Tall Tail

Monday, September 6, 1784

The setting sun, bisected by a spearlike gray cloud, was turning scarlet. It was 7:30 P.M., shadows lay long on the fields. Most of the forage crops, piled loose onto open wagons, had been stored in a seventy-two-foot-by-forty-eight-foot shed, twenty feet high. Charles West, a former British prisoner of war and self-taught architect, had designed the shed so air would circulate through it. Three inches open between the roof and the side wall allowed air to flow, while the overhang protected the hay from all but the fiercest blowing rain. At the foot of the building, small louvers opened to allow more air inside. In the middle of the sides, two-inch round holes had been drilled out. The hay sat on a solid wooden floor so moisture would not rot the hay on the bottom.

A few hay ricks stood in the fields for cattle and horses to enjoy. The ricks, giant overturned thimbles, shed water. The outermost layer might suffer some, but all an animal had to do was dig in deep and the reward was sweet hay.

John Schuyler was imposing, well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and heavy muscles. He stood next to his former prisoner Charles West, who was almost as tall, muscled but more slender. West folded his arms across his soaked shirt. They’d worked hard that day. At Charles’s feet sat Piglet, his faithful corgi who had gone through the War for Independence with him, as well as imprisonment in two separate camps.

The Barracks was a more-than-two-hundred-acre prisoner-of-war camp. Abutting the back of Ewing Garth’s three-thousand-acre estate, The Barracks still hosted remaining Englishmen, Irish and Scots, although not as prisoners. Initially, these men were to be repatriated to the United Kingdom, an agonizingly slow process, as King George and his advisers dragged their feet. Living in makeshift buildings, one by one, the men gave up on returning home. Resourceful, they plied the trade they had learned before soldiering while they lived without rent in the log buildings. Each dreamed of saving enough to buy a patch of land and strike out on his own. The state of Virginia bore them no ill will, and since the state need not pay any expenses, the men were free to squat.

Both John Schuyler and Charles West would call on these highly skilled squatters, from time to time making use of their crafting or iron work, or hiring them for day work on the Ewing estate. Karl Ix, a captured Hessian, became close to Charles and John when building three bridges on Ewing’s property. Charles and Karl Ix worked hand in glove, two young men from different backgrounds and countries, who grasped the limitless possibilities in the new nation.

As all three men, John, Charles, and Karl, had married American women, great sweetness was added to the future’s limitless possibilities. While still a major in the Continental army, John married first. Perhaps he didn’t know the first time he set eyes on Catherine Garth that they would marry, but just about everyone else did. Catherine was wealthy, well schooled, and beautiful. She also brought John and Charles West together. Back when Charles was still a resident of The Barracks, in exchange for extra supplies for his men, he trained John in the ways of a gentleman. Certainly, a lady of Catherine’s station couldn’t marry a Massachusetts farmer’s son like John Schuyler, devoid of refinement, although not of good looks. Charles West, a baron’s younger son, would never inherit, but he had all the polish of a titled aristocrat with none of the snobbery. The openness of this New World enchanted Charles even as it sometimes shocked him.

When John Schuyler met Catherine Garth she was eighteen. Now, at twenty, she was even more beautiful, if that was possible. Her younger sister, Rachel, now eighteen, had married last year. While Rachel was a delightful, lovely, extremely pretty young woman, her sister Catherine looked like a goddess. Catherine was also strong-willed and had a head for business. Women’s talk and circumscribed lives bored her to bits, although when she had been in the company of the governor’s wife or other wives of powerful men, she had banished that boredom. If not intellectually brilliant, however, certainly some of these ladies were shrewd. They well understood how the world worked and were committed to their husbands’ ascents.

Unlike Catherine, Rachel was easygoing, tall, shy of argument. She couldn’t dissemble. She tried not to wear her heart on her sleeve, but somehow it always showed. Both young women were loving, but Catherine hid this quality. Both sisters shared strong feelings about right from wrong. For all Rachel’s sweetness and desire to please, if she felt someone had been wronged or something was shady, she wouldn’t budge. Indeed, she would do all she could to help.

Charles West had come to Ewing Garth’s for a job when he ran away in deep winter from the prisoner-of-war camp at York, Pennsylvania, where he’d been shifted due to overcrowding at The Barracks. From the start, he was hardly immune to Rachel Ewing’s grace, kindness and beauty, but she was sixteen then and he nineteen. He thought her young and sheltered. But the more he saw her, had a conversation here and there, the more he perceived how kind and mature she was. He fell in love. So did she.

Poor Ewing Garth found himself paying for a second wedding extravaganza the year after Catherine’s. Those two weddings became the standard for Albemarle County, for all of Virginia, really—and many a father cursed Ewing Garth under his breath for his lavish spending.

Karl Ix also found a handsome girl, a resident of Charlottesville. Her parents were German. She understood his native tongue and she certainly evidenced all the earmarks of a clean, crisp, well-organized personality. Germans helped populate the mid-Atlantic. Karl and Giselle lived on the Garth estate in a small cottage, which she filled with painted furniture, a big wall clock from her parents, and already one son, the spitting image of his father.

Young and in love, all three men watched the red rim of the sun dip below the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Charles felt he would never fully adjust to Virginia weather. “Should cool off now.”

Karl felt the same. “If only the wind would pick up.”

“Maybe it will be cooler tomorrow,” John said. “Summer’s at an end. I don’t know about you two, but I need a bath and a cool drink.” He turned toward his four-over-four farmhouse, built as a wedding present for Catherine by her father.

“We could sit in the icehouse,” Charles suggested.

“Have to climb in a big basket and be lowered down and the Mrs. would fuss.” Karl laughed.

“You know the Romans knew how to build icehouses and to make sherbet,” remarked Charles, educated at Oxford. “Oh, I wish I hadn’t mentioned sherbet.”

“Me, too,” Piglet barked.

“Piglet, you and me, we always agree.” John laughed with his booming good humor. “Remember, Charles, we have to go to the Selisses tomorrow early evening?”

“I know,” he said, unhappy at the prospect.

“Well, I’m off the hook.” Karl slapped his thigh and turned away. “Home to my bride.”

“Excellent idea,” Charles agreed.

As the men turned to walk to their respective dwellings, they heard Bettina singing. The voice of an angel. Her work as a cook in the Garths’ big house was done for the day, and she’d gathered all the children to her front porch. Whenever Bettina sang, a crowd gathered.

—

A long, long twilight kept the sky clear and dark blue, but when John looked to the big house, he could see some candles shining.

Gathering up papers with her father as he hunkered down at his desk, Catherine remarked, “Father, you aren’t thinking of buying into the forge with Francisco, are you?”

“No, no, my dear.” Ewing shook his head. “But it will be an important business and we must stay on good terms.”

“He’s a beast,” Catherine sharply replied.

Ewing folded his hands over his linen waistcoat. “His methods are harsh on his estate and in business.”

“Harsh. He’d skin a maggot.”

Ewing laughed, rose to kiss his daughter on her cheek. “That he would.” He paused, pecked her cheek again. “I am awaiting my first grandchild, you know. I assume you’ll precede your sister.”

“We’re trying.” Catherine’s demeanor softened. Her laugh was like silver.

“How I remember your mother and I praying for our firstborn: you.” His eyes brightened as he beheld the evening star out the window. “Venus.” Then he looked at her. “You, of course.”

“Oh, Father.” Catherine playfully pushed him, then left by the back door to walk to her own house.

A whip-poor-will called out. She heard a soft flutter overhead, looked up to see the barn owl and the last of the fireflies. Twinkles and flashes of green and yellow danced over the herringbone brick walkway, above the meadows. If there weren’t fireflies in heaven, she didn’t want to go.

Even before she reached her clapboard house, John’s deep baritone reached her ears. While not musically gifted, the man remembered every hymn he’d ever sung in church. Right now he was mangling “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

She opened the door, tiptoeing to the back of the house, where her husband sat in a large tub, scrubbing his back with a long-handled brush. She joined in singing the hymn. He smiled at the duet. Taking the brush, she finished scrubbing his back.

“You sparkle like a firefly,” he cooed.

“You flatter me. Come on, haul your carcass out of the water. Let’s have a cool drink while we watch the fireflies from the porch.”

He grinned as she handed him a towel. “Yes, my darling.”

“Just wrap it around you. No one will see you.”

“You will.”

“That’s why I suggested it.” She flashed a grin. “Go on. I’ll bring two sweet teas, or would you rather have an untea?” She used the expression for unsweetened tea.

John was still learning southern terms. “Un, I think.”

Minutes later they sat, watching the blue of the mountains deepening. A light breeze picked up, and lightning bugs were everywhere, squadrons of them now. Bettina’s voice, singing in the distance, was joined by others.

“There is no sound like the sound of our people singing. I remember curling in Mother’s arms, Rachel in mine, and we’d listen.” Catherine meant “our people.” Only a churl would say “slave.” The etiquette was clear, as was the injustice, which some had spoken of—notably, General Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Catherine, like her generation, didn’t think too much about it. They had always known this way of life.

“It’s beautiful,” said John. “I sometimes think they are closer to God.”

“I wonder,” she quietly replied. “Before I forget, don’t you forget we’ve got to be dressed and ready to leave at four tomorrow. The Selisses.”

“I’ll be ready.”

Neither could know, could even imagine, that tomorrow would be the beginning of a crime, a horror even, that would silently seep through two hundred and thirty-two years.