Dreams of Glory Page 22

  When Henry Kuyper refused to support the rebels in New Jersey, he was dragged before a revolutionary committee and cowed into recanting his loyalty to the King. The old lady received so many insults from her rebel neighbors and was so ashamed of her son’s cowardice, I think she died of mortification, although the doctor called it pleurisy. This placed the direction of the farm in the hands of Caesar Muzzey.

  To some extent, Caesar had been running the farm already. But Mrs. Kuyper was a sharp supervisor, almost to the day of her death. She would ride out to the farthest fields on her little pony and criticize the planting, the drainage, and the fertilizer with an experienced eye that even Caesar respected. But respect vanished into the grave with her.

  Henry Kuyper had no interest in farming. If any evidence is ever needed of the bad effects of slavery, Henry would be a prime example. With blacks to labor for him, he grew accustomed to spending most of each day at the Three Pigeons Inn or some other local tavern, drinking and smoking and talking politics with cronies who had equally large amounts of leisure time.

  His only work was his weekly trip to New York to sell his meat and produce. The rebellion diminished, but by no means eliminated his social life. The secret loyalists among the Bergen Dutch formed their own society.

  Caesar and I had had little to say to each other while Mrs. Kuyper was alive. After her death, Henry made only a pretense of supervising him. He was fond of Caesar, who had been his body servant as a boy; they had been raised almost as brothers. Henry often boasted of his good fortune, having a manager who took all the worries of farming off his shoulders. Nevertheless, Caesar made a point of consulting Henry on when to plant, when to harvest, when to prune the fruit trees. I thought he was being tactful. I gradually realized he was looking for reasons to come to the house to see me.

  When he found me alone, Caesar quickly turned the conversation to other matters, such as my opinion of slavery, the progress of the war, my personal history. He was fascinated to learn that in New Orleans free blacks and mulattos had their own quarter, that many of them practiced trades as skillfully and profitably as whites and some owned substantial farms in the countryside. The few free Negroes Caesar knew in New Jersey led miserable lives. He told me that I had given him a paradise to dream about.

  It soon became evident to both of us that the sympathy I had expressed for Caesar’s enslaved state was turning into something more profound. Now I realize I desired him not only as a man but as Africa, as a turning within me to my black blood, after so much abuse and humiliation as a white woman. I told myself the happiness my father had urged me to seek in love was there, where I least expected it. When I confessed to Caesar the truth about my ancestry, we both knew what must follow.

  But I never told Caesar the whole truth about England or William Coleman. I was afraid he would despise me. Caesar was enormously proud. He would have had no use for a degraded woman. I invented a story about a trip to London to seek out my father’s relatives, being rejected by them, and forced to become a redemptioner. But I was able to tell Caesar, with complete sincerity, that I was ready to flee with him to New Orleans, where we could live together as man and wife.

  Then the war rumbled closer and at the end of the summer of 1776 it swept over us. The Americans were routed from New York and New Jersey, and Henry, unwisely thinking the British had won, recanted his oath of loyalty to the rebellion and again pledged his allegiance to the King. Before the year was over, British fortunes underwent an astonishing reversal and most of New Jersey was in American hands once more. The rebels threatened to confiscate Henry’s farm. I persuaded him to feign enough contrition to convince them that he was only a weakling. There were hundreds of others who did the same thing. But Henry became a suspected person, whom the rebels were determined to punish in some way.

  In the spring of 1777, the rebels ordered every tenth militiaman drafted to fill the ranks of Washington’s army. Henry’s name was among the first on the list. This seemed strange policy, to try to make a soldier out of a man who had no love for their cause. Now that I know more of the army, I understand that a soldier’s opinion of the war has little to do with his usefulness. On a battlefield there is no time to debate ideas. Every man fights for his life. But Henry had no intention of going near a battlefield. Under the law he could send a substitute, and he announced that he was sending Caesar.

  When I told Caesar, he uttered a terrible oath. “That decides it,” he said. “I’ve been thinking for a long time that there’s only one way we’ll ever get to New Orleans. You must become a widow.”

  That night, I left the back door unlocked. When Henry went to bed, I stayed downstairs, pretending enthusiasm for a novel. I heard Caesar’s bare feet go up the back stairs and down the hall to Henry’s bedroom. There was a muffled cry, then silence. Caesar smothered him with a pillow. He was careful to leave no marks on the body. It was easy to convince the doctor that Henry had died of apoplexy.

  Caesar forced me to come upstairs and look at Henry’s dead face. “I wish I could cut him open and make you drink his blood with me,” he said. “Swear on his eyes that you love me.”

  He forced me to put my hand on Henry’s eyes and swear. The hatred slavery creates is monstrous. That night it poisoned my love for Caesar. I was never able to regain the feelings that drew me to him.

  Shortly after Caesar left for the American army, William’s London friend, Walter Beckford, walked into this house. He was still in the British array, a major now, serving with the garrison in New York; Beckford informed me that he was making the house a way station for escaped prisoners. He told me that William had joined the American army and was working for him as a spy. He asked me if I knew anyone in the army who might make a good courier. I volunteered Caesar. I saw it as a way of securing Beckford’s protection and earning money to reach New Orleans. By now our plan included taking Cato and Nancy and the field slaves with us and freeing them in Louisiana.

  I don’t think, even as I taught Caesar French and talked of the happiness we might find in New Orleans, that I really believed we would succeed. I always saw Henry Kuyper’s smothered face, with its gaping mouth and bulging eyes. I remembered things Lord Lyttleton and others made me do in London. Now do you see why I need forgiveness?

  The candle beside the bed was a guttering stump. Caleb Chandler had no idea what time it was. Time and space had been annihilated. Flora Kuyper’s whispered words had changed the shape and dimension of his world. It no longer rested on traditional ideas of good and evil, salvation and redemption. Flora’s life could only have been created by a God of darkness and mystery, a being whose purposes and powers were infinitely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

  As Flora talked, Caleb had had a sense of God receding from this world. It was a new experience for him. Before, he had been certain of God’s presence; his argument had been with those who saw Him as a harsh, relentless tyrant. God’s absence was a new idea. It aroused in Caleb an awed pity for human loneliness.

  For a few minutes this loneliness made his promise to protect Flora loom larger than victory or defeat in this stalemated war. What she had just told him was both a confession and a pledge, a kind of covenant. But how could he honor it? How could he respond to her trust and simultaneously plan to betray it?

  Necessity, roared Benjamin Stallworth’s iron mouth. But his cynical assumptions about this woman had proven to be as narrow and as sterile as his soul.

  “My dearest love,” Caleb said, “if ever I’ve seen or heard of a woman who’s been more sinned against than sinning, it’s you.”

  Kissing her, he realized her face was wet with tears. “I have one more sin to confess,” Flora said. “The congressman, Hugh Stapleton, whom you sent here with Caesar’s body. Walter Beckford ordered me to seduce him. Now he’s in love with me. He wants to take me to Amsterdam with him.”

  Caleb heard Stallworth’s triumphant sneer: She fucks for the King. But the fact was not the truth. The truth was as remote from Sta
llworth’s sneer as it was from most pulpits, where sin and sinners were equally condemned.

  Fact or truth, Flora’s final confession made Caleb writhe with redoubled desperation. She had to be extricated from this maze of deception and corruption as soon as possible. But even if he abandoned Stallworth’s necessity, turned his back on the dubious revolution, how could he tell her that the man who had just made love to her was a patriotic liar?

  No. He turned to the hope that he could somehow persuade her to accept the cause, the revolution, and then confess what he had done in its name. It was still, in spite of its Stallworths and Stapletons, a struggle for liberty, the rights of man, the same sort of struggle for which her father had died in New Orleans.

  “I understand about Stapleton,” Caleb said. “Too bad the rebels have congressmen like him. What we - they - need are more men like your father. A man who really believed in liberty.”

  “I don’t think my father would be any more popular in Philadelphia than he was in New Orleans. He’d still be opposed to owning slaves. He’d never use liberty as a catch phrase to justify persecuting and robbing those who disagreed with him.”

  “He didn’t fight a war. Perhaps a war forces people to do things they dislike.”

  “You sound like you’re changing your mind. Are you thinking of going back to the Americans and betraying me?”

  “Don’t say such a thing. I . . . I’m only trying to honor your father’s memory.”

  “It needs no honoring, as far as I’m concerned. What happened to him is a better lesson. Anyone who trusts the people is a fool. There’s no virtue or courage in them.”

  Caleb retreated to agonized silence. The cage of circumstances in which he found himself seemed to have no exit. Stallworth had made him a liar and seducer. Without the lies and seduction, he would never have learned the truth about Flora. Now the lies and seduction made it impossible to tell her the truth about himself.

  At dawn, Flora rose and ordered Cato to get out her sleigh and horses. She was anxious to leave for New York to see Major Beckford. “How will you get past the rebel militia guards on the road to Powles Hook?” Caleb asked.

  “They’ve been bribed long since,” she said. “They think I’m just replenishing my wardrobe with a little London trading.”

  Flora returned in the late afternoon, trembling from the savage cold. “Beckford was skeptical at first,” she said. “But he’s desperately in need of a courier. I convinced him of your sincerity. He’ll send for you tonight.”

  “Good,” Caleb said.

  Flora accepted some hot broth from Cato but did not drink it. She put the cup down on a side table and waited until Cato left the room to begin a new topic.

  “All day, on the road, in New York, I’ve been thinking about our future together. Now that you know the truth, you can see why I wanted to retreat to New Orleans with Caesar, If the British win this war, which begins to look more and more probable, William will attempt to reclaim me again, with Beckford’s help. It seems to me we have no alternative but to follow the same plan. I see no refuge but New Orleans.”

  Caleb nodded. He was finding it harder and harder to lie to this woman.

  “They won’t let you marry me. I’m still a woman of color,” Flora said. “But we won’t need priests or ministers to seal our marriage. We’ll buy a plantation on one of the bayous and live quietly. Perhaps I’ll have babies. If not, we’ll adopt some children of color.”

  “Yes,” Caleb said.

  Flora heard the falling note in his voice. Her eyes filled with tears. “You don’t think we’ll ever do it,” she said. “You think the whole thing is mad.”

  “No,” he said, “I think it’s desperate. I fear it will be much more difficult than you think. What if the British win the war before we can leave? Won’t Major Beckford or William Coleman detain you?”

  “Do you think it’s possible that they could win so quickly?” she said.

  “All too possible,” he said.

  “I . . . I don’t want to see William again. Beckford I can deal with. But William is different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s hard to explain. There are certain memories-”

  “You still love him?”

  “No!” Flora looked past Caleb at the parlor’s dark ice-coated front windows. For a moment Caleb had an eerie feeling that William Coleman was out there, his face pressed to the glass. “I don’t love him. But I don’t hate him, either,” she said.

  “Let me hate him for you,” Caleb said. “He deserves someone’s hatred. If anything makes me dubious about our future, it’s the thought that this man could somehow regain you.”

  For a moment Flora seemed to waver toward a declaration of her detestation of William Coleman. But before she could answer him, there were footsteps in the hall. Two men in white greatcoats clumped into the parlor. One was short and middle-aged and had corruption written on his face in a hundred brutal lines and creases. His companion was huge, with the staring eyes and expressionless face of an angel in a bad religious painting.

  “These are Beckford’s guides. John Nelson,” Flora said, gesturing to the older man with evident distaste, “and Wiert Bogert.”

  “Let me get a good look at you, Parson,” Nelson said, advancing into the parlor until snow from his boots formed rivulets on the Oriental rug. “You’re a seven days’ wonder, you know that? A week ago, we had orders to cut your throat. Now we’re told to being you to New York like a bloody escaped colonel or general.”

  Caleb did not know what they were talking about. “Orders to cut my throat? Who gave them?”

  “Major Beckford, who else? At the request of his friend in Morristown, the one they call Twenty-six. Mistress Kuyper was supposed to keep you busy till we got here to do the job. But for some reason she sent you away ahead of schedule.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Flora said. “I had no control over Mr. Chandler. The funeral service he came to perform was over and I could think of no way to detain him.”

  “You could think of no way to detain him,” Nelson said, sneering. “There’s one way you could have tried, if you’d been so inclined.”

  “Shut your mouth. Major Beckford has ordered you to treat me with respect.”

  “I’ve obeyed the order like a good soldier,” Nelson said, “But respect works both ways and so does obedience. If you’d obeyed orders, we’d be fifty guineas richer.”

  While they argued Caleb was reconstructing the events of his first visit: Flora’s decision to have the funeral the morning after his arrival, her impatience to see him on the road to Morristown. He realized she had saved his life.

  “I saw that Mr. Chandler was a servant of the King. Or ripe to become one,” Flora was telling John Nelson. “I saw what a mistake it would have been to kill him.”

  Lying again? Chandler wondered. This time he was not sure. He looked at her and heard Stallworth’s sneer.

  Nelson grunted skeptically and pulled a white greatcoat and boots from his knapsack. “Here,” he said, flinging them at Caleb’s feet. “Get these on. We’ve orders to run you back to New York without delay. Can you use snowshoes?”

  “I used them in the woods as a boy,” Caleb said.

  “We’ve got some outside for you.”

  As Caleb walked to the door, Bogert stepped in front of him, glowering. “Tell me truth. You kill Caesar?”

  “No.”

  “John think you did.”

  “John’s wrong. I’m on the side of the King. So was Caesar. There was no reason for me to kill him.”

  “I find out you kill him, I kill you no matter what Beckford say.”

  “Forget it, lad. I was just talkin’ to hear meself,” Nelson said. He grinned mockingly at Flora. “Old Caesar and Bogert was friends. They did some carousin’ in New York that it took half the watch to stop. He was a wild one, old Caesar. The whores all loved him. Black and white.”

  Flora looked like she might
start weeping. “Let’s go,” Caleb said.

  Outside, the cold was the worst Caleb had felt since the winter began. It assaulted every inch of exposed skin. He bound a scarf around his nose and lips, stepped into his snowshoes, and followed Nelson and Bogert into the dark fields north of the Kuyper farm. They kept to the fields and woods, avoiding the roads, stopping only to consult a small luminous compass. They were traveling east to avoid the heavily patrolled roads around the British fort at Powles Hook. East was also the direction of Connecticut, but Caleb felt the journey was away from, not toward, the state of his birth. He kept thinking of home as a place from which he was receding, perhaps forever. He remembered other winter journeys, when his father joined twenty or thirty fellow farmers for a trip to the New London market. He could see the slim figure of his father on the back step of the two-horse sleigh that Caleb and his brothers had spent hours loading with frozen hogs, poultry, firkins of butter, casks of cheeses, skins of mink and fox, baskets of nuts, hand-cut shoe pegs, and yarn their sisters had spun. How he had envied his father those journeys. Even then, Caleb was dreaming of a way to escape Lebanon. But his father returned from the city untouched by its sophistication or its vices, the same simple, earnest man who trembled at the thought that he or those whom he loved might not be among the saved. Caleb was certain he would not return from this journey the same man.

  The three travelers came out of the woods onto a road. Bogert caught Caleb’s arm and dragged him back into the trees. They waited for a moment and Caleb heard the irregular thud of horses’ hooves on the snow. Five minutes later a sleigh, loaded not unlike the one Caleb’s father used to drive to New London, rounded the bend and passed them. “Contraband trade,” Nelson muttered. “If we didn’t have special orders to bring you straight in, we’d wait here for the bastard to come back. There’s sixty guineas in fresh beef on that sleigh. I’d be happy to extract the cash from his pocket on his way home.”