Dreams of Glory

by Thomas Fleming

  “Hurry up, Chandler,” Benjamin Stallworth snapped. “They have sentries patrolling this shore.”

  “I’m going back for Flora Kuyper.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Chandler.”

  “What do you care? You’ve got the congressman.”

  “She hates you, Chandler. She’ll hang you.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  Stallworth made a strangling sound. Caleb could not see his face, but it was easy to imagine his expression. “I’ll come back for you,” the major said. “I’ll wait until an hour before dawn.”

  “God bless you, Stallworth,” Caleb said in the mocking tone that had become a code between them.

  “You’re the one who needs His blessing, you damned fool.”

  At Madame Plaisir’s, Flora put one, two, three, four, five drops of laudanum in the glass of wine and drank it all down. Would Caleb come tonight? she wondered. She wanted to keep her nerves very calm and steady, so she would be ready for him. She was sure that he would come eventually. His stupid New England conscience would force him to keep his promise. Then she would keep hers. She would inform the British officer who happened to be enjoying her when Caleb appeared that this long-nosed creature was an American spy and should be arrested and hanged without delay.

  “I say,” called the infantry captain who stood beside her bed in his shirt, “what the devil are you drinking there?”

  “Something to make me happy,” Flora said. “So I can make you happy.”

  “Well, let’s get on with it,” the captain said. “Ten guineas is a deuced lot of money.”

  She took off her night robe and lay down beside him in the bed and let him get on with it. She did not think about what he was doing to her. Only when he kissed her did his foul breath penetrate the glaze of laudanum that protected her. Most of the time the positions that he ordered her to assume did not require her to touch his lips.

  “Not very bloody enthusiastic, are you?” the captain said. His teeth were yellow. Without his wig he was almost bald.

  “You were wonderful,” she said.

  Downstairs a fiddle began scraping. Madam Plaisir provided other amusements for her customers besides this fundamental entertainment. “Let’s go down for a drink and a bit of a dance,” the captain said, pulling on his buff breeches. “It might wake you up.”

  Flora smiled dreamily and let him help her into her night robe. Down the stairs they went to the parlor, where a half-dozen black, brown, and tan girls and their customers were doing a drunken gavotte. The girls’ night robes were tied loosely at the waist; they might as well have been dancing naked. Madam Plaisir, enormously fat and as black as Flora’s grandmother, sat in a corner keeping time with her fan. Her red wig was tipped over her right ear. It was well past midnight and Madam, like everyone else, was drunk.

  In New Orleans, the ghost of Flora was at a different dance, although many of the dancers were the same color. It was a splendid affair, in the ballroom on Condé Street, and she was wearing the white silk gown with ruchings of intricate lace that her mother had sewed for her. Handsome Creoles waited breathlessly for an opportunity to put their arms around her while her mother watched sternly from the balcony.

  The front door bell jangled. Madam Plaisir hurried to answer it, A late customer. There would be an argument when Madam Plaisir insisted one of the girls had to take him. Madam was proud of her motto: no one is ever turned away. Most of the girls complained when they had to take more than five men a night. From the start Flora had said her motto was the more, the better. But Madam Plaisir had decided they could both make more money if she limited herself to one a night for the first few months. When the wealthier British officers got tired of her, she could begin to take as many customers as she wanted.

  “That’s her,” Madam Plaisir said above the music. “But all you can do is talk. She’s taken for the night. Flora, come here for a minute.”

  Flora turned, leaving the infantry captain drunkenly gavotting by himself. Caleb stood in the parlor doorway. His expression was so sad, so tormented, she wondered if she had already betrayed him. Had she met him yesterday and called the watch? Were the watchmen outside now, leading him to the place of execution? Was that why he had stopped? So she could tell him once more how much she hated him?

  He said nothing. He looked at her as if she were the one who was being executed. Grief, mourning, were stamped on his face. Maybe she was dead. Maybe Beckford had killed her for betraying William. Maybe this evil dream was hell.

  “Go upstairs and put your clothes on,” Caleb said. “You’re not going to stay here another night.”

  Caleb turned to the startled dancers. “Ladies and gentlemen, forgive this intrusion by a man of God. I’m a minister, concerned with the salvation of this woman’s soul. She persuaded me to declare my loyalty to the King. But through a misunderstanding, we quarreled, and she thought I no longer cared about her. That’s why-”

  “Come back in the morning, Parson,” the infantry captain said. “I paid ten guineas for her. She’s mine for the night.”

  “I can’t come back in the morning. I’m sailing for London on the mail packet. I want to take her with me.”

  Sailing for London. The lying words awakened memories of William Coleman, the original liar. “He’s an American spy,” Flora said. “Arrest him and hang him.”

  “My dear girl is drunk,” Caleb said, taking her hand. “I’ll be happy to give you my note for ten guineas. I’ll remit it the moment I get to London. His Majesty has promised me a most generous reward for some information I brought with me when I deserted the American army. I saved four hundred dragoons from slaughter. Brigadier Birch will be happy to attest to what I’m saying. In fact, he’s promised to stand for any debts I contract before I sail-”

  “He’s a liar, he’s a spy,” Flora screamed. “He wants to take me back to the Americans.”

  The infantry captain and several other officers began moving toward them. “I don’t like the smell of you, Parson,” the captain said. “I think we’ll call the watch and see if this drunken bitch is telling the truth. Meanwhile, I’ll get my ten guineas’ worth.”

  The captain grabbed Flora’s arm and tried to drag her toward him. Suddenly there was a pistol in Caleb’s hand. It boomed and the captain sprawled on the floor, blood gushing from his chest.

  “Murder!” Madam Plaisir screamed, and Caleb dragged Flora into the street. “Now do you believe me?” he shouted in her face. “There’s a boat waiting. Come, please.”

  He dragged her toward a carriage. “No,” she cried. “Never.” She kicked at him and slashed his face with her nails. “I love you,” Caleb said. “Please.”

  “Murder!” screamed Madam Plaisir in the doorway of the house. Two officers squeezed past her and rushed at Caleb. He drew another pistol and shot one of them. He clubbed the other man in the face with the empty gun and carried Flora as far as the carriage. Men ran toward them from other houses. The shrill whistle of the city watch cut the night. “He’s a spy,” Flora screamed.

  Caleb tried to lift Flora into the carriage. He had her in his arms when a shot rang out, then a second and a third. Flora felt the bullets thud into his back. “Oh, God,” Caleb groaned.

  He stumbled away from her. “Gentlemen, I surrender,” he said. “Please don’t hurt this lady.”

  Two more pistols crashed. The bullets flung Caleb on his back in the mud. Flora clung to the carriage, staring dazedly at him while Madam Plaisir screamed, “Shoot him again, the goddamn spy.”

  The carriage was commandeered to rush the infantry captain and the other wounded officers to the army hospital. The watchmen took a statement from Madam Plaisir. The rest of the crowd returned to the other houses in the Holy Ground to resume their pleasures. Flora knelt beside Caleb and touched his dead face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Madam Plaisir loomed over her. “What the hell you doin’ there in the mud? You gonna catch your death. I ain’t wastin’ my time and mone
y nursin’ sick whores. Come on, now. Let’s go back to work.”

  She pulled Flora to her feet and led her into the house. “A little laudanum and you’ll be good as new,” Madam Plaisir said. “You got Brigadier Birch comin’ tomorrow night. Repeat business. That’s important, Flora.”

  “Yes,” Flora said.

  She looked over her shoulder at Caleb lying in the mud. For a moment she wanted to weep. But Madam Plaisir was right. A few drops of laudanum and she would feel as good as new.

  Hugh Stapleton spent the night in a carriage on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. He awoke in the dawn as Major Benjamin Stallworth pulled open the door and dropped into the seat opposite him. The major’s face was a strange combination of grief and rage. “They killed him,” he said. “The goddamn whore called for the watch and they killed him.”

  “I . . . I wish I’d had a chance to thank him,” Stapleton said.

  Stallworth glared at him. For a moment the congressman thought he was going to say something insulting. Instead the major drew his cloak around him and said nothing for the next two hours as the coach jolted and rocked along the road to Morristown.

  Beyond Hackensack, the noon sun proclaimed a beautiful April day. Stallworth glared at the greening pastures and orchards as if he somehow disapproved of them. “Land of milk and honey,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon,” Congressman Stapleton said.

  “That’s what a friend of mine called this country in the last letter he wrote to me.”

  “Was he killed in battle?”

  Stallworth shook his head. “The British hanged him as a spy in ‘76.”

  They were silent for another mile. Stallworth continued to glare out the window at the bountiful landscape. Then he spoke again in the same snarling voice. “Why do bastards like you and me survive this business and the best - the best - die?”

  “I’m afraid only God can answer that question,” Congressman Stapleton said.

  “It’ll be the first thing I ask Him if we ever meet,” Stallworth said.

  They rode on toward Morristown to renew the struggle for that scarifying prize, victory.

  This book was written under a grant from the Principia Foundation. It continues a series of personal histories drawn from the diaries, journals, letters, and memoirs of the Stapleton family. The author wishes to thank James Kilpatrick, director of the foundation, for his support and encouragement.

  After the war Hugh Stapleton served two terms as a senator from New Jersey. He continued to flourish as a merchant, becoming one of the pioneers in the China trade. Hannah Stapleton had two more sons by her husband. She died a month after celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary, in 1819.

  Among the other principals, George Washington’s later life needs no summary. Colonel John Graves Simcoe, whose published journal corroborates the plot to kidnap Washington, became governor of Upper Canada, where he did his best to make life miserable for Walter Beckford. Resigning his army commission, Beckford drifted from Canada to the West Indies in minor civil service jobs obtained for him by his mother’s family. He died of yellow fever in Jamaica in 1790. Benjamin Stallworth became a congressman from Connecticut and in his old age wrote a book arguing that American independence was won through the intervention of divine providence. Brigadier Birch died in London, a full general. Repeated searches of New York newspapers, police records, and burial reports failed to produce any mention of Flora Kuyper.

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