Uhhhhhh, moaned the March wind. The gray sky seemed low enough to touch the treetops. Cato sat on the coachman’s box like a black statue. The horses were plodding past the place on Morristown’s green where Caleb Chandler had found Caesar Muzzey’s body. Some of the same snow, beaten into pocks and hollows by last night’s rain, was still there.
Beside Caleb in the sleigh sat Flora Kuyper in a purple dress and traveling cloak. She had spent the night at O’Hara’s Tavern. She stared straight ahead, her eyes rigidly averted from his forlorn gaze. They stopped in front of the Ford mansion. Caleb tried to help her out of the sleigh. “Cato will do it,” Flora said, withdrawing her hand. “I don’t want to touch you if I can avoid it.”
Yesterday afternoon, they had driven here in the same sleigh with William Coleman and Major Benjamin Stallworth beside them. Coleman had persuaded Stallworth to let him change to male clothes. Red Peggy’s fluttery mannerisms and voice had vanished with her rouge and skirts. The man who had seduced Flora confronted them, a compound of willful sensuality and domineering pride. When they brought him to General Washington, agent Twenty-six had at first arrogantly refused to confess or reveal anything. But Stallworth had trumped the bearded queen with predictable savagery. “Tell us what you know or Mrs. Kuyper hangs tomorrow morning,” he had said.
Caleb, his eyes on Flora, had almost protested. But he remained a prisoner of necessity. “Does this proposal have your approval, General Washington?” Coleman had asked.
“Yes,” Washington said. His voice had been as hard as Stallworth’s, without the iron rasp.
The threat had worked. William Coleman had begun to bargain with them. In return for Flora’s safe conduct to New York, he had agreed to reveal Beckford’s route and plan of attack. Once Flora was in New York, he said that he might, under certain conditions, agree to provide the names of the men in his network in Morristown.
After locking Coleman in the town jail and leaving Flora under guard at O’Hara’s Tavern, Stallworth had proposed putting a brigade of infantry and a dozen cannon in the woods along the Warwick Road to annihilate Beckford and the British cavalry. Washington had demurred. He wanted to defeat and disgrace Beckford as an intelligence director. “It will blind them for a few months and give us the time we need to revive this army,” he said.
He pointed out that it would also give Caleb unshakable credit with the British. How could they distrust a spy who had saved four hundred dragoons from slaughter? “You may be able to use this good faith to free Congressman Stapleton,” the general added in his casual way.
Now, the morning after Major Beckford had stumbled back to New York in mortified disarray, Flora Kuyper was about to join him. Stallworth had cryptically ordered Caleb to bring her to headquarters first. An aide escorted them to George Washington’s office. The general closed the door and studied Flora for a moment.
“You think ill of us, madam?” he said.
“Why shouldn’t I?” she said.
“You think we set this young man to snare your affections, out of malice?”
“What else can I think?”
“There was, from your point of view, some malice in our policy. We prefer to call it patriotism, or necessity. But as far as Mr. Chandler was concerned, he had no choice but to obey our orders. I saw how difficult this was for him, Mrs. Kuyper. It was clear that his heart belonged to you before we put it under the orders of his country. Now that we’ve met, I can understand why.”
“You’re too late with your explanations and your compliments, General,” Flora said.
“You alone can be the judge of that,” Washington said. “But if you’ll let an older, if not wiser, man advise you, the heart eventually heals its wounds, especially if there’s another heart to which it can turn for honest sympathy.”
“I’ve never had honest sympathy from any man in my life except my father.”
“Not true, not true. I’ve seen with my own eyes Mr. Chandler’s sympathy. Let me assure you, madam, you also have mine. I hope you don’t see our sending you to New York as banishment.”
“Are you trying to turn me into a spy for you?” Flora asked.
“No. I’m trying to tell you that as far as the government of the United States is concerned, you have nothing to fear.”
“I despise your forgiveness as much as I despise Mr. Chandler,” Flora said. “I’ll take advantage of it in only one way. Let me bring my slaves with me. I assume that my farm will be confiscated. I don’t want them sold at auction like cattle.”
“Confiscation can be prevented,” Washington said. “I have some influence with the civil government of New Jersey.”
Flora shook her head, all willful passion. “I don’t trust you. I want them with me.”
“How will you support them and yourself in New York, madam?”
“I intend to free them.”
“I look forward to the day when a free country will permit me to do the same thing for my blacks. But how will you support yourself without their labor?”
“I intend to pursue the profession for which you and Mr. Chandler have trained me, General - whore.”
Washington lowered his head for a moment. “Madam,” he said in a mournful voice, “I accept the rebuke in the name of the United States.” He raised his head and became the commander in chief again. “Mr. Chandler, take Mrs. Kuyper to the jail to say good-bye to the prisoner, William Coleman. He insists on it as one of the conditions for giving us further information. Do you have any objection to seeing Mr. Coleman, madam?”
“Not in the least,” Flora said. “I find him no more - or less - despicable than Mr. Chandler or you.”
At the Morristown jail, William Coleman’s wrists and ankles were manacled and leg chains wound in heaps around his feet. He looked ghostly. The shadowy cell seemed to have sapped some of the defiant vitality he had displayed when he was captured.
“Flora, dearest,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“He brought me,” Flora said with a contemptuous nod toward Caleb. “He’s my keeper for the moment.”
Coleman tried to take her hands. Flora stepped back, refusing to let him touch her. He accepted the rejection and dropped his weighted arms to his sides.
“This is the last time we’ll meet,” he said in a sad, steady voice. “You have good reason to hate me, I know. But in these ten years past I’ve done nothing but out of love for you. We shared the same hard fate, to have been born too low for our dreams and desires.”
“For your dreams. Your mad, grandiose dreams,” Flora said.
“A gambler’s dreams. But my last card can still recoup most of your losses. Tell Beckford I’ll die a loyal servant of the King, confident that His Majesty’s generosity will protect you. Assure him I’ve betrayed no one and a mutiny is still possible.”
For a moment Caleb was confused. This did not sound like a man who was going to negotiate for his freedom by revealing all the members of his network once Flora was safe in New York. Studying that arrogant, sensual face, stamped now with mourning, but also suffused with a remarkable resignation, Caleb realized that William Coleman did not want freedom. In London, he was a convicted felon who could offer Flora nothing but a life of poverty and disgrace. By dying in Morristown, he could finally prove the truth of his love for her, the love that he had avowed and betrayed too often. Caleb saw that William Coleman had made Flora his faith, his hope, his charity. From the moment of his capture he had done nothing, said nothing, that was not connected to his obsessed, corrupted love.
“I don’t want your king’s protection, William,” Flora said. “I won’t accept it even if it’s offered.”
“Yes, you will,” Coleman said with a blaze of his extraordinary gray eyes.
Flora shook her head. “I’m going to practice the profession you taught me in London, William. But I won’t gamble the money away.”
“No,” he said, stumbling toward her over his chains. “No. I forbid it.”
Flora stepp
ed back again and the chains caught Coleman. He swayed on them, groping helplessly toward her.
“Good-bye, William,” Flora said.
She turned and walked out of the jail. Caleb followed her. Behind them, William Coleman roared: “I forbid it. I forbid it. Flora!”
Outside, Caleb tried to help Flora into the sleigh. Again, she asked for Cato’s hand. As they repeated this ritual of detestation, Benjamin Stallworth rode up. Caleb wondered if he should tell the major what he had just heard from Coleman. He decided to say nothing. He did not really think that Coleman’s mutineers, shorn of their leader, could wreck the army. Perhaps he also owed something as a human being to William Coleman. Who else but Caleb Chandler understood the nature, the power of the love that had destroyed him, its unique compound of pity and beauty, sadness and desire?
Major Stallworth handed Flora an order, signed by General Washington, permitting her to take her blacks and any other movable property she chose to New York. A half-dozen of Major Henry Lee’s green-coated cavalrymen waited to escort her. Caleb gripped the side of the sleigh, staring at Flora’s face in frozen profile. “I won’t let you do it,” he said. “I’ll come to New York and stop you.”
“If I ever see your lying face in that city, I’ll tell Beckford the truth about you. I’d enjoy seeing you hanged.”
Caleb saw that she was beyond his reach, beyond the reach of them all, in a world of loss that she was determined to explore to its depths. It was a glimpse of damnation as the theologians described it, the rejection of even the possibility of faith or hope or love. Where, to whom, could he turn to save her? Washington had tried, with his worldly common sense. Stallworth, the minister manqué in the service of Mars, did not think she was worth the trouble. Every other minister Caleb knew would declare her beyond the mercy of New England’s God.
He did not know how long he clung to the sleigh, staring at that beautiful, hatred-suffused face. “Will you stand free, Mr. Chandler?” Cato finally called.
Caleb withdrew his hands and the sleigh surged up the road toward New York. Would she turn her head, give even a hint of regret, irresolution? She never moved. The sleigh rounded the bend in the road about a quarter of a mile beyond Washington’s headquarters and disappeared.
“Listen to me, Chandler,” rasped Benjamin Stallworth. “You’ll be on your way to New York tomorrow. Under no circumstances are you to go near that woman. You’re there to get Stapleton out of the Provost, remember that. Remember you’re the one, with her help, who put him there. Are you listening to me, Chandler?”
“I’m listening,” Caleb said, his eyes still on the empty road.
But in his mind roared a voice that echoed William Coleman’s farewell: I forbid it.
In his cell in the Provost prison, Hugh Stapleton crouched in a corner on his pile of straw, trying to escape the chilling current of night air that the March wind swept through the glassless window. His head ached, his nose ran; he had the worst cold of his life. After three days of prison food, his stomach alternated between hunger and nausea. The meat was foul, the soup rancid with grease, the bread as hard as stone.
Footsteps ascended the stairs. He placed his eye to the small, barred opening in the cell door. Were they bringing George Washington to share this misery? If Beckford’s plan had succeeded, the general would have been captured yesterday. But the British would probably try persuasion first; only if Washington were defiant would they consign him to the Provost.
One part of the congressman’s mind dreaded Washington’s appearance. His capture would mean the end of the rebellion. Another part of his mind almost welcomed it. He needed an ally, an example, if his own defiance was going to last much longer. On the other hand, perhaps a captured Washington would counsel negotiation, a qualified surrender. The congressman’s ordeal would be over.
Stapleton got a glimpse of Walter Beckford’s fat face in the flickering lantern light of the passageway. Then the lock turned, the door swung open, and the director of British intelligence walked into the cell. He was accompanied by the chaplain from Connecticut, Caleb Chandler, wearing the same threadbare cloak and old-fashioned suit he had worn the night they had met on Morristown green.
“Mr. Stapleton,” Chandler said, extending his hand, “how nice to see you again, sir. I wish it were in better surroundings.”
“So do I,” Stapleton said, ignoring his hand. “And I wish you were in better company.”
“How are you this evening?” Major Beckford asked.
“As cold - and as much an American - as I was two nights ago. Have you captured General Washington?”
“Our plan worked perfectly,” Beckford said. “Now all we need is your signature on this statement calling on Congress to negotiate peace.”
He drew a piece of paper from his pocket and thrust it at Stapleton.
“I couldn’t possibly sign such a statement without conferring with General Washington,” the congressman said.
“That’s out of the question,” Beckford shrilled. “He’ll soon be on his way to the gallows. But you can still save your neck if you cooperate.”
The congressman began to look closely at Major Beckford. His tone was much too strident for a man who had just executed the most daring coup of the war. He was not exuding the sort of confidence he had displayed at Flora Kuyper’s house. There was something wrong with the expression on Caleb Chandler’s face, too, something fraudulent about his supercilious smile.
“I begin to suspect you’re a liar, sir,” Stapleton said to Beckford. “I wouldn’t be surprised if General Washington is sitting down to supper in Morristown at this very moment. Would to God I were with him.”
“No matter where Mr. Washington is,” Beckford said, “you are here, sir, in our power. If you want to get out of here alive, if you don’t want your reputation ruined, you will sign this statement.”
“If I have to choose between being known as a fool or a traitor, I prefer the fool. It has the merit of honesty. I have been a fool. I was never a traitor and nothing you say or do to me can make me one.”
“Flora Kuyper is here in New York. She’s prepared to describe your meetings with her in detail.”
“The Royal Gazette will sell out that edition,” Stapleton said. “I hope the editor makes it clear that you set her to the business. If the world knows me as a fool, it should also know you as a swine.”
For a moment Major Beckford looked as if he might burst into tears. “Talk some sense to him,” he all but wailed to Caleb Chandler.
The chaplain replaced his supercilious smile with a sanctimonious manner. “Let me first admit that Mr. Washington has not been captured,” Chandler said in an infuriatingly unctuous tone. “That was merely a stratagem of Major Beckford’s, to speed your persuasion. The plan to seize the great man miscarried, but I was fortunately able to warn the major and the British cavalry in time and they returned to New York without the loss of a man.”
“You’ve been in this bastard’s pay from the start?” Stapleton shouted. “You goddamn Yankee hypocrite.”
“I became a servant of His Majesty out of a conviction that only his goodness can restore peace and prosperity to America,” Chandler said.
“Piss on His Majesty and His Majesty’s servants,” the congressman roared.
“Sir, your language shocks me,” Chandler said. “I’m trying to save you from unnecessary pain and suffering.”
“Thus far,” Beckford added, “I’ve protected you from Provost Marshal Cunningham. If I walk out of here without your signature, that protection will be withdrawn.”
“The more I hear, the more I think you’re trying to save your own neck, Major,” Hugh Stapleton said. “As for this contemptible man of God, I’m sure he’s like every Yankee I’ve ever known, ready to sell his soul for the right price.”
The turncoat chaplain’s eyes squinted with indignation. “Your blasphemous reference to my calling is bad enough, sir. But to heap contumely on the place of my birth-”
; “Don’t waste any more breath on him, Mr. Chandler,” Beckford snapped. “We’ll see how patriotic he feels after a week or two in a dungeon below stairs.”
“May God have mercy on you, Mr. Stapleton,” Chandler said,
“Go to hell,” the congressman said.
The frustrated persuaders departed. For a few minutes Hugh Stapleton felt good. The argument had been almost as invigorating as a warm fire in his cell. Bur a whoosh of the March wind through his window reminded him of how chilled he was, how isolated. He lay down on his bed of straw and realized that the failure to seize George Washington would only make the British more determined to wring some profit out of capturing him. While the circumstances of his capture, the motive that had brought him to Flora Kuyper’s house in Bergen, would incline the Americans to abandon him.
A half-hour later, Stapleton heard the familiar stomp of Provost Marshal Cunningham’s boots on the stairs. He opened the cell door and gave the congressman a grim smile. “We’ve got orders to escort you to the accommodations you deserve, you rebel bastard,” he said. An Irish sergeant almost as big and mean-looking as Cunningham gestured with a musket. They led the congressman down the winding stairs to the prison’s dungeons, fifty feet below the ground. Here the cold had a harsher, more abusive power. The below-zero days of January and February still lurked in this subterranean world.
Cunningham opened an iron door and pointed into a cell not much wider than a grave. There was an inch of water on the floor. The walls oozed slime. “I won’t go in there,” Hugh Stapleton said.
Cunningham punched the congressman in the face, sending him flying into the watery muck on his back. “Sweet dreams, rebel,” the provost marshal said, and slammed the door.
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