The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  “If that’s a promise,” she said, “I’ll go with you.”

  So they made their good-byes to Dewlap and his sad-eyed wife, then journeyed down from the mountains, south by the New Hampshire lakes, across a landscape embracing the beauty of June. They went by cart, by raft, and by foot, a hundred miles to Exeter, the capital.

  “AND WHO IS it that’s lookin’ for Mr. Caldwell?” asked the sergeant-at-arms outside the Exeter meetinghouse.

  “My name is Will Pike. Brother of North Pike. The late North Pike.”

  “Well, the gents on the other side of this door are doin’ some big talkin’, and lots of it, now that they’ve reconvened. Not sure Caldwell has time for chitchat. But I’ll give him the message.”

  Caldwell P. Caldwell sent out a note: “Meet in Folsom’s Tavern when convention stops for dinner. And order me a pint.”

  At two o’clock, the delegates poured into Folsom’s—gentlemen in suits and lace stocks, farmers in rough coats, backwoodsmen in buckskins, all elbowing for seats at the four groaning boards set up to feed them, all except for one. He stopped in the doorway and scanned the room as if he owned it. His big belly proclaimed him a man of property, especially among skinny New Englanders. His enormous round head proclaimed him a man of republican tastes, one who would wear no aristocrat’s wig to cover his baldness.

  When he saw the young man and woman seated at the end of a table, he went straight for them … or perhaps it was the mug that drew him.

  He sat, took a draft of ale, and said, “Will Pike, is it?” After offering condolences on North’s death, he called for plates of stew, then asked, “So … what can I do for you?”

  “You received my letter?” asked Will.

  “I did. Fine penmanship. The work of an amanuensis.” Caldwell shot a glance at Mary. “You know what that is, young lady?”

  “One who writes down the words of others,” she said.

  “Very good.” Caldwell toasted her, drank, licked foam from his lip.

  “Then you know why we’re here,” said Will. “I was Rufus King’s amanuensis.”

  “So that’s where that draft came from,” said Caldwell. “Your brother was never too clear on that.”

  “I want it back,” said Will, as blunt as fist.

  Caldwell smiled. He seemed a cheerful sort, not one to stand on ceremony or take offense. “I paid good money for that draft, son. Fifty Spanish dollars. Bought in good faith. I couldn’t just give it to anyone who lays claim to it.”

  “Receiving stolen property is a crime.” Will fell back on an argument he had hoped not to use. He said “crime” as harshly he could, trying to unnerve Caldwell.

  Caldwell kept smiling, as though Will Pike was not worth a frown. “Can you prove the document is stolen? Can you bring Rufus King up here and have him testify that it’s his handwriting on it?”

  Will looked down at the foam in his mug.

  Caldwell laughed. “There’s an old sayin’: ‘Don’t get in a pissin’ contest with a skunk.’ Well, I’m a lawyer. A trained skunk. Don’t argue with me, son, till you’re a little better … equipped.”

  “I’m not your son,” was the best that Will could shoot back.

  “Mr. Caldwell,” said Mary, “we’re worried that the document could fall into the wrong hands and affect the outcome of this convention.”

  “It could, if I had it,” answered Caldwell. “I’d show the delegates that New Englanders were thinkin’ on a bill of rights from the start and we should hold out till we get one, or maybe just hold out on general principle. When so many people say somethin’s good medicine, I get leery.”

  Will heard only Caldwell’s first sentence. “If you had it? You mean you don’t?”

  “Back last August, a feller from Rhode Island come through Lancaster—”

  Will felt pain shoot from his brain to his stomach, which turned, then to his leg, which started to throb.

  “—a Frenchman. Had a girl with him, and a big burly sailor, too. They knew your brother. The Frenchman asked after the document, and, well … I figured a Rhode Islander might need it more than I did. So I sold it to him. Fifty-five Spanish dollars.”

  Will could not speak. He did not think he could move. And if he tried to stand on that leg, he thought it might snap.

  Caldwell, who seemed to like filling silence as well as space, said, “There’s a lesson for you, son. If you can’t buy cheap and sell dear, make a little profit anyway.”

  Will managed to stand and dig into his waistcoat pocket for a few coins.

  Caldwell put up a hand. “The least I can do its pay for your meal.”

  As Caldwell dropped coins on the table, Will took Mary’s arm. Mary pulled away.

  Caldwell noticed this—he seemed a man who noticed things—then he pushed himself from the table and said, “Where will you be headed now?”

  “South,” said Will.

  “I’d head north,” said Caldwell. “Vermont. That’s the place to go. Good land in Vermont. Cheap and fertile. Vermont’s the place.”

  Will thanked him, still polite, “But—”

  Caldwell kept talking, “I own some fine land on Lake Champlain. I’m sellin’—”

  “Not interested.” Will started for the door.

  “What kind of land?” asked Mary.

  “The kind where a young family could settle.” Caldwell gave her belly an appraising look.

  “Is your land expensive?” asked Mary.

  “If you couldn’t pay, you could work it, pay rent,” Caldwell smiled as if to close a deal, “and I’d put it towards the sale.”

  “I have land in Massachusetts.” Will took Mary’s arm again.

  Caldwell kept smiling. “Sell in Massachusetts. Buy twice as much in Vermont.”

  Will ignored him and said to Mary. “Come on. Newport’s a long way.”

  Caldwell followed them out into the sunlight. It was market day in Exeter, so the town square was rumbling with carts and wagons, with horses clopping by, with New Englanders trading upon the fruits of their labor.

  “Son,” said Caldwell, “no matter what folks decide in New Hampshire or Rhode Island, that Constitution will be law soon enough. If I was you, I’d get on with my life.”

  “Washington told me to protect it with my life.” Will started walking.

  Caldwell looked at Mary. “Stubborn, ain’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Mary, “but so am I.”

  “Two stubborn people,” said Caldwell, “don’t always make a good stew.”

  Mary followed Will.

  And Caldwell shouted after them, “Do you know what they’re callin’ this Constitution? The Gilded Trap. A glitterin’ thing that will enslave many a good man—and woman—under the yoke of a government, a ruling class, heavy taxes, monarchy….”

  THE NEW HAMPSHIRE convention ratified the Gilded Trap the next day. Nine states were now committed to the new union, and the rest—Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island—were bound to join.

  By then, Will and Mary had walked ten miles to Portsmouth and, with their last bit of money, had taken passage on a packet to Boston.

  Word of New Hampshire’s ratification, carried by express rider, reached the city ahead of them. At Long Wharf, they were greeted by a young boy selling copies of the Boston Gazette and shouting the news. They would have bought a paper if they’d had a coin. As it was, they just listened.

  “So,” said Mary, “no more need to rescue a document to save the country.”

  “But the men who have the document have your money.” Will started up State Street. “And they killed my brother.”

  “And they’ve surely concocted a story by now. Rhode Islanders, in Rhode Island, accused by a man from Massachusetts and a woman living in Maine about something that happened in New Hampshire. Who’ll believe us?”

  “Any who’d believe Rufus King’s amanuensis,” said Will.

  “Did you spend the winter practicing with pistol and blade because you expect to
be believed? You disappeared from Philadelphia with papers belonging to Rufus King.” Mary stepped over a pile of horse dung. “He may have charged you with theft by now.”

  “But I wrote to him and explained myself. I wrote to him twice.”

  “Once,” answered Mary.

  “Twice … a note before I left Philadelphia, a letter that Dewlap mailed.”

  Mary walked a few paces and stopped. She dropped her bag on the State Street boardwalk and took out the letter he had written to King the previous fall. “I asked Dewlap not to send it. Too much apologizing. A sign of weakness.”

  Will’s confusion was greater than his anger. He simply shoved the letter into his pocket and said, “But we need money. And that document is still worth something.”

  “How much? Fifty-six Spanish dollars? Even if you get it back, you won’t sell it. You’ll give it to Rufus King.” She started walking again. “The only way to get my money is to kill the Frenchman and Curly Bill. And we’re no match for them.”

  As they walked through the city, the truth that had been growing between them grew plain: The mountain cabin had been a cocoon in which they had grown together. Now they had emerged into the world as independent spirits.

  Will no longer felt a burst of affection, followed by a surge of desire, every time he looked at her. Mary no longer embraced his dream of retribution as a pathway to her dream of respectability.

  At the door of the Gefahlz Clock Shop, as Will pulled the bell rope, Mary forced the issue. “Are we to be man and wife to these people?”

  “Married we will be welcome,” he said. “Unmarried also.”

  “Then … unmarried,” said Mary. “In separate beds.”

  “Fine, then.” Will pulled the bell rope again.

  She put a hand on his arm. “I’ve thought hard on this, Will … we don’t need to go to Newport. The country is secure. And my money is spent. Going to Newport can only bring trouble.”

  “Where then, if not Newport?”

  “To Millbridge and my father’s mill, if it’s not sold yet.”

  “To do what? Grind corn the rest of our lives?”

  “Then to Pelham … or Vermont. Maybe Caldwell’s right. Maybe Vermont’s the place.”

  “I must go to Newport. I must”—he surprised himself with his admission—”see Eve again. That day in the Notch, she bartered herself and my brother’s baby for our lives.”

  “She said the baby was Danton’s. Your own brother said it wasn’t his.”

  “I think they both lied. I must see her.”

  “You must see her?” Mary Cousins took her hand from his arm. “Am I a fool, then? As I was with your

  brother?”

  The door swung open, and Herr Gefahlz shouted into their faces, “Will Pike! A miracle comes to our door. And … and a greater miracle is a beautiful girl.”

  Mary looked at the big German clockmaker and managed a smile, though tears were brimming in her eyes.

  Will wanted to take her in his arms and promise to do whatever she thought best, but the joyous Hessian was sweeping over them, clapping Will on the back, grabbing the bag from Mary’s hands, ushering them into the house, shouting for everyone to come down and “see who has come for the horse that last year he left.”

  WILL AWOKE BEFORE dawn and found a note slipped under his door:

  Dear Will: I have changed since we left the cabin, but you have not. I see the world as it is, but you do not. You want me to be second to another woman, but I will not. I leave off trying to save you from yourself. Send your apologizing letters, search for your lost documents, see Eve if you must. I am going home.

  Will hurried downstairs, but she was gone.

  He saddled the black gelding he had ridden to Boston the year before; then he cantered across the quiet city and down the Neck, all the while hoping that he would come upon her. Soon the landscape widened into fields and farmlands, but he kept up hope for nine miles more.

  He overtook other riders and other walkers. He passed carts carrying food to Boston and wagons bringing goods to the countryside. But he met no young woman walking alone toward home.

  So he stopped in the village of Dedham, where the Lower Post Road and the Middle diverged. If he went toward Millbridge, he might still find her. But what would he do then? Settle down, surrender his ambition, and wonder forever if he had done the right thing? And what if she had gone in the other direction altogether? What if she had taken Caldwell’s advice and made for Vermont?

  There was only one thing for him. He spurred his horse onto the Lower Road.

  IN NEWPORT, A thunderstorm was blowing through, a perfect summer tempest of wind and rain and shafts of gilded sunlight slanting between the clouds. It drove people off the streets, which was for the best because Will did not want to be recognized. He left the black gelding tied up at the White Horse tavern; then he pulled his hat down and walked toward the waterfront.

  At Corliss Wharf, Pretty Eve and Pretty Sarah were taking on supplies. Curly Bill Barton stood at the head of the wharf, shouting at the dockhands.

  Will thought he saw Nathan Liggett’s gold watch fob flash on Bill’s belly, but he didn’t see anything else, because he kept moving, past Wall-Eyed Frank’s, past the next wharf, to a warehouse doorway where he waited for the rain to end and the night to begin.

  The air came in cool and fresh after the storm. The clouds caught the last glow of dusk, so that they glimmered pink that darkened to purple as they blew off easterly. Will watched them and waited until the glow faded. Then he made his move.

  He did not go directly toward the big yellow house. He came up the other side of the street, paused beneath a maple tree, and noticed black crepe over the door.

  Someone had died. Danton? Eve? The baby? Old Thornton Corliss?

  Will moved to the shadow of another tree, from which he could peer directly into the library. The Frenchman was sitting behind Corliss’s desk, writing. Was he alone? Where was Eve? Had childbirth taken her? Taken the baby? Taken both?

  Then the evening quiet was pierced by a baby’s cry.

  The Frenchman looked up, made a gesture, said something.

  Will felt relief fill his belly, because Eve was rising from a chair, lifting a lamp off the mantel. The light led her into the hallway and up the stairs. It appeared a moment later in the room above the library. It was set down, and the shadow of a mother lifted her child to her breast in the universal gesture of love.

  So it was Corliss who was dead, thought Will, dead in his time.

  And the child? North’s baby? Flesh of his flesh? Will told himself he had made the right decision. He would save mother and child from their imprisonment, and save the Constitution, too.

  But how? He stood in the shadows, watched, and wondered.

  Eve put the baby back in its crib. The lamplight crossed to the other bedroom and soon went out.

  In the library, the Frenchman took down a book and settled into a wing chair. From where he stood, Will could see only the pages, turning, and the Frenchman’s pipe smoke, curling.

  The tall case clock in the foyer chimed out nine, ten, eleven, the sound echoing muffled through the door. Otherwise, there was silence. A dense fog seemed to settle out of the trees and layer itself on the ground.

  TOWARD MIDNIGHT, THE Frenchman’s book dropped. A moment later, he got up, poured a glass of port, drank it in a swallow, and went upstairs.

  Will watched the bedroom window for ten minutes, twenty minutes. Then he crossed the street, pushing the ground fog ahead of him like smoke. He did not stop to compose himself, as he had a year before. Instead, he pulled his pistol and tried the door.

  The Frenchman had forgotten to lock it. Or perhaps he had no fear of invasion.

  Will stepped across the foyer to the library and almost tripped on a packing crate. He stopped for a moment so that his eyes could adjust and realized that there were more books in crates than in the bookcases.

  But the Constitution?

  He w
ent to the desk and tugged the drawers. Locked. All locked.

  In the room above, the baby stirred, cried briefly, then quieted.

  Will knew little about babies, but he suspected that this one would wake again. So he slipped off his boots and tiptoed upstairs. In the baby’s room, he slid down into the shadows and wondered if he should pull his boots back on, for he might need to kick with them or run in them. He decided to keep them off.

  It must have been near two when the baby began to fuss again. And the first outright cry drew a sleep-staggered mother into the room. As Eve bent over the crib, a hand closed over her mouth, and a voice whispered into her ear, “It’s me. It’s Will. I’ve come back.”

  Eve’s eyes widened in fright.

  “I’ve come back to take you away.” With a nod to reassure her, Will removed his hand.

  “Take me away?” she whispered. “From what?”

  “Why … the Frenchman.”

  “He’s my husband. He’s the father of my baby.”

  Will brought his finger to his own lips and tried to shush her.

  But her voice grew louder. “My father left him half of the estate, to be sure we would marry and stay married.”

  “But—”

  Eve bolted for the door with the baby screaming in her arms. “Robert!”

  “Quiet!” Will ran after her. “Quiet or shoot.”

  In the bedroom, the Frenchman was already on his feet, a huge shadow in the darkness. He gave an animal cry and leaped at Will, black hair and nightshirt flying.

  Will aimed the pistol, and Eve cried, “Don’t shoot.”

  In Will’s half-second of hesitation, the Frenchman was on him. So Will swung the pistol, smashing it into the big forehead, collapsing the Frenchman on the carpet.

  “Robert!” Eve scuttled over to her husband, while Will pulled back the hammer of his pistol and put it against the Frenchman’s unconscious head.

  “Will Pike, what are you doing?” Eve pushed the gun away.

  Will pointed it again. “He killed my brother. He kidnapped you—”

  The baby continued to bawl, a piercing, hysterical cry that Eve calmed by opening her gown and giving the child one of her breasts.