Dominion (40 page)

Because Stanton approved of his young intellect, Caleum had complete access to the books at Acre and was free to go and borrow a volume even when Stanton himself was not home. Caleum was at first intimidated by the big airy rooms. He had thought when he finished at Miss Boutencourt's that he was educated, and he had always carried himself as such. In the library at Acre for the first time, though, he felt his immense ignorance hit him like a storm wave slapping an untested vessel. It took all his self-control then to keep from showing untoward emotion, for his first instinct was to cry.

He threw himself at the books with zeal then, so he should be as strong in mind as in body. However, even in his enthusiasm, he took care not to go softheaded with their pleasures and also not to become like some men, who read only part of a book or, worse yet, learned only its reputation, then prattled on as if they had read the entire volume.

He moved slowly through the shelves, letting one book lead him to the next by way of suggestion, so that this folio would take him to that folio and in turn to such and such octavo; from there it was on to a certain quarto or duodecimo, then back to the original folio, and so on. When he could not find a clear answer to something using this method, he was scrupulous in questioning Stanton, especially about Greek or Latin terms.

“Mr. Stanton, what is the difference between
a priori
and
a posteriori
knowledge?” he might ask in those early days.

Stanton always answered these questions with the utmost patience and care, so that if the young man was led astray in his thinking it would not be because he had been provided faulty maps and teaching but because he had sought to go wandering in too curious a place.

One day while returning a philosophy text, a slim leather book with gilt lettering caught his eye because of its great beauty. When he removed it from its shelf, he realized it bore the name—Antigone—his grandfather had once told him to give his daughter should he ever be so blessed. Although he was not usually one for made-up stories, he opened the little book, intending to read it. As he gazed at the first line, however, he felt he was doing something wrong. “I have heard this story,” he reasoned to himself. “What if the second telling changes its original meaning?”

Although it was contrary to his usual discipline with books and their information, he had read enough by then to know stories that have been heard or otherwise interrupted were often very different than those seen with one's own eyes and mind. In this case he preferred Jasper Merian's rendering, with whatever faults of interpretation and possible misinterpretation, so chose but once ignorance over knowledge.

Once was a powerful king, whom the gods did favor.

Not that one needed books to receive a political education that summer. Everywhere people debated what was happening at Philadelphia, even as they prepared for the seasonal harvest. Slaves, hired men, landowners, and governors all argued among themselves, and sometimes with each other, whether they should break from the mother country and chart a separate course or hold to the path they were on. All men then were expert on the subject, and each held either that war was anathema to their interests or else the only way to secure their rights and rightful consideration.

The debate raged on even after the Congress voted for independence in midsummer. After the harvest games that year, which had become tradition, Caleum and Magnus drove into town to buy such winter supplies as they could not produce themselves on their farm.

What he paid that year incensed Magnus, as there was a tax on nearly everything he needed, which cut deeply into his cash profits. After loading the cart with wares, though, they headed to Content's, to forget the labors they had just completed, as well as the sting of giving money for nothing in return. The tavern was emptier than was usual for that time
of the year, and the two of them sat looking out on the square in reflective silence for quite some time, before Magnus said to Caleum at last. “You know I will die some day.”

Caleum was at first taken aback by this pronouncement and wondered whether something was the matter. “Are you ill, Uncle Magnus?” he asked, with gravest concern.

“No,” Magnus replied evenly, drinking from his mug. “But I will die one day all the same.”

Caleum thought about it for some time again before answering. “I understand.” They continued drinking their beers in silence for a while, before Caleum asked, “Do you think they will rebel?”

“I don't know. You?”

“I suspect.”

Magnus was thoughtful and withdrawn into himself then, reflecting on all the change he had seen and the change he knew he would not see. It was true that he was not ill, at least not in any immediate manner, but he had been aware since that spring of his mortality in a new way, and the mortality of their way of life as well. He wanted to impart some sense to Caleum of how it was, how it had been for him and his father—and Caleum's own father as well—when they were all there on the land together, and what Stonehouses was for all of them. He settled instead on asking, “Do you think the eastern field is getting overworked?”

“It would not hurt to rest it,” Caleum answered. “But it is still good land and only needs fertilizing and a rest.”

“It was always the most productive field.”

He asked next after Libbie and her condition.

“She will not stay off her feet, though she is otherwise well and good,” Caleum replied. “She says she isn't due until September, and might as well do now what she won't be able to then.”

“Well, I suppose you have to trust she knows best in this.”

“I suppose so.”

At last he put forth his question about the militia, very casually.

“There is nothing new to report,” Caleum answered, “but Stanton has us drilling in secret now, so I think he knows something we do not.”

“He is always first with news.”

They returned to the discussion of the past harvest, then finished their beers and went outside to claim the wagon. Magnus mounted on one
side of the vehicle very carefully, and Caleum took the reins on the other, neither of them self-conscious or apologetic about his age, yet both enjoying where they were in life at that moment. They rode leisurely then, back to the country, stopping to enjoy the great swells of greenery and lushness and the fields all under cultivation. When they arrived home, each of them went to his own place feeling somehow they had had a very meaningful conversation that settled something of great import that day. As each ate dinner with his wife and discussed his plans, both knew that the future would arrive only after a rupture with the past. That is the understanding that had blossomed between them, that they were in the final moment of that shared past, and as for the other part—what the future would be—that would be decided only in time. For what it was, though, and what they themselves believed in, they were very clear on that.

When Libbie gave birth in November it was a daughter, and Caleum was finally able to honor his promise to his grandfather by giving to her the name he had asked him to. Libbie, however, when Caleum told her the story of where the name came from, insisted they give her another as well, “Because we don't wish for her too many sorrows either.”

She suggested at first that they call the girl Lucky, but Caleum, being superstitious in such matters, thought that was too tempting of fate. Instead they agreed together on Rose, which was the name she was known by the length of her days.

In the weeks immediately after her birth they did not have the kind of celebration they had before on such an occasion, but at Thanksgiving that year mother and child were foremost in everyone's prayers. The other great topic, which was now ever-present before them, was the fighting that had broken out in Massachusetts between the colonists there and the Royal Army.

Caleum and Magnus were both ardent supporters by then not only of Berkeley, but also of independence in general, and Caleum continued to drill with the militia that winter in anticipation of being called to serve. It was then that he remembered the sword his grandfather had given him. When he went off to battle it was this weapon that would serve him best. He would also wear the coat Libbie had made for him,
with the scene of Stonehouses on its interior, and that was complete now with the birth of young Rose.

He would sleep nights in the future with it wrapped around him, swearing it to be warmer than any three blankets combined and that he never knew coldness when it was upon him.

The day he left Stonehouses was late in winter, and Magnus Merian had already turned his attention to the coming season. But Caleum Merian was not to be there as they tilled the earth that year and planted their hopes on another spring.

The two men had just mended a hole in the fence of the western pasture together and returned home for dinner in the main house. They were all seated, and had complimented Adelia on the meal, as Libbie nursed young Rose, and Caleum carved the roast. It was as he doled out the food that they heard the sounding of the knocker on the front door. When the great clacker sounded again, they knew it could only be one person in all of Berkeley.

Caleum went and answered Stanton's knock, and their neighbor entered the hall all in a flush. “We are sending a regiment up to join the Continental Army,” he said. “Naturally, I have volunteered the Berkeley militia to be among it.”

Looking at his face then, it was clear to all that what he was announcing had been a lifelong wish, which he kept secret until that moment. During the hours when he debated other men and seemed to take their opinions into consideration, it was just they themselves he considered, as his own opinion was etched already and he waited only for its soundness to become obvious to others. It was clear as well that all else in the world was present in his mind only to serve this one great purpose.

He could not stay for dinner, he said, having much else to do that night. He gave instructions to Caleum as to when the militia would assemble and depart, leaving him with his family until that time. Caleum went back to the table and delivered the news.

All in the hall were feverish with the excitement and uncertainties it induced. These they did not speak of aloud, because they did not want to burden Caleum with worry. Instead they tried to turn dinner that evening into a proper feast, eating and conversing until late at night and sparing nothing for Caleum's pleasure.

He was happy for these comforts of home, as he dined with his wife and child and the uncle and aunt who had reared him as their own. In his mind, however, he was already preparing himself to live without them.

He did not wish for bloodshed, but he could barely wait for the next day, when he would leave with the army. His impatience was only partly due to confidence; the other part was the fact that one night while practicing with his sword he looked at the metal and saw there a picture of himself, which enveloped both sides of the blade. He stood with the weapon in a position of conquering, and all around him men fought in battle. He was larger than the rest and cut through a great many of his enemy.

He startled when he first saw this, having never noticed such an engraving on the sword before, but he knew, when he did, that this was perhaps his own great purpose and duty to fulfill. That he did not fail in his responsibility was a thing as meaningful to him as Stonehouses itself.

His life made sense to him then, as he mounted his favorite horse the next morning and flew to join the battle, and the morning sun lit up and reflected off of Stonehouses as he sped away.

He is strong as any man in the thirteen states and his arms have grown thick as oak boughs from wielding his sword to hold them. To see him you would think he was born to martial life and never did know the country fields or hearth of family. It is these he misses most, however, on his long war campaign, which has stretched far beyond what he or anyone else ever imagined when he first left home.

He knows now how seldom victory comes swiftly; that it is always hard-won and bloody. As he waits for the battle to be joined again at Saratoga, the farmland reminds him of his home, which was called Stonehouses, and he wants nothing more than to return to his family and take up his plow again. He will be moored permanent to his land then—instead of in brief respites such as he enjoyed winters during these three years of fighting—and no more leave it for any reason. Yet deep within himself, he knows there is also another possibility: that movement is in his blood now, and nothing can suppress what it has taught, and even homecoming will not alleviate it. It is the privation of having been apart from everything dear to him with no certainty of returning. Some knowledge, he thinks, is never lost, nor the cost of acquiring it forgotten. It has made his brow heavy and wise seeming, but it is sadness he feels when he stretches out for the night.

It is something other in the morning—a hotness—as he anticipates the next battle.

In the early months, when the colonists first faced the Great War Machine, they tried to match it gear for gear. However, they quickly found their enemy was all levers of warmongering and cogs of empire-making,
and they were mowed down incessantly beneath it—or else humiliated by what they did not know. It was only when they learned to separate and attack individually that the spirit flowing between them had room to reveal itself, like a massive inevitable net, and they had any chance of winning.

As they sat around camp in early autumn, with the cooking fires aroar between them, the men took stock of their supplies and cleaned their equipment after the long days of silence, during which time the pastures of Saratoga had not known blood but only waiting. Lunch that noon was a thin soup provided by the farmer who hosted them on his land, augmented by a few wild hares some of the men had snared that morning. He sat under the cool October sun to share in the meager repast before the time when fighting would start up again. John Corbin, a freemason out of Burlington, who had fought so gallantly at Long Island and Brooklyn Heights, sat on his left. Herman Van Vecten, who had spent his twenty-fifth birthday in that camp and looked at least a decade older, was at his right. Carl Schuyler, who was commended for bravery at Trenton by their commander in chief, sat in front of him, slopping soup. There was also one called Ajax, a slave out of Maryland who had proved his worth at Brandywine. His other companions were a freedman called Mace, who took rather too much glee in the doings of battle, and a man called Polonius from Delaware, who had been promised his freedom for fighting and had surely won that already, snatching it from death again and again during the spring campaign just passed. The slave Julius, whom Caleum knew from youth, had also been enlisted by his master in the third year of the war, after he found out what the bounty was. For the fight he gave, though, one could not have paid enough, and the others soon forgot his status.