Through the door burst Rebecca Hogg and Anne Kannady. With them was Anne's husband, James, one of the members of the Night Watch whom Clara had overheard yesterday on Roosevelt Wharf, talking about Africans as criminals. His thickset friend, Robert Hogg, Rebecca's husband, was with him.
“Where's your master?” Rebecca Hogg said to Clara.
“My master? I have no master,” Clara said. “You know that as well as I do, Mrs. Hogg.”
“A likely story,” Rebecca Hogg snarled. “Don't you pay him a share of what you make for your fucking?”
“I'm half owner of this tavern, Mrs. Hogg. I don't fuck sailors,” Clara said.
“John Hughson!” Rebecca Hogg said. “Come down here.”
Hughson soon appeared, pulling on his coat. He looked frightened, even though he towered over Mrs. Hogg and her friends.
“We have evidence that some of the square pieces of eight robbed from my store last night were passed here for drinks. Do you know anything about it?” Mrs. Hogg said.
“Not a thing,” Hughson said.
“Our witness told us it was Vraack's Caesar who passed it. A known thief.”
“I saw no square pieces of eight,” Hughson said.
“We've got a warrant to search your premises,” Constable Kannady said.
“Search away,” Hughson said.
The two men stamped upstairs. Clara watched, dread consuming her. Was it the beginning of their destruction? In twenty minutes, the constables returned, looking glum. “There's nothing to be found,” Kannady admitted.
Anne Kannady turned to Mary Burton. “Do you know anything about this, child?” she said in a kindly voice.
Mary shook her head.
“I've heard you complain about this man when he sent you to me for
candles,” Mrs. Kannady said, gesturing to John Hughson. “If you proved him a thief, I'm sure the judge would free you of your indenture.”
Clara shuddered at the hungry light in Mary's eyes as she considered this offer. The girl's gaze flicked to John Hughson's bulk. Did she notice his hands opening and closing? “I know nothing of thievery,” Mary said.
The constables and their wives departed, Rebecca Hogg loudly urging them to summon a magistrate and at least arrest Caesar on the basis of the witness who saw him with the money. Hughson glared at Mary. “If you ever say a word,” he said. “You'll be in the river next morning.”
“I won'tâI won't ever!” Mary wailed. She was terrified, as well she should be. Hughson could break her neck with a single blow. “Don't let him hit me, Clara,” she begged.
In the Indian part of her soul, Clara knew it would be wise to kill Mary Burton then and there. But the Christian part of her soul could not tolerate such a crime. “Finish the floor,” she said. “We'll be opening in ten minutes.”
Hughson asked Clara to find John Ury. It looked as if Caesar was about to be arrested. What if he talked? “He'll deny everything,” Clara said. “Passing a square piece of eight proves nothing. But those constables may come back. You better get that stuff from Hogg's shop out of here.”
“Why?” Hughson said. “It's tucked away under the stairs. They didn't come close to finding it.”
It was hard to deal with a man who was both stupid and arrogant. Clara went looking for John Ury. He was tutoring Adolphus Philipse's son. She knocked on the door of the family's redbrick mansion on Broad Street. A plump young woman answered the door. “Go around the back,” she said.
“I'm here to see Professor Ury,” Clara said.
“Go around the
back
!
”
the obnoxious creature said and slammed the door in Clara's face.
Clara trudged down the alley to the back door. A black cook led her up a rear stairs to the second floor and pointed down the hall. She found Ury reading French to a fat boy of twelve who looked like a male version of the young woman who had answered the front door. “Mr. Ury?” Clara said.
He closed the boy's door and they conferred in the hall. Ury paled when he heard about Caesar. “He's essential to our plan. No one else can lead the Africans,” he said.
“Hughson wants to see you. He's very upset.”
“I'll come within the hour.”
Back at the tavern, Clara found Sarah and John Hughson in an anxious conference upstairs. “Caesar's been arrested,” Sarah said. “We just heard the news from Cuffee. He's in a panic, thinking he'll be next.”
“I'll try to hire a lawyer,” Clara said. “If Caesar holds his tongue there's nothing to worry about.”
“There isn't a lawyer in the city who'll take his case,” Hughson said.
He was right about that. John Ury arrived an hour later. He had talked to a lawyer he trusted, who told him to forget the idea. Only if Caesar's master, old John Vraack, pleaded for him, as he had often done in the past, was there any chance of an early release.
The Hughsons' oldest daughter, also named Sarah, rushed into the room. She was a tall pretty girl of about twenty, with her mother's looks and father's lack of brains. “The constables came and took Mary away!” she said.
John Ury decided to leave immediately. “There's nothing to be gained if I'm arrested too,” he said.
Later in the afternoon, Rebecca Hogg and her constable husband returned with Undersheriff John Mills. He was the same slovenly man who had run the city jail when Clara spent a night there with Caesar. Mrs. Hogg was bristling with triumphant exultation. “Mary Burton has told us a great deal,” she said. “She's sure my stolen property's hidden in this house. She said my husband trod upon it but wasn't cute enough to see it.”
50
“She's a damn liar. I'll give her the whipping of her life when she gets back here,” John Hughson roared.
“You'll do no such thing. She's been remanded to the protection of the sheriff until this matter is settled. If her word proves true, you'll see no more of her as an indentured slavey. She's told us how you've all but worked her to death.”
“The girl is a liar and a whore!” Sarah Hughson said.
“Tell us where the goods are, John,” Undersheriff Mills said. “You may get out of this with your whole skin if you play an honest part.”
Hughson's small brain churned. Clara could almost hear the machinery grinding. “Maybe I know where some things is hid. I'll bring them to you,” he said.
Sarah Hughson could only stare in horror. Clara began seeing everything through the red haze. Hughson went upstairs and returned with a bundle of linens and a silver candlestick. Rebecca Hogg snatched them away. “You goddamned thief. You'll hang for this. You and your wife and your black whore!”
“You all better come along to City Hall,” Undersheriff Mills said.
“I had nothing to do with this,” Clara said.
“You own half this tavern, don't you?”
“Yes.”
“Come along then. Or get dragged.”
In City Hall, a constable was sent to the house of Judge Daniel Horsmanden. Mary Burton was brought in by another constable. Caesar appeared, shackled hand and foot. Mary testified that she had seen the Hughsons accepting stolen goods from him.
“But not her,” she said, pointing to Clara. “She was always tellin' Caesar to change his ways.”
“But she knew about his thefts?” Judge Horsmanden asked.
“Everybody in the place knew about them,” Mary said.
“Did you ever traffic with this woman?” Horsmanden asked Caesar.
He shook his head. He was looking forlorn. “She's an honest woman, Your Honor. I should've listened to her.”
“If she were honest, she would have notified the proper authorities of your thievery,” Horsmanden said. “I hereby order all these people arrested as accessories to the crime of theft, committed by the slave, Caesar.”
The doors of the courtroom swung open. Old John Vraack hobbled in, presumably to make his usual plea for Caesar's services. Horsmanden did not even let him open his mouth. “You're too late, Mr. Vraack. Caesar is through baking bread in this city.”
“And well he should be,” Vraack said.
Clara noticed he was carrying a bundle in his hand. He dropped it on the floor and it made an ominous clank. “Here's a parcel of linen and silver plate I found under my kitchen floor this morning. No doubt it belongs to Mrs. Hogg.”
“Are you going to set bail for the others, Your Honor?” Undersheriff Mills asked.
“Ten pounds each,” Horsmanden growled.
The Hughsons looked dismayed. As usual they were living on the edge of bankruptcy. “I'll pay it, Your Honor,” Clara said.
“Where did you get that kind of money?” Horsmanden said.
“I earned it with hard work six days and nights a week at our tavern,” she said.
“Undersheriff, go directly and collect the money before you discharge one of them,” Horsmanden said.
They all trudged to Clara's house on Maiden Lane, where she pulled her chest of Spanish silver dollars from beneath the bed and counted one hundred fifty of them into Mills's grimy hand. They parted company and the Hughsons and Clara returned to the tavern. Their daughter, Sarah, had opened the taproom. It was filling with the usual mixture of whores, blacks, sailors, and soldiers. Everyone talked of Caesar's bad luck. Many of the soldiers had helped him dispose of his loot in the past. They were mostly Irish and had little regard for English laws or army regulations.
When Ury arrived around ten o'clock, Clara and the Hughsons beckoned him upstairs. He had been consulting with lawyers on their behalf. “Most of them tell me Caesar won't be hanged. He'll be banished to the West Indies. You may get a similar sentence. You'll have to move to some other colony. The goods aren't worth that much money and there's no evidence to connect you to reselling them.”
“What about me?” Clara asked.
“If Caesar and everyone else maintain your innocence, you'll get little more than a warning.”
They went back downstairs in a somewhat better frame of mind. Ury seemed to have talked to level-headed, respectable men. Caesar looked like he would be the biggest loser in their bad luck. Clara found herself thinking perhaps the Master of Life had heard her prayers and was removing Caesar from the city. It would instantly deflate the larger plot. Ury seemed to accept this. “We must try to understand God's mysterious will in such things,” he said to Clara as they walked into the taproom.
By now it was very late. Cuffee and a half dozen other Africans, including the leader of the Spanish Africans, Antonio, were at the bar. Sailors were propositioning whores in the corners of the room. Clara replaced Sarah Hughson behind the bar. The Africans were drinking hard. They were paying in square Spanish pieces of eightâa reckless, even an insane thing to do.
“Caesar told me where he stashed the Hogg money,” Cuffee said. “I went out the back door of Vraack's place as the constables came in the front.”
“We may have seen the last of Caesar,” Hughson said. “Unless we fancy a trip to the West Indies.”
“The hell you say,” Cuffee snarled. “They ain't goin' to get rid of him that easy. He gave me an order as I ran. We're goin' to obey it, like true soldiers.”
“What order?”
“Fire the town. When it's burnin' bright, and the whites are in the streets, start shootin', cuttin', slashin'. When Caesar comes out of that jail, he'll be king of New York.”
Clara shuddered. There was destruction in every word of that rant.
“We're going to free those Africans from the
Golden Mermaid
and give them all swords,” Antonio said. “They're Ashantis. I've learned the one word they need to know. It means kill.”
The red haze descended once more, shot through with streaks of darkness. Clara saw blood drooling down their faces. The Evil Brother still ruled New York.
“
I
DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE TRYING to tell me,” I said.
“How can I make myself clearer?” Clara said. “There's going to be terrible trouble here in New York. You'll be much safer in New Jersey.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I've had your dreamâthe whole city in flames.”
“You think the French or the Spanish are going to attack us?”
“What else could it mean? Take Hugh and go to New Jersey tomorrow. I was talking to Malcolm today. He said it might be a good idea. You're feeling poorly.”
“I'm not feeling that bad,” I said. “The New Jersey house is a wreckâ”
Had Clara changed her mind about Malcolm? Was she trying to exile me to New Jersey while she enjoyed him in New York? I could think of no other reason for this urgent suggestionâsad evidence of how little progress I had made spiritually, in spite of my resolutions to change during my sojourn in Holland. My growing pregnancy contributed to my Moon-Womanish feelings.
“I have no designs on your husband's marvelous body,” Clara said.
That only sharpened my suspicions. “I want to testify at your trial,” I said.
Clara almost groaned with exasperationâor despair. Or both. Caesar's plan for burning New York called for setting fire to Fort George on the first night that a strong west wind began to blow. That could happen tomorrow.
“Malcolm's going to testify,” Clara reminded me. “So will many others. Peter Van Ness is a good lawyerâ”
Malcolm had hired our former London lawyer-poet to defend Clara. Van Ness too had returned to New York disillusioned with our British overlords.
“I want to defend my reputation,” I said. “That judge, Daniel Horsmanden, is my uncle's closest friend. They're going to try to slander both of us. If I run off to New Jersey it will look like I have something to hide.”
Clara gave up and retreated to Hughson's. A month had passed since
Caesar's arrest. He would be going on trial in another three weeks, when the Supreme Court began its next session. Cuffee and Antonio were trying to rally the city's slaves but it was much more difficult without Caesar. Their organization had been haphazard, at best. Now, the Night Watch had been doubled and their orders included a strict enforcement of the ban on slaves in tavernsâespecially in Hughson's. It was difficult and frequently impossible for any of them to move freely around the city without arousing the anger and perhaps the suspicion of their masters.
Did Clara want them to succeed in spite of these obstacles? She only knew she was still not prepared to betray them. She could do that in a five-minute talk with Malcolm Stapleton. She was even more unsure why she wanted Catalyntie, of all people, to survive, since her Seneca sister was a walking talking paradigm of white vices, from arrogance to greed to vindictiveness. But she remembered the woman who had rescued her from oblivion at Hampden Hall, the woman who had freed her without a moment's hesitation as soon as she had the power.
Why wasn't she more concerned about Malcolm? He would be a prime target of the uprising. Clara had long since decided every warrior had his individual
ondinnonk.
Nothing could kill one of them until he reached that predestined fate and nothing could save him from it once the deadly moment arrived. She also remembered her dream of Malcolm, flanked by those angelic figures.
At Hughson's, everyone lived in mute terror, unable to decide whether the Africans' plan would rescue or destroy them. John Hughson had burnt the book in which he had listed all the slaves who had agreed to join Caesar's army. But he could do nothing about the passionate hope and even more passionate anger Caesar had stirred in their hearts. The only man who might have done something was John Ury. But he remained passive, equally divided between a different hope and their common fear.
So things drifted until March 17, the day on which the Irish in New York celebrated the birthday of their patron saint, Patrick. Hughson's was jammed with Irish soldiers from Fort George that night. They were joined by dozens of Celts among the sailors in the harbor. More often than not, the toast was “A free country.” Dozens of times, Clara had heard the soldiers bemoan the oppressive vise that the English had clamped on Ireland. It confirmed Caesar's contention that the plotters had little to fear from the garrison. An appeal to their Irish blood would persuade most of them to switch sides if they thought they had even a fair chance of survival.
Toward midnight, John Hughson muttered in Clara's ear. “Be prepared for trouble. Take the cash out of the drawer and hide it in the closet under the stairs.”
“Why?”
“Little Quaco is going to fire the fort tonight. Can't you hear the wind? It's blowing thirty knots from the west.”
For the first time, Clara noticed the March wind was beating against the windows and roof and howling in the alleys. She had willed the fateful sound out of her mind. Quaco, one of Eugenia Fowler's footmen, was the logical African to burn the fort. The abuse he had endured from his mistress for half his life had bred a violent hatred of whites in his heart. His wife was the governor's cook and Quaco was a regular visitor to the governor's mansion inside the fort's grounds. For the next hour, Clara, heart pounding, waited for the upheaval to begin. She concocted a mad scheme of rushing to the Stapleton house and offering herself as protector against the knife and ax wielders who would soon be swarming in the streets.
Two, then three more hours passed without the dreaded cry that would send everyone fleeing from their houses to meet assassins on their doorsteps. Eventually, the last drinkers stumbled off to their beds and Hughson could only mutter: “Something's gone wrong. I hope they didn't catch Quaco. He's got a loose tongue.”
As they were bolting the doors and shutters, three figures emerged from the night: Antonio, the leader of the Spanish slaves, Caesar's partner, Cuffee, and Quaco. “What happened?” Hughson said.
“The devil I know,” Quaco said.
“He put the coals under the eaves of the house exactly as Caesar told him to,” Cuffee said. “But they didn't catch.”
“I'll do it again tomorrow,” Quaco said. “I want to get even with His Excellency, the son of a bitch. He don't let me see my wife.”
He was drunk. No wonder the coals had not caught. They parted with Quaco reiterating his vow if the wind held. Clara hoped he would drink himself unconscious and forget about it.
The next day, around one o'clock, as Clara left her house on Maiden Lane for the trip across town to Hughson's, she noticed the wind was still blowing hard from the west. She had barely closed the front door when a cry of “Fire!” rang through the streets.
Men burst from houses and shops. “Where? Where's the fire?” they cried. In this city of shingled roofs and mostly wooden houses, no word carried more terror.
“The fort. Fort George is ablaze!”
Clara followed the running men to the tip of the island. By the time she reached the Bowling Green, flames were roaring above the walls of the fort. Someone inside was frantically clanging the bell of the chapel as a superfluous fire alarm. The hundred-man garrison was milling around outside the walls, shouting for buckets, for the town's fire engines. These soon arrived from their storage place in City Hall. But they made little
headway against the flames. The stiff wind blew the water back in the hosemen's faces when they lifted their nozzles to reach the burning roof. A bucket brigade organized by Malcolm Stapleton did no better. The heat scorched them off their ladders.
The soldiers, finally taken in charge by their officers, rushed into the governor's house and carried out official records and furniture and some of their guns and ammunition from the barracks. But the rampaging flames quickly put an end to this activity. Soon it became evident that all the buildings in the fort were beyond redemption. The fire spread from the governor's house to the chapel to the barracks.
With the fort's whole interior ablaze, many of the bucketmen and hosemen retreated, fearful that the gunpowder would explode. Malcolm Stapleton conferred with the governor, who assured him that was very unlikely. The powder was stored deep underground to prevent such combustion. But most of the firemen were unconvinced and they clustered haplessly around their engines, letting the fort burn.
Glowing embers began drifting uptown on the wind to land on roofs of nearby houses. The dry shingles began smoldering. The weary firemen rushed to prevent these new fires, spraying water on dozens of roofs while panicky residents dragged furniture and other valuables into the street. Word of roofs burning farther uptown increased the general panic. More and more firemen abandoned their posts and raced to rescue wives and children and valuables from their own houses. As twilight descended, it began to look as if the entire city would be ablaze by midnight.
Clara saw Antonio and Quaco and Cuffee once or twice on the edge of the crowd, exultance on their faces. John Hughson rushed up to her, panting from passing buckets to fight the flames, and whispered hoarsely: “It's coming, it's coming, by God. Tonight will be the night. Keep the cash hidden.”
Clara fled to her house on Maiden Lane. Upstairs in her room she knelt before the statue of the Virgin that John Ury had given her.
Oh Holy Mother, tell me what I should do.
Silence.
What is happening? I want to understand it.
Silence.
I want to help those I love!
Silence.
I know I'm not worthy. My heart is full of hate.
Silence.
Give me a sign, Holy Mother. My faith is so weak.
Silence.
Then Clara heard it drumming on the roof. Rain. She saw it sluicing
down the windowpane. Rain. She flung herself facedown, arms outstretched.
O Holy Mother, I will never doubt again.
A few blocks away, Malcolm Stapleton stood among the exhausted, soot-blackened firefighters, his big head tilted toward the sky. Rain! An hour before, the sky had been clearânot a trace of a cloud. Beside him his friends Peter Van Ness and Guert Cuyler, equally grimy, were just as dazed. The rain pelted down, soaking roofs they could not reach, dousing the still-formidable fire inside the fort.
“The windâit's dropped to nothing,” Guert Cuyler said.
“Someone must be praying for us, somewhere,” Malcolm said.
51
Rushing downtown again through the rain, Clara found Malcolm in front of the Universal Store on Pearl Street. Adam Duycinck and Sophia Cuyler had thrown most of the goods into the street, anticipating the destruction of the shop. Malcolm and several other firemen were helping them return the stuff to the shelves. Catalyntie stood in the doorway, watching.
“I must speak with you,” Clara said to Malcolm.
They walked a few feet down the block. The rain had dwindled to a drizzle. “You should patrol the streets with your militia tonight, guns in hand,” Clara said.
“Why?”
Clara glanced toward Catalyntie. She was staring at them. “This fire was a signal. Even though it's been extinguished, there may be trouble.”
“From whom?”
“I'm not an informer. Just do as I say! You should have no difficulty turning out enough men. With a war in your favor.”
She left him there, staring after her. “What did Clara tell you?” I asked.
“She thinks we should turn out some militia tonight.”
“Why?”
“She won't tell me.”
Malcolm decided to take Clara's warning seriously. He conferred with the governor, who agreed to call out a company of militiaâabout seventy-five menâto night duty. He also ordered the Night Watch to be alert for trouble. At Hughson's, Clara said nothing while Sarah and John Hughson discussed with John Ury the mysterious way the fire had been extinguished.
“I fear it's a sign,” Ury said. “But it's written in a language I can't understand.”
“The Africans would've come out, fire or no fire, if Stapleton didn't spring his damned militia on them,” John Hughson said. “With the Night Watch, he's put a hundred armed men in the street. I think someone ratted.”
“Who could it be?” Ury said. “Do you have any idea, Clara?”
Clara shook her head, her heart choked with pain. Was there another word for what she had done, besides betrayal? Yes, she told herself. The militiamen guaranteed a peace that would preserve everyone's lifeâperhaps even Caesar's. But she did not reckon with the fury in the hearts of the slaves. Was it because she was free? Was that brutal fact responsible for the gulf that opened between them?
For a week an uneasy peace prevailed in New York. But there was no peace at Hughson's. Antonio and Cuffee visited after midnight on Monday to denounce the Hughsons and Ury as traitors. Nothing could convince them that the trio had not switched sides and advised Malcolm Stapleton to turn out his militia on the night of March 18.