Probable Claws

32

April 10, 1787

Tuesday

Ewing strode through the carriage stables, looking for his elder daughter.

She glanced up from King David’s hoof, which Baxter O. held between his knees.

“Baxter, thank you, you can put his hoof down.”

Ewing, clearly agitated, focused on King David. “Is he all right?”

“Fine. A little tender. A small stone bruise. The pastures are greening up. A little turn out and no work will fix him just fine.” She smiled at Baxter O., whose opinion she valued highly; they had talked this over.

“Walk with me,” her father commanded. “I need to get the kinks out.”

She teased him. “Head or back?”

“Just you wait.” He smiled at her. He then launched into what was on his mind. “Roger Davis wrote Maureen Seli…I mean Holloway, to tell her there is to be a convention in Philadelphia in May. Settled. It will happen, and those representatives farthest away from Babylon on the Delaware are already on their way. What an opportunity this will be for endless pronouncements, legal twaddle, and rampaging self-interest. I don’t know what’s worse: deteriorating as we are or letting those men argue at a convention.”

“Father, you’re the one who says we have to do something. We can’t have export and import taxes between states and that’s what the current situation amounts to, doesn’t it?”

Grimly, he nodded. “Does, but Jefferson and his minions will be philosophically opposed to Adams and his following. Each will parade his Latin, too.”

“Surely there will be more moderate men.”

“Hamilton?” Ewing’s voice lowered. “Jefferson hates him, loathes him, and I expect it’s mutual. So that means Madison loathes him. I don’t see how an accord, even a rough accord, can be affected with these intensely self-regarding men.”

“When you speak, I am glad I am not in politics.” Catherine smiled.

“It’s the devil’s work. Is. I have lived a long time. I have observed from across the ocean the foolishness of kings, who worry more about their conquests and how they will be remembered than in fostering trade. They know nothing about trade and how wealth is created. They only know how to spend it like the mess in France with the queen’s jewelry. It’s absurd. And we’re absurd, too.”

“Will Washington be there?”

“He will. He’s probably the only man who can keep order. Franklin is eighty-one. But he has a way of bringing people together.”

“I thought Jefferson was still our ambassador to France.” Catherine was well informed, but only her family knew this, as well as Maureen, who divined it.

A slight breeze tousled Ewing’s hair. The early afternoon burst with spring’s promise of renewal. Many trees sported small buds opening to reveal true spring green color. The daffodils still bloomed but on the down side. Next would come the tulips with their wide array of colors.

“Oh, he’s in France, but I tell you who will be there, in his clever way. Madison. Madison. Madison.”

“Hence Roger Davis’s centrality to all this?”

“Mmm.” Ewing pursed his lips. “Madison is shifty. Brilliant, yes, but so are Hamilton and others. But Madison leaves little trace of his goings and comings. He’s like a tailor using invisible thread.”

“I thought you liked his mother.”

“She makes Franklin look young.” Ewing laughed. “Nell Madison has been dying since the day she was born. Whatever affliction is present or talked about, she has had it or is exhibiting the first symptoms. She’ll outlive us all. No wonder James isn’t married. She’s driven them all away.” He laughed again.

“Much as I like John’s family, I am glad they are in Massachusetts. And then when we visit them once a year, or they come here, I feel peeved at myself. His mother is a hardworking, loving woman and she never tells me what to do.”

“Oh, my dear, who can do that? I’ve been trying since you learned to walk.”

A slight blush rose on Catherine’s cheeks. “I listen.”

“Now you do but you were a handful.”

“Rachel was perfect.” Catherine smiled.

“Let’s just say Rachel is more like your mother.”

“And I am more like you.” Catherine slipped her arm through his.

He looked down for a step or two then looked up at an aqua sky. “So they say.”

She laughed. “Back to Philadelphia. It’s a Quaker city. How can it be Babylon on the Delaware?”

“Don’t be fooled by all that simplicity rubbish. A Quaker can spend money as well as the rest of us. Perhaps they’re smarter about hiding it. No lavish jewelry or excessive furniture. However, I have yet to see a rich Quaker who doesn’t own a handsome carriage.”

“I suppose each group of people has their ways and a way to get around them.” She drew even closer to her father.

“True. My fear is an agreement that is sensible, focused on trade, the latest farming practices won’t be reached. Everyone will question slavery but no state will really do anything. Look how many slaves New York has. It will be a deadlock. And all the disagreements will be on the table.”

“Maybe they have to be on the table to get anything done.”

He patted her hand. “I don’t know, my dear. I believe in letting sleeping dogs lie.”

“It is a sensible way to live and yet these are new times. No one ever thought we would throw out King George, defeat the British Army and Navy, dispense with born aristocrats and royalty. I suppose we should all fall on our knees and give thanks for Lord North.” She cited the prime minister who most felt misled the king.

“And fall on our knees for Washington. How he kept together the different state militias, most of whom only signed up for three months and weren’t paid, I might add.”

“Many still haven’t been.”

“Yes. Yes. That’s unforgivable. You see a man begging on a Richmond or Williamsburg street and he lost his legs at Guilford or some other battle. It’s a sin, you know.”

“I do. John isn’t shy about expressing himself when it comes to his comrades. He’s not a political man but he feels deeply for those who served.”

A sharp smile crossed Ewing’s face. “Old men start the wars. Young men fight them. It’s been that way since Marathon.” He waved with his free hand. “I can’t let this affect me so.”

“Father, you risked your life not in battle but by working for the cause, by pouring money into it, by raising troops.”

“I did and I never dreamed it would come to this.”

“Does the future ever turn out as we dream?”

“I don’t know, my dear. My future has you, your sister, good husbands, grandchildren. In so many ways it’s better than I could have imagined. Politics, national direction, that’s a different matter.”

“Why do you think Roger Davis writes Maureen?”

He stopped, looked at his daughter. “I don’t know. In fact, I didn’t consider that until you brought it up.”

“You know Maureen never engages in anything that doesn’t redound to her advancement.”

“Can you imagine if she could be in politics?”

“But, Father, she is.”

Confusion, then a ripple of fear followed this statement for Ewing. “How?”

“Perhaps it takes a woman to fathom another woman’s methods.” She hastily added, “Which isn’t to say I approve.”

“Well?” His interest skyrocketed.

“I believe, I can’t prove, but I believe Maureen has kept all of her former husband’s financial friends, bankers, sugarcane planters, shipbuilders, and captains. I believe she has stayed at the center of that net.”

“You don’t say.” He frowned. “She is uncommonly shrewd.”

“I believe most of her money remains in the Caribbean. And I also believe she lends it at a high interest from time to time.”

“So much for usury.” He half smiled.

“Always honored in the breech. It’s an easy profit and should the lender fail, you take back whatever he has of value. I have no doubt she owns ships, plantations in the Caribbean and she’s angling for something here. Why else would Roger Davis keep her informed?”

“She’s paying Madison under the table?” Ewing was shocked.

“It is possible but I think she’s more clever than that, and truly I don’t think the highly intellectual Madison is a person of finance or greed.”

“I don’t know about that. His father wasn’t slow and truthfully neither is his mother, although she hides it behind her stream of illnesses. I believe she knows where every penny is. Every penny.”

“You know them far better than I, Father.”

“Maureen is a formidable enemy, as was Francisco. I always stayed on the good side, did some business with Francisco.”

“She’s ruthless. She would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eye.” Catherine used the old phrase. “And she’s not above killing a slave.”

“Herself!” Ewing was horrified.

“I think if Maureen sets her mind to something, anybody who gets in the way courts danger.”

“But personally kill a slave?”

“I think…” Catherine almost let it slip about Maureen’s attempted murder of Ailee. “Well, I suspect she could.”

“One hears of men who kill in a fit of rage, but a woman. Oh, that is unnatural.”

“So you think murder is natural?” Catherine loved to talk to her father about anything.

“I suppose I do. Humans have been killing one another for thousands of years. We just emerged from a brutal war. Look what the British did to our prisoners. They let them die in the holds of prison ships off Boston. Unforgivable. We treated their prisoners with decency. Thanks to Washington. But yes, I think murder, killing, theft, all the sins are part of humankind wherever we are in the world. In deepest Africa, one tribe kills another. In Europe all they do is start wars. China. The hoards of the East marching and killing across the plains. Finally stopped at Vienna in 1683. I’m afraid, my dear, it’s what we are. But women. Women are morally superior to men.”

She smiled. “Or Father, perhaps we haven’t had the chance.”

He walked more briskly with her. “You know, Catherine, sometimes you scare me.”

“I don’t mean to but ideas cross my mind. And thanks to you, I received a good education.”

“Do you talk to John in this fashion?”

She shook her head. “John deals with what’s in front of him. And remember, he did not have much education, just a bit of schooling in that tiny town in Western Massachusetts. Hardscrabble there.”

“Indeed,” her father agreed.

“I tell you, he is not a learned man nor an intellectual one, but he is brave, believes in Christ devoutly, far more devoutly than I do. And well…” She paused. “I think the early death of the baby has affected him even more than myself. There are times when I look at him, he doesn’t know I am watching him, and he’s so sad, so deeply sad.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“He wants to make everything all right. But he can’t. So he struggles to accept why God would do this to our baby, to me. I mourn the child, of course I do, but in a way women are prepared for these things.”

A long, long silence followed this as Ewing stared at the mountains. “Your mother bore her loss with incredible courage. You may be like me, my dear, but you are also much like her.”

“It’s a woman’s lot, Father.”

“Yes, yes, it is.” Then his voice grew stronger. “In life there is death and in death life. We must endure.”

“I am. I am.” Her hand slid from his forearm and she held his hand. “The future is not given to any of us. We must fight for it.”