Suddenly the sheriff was no longer friendly. He clapped manacles on Caesar’s wrists and ankles and tied Clara’s hands behind her back and ordered them ahead of him to the courtroom. On a high seat in a room lined with dark wood sat a gloomy-eyed old man in a black robe, with a long white wig that fell to his shoulders on both sides of his head. Behind him on the wall hung a portrait of King George II. This was “old Staats”—Judge Walter Van Staats, the man who liked to punish blacks. On a bench in the center of the courtroom sat Mrs. Van Vorst and Fat Alice and her daughter Hester.
Caesar was tried first. The sheriff reported he had been spotted by the constables of the Night Watch10 at the foot of Dock Street with a bag over his shoulder. The Watch gave chase and Caesar threw the bag into the harbor. The Watch was convinced it was stolen goods that Caesar was on his way to sell to sailors on nearby ships. The judge told Caesar this was his third arrest this year on the same charge, suspicion of theft. What was his explanation this time?
Caesar said the bag contained various things he had won at cards with his friends. He did not want the Watch to get it because some of the items might have gotten the friends in trouble. He swore none of them were stolen—they had all been given to his friends for being good servants. He also said he was angry at the Watch for persecuting him.
From a bench in the rear of the courtroom tottered John Vraack, Caesar’s master, a bent old man who pleaded with the judge to be lenient with Caesar. He needed him to run his bakery. His health no longer permitted him to do heavy work. Without Caesar, he and his wife would have to go out of business. They could not afford to buy another slave.
Judge Van Staats swore if Caesar was arrested again, he would hang, even if John Vraack and his wife starved and half of New York went without bread. Caesar piously vowed to stop gambling and attend to his work. He said he would go to church every Sunday and ask God for help. Grumbling and snarling, Judge Van Staats dismissed the charges.
It was Clara’s turn. The sheriff had said very little against Caesar. He had stated the facts of his case in a bored monotone. With Clara he became furiously indignant. He described her threats and called her a savage who needed to be taught that Indian ways were not white ways and New Yorkers would not tolerate threats of murder and mayhem.
“I agree with every word you say!” the judge rumbled. “Summon the witnesses.”
Gertrude Van Vorst and Fat Alice testified to Clara’s threatening them with the knife. She was sure she was on her way to the whipping post when the doors at the back of the courtroom swung open and Malcolm Stapleton and his friend Robert Foster Nicolls hurried up the aisle. With them was the hunchback, Adam Duycinck, and a third man, followed by her Seneca sister, Catalyntie Van Vorst.
I had spent the intervening hours quarreling violently with my aunt and uncle and beseeching Malcolm Stapleton and Guert Cuyler to save Clara from the whipping post. Guert could not prevail upon his father to take the case. Nor could Malcolm persuade his father. No established lawyer wanted to defend an African who had threatened a white woman with a knife. Guert decided to plead it himself, even though he was far from a thorough lawyer.11 When Robert Nicolls heard about my distress, he volunteered to join us as a friendly witness.
“Your Honor,” said Guert, “I would like to represent the defendant in this matter.”
“On what grounds? She’s not your property,” Judge Van Staats said.
“She’s the property in fact if not in law of Miss Van Vorst here, the granddaughter of your late lamented good friend, Cornelius Van Vorst,” Guert said. “He was also among my grandfather’s dearest friends. Miss Van Vorst is not yet old enough to inherit her estate. But I think she has a right, in the law, to protest the abuse of a slave that belongs to her, just as she might protest if her uncle, the executor of the estate, began damaging or otherwise maltreating a house which was left to her.”
“How dare you, sir?” Gertrude Van Vorst cried. “How dare you accuse my husband of such a thing?”
“For the moment we’re only accusing you of maltreating this girl, madam,” Guert said.
“What about the right of the community to protect itself against the creature’s violence? Am I supposed to let her return to the house she’s threatened with murder?” Judge Van Staats said.
“If it please the court,” Guert said. “I would suggest an order from Your Honor to place the wench in the custody of my friend, Malcolm Stapleton here, and his father. They’ll negotiate a fair price with the Van Vorsts for the loss of her services.”
At this point, Robert Nicolls stepped forward and gave an eloquent defense of Clara’s character. “I saw this young woman when she was exchanged at the great peace council last year,” he said. “She did not display a hint of violence or resentment in her demeanor.”
“I’m inclined to order her sold to the West Indies at a fair market value and the money to be placed in Miss Van Vorst’s estate!” Judge Van Staats roared.
“Your late lamented good friend, Cornelius Van Vorst, when he drew his will, urged that this young woman be treated with kindness and forbearance, out of a debt of gratitude he owed her father for saving his life in the northern woods,” Guert Cuyler said.
The repetition of Cornelius Van Vorst’s name had a marvelously soothing effect on the old judge. He rumbled and grumbled about Clara still being a danger to the peace of the city but he was no longer threatening her with punishment. “If it would satisfy Your Honor,” Malcolm said, “she can be sent to my family’s house in New Jersey. My mother is in need of a servant out there.”
“Done,” the judge said, whacking the bench with his gavel. “In the name of the best friend of my life. For no one else would I hesitate to mete justice to one of these black vermin. They murdered my son, you know. Every time I see one of them on the street I can taste the bile of that memory in my throat.”
“They murdered my father!” Gertrude Van Vorst cried.
Black vermin. The words struck Clara like a lash across the face. Was this what white men thought of them?
Them. Who was she talking about? She was a Seneca. She was not one of these Africans.
Dazedly, Clara let me embrace her and lead her from the courtroom, while Gertrude Van Vorst raged at us. Guert Cuyler struggled to play the peacemaker. He obviously had misgivings about offending the Van Vorsts. It was a good indication of how rich my uncle had become.
“I took the case at Miss Van Vorst’s request, madam,” Cuyler said. “My father drew Cornelius Van Vorst’s last will. We consider her our client.”
“The whole matter is an unfortunate misunderstanding,” Robert Nicolls said. “I’m sure you never intended to mistreat her, madam. It’s hard for us civilized folk to appreciate the way Indians act and react. You should think of her that way, madam—and consider yourself well rid of her. I’m sure, when you have time to reflect on it, you’ll agree with me.”
“You may have a point, sir,” Aunt Gertrude said, soothed by Nicolls’s ingratiating manner.
My admiration for-not to mention my gratitude to—this self-assured young men quintupled. It mingled with my satisfaction at extricating Clara from the Van Vorst household. I could only hope she would be happier with the Stapletons, even though she was still a slave.
We escorted Clara to a boat waiting at a Hudson River dock. “The sooner you’re out of Aunt Gertrude’s reach, the better,” I said. “Mr. Stapleton’s assured me you’ll be treated with perfect kindness and respect. We can exchange letters and perhaps I can visit you, if I can persuade my uncle to lend me the money for the trip. As soon as I inherit my estate I’ll free you.”
We reached the dock as I said these last words. The rage they created in Clara’s eyes made me wonder if our love had ended. I had blundered from the white world back into our Seneca past. Even if I freed her from slavery, the gift was poisoned. How could she accept as a gift the liberty every Seneca inherited at birth?
“Forgive me!” I cried.
“There’s nothi
ng to forgive,” Clara said.
In that moment, Clara donned an invisible false face. She no longer cared about the teachings of Jesus. She did not even care whether her words and acts created good or evil. She saw her soul, fleeing through the moonless forest to be devoured by demons and devils, all of them white. Somehow she would outwit them.
THREE
THE STAPLETON MANOR HOUSE STOOD ON a broad meadow, a few miles from the falls of the Passaic River. Beyond it stretched fields of green corn and wheat and orchards full of flowering apple and pear trees. The fieldstone mansion looked huge, compared to the size of the houses Clara had seen in New York. It was four stories high, with a central hall that separated it into two massive wings. There were six matching windows on each floor—proof of the builder’s wealth or arrogance or both. The cost of heating such a house had to be stupendous. On the red tile roof a half dozen chimneys poked red brick snouts into the sky.
Around the mansion were red barns, a fieldstone carriage house, and at least two dozen smaller wooden huts, which she would soon learn were slave quarters. “Does this village have a name?” Clara asked.
“Happenstance Hall,” Adam Duycinck said.
“Hampden Hall,” Malcolm Stapleton said. He was holding the reins of the two-horse team that was pulling their springless wagon, in which crude seats had been fastened by a country carpenter.
“After some bloody English hero,” Duycinck said.
“He was a real hero, you stupid Dutch bastard,” Malcolm said. “John Hampden defied the Stuart kings and their corrupt ways. My grandfather, Hugh Stapleton, served in his regiment in the civil war. He was with him when he died at Chalgrove Field.”
“You can’t get an idea into this fellow’s noodle that isn’t connected to a battle,” Duycinck said to Clara. “All he thinks about is war.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Clara asked. Among the Senecas, men thought of little else except the exploits of the great warriors they hoped to match.
“You can get yourself killed in a war,” Duycinck said.
“What difference does that make, as long as you die with your honor unbroken?” Clara said.
“Listen to that, Duycinck!” Malcolm Stapleton said. “From the mouth of a slave girl.”
“I’m not a slave,” Clara said. “I’m a Seneca. A daughter of the Bear Clan!”
Startled, Malcolm looked over his shoulder. Was he seeing her for the first time? Words from her Seneca mother leaped into Clara’s mind. There are people who look and see nothing. Trust only those who look hard and see truly. This young man was learning to look hard. Should she trust him?
No, it was impossible. He was white. With him, as with the others, even Catalyntie, she would always wear a false face. But she soon saw the value of having Malcolm Stapleton’s good opinion. In the lofty entrance hall, they met the mistress of the mansion, whom Malcolm introduced almost rudely as “my stepmother.”
A tall, and fair-skinned woman, Georgianna Stapleton faced the world with the hauteur of a queen. Her hair was a glistening auburn, strewn with darker shades. She was wearing a green riding outfit and green hat with a black raven’s feather in it. “Who is this beautiful creature?” she asked, with the hard eyes of a woman who does not tolerate rivals.
Malcolm explained who Clara was and why she was here. “We have no need of another house servant,” Mrs. Stapleton said. “She’ll have to go into the fields.”
“She’s too educated for that,” Malcolm said. “She can read and write. Father thinks she can help Jamey with his lessons. She can also help Adam with his accounts.”
“Lessons!” Mrs. Stapleton said. “I fear scholarship will be as lost on Jamey as it was on you. I will never understand how an intelligent man like your father sired two such boobies.”
Malcolm flushed and struggled to control his anger. Mrs. Stapleton went blithely on: “What does Adam need with an assistant, unless she knows how to turn red ink into black?”
“She’s turned black blood into red, madam,” Duycinck said with his leering smile. “Her mother was killed by the Indians and she was adopted by them. She considers herself a Seneca.”
In a more confiding voice, he added: “They say her mother had powers. She may be able to change our luck.”
“That would be a novelty,” Mrs. Stapleton said. “I’m off to the Alexanders for a fortnight. We’ll decide what to do with Clara when I return. If she wants to try teaching Jamey in the meantime, good luck to her.”
“As for you,” she said, poking her riding crop into Duycinck’s protruding stomach. “If there’s a Negro born with a twisted back in nine months, I will personally persuade Governor Nicolls to deport you to the West Indies. I’ll color you black first to make sure you go directly into the sugarcane fields.”
“Madam, that would be Satan at work, not poor pathetic Adam,” Duycinck whined.
“You were born a scoundrel and you’ll die one,” she said. She seemed more amused than angry. “We’re entertaining the governor and his entourage on my return. Make sure the kitchen, the bedrooms, the public rooms, are ready to receive them. I’ve written out the menus for the dinners.”
“All will be attended to exactly as you wish, madam,” Duycinck said.
“You may kiss me good-bye, Stepson.”
Georgianna Stapleton turned her head, permitting Malcolm to kiss her rouged cheek, and strolled past him onto the sunny lawn, where an African in a red coat was soothing a skittish white horse. Malcolm glared sullenly after her. The encounter had annihilated his good cheer.
“If there’s any trouble in this neighborhood, it’ll be between her legs, not mine,” Duycinck muttered.
“Shut your filthy mouth,” Malcolm snarled.
“I don’t know what you people are talking about,” Clara said, concealing her disgust behind the false face of a timid bewildered girl. Duycinck’s remark was not much different from jokes she had heard in the longhouse of the Bear Clan since she was a child. Her performance was designed to win Malcolm Stapleton’s sympathy.
Malcolm watched his stepmother canter down the curving drive, followed by the red-coated groom on a smaller horse. “Mrs. Stapleton rules my father and the rest of us like a Russian czarina,” he said. “My father loves her extravagantly. He built this great pile for her—going monstrously into debt—but as far as I can see she loves no one but herself.”
A big black man named Samson lugged Clara’s trunk up the stairs to her room on the top floor. “How long have you lived here?” Clara asked him.
He shook his head angrily, as if he disapproved of her question. Duycinck, who had followed them upstairs, explained: “He’s just off a ship from Africa. He doesn’t know a word of English.”
He spoke rapidly to Samson in a language Clara did not understand, though the sound of it stirred a tremor in her flesh. Had she heard similar words from her parents as a child? Samson retreated down the hall and Clara asked Duycinck the name of the language. The hunchback shrugged. “I picked it up from the blacks on the ship that brought me here,” he said.
Suddenly his arm was around Clara’s waist. “I’ll be glad to teach it to you between midnight and dawn,” he said. “My back may be crooked but there’s other parts of me that can stand as straight as a pine tree with a little encouragement.”
“Why should I be so generous?” Clara said.
“I can help you with Madame Stapleton. No one else can tease her into a decent humor when she goes on her rampages. Malcolm flees to the woods, his father to New York City.”
“Why does she rampage—as you call it?”
“She regrets leaving England. She considers the Stapletons—and everyone else in America—beneath her. Her father was a London merchant who went bankrupt after presenting her at court and otherwise raising her to live like a princess. She had to take the best offer she could get.”
“Was the first Mrs. Stapleton as beautiful?”
“Pretty enough. Scottish. It’s where Malcolm gets his nam
e and his warrior blood. She died giving birth to Malcolm’s brother, Jamey. Malcolm gets drunk on the anniversary of her going, every year. Can you imagine a soldier with such a heart? It’s fitter for a woman.”
“Soldiers never let their hearts trouble them?”
“They must never admit the pain to their mind’s eye. A soldier’s heart must be as tight and tough as a drum, and he marches to its martial beat, no matter what sort of vapors rumble inside it!”
The little Dutchman swelled his chest like a screech owl as he declaimed this fustian. “You too have a warrior’s heart?” Clara asked.
“Haven’t I just told you I’m a man?” Duycinck cried.
“I’m glad you’ll be able to bear the pain of what I must tell you. I’m not interested in your proposal. I can only give myself to a man I love.”
This was another false face, Clara told herself, even if the words were true. She watched with amusement as Duycinck deflated like a frog in a kettle. “You’ll soon find you need me,” the hunchback said.
“If so, I hope I’ll discover a friend generous enough to help me without any expectation of a reward,” Clara said.
Muttering, Duycinck withdrew and Clara unpacked the half dozen everyday dresses and petticoats Catalyntie had hastily given her. As she finished hanging the clothes in a dusty wardrobe, Malcolm Stapleton appeared in the doorway, an unhappy expression on his face. “You must never cross my stepmother. Her good humor can vanish in a flash. She can persuade my father to do anything.”
“Is your father pleased with her when she behaves that way?”
“He stopped being pleased with her a long time ago,” Malcolm said. “Except when she deigns to comfort him in bed.”
“Why doesn’t he find another woman to live with?”
“Because marriage is for life,” Malcolm said.
“What a foolish idea,” Clara said. “Among the Senecas people often have two or three husbands. My grandmother had four.”
“That’s easy for them. They’re heathens,” Malcolm said. “We have to bear witness before God.”
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