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Johnny One-Eye

Page 18

by Jerome Charyn


  The prince had installed an entire sinfonia, with a harpsichord, violas, and violoncellos, but there was silence while Paul’s officers and “Ethiopian” women stood like partners in a frozen minuet. The lighting was sparse, with lanterns placed at long intervals. The munitions factory had no chandeliers. Paul clutched a wooden staff that a dancing master might carry. He struck the staff once against the factory floor—the smack it made had the crispness of a bell. A woman descended the factory’s staircase, moving in and out of the somber light. She wore a mask, but I could not mistake her poise or her pyramid of blond hair—my Clara, an octoroon with freckles, was queen of the Ethiopian Ball.

  The musicians began to play once Clara arrived at the bottom stair. She moved among the partners, tapping each male on the shoulder; one by one, the couples started to dance, while Paul beat out the tempo of each step with his staff. I hadn’t realized how cruel the minuet was—how relentless the rhythm—until I saw his dancers dance. Paul’s minuet had all the sad machinations of the civilized world, its clockwork, its precision. But it also had a beauty here in the far reaches of the Out Ward, on Winne Street, a small, forgotten territory without redcoats or royal pudding.

  The queen of the ball came up to me while the dancing master continued his magical beat. I shivered hard the moment I understood the purpose of her visit. She meant to pick me as her partner—I had never studied the steps, tho’ I had often watched the nuns play-dance among themselves.

  She tapped me on the shoulder. I did not bow as I should have done. Her eyes flickered under the velvet mask. She tapped me again.

  “Majesty,” I said, “I will not dance until you remove your mask.”

  The flickering stopped. I could detect the trace of a smile at the border of the black velvet. “You are my subject, sir, and will do whatever I ask.”

  “Remove the mask.”

  She tapped me a third time. I was the fool of fools. Clara had invited me, not Prince Paul. Clara must have sent the enormous envelope, scratching my name in the largest letters, so she could disguise her scrawl.

  I lent her my hand and prayed that I could discover the steps under the tutelage of Paul’s dancing stick. And as we twirled about, Clara did remove her mask. The light was wan, but I still had one eye in my head. Verily her face was aglow. The munitions factory was keeping her alive. She couldn’t have survived dancing with all those bloody Englishmen at Clinton’s balls without her little sojourns to the far side of the Indian Wall. She was Gert’s amanuensis in the middle of a revolution, and had to make the British believe that she was their very own plaything, a beautiful informer and double agent who could dance with an army of officers.

  “Johnny,” she said, “didn’t you know? Partners are encouraged to kiss. That’s what the rule book says.”

  I didn’t believe there was such a book. But when I reached over to kiss Clara, I lost the dancing master’s rhythm and had to prevent myself from falling over my own feet.

  Trying to accomplish that kiss was like hoping to find the Minotaur inside a maze.

  Clara laughed. I’d pleasured her with my maladroit maneuvers. The Minotaur could eat me alive—I cared not a feather or a fig…as long as I continued to dance. But the minuet must have gone into another phase at the factory. Couples broke up near the end of a turn, with men’s knees hanging in midair. Clara’s hand slipped out of mine and she vanished into the shadows, a queen without a partner.

  Thirty-Five

  I WOULD HAVE BANKRUPTED ALL THE KING’S MEN and paid a million pounds for another invitation to the Ethiopian Ball. I received none. Perhaps the balls themselves had vanished with the black Marie Antoinettes. Clinton had also closed his shop. The party season must have ended for the British in late October. Clinton sent no more carriages, and Clara seemed to have less need of lullabies. I was not summoned to her closet again. But I trapped Clara in a damp corridor behind Gertrude’s kitchen. “Where the Divil is my queen of the night?”

  “What manner of queen is that?”

  “The mistress of the Ethiopian Ball.”

  “You are mistaken,” she said. “’Tis illegal to have dancing assemblies in the Out Ward. Blacks are not supposed to congregate lest Little Africa rise up against the white king.”

  And in my chagrin I grew formal with Clara. “Dost thou deny that we ever danced?”

  She stunned me to the quick—haughty Clara started to cry. “Major André is gonna shut us down, and Gert doesn’t want you implicated with us, not while André is gunnin’ to get ye.”

  I SAW NO GALLOWS being built. I was still invited to the war room at Clinton’s headquarters, where André presided with his boot heels on the table. He had a harebrained idea to capture one of Washington’s generals.

  “We ought to start at the top of the list,” Harold said. “Why not the farmer in chief, why not Washington himself?”

  And that’s when André turned in my direction. “Let us ask our John. He has met the farmer, has seen him in the flesh…aren’t women Washington’s weakness?”

  I had to be as artful and devious as that little shit. “I should think so, Major.”

  “Were you not present at his marathon game of vingt-et-un with Sir William on Holy Ground?”

  “Indeed I was. He’s daft about the mistress of the house, my own matron, Gertrude Jennings…we should pounce on him, using Madame as bait.”

  Harold looked at me as if I’d gone berserk. But I had to deflect André by going into the lion’s mouth. “Arrest Madame, and the farmer might come out of the woods. Hang Madame, and he will grieve for her,” says I.

  André rolled his eyes in contempt.

  “Washington will not come out of the woods for Mrs. Jennings. I cannot believe he loves that creature. She is his spy, and I will hang her when the time is ripe. We can forget the farmer.”

  “Shall we pick another general?” Harold asked. “What about Benedict Arnold?”

  André ruffled his nose and rolled his eyes again. “I am not in the habit of traducing cripples. He has a shattered leg. We will leave Arnold where he is and go after bigger game.”

  Every child in creation knew that Benedict Arnold had become military governor of Philadelphia after the British left in June. He was no longer a fighting general. He could not even sit on a horse. He’d spent months at a hospital in Albany, immobilized, his body tied to a board, while he screamed at his doctors, who wanted to amputate his leg. “Better take my life. I’ll kill you all if I do not walk out of this hospital complete.”

  Arnold did walk out with both his legs but had to live on crutches. He inherited Sir Billy’s old headquarters on Market Street, moved a little army of servants into the mansion, bought the finest carriage in Philadelphia, indulged himself like a duke.

  Philadelphia was not for him. He got into trouble with Pennsylvania’s revolutionary council, and he’d always been at war with a Continental Congress that had snubbed him, raising mediocre generals over his head. He rode around in his carriage with bodyguards, entertained rich Tories. He began outfitting his own merchant ships and investing in privateers. The council accused him of peculation, of turning war into a business. Sir Billy had had his hand in different pots, had received hard cash from his commissaries, or he would have drowned in debt. But Arnold wasn’t an aristocrat. He didn’t dance with Billy’s grace. He didn’t dance at all now that his left leg was three inches shorter than the right.

  And then I learned that Arnold had become engaged to the daughter of a Philadelphia nabob—a damsel of eighteen, blindingly blond. She was called the greatest beauty in the metropolis, shy and brilliant, and she’d read as many books as Gertrude’s nuns. Her name was Peggy Shippen, she who had her silhouette done by Major André. That little shit had recruited her as one of his spies. She was Salome, and my poor general was John the Baptist, soon to be without a head.

  I couldn’t even maneuver against the British in my own masked way. André stopped inviting me to headquarters.

  “Why hav
e I been disinherited?” I asked Sir Harold.

  “Clinton doesn’t like you.”

  “Clinton doesn’t know I’m alive.”

  “Don’t be misled. He sees much more than any waking man.”

  “’Tis that blond bitch. Peggy Shippen. André has found an avenue to her, from the very heart of Manhattan. He will entrap Benedict Arnold, military governor of Philadelphia.”

  “I dare not say. I am part of the secret service. And you, sir, are neglecting the Black Brigade.”

  Harold had never been so formal as to call me “sir.” And Arnold, whose vanities betrayed him beyond the battlefield, was a doomed man. He was no match for a master spy, even if she was but a girl—Peggy Shippen.

  Thirty-Six

  WE WERE A TOWN OF INNUENDO AND DIVISION under British rule, of mayhem and civil strife, where the poor suffered in canvas houses, while some high commissioner might have several mansions and a birdcage for his mistress. The rich had their own private parks where madrigals could be heard, and all beggars and Africans were excluded. Bakers could only bake bread for the British army and certain nabobs; everyone else had to find ovens and scraps of stale dough. Women and children did not venture abroad at night without a military escort. Highwaymen lurked in the alleys. And those who were robbed most were Africans, who had no escort but the Black Brigade.

  We’d been given a new task, to contain the Skinners, those rebel ruffians who operated in the “Neutral Ground” between British Manhattan and the Highlands of Westchester, where the patriots had their pickets. The Skinners would fight the Cowboys, Tory ruffians, and maim one another. But they also did their own business, and were notorious highwaymen, scalp hunters, and cattle thieves. They would scalp men, molest women, and murder children.

  We could have done little about it, but these marauders had been sighted in Harlem and King’s Bridge, below Neutral Ground, where they had no business. The Black Brigade wasn’t issued live ammunition. The Brits wanted us to fail—we were their jesters, their clowns—but our captain, Prince Paul, had ammunition of his own, enough powder and lead balls to make at least one of our muskets a little less than useless. Now we were fighting men, even if we were only called upon to attack civilian pirates.

  I despised the Cowboys and the Skinners and would have been willing to hunt them into hell. But we had to keep within the integrity of our island. We had no permission to wander far afield. And in early November we went in wagons up the Bloomingdale Road, with our captain on a white horse. “Brigade” was a misnomer. We were nine men in gold and green uniforms, the colors that Harold had bequeathed us. I had a cutlass, and pistols in my pocket without a single lead ball. The buttons on our tunics were brass replicas of the king’s head.

  We followed the tracks of a rampage. The Cowboys had been looting Harlem wholesale, making off with women and cows, battering children into speechlessness. ’T was not a pretty picture.

  “There’s a complicity to this madness I do not like,” said Paul.

  “These Cowboys aren’t running wild. Seems as if they have their own general with a battle plan for desolation.”

  I had to agree. This roughness was a little too symmetrical in its waywardness. Cowboys and Skinners did not have the imagination to accomplish such deeds.

  We fell upon an extravagant farm, the country estate of Joshua Loring. He had barns and horses and cows, and he lived like a bloody Englishman in a manor upon a hill. He’d grown fat off the fare of prisoners, but he served at the pleasure of the Crown. And his protector, Sir Billy, was long gone. I wondered where Mrs. Loring was. I’d had no news of her. Not even the Crier, who poked his nose into everything, could tell me if Mrs. L. had gone to England or was locked up inside the manor house like a madwoman. She vanished once Billy departed from Philadelphia aboard one of his brother’s ships six months ago.

  But we hadn’t come to the manor about Mrs. Loring. Why had the plague not visited this farm? ’T was ripe for plundering. The pirates could have grabbed half a hundred cows. Joshua had a host of servants and slaves, but this host could never have stood up to muskets and stink bombs and bayonets. And then we discovered Loring’s secret saviors. A detachment of Hessians in their tall helmets lay on Loring’s grass. These lads were cavorting with milkmaids while their horses nibbled grass at their feet. It was like some idyll of northern Manhattan painted by a very sly painter. Something was amiss. As we got close, we could see specks of dried blood on their uniforms.

  Suddenly the idyllic landscape turned into a frieze. The soldiers stiffened. The milkmaids ran to a barn. A Hessian officer with a blade of grass in his mouth approached me. His uniform had no blood.

  “Yes, yes, how can I help?” he asked without the slightest of accents. He could have stepped out of any court in Europe.

  “Captain Paul of the Royal Irregulars,” our prince said from his horse. “We’re looking for Skinners. They’ve been attacking farms in the area, making off with women and cows.”

  “Ah, but we have not seen them, Herr Captain, or heard a single shot, or we would have come down hard on their backs.”

  “I’m quite sure of it. But I would like permission to search these grounds.”

  “Permission denied, Herr Captain. This is not my estate.”

  We did not have enough bullets to put a hole in their helmets. His men could have cut us to pieces and plucked the buttons off our tunics while we lay writhing in the grass. The Hessians did not love this war. Hirelings on foreign soil, they often could not distinguish between rebels and Loyalists. They plundered wherever and whenever they could. Adventurous lads and also lazy, they were still prepared to butcher us. But someone in a velvet waistcoat, silk stockings, and the fashionable tricorn of a gentleman farmer traveled down from the hill with all the power of a British commissary. ’T was Loring himself. And he had no mischievous horsemen around him, no meddlers, like the last time, when he’d tried to waylay me and Mrs. Loring, remove us from her carriage.

  He bowed, hat in hand.

  “’Tis the changeling again, my wife’s little paramour. You are trespassing, sir.”

  “We’re soldiers of the Crown on a military matter.”

  Loring laughed. I did not like him.

  “Soldiers, you say? If you do not leave this minute, I will appropriate every one of you and put you to work as field hands on my farm.”

  I would have cracked him over the head with my cutlass, but I wasn’t captain here. It was the prince who was playing vingt-et-un without a card in his hand.

  “Do we have your word that you are not hiding ruffians on your farm?”

  Loring turned his back on the prince. Paul signaled to his Blues, and like the finest actors around, our lads rattled their muskets, while the Hessians busied themselves with their powder horns, ramming rods, and live ammunition.

  Loring’s ears pricked at these sounds of war. Then he smiled and performed a jig in his buckled shoes. He must have been aware that the king’s men would never issue ammunition to toy soldiers such as ourselves. That’s when Paul seized the one live musket we had and shot a lead ball into the air. Loring froze in his tracks, like a rabbit or red squirrel caught in lantern light. He was petrified. Imagining that he might find himself in some crossfire, he faced the prince again.

  “I do not harbor criminals, sir.”

  And he bolted toward the manor in a palpable rage that tightened his neck under the tricorn.

  Mindful of Hessians, the prince and I moved out of earshot.

  “Captain Paul,” I said. “’Tis plain as day. He’s behind the bloodshed. He’s a murderous profiteer.”

  “And who are we? Black men on a mission with one white officer? Not a man, woman, or child in Manhattan would admit that we’re soldiers.”

  “And I am not a genuine officer,” says I.

  “But they believe you are. And that belief is our only flag…come, Johnny, we have Cowboys to catch.”

  “You mean Hessians posing as Cowboys.”

  “I
mean Cowboys.”

  We rode off in our wagons, drank from our canteens, dove into our knapsacks for lumps of hard cheese. ’T was a bitter meal, lads. But Paul had the patience of a prince. We passed magnificent farms and pastures, red barns and rolling hills, until I thought we’d come to a domain ruled by horses and cows. And that’s when we saw puffs of musket fire and heard the dull crack that accompanied it.

  We stole upon the scene. Five or six drunken Hessians were raiding a farm a few miles from Loring’s hill. One of the Hessians held a woman by her hair. They ignored us and continued their carnage.

  I cared not about the wretched state of our musketry. I had my cutlass. “Captain, permission to murder that man.”

  “Lieutenant Stocking, you will stand down.”

  He grabbed the cutlass out of my hand, rode into the Hessians on his horse, and drubbed that Hessian who was holding the woman, drubbed him with the dull edge of his sword until the Hessian’s knees buckled, and the woman dropped out of his hands. The prince climbed down from his horse, put his knapsack under the woman’s head, and began to feed her water from his canteen. She started to sob, and Paul rocked her like a baby.

  “We’ll be back for you, ma’am, but first we have to take these butchers to our base.”

  We had no base, but the prince had gotten used to soldiering, and thought we had. The five other Hessians were so besotted, they had little resistance left. We dumped them into a wagon, but another batch of helmets arrived from Loring’s farm with Loring himself and his own motley crew of marauders that meant to murder us on the spot and leave no witnesses. Loring and his lads rode up to me and Paul with pistols in their hands.

  “Negro swine,” he said to Prince Paul. “You and your little white slut who calls himself One-Eye. I will relieve you both of your brains.”

 

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