Two Hundred Lost Years

by James Philip

  “The Governor’s daughter is presently at Clinton Avenue Police Station doing what she can to smooth Abraham Fielding’s passage through the, er, ‘system’. I plan to speak to him later today.”

  “Abe’s in Albany?” William Fielding asked dully.

  “Yes. He surrendered himself to the colonial authorities yesterday evening. His wife and your new nephew are being put up at the Governor’s Mansion.”

  “His wife?”

  Melody was determined to be provocative.

  “Yes, his squaw…”

  “I don’t ever use that word.”

  Melody frowned her curiosity at the still seated man.

  “That must be a problem when you’re with your Getrennte Entwicklung friends?”

  William Fielding scowled at her.

  “I’ve always been honest about my beliefs. I believe the First Thirteen should be white. I believe that the one true faith should be the word that rules all our lives. But that doesn’t mean I’ve got anything against the blacks or the Jews or the…Indians. Heck, you people paint us separate developers out to be racists and bigots, we’re only trying to be guided by our faith, by the laws of the Bible!”

  Melody strongly suspected that John Murray was as astonished as she was by William Fielding’s sudden volubility. By all accounts the man had been morosely monosyllabic, uncooperative, distant for most of the last year spending long hours praying and chanting to himself in his cell like a monk.

  “I ain’t got nothing against Kate,” William Fielding went on doggedly. “Abe ought to know that.” He shrugged. “Me and Abe never got on but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love him as a brother.”

  John Murray cleared his throat.

  Melody beat him to the verbal punch.

  “This can be on, or off the record,” she offered. “The Crown moves forward to a preliminary hearing early next week and then probably, straight to trial. I’m not here to beef up the prosecution file; I’m here to test it and to report back, confidentially, to Government House in Philadelphia.”

  She made and held eye contact with the former Chief Magistrate.

  “You are the most distinguished King’s Counsel in the colony. I am not about to tell you your job, My Lord,” she shrugged apologetically, “but we both know that the investigation into last year’s outrages has been a comedy of errors primarily mitigated by the need to apportion blame rather than to ascertain the truth.”

  The old man ruminated on this.

  “I and my client will be the judge of what is, and what is not, on the record, Detective Inspector.”

  Melody had been about to open her notebook.

  She left it closed as they settled at the table.

  She fixed William Fielding in her gaze.

  “For the record, I too regard the word ‘squaw’ as being intolerably pejorative, Mister Fielding,” she told him. “In fact, I find it offensive on so many levels that I honestly don’t know where to begin to explain my…disgust.”

  She let this hang in the air and waited, suspecting she had accidentally touched a chord in the middle Fielding brother’s troubled soul.

  John Murray drummed his fingers impatiently on the table top.

  Melody smiled tight-lipped at his client.

  Who met her stare and after a second or so, nodded resignedly.

  “Last summer I was contemplating breaking from my Church,” William Fielding grunted.

  Melody raised an eyebrow.

  She said nothing, knowing there was a lot more to come.

  “There was the thing with Abe and Tekonwenaharake, the others in the congregation wanted me to condemn Abe in public. But I always knew they’d end up hitched, one way or another; only Pa had his head in the sand. Heck, he had his head so far up his arse he actually tried to talk Abe out of it!” He shook his head in despair. “Like that was ever going to work!”

  “You broke with your father?” Melody checked, afraid she was missing something important.

  “You never ‘break’ with your parents,” the man retorted sourly. “You try but it never works. I suppose that’s why so many people emigrate to a new colony; to get away from their families?”

  Despite herself Melody smiled.

  It worked for me…

  “Maybe, you didn’t try hard enough?”

  “That’s a joke,” William groaned. “I always assumed all those Spaniards he, Pa that is, was involved with at Long Island College were deadbeats or poor rich kids sent up her to get away from the blood feuds or the ‘thought police’, inquisitions back home. Then one day some of them turned up at the yard…”

  “Long Island Powerboats at Gowanus Bay?” Melody queried. “Can I call you William?” She asked as an afterthought.

  “I’m Bill to those who know me.”

  “Bill, then. Tell me about the Spaniards?”

  “There was talk about closing down the yard a couple of years, eighteen months ago. Then all this new work comes in, turbo-charging big old boats laid up for years because the rising cost of oil and keeping them seaworthy got too high back in the fifties and sixties, and my boss comes to me and gives me a raise on account of all these guys – not Spanish really, I suppose, but guys from down Florida and West Texas way, most of them weren’t from anyplace near New Spain, if you see what I mean – were putting all this business his way. Afterwards, I find out these guys asked for me to work on their boats. That was part of the deal, old Bill Fielding works on the boats or we’ll go someplace else. What was I supposed to do? I started catching crap for that after a while at my Church. It’s easy for a lot of those people in the congregation, they’ve got good jobs in Manhattan or positions on the big estates out in the country, no conflicts of interest, some of us have to earn a living…”

  John Murray had listened with growing agitation.

  He coughed.

  Melody raised a hand to prevent him breaking the spell.

  “How did you meet Rufus McIntyre and Paul Hopkins, Bill?” She asked.

  Momentarily, William Fielding shrank from her.

  He swallowed hard.

  “I’ve always played cards,” he confessed, shame-faced. “I tried to stop more than once. I tried to keep it secret from the congregation. I still had a family when Ma was alive, after that I only had the Church. Rufus found out I gambled, that I had the sort of money problems no honest man can ever get out from under. I reckon he guessed I had problems with the work I was doing for the Spaniards at the yard; heck, what we were doing was powering up those old boats to be real racers again but we all knew that scene was gone ten years ago and it wasn’t coming back any time soon. A lot of the guys at the yard weren’t happy working for the Spaniards, I reckon that’s why Rufus got Paul Hopkins on board. I reckon he must have known that Paul was in an even worse place than me…”

  “So, you had gambling debts?” Melody probed gently.

  “Yeah. High stakes back room games, and at the track. You get so you’re always trying to get back ahead; most times you just get deeper into the…horse manure. This time last year this,” he gestured around them, “was the safest place to be. The CSS said they had me ‘cold’ so, well, I kept quiet. Reckoned I’d worry about what happened next when I got to stand up in court. I know, my God knows, I ain’t raised my hand against another man since I beat up on the last guy I heard calling Kate a ‘squaw’.

  “But,” John Murray put to him tersely, “you recommended McIntyre and Hopkins to your brother, thus inducing him to ‘nursemaid’ them, two inexperienced pilots all the way from Albany to Jamaica Bay from whence they were able to launch murderous attacks on Royal Navy warships?”

  William Fielding scowled.

  “I thought they were just running contraband or looking to earn some easy money taking folks for joyrides over the Fleet, the same way Alex told me he planned to ‘cash in’ months before Empire Day. I owed Rufus money, I hated being beholden to another member of the Church…”

  Melody could feel the sha
me leeching out of the pores of the man’s skin.

  “You seriously expect us to believe,” the poor man’s own lawyer demanded with mounting incredulity, much to Melody’s irritation, “that you remained silent all this time when you knew you were an innocent man because you were more afraid of your creditors than the prospect of standing trial for treason?”

  “Lord Dunmore,” Melody pleaded, “if you’d allow me to conduct this interview!”

  Too late.

  William Fielding’s head was in his hands and he was sobbing.

  Chapter 27

  Friday 28th July

  Government House, Philadelphia

  The Governor of New England could not possibly have been prouder of, or more exasperated by – he was unsure which clause applied – the latest endeavours of his youngest daughter. In retrospect, up until now reconciling the duties of an imperial proconsul with the responsibilities of a loving and dutiful father had been less of a problem than he might reasonably have expected it to be in the course of his long and eventful career. Now it seemed, he was about to get his comeuppance!

  If he ordered his daughter to desist and return to Philadelphia she would – probably – so do. If on the other hand, he allowed her to continue her exhilarating little voyage of self-discovery, no doubt spurred on by that remarkable Danson woman, she and inevitably, he, might as easily become embroiled in a tsunami of controversy. Indubitably, the majority of his predecessors in Government House would have played safe, risking his daughter’s undying opprobrium and peremptorily cut short her little odyssey.

  This was what he was sorely tempted to do.

  His wife, the real diplomat in the family, had suggested that he stay his hand a little longer; which really meant that she thought he should give Henrietta her head and be damned with the consequences!

  Had the damage not already been done he would almost certainly have recalled his daughter to Government House and started looking around for a convenient nunnery into which he might banish her until things had ‘settled down’ again.

  ‘That won’t work either, my love,” his wife had counselled wisely.

  Eventually, they had agreed that ‘we are where we are’.

  Therefore, he would just have to pull himself together and pick up the pieces!

  Henrietta had stirred up a veritable hornet nest at Fort Oswegatchie. The positively seismic aftershocks of her progress north to the St Lawrence and her return to Albany were reverberating all around New York. De L’Isle had already fielded telephone calls from the Headquarters of the Colonial Armed Forces across the Delaware in Camden, the Lieutenant-Governor of New York – an old cavalryman like himself whom the Colony’s Governor had deputed to communicate his ‘unease’ so as to keep ‘things informal’ – and horror of horrors, somebody in Albany had already spoken to the press.

  “Forgive me, sir,” Sir Henry Rawlinson, De L’Isle’s trusted Chief of Staff observed while the two men rolled tumblers bearing generous shots of single malt whiskey in their hands as they sat, comfortably ensconced and briefly, alone, in their chairs in the Governor’s room, “but we may be in danger of allowing ourselves to be inveigled into a situation whereby we cannot see the woods for the trees. Young Hen,” both men smiled complacently, fondly, “might be about to generate a storm in a teacup but the main thing is that we have now established, pretty much to everybody’s – who matters, that is – satisfaction, that the bloody Spanish tried to murder the King last year. Moreover, it seems likely that the news is going to seep out into the public milieu drip by drip rather than in a sudden thunderclap. Which, when all is said and done, was what we hoped for all along.”

  Spaniards behind the Empire Day atrocities…

  Now the problem was going to be defusing the ticking timebomb!

  That was certainly the imbroglio which was preoccupying the Government in the Old Country and, when ‘the facts’ became more widely known, would inevitably enrage the peoples of practically every corner of the Empire. There would be calls for punitive economic, possibly cultural and diplomatic sanctions against the regime in Madrid; and some, a minority hopefully, would surely call for a direct military ‘response’, either a symbolic retaliatory strike, or worse.

  “I agree, Henry,” the Governor of New England concurred. “It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?”

  The other man guffawed and sipped his drink.

  Sir Henry Rawlinson was himself a doting father of three daughters; to whom he could deny nothing. Like De L’Isle he had spent many years soldiering before settling in New England and finding himself serving in his current post in the previous Gubernatorial administration.

  “Damned sight easier to order one’s chaps to advance under enemy fire than it is to reprimand one of one’s girls,” he sympathised.

  “Especially, when you know they are doing the right thing!”

  “Henrietta is still at that age when she can afford to be guided by her conscience.”

  “She’ll want me to make an example of somebody, Henry!”

  “Perhaps, we ought to. We can think about that again when we see how this plays out in the newspapers,” Rawlinson sighed, “and on the television, of course…”

  The Governor put down his glass.

  “This must all be doubly dreadful for Matt Harrison. My wife was distraught over what happened to poor Sarah. It is almost a mercy that Hen and Sarah never really got a chance to get to know each other that well.”

  Henrietta had been at University in England when De L’Isle had accepted what wags in the Foreign and Colonial office called ‘the American Throne’ and many historians, with good cause, called the ‘graveyard of otherwise brilliant careers’ in Philadelphia. At that time Sarah Arnold had been stationed at Government House as Matthew Harrison’s liaison officer, deniable ‘back channel’ and if need arose a ready-made ‘cut out’ to isolate the Governor’s Office from any potential CSS scandal anywhere in the First Thirteen.

  With the flight of the De L’Isle’s once large brood to all parts east and west, and finally, their ‘little girl’, Henrietta’s departure for Cambridge, Sarah’s arrival in the household had serendipitously filled a vacuum and she and Lady Diana had become close over the years. That had changed when Henrietta returned from England, Sarah had been redeployed, taken on the role as her godfather’s – Harrison’s – secretary and then, fatefully, gone undercover and largely disappeared from sight for the best part of eighteen months. By then Henrietta had become her father’s secretary and frequent Government House hostess on account of her mother’s infirmity.

  “There’s only ever room in any household for one strong woman,” Sir Henry chortled sadly.

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door.

  “It’s Miss Henrietta, sir,” the Governor was informed apologetically since he had asked not to be disturbed for another ten minutes. “She’s on line one, sir.”

  The Governor got to his feet and went to his desk, waiting patiently for the call to be put through.

  “Well, my dear, it seems that you have been busy overnight?”

  He allowed his daughter’s ill-considered remarks about the twin colony’s ‘concentration camps’, ‘serial child abuse’ and general ‘pig-headedness’ to go unchallenged.

  Life was too short.

  “Please tell me you haven’t spoken in those terms to anybody…”

  “In the press?” His daughter snapped back, mortally offended. “Of course not, father!”

  “Forgive me,” the great man muttered, regretting that he had left his whiskey on the coffee table beside the chair in which he had been attempting to relax moments before.

  “Look, I’ve just got off the line from speaking with Melody,” Henrietta went on.

  Melody?

  Oh, Chief Inspector Danson, of course…

  “She says it is possible that William Fielding, the middle son, the Churchy one with the Getrennte Entwicklung chums was so terrified of the people he owed money to �
� he’s a compulsive gambler, apparently – that he thought he was safer in jail than out on the streets. So, when he was arrested he clammed up!”

  My darling little girl has only been associating with that Danson woman for a few days and she’s already talking like a character from an Ealing movie!

  De L’Isle refrained from saying as much; not that it would have been an easy matter to get a word in edgewise.

  “Anyway,” his daughter continued, “it looks like William Fielding may be as innocent as his brother, Alexander. Obviously, we still haven’t talked to Abraham, assuming he’ll still want to talk to us after what those nincompoops put him and his poor wife through last night! Melody said she ran Brigadier Harrison’s theory past the Indian gentleman, Black Raven, yesterday and it held water. But she won’t commit to anything until she’s re-interviewed the father, Isaac. He seems to be an odd man…”

  Either his daughter ran out of puff or concluded she was gabbling like a fish-wife and it gave the Governor of New England a fleeting opportunity to be heard.

  His tone was sternly measured.

  “Yes, well, let’s not get carried away with the idea that the family Fielding are simply the blameless victims of this whole affair. If they had all been honest with the authorities from the outset it would have saved us all a great deal of avoidable grief in the last year!”

  Chapter 28

  Saturday 29th July

  Fort Crailo Prison, Albany

  Abraham Fielding rose stiffly to his feet when Melody Danson and Henrietta De L’Isle entered the messroom on the ground floor. Other than to be issued with grey prison dungarees the man had yet to be properly inducted into Fort Crailo, allocated a cell or formally documented.

  There had been a delay in his transfer to the prison because at Henrietta’s – positively imperious - insistence he had been taken to the Accident and Emergency Department of the Queen Eleanor Hospital to have his injuries assessed. Her bodyguards had reported that he had been ‘seriously roughed up’ by the thugs at Fort Oswegatchie; now, in the cold light of day the right side of his face was puffy, swollen and he was clearly in pain every time he moved. The diagnosis was a cut mouth, a couple of loose teeth but that his jaw and skull were intact; however, that he had sustained two ‘cracked’ ribs.