My Heart Laid Bare (2 page)

S
he was not a Londoner by birth, she was very likely not even English by birth, you could hear it in her voice. Sarah Wilcox. Sarah Hood. Nineteen years old, small-boned and ferret-crafty, eyes of no particular brightness, hair of no particular beauty, yet she was her Lady's favored maid, her Lady's most attentive maid, listening at the children's lessons, French, Latin, music, numbers, the Kings of Old England and France, listening at the children's prayers, paying heed to her Lady's friends in the great houses and royal palaces, how to incline the head, how to lift the voice, the eyes rolled delicately Heavenward, as if God on His throne were gazing down: ah, an innocent flirtation! Before her Lady called Sarah knew to obey, before her Lord gave a command Sarah knew to acquiesce, having, as it seemed, no will of her own, surely no cunning, albeit Sarah was not
her name and in her voice you could hear she was not a Londoner by birth, very likely not even English.

One day Sarah swept to her Lady's golden mirror, bedecked in her Lady's most exquisite finery—silks, jewels, hairpieces—and made so bold as to inquire, in her Lady's very voice,
Is it little Sarah, or her Lady, who stands here so proud?
—whereupon the mirror laughed, saying,
Your Lady, little Sarah, was never so proud.
And shortly thereafter her Lady and her retinue were summoned to the great palace at Warwickshire to visit servants she was Royalty, and all trembled in awe of her. Old Jeremiah was charmed with her high pure faultless soprano voice, a child grew in her womb but it soon turned to stone, now the old man repented of his sin, now the old man begged of God forgiveness, he had no use for Sarah's Latin, or her French, or her fine embroidering, or her tears, and now Jeremiah died of flames raging in his throat, and Sarah fled Marblehead in the late winter of 1775, as York, as Winthrop, as Talbot, her long fair hair bound up tight beneath a gentleman's hat, and her slender body craftily concealed in gentleman's clothes. In Rhode Island she gambled at cards, in Delaware she followed a river south to her father's bedside,
What seek ye, Sarah?—what, and where?
—in Maryland she revealed to admiring eyes that she knew all the dances of the English court, her feet were small, quick, high-arched, her lovely head was high, her eyes ablaze in young womanly beauty. In ballroom mirrors in the great houses of Virginia there was reflected a hundredfold the graceful figure of Princess Susanna Caroline Matilde, and did the sweet English visitor not charm her hosts with tales of her sister the Queen, and her brother-in-law the King, and, ah! numberless intrigues at court? And did she not charm all who gazed upon her with her pure faultless soprano voice, and her skill at the pianoforte, and her pretty French, and her reverent Latin, and her exquisite manners, and her Royal ways?

Though he had already a wife the courtly Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia wooed Princess Susanna, though he had already a wife and a young mistress the master of the largest plantation in the Carolinas
wooed Princess Susanna, and loving no man she loved all, and loving all she loved no man, traveling through 1775 and early '76 as a houseguest in one great mansion after another, hinting at Royal patronage to the happy few who succeeded in pleasing her,
We are Royalty who comport ourselves as such
was Princess Susanna's gentle catechism to all wealthy commoners, who were privileged to offer their guest gifts of a feminine sort (pearls, jewels, and gold trinkets primarily) but dared not offend by offering outright bribes.

Then it happened in the spring of 1776, in one of the great houses in Charleston, Princess Susanna was exposed as “Sarah Wilcox,” outlaw bondwoman and suspected murderess.

Now did French avail her?—it did not. And did Latin avail her?—it did not. Nor her pretty little white Bible, nor the locket around her neck (with the likeness of the Queen inside), nor her pure unwavering soprano voice, nor all her tales of court. Yet though she was manacled, and subdued, and weakened, and much abused by her captors, the outlaw escaped while being transported north; and none knew where she had gone, unless it was into the very air—!

Now God had mercy on a poor youth named Durham, now a pale young seamstress named Bethany, now Susanna Shepherd, widow, now Sarah Licht, widow, twenty-six years of age, childless, of Bush Creek, Maryland, engaged in the autumn of '76 to a young British officer, Lieutenant William Ward of the 16th Light Dragoons, soon to perish at Trenton. And did Sarah love him?—she did not. And did she mourn him?—not for an hour. For she had her dying baby to mourn, burning with fever, misshapen head, tiny fingers and toes webbed together, she had crazed weeping Sarah to mourn, running with a drunken mob in Contracoeur, torches and pitchforks and rifles, hunting Tory traitors to the death. She would set the New World to flame, she cried, as if it were the Old! There was Mrs. William Ward, widow, a governess in a Vanderpoel household, dismissed after six months' service for “insolence, impiety, and suspected
theft,” there was Mrs. Sarah Ward, a country midwife, shrewd and close-mouthed, said to be of the Devil's tribe, who never failed at a birth and never rejoiced at a birth, baptizing mother and babe alike with her black bitter tears.

What seek ye, Sarah?—why, with such passion?
—so Sarah's own mother admonished her, appearing one night by Sarah's bedside.

But she paid no heed, for it was not yet her time, she fluffed out her thinned hair, and slapped color into her cheeks, and gave her heart to a dashing young man named Macready, a black-bearded young horse thief from Philadelphia,
Come with me, Sarah Wilcox, and do my will, Sarah
, his eyes sly and slanted as her own, his face flushed with love, he could lift her in one arm if he wished, he could smother her in the bulk of his body if he wished, and Sarah cried
Yes, yes
, and curled like a babe in his bosom.

Would she cut her shining hair for him?—she would. Would she dress in men's clothing for him?—she would. Would she follow him into the countryside, into the hills, seeking plunder where plunder might be sought?—she would, she would, she wept for very joy, she gave him all the gold she had, she followed where he led her, close upon the heels of the British at Valley Forge, close upon the heels of the Americans at Jockey Hollow, where many a stray horse might be haltered and traded for cash. The War for Independence was many wars, the horses knew no allegiance to King or to General Washington, why thus should Sarah and her lover? For it is foolish to starve when one might feast, it is foolish to die when one might live, and why support a war, Macready said, if one might be supported by it? Such fine horses to be had for the taking, albeit starving, and frostbitten, and gun-shy, and wary of mankind—! And Sarah clutched at her tall dashing black-bearded lover as she had never clutched at any man,
Yes, yes
, Sarah wept, Morristown, and Powhatassie, and the doomed British encampment at Port Oriskany, and one day Macready was shot down by moonlight and died streaming blood in Sarah's arms.

Could he die like a dog, in a ditch, streaming blood, though Sarah
loved him, and would have died in his place?—he could, he could, in Sarah's very arms, though God looked down and observed the lovers' agony.

SARAH FLEES TO
the North, Sarah flees to the South, it is the year 1780, it is the early winter of '81, she is hunted down in Old Muirkirk, she must die in the wilds of Muirkirk swamp, years ago she lost Princess Susanna's gold locket, it has been years since she had gold coins to toss at the horses' hooves, she cannot plead with the soldiers in Latin, they will not pause to hear her pretty lisping French, God Himself is deaf to all her pleas. The first lieutenant fires. The second lieutenant fires. Sarah is a great-winged soaring egret but the terrible shot tears through her breast, she is a leaping doe but the shot tears through her throat,
Will you not have mercy, my Lord, on one of Royal blood,
but the shot tears through her heart, even as the soldiers marvel cursing at the woman's strength, and dare not pursue her into the marsh, on horseback or afoot. How quickly the horse thief runs!—how alive, how desperate!—even as she staggers in agony, her blood cascading from her—even as the shots tear into her back—Sarah Wilcox who cannot be killed, Sarah Licht who cannot be run to earth, Sarah Macready now sinking into the soft black muck—how alive!—how alive!—the Devil's own!—even as the soldiers fire at her fallen body, and fire yet again, and again, with curses of exultation.

And now Sarah
is
dead, surely?—in the spring of 1781?

And the great tractless swamp swallows her up.

D
o I doubt?—I do
not.
Does my hand shake?—it does
not.
Am I like other men?—
I am not.
”

He smiles at his ruddy mirrored reflection, that paragon of manhood, a gentleman in the prime of life, deep-set mica-chip eyes sly with secrets, glowing with interior heat, he smiles and it
is
a smile, it satisfies him, though the flushed muscled cheeks would clench in rage to reveal too many strong wet white teeth. Too many strong wet white teeth.

“Am I to be trusted?—
I am.
Am I a gentleman?—
I am.
”

He pauses in his robust lathering of his cheeks and jaws, he examines a three-quarters profile (the left, the truly striking side of his face), hums several bars of Mozart (Don Giovanni in the guise of Don Ottavio), examines the smile again, measured, perfectly calibrated, now a slight modest downturning of the eye, an inclination of the head as well, a gentleman who wears his power lightly, who does not insist, a gentleman-stallion (assuredly not a gelding) who exhibits his charms sparingly, the very essence of “A. Washburn Frelicht, Ph.D.”

“Am I like other men?—
I am not.
”

He completes his toilet with a flourish and flings down the soapy towel, noting with admiration the light flush of the clean-shaven cheeks, the perpetual fever of the cheeks, noting with awe the hard, hard bones, his inheritance, that press against the flesh:
his.
Why,
it is all his.

“Do I doubt?—I do
not.
Does my hand shake?—it does
not.
Am I eager for it all to begin?—yes, yes, a hundredfold
yes.
”

This day of legend, or of infamy.

To be spoken of, written of, speculated upon, recalled with perennial controversy in the annals of American horse-racing (and gambling) circles well into the twenty-first century: Derby Day of 11 May 1909 at resplendent Chautauqua Downs, one of the first of the “playing fields of the rich.”

At Chautauqua, at that time, speculation in the clubhouse centered as much on the mysterious gentleman gambler, the “astrological sportsman,” one Frelicht, “Doctor” Frelicht as he and his associates insisted, as of which of two great horses, Stone Street or Xalapa, would win the cup.

Frelicht. A. Washburn Frelicht, Ph.D.
A stranger to Chautauqua Falls, New York; but wasn't his name dimly notorious in racing circles back East: wasn't he, or an individual with a name very like his, the inventor of the “tipster sheet”? . . . beloved of gamblers and despised by honest horsemen, and just this past season outlawed from the Chautauqua track as from Belmont and Saratoga. Wasn't Mr. Frelicht in some ambiguous way associated with “Baron” Barraclough of Buffalo, the railroad speculator; and with the seemingly disgraced congressman Jasper Liges of Vanderpoel; hadn't he, or an individual with a name very like his, been involved in the secret selling of shares in the “newly discovered” estate of an heir of Napoleon, descended by way of an unclaimed illegitimate son?

These rumors, amounting in essence to character assassination, circulated freely in Chautauqua Falls in the days preceding the race. Many
persons had opinions of A. Washburn Frelicht who had never set eyes upon him, including the very owner of the Chautauqua track, Colonel Jameson Fairlie, who dared to speak of him to the Warwicks (brother and sister, the elderly bachelor Edgar and the widow Seraphina, former wife of the Albany banker Isaac Dove), who were Frelicht's friends and staunch supporters. To Seraphina the Colonel spoke with his accustomed bluntness, warning her against involving herself in matters that might have been repugnant to poor Isaac, causing the widow to snap shut her black-lacquered Japanese fan, and fix her old friend with a glacial eye, and say, in a voice usually reserved for slow-witted servants: “Mr. Dove, being dead, is hardly ‘poor,' as he was hardly ‘poor' in life; and has no more stake in my current affairs, Colonel, than do you.”

And this exchange, too, quickly entered the lore of that day of legend, or of infamy.

“Stone Street,” and “Xalapa,” and “Sweet Thing,” and “Glengarry”; “Midnight Sun,” and “Warlock,” and “Jersey Belle,” and “Meteor,” and “Idle Hour” . . . nine handsome Thoroughbreds in descending order of presumed merit, competing in the Twenty-third Chautauqua Downs Derby; nine Negro jockeys in gaily colored silks armed with little whips and spurs and every manner of jockey trickery, the smallest of the riders weighing in at eighty-eight pounds and the heaviest at one hundred twelve. The public stakes are $6,000 (“The Highest Stakes in America”) and a costly engraved silver trophy, to the winner; $1,000 to second place, and $700 to third. The serious money, however, is as usual in the betting, for what is any horse race, what is
this
prestigious horse race, without the exchange of cash?—and without clubhouse rumors of Glengarry's swollen knee, and Jersey Belle's colic, and Warlock who started so poorly at the Preakness, and Midnight Sun whose owner has been racing him too frequently, and the hairline crack in Meteor's left rear hoof—or is it Xalapa's? And Sweet
Thing is said to have been “coked to the gills” last month at Belmont—or dosed with a mild painkiller for an ear infection; and there remains the bitter rivalry between the jockeys Parmelee (on Midnight Sun) and “Little Bo” Tenney (on Xalapa), and the strange flurries of betting, now Stone Street is the favorite, now Xalapa is the favorite, now Midnight Sun is up to 2–15, now Henley Farm's Idle Hour has dropped to 1–30 . . . .If the Derby betting is too eccentric—if there's suddenly a run on any but the two favorites—the overseeing judge has the privilege of declaring all bets off, switching the jockeys around, and an hour set aside for the hasty remaking of book: which many a horseman and gambler prays will not occur. For, the vicissitudes of chance aside, a Thoroughbred is but a horse while a race is—performed by jockeys.

(Yet the Colonel has satisfied himself that
these
jockeys,
this
Derby, will be absolutely honest.)

Is Washburn Frelicht, seated in the Warwicks' clubhouse box with his hosts, one of those gamblers who fret as the hour of the race approaches, and suck at their cigars, and consult their gold pocket watches another time, and make only a polite show of attending to the band's spirited “Blue Danube”? A neutral observer could not have said whether the handsome gentleman with the black stain eye patch over his left eye, and the meticulously trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee, and the jaunty straw hat, and the air of patrician confidence, was betraying now and then a just-perceptible apprehension, or whether, like numerous others, quite naturally in these heightened circumstances, he is merely anticipating the contest to come. A neutral observer would have guessed that so sporting a gentleman, with that steely-smiling gray gaze, those moist white teeth and ruddy lips, has placed a sizable bet; just possibly, on a “dark” horse; but could not have guessed that the gentleman has secretly made book with $44,000 of his and his clients' money on the rangy black colt Midnight Sun—whose odds are presently 9-1.

(That's to say: if Midnight Sun wins the Derby, as Dr. Frelicht believes
he must, he, Frelicht, will collect an unprecedented $400,000 from a half dozen bookmakers and private parties, to be divided not quite equally among himself and the Warwicks; Frelicht's share being understandably disproportionate to his modest $1,000 stake. And if Midnight Sun betrays Dr. Frelicht's astrological prognosis, if the very Zodiac has misled him, then Frelicht will lose his $1,000 and the Warwicks will lose their $43,000 . . . a prospect that doesn't bear contemplation; so Frelicht refuses to contemplate it.)

No,
he
betrays no sign of worry. Only the vulgarian worries in public.

A tumultuous day of brisk chill winds, and high, fast-scudding clouds like schooners, and a slate-blue sky far, far overhead!—and here below, on time-locked Earth, an amiable confusion of handsome carriages, and motorcars gleaming with newness, and spectators afoot, crowding the narrow streets and lanes leading to the Colonel's racecourse. Here are splendidly dressed ladies and gentlemen in the clubhouse area—terrace, lawn, shaded boxes—white clapboard and dazzling white-painted stucco—a lawn fine and clipped as a bowling green, edged with rhododendron shrubs and vivid red geraniums. In the grandstand, newly painted dark green, sits the noisy majority of citizens, while the “common-folk,” quaintly so called, of both mingled races, settle themselves in the infield or on low roofs and hills abutting the track. For all are Thoroughbred fanciers on Derby Day in Chautauqua; no one so poor, or in debt, that he, or she, can't afford a bet of at least $1 on one of these fine racing horses; even children are caught up in the betting frenzy.
For all who live humanly are wagerers
as Dr. Frelicht is in the habit of murmuring, with that inscrutable expression to his strongboned, ruddy face that some observers have described as philosophic and stoic, even melancholy, and others have described as childlike in yearning.
And Americans are, of the Earth's population, the most wondrously human.

The band strikes up an exuberant polka, mule-drawn watering wagons make their slow, stately way around the track. By Colonel Fairlie's
proud estimate some forty-five thousand persons are attending this Twenty-third Derby, having converged on Chautauqua Falls from such places as New York City, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, and of course Kentucky, as well as Texas, California and abroad; by highways, waterways, and rail. The Kentucky Derby having lapsed into a decline, the Chautauqua Cup has emerged as the most prestigious of American Thoroughbred races, for a record one hundred eighty-four horses were originally entered for the race, of which nine, from the finest stables in the country, are to start. Every hotel in town is filled, including the palatial Chautauqua Arms, where Lord Glencairn of Scotland (a racing enthusiast rumored to wish to purchase the beautiful chestnut Xalapa) has taken an entire floor; the Pendennis Club is given over to officers of the Eastern Association for the Improvement of Breeds of Stock, and their wives and companions; such famous sporting gentry as James Ben Ali Hagin of Kentucky, and Blackburn Shaw of Long Island, and Elias Shrikesdale of Philadelphia are here, having chartered private Pullman cars for themselves and their retinues. Every bookmaker is happily occupied (though the Colonel has raised their clubhouse fees to $140 for the occasion), as are the Pari-Mutuel betting machines; milling about in the half hour before the race are newspapermen, “amateur experts,” owners, breeders, trainers, jockeys, grooms, and veterinarians. Unattended young boys, both white and colored, run wild in the infield and beneath the grandstand, pursued by security guards. Though “tipster sheets” have been disallowed at respectable tracks, it seems that some persons have them, and that they are being surreptitiously sold; as are Derby Day cards, and frothy pink cotton candy, and lemonade in paper cups, and bright-colored ices. Beribboned parisols and sunshades, gentlemen's straw boater hats, shoes polished to a piercing high sheen, starched white snap-on collars, watch chains, walking sticks, gloves, ladies' veiled hats, gentlemen's white flannels . . . A. Washburn Frelicht, Dr. Frelicht as he prefers to be called, gazes upon the crowd with his single good eye.
And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Dr. Frelicht, keen-nerved as a stallion, would take a quick nip from the silver flask concealed inside his blazer but no—he will have an English toffee instead, how kind of Mrs. Dove to pass the tin, with a smile; both Warwicks are fond of sweets, as indeed is Dr. Frelicht, but sweets do the teeth ill; wreck the smile. The hard bared grin of Teddy Roosevelt, a thousand times pictured, brought teeth, muscled cheeks, and impassioned fists into style among the populace, but so energetic a style displeases ladies and gentlemen. For is not Teddy R. something of a boy, a boy-man, and thus laughable, contemptible? Not a blunt bold baring of the teeth is desired, but a slow, measured smile of manly intelligence, thinks Dr. Frelicht.
Like this.

The band's spirited playing of “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” the old Civil War favorite, is interrupted by the announcement that the race will not start at 4:30
P.M.
as planned, but at 4:50.

And why? No explanation offered. A wave of disappointment, curiosity and apprehension washes over the racecourse.

Stroking the neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee to which he has only just recently become accustomed, dabbing lightly at the forehead with a fresh Irish linen handkerchief monogrammed AWF. The noble uplifted profile, the glint of the gold watch chain. Dr. Frelicht has not wished to cultivate a reputation for wit in these circles, where he is known as a mystic student of the Zodiac, but he sees no harm in saying, quickly, in a general voice, that others in the clubhouse seats might be amused as well as his hosts the Warwicks—ah, the need of
nerves
, to perfectly express the mood of a moment—“‘If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done
quickly.
'”

And the ladies and gentlemen respond with delighted laughter at this clever allusion to—“Shakespeare, yes? I believe it must be Hamlet?” Mrs. Dove cries, with the air of a giddily bright schoolgirl of stout middle age; for even the rich are touched by anxiety, when matters of chance and cash are at stake.

Not the wealthiest citizens of Chautauqua Falls but well-to-do, indeed, Edgar E. with his inherited fortune in asbestos, ink and sugarcane (Hawaiian), his sister Seraphina with a similar inheritance in addition to her deceased husband's portfolio. The gentleman, only sixty years of age but looking distinctly older, with a hairless skull, sunken eyes, squat nose and cavernous nostrils—the nostrils darkly alert as the eyes, lost in fatty ridges of flesh, are not; the lady, the widow, well corseted, flushed with health, yet possessed of a cold pale eye and very small pursed lips. Edgar E. Warwick is known for his Lutheran zeal (did he not lead a successful movement to defrock a Contracoeur minister in '88?), Seraphina Warwick Dove is known for her litigious zeal (did she not, only the previous June, bring suit against her own newly widowed daughter-in-law, to break her son's “disgraceful” will?) . . . How the parsimonious Warwicks became acquainted with A. Washburn Frelicht, a stranger to the Chautauqua Valley and a person of some ambiguity, no one in their social set knows; why they became disciples of a sort, fervent believers, eager to finance Dr. Frelicht in his astrological stratagems, is somewhat less mysterious: they scented profit, the greediest and most gratifying sort of profit. For it was Dr. Frelicht's artless contention that they could not lose. His method, which was a scientific one, could not lose. The Derby winner of '09 was as clearly inscribed in the Zodiac as were the Derby winners of past years, if one but knew how to read the celestial hieroglyphics. “For, in the heavens, ‘future' and ‘past' do not exist,” as Frelicht explained enthusiastically, “but all is a single essence, a
continuous flowing presence.
”