Remember the Morning (21 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Remember the Morning
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“You can buy a three-gallon keg of rum for twelve shillings. If you
know what you're doing, you can trade that for eight pounds of beaver worth fifty-six shillings. If you add water to the rum—the Indians never notice—you can double that exchange rate. No trader can make a profit unless he deals in rum.”
“I'll … never do it!” I said, although the words almost killed me. Clara was watching me, wondering if that was another lie. I could see her growing disgust with the whole system.
“I can get better prices in London,” I said. “I'll take my pelts there myself.” I had no idea if this was true. I felt a need to defy this arrogant man.
“You'll lose more money if you do,” Van Sluyden said with a complacent smile. “The voyage alone will cost you a hundred pounds. Then there are warehouse fees, duties. A single trader can't make a profit shipping his own skins. I own a ship that carries the catch of a dozen traders to London.”
His logic was crushing. On Malcolm Stapleton's face was a barely concealed satisfaction. Was he secretly pleased to see this headstrong female encountering hard truths about the man's world she talked about conquering? Aside from our various collisions, I suspected he disapproved of the very idea of women in business.
I struggled for self-control. I was a small fish in the fur trade for the time being. I saw that the real money was made by men like Van Sluyden, who had a store attached to his office where traders bought strouds and jewelry and rum on credit and paid for them in beaver skins at the end of the season. His markup on the goods was over a hundred percent.
Some sort of native Dutch stubbornness prevented me from submitting to this cold-eyed scion, who had made himself the ruler of the fur trade. I remembered that my father had hoped to become a manor lord on the Mohawk. If the Evil Brother—or this man's father—had not destroyed that hope, I might be presiding over a store this size on the river, which traders would prefer to this Albany emporium because it was far closer to Oswego.
“I thank you for your good advice, Mr. Van Sluyden,” I said. “But I will sell my furs elsewhere.”
The crown prince found it hard to conceal his displeasure. “Where the devil do you think you can do that at better prices?” he said. “No one outbids Philip Van Sluyden in New York. If they do, they soon find they can't sell their furs in London for more than a penny on a pound. My friends there see to it.”
Like my Uncle Johannes, Philip Van Sluyden had made his peace with the English system by carving himself a juicy slice of it. “I'll take my chances, nonetheless,” I said. I strode into the street, leaving the great man muttering about female stupidity.
We retreated to the modest home of Sheriff Van Maesterland. Both he and Nicholas Van Brugge were dismayed by my intransigence. “You're pursuing a pointless vendetta,” Van Brugge said. “He could have smoothed your way with the traders at Oswego. No one dares cross him up there. They owe him too much money.”
“What good would that do me, if I can't make a profit?” I said.
The lawyer shrugged. “You can make one if you deal in rum.”
“Yah,” said the sheriff. “Der savages moost have der drink.”
“Never! Can't you see the whole thing is a rotten English scheme to keep prices down? They don't care what the rum is doing to the Indians. I do.”
Van Brugge laughed. “You remind me of my mother. She was always telling my father not to truckle to the English.”
“All der vimmens in der family vas the same way,” Sheriff Van Maesterland said, gazing fondly at me. He seemed ready to adopt me as his daughter.
Van Brugge, having discharged his duty to me as my lawyer, now spoke more as a friend or relative. “Maybe there's a way to sell your furs for more money. But it's risky.”
“What is it?”
“Send them to Amsterdam.”
“Out of the question!” Malcolm Stapleton said. “Parliament's passed a law requiring all the goods shipped from New York and any other colony must pay duties in London before going anywhere else.”
“Parliament passes many laws,” Van Brugge said. “Not all of them are obeyed. There are men in Albany who still trade direct with Amsterdam. In time of peace, the British seldom interfere with a vessel on the high seas. Their frigates keep to home waters.”
“As sheriff I'm supposed to arrest such fellows,” Roelof Janse Van Maesterland said in Dutch. “But a man can't enforce the law day and night. Their ships sail after dark.” He added a huge wink to make sure I got his point.
“Where can I meet one of these brave Dutchmen?” I asked.
In another hour I was sitting with Killian Van Oorst in his house off State Street. He was a compact man with a secretive air about him. Yes, he had a ship. Yes, he was planning a voyage to Holland. Yes, he had heard about my extraordinary trip to Oswego and my vindication in court. Yes, he knew what beaver pelts were selling for in Amsterdam. He had a letter from his brother only yesterday, stating that the price, translated from Dutch guilders, was the equivalent of sixteen shillings an English pound. Two and one half times what Philip Van Sluyden had offered.
“Would you consider shipping my pelts on consignment, for ten percent of the sale price?”
“My usual commission is twelve percent.”
“Eleven?”
“Agreed.”
If Killian Van Oorst made a successful voyage, my furs would sell for eight hundred fifty-four pounds—which meant I would clear roughly three hundred pounds, a profit of about eighty percent. I signed a contract with him on the spot. It said nothing about shipping furs, of course. There was only a vague reference to “goods.” But Sheriff Van Maesterland and Nicholas Van Brugge assured me Captain Van Oorst was an honest man and would never cheat a fellow Dutchman—or woman. Encouraged by this testament to Dutch solidarity, I empowered Van Oorst to find an Amsterdam merchant who would ship me goods on credit to open a store in New York.
I insisted on Clara signing the contract too. I wanted to make it clear that we were partners in this final step of our joint venture. Malcolm Stapleton infuriated me by advising Clara not to do any such thing. “You're breaking the law. You could end up in prison if this attempt to defraud the king fails,” he said.
We were having dinner at Sheriff Van Maesterland's table when this quarrel erupted. “Oh, young fella, you ist too padriotic for me,” chuckled the sheriff, as he sliced a well-pickled ham and his wife filled flagons of beer so large Duycinck was almost invisible behind his.
“That's a title I'll never apologize for,” Malcolm said. “Without the king and his fleets and armies, what would we be today? The victims of Spanish and French butchers, who'd raid our ports, capture our commerce, and reduce us all to beggary.”
“Does the king and his great fleet and victorious army mean his rule is right?” I said. “A robber who has the power to take your property and your life is still a robber.”
Malcolm grew almost incoherent with indignation. “You're talking treason, Miss Van Vorst. It's a good thing you're a woman. You can say such things without fear of punishment.”
“Let them punish me as much as they dare!” I said. I was putting on a show for Sheriff Van Maesterland, who beamed at me and said with more women like me and a few good men, the Dutch would never have lost New York.
Clara, mainly to please Malcolm, declined to sign the contract. The next day I paid Malcolm the thirty-eight pounds I owed him for his protection and asked him if he was returning to New York with me and Clara and Duycinck.
“I've told him he
must
come back,” Clara said. “The other night I dreamt of his father. He seemed crushed by unhappiness. I fear he's in great distress.”
Malcolm paced the Van Maesterland parlor and finally decided he should go with us. We embarked on a Hudson River schooner that afternoon and in four days were in New York. The city sweltered in the August heat. On the wharfs, sweating whites and blacks unloaded ships and cursed at cartmen, who cursed them in turn. Clara offered Malcolm a room in our house on Maiden Lane but I feared it would cause too much gossip for a young man to stay with two unmarried women. This might have made some sense if the two unmarried women had reputations to lose. My real fear was what might happen if Malcolm spent any time with Clara in domestic circumstances that might arouse their wounded love.
Malcolm curtly told me that he would stay at his father's town house on Broad Street. Parting company, Clara and I hurried through the noisy smelly city streets to our house. After four months in the wilderness, where silence reigned most of the time, except for the wind and the occasional voices of birds and animals, the city's clamor was almost unbearable. So was the stench of rotting food and offal in the humid streets, with wandering pigs the only hope of cleaning it up.
Clara found the atmosphere distressing. “Maybe we should have stayed at one of those Seneca villages,” she said, half seriously.
“And starved each spring?” I said. “No. It's better to grow rich down here, even if the noise and smells are unpleasant.”
In our relatively cool parlor, I began telling Clara my plans for the immediate future. In December I would be twenty-one and I hoped to get control of the inheritance my grandfather had left me. We would use some of the money to expand the store I hoped to open with the goods Captain Van Oorst was bringing from Amsterdam. I would invest more of the money in shares of various ships and their cargoes and the rest in opening a trading post on the Mohawk that would rival Philip Van Sluyden in the fur trade.
“We'll run that bully out of the business,” I said. “Without selling an ounce of rum. Then we'll go to work on proving his father was a murderer.”
Someone rapped the brass knocker on our front door. Clara opened it to find a dazed Malcolm Stapleton and an alarmed Duycinck. “My father's dead,” Malcolm said. “There are strangers in his house.”
He slumped in a chair and Duycinck continued the story. “That's but the half of it. We met our old friend Cuyler in the street. He tells us Malcolm's disinherited. His father's left everything to his brother, with his stepmother in charge until the quarterwit gets to be twenty-one. If there's a penny left in the till when that year arrives, I'll be the most surprised man in America.”
“But he said he wanted to see Malcolm,” Clara said. “There was something he wanted to tell him.”
“And what did the lad do? He went off chasing beaver skins on the shores of Lake Ontario for the next three months. You ladies warned him of disaster—and then persuaded him to ignore it.”
“
I
didn't,” Clara said.
“Whether you did it jointly or singly doesn't matter much,” Duycinck said. “The lad's ruined.”
I too might be ruined. The death of George Stapleton, my advocate, however reluctant, with His Honor, the royal governor, would give my Uncle Johannes a wonderful opportunity to try to defraud me of my inheritance. But I was amazingly indifferent to this probability. I was too busy thanking the Evil Brother for the chance to acquire Malcolm Stapleton.
“It was my fault. But Malcolm will never be ruined as long as I've got a pound in my pocketbook,” I said. “I'm ready to declare him a partner with an equal share of our profits from the furs Captain Van Oorst will sell in Amsterdam. I'm sure Clara will agree. Won't you, Clara dear?”
“Of course,” Clara said.
“I'm ready to form a joint company for future trading, with him as full partner,” I said. “Don't you also agree to that, Clara dear?”
Clara glared at me. She knew exactly what I was doing. I was purchasing Malcolm Stapleton. Transforming his dislike into grudging gratitude, corrupting his patriotic conscience, making a mercenary of the idealistic soldier Clara had loved and lost. But she could not oppose me without seeming to be an ungenerous, unreasonable purist.
“Did you hear that, lad?” Duycinck said. “All's not lost. You've got true friends here. Now if we can find a way to pry me and my indenture out of the hands of your Cleopatra of a stepmother—”
“We'll do that too,” I said. “Damn the expense.”
“By God, I take back every dirty thought I've had about you,” Duycinck said. “Come on, lad. Let's go find our friend Cuyler and drink to your father's memory.”
Malcolm allowed Duycinck to lead him out the door. I realized he had yet to say a word to indicate he accepted—much less was grateful for—my generosity. Was the Evil Brother mocking me again?
The moment the door closed, Clara whirled on me. “Even if he marries you, he'll never be willing,” she said.
It was more than a prophecy. It was a curse. How could I persuade Clara to revoke it? Should I weep and beg her forgiveness, plead the madness of desire? Confess my surrender to the Evil Brother and implore her help?
No
, the Moon Woman whispered.
You will do none of those things.
“I haven't the slightest intention of marrying him,” I lied.

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