“Of course,” Browne said, “but that is a separate trade, and we are but dabblers yet. Mark my words, some day the whole of the British trade in Negroes will be opened to all comers. The demand is rising fast. Until then, like so many others, we are but interlopers, careful interlopers.”
Aaron smiled. “Cunning interlopers!” he added.
Then just before turning indoors Browne looked at Apphia and added: “And will you, dear daughter, join us for a light meal? Shall I tell Mrs. Hawksworth?”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll send Millie over later this evening to confirm, Father,” she said. “Thank you.”
XXIV
Aaron arrived earlier than Apphia the next evening that he and his father might discuss commerce. But after Apphia joined them and they had sharpened their appetites with a cup of sack, it became clear to Browne that his children had returned not only to comfort him, but to satisfy their further curiosity.
As they stood before a large, newly made fire in Browne’s hall, Apphia opened the subject again.
“And you believed the Fletchers, Father,” Apphia asked, “and then Higgins’ account of what finally took place?”
“Eventually, although no judgment has ever been ruled in the matter. And of course Mistress Coffin’s journal would account for much that would fit as well. There is a thread of truth running through all three accounts. Up to a point, of course.”
Browne began to explain the circumstances of their finding Higgins for the second time in the interior. “When we returned to the village by the lake, Shaw and I discovered that Jared Higgins had departed with the family into which he had married some time, perhaps a year, before. I can still recall how Shaw kept his face expressionless when the Indians were telling him this. But I kept pushing Shaw to get more information.
“One of the savages answered that Higgins had gone on the big river with the Amoskeags. He guessed he would be found where the river crosses below the pinnacle and the salmon falls. Shaw asked were they sure Higgins was still alive, and they assured us he was, that he had produced a healthy son.
“The river being strong and the portages few, Shaw and I camped only one night in pursuit of Higgins. But we did not find him among the small Amoskeag encampment at the falls. Moreover, Shaw was unknown among these Indians. They insisted that they knew nothing about a white man among their tribe. But Shaw persisted. He explained who had directed him to their tribe. Eventually we managed to prevail. There was, you see, no ‘Higgins,’ only a man called White Robin who might be found with their people near the village of the Wamesit, farther down river.
“That, finally, was where we found Higgins. His tawny skin, his carriage, his ornaments and clothing, his hair, his dialect—all were those of his new people. Even his eyes seemed to have changed, their movement, their darkness, their strange serenity. To our eyes, the transformation was complete. Only the nose and a few missing teeth might have suggested an Englishman to us. In his wigwam close by the river, we came upon this white Indian’s squaw and son.
“He—this White Robin—was circumspect. He chose not to speak English. Shaw had to interpret for me. Before we three sat down, White Robin sent his wife and baby out to an old woman who was cooking directly in front of the wigwam.
“Shaw began translating my words to him: ‘Balthazar Coffin is dead.’ White Robin responded that ‘he was an evil man.’ For a time, White Robin said, he thought he would return and kill Coffin. But he realized he did not know what power he would be up against, and lost his courage. Shaw then explained, at my direction, that he, Higgins, might return now to his proper wife and children. But he continually refused, saying that he had no wish to live among the English. I persisted; after all, his own wife and children. But White Robin only said: ‘I have the tenderest feelings for them, but I cannot return now.’ He emphasized that he was sorry events turned out as they did for his white family, but he could not change all that.
“I tried appealing to his innocence, which we could establish at the bar, but he only retorted that his innocence was clear to him. Finally he asked us to report that he was dead, then they would easily find someone to look after them. I’m afraid I only made matters worse at that point by accusing him of bigamy, adultery, forcing his wife to scorn God’s laws, whatnot. White Robin repeated that he lived by the laws of his gods. He said that once he was a false man, but now he had become a true man, or as Shaw translated it, ‘a man’. He said that no truth nor cozening would move him from his life. ‘The life of the English is dead to me,’ he told us.
“You see, he had cut himself off from all natural affections of a true Englishman. I believed it was now that he was living the false life, not formerly. He only asked us then if we were certain of Coffin’s death. When I assured him we were, he grew silent. He looked at the skins on the floor, his face drained of expression. I thought that surely there must be some conflict between the Indian and the white man. No one, it seemed to me, can deny a former life, however unpalatable it might seem from the present life. I finally said as much. Then White Robin rose and looked at us strangely. He turned, said something, and left the wigwam. I asked Shaw what he had said. ‘He says he needs a sweat,’ Shaw replied.”
“He did not tell you the story you have mentioned?” Aaron asked.
“Not until the next afternoon. Here it is,” Browne said, pulling out from beneath some papers on a table a faded, fragile manuscript. “Just as we wrote it from memory upon our return. Higgins had sent word for us to meet him near the bank of the river just north of the encampment where a great tree made open space. By that time I had decided that the only chance remaining to bring Higgins back was to tell him everything I had discovered, including the diary. I remember now that as I spoke, I could see the river sweeping heavily by. I believe that it must have taken me an hour to tell the whole story, occasionally circling back to fill in a forgotten detail or incident. White Robin listened, interested but serene. He asked a question or two only about the Fletcher brothers.
“I remember now too that Shaw rose and walked about for some minutes before White Robin spoke. ‘The Fletchers are those you seek,’ he finally began, in English now. ‘They were, as they said, hired for Coffin’s vengeance.’ I asked him if it was vengeance against himself and Mistress Coffin.”
Browne looked down at the faded manuscript now and began to read to his children the words he had written long ago.
“‘I learned Coffin was suspicious of me. What led him to believe in such falsehood I didn’t know, but it was God’s truth to him. Even in his hiring me to carry his wife to market I felt something wrong. But then Jacob Fletcher came to see me. I was planting a late crop. He had information, he said, that might save me. But he made it clear the information should be worth something, so we finally agreed that he’d have my new axe and an Indian bow of mine. I’m not sure how he knew about the bow. He had hoped for coin, but I had none to give him. Only if I agreed the information as important to me as he had promised need I pay. So I didn’t see how it could not be. And of course it was.
“‘We had worked together at times. And I knew him for a local tosspot and rakehell. He said first that he did not like the job he had been hired to do by this strange man Coffin. The more he thought, he said, the more he saw we might design to benefit us both, act out a sort of stage play for Coffin’s plaudits. Then he told the details of his covenant with Coffin.
“‘The game he had got up to was this: they would capture and bind us as planned. Yet I was to know the playbook as it played, not the woman. Too dangerous for appearances of the truth. They would filch whatever she had, knock her about, leave her on the island to be “rescued” as arranged. “Coffin is to rescue a cuckold and his lady!” Jacob said and laughed. I would now bear the weight of their attack, but short of death or mutilation. I was to make my escape while they were busy with her.’” Browne looked up at his children, ceasing to read for the moment the words of White Robin.
“I remember acc
using him,” Browne said, “of lying in deposition to the court. But his only response was that he withheld certain of the truth to save himself, and others, from the vengeance of the law. He said that he was ‘a false man’ in those times.” Browne then looked back down at his manuscript and began reading White Robin’s words again.
“‘From Coffin’s own thirst for revenge, from his arts, his ways, our playacting began to seem an escape. Short of immediate flight alone—or with my confused family deep into the wilds of Maine or some faraway place—I saw no other way out. I confess I hoped that being his victims in our spectacle might slake his desires against us. How else appease, I thought, that awful serpent in his heart? He would not have listened to truth. Was this plan not worth a trial? Of course, I knew I would have to make ready to escape his reach should our performance fail to entertain and satisfy him.
“‘So we went ahead with it. Mistress Coffin alone unaware of what we had staged. I disappeared as planned. While she was at market, Jacob Fletcher connived to meet her after she sought me and offered his services, as he was returning himself and as I had told him that I had to return home for a mishap befalling one of my children. He said I had asked for his help in returning her, and so on in such vein until she finally got into the canoe with him. She knew who he was; her husband had once or twice hired this man who, if his reputation were smirched, worked well when you hired him.
“‘By the time they reached Bailey’s Island, I had been bound to an oak tree, dirtied and beaten somewhat, stripped to my breeches, my mouth tied, my clothes strewn about. You see? Henry Fletcher sat below me whetting his knives by the fire.
“‘But even then I began to regret my part in the drama as soon as I saw her face. And they seemed to use her with more force than necessary from the first. You see, as soon as she saw my condition she began to resist. They were hard on her, and when she began to scream for help they tied a rope around her throat, with a slipping knot, and gave her pressure until she ceased. They searched her, taking whatever valuables they found, including the corn and some coin in her purse. They removed her clothing and searched her nakedness. Henry piled her clothes aside carefully. Jacob began to threaten her with what would soon befall us, while Henry acted dumb shows of our waiting agonies.
“‘Jacob stripped my breeches off while Henry continued with Mistress Coffin. I knew they had begun too much to relish their roles. I began to see that they had counted this woman a portion of their booty. We all moved on a knife edge between the true and the staged. At any moment their lusts might spill over, making the show grow real. I almost broke free of my loose bonds to fight, but then I thought better of it—a naked man defenseless against their double weapons.
“‘That is what happened, at the bottom of it. It all went wrong. The final turn came just as Jacob was flourishing before me his heated knives, and Henry ran over to motion that he needed help with the woman. This we had planned. When they turned from me to attend to the struggling woman, I was to flee. But somehow she had loosened the rope and found strength enough to begin screaming again. They became very busy with her. Henry pulled the small canoe up on the land and turned it over. Jacob dragged her by the rope to the canoe, her screams stopped, while she clutched at the rope to relieve its choking. They pulled her over the canoe on her stomach, tied the end of her rope to a sapling, and then bound each foot to separate trees, so that she lay over the canoe wide before them.
“‘Then it was that Henry started in on her, with less mercy than a butcher’s cur toward an ox cheek. He removed his breeches and started to come at her on hands and knees, even though Jacob was calling to him: “Not yet you goddamn fool.” But there was no stopping him; it had all gone wrong. He had come right up to her, grunting in her loins like a calf at the salt. She had been made so helpless by her bonds that she could neither move nor utter a sound now. Her free arms were pulling against the rope to relieve the crush at her throat enough to stay alive.
“‘Henry grabbed his inflamed yard and slammed into her, and then Jacob ceased his complaint and began to laugh as he watched the two of them. It was just as Jacob began to remove his clothes that I finished undoing my own bonds, certain by now that everything had gone awry. As they busied themselves upon her, fore and aft, I ran, grabbing my breeches on my way, and jumped into the water. I swam to the western shore like a demon.
“‘On shore I saw that neither brother had stopped his pleasures of her to pursue me. I was supposed to have escaped, after all. I’m sure they were not worrying whether anyone had thrown out the playbook. I pulled on my wet breeches, and fled barefoot overland to my house.’ “Here Browne paused briefly again in his reading. When he looked up his eyes looked distant and glazed.
“I recall somehow,” Browne said to his children, “exactly how he looked just then as he told his story. He briefly shifted his position and then began to slide a strand of beadwork through his thumb and forefinger.” When Browne failed to continue his reading, his son prompted him: “Father? Go on, please.” Browne seemed to return to the present, shook his head, and looked down at his manuscript. He began reading again.
“‘The upshot is that when they found the poor woman’s sorely beaten body in the river, I could neither eat, nor sleep, nor think. I prepared to flee, fearing to tell anyone, even my wife, of my role. Who shall believe me now? I resolved to take their lives, those Fletchers, but before I could make ready, there were hearings. I came under close watch, had to shift as much blame as possible. Then the Fletchers had not, it was said, returned to the town. They managed earlier to get the half part of payment out of Coffin, who was desperate for his vengeance, and by what they took from her purse. When Coffin saw that I had returned whole, he took recourse of the law against me. Under questioning, I began to hint that his own hand was in this and that his wife, as he still believed, was an adulteress. Then he gave up on my punishment by the Courts.
“‘The missing brothers drew scant suspicion. They were believed to be hunting in Maine, using the house of an uncle in Casco Bay as their base. Once suspicion turned from me, I tried to find them, but their trail had turned cold and their distance, by then, too great. It was when I returned from Maine that I discovered what was amiss in my own family. For then it was our own torments began. It was later, after the Fletchers had drifted back into town, and I finally fled, that Mr. Cole—seeing the sufferings of my family—settled with you, Mr. Browne, to look into it.’ “
Browne looked up at his children. “There,” he said. “That is all.”
“All?” Apphia asked.
“All that was written,” Browne said. “I remember some things now, of course. Much of it came back to me as I was reading to you. I remember that when White Robin stopped speaking there was only the sound of distant birds and of the river thrusting beside us. I felt as if I had awakened from an evil dream. I thought I would be ill. I saw again and again Elizabeth Higgins’ sealed note to Balthazar Coffin drop out onto my table from among the papers Dr. Sedley had sent. I looked at Shaw, who gave no indication of his belief or disbelief in his old friend’s story. The story had felt absolutely true to me as it was told, but in the crush of emotion afterwards I wondered.
“I also recall standing up and trying to shake off a sensation of dizziness, and walked around before I spoke again. I think I said to White Robin: ‘That, however, is all in the past, as dead to us here today as that poor woman, and now her husband. You cannot now act as if your life, your children, your wife back at Robinson’s Falls are a story or a dream. You’re still responsible for them. No one, least of all I, will bring action against you again in this bloody matter. The Fletchers may have to answer. I can procure agreements with Mr. Cole to keep you clear of any retribution, especially if you testify. I can secure all this and return in two months for you.’
“‘The Fletchers have their punishment coming,’ White Robin said to me. ‘What more can it matter now?’ How could he have known that they were to be sent into exile before any
action would be initiated against them again? At the time I explained that it was for his wife, his family, that I pleaded. But he only answered that his family was here, meaning the Indian camp. Then he asked Shaw and me to leave him. In desperation I tried to get Shaw to agree to bring Higgins’ wife and son to see him, but Shaw, correctly no doubt, said simply that he, Higgins, would not be found again. Indeed, he had already, Shaw said, made his farewell to Shaw in the dialect. We left the next morning.”
“When you consider,” Aaron said after a silence, “that Mother suddenly faced not only an adulterous and deserting husband, but one who had likely joined with these ruffians in a conspiracy leading to the torment and death of that poor woman. . . .”
“Oh, Aaron. He had become a savage,” Apphia said, her face still astonished by the news. “And continued bigamous, or rather adulterous, relations there in the wilderness!”
The energy of Apphia’s outburst silenced her brother and father momentarily. The two men looked at her kindly.
“Yes,” Browne finally offered, “what we all know now has carried you about as far as it has carried me. Once she faced all these events and doings, you see, your mother awakened, so to speak. At the least her husband had violated her truly as much as if he had beaten her without cause, denied her himself, or failed to care for his family in any of the common ways. And I too was in the process of making arrangements to leave for the Port. My fortunes were increasing comfortably during this time. There was further the prospect of combining our legacies. Your mother finally thought better of striking out alone.”
“Surely your charm and position must have prevailed with her,” Aaron said and clapped his father lightly on the shoulder.
Browne found his heart lightened by the wine and bright evening fire. “As to my charm,” he said, “I cannot attest. But my situation improved daily, that is true enough.
The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin Page 20
