The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  Peter left Evangeline to browse while he went toward the back. Two leather sofas in the middle of the floor invited visitors to sit. The open cases of secondhand books gave them something to read. The locked cases of rare books gave them something to aspire to.

  The door was open to the office at the back. Martin Bloom was writing at his desk, head down, bald spot shining through a film of hairs.

  “Peter Fallon,” he said without looking up, as though he had a third eye peering through his combover. “You must be looking for something.”

  “Martin, what would ever give you that idea?”

  “You only show up here when you’re looking for something.” Bloom raised his head. He had impeccable taste in coordinating the color of his shirts and bow ties, but he had never learned that a long skinny face should not wear horn-rimmed glasses with round lenses. They became his only feature, making him look happily surprised if he was smiling, sadly shocked the rest of the time.

  “Martin,” said Peter, “that’s an exaggeration.”

  “This is Maine. We don’t exaggerate. Remember when you heard that a collector in Camden had three letters from George Washington to Martha?”

  “Would’ve been worth a fortune.”

  “Except that she burned their letters after he died.”

  Peter shrugged. “I was misinformed.”

  “You could’ve called.” Bloom came around his desk and they shook hands. “Instead it took three hours, dinner, and two expensive bottles of wine.”

  “I paid the bill.”

  “So, let’s save your money and my time.” Bloom smiled, which caused long eyebrows to rise like caterpillars from behind the horn-rims. “What are you looking for, and how can I get a piece of it?”

  Peter dove right in. “Tell me about Professor Stuart Conrad.”

  Bloom’s eyebrows dropped. “A friend, a customer, a scholar. A terrible loss.” Then Bloom noticed Evangeline. “And who’s this?”

  After introductions, Evangeline said, “You have a wonderful collection.”

  Peter said, “He knows where more Federal era bodies are buried than anyone in the business.”

  That remark seemed to upset Bloom. The eyebrows dropped again. “Bodies? That’s not a very nice thing to say.” Then he turned to Evangeline. “I wouldn’t know one thing about bodies.”

  Touchy, thought Peter. So he decided to probe a bit more. “The market for Founding Fathers paper is getting hot. I’ll bet you’ve been doing well ever since this Second Amendment business started.”

  Bloom turned things back onto Peter, as if he would be the player rather than the playee. “You’re living proof of the hot market, what with that Henry Knox letter you sold last month.”

  “It’s a living,” answered Peter.

  Now it was Bloom who probed. “I’ve heard there are more Knox letters out there, and more from that Will Pike.”

  And the question alone told Peter he had come to the right place. “Why this sudden interest in a bit player like Pike?”

  Bloom’s eyebrows dropped, as if he realized he had revealed too much.

  Peter kept at it. “What was that professor after, Martin?”

  Bloom considered a moment, then said, “I can’t tell you, because I’m not really sure. And Paul Doherty wouldn’t approve if I told you anything.”

  “Where is he?”

  “At the Mount Washington Hotel, at the New England Rarities Convention.”

  Peter turned to Evangeline, “Art, books, prints, all relating to New England history. It’s a big anniversary, so they’re doing it at a fancy venue.”

  “I’m getting ready to head up there myself,” said Bloom.

  “I was thinking about going, too, before I got distracted.” Peter glanced at his watch. “Through Crawford Notch, we can be there in two and a half hours.”

  Bloom’s eyebrows fluttered. “Paul doesn’t like people mixing in our business. He’ll want tit-for-tat if we tell you anything.”

  “You give me something, I’ll give you something back.”

  “Will you tell us what else you know about Will Pike’s letters?”

  “If that’s what you want,” said Peter.

  “So …” Bloom turned to Evangeline. “We’ll enjoy cocktail hour at the Mount Washington Hotel. But how about a Portland lobster for lunch?”

  NINE

  August 1787

  WHEN THOMAS JEFFERSON WROTE in the Declaration of Independence that King George had “burnt our towns,” one of them was Falmouth, Maine. And it was not the first time that it had been burnt. The Indians had done it during King Philip’s War in 1675, and they had come back and burnt it again a decade later.

  Will Pike thought a name change might bring the town better luck, though nature had already given it many advantages. Cape Elizabeth and the rocky islands of Casco Bay protected the harbor. Two hills—Munjoy and Bramhall—offered fine heights for defense. And the summer southwesterlies could push a schooner far and fast to the fishing grounds.

  People here were called Downeasters, because the rest of America reached them by sailing down wind to the east, and Downeasters got to the Grand Banks and the great ports of Europe by doing the same thing. They were not known for their warmth, even on a summer afternoon. And they were suspicious of strangers, too.

  But several fishermen at the wharf had hauled nets with North Pike, and once they reckoned Will’s resemblance, they directed him to a rooming house called Cochran’s Rest on Bramhall Hill. It was run by a shipbuilder who had lost everything—including a leg—when the British burnt the town in 1776.

  Cochran’s was a house befitting a rich man, thought Will, or one who had once been rich. The paint was peeling. Chickens picked over cracked corn in the front yard. A sullen old dog, asleep on the porch, raised its head when Will struck the knocker, then the head dropped of its own weight, and the dog went back to sleep. No one answered the door.

  “Lady of the house must be off buying provisions,” said Will.

  “Let’s go around to the back, then,” said Eve.

  “No.” Will pushed the door open. “We’ll go in like guests, not sneak thieves.”

  There was a center hallway, a wide stairwell, rooms on either side.

  “Hello?” said Will.

  In the sitting room to the right, a one-legged man was sleeping more soundly than the dog. Will took a step toward him, then saw Eve go past the window.

  Bad enough that he was in the house uninvited. Now Eve was poking around outside, just as he had told her not to. He hurried through the house to head her off.

  There was no one in the dining room to stop him and no one stirring the vat of stew over the kitchen cookfire. But if stew was simmering, it meant the lady of the house couldn’t be far.

  As Will came out the back door, he saw Eve walking toward the woodshed, drawn by the sounds of a man and a woman and a cord of wood thumping against a wall.

  “Eve,” said Will, “wait. Don’t—” But he was too late.

  Eve shrieked, “You filthy whoreson!”

  Then came a familiar voice: “Eve? Eve Corliss?”

  Will looked over Eve’s shoulder into the shed.

  North Pike was standing by the stack of wood, his white ass muscles flexed on a forward thrust, bare female legs over his shoulders, a jumble of skirt flowing over the stack of wood.

  The woman’s head popped up and she screamed, “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” demanded Eve.

  “Who am I? Who am I ?” The woman swung a leg and the stack of wood collapsed under her, so that she landed on the ground and her skirt fluttered back to her ankles but her breasts swung loose above the neckline of her blouse.

  “This is Mary Cousins,” said North. “And Will! Why … what a surprise.”

  “Pull up your breeches,” said Will.

  North looked down at his aroused and ready self and did as his brother told him, for once. Then he grabbed the woman, who slapped his hands away and came up s
creaming for them all to leave.

  “Not till I get an answer,” said Eve. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the lady of the house.”

  “Best put your tits back in your blouse,” said North, “or they won’t believe you.”

  Will could not keep his eyes from the woman’s breasts. Somewhere in the back of his head, he was thinking that his brother always picked pretty women … first Eve, now this “lady of the house” with the blond hair tucked under her mobcap and the red flush of anger on every bit of skin he could see.

  “I’ll put my tits back,” she shouted. “I’ll put ’em back. I’ll put ’em back, and you’ll never get another taste of ’em.” All of this as she pulled up her bodice, straightened her skirt, and snapped at Will. “So what are you staring at?”

  Will turned his eyes back to his brother. “Where is it?”

  Mary Cousins shouted at North. “Who are these people?”

  Eve shouted at Mary, “Who are you?” “This is my woodshed,” answered Mary. “Who are you?”

  Eve raised her chin, “I’m this man’s fiancée.”

  “Fiancee? You are not! I am.”

  North took a step back. “Now, girls, let’s leave off arguin’ and—”

  A gunshot quieted all of them.

  Instinctively, Will threw an arm around Eve, dropped, and considered how far he had come from the debates in Philadelphia to the chickenshitcovered floor of a woodshed in Portland, Maine.

  From the sound of the gun, it was a pistol. From the sound of the voice, it was an old man. “You can let him fuck you in the woodshed if you want, Mary Cousins, but if he’s doin’ it whilst the stew burns, I’ll shoot him dead.”

  “Comin’, boss.” Mary shoved past them. “Be gone before supper. All of you.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said North, sounding as if it were all a great joke.

  Mary spun back at him. “If I’m not to marry you, you’ll be owin’ me one Spanish milled dollar for every favor I give you, includin’ just now, even if you didn’t finish. And I’ll be damned if I don’t collect.” Then she stomped into the house.

  North turned to the others and said, “So … what brings you folks to Portland?”

  AS FAR AS Old Man Cochran was concerned, if the daughter of a New England shipper wanted to stay in his house and could pay in specie, he’d hear no objections out of “a housekeeper from Millbridge, Massachusetts, no matter how good she made stew or how fine her tits bounced in her blouse.” Cochran, it seemed, had abandoned dreams of bedding the housekeeper, but he still had dreams of reviving his shipbuilding business, and a commission from Thornton Corliss might be just the thing.

  So that night, the new visitors took their places at the house table, along with a husband and wife awaiting passage to Nova Scotia, a lumber cruiser bound for the north woods, and a button salesman out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And everyone sensed the tension in the dining room whenever Mary Cousins brought in another tureen of stew or plate of biscuits.

  It was not until Eve excused herself and went upstairs that conversation brightened, and it brightened again when Will and his brother excused themselves and went outside.

  But Will had nothing bright to say and only one conversation in mind, which his brother had been trying to avoid. Will took North by the armhole of his waistcoat, pulled him across the porch, past the old dog, out to the shadow of a big maple. Then he said, “I won’t ask you again. Where is the Constitution?”

  “I’m sorry, Will. I truly am. It’s”—North gestured to the distant mountains—”out there.”

  “Out there? Out where?”

  “I sold it to a New Hampshirite named Caldwell P. Caldwell. He’s in the state legislature. Met him at Rabbit Annie’s. Said he didn’t trust the Philadelphia convention any more than I did. So I told him what I took and why I took it.”

  “You took it to impress Eve Corliss’s father.”

  “That’s not true, and even if it was, it didn’t do me any good. She never let me near her. No matter what she says. And her father didn’t want any part of me.”

  “I don’t know who’s lying. You or her.”

  “Would I lie to my own brother?”

  “Why not? You sold my reputation and spent it on whores and—”

  He was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass in a chamber above, then by Eve’s sharp voice. “There’s my answer. Get out!”

  “I’ll get out”—that was the voice of Mary Cousins—”when I know which of us is a damn fool for liftin’ our skirts to North Pike.”

  “We’re both fools,” said Eve.

  “Maybe,” answered Mary. “But I’m collectin’ for every time I let him do me and claimed he loved me. You should do the same.”

  North said, “Little brother, I know where to buy two horses tonight. If it’s the only way to make things straight with you, I’ll take you to Caldwell.”

  “What about—?” Will gestured to the window. The curtains were fluttering in the breeze. The women’s voices were dropping to more conversational tones.

  “Nothin’ but trouble, the both of them,” said North. “Rescuin’ your reputation in the eyes of Rufus King, and rescuin’ mine in the eyes of my brother— those matter more to me than a pair of peeved women.”

  Will was inclined to agree, although he could not deny that he had come to enjoy Eve’s company. “Where do we have to go?” he asked.

  North led him out from under the maple, so they could see the distant panoply of mountains against the evening sky. “There’s a notch up there. We can get through and be at the Connecticut River in three days. Just you and me, movin’ fast. We’ll follow the river north to Lancaster, where Caldwell lives. We’ll buy back your document—”

  “With what?”

  “With this.” North reached into Will’s pocket and pulled out the watch. “Solid gold … worth a lot more than some old document.”

  “That’s stolen property,” said Will.

  “Like hell it is. Nathan Liggett give it to me just before he died. Put it right in my hand.”

  Will decided not to ask further about Liggett’s demise. He had a more pressing question: “When do we leave?”

  North looked up at the window, where the women were now talking softly, almost conspiratorially, as if they had come to some understanding. “The sooner the better.”

  BY NOON THE next day, Will Pike was watching a hawk ride the updrafts west of Lake Sebago, and he imagined that he could see what the hawk could see—hundreds of lakes and ponds reflecting the sunlight, so many that it seemed the land was afloat on a sea of fresh water; the rivers and streams, bringing the water and carrying it away; and the endless green forests rolling back from the coast like a blanket pulled up and over those sleeping mountains.

  “Always watchin’ the hawks,” said North, “ever since you was a boy.”

  “I’m watching the mountains,” said Will. “The closer we get to them, the closer we get to this Caldwell P. Caldwell.”

  “Do you want to know how he got his name?” asked North.

  “I want to know why you did it.”

  For a time, there was no sound but the horses’ hooves on the dusty road.

  Then North said, “I did it for America.”

  “You did it because you’re a selfish son of a bitch.”

  “I did it because people need to know that the government they’re makin’ in Philadelphia won’t be any better than the government they made in Boston, except there’ll be more of it … more rich men in more places havin’ more of a say in how fishermen fish and loggers log and farmers farm. They’ll put more taxes on us, too, and more laws … they’re even thinkin’ about who gets to carry a gun and who don’t—”

  “Everyone gets to carry a gun who wants to.”

  “Depends on what the fellers in Philadelphia decide.”

  Presently, they came to a rise in the road, and a rich valley opened before them—cornfields, pastures, a pond, a single mountain jumping a
bruptly from the landscape.

  It was so beautiful that Will reined up to take it all in.

  North stopped beside him. “I did it because the only way to settle this fine land is to let free men be about their business. And”—he grinned—”I did it because I’m a selfish son of a bitch. It comes from growin’ up without a mother, the one who died birthin’ you.”

  BY NIGHTFALL, THEY reached the town of Conway, just over the New Hampshire border, and stopped at the McMillan House.

  For his service in the French and Indian War, Colonel McMillan had been rewarded with a land grant in the Saco River valley. He had built a handsome twin-gabled house in the most northerly village in the township and turned it into a center of business—a store, a registry of deeds, an inn.

  It was a fine bit of gentility, thought Will, in a lonely place on the edge of the wilderness. McMillan greeted his guests in satin coat and waistcoat. He ordered a Negro servant to tend to their horses. And he showed them to a table in the taproom, amidst local drinkers and thirsty travelers. There, another Negro served them mutton stew and mugs of ale.

  “Now … about this Caldwell P. Caldwell,” said North, once they were seated and spooning stew, “he got his name because his mother and father were both Caldwells—cousins—one from the New Hampshire side of the river and one from Vermont.”

  “Cousins aren’t supposed to marry,” said Will.

  “No, but people be few and far between in the back country. If you live in a place where the only girl willin’ to wet your dick is your cousin—”

  “Pa always said controlling yourself was part of being a man.”

  “Bein’ a man is a complicated matter. Some do better at it than others.” North chuckled. “A feller once said that I’d mount a snake if I could hold it down. I said, hell, I’d mount a woodpile if I thought there was a snake hidin’ in it.”

  “You like woodpiles. Woodsheds, too.”

  “I was havin’ a fine poke till you and Eve spoiled it. But I never had Eve. I tried. Even told her I loved her. But—” North’s face froze at something beyond Will’s shoulder.