The Constable's Tale (30 page)

“Then, why did you go along with leaving North Carolina?”

Maddie took a big breath, as if getting ready to make a speech. “It’s all a tangle,” she said and let the breath out.

“Untangle it for me. I’d really like to know.”

“Where to start?”

Good question
, Harry thought.

CHAPTER 29

26: In Pulling off your Hat to Persons of Distinction, as Noblemen, Justices, Churchmen & etc make a Reverence, bowing more or less according to the Custom of the Better Bred, and Quality of the Person. Amongst your equals expect not always that they Should begin with you first, but to Pull off the Hat when there is no need is Affectation, in the Manner of Saluting and resaluting in words keep to the most usual Custom.

—R
ULES OF
C
IVILITY

HARRY HAD JUST TURNED THIRTEEN. TOO OLD TO BE PLAYING WITH
children. But Talitha had business in court that day. She made him
stay outside with the dozen or so others whose parents were likewise occupied. The game, organized by one of the grandmothers, was one that Harry had played many times while growing up. They were marching in a circle around a randomly chosen child, in this case a red-haired, big-eared nine-year-old by the name of Anthony. They chanted as they tramped along:

King William was King James’s son
,

From the royal race was sprung
,

Wore a star upon his breast.

Go choose your East, go choose your West;

Choose the one that you love best.

If she’s not here to take your part
,

Choose another with all your heart.

With that, Anthony, blushing deeply, reached out and tapped the shoulder of a pretty little girl Harry had never seen before. She looked about ten years old, with skinny arms and curly hair the color of late wheat. Though the boy’s performance was familiar, part of the game, it brought a burst of giggles and catcalls from the other children.

At the grandmother’s direction, the girl stepped out of the circle and joined Anthony in the center. The marching resumed, the girl looking bewildered.

Down on this carpet you must kneel

Sure as the grass grows on the green.

When you rise upon your feet
,

Salute your bride and kiss her sweet.

They stopped marching and began chanting, “Kiss her sweet! Kiss her sweet!” Anthony looked here and there as if to find a means of escape. But the longer he put it off, the worse the harassment became. He finally did as commanded—to a renewed outburst of giddy
derision. Then, under the guidance of the old woman, who seemed to be having the best time of anyone, the children again took up their circular trek.

Now you’re married you must be good.

Split the kindling, chop the wood.

Split it fine and carry it in.

Then she’ll let you kiss her again.

This time, Anthony grabbed the little girl by both arms, gave her a hasty kiss on the cheek, and retreated into the circle, looking relieved and thankful the ordeal was over. The girl, who seemed dazed, began to follow, but the grandmother said, “No, dear, you must stay where you are. Now it’s your turn.”

The marching started up again with the children chanting from the beginning but changing the words to suit a girl. By the time they came to the end of the first stanza, “Choose another with all your heart,” she knew exactly what to do. She had been sizing up the boys with a critical eye. As far as Harry could tell she had not given him a second look. But she stepped forward with unsettling boldness and poked him square in the chest.

The giggling and taunting began, though this time it had a different timbre. It was more tentative, as if the children recognized that Harry’s advanced age put him on the borderline of familiarity. Harry, who for some time had been paying close attention to girls of his own age and older, the way they looked, and their sometimes mystifying behavior, was not pleased at all. Until now he had felt his presence in the children’s circle merely undignified. Now he felt ridiculous. But he was trapped. No choice but to go along.

Standing on tiptoes, grasping Harry’s shoulders to pull him down within reach, she kissed him full on the lips. She held it for what seemed a long time, allowing the scent of a girl-child flushed with exertion to fill Harry’s senses.

Her name was Madeleine. Maddie, as she preferred. She was the granddaughter of the county’s chief justice of the peace, recently arrived in New Bern from a city across the ocean called Edinburgh. Her father had died unexpectedly and her mother taken ill. As weeks passed, then months, Harry somehow kept finding himself in her company, usually but not always in the vicinity of other children or adults. She introduced him to riddles, a pastime of hers in Scotland. She taught him those she already knew and some she was learning through new friends she was making among the better families of New Bern. Families that did not include the Woodyards. Harry was flummoxed by the sly logic of such brain scramblers as:

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Jews
,

Sat down on the floor to put on his shoes.

How do you spell that with four letters?

Harry liked solving puzzles. People said he had a knack for it. But he was not fond of riddles, which depended on tricks with words and phrasings. He could not think of an answer to the Nebuchadnezzar one that he imagined would come anywhere close to correct. Finally Maddie leaned over and whispered in his ear, “T-H-A-T! Four letters!” She rocked back, convulsed with laughter.

Despite the joy she took in baffling him, Harry found that he enjoyed Maddie’s company. He was sure she was much smarter than he, and that made him nervous, afraid she would tire of him. He kept assuring himself that he felt no physical attraction whatsoever. But with the passage of months, the barest hint of breasts became visible underneath certain types of clothing and angles of light. And she was growing hips.

He tried to avoid even thinking about thinking in such terms. Having sex with girls before they were physically ready was not unheard of in North Carolina. From time to time such a thing would come to the attention to the Court of Quarterly Sessions, especially
in the case of orphans. Harry’s instincts told him that such thoughts, the thoughts themselves, let alone any actions that might flow from them, were against the laws of nature. But to his distress he found he could not stop wondering what she looked like without clothes. He had the sensation of standing on a slippery ledge overlooking an uncharted and possibly dangerous bottomland. Flattered by her attentions but aware of where they might lead without constant vigilance. He fancied that she thought of him as one might of a big brother. He returned this by making himself think of her as a little sister. A very affectionate little sister.

She continued her practice of kissing him on the mouth whenever they said hello or good-bye, as if they were grown-ups, each time delivering her sweet, musky bouquet. This behavior struck him as both childish and strangely mature, like dressing up in adult clothing. But, then, he was discovering a great many peculiarities about feminine behavior overall.

It was three years before they made love. At age sixteen, Harry felt fully grown. Old enough to be turning out for militia musters. Maddie, at thirteen, was the same age as the new bride of the sixty-eight-year-old governor of North Carolina. They moved gradually toward it, with laughing tussles during outings in fields and forests within the town gates and beyond as opportunities presented themselves.

Harry’s mother’s suspicions were stirred up one afternoon as she was finishing some business in town and getting their wagon ready for the trip back home. She noticed Harry and Maddie walking along a shady side street, playfully pushing and poking at each other. A little too playfully for her satisfaction. She went directly to Judge McLeod and told him what she had seen. The result was that the two were forbidden to spend time together alone. Harry was willing to accept this outcome but not Maddie. Soon she was figuring out ways to be together secretly, with the added sense of drama their clandestine meetings brought.

One warm afternoon in early fall, in the shadow of a haystack in a field belonging to an old man named Rollins, a wrestling match
became a halting exploration of the unknown. For Harry it was a stunning revelation, how well men and women fit together in actual fact, compared to what he had only heard. Unfortunately, Rollins came riding by before they had finished putting their clothes back on, and what had been a journey to heaven became a long and sudden fall in the opposite direction.

Harry’s mother was feverish with anxiety over possible consequences. Harry had no doubt he would be hung. But days passed and no posse came to their doorstep. After a suspenseful week, they learned from friends that McLeod had decided his granddaughter had seen enough of America and would be returning to Scotland to finish her education at a proper academy. Though everyone in New Bern knew exactly what had happened, the judge stuck publicly to the fiction that nothing had actually happened, that his flesh and blood remained unsullied. That meant, miraculously, no punishment for Harry, for the reason that no offense had occurred.

Maddie’s leaving left a wound that would not heal. He even considered following her to Scotland, reckoning he could figure out what to do then after he got there. Those thoughts faded with agonizing slowness until at last Maddie was no longer a burning scar on his heart, the first thing he thought of in the morning and the last thing at night.

Having had a taste of heaven, he spent the next year looking for more. He found he was one of those blessed few who could bed just about any unmarried girl he wanted and a few married ones as well. Another discovery was that his mother no longer could call his tune. He could do as he pleased. Of the men in Harry’s life who counted, Natty had no objection to youthful adventure. Nor did Comet Elijah, who was busy teaching him about other things, like how to throw a tomahawk.

The time of freedom came to an end just before his eighteenth birthday. Harry was arrested for nearly burning down Speight’s Tavern, whose owner’s face, Harry’s crowd had decided, reminded them of a pig. Besides the fact that liquor was involved, the trial established that Harry had not intended to destroy the place, just see what would
happen when the object of their ridicule came from the kitchen to see a bonfire in the tap room. Harry suffered a pang of regret when he saw the look of bewilderment on Speight’s plump pink face. It took the fun out of it.

Nevertheless, Harry’s reputation as a hellion had become established, and it seemed that somewhere in the upper reaches of the town leadership it had been decided this was as good a time as any to bring him to heel. The county solicitor recommended a penalty of twenty strokes, time in stocks, and a fine of fifteen pounds plus damages. Of these punishments, the prospect of the lashes was the most daunting. People were known to be permanently maimed by such treatment, to the point that the rich never were made to suffer them, no matter how serious their offense. They were always let off with a fine.

But, to everyone’s surprise, in light of the family’s otherwise good standing in the community and Harry’s father’s faithful, and probably fatal, service to the Crown at Cartagena, McLeod offered an alternative. Harry would become his ward and part-time servant for the period of a year. He would submit to the judge’s authority in all respects, undertake any course of instruction, and carry out all services required, with the intention of making of the now grown-up Harry an upstanding citizen of New Bern. If the project succeeded, his name would migrate from the liability column of the community ledger to the asset side.

The tasks turned out to include emptying slop jars for McLeod and several of his neighbors, working on repairs to the town fence, rounding up stray animals off the street, and occasionally assisting constables and sheriff’s deputies in serving writs and escorting prisoners. And dancing lessons. The judge said one could not be a proper gentleman without knowing how to dance. All of these activities to be performed after Harry had put in a full morning’s work at his family’s plantation.

In addition, he had to sit through a daily lecture on some aspect of the importance of honor, duty, and the rules of proper conduct
as observed by the better sorts of people throughout the world. Rooted in some ancient Italian court, later written out by an elderly Frenchman, they recently had been translated into English as
Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation
. These directions covered every social situation a person of refinement was likely to encounter in a lifetime. They included guidelines for polite conversation, appropriate dress, manners at table, conduct on the street, and the respectful treatment of one’s betters. This last thing, as Harry learned, was a whole subsidiary set of extensively evolved rules concerning where one should sit at a table, when to initiate speech and when to remain silent, the finer points of cap doffing, and even on which side of another person one should walk, depending on the social rank of each. Despite the tedious nature of the rules, McLeod assured Harry they were indispensable, that no matter where he might travel in the future, whether to London or Paris or Rome or Vienna, he would recognize the application of this code of behavior when among courteous society. And they would recognize it in him and know he was a person of good breeding. One of them.

To help it all stick in Harry’s mind, he had to buy himself a small ledger book in which to paraphrase the judge’s lectures and memorize these shortened versions, two rules per week. He found many of them ran contrary to his upbringing and some just flat-out strange. He avoided as much as he could sharing any of it with Natty so as to save himself the trouble of having to explain why Harry was going along with it. When Natty heard the outlines of the judge’s program, he said he would have preferred the lashes.