Remember the Morning (17 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Remember the Morning
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“Not a word,” said Brunck, readily picking up the signal. “It's all female moonshine. They ran off when one of them got it into their heads that we was in love with them. An uglier pair of whores I never seen. You couldn't have got me to stick one of'm for a hundred pound.”
“Do you have a witness to this attempted battery?” Judge Van Sluyden asked me.
Duycinck told his story. The judge looked sourly at him. “You're in this woman's employ?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Is this a scheme to defraud these poor fellows of their wages?”
“No, Your Honor. I'm ready to swear—”
Judge Van Sluyden was too busy working himself into a rage to let Duycinck swear to anything. “Do you think you can go to Oswego with an order from me to repossess your goods and clap honest men in jail—on hearsay evidence like this? Get out of here before I arrest all three of you for vagrancy and false testimony and give you a hundred lashes each at the whipping post!”
Outside, I stared down State Street in the thin March sunshine, while Duycinck urged me to go back to New York. The whole thing was unspeakable, intolerable. But what could a woman—or two women—do about it? We needed a man's protection—or help. A man might persuade some other honest men to do something about de Groot and his thieves. But where could I find this paragon in a town where we did not have a single friend?
“It's exactly as Malcolm warned us—a dirty game with some in Albany in on it,” Clara said.
Malcolm Stapleton. The vision of that morning when he defeated Bold Antelope leaped in my memory. Was he capable of helping us? He looked like a dirty dissolute sot. That could simply be evidence of his poverty. He was still a pine tree of a man. Could I ask help from someone whom I had told to his face I considered lower than the worst scum in Albany?
No—but Clara could ask him. Maybe there was something to be said for a forgiving heart, after all—although I still vowed never to tolerate one in my body.
I outlined the proposal to Clara. “Cry a little,” I said. “Appeal to his manhood.”
Clara curtly told me she would not have to descend to such hypocrisy. In a half hour, Malcolm Stapleton stood on the wharf. “Do you have any money?” he asked me.
“Not a great deal,” I lied.
“You'll have to pay more than bateaumen's wages if you want men to risk a bullet in the belly for you,” he said.
“Does that include you?” I said.
“I don't want a farthing of your miserable money. I'm doing this for Clara's sake. She's told me what you've done for her. There must be some good in you, even if it escapes me.”
I swallowed this insult and agreed to pay triple wages to any man Malcolm persuaded to join us. In an hour he had three men on the wharf, each armed with a long gleaming musket and a cartridge case with thirty rounds of bullets and powder. I can still remember their names: Peter Finch, Andrew Berner, and Michael Malone. They were all younger than Malcolm. “I can vouch for these fellows,” Malcolm said. “We've spent time in the woods together, learning to be rangers. When the war begins with the French, we'll be the first to fight.”
“Why should we have a war?” I said.
“The French want one. They see no other way to stop the English from spreading over this whole continent. But you'll never hear that from anyone in Albany. They're making too much money trading with the murdering bastards.”
I marveled at the confident way Malcolm spoke. Despite his sloppy clothes, he was much more than a dispirited vagabond. Clara's would-be soldier had become a man during his adventurous year in the north. But I stopped short of endorsing his readiness to fight the French.
“Let's regain our goods and worry about a war some other time,” I said.
“These men don't give a damn for your goods—or your money, for that matter,” Malcolm said. “They want to deal with de Groot and his gang of traitors. Right, men?”
A growl of agreement came from Peter and Andrew and Michael. “They're patriots, sick of the way the king's interests are being sold by the greedy politicians in this traitorous town.”
I had the good sense to say nothing to this speech. I saw its galvanizing effect on Malcolm's three followers. I also realized that Malcolm Stapleton had acquired some interesting information about the way things
worked in Albany. I had never forgotten my grandfather's suspicion that my parents and the others had been murdered by men in Albany who profited from their deaths.
We hired horses who carried us to Schenectady in a few hours. By midafternoon, we headed up the Mohawk in a large canoe. We traveled at twice the pace of the heavily laden bateau we were pursuing. By dark we had reached the campsite from which Clara and I and Duycinck had fled. “They can't be more than ten miles ahead of us,” Malcolm said. “Twenty at the most. Let's keep going.”
Far into the night the men bent to their paddles. Finally Malcolm ordered them ashore and sent Peter Finch up the riverbank on foot. He came back in an hour to report he had located de Groot's camp. “We'll attack at first light,” Malcolm said.
“Are there enough of us?” I said. De Groot had six men.
“There's enough,” Malcolm said.
We slept in relays until the first hint of the sun began greying the eastern sky. Malcolm assembled his men. He told Clara and me to stay with Duycinck, guarding the canoe.
“I'm coming with you,” I said. “I've got a pistol. I want the privilege of killing that son of a bitch de Groot.”
Malcolm shrugged and put me at the end of his little column. For an hour we followed the river until Peter Finch, in the lead, held up his hand. We filtered into the woods on two sides of de Groot and his bateaumen, asleep in three tents in a clearing by the river.
The sky was brightening but Malcolm ordered everyone to stay among the trees until he gave the signal to attack. “What are you waiting for?” I said.
“Enough light to aim a gun,” Malcolm said. The light along the river was still grey and thin.
A half hour later, as the sky began to redden, Malcolm borrowed my pistol, aimed it in the air, and pulled the trigger. The bateaumen came tumbling out of the tents, led by de Groot with his musket in his hand. “Get down to the river,” he called, crouching low. “Form around the boat.”
“De Groot,” Malcolm called. “I've got men all around you. Anyone who tries to launch that boat will be shot down without mercy. We're here to regain Miss Van Vorst's stolen goods. We don't want to kill anyone unless you make it a necessity.”
“It's Stapleton, goddamn him,” de Groot said to the men around him. “Here's my answer, you English son of a bitch.”
He fired his gun in the direction of Malcolm's voice. The bullet hissed through the trees a foot away from me. So that is what death in battle
sounds like, I thought. It did not frighten me. I liked it. I liked being exposed to the sort of danger men claimed no woman could endure.
The bullet did not frighten Malcolm either. He took careful aim and pulled his musket's trigger. The crash deafened me and the gush of acrid smoke from the barrel almost blinded and choked me. Other muskets were booming from the woods. The men around de Groot fired back but soon three of them were sprawled on the green grass, dead or badly wounded.
Another bateauman raced up to the Dutchman clutching a bloody arm and shouted: “It's death down by the boat. They shoot anyone who goes near it.”
“Load and follow me,” de Groot shouted. He and three others still on their feet raced toward the woods on the north side of the clearing. Malcolm fired another round and dropped the last man as he entered the trees.
Peter Finch crept through the trees to join me and Malcolm. “Should we go after them?” he asked, his eyes shining with excitement.
Malcolm shook his head. “De Groot would have all the advantages on the run in the woods.”
He sent Michael Malone back to bring Clara and Duycinck up to the clearing in the big canoe. Matter-of-factly, we buried de Groot's four dead men in unmarked graves. Malcolm turned to me and said: “You've recovered your property. Now what? Have you had enough of the north woods? Is it back to safe comfortable Manhattan Island?”
“I'm going to Oswego,” I said. “Will you come with me? You and your men?”
“From what you told me about my father, I should go back to New York as soon as possible—”
“Then Clara and I and Adam will go on alone. I think you must know by now our fate is in these goods. We're as determined as any soldier to conquer or die.”
“Let me talk to my men,” Malcolm said.
While Malcolm conferred with his recruits on the other side of the clearing, Clara glowered at me. “He should go back to his father.”
“Why should you give a damn for him or his father after what they did to you?” I said.
Before Clara could answer me, Malcolm sauntered across the clearing. “How much will you pay?” he asked.
“I'll double the wages you're getting, which are already treble.”
The thought of risking so much money almost made me ill. But I needed this glowering giant's protection. In my mind he was still lower than the lowest scum in Albany for what he had done to Clara. But he
was a fighter—and that was what I needed to survive in this vicious northern world, where nothing was forbidden.
As we took over the bateau and prepared to resume our journey up the Mohawk, I noticed Clara gazing at Malcolm. He was issuing crisp orders to Duycinck and Peter Finch, who would lead the way in the canoe. He wanted them to stay alert for any sign of de Groot and his two friends. They were more than capable of ambushing them.
“Don't you think he's redeemed himself?” Clara said.
“I thought only Jesus could redeem people,” I said.
“You know what I mean,” Clara said.
I knew exactly what Clara meant. She was still in love with this blond behemoth. She had told me as much a dozen times. Why did it dismay me to hear it now?
O
SWEGO AT LAST!
It had been an exhausting journey up the Mohawk to the great portage, where we dragged the bateau and canoes on rollers to Wood Creek. On this narrow winding watercourse, a huge fallen tree blocked our passage. It had to be sawed up and hauled out of the water with backbreaking labor. Next we paddled across the lake of the Oneidas. They had a great palisaded castle on its shores. Their chiefs made no secret of their expectation of generous presents and we took pains to please them, not wanting to find ourselves on the wrong end of their hatchets. Finally we traversed the Oswego River to the British bastion on the shore of Lake Ontario.
The bulky stone fort loomed against the skyline of the immense empty lake. From its ramparts a huge red British flag whipped and crackled in the cold March wind, a symbol of royal power and pride. The geometry of the jutting parapets and casements proclaimed order and dignity and strength. For the first time, I glimpsed the meaning of the word
empire.
Then I got a closer look at the world that surrounded the fort. Like pygmies at the feet of a giant, a clutter of wooden huts and tents and tepees created a veritable slum where fifty or sixty traders and several dozen Indians mingled in the mud. We had arrived an hour before sunset,
a time, Malcolm Stapleton remarked, that was almost guaranteed to give the worst possible impression of the fur trade.
Their business finished for the day, white men and Indians were getting drunk as fast as possible. While venison and fish broiled over open fires, card and dice games raged on all sides. As we watched one of the nearer dice games, an Indian lost his last beaver skin and bet his powder horn on the next roll of the dice—and lost that too.
Clara was repelled by the scene. I tried to revel in it. “The drunker they get, the more they gamble, the less business they'll do,” I said. “We'll keep our heads clear and make a fortune.”
I saw skepticism in Malcolm's eyes—an opinion he had exhibited once or twice as we labored up the Mohawk—and I had rejected in my headstrong way. In private, Malcolm had told Clara he had made many trips to Oswego over the past year. He thought we would have a very difficult time buying furs. He grew even more emphatic when he discovered we had no rum in our baggage. Rum was the heart of the business, he told her.
Leaving Adam Duycinck and the other men to guard the bateau and canoes, Clara and I and Malcolm hurried through the noisy chaos of the trading village to the gate of the fort. After Malcolm exchanged a few words with the sentry on duty, we were beckoned inside. In a few minutes we were meeting an unshaven slack-jawed man in a soiled red coat—Captain Henry Hartshorne—the commander of His Majesty's Independent Company at Fort Oswego.
Hartshorne listened to my complaint against de Groot and his henchmen with an air of weary resignation. He seemed almost annoyed at me for bothering him with such trifling crimes as theft and attempted murder. He was far more amazed to discover that I had come to Oswego to trade with the Indians.
“Don't you have parents, a guardian?” he asked. “Surely someone must have told you that any woman who spends a night here without a proper escort has lost her reputation forever.”
“My parents are dead. I have no guardian I trust nor reputation to forfeit,” I said. “Mr. Stapleton will tell you why, if you're truly interested.”
“I'm acting as her escort, Captain,” Malcolm said. “I advised her against coming here. But she's not inclined to take advice from anyone.”
Hartshorne pointed to Clara and said: “This wench is much too pretty. You'll have a hell of a time protecting her from the traders.”
“She's not a wench. Her name is Clara Flowers,” I said. “She's my partner in this business.”
“Is all this true, Stapleton?” Hartshorne asked, more and more astounded.
Malcolm nodded. He gave him a somewhat labored explanation of when and where he first met me and Clara, stressing our years as Senecas. “Miss Van Vorst—and Miss Flowers—are worthy of whatever protection you can offer them, sir. They've withstood great misfortune with a resolution that speaks well of their characters.”
“How am I supposed to protect them?” Hartshorne said. “You know my difficulties. I have a grand total of thirty-six men in this garrison, half of them sick on the miserable rations they get. They haven't powder enough to fire more than one round a man. If I got in a quarrel with those trading brutes, they'd cut my throat quicker than any Indian.”
“At the very least I hope you'll arrest de Groot and his men if they come in here,” I said.
Hartshorne shook his head. “My jurisdiction extends only to the trading area around the fort. If he behaves himself here, I have no right in law to lay a hand on him.”
Back at the boats, Malcolm told us what he knew about Captain Hartshorne. His father had been a wealthy merchant in the West Indies sugar trade. A madness for gambling had beggared the son. He had fled to America to escape debtor's prison and took the command at Oswego as an alternative to starvation.
Malcolm was inclined to sympathize with Hartshorne. The captain had encouraged his ambition to be a soldier. “He's convinced unless we show some talent in the military art, the French will destroy us,” Malcolm said. The penny-pinching New York legislature had reduced the funds for Oswego every year since Hartshorne arrived. Militarily speaking, the fort was a joke. The French could come down from Canada and take it anytime they chose.
I listened impatiently to this tale of woe. I was thinking of how I could persuade Malcolm to protect us from de Groot and like-minded denizens of the frontier. “I can't pay all your men the triple wages they're getting while we try to do business here,” I said.
“They wouldn't take it if you could,” Malcolm said. “They want to be on their way home. No one but a fur trader or a fugitive from the law spends any time in this place if he can help it.”
“Would you stay—for an honest wage?”
“I'll stay for Clara's sake.”
I realized it was time to suspend my animosity toward this man. “I want to apologize for the obnoxious things I said to you in Albany,” I said. “Your good conduct on the Mohawk—and several rebukes from Clara—have made me realize I was unjust.”
Around us drifted the raucous voices of the fur traders and the Indians as their celebration grew more and more boisterous. An Indian woman,
completely naked, burst out of one hut and fled into the woods, pursued by two white men in dirty red coats.
“There goes some of the garrison to their sport,” Malcolm said. “It's a wonder they have the strength to lift a gun.”
Was he unwilling to accept my apology? I struggled to take my grandfather's advice and bow down a little lower. I needed this young giant. But I vowed I would never bow down to him—or any other man—in my heart.
“Will you stay?” I asked.
“I told you I would,” Malcolm said.
“Look!” Clara cried.
From one of the trader's huts had staggered an Indian we instantly recognized: Bold Antelope.
Malcolm nodded. “I've seen him here once or twice. He's changed his name. He calls himself Grey Owl. When he gets drunk he talks the damnedest stuff you've ever heard.”
Clara called to him and Grey Owl—or Bold Antelope—approached us, blinking with disbelief. “What are you doing in this place?” Clara asked him in Seneca. “Why aren't you back at our village, contented and happy, with a wife and young sons at your side?”
“They laughed at me in Shining Creek after I let this white man take you away from me,” Grey Owl said, glaring at Malcolm. “Even the women said I was like a damp stick, all smoke and no flame. They were right, too. I have seen a different destiny for my soul. I have the dreams to prove it.”
“What is it?” Clara asked.
“To preach the truth that all Indians are one people,” he said. “To urge them to cease to live as separate tribes and unite as a single nation. Otherwise the white man will devour us one by one.”
“And your
ondinnonk
sees the day when the tribes will unite?” Clara said.
“Yes. I have dreamt it many times. I see a great army of warriors as numerous as the leaves on the trees assembling to drive the white men back to the great ocean.”
“Oh, my friend, I don't think it is possible,” Clara said. “Remember what our sachem, Black Eagle, told us? It is the white men who are numerous as the leaves on the trees. I have seen them in their great cities and on their farms.”
“It will happen, nevertheless. The white men cannot fight the Indians in the forest. We will draw a line on the ground and tell them to come no farther. When that happens, they will lose heart and begin to quarrel with each other over the way they have divided this land. Then we will play them against each other as they have so long played us.”
“It would be better if you went back to Shining Creek and made peace with your family and friends,” Clara said. “Forget me and what happened at the great council. I'm only a woman. Other women will make you happy again someday.”
“Never!” Grey Owl said. “I cannot forget Bold Antelope. He died on that day of shame and rose again as Grey Owl. He lives to revenge his warrior ancestor.”
Clara almost wept. “I'll pray to the Manitou for you. I will ask him to give you peace.”
“You may do what you please. You cannot change my fate now.”
Grey Owl drifted back into the cluster of huts. “How does he live?” Clara asked Malcolm.
“Many Indians consider him a prophet,” Malcolm said. “They give him clothing and food. He comes here to make converts of the warriors who drink too much rum and get cheated out of their furs.”
Smiling drunkenly, the two soldiers who had run into the woods returned with the Indian woman. They gave her some coins and she went back into a nearby hut. Clara and I were appalled: Indian women becoming prostitutes!
We set up tents on the outskirts of Oswego's trading town and tried to get some sleep. The drunken shouts and laughter continued far into the night. The noise was not much worse than we had encountered in New York, where parties of drunken sailors or roistering apprentices regularly clashed with the Night Watch. But what it signified made sleep elusive.
Clara told me what Malcolm had said about the importance of rum. “Now that I've seen this place, I fear he may be right,” she said.
“I'll go bankrupt before I sell rum,” I said. “On that point I'm still a Seneca.”
The next day, Malcolm's recruits headed back to Albany in one of the canoes, each with triple wages of eleven pounds clinking in their pockets. Before they departed, they lugged our trading goods from the bateau to the tents and opened the boxes and bales. Malcolm bought a bottle of rum from one of the traders and went down to the river with Adam Duycinck to see them off.
As Clara and I unpacked our goods, word of our presence swirled through the huts and tepees. A semicircle of traders and Indians soon surrounded us. The white men rubbed their unshaven faces and scratched their unwashed armpits and all but smacked their lips with anticipation as they contemplated us.
“How much?” asked one of them. He was a big-bellied tub of a man with a loud, authoritative voice.
“These goods are not for sale. I'm here to trade for furs,” I said. I
added in Seneca to the Indians: “You will get honest prices from me. I'm a daughter of the Turtle Clan. My friend Clara is of the Bear Clan.”
“I mean how much for her?” the questioner said, pointing at Clara.
“She's not for sale. She's as free as I am,” I snapped.
“You mean you're going to give it away?” the big-bellied questioner asked.
Roars of laughter. I stubbornly tried to ignore what they were talking about. “What's your game? Do you aim to be queen of Oswego?” another man asked.
“We're here to trade for furs—and nothing else!” I said.
Incredulity on every face. “If you aim at bargaining, here's the going rate,” the fat man said. “A squaw charges a shilling or a bottle of rum. Assuming you're both free of the pox, we'll pay three, maybe four, shillings for your Negro friend—and five for you. No one's seen a white woman here in years.”
“I'll go double that!” shouted another man, a wiry, hook-nosed fellow with a cleft lip. He threw his arm around my waist and leered into my face. “When you're this ugly you've got to pay extra!”
The next sound was the crack of my open hand against his cheek. As he stumbled back, astonished, I snatched my pistol out of one of the boxes of strouds. “I know how to use this. Anyone who thinks he can abuse me or my friend Clara had better wear chain armor on his balls—”
I was talking like a Seneca—but it only convinced the traders that we were prostitutes. The hook-nosed suitor clutched his burning cheek and burst out laughing. “Why, hell, she's got enough spit and fire to keep a seventy-four-gun man-of-war busy. I'll double my double offer. Who would think the devil would bring such a piece to Oswego! It's enough to make me believe in divine providence all over again!”

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