He slid a pistol under his coat. He put a smaller one in his boot. “You better be prepared to go to New Jersey as soon as possible,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll be any more popular than I’ll be.”
“I’ll survive. They won’t abuse a pregnant woman,” I said.
“I’m not so sure,” Malcolm said. He kissed me hard and vanished into the night.
I sent Peter for Duycinck. When I told him what Malcolm had in mind, his eyes bulged with terror. “We’ll all get hanged,” he said.
“Perhaps. But we owe Clara the risk. You as much as anyone. Perhaps more.”
That shut him up. He took Malcolm’s gun apart and put it into a sack with the powder and balls. Finding a boat along the river would be no problem. There were plenty of them tied up at the piers, often with their oars in the thwarts. But to be on the safe side, Adam thought it might be a good idea if he headed for New Jersey afterward.
“You know I’m no hero,” he said.
“You’ll do until one comes along,” I said and kissed him on his balding head.
An hour later, Malcolm strode into City Hall and descended to the basement, beyond the jail cells. He found Undersheriff Mills finishing supper at his desk. He was halfway through a bottle of brandy.
“I want to see Clara Flowers,” he said. “I think I’ve found some evidence that could save her.”
“What the devil would that be?” Mills said.
“This,” Malcolm said and put a pistol to his head. He relieved him of his gun and keys and prodded him down the dank corridor to Clara’s cell.
“They’ll hang you, General Stapleton,” Mills said.
“They’ll have to catch me first,” Malcolm said.
The cells were mostly empty. Only a few more slaves remained to be tried. Clara was kneeling in her cell, praying, her arms outstretched. “I knew she was a bloody witch,” Mills said.
“What are you doing?” Clara said.
“What does it look like?” Malcolm said.
Malcolm manacled Mills’s hands and feet and gagged him to guarantee them several hours’ headstart. Locking him in the cell, he led Clara into the office, where he hauled a set of men’s clothes out of a sack. “Put these on,” he said. “Fast.”
“Does Catalyntie know you’re doing this?”
“Of course.”
“I’m not worth it.”
“Yes, you are. Hurry up. Get into those breeches and that shirt.”
She struggled into the clothes and Malcolm handed her a big cocked hat. She shoved her hair under it and he lowered it on her brow. “Perfect,” he said.
As they strolled out of City Hall, Malcolm threw his arm around Clara, as if they were a bit drunk. No one paid any attention to them. The streets were largely deserted. They only had one close all. On the Broadway, they passed two members of the Night Watch.
“Good evening, General Stapleton,” one said.
“Good evening,” Malcolm said.
In five minutes they were at the Hudson on Nassau Street. Adam stepped out of the shadows by the wharf. “The boat’s below,” he said. “It’s got a sail. You’ll have the wind and tide with you. By morning you should be well north of Judge Horsmanden’s clutches.”
“You’re a true friend, Adam,” Clara said.
“Maybe now you’ll forgive me for what I did to you out of cowardice that day in Hampden Hall,” Adam said.
“I forgave you long ago.”
Out on the river, Clara was silent until the lights of the city slipped behind them. “I’m still not worth it,” she said. “You’re ruining your life—and Catalyntie’s life—”
“Our lives would have been ruined if you died at that stake.”
“I don’t love you anymore,” Clara said. “Do you realize that?”
“I can understand why.”
“I don’t think I love God, either.”
Malcolm answered her out of his own pain. “It’s ended my illusions about America. Patriotism here will be just as hard to realize—maybe harder—than in England. It will be a long struggle—maybe a losing one.”
“I’m afraid you may be right.”
“I wish I believed in your God. I don’t understand His purposes.”
“Neither do I. I can only testify to His presence.”
They slid into the night on those anguished words.
Back in New York the next morning, I prepared for trouble. I sent Hugh and old Peter and his wife Shirley across the Hudson with money to proceed by hired wagon to Hampden Hall. An hour later, about 9:00 A.M., a fist pounded on my door.
I opened it to face a livid Undersheriff Miller and Sheriff Tompkins. “Where is your husband?” the sheriff roared.
“I don’t know. He went out about ten o’clock last night and didn’t return,” I said.
“The hell you don’t know. We’re searching this house.”
They stormed through the rooms, hurling clothes out of wardrobes, peering under beds, scouring the cellar and the backyard.
“What’s wrong? What’s he done?” I said.
“You really don’t know?” the sheriff growled.
When he told me, I burst into tears, putting to good use my ability to cry on demand. “You’ll protect me, won’t you?” I said. “I’m afraid I’ll be mobbed.”
“I don’t see why or how we can do that,” the sheriff said.
The two lawmen stalked out. About a half hour later, I heard the roar of the mob. The news of Malcolm’s escape with Clara had swirled through the city and the people were about to take their revenge. They ripped open the door and crowded into the house, shouting curses in my face.
“If you weren’t with child we’d have burning fagots at your feet by noon,” Rebecca Hogg screamed.
“It proves all Judge Horsmanden’s said about you in private,” shouted her husband.
“Your own aunt says you’re possessed by the devil,” cried a woman.
“Can’t you have pity on a wife who’s been abandoned by her husband?” I said. “Traduced and abandoned?”
“Abandoned, hell,” snarled an older man. “He’s never done a thing you haven’t thought for him first!”
Many of the mob were Night Watchmen and constables, carrying their clubs. They methodically smashed every window in the house. Then they began pitching everything—silver, dishes, clothing, out the windows into the street. What would not fit out the windows, they flung out doors, including beds (dismantled), chairs, tables, and rugs. In a furious hour, the house was a stripped shattered shell. In the street, people pawed through the wreckage, taking what they pleased as if it were the spoils of war.
“On to the Universal Store!” shouted one of the constables.
I would bear it, I told myself. I would bear it for Clara’s sake. But it was hard. The thought of them looting the store brought real tears down my cheeks. Between my losses in the house and at the store, the day would cost me five thousand pounds. I would never sell another item in New York again. I had no idea how I could be a businesswoman in rural New Jersey. The biggest town was Newark, with a grand total of six hundred souls.
My next visitors were Judge Daniel Horsmanden and Governor Clarke. Horsmanden was apoplectic. “I have conferred with His Excellency here on the advisability of confining you in the city jail until your husband returns with Clara Flowers and faces the justice they both so richly deserve. But he has decided for your own safety and the good order of this city, it would be best if you immediately departed this province.”
“I don’t have much choice,” I said. “Unless I want to sleep on the floor.”
“How could your husband throw away his good name this way?” the governor said.
“He’s a patriot, Your Excellency,” I said. “He’d rather disgrace himself than see his country commit an injustice.”
The governor goggled. “He doesn’t love her? It’s all patriotic moonshine?”
“Oh, he loves her too. He loves her more than
me or this damned stupid country.”
This time my tears were beyond real. They were eternal.
BOOK
SIX
ONE
IN THE CRUDE FARMHOUSE I HAD built from the stones and timber of Hampden Hall, I faced myself in the bedroom mirror. Was that creature with the streeling hair, the soiled dress, the same woman who never ventured out of her New York house without her hair crimped and permanented, her hat, shoes, dress, and cloak in the latest, most expensive style? I was growing ugly and coarse. Was that what happened to a loveless woman?
For the hundredth time I told myself I was not loveless. Never had I felt so much love in my heart. Joining Malcolm in his decision to rescue Clara had united me with him on a level we had never before attained. I felt that I had won his love and respect for the first time.
No, I was not loveless. I was merely deprived of immediate love, the love that was created by touch, by words, gestures, presence. But another kind of love was in my heart—a love that often seemed stronger than immediate love.
At other times, this spiritual love seemed so much vapor, a compound of moonshine and wish. My furious heart, my aching belly, wanted Malcolm with a violence that frightened me. I found myself drifting back to hating Clara, even hating the color of her skin, the fate of her race—all the things that compounded pity and desire into love in Malcolm’s warrior soul.
Two years had passed since Malcolm and Clara fled north to the Iroquois country. I had heard nothing from them. But no news meant they were still free. Their capture would have been trumpeted in the New York Gazette, to which I stubbornly subscribed, even though reading it made me melancholy for hours each week.
I did not expect a letter. They would have had to entrust it to a stranger. No one could be relied on to resist the two-hundred-pound reward that Judge Daniel Horsmanden had persuaded the City of New York to offer for their capture. That offer still stood, but opinion in New York about Malcolm’s exploit had been undergoing a slow change. The war with France and Spain had ended in a negotiated peace. With the threat of invasion and rapine removed, many people began to regard the Great Conspiracy in a calmer light. In particular, they accumulated grave doubts about Mary Burton as a witness—and Daniel Horsmanden as a judge.
Remember the Morning Page 43
