The Lost Constitution

by William Martin

  That sight drained Will of whatever fury was in him. He lowered the pistol. He crouched and looked into Eve’s eyes. “But I’ve come to save you.”

  “What makes you think I want to be saved? I can’t take my baby from his father. It would be unnatural.”

  Will sat back on his haunches. The pain that shot through his leg was almost as sharp as his shock. “Then … what you said in the Notch was true? He raped you?”

  Eve looked down at her husband, who was beginning to stir. “He took his advantage. So I ran away. To punish him. He said he pursued us because he loved me. He’s been kind to me ever since, and he loves the baby.”

  In all his imaginings of this moment, Will had never expected this. “But—”

  “We leave for the Indies on tomorrow’s tide, for Robert’s estate. Go, Will. Go before he wakes up and knows it was you. Then he won’t rest until he kills you.”

  Will looked at the pistol. “Then I should be killing him, like he killed my brother.”

  “Please, Will. My baby needs a father. Just go, and I’ll never tell.”

  Will looked into those eyes, glistening in the dark. On a night ten months earlier, they had intoxicated him. Now they were beams of light, burning away his illusions. He stood and shoved the pistol back into his waistband. “I’ll go. But not without the Constitution.”

  “Constitution?”

  “You went to see a man named Caldwell after the fight in the Notch.”

  “Yes. Because of Robert. He said that after all you went through to get that document, it had to be valuable. But Caldwell said he didn’t have it.”

  “Didn’t have it?” Will knelt again.

  Eve moved the baby to the other breast. After a moment, the infant burrowed.

  Will hardly noticed. He simply repeated, “Didn’t have it?”

  “Robert thought he was lying. But … afterward, we rode home through the Connecticut Valley, and in every town, they knew Caldwell … all the farmers, all the old soldiers. They said that if he couldn’t buy their land, he’d try to buy their money.”

  “Their money?”

  “Caldwell’s a speculator. He bought Continental money from veterans for pennies on the dollar. A new government may redeem it at face value. A huge profit for him.”

  “So he wanted ratification,” said Will. “Even though he pretended to be anti-Federalist. He bought the draft from my brother to keep it off the market, keep it out of the hands of people who might use it against ratification—”

  Outside, there was a noise. Two men were laughing in front of the house.

  “Curly Bill,” said Eve. “He lives back of the kitchen now, in the room that Robert had until he became master. Some nights, he steals a bottle of port from the library and goes to sleep. Tonight he has a sailor with him. The sailor will distract him.”

  The front door swung open, and two sets of footfalls receded through the house.

  “Go now,” said Eve. “Go by the front door.”

  Will looked into those eyes again. “I’ll always remember our journey.”

  “So will I. But I don’t love you. And I didn’t love your brother. And I don’t love Robert. Men are greedy, lustful, murderous creatures. But I love my baby.” She pulled Will’s face to hers and kissed him. “Now go.”

  WILL TOOK HIS boots, slipped silently down the stairs, stopped in the foyer, listened for footfalls. Instead, he heard a strange animal groan of pleasure and pain.

  He should have sneaked out. But curiosity drew him to the door of the library. The room was lit by a shaft of moonlight. It fell upon a pile of clothes on the floor. And something in the pile was shining—Nathan Liggett’s watch.

  Beyond the shaft of light were Curly Bill and the sailor, and what they were doing was yet another shock for Will Pike.

  The sailor was on his knees, his elbows on the seat of the wing chair, his ass in the air. And Bill was behind him, his breeches off, the port bottle in his hand.

  And …

  There came another strange groan from the sailor. And Bill gave out with a deep, gutteral groan of his own.

  Will thought to snatch the watch and be gone. Then he considered cutting Bill’s throat. Bill should be punished for that day in the Notch, for general thuggery, and by the lights of normal men or Bible readers, for this night of buggery.

  But Will had been saved once from murder. He would not submit to hatred now. Men might not always be what God intended them to be, but most were decent nevertheless, and he counted himself in that number. He also counted himself as smarter than most.

  So, while Curly Bill pounded himself against the sailor’s backside, Will pulled out his brother’s knife, reached into the room, and with the tip of the blade snagged Curly Bill’s breeches and dragged them across the floor. He slipped Bill’s purse from the pocket, but he left the watch.

  Then he tiptoed out and disappeared into the ground fog.

  IN THE MORNING, a note appeared beneath the sheriff’s door:

  Before the Pretty Sarah sails, ask First Mate Bill Barton how he came by a certain watch, the initials belonging to a businessman of Springfield, Massachusetts, murdered last year, by the name Nathan Liggett. Signed, A friend.

  Though the note might not convict Curly Bill of a crime he did not commit, it would certainly cause him a share of discomfiture, and that would be small satisfaction for Will Pike.

  By the time the sheriff appeared at Corliss Wharf, Will Pike had ferried across Narragansett Bay and was heading back to find Caldwell. But the purse he had taken weighed heavily on his belt. He did not consider that he had stolen it but that he had recovered it and so should return it to its rightful owner. He also wanted to tell the rightful owner that she had been right … about many things.

  It was a brilliant day, the sun near its apex but the air still fresh and dry, the kind of June day when summer stretched before New England like infinity before a godly man.

  Somewhere between Providence and Pawtucket, Will made his decision. He would leave the Post Road and go north along the Blackstone to Mill-bridge. But the black gelding, ridden farther in two days than in the previous ten months, went lame a short distance later, forcing Will to take to the shank’s mare while the horse hobbled behind.

  It was not long before the driver of a two-seat chaise stopped beside them. “Good day to thee, sir.” The man wore a simple black suit and broad-brimmed hat.

  From his manner of dress and address, Will took him for a Quaker. “Good day to … you, sir.”

  “May I be of some assistance?” The man had a narrow ascetic face, but there was a sincerity about him that inspired trust. “Where dost thee travel?”

  “Millbridge, sir, on the Blackstone.”

  “I go no farther than Blackstone Falls in Pawtucket, but perhaps one of the Friends there might do a bit of horse-trading with thee, so that thou may be on thy way. Climb aboard.”

  And that was how Will Pike came to meet Moses Brown, one of the wealthiest merchants in Rhode Island, a man of foresight and judgment who was traveling to Pawtucket, as he explained, “because it has come time for Americans to learn to spin their own thread.”

  Will thought Brown spoke metaphorically until he elaborated: “A man bound for Millbridge knowest whereof I speak. The Blackstone River is like many of God’s gifts, a wondrous thing that needs only the appreciation of men to prove its value.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Will, without much certainty as to what Brown was talking about.

  But Moses Brown seemed a most garrulous Quaker. “Water power. God’s own muscle. From Lake Quinsigamond to salt water at the Seekonk, the Blackstone flows fast and true, so that honest men may grind their grain and cut their logs and do a hundred other things to lighten their load. Once the load is lightened, men have more time to bear witness. ’Tis a great gift, and one that God intends us to use greatly.”

  “I have not given much thought to water power, sir. I’m the son of a farmer.”

  “A noble professi
on, the tilling of the soil. But”— Brown glanced at Will’s knife and pistol—”thou art armed for more than scything wheat.”

  Will closed the buckskin jacket. “I’ve seen much of the world, sir, and too much of life.”

  “Older but wiser, art thou?”

  “Older, at least,” said Will.

  “A wise answer.”

  That afternoon, Will Pike enjoyed simple hospitality and honest horse-trading on Quaker Lane in Pawtucket.

  At sunset Moses Brown brought him down to the river to witness the power of God made manifest, and Will understood why this smart old Quaker would want to build a mill at the mouth of the Blackstone.

  Will stayed until dark, listening to the water roar, feeling its power vibrate into the earth, and watching the purple of night spread across the sky. And he thanked God for the mistakes he had not made in Newport. He thanked Him also for the opportunity to get up in the morning, go to Millbridge, and unmake the mistake that he already regretted.

  THE NEXT MORNING, he went north on Great Road, through small villages, across meadows, in and out of woods, always with the river nearby like a great vessel pumping lifeblood through the countryside.

  The town of Millbridge shaped itself into a neat square around a town green. A white steeple held the northwest corner in place. At the southeast corner, Great Road from Rhode Island met the Middle Post Road, which led to the single-arch stone bridge. On the other side of the river, stood the Cousins Mill. It looked like a modest house attached to a wheel, but as there was little grain to grind in June, the wheel was still.

  An old man was hoeing a garden out front.

  Mary was scrubbing clothes on a washboard in a tub by the door. When she noticed the rider, she stopped in midmotion. Then she straightened, brushed the back of her hand through her hair, wiped her palms on her apron.

  Will dismounted and tipped his hat to the old man, who stopped hoeing and gave him a squint. Then Will took the purse from his belt and held it out to Mary.

  “How much?” asked Mary.

  “Forty-two Spanish milled dollars. I owe you eight more.”

  Before she took it, she asked, “Are you stayin’ or goin’?”

  “That will be your decision.”

  She took the bag and flipped it to the old man. “There’s rent for a year, Pa. You can’t sell this place out from under me now.”

  The old man was frail and skinny, except for huge hands and head that seemed like husks of a youth long past. He fingered the coins and said, “Who’s your friend?”

  “A man who’d throw away his life pursuin’ a document, when he should honor it by practicin’ what it preaches.”

  “Is that so?” The old man made a face. “How?”

  “By enjoyin’ life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” she said.

  Will looked at the old man. “Your daughter confuses the Declaration with the Constitution. But the man she describes is a man she knew yesterday. Today, you might call me a man ready to … to spin my own thread. I’d also like to marry your daughter.”

  “Would you? Would you now?” The old man nodded, as though Will had asked the price to grind a bushel of corn. “I suppose I should go in and clean up, then.”

  Will and Mary waited until the old man had made himself scarce, and then, though they had been apart only a day, they fell together as if it had been a year.

  “You were right,” said Will. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it.”

  “So am I.” She kissed him. “And there’s the end of it.”

  “Too much apologizing,” he said. “A sign of weakness.”

  Somewhere above them, a hawk circled….

  THE NEW ENGLANDER was an industrious creature, whether Quaker or Congregationalist, immigrant or native born, Federalist or anti-Federalist, who soon came to be known as a Democratic-Republican. And when New England industry was set into a framework shaped by a Constitution, and God’s power flowed from the rain to the rivers to the mills that rose beside them, great things happened.

  A year after Will Pike met Moses Brown, an Englishman named John Slater came to work for Brown. Slater carried in his head the plans for the newest British spinning technology and a genius for marketing what he spun. Soon families were leaving their farms to work in the mills at the mouth of the Pawtucket, and a new world was born.

  In time, the clatter of spinning machines could be heard up and down the Blackstone. Men learned by watching Brown and Slater. They built machines of their own, or copied Slater’s, or bought Slater patents. They invested in land and river rights and built mills to spin yarn, then bigger mills to loom cotton cloth from the yarn.

  And one of those men was Will Pike, who boasted to his friends that his wife had a knack for childbirth, a mind for business, and a patch of golden ground by the Blackstone.

  Their first mill resembled a great barn grafted to the back of the original Cousins Mill. Then it rose into the sky. And as it grew, a family grew with it. So Will and Mary built a fine house beside it, then an even finer house—with a grand portico and white pillars—across the river.

  And every day, Will watched the millwheels turn. And some days, he looked for the circling hawks and wondered what they could see, but he never once regretted the decision he had made.

  And the Blackstone ran, and the decades were carried on the current….

  ON A SPRING morning some fifty years after ratification, a leather-bound volume arrived at the house with the white pillars. It was called Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, by James Madison.

  Accompanying the book was a letter from Eve Corliss Danton.

  Dear Will, I thought of you recently. There has been much talk of late regarding those days in ’87, because of this volume. Accept it as a gift from someone who remembers you “in your youth.” Our youths have long since fled. Our spouses are long since dead. Mine has been gone so long I barely remember him. The passing of your Mary must yet remain a wound unhealed. But know this: At your side she built something that will endure. She was a lucky woman.

  More than that, thought Will, he had been a lucky man.

  And the book? He opened it and began to read and in an instant he was carried back to 1787 and his youth….

  TWELVE

  PETER FALLON READ THE title page: Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, by James Madison.

  “Very rare,” said James Fitzpatrick. “But you knew that.”

  “First edition.” Peter inspected the leather binding, the rough-cut edge, the marbled endpapers. “Published by the Library of Congress, part of the three-volume Papers of James Madison.”

  “Signed?” asked Evangeline.

  “Published posthumously,” said Fitzpatrick, chief librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a skinny bachelor with a photographic memory for all the manuscripts, books, and artifacts in the collection, no mean talent at a place that had been gathering historical treasures since the end of the Revolution.

  Peter often said that, based on the dollar value alone, Fitzpatrick presided over more assets than the CEO of a mid-cap on the New York Stock Exchange.

  “I wish they paid me like one,” was Fitzpatrick’s standard answer.

  It was a slow day. There were no scholars working, so there was no need for whispering in the Ellis Hall reading room.

  Evangeline slipped the book from Peter’s hands. “Published in 1840. Madison died in—”

  “—in 1836,” said Fitzpatrick. “He kept notes through the whole convention. He sat in front of Washington and wrote down everything that was said in a kind of shorthand, then transcribed it at night and saved it for posterity. He didn’t want it published until all the Framers were dead, because he didn’t want the public to see how contentiously they argued over the shape of the government, over issues like slave representation, which they were still arguing about fifty years later.”

  “He took the rule of secrecy seriously,” said Evangeline.

  “We know t
here were three drafts of the Constitution.” said Peter.

  “Right” said Fitzpatrick.

  “Do any of the first drafts still exist?”

  “Not only do they exist, we have one. It’s part of a set.” Fitzpatrick’s grin lit up his librarian’s yellow complexion. “And it’s annotated.”

  Peter and Evangeline looked at each other, then both said, “Annotated?”

  Fitzpatrick raised a finger. “Wait here.”

  And they did, nervously. Was this what they had been looking for? Had they found it already? Right under their noses in the Back Bay?

  Evangeline paged through the Madison book.

  Peter looked at the pictures on the paneled walls: ancient New Englanders who had lived long enough to sit for portraits but hadn’t gotten around to it until after they’d lost their teeth. In New England portraits, no one seemed to smile. And how puzzled would they have been by the parade outside? Cars crawled along on the Fenway, while a stream of people in Red Sox paraphernalia headed for the park.

  Afternoon playoff game … against the Yankees, no less. Reason enough not to drive from New Hampshire into the Back Bay traffic, but now that Peter knew what they were looking for, there was no better place to start than at the MHS.

  Fitzpatrick came back with three folders. “I don’t bring them out often, but for Peter Fallon and my favorite travel writer …” He placed them on a table.

  Folder One: “August 6, 1787, Committee of Detail draft printed by Dunlap and Claypoole from the proof copy. Sixty printed, sixteen in existence that we know of.” Folder Two: “September 12, Committee of Style Draft, same printer, sixty copies, fifteen extant. Folder Three: “Final copy, the first public printing in the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, September 19, 1787.”

  Fitzpatrick opened the folders:

  The first two drafts were printed on long folio sheets, in large type, offset right, with wide left-side margins for annotation. The margins and the text were covered in neat handwritten additions, deletions, and changes in punctuation. The final version of this set, on heavy-duty newsprint, was clean.