“You came out as a redemptioner?”
“Yes,” Flora said, slipping smoothly from truth to fabrication. It was a plausible story, the tale of Henry Kuyper purchasing her from one of those English or German ships crowded with human cargo that docked regularly in American ports, where the passengers were “redeemed” for the cost of their voyage plus a profit for the shipowner. It was an easy way for the buyer to get a servant for six or seven years, the usual length of the contract the redemptioners signed to work off their passages.
“Henry’s mother disliked me from the moment I set foot on the property. Perhaps her woman’s intuition warned her that Henry would disobey her for the first time in his life and marry me. I had to put up with her bad temper until she finally died, the year before the war began.”
“You have my sympathy,” Congressman Stapleton said. “I know what strong-willed Dutch women are like. My mother was one. I moved to New York to escape her.”
“More Madeira?” Flora asked.
“Thank you. Is it Tinto?”
“From the southern vineyards. What a pleasure it is to serve it to an appreciative palate. My father was a Marseilles wine merchant who went bankrupt. The shock killed my mother. I was left alone, penniless. It was America or - sell myself in less attractive ways.”
“How dreadful,” the congressman said, with surprisingly genuine sympathy in his voice. “My dear madam, you have endured a great deal. I’m amazed that it has not in the least diminished your spirit, your - if I may say it - beauty.”
Ah, Mr. Stapleton, Flora thought. If you only knew how much I have diminished my spirit, how much I am diminishing it at this very moment, to preserve the beauty that you admire and I am beginning to hate. For a moment behind her smile she was virtually paralyzed by a spasm of grief. She could see Caesar in his coffin in the icy barn, his angry eyes closed, his proud mouth slack with death’s nothingness. This American, who stood here paying her compliments, may have been one of his killers.
The congressman was admiring her furniture. “It makes me wish this damned war would end somehow and I could regain my house in New York. It was furnished much like this. I, too, am fond of Chippendale.”
“Will the war ever end?” Flora asked.
“Some people think it could last another ten years, provided the British remain as inert as we are.”
“What if the British roused themselves?”
“I prefer not to think about that, although circumstances seem to be forcing my mind in that direction. I’ve just spent four days in Morristown. Washington’s army is a collection of half-starved scarecrows.”
“The thought of a British victory fills me with horror,” Flora said. “I know I have nothing to fear from it. I suppose it’s my French blood.”
“Allow me to disagree with that kind of national antagonism, madam,” Hugh Stapleton said. “I’m inclined to think we have a perfect right to like or dislike individuals, but it makes no sense to dislike an entire nation. Such prejudices cut us off from a vast range of potential friendships. You think of yourself as French. Should I dislike you because my father fought your countrymen in the north woods twenty years ago?”
“I would hope not,” Flora said, letting her voice surround the negative words with a positive invitation.
“Just so. We have idiots in Congress who think that way. But I am not one of them. I have friends in England whom I hope to see and love again, though I have opposed the greedy, aggrandizing policy of their government which gave our New England fanatics the excuse they wanted to start this stupid war.”
“I’m amazed to find such detachment of mind in a politician,” Flora said.
Hugh Stapleton liked that. He liked to think of himself as educating, perhaps even creating, a woman’s mind in his image. Flora decided that she would have to appear naive without becoming stupid.
“It’s a product of philosophy, Mrs. Kuyper. Without reflection, what are we? No better than beasts. Detachment enables us to find our way through life with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain. To enjoy our liberty, madam, that’s the important thing.”
“I’ve never felt the exhilaration of such freedom,” Flora said. “Perhaps because I’m a woman. Or because I’ve been unfortunate.”
“But now your fortune has turned, madam. You sit here, sole heiress to the Kuyper estate, the finest three hundred acres in New Jersey. I’m surprised this parlor is not thronged with suitors all the day long.”
Flora smiled, acknowledging the compliment. “I felt a year’s mourning was required.”
“So you’ve gone to church every Sunday and let old Dominie Demarest put you to sleep?”
“Yes,” she said.
“We have an even bigger bore in Hackensack, Dominie Freylinghuysen. My wife insists on my going, for the children’s sake. But I’m not a believer.”
“Nor am I.”
“A woman after my own mind,” Congressman Stapleton said, tossing down the last of his wine. “You’re in danger of making me regret I married young. If I were free, madam, you might find me at the head of that throng of suitors you’ll soon be facing. And I assure you that my interest would not be in your three hundred acres.”
“If you insist on teasing me with these compliments, the regret will be more on my side,” Flora said.
Cato summoned them to dinner. The dining room’s cut-glass chandelier glistened in the candleglow from the wall sconces and the seven-branched silver candelabrum on the table. Cato served them goose in a dark gravy, flavored with preserved cherries. The wine was Chateau Margaux, 1769. The congressman said he had not tasted anything like it since he left London, four long years ago. For dessert, Cato flamed a pair of his wife Nancy’s crepes filled with sliced apples. With them came the rare French dessert wine, Vin de Rousillon, which also caused the congressman to exclaim with pleasure. They returned to the parlor to drink coffee laced with brandy.
By now the congressman’s face was flushed. Winter had been banished from his mind and body. He cheerfully accepted a cigar. Flora studied the small brown tubes of tobacco in their mahogany box and said, “Will you consider me a loose woman if I join you?”
“I’ll consider you a woman of fashion, which you obviously could become - if you were willing to take the final step. You know the saying?”
“A lady can’t become a woman of fashion until she loses her reputation?”
“Precisely.”
The congressman took a tall candle from the mantel and lit her cigar. There was no question that she had him. But did she want him? Caesar dead in the barn, delivered to her like a piece of merchandise, the proud face crushed against the raw pine of the coffin lid. Could she betray him so soon?
“It may be necessary to lose one’s reputation in London or Paris, Mr. Stapleton. But here in America we can be more discreet. We can have both pleasure and reputation. It’s one of the things I like about your country.”
“Servants talk,” he said as Cato took away the coffee cups, then served more brandy.
“Not my servants,” Flora said. “I permit only two in the house, Cato and his wife, Nancy. They are absolutely trustworthy.”
Cato departed, carefully shutting the door behind him. “Then the question, madam,” said the congressman, strolling around the room to look at the paintings, “comes down to those elemental principles that my father’s old friend Ben Franklin so lucidly explained in his book on electricity - attraction and repulsion.”
“Fascinating,” Flora said. “What about scruples, Mr. Stapleton? Did Dr. Franklin write about those?’
Where did she find the will, the wit for this banter? She must be playing a part that Walter Beckford had written for her. Sometimes she thought he was Satan, and William Coleman one of his dark angels. They possessed her soul and body, and no one had the power to break their spell.
“Scruples are like buzzing flies, madam,” Congressman Stapleton said. “If they blunder into the field of attraction, they flutter to the g
round, knocked silly by its violence.”
“You make it sound so fierce.”
“It’s like music, madam. Fierce, sweet, fierce again.”
“As I told you, I’ve never . . . played the music you’re suggesting. Never gone from fierceness to sweetness to-”
Liar, boomed Caesar from within his coffin. Liar. She saw his hands reaching out for her. Those murderous dark hands. Terrifying in their ferocity, and the sweetness they created. She saw them, black on her white breasts.
She sat down at the harpsichord in the corner of the living room. “Will you allow me to sing my favorite song for you?”
The words were on her lips: Plaire à celui que j’aime. It was a way of saying good-bye to Caesar, good-bye to the dream, however dubious, that he had given her of escaping the diminished woman she had become.
Liar, roared Caesar from his cold box, and the words froze on her lips. All right, she whispered to him. I will not sing it in French I will never sing it in French to anyone but you. Not good enough, roared Caesar, and she heard herself choosing another song.
The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow;
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
Sing willow, willow, willow.
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur’d her moans;
Sing willow, willow, willow;
Her salt tears fell from her, and soft’ned the stones;
Sing willow, willow, willow . . .
“That’s better,” whispered Caesar from the icy darkness.
“What a lovely voice,” the congressman said. “I wish you preferred a happier song.”
Congressman Stapleton sat down beside her on the harpsichord bench. “Is there nothing I can do to assuage that sadness?” he asked.
“I fear not,” she said, her head bowed.
He turned her face to him and softly kissed her on the lips.
“Kill him,” Caesar said. “Tell Cato to kill him in my name.”
“No!” she cried, and fled across the room. She found herself face to face with the last thing she wanted to see, a portrait of Caesar and Henry Kuyper as boys. Each was dressed in an elaborate velvet suit, with lace cuffs and a ruffled collar. Caesar gazed up adoringly at his young white master, who sat on a pony. It was madness. Hugh Stapleton would be melting in her arms, if it were not for that dead voice out there in the winter night.
The congressman was baffled by her conduct. “Madam,” he said, “I don’t understand you. Have I said or done something that disturbs you?”
“No,” she said. “You must take me - I can’t offer myself. I’m not a woman of fashion. There are scruples, memories-”
It was very close to the truth and it penetrated his rake’s mask. He drew her to him with unexpected gentleness. “My dear, I’m not a mere cocksman. I feel a power, a hope of affection in you, beyond anything I’ve ever known.”
“Show me,” she said. “Rescue me, from the past.”
He took a candle off the harpsichord and led her upstairs. Her bedroom fireplace was aglow with coals, banked by Cato with his usual skill. Before it was a tin tub, filled with water scented with attar of roses. “I must bathe,” she said, “in spite of winter.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?” he said, amazed. Few Americans bathed between October and June.
“Everything is dangerous,” she said. “Help me.”
He undid the buttons on the back of her gown and she stepped out of it. Together they unlaced the stays that had added firmness to her soft, plump waist. She slipped the pannier belt that held the little half hoops on her hips and threw those fashionable encumbrances on a chair. Turning, she gave the congressman a swift challenging kiss. She always felt freest when she escaped the confines of the feminine mode, free and wild, equal to the most confident man. She let him unbutton the petticoat and under-petticoat. They slid down her body to a soft heap at her ankles. Mounting the tiny three-step ladder beside the tub, she descended into the warm, scented water.
Memory flooded her. She saw Caesar beside the tub in the hot summer night, the black soap-flecked hands sliding down her flesh, his own body gleaming like oiled metal. Bitch, he roared at her from his cold coffin. But she had control of her fear now. You are dead, she whispered. I would do anything, give anything, to restore you to life. But it is not possible.
“I need a little drink of that,” she said, pointing to the laudanum on her night table. Faithful Cato had left a glass of fresh water beside it. She put five drops in the glass and drank it down. Soon Caesar’s voice became more distant; she no longer felt any need to answer him. The congressman’s hands were massaging her back, her breasts, exploring beneath the water the silken hair of love. She smiled and let his tongue probe her mouth. It was the best way to say good-bye to Caesar.
With no warning Caesar changed into another ghost, Henry Kuyper whispering in Dutch: “Ah, myn Flora, myn Flora.” For a moment she relived the old struggle against indifference, remembering Henry panting above her while Caesar waited in the thick summer heat of the barn, ripe with hay and animal smells. One last time Caesar speared her like a triumphant hunter, taunting her, making her beg him for release, for breath, at last crooning softly, Plaire à celui que j’aime.
The congressman was inviting her to bed. He had removed his expensive clothes and found a purple robe in the big Dutch cupboard on the other side of the room. He was holding up a sky-blue dressing gown for her. She stepped into it and into his arms in one falling motion. “Take me, rescue me,” she murmured, and he carried her to the bed.
He drew the curtains, and darkness consumed the ghosts around the fireplace. The blank swift motions of desire dismissed memory. He was a man, the congressman. She savored the sinewy muscles of his arms and back as he drew her to him. She welcomed the first deep thrust of his sex, and his eager tongue in her lying mouth. At least this was not a lie, she wanted him now as much as she had ever wanted Caesar or any other man. She remembered his words downstairs: “a hope of affection in you.” Even he, behind or beneath his boredom and self-satisfaction, sought a love that was strong enough to transform a mercenary world.
He began to stroke her slowly, deliberately, with the practiced skill of a man who knew how to extract maximum pleasure from this ancient ritual. Flora struggled to keep her will, her wish, focused on that promise of affection, to meet his rising excitement. But the knowledge that she was lying beneath this man on orders from Walter Beckford collided with this wish, with the possibility of affection. In the wreckage, Caesar’s voice boomed out of the wintry night: Never. Never love anyone but me. Memories of other men, grinning peers and politicians for whom she had assumed this supine position, prowled in the distance like deserters in search of plunder. She should have sung the secret words, Plaire à celui. She should have dismissed hope, mocked love, once and for all.
“Ahhh,” gasped the congressman. Flora felt his seed surge deep in her belly, a young man’s coming, after many long lonely nights. He lifted her against him and for a second they were together, his fists tangled in her hair, his lips against her throat. Then they were on the earth again, in Bergen, New Jersey, with Caesar in the cold barn growling. Never and the British and their money and power a half-hour away across the frozen Hudson.
Congressman Stapleton cradled her in his arms. “My dear, my dearest Flora,” he said. “You really are a goddess of nature, of spring. You transform winter-”
She had him. She had a congressman. She had a lover who thought he had rescued her from guilty dreads and lackluster widowhood, from the griefs and humiliations of her fictitious past. Flora wondered what Major Beckford planned to do with him.
Hugh Stapleton slept in Bergen, his arms around Flora Kuyper.
Two dozen miles away in Elizabethtown, a saturnine man in a Continental Army uniform sat at a dining-room table reading a letter. It was addressed to one of the young ladies of the village and on first inspection appeared to be nothing more th
an a chatty note from a loyalist cousin in New York. The letter discussed fashions and balls and plays, handsome officers and their budding romances and foundering liaisons. The young lady was obviously fascinated by the British army’s gallants. That was hardly unusual. Her cousin, who happened to be Susan Livingston, daughter of the rebel governor of New Jersey, had agreed in a recent letter that almost every female, rebel or loyal, was liable to contract a case of “scarlet fever” if she spent too much time with these red-coated gentlemen.
The man took from his pouch an hourglass-shaped mask and placed it over the chatty note. Almost all of the page was obscured, except parts of a half-dozen lines in the center. These communicated something far more important than affairs of the heart.
Some officers say the best way to finish the business is to kill a certain general or buy him off and claim they are indifferent as to which is done. They want to end the war this year.
Muttering a curse, the man took another letter from a pouch on the chair beside him. This one was written in gibberish.
byon nzitelnl tifeailr el uiltir mrtnelelf tpayr yh elkenl nrrnlc yl lyti ektuio
Beside the letter the man placed the key to this alphabet cipher. He soon had the message decoded: First American Regiment in secret training. Rumor of Indian attack on Albany. Fearful mortality aboard the prison ship Jersey. Quantities of counterfeit money being sent to Connecticut.
A knock. Instinctively, the man reached for the pistol on the table beside him. “Who is it?” he said.
“Usaph Grey, sir. I was hoping for a chance to speak with you.”
“Just a moment.”
The man swept everything off the table and into the pouch. Unlocking the door, he admitted a small, limping civilian with the darting stricken eyes of a trapped rabbit.
“What happened to your leg?”
“I slipped on the ice coming across the Kill last night,” Grey said. “Our sentries chased me. I never expected them out in this weather.”
Dreams of Glory Page 6
