by Mike Ashley
“Of course not,” snapped Chad Pearson. Fright was giving way to anger. “But someone did poison my brother, you say. Who? How?”
Joseph paced, passing the pot of arsenic from hand to hand, juggling possibilities in his head until he was dizzy. The oven-heat of the warehouse made him dizzy too, and he stepped outside. The sun was like a hammer, so he moved against the building. The shady strip was a popular place this blistering summer, and posted along the wooden wall were notices announcing auctions or the sale of pirated goods.
Unintentionally, the student read the broadsides, as he read everything that came before his eyes. One poster announced a forthcoming auction conducted by Pearson and Co. “Prime Likely Negroes, both Male and Female, from Ten years of age to Twenty, imported the Last Week from Nevis, and were Brought from Guinea. Seasoned against Smallpox. Also a House Servant, able to Read, trained to Table, raised from a Boy –” The rest was obliterated by the black word CANCELLED. The holder’s sudden death had thrown his estate into limbo.
Chad Pearson’s jaw and fists were knotted. He looked ready to smite the wall, or Joseph. “You haven’t told me yet! Who killed my brother? Who?”
Joseph shrugged his shoulders like some Quebecois. “I don’t know! Too many could want him dead! The puzzle needs sorting, wheat from chaff! It’s best, I don’t know . . . It’s best to ask, which single person would most prosper from his death?”
Pearson growled, Treat sighed, while Joseph rubbed his temple. Something nagged him, buzzed in his brain like a rattlesnake’s warning. Stock still, he waited for the idea to settle and take root.
Yet Chad Pearson, furious, grabbed Joseph’s shoulder and spun him around. “I demand –”
Joseph gazed over the man’s shoulder at the auction broadside. Slowly he breathed in Latin, “ ‘I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of a man.’ ”
“Eh?” asked the parson and merchant.
Joseph pointed at the poster, turned without a word and ran up the street, careful not to spill the arsenic. “We must make the field! We must stop the burning!”
“What?” called Pearson. “Come back here!”
“What can you say?” objected Treat. “They won’t like it!”
But Joseph was gone, running flat out.
All of Newport filled a pasture near where the tarred Cuffy hung in his “iron suit”. Children grabbed the bottom of the cage and squealed to be swung. Adults jammed the shade along the stone walls or else sat on horse blankets under parasols. In the full glare of the sun, a stake was surrounded by pine shavings from a mill and branches culled from nearby orchards: applewood burned so hot it would melt andirons in winter. Against the stake was propped a four-legged stool with a cracked seat. In the seat sat Hazel, feet amidst the fagots, chains on her wrists and ankles. A noose around her neck bound her to the stake, half-throttling so she sat bolt upright. At four corners of the pyre, men with batons keep gawkers at bay. The sheriff talked to a large man sweating in a purple coat, gesturing to the pyre with a birchbark torch. Foremost on blankets the Pearsons sipped madeira proferred by the house servant Prosper. Far back in the sun stood the colony’s few free Negroes, including Maroca’s brood. The onlookers droned like cicadas.
The buzz deepened when Joseph hopped the stone wall, Chad Pearson and Reverend Treat trotting behind. The sheriff cursed Joseph in round tones, Reverend Treat and Chad Pearson shouted him down. Joseph held his chest, breath rattling and sobbing. He held up the tin, but the sheriff slapped it out of his hand so white powder dusted everyone. “What the hell’s that?”
“Your ‘snake’!” gulped the student. “Arsenic! It kills by stomach cramps, making a man swell up and suffer terrible thirst, so he drinks more and poisons himself further! But it wasn’t stirred into the madeira, because no one else fell sick. Pearson suffered from gout. Straight madeira was too rich for his blood, so he took his wine watered, the only family member to do so. And who fetched him the water? It wasn’t poor Cuffy yonder! He fell sick with stomach cramps himself, rest his soul, and a man would hardly drink wine he’d poisoned. But there was another in the household who might prosper by Pearson’s death!”
Joseph’s rasping was quiet, but everyone heard. “At the bottom of a broadside for a slave auction, Master Pearson advertised for sale a house servant raised from a boy, trained to table, able to read. A young servant who ran errands to the docks, where he could read an auction notice, and lay hand to arsenic. Rather than be sold, this young slave poisoned his master’s water. Pearson’s sudden death froze his assets and stalled the slave’s own sale.”
The stunned crowd swivelled to stare where the Pearsons sat in the place of honour. The family members drew back, open-mouthed, until the house slave Prosper stood alone. His dark face went grey as smoke.
A muttering, then a howl rose. Men broke from the crowd, shoved the Pearsons aside, grabbed the terrified slave. At the stake, the sheriff’s men loosed the rope throttling Hazel and hurled her off the stool to make room for Prosper, who shrieked and blubbered as a score of hard hands banged him in the seat. A chant rose. “Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!”
Joseph caught Hazel’s chains and led her into the sturdy arms of Maroca. Hazel was more dead than alive with fright and shock, shambling like a statue of ebony wood, chains clinking. Yet she enfolded her son, kissed the head of flat black hair. Prosper screamed, prayed, begged as he was lashed with rope, swaddled like a mummy. Men slapped his head, kicked fagots under his feet. Cries went up for a torch.
Keeping his back to the morbid scene, Joseph pushed amidst the Pearsons to fix the mistress with a deep burning stare. “Hazel has suffered much in her innocence, being damned and incarcerated and near-burned after losing her husband. She’d have precious worth in your household now. Will you give her to me? As a fee for uncovering the true murderer?”
The merchant’s wife ran a rapid calculation in her head, then discarded it. “Yes, yes, you may have her. She wasn’t good for much anyway. Only to my husband and brothers-in-law,” she flared.
“You are all witnesses, eh?” Excited, Joseph’s French mannerisms surfaced. “She belongs to me. Then witness, too, I set her free and charge her to the care of Maroca, a freewoman.”
He turned to go, but Chad Pearson caught his sleeve. “Wait. Prosper poisoned Francis to stay in our household? That makes no sense! What difference the master?”
The student shrugged. “What does a slave own? Nothing, not even himself. Only his station, the only life he knew. Think on Cuffy, who despite seeing his wife abused, fought to save his beloved master with a snake panacea. ‘The slave loves the whip.’ And remember this: ‘Master, be good to your slaves, for know that you have a master in Heaven.’ ”
A sheriff’s man had unlocked Hazel’s manacles. Sweeping his arms wide, Joseph gathered in Maroca and her children and Hazel and her baby, urged them, pushed them, hurried them down the dusty road towards Newport and home. He had to drag Quamino, who stood stricken. Tears spilled down her cheeks, the first tears he’d seen on any black. “Quickly, apace!”
They weren’t fast enough. Prosper screamed as flames licked his legs. To cover the noise, Joseph thought to recite. But all he could quote was, “ ‘If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, whose fruit threw death on else-immortal us, if lecherous goats, if serpents envious cannot be damn’d; why should I be?’ ”
_________
* The first French & Indian war, King William’s War of 1689–97
The Uninvited Guest
Edward D. Hoch
Edward Hoch continues to be a literary phenomenon as the world’s most prolific living writer of crime and mystery short stories, having just passed the 900 mark. He is also approaching his fiftieth anniversary as a writer. In all that immense output Hoch has written quite a number of historical mysteries. Probably his most celebrated series are the narratives of Doctor Samuel Hawthorne who looks back over his remarkable career in the twenties and thirties when almost
every month there seemed to be a new impossible crime to solve. Some of the early ones have been collected as Diagnosis: Impossible (1996). Then there’s his western gunslinger turned sleuth, Ben Snow, believed to be a reincarnation of Billy the Kid, some of whose stories are included in The Ripper of Storyville (1997). A more recent series is set at the time of the American War of Independence and features Alexander Swift, aide to George Washington.
The spring of 1779 was an unusually quiet time for the American colonies in the midst of their war of revolution. Perhaps it was a result of the imperceptible merging of the seasons that year. Neither side in the struggle found it necessary to break camp and move out with the coming of spring because in truth there had been hardly a snow or frost since mid January.
General Washington and his wife Martha were with the troops at their winter quarters in Morristown, New Jersey; when Alexander Swift arrived there on April first in the company of Molly McVey. The camp itself consisted of sturdy huts and cabins, a far cry from the conditions at Valley Forge two winters earlier. And spring had indeed come early to the region, with buds already visible on the fruit trees.
“All is quiet,” Washington said, greeting Swift with a firm handshake. The general was a tall man with big hands and feet. At age forty-seven his hair was still reddish-brown, and his large grey-blue eyes looked out from a pale face slightly marked by smallpox. “It is as if the war had gone away.”
“The support of the French has been a great help,” Alexander Swift replied. Indeed, since France had signed a treaty of aid with the revolting colonies and sent its fleet briefly into American waters the British had evacuated Philadelphia the previous year, leaving it to General Benedict Arnold to enter the city with a corps of Massachusetts troops. Arnold, wounded at Saratoga and unable to walk without support, had been made military commander of the capital. It was a post suitable for a wounded hero who was also an old friend of General Washington.
“And this would be Miss McVey?” Washington asked, extending his hand to the slender, dark-haired young woman at Swift’s side.
“Excuse my rudeness. General Washington, may I present Miss Molly McVey, who was of great help to me at Camp West Point.”
“A pleasure,” the general said. “I have heard much about you, Miss McVey. Will you be living in this area?”
She blushed nicely. “I am travelling with Mr Swift at the present time. I may be returning north soon.”
“So might I,” Washington responded, walking back to take a seat behind his desk. “In a month’s time I plan to move north along the Hudson. I may set up headquarters at New Windsor, beyond West Point on the eastern bank.”
“A wise move,” Alexander Swift said. “It will bring you closer to the enemy activity.”
“Meanwhile, I have a particular assignment of a social nature for you – for both of you, as a matter of fact.”
“A social nature?” Swift could not imagine what the general had in mind. Until now his special assignments as a civilian had involved informal action against the British, sometimes as a spy.
“Two old friends, General Benedict Arnold and Miss Peggy Shippen, are to be married in one week’s time. I cannot attend personally, but I would like you to represent me and take a gift from Martha and me.”
“So Arnold is marrying again!” Swift knew the wounded hero only slightly, but was interested in the news. Benedict Arnold was a widower with three half-grown sons. “He must be nearly forty.”
“Thirty-eight, I believe,” Washington said. “Peggy is much younger, of course, not quite nineteen. She is the daughter of Judge Edward Shippen, a prominent Quaker and something of a Loyalist, I do believe. I’ve known her since she was a child.”
“They remained in Philadelphia during the British occupation?”
The general nodded. “And I daresay Peggy waltzed with British officers. Young women her age can be terrible flirts. I visited the city this past winter and saw them all, including Arnold. These are difficult times for him. He harbours some bitterness at others being promoted ahead of him. When our rebel troops re-entered the city, Arnold placed Philadelphia under martial law. Shopkeepers resented that. As you know, Arnold has since resigned his post. But a faithless friend of mine, Joseph Reed, now president of the state’s Supreme Executive Council, has actually brought charges of malfeasance against him, and Congress is considering the matter.” He lowered his voice slightly. “I must admit, Alexander, that when I visited Philadelphia this past winter I found the general living in a grand style of which I could not approve.”
“How is his leg?”
“Not good. He needs help standing upright, and four men must assist him in and out of his coach. Still, he claims to be improving. Certainly young Peggy sees some improvement, but then love is blind.”
“Where will next week’s wedding be held?”
“At the Shippen home in Philadelphia. It will be a quiet ceremony, and I am sorry I cannot be there. Will you go? You can both attend as my representatives.”
Alexander Swift glanced at Molly. He could see that the suggestion intrigued her. The social world of a Philadelphia wedding was a long way from the tavern at West Point where she was employed. “Certainly,” he told General Washington. “We would consider it a great honour.”
Washington had sent a message ahead to inform the family that Swift and a guest would be attending in his place. Arrangements were made for Alexander and Molly to arrive the evening preceding the wedding and spend two nights with Major Cutler, an aide to Benedict Arnold.
Cutler proved to be a slender, taciturn man in his early thirties, about Swift’s age, who also would be attending the following day’s ceremony. His wife Louisa was more talkative. She was a plain but lively woman a few years younger than her husband. Molly liked her at once, and the two fell into a lengthy conversation following dinner.
Swift and Major Cutler stepped outside for a cigar, but the major still said very little. “How is Arnold’s leg mending?”
“Better.”
“Does he still need support for standing and walking?”
Cutler drew on his cigar. “Sometimes he tries hopping about. He’ll probably use his cane at the wedding.”
“Do you think the British are gone from this city for good?”
“I think so.”
“It was a great victory for our side.”
The slender officer shrugged. “They pulled out, we came in.”
Later, when they were beneath the covers of the great feather bed in Cutler’s guest room, Molly spoke quietly to Alexander Swift. “Louisa Cutler told me some interesting things about Benedict Arnold while you and the major were enjoying your cigars.”
“I’m sure it was more interesting than our conversation.”
“She said Peggy Shippen’s brother was arrested as a Tory sympathizer, and most of their rich friends are not really loyal to America. Peggy herself was courted by Major John Andre, a British officer, and wore a lock of his hair in a locket on her necklace. More than that, Louisa hinted at Arnold’s extravagant living and illegal business partnerships.”
Swift wasn’t surprised at the latter. “Washington mentioned something about charges of malfeasance being brought against him.” He considered the situation as he drifted into sleep. Washington was an old friend of General Arnold. Perhaps he’d had more than one reason for sending a representative to the wedding in his place, especially a representative like Swift who’d handled special assignments in the past.
Washington’s gift to the bride and groom was a silver sugar bowl and creamer fashioned by Paul Revere. It seemed a fitting wedding present, linking these patriots who had fought the British from the beginning. If Arnold was marrying into a family of Tory sympathizers, Swift felt sure he could hold his own against them.
They left their horses at the Cutler house the following morning and the two couples travelled by carriage to the Shippen family home, the box containing Washington’s gift on the floor at their feet. It was Thursd
ay, the eighth of April, four days after Easter, and the Philadelphia streets were bright with springtime. In the front yard of the Shippen home the apple trees were blossoming weeks ahead of schedule.
It was to be a quiet ceremony, with only the family and a few friends and neighbours in attendance. The minister was a solemn Church of England gentleman who stood apart with Mr Shippen. Swift introduced himself and Molly, expressing General Washington’s regrets and presenting the gift he had sent. Judge Shippen, in turn, introduced Peggy’s mother, brother, and two older sisters, as well as Arnold’s boys. The guests milled around the large parlour speaking with family members, and Swift counted about two dozen people in all. He walked over to where a broad-shouldered General Arnold sat in full dress uniform, awaiting the appearance of his bride.
“I’m Alexander Swift. You probably don’t remember me, sir.”
Arnold’s stern hawkish features turned toward him, the blue eyes seeming out of place in such a swarthy face. When he stood with the help of a thick walking stick he was shorter than Swift remembered. “You’re General Washington’s man.”
“That’s correct. He is sorry he could not be here in person. Both he and Martha send their regrets and promise they will visit you both at their earliest opportunity.”
A man in formal clothes had begun to play a harpsichord, and all conversation ceased. Suddenly the bride appeared on her father’s arm. Peggy Shippen, twenty years younger than Arnold, had the blossoming freshness of a young girl in springtime, a slim blue-eyed beauty who seemed totally in control of the moment. Her hair was piled high on her head in an elaborate European style and she wore a flowing white wedding gown. As the minister stood by, Judge Shippen delivered her to Benedict Arnold. For a moment Swift was reminded of his own marriage, which ended with the coming of the revolution when he left New York while his wife Amanda stayed on with a British officer.