Dreams of Glory (17 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Dreams of Glory
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“You said you would stay at least two weeks.”
“I believe you told me only last night that our nation's affairs were in crisis,” he said.
Hannah looked so sad he felt momentarily ashamed. He soothed his conscience by telling himself that destiny was conspiring with desire to overwhelm his will. It was an easy thing for a willful man to believe when his world was writhing in history's grip.
Pompey was at the door with the Burlington geldings
hitched to the sleigh. With masterful hypocrisy, the congressman told Pompey that he would endure the strain of driving to Philadelphia without him. “I want you here to guard the house against loyalist raiders. I hope it will calm Mrs. Stapleton's nerves to have someone nearby who can use a gun. Keep my father's old musket loaded at all times and show her you know how to use it.”
Flattered by his master's trust, the burly old black promised to be ready to defend the house on a moment's notice. Hugh Stapleton seized the reins and headed for the main road. In two hours he was knocking on Flora Kuyper's door. She greeted him in her sitting room, looking as pale and disconsolate as the wife he had just abandoned.
“I got your note,” he said. “I almost missed it.”
“I—I merely wanted you to know my feelings,” she said. “I—I didn't really expect you to risk another visit. So soon, at least.”
“You seem unhappy.”
“I—I've been assailed by a most melancholy humor all day.”
“Why, madam?”
“I don't know. Perhaps the times. Perhaps—it has something to do with you. I found myself wishing to see you again—and telling myself it would be far better if you tore my note into a thousand pieces and dismissed our meeting as—a night's indiscretion.”
“You must know it was much more than that.”
“It was—for me. But you're a man of the world. No doubt you have had many such conquests.”
“If there was a conquest, madam, it was on your part. Since I left here I haven't passed an hour, day or night, without thinking of you.”
“I've had similar thoughts. But you're a married man, Mr. Stapleton. What can either of us hope to gain from continuing our friendship?”
“Happiness. Enough happiness to satisfy our souls for a lifetime.”
“How? Even as you sit here my heart leaps at the risk you take to visit me again.”
“I've thought of that,” the congressman admitted. “I must either resign my seat in Congress or persuade you to come to Philadelphia with me.”
“Both are out of the question,” Flora said. “I won't be responsible for your abandoning the cause of your country—which is also mine by adoption. I can't go to Philadelphia. I have seven slaves, a farm to protect. All I own in the world.”
“What if I told you the truth, madam, that the cause of your adopted country is no longer worth defending? It may have been once, in those glorious days of 1776, when everyone was sure of America's virtue and patriotism. Now we know those qualities were chimeras, imaginary visions as fanciful as the nonsense in the Bible.”
“Then, why should I go to Philadelphia and join you in defending this—this nonsense?”
That was the moment when memory and desire fused in Congressman Stapleton's mind. The memory of his conversation with his brother, Paul.
Of course I have a plan …
You'll get word to us in time to bring Hannah and the boys to Philadelphia …
Perhaps I'll leave her to you …
Here was the other half of his mind—or, better, his soul. The better half of his soul. Here was beauty and admiration and consolation for Catalyntie Van Vorst Stapleton's son, whose shrewd Dutch brain tells him it is time to run for cover.
“You wouldn't stay in Philadelphia very long, madam. I have a fast ship—and a half-million pounds waiting for us to enjoy in Amsterdam as soon as the ice melts in the Delaware.”
“Amsterdam,” Flora Kuyper said, a smile banishing her melancholy frown. “I've never been there. I've heard it's charming.”
MAJOR BENJAMIN STALLWORTH STUDIED CALEB Chandler's haggard, sleepless face. It was the fourth day of his interrogation. From 6 A.M. until 6 P.M. Stallworth had paced the bare room in the unheated house off the Vealtown Road, snarling questions and accusations at his prisoner. Then Alexander Hamilton took charge of the verbal gauntlet, continuing it until midnight.
For a moment Stallworth felt a tremor of remorse. It disturbed him, out of all proportion to its intensity. He had never felt a trace of such an emotion with other prisoners. Was he losing control of his nerves? Was he afraid of repeating the mistake he had made—if it had been a mistake—with the Reverend Joel Lockwood? No, Stallworth told himself, glaring coldly at Caleb Chandler until his stare matched the temperature in the room. The regret was not for Chandler. It was his own naive self he was mourning, the slogan-chanting college graduate, marching to war in the good cause. Caleb Chandler reminded him of that nincompoop, who believed the ministers in every pulpit, thundering confidence in America's virtue. Perhaps he still wished he could believe in that myth, and the larger myth behind it, the God of righteousness and His grace. But Stallworth was a servant of necessity now.
Besides, there was still the possibility that Caleb Chandler was a traitor. Stallworth had begun to doubt it But the thought enabled him to begin the day's interrogation with the requisite contempt in his voice.
“Do you believe me now, Chandler? Are you prepared to admit that your hero, Joel Lockwood, was ready to turn his coat?”
Yesterday, Stallworth had read Chandler the letters that
Lockwood had written to Major Walter Beckford. Letters that Caesar Muzzey had conveniently betrayed before carrying them to New York.
“Yes,” Caleb said in a leaden voice. “But that doesn't mean I'm a traitor.”
“Oh, no,” Stallworth said. “Not at all. Just because your mentor—the man whom you called in one of your letters the captain of your soul—is a traitor, that doesn't mean you're one. It just raises the probability a little higher. When we add to it all the other probabilities—no one else had a better opportunity to murder Caesar Muzzey, no one else had a better motive, presuming, as we must, that you're in British pay. No one else has preached traitorous sermons to the troops. No one else arranged to send one of our congressmen to the house of a known British agent, where only good fortune prevented his capture. No one else proceeded to spend twenty-four hours with that same British agent, for Christ knows what hellish purpose. When we pile all those probabilities on top of one another, Chandler, they become a gallows high enough to hang you.”
“I've told you a hundred times I knew nothing about Mrs. Kuyper being an agent. I knew nothing about Lockwood. I knew nothing about Caesar Muzzey. I only wanted to see justice done.”
Stallworth shook his head. “Chandler, your feeble pleas won't convince a court-martial board. There are too many coincidences. Your one chance for life is to tell us the truth. Confess your guilt. Give us the names of the other people in your network. Who recruited you?”
“No one. Major, please believe me. I'm not a spy. I—I'm ready to die for the cause. I came here believing everyone—Joel Lockwood, the soldiers, the officers—felt the same way.”
“Have you ever seen a man hanged, Chandler?”
“No! I told you—I—I never have.”
“I saw General Putnam hang one of your royalist confederates, a Ridgefield man named Jones, about a year ago. It was a
dismal scene. His parents and relatives wringing their hands, wailing. You can be sure we'll hang you back in Connecticut, as an example to others of your traitorous ilk.”
Stallworth had said the same thing yesterday, and the day before. It was part of the process, to say something over and over, pretending it was for the first time. It made the prisoner wonder if his previous answers had been heard. It made him feel more and more trapped, desperate for a normal response.
“Tell me about your visit to Mrs. Kuyper, Chandler. How many times did you fuck her?”
“I told you—I never touched the woman.”
“Horseshit, Chandler. You admitted yesterday you thought about it. You were almost ready to tell the truth. We know she fucks for the King, Chandler. She's probably fucking that Continental Congressman you sent to her, right now. I have to admit it, Chandler, that was a coup. Beckford must have paid you a hundred guineas for that one. Handing them a congressman that way. A sitting duck. Or, to be more exact, a fucking duck, that they can haul off to New York anytime they please.”
“I told you I didn't
know,
“Caleb Chandler shouted.
Stallworth pulled a chair across the room and sat down, only inches from Chandler, jamming his knees against his legs. “Come, now, tell me man to man. I like to hear these kinds of stories. I'm a connoisseur, Chandler. I used to command the military police when we had a garrison in New York in '76. I used to go through the Holy Ground every morning, dragging out the drunks and an occasional corpse. I saw the ladies in their lacy nightclothes. That's when I stopped believing in
virtuous
Americans—the kind of horseshit you parsons shovel from pulpits. That's when I saw how this war would have to be won.”
“I didn't touch her.”
“Not even a finger on those juicy tits? Not even a rub against that pussy? As dark and fine as angel's hair, I hear it is. Tell me what it was like, Chandler.”
“I didn't touch her!”
Stallworth abandoned his chair and retreated to the other side of the room. “That gives me even worse apprehensions, Chandler. Is it possible that Yale has produced another Williamite? We had one there in my day. We drove him out of the place. From what I hear of the school's progress in corruption, you may have been the most popular scholar in Connecticut Hall. It would explain your seduction by Walter Beckford, the chief sodomist in the British army—a notable title, since they have so many. It would explain your indifference to Mrs. Kuyper.”
“I am not indifferent to Mrs. Kuyper. I told you I thought she was the most beautiful woman I've ever met. I—”
Stallworth went to a table in the center of the room and wrote in a book, repeating each word as he inscribed it. “Prisoner—denies—being a sodomite in spite of—extensive evidence—to the contrary.”
Stallworth shook his head. “That won't go down well at your court-martial, Chandler.”
“I want to see General Washington,” Caleb Chandler said. On previous days these words had been a demand. Now they were a whimper.
“To make a full confession? You can do that as well to me.”
“To protest this—this outrageous slander. These accusations.”
“General Washington doesn't see prisoners under arrest, Chandler. He appoints a court-martial board to hear the charges and then approves—in most cases—the board's findings. Let's talk about your family, Chandler. We've been investigating them. Your two brothers were among those glorious Connecticut heroes who ran for their lives at Kips Bay in 1776. They haven't lifted a finger for their country since.”
“They're married men with families—”
“Maybe one of them,” Stallworth continued, as if Caleb Chandler had not spoken, “is the evil genius behind your treason. We've found that the traitor and the coward often go together.
Are you refusing to confess out of some misguided sense of nobility? Better for you, a bachelor, to hang? We're prepared to hang you both, Chandler. We will, too. Your silence will only delay your brother's execution. Your whole network is exposed, Chandler. There's no hope of protecting anyone. Only a full confession, a plea for mercy, can save you and your brothers.”
“I will never plead for mercy from you—you son of a bitch!” Caleb Chandler shouted.
“Oh?”
Defiance at this point was a good sign. It usually preceded surrender. Stallworth paced the room, pretending distress.
“All right. I'll admit something, Chandler. I don't want to hang you. That clerical coat you're wearing may yet save your worthless, probably traitorous neck. I said the same thing to the Reverend Joel Lockwood. That bastard Rivington, the publisher of the
Royal Gazette,
would make too much capital out of the Americans hanging a man of the cloth. What better proof that the glorious cause is collapsing? I'm going to offer you the same chance we gave the Reverend Lockwood. You can live—if you agree to become a spy for us. What we call in the espionage business a double agent.”
“Joel Lockwood—agreed to that?”
“For the same reason you'll agree to it, Chandler. To save your worthless life!” Stallworth roared.
He paused to let the shock penetrate the prisoner's crumbling defenses. “I hope your nerves are better than Lockwood's. What I want from you is more difficult. All he had to do was go back to Connecticut and pretend to be a turncoat, then report to me everyone who nibbled at his bait. Perhaps my mistake was not offering him the consolation I'm giving you, Chandler.”
“What's that?” Caleb Chandler asked.
“The opportunity, the necessity, to make love to Mrs. Kuyper. To plant yourself so deep in her affections, Chandler, that she invites you to become a spy for Beckford.”
“Then what happens?”
“She'll send you to New York, where Beckford will put you through a gauntlet not much different from the one I'm administering to you. If you survive it, you'll become Muzzey's replacement.”
“Muzzey's replacement,” Chandler said. The idea seemed to bemuse him.
“Then you'll begin to think and live as a double agent. You'll begin to prove your patriotism, Chandler, always remembering that I assume you're a traitor. I'll accept as proof to the contrary nothing but facts—information that's useful to us. That moves us toward victory. Anything else, any facts that prove harmful, will move you a little closer to the gallows.”
“You're telling me, in the name of the government of the United States, to lie to this woman, to pretend to love her, to seduce her if necessary?”
Stallworth clicked his teeth in exasperation. “Chandler, how many times do I have to tell you? Flora Kuyper's a whore. She fucks for the King. You won't seduce her. It'll be the other way around, to guarantee your enthusiasm for His Majesty. You won't be the first man to lift her skirts and you won't be the last. The important thing is the purpose, Chandler. To get you into the network run by their agent, Twenty-six.”
Chandler barely listened to him. He shook his head, groping for another defiant answer. Stallworth sensed he was on the edge of collapse.
“Are you worried about your immortal soul, Chandler? As far as I'm concerned, the only thing you're risking is a case of the pox. We're not under the command of Jehovah any longer, Chandler. His name has become Necessity and His voice speaks through a cannon's mouth. And through your lying mouth. And mine. What happens to our souls doesn't matter, Chandler. Only one thing matters. Victory.”
For a long moment the prisoner said nothing. He was staring at Benjamin Stallworth with the same bemused expression on his face. “Such faith I have not found in all of Israel,” he said.
The voice, the eyes, did not belong to Caleb Chandler the naive Yale graduate. Those words, mocking the God of the New Testament, were spoken by a different creature, a numb, bitter cynic.
Washington was right. It was different from ordering a man to stand and die on the battlefield. But it was necessary, Stallworth told himself. Necessary. For victory.

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