My Heart Laid Bare Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Randy Souther

  EPIGRAPH

  If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own—the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple—a few plain words—“My Heart Laid Bare.” But this little book must be true to its title. No man dare write it. No man could write it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery pen.

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1848

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: The Princess Who Died in Old Muirkirk

  ONE

  “Midnight Sun”

  “The Lass of Aviemore”

  “A Bird in a Gilded Cage”

  In Old Muirkirk

  “In Adam’s Fall . . . ”

  The Pilgrim

  The Forbidden

  The Catechism of Abraham Licht

  “The Mark of Cain”

  The Mute

  The Grieving Father

  The Fate of “Christopher Schoenlicht”

  “Little Moses”

  “Gaily Through Life I Wander”

  “Nigger!”

  Secret Music

  The Desperate Man

  The English Reformer in America

  The Condemned Man

  The Guilty Lovers

  The Ingrate Son

  TWO

  By Night, by Stealth

  The Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. August Napoléon Bonaparte

  Fools and Knaves

  The Betrayal

  “I Have No Feeling of Another’s Pain”

  “I Bring Not Peace but a Sword”

  The Death of “Little Moses”

  Venus Aphrodite

  A Charmed Life

  “Pathétique”

  “The Lass of Aviemore”

  “The Bull”: L’Envoi

  “Albert St. Goar, Esquire”

  THREE

  A Blood-Rose!

  The Wish

  “And the Light Shineth in Darkness”

  “The Lost Village”

  “Prophet, Regent & Exchequer . . . ”

  The Enchanted Princess

  “The First Annual Universal Negro Confraternity Rally”

  In Old Muirkirk

  The Pilgrim

  About the Author

  Also by Joyce Carol Oates

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  THE PRINCESS WHO DIED IN OLD MUIRKIRK

  She was not a Londoner by birth, she was very likely not even English by birth, you could hear it in her voice. Sarah Wilcox. Sarah Hood. Nineteen years old, small-boned and ferret-crafty, eyes of no particular brightness, hair of no particular beauty, yet she was her Lady’s favored maid, her Lady’s most attentive maid, listening at the children’s lessons, French, Latin, music, numbers, the Kings of Old England and France, listening at the children’s prayers, paying heed to her Lady’s friends in the great houses and royal palaces, how to incline the head, how to lift the voice, the eyes rolled delicately Heavenward, as if God on His throne were gazing down: ah, an innocent flirtation! Before her Lady called Sarah knew to obey, before her Lord gave a command Sarah knew to acquiesce, having, as it seemed, no will of her own, surely no cunning, albeit Sarah was not her name and in her voice you could hear she was not a Londoner by birth, very likely not even English.

  One day Sarah swept to her Lady’s golden mirror, bedecked in her Lady’s most exquisite finery—silks, jewels, hairpieces—and made so bold as to inquire, in her Lady’s very voice, Is it little Sarah, or her Lady, who stands here so proud?—whereupon the mirror laughed, saying, Your Lady, little Sarah, was never so proud. And shortly thereafter her Lady and her retinue were summoned to the great palace at Warwickshire to visit servants she was Royalty, and all trembled in awe of her. Old Jeremiah was charmed with her high pure faultless soprano voice, a child grew in her womb but it soon turned to stone, now the old man repented of his sin, now the old man begged of God forgiveness, he had no use for Sarah’s Latin, or her French, or her fine embroidering, or her tears, and now Jeremiah died of flames raging in his throat, and Sarah fled Marblehead in the late winter of 1775, as York, as Winthrop, as Talbot, her long fair hair bound up tight beneath a gentleman’s hat, and her slender body craftily concealed in gentleman’s clothes. In Rhode Island she gambled at cards, in Delaware she followed a river south to her father’s bedside, What seek ye, Sarah?—what, and where?—in Maryland she revealed to admiring eyes that she knew all the dances of the English court, her feet were small, quick, high-arched, her lovely head was high, her eyes ablaze in young womanly beauty. In ballroom mirrors in the great houses of Virginia there was reflected a hundredfold the graceful figure of Princess Susanna Caroline Matilde, and did the sweet English visitor not charm her hosts with tales of her sister the Queen, and her brother-in-law the King, and, ah! numberless intrigues at court? And did she not charm all who gazed upon her with her pure faultless soprano voice, and her skill at the pianoforte, and her pretty French, and her reverent Latin, and her exquisite manners, and her Royal ways?

  Though he had already a wife the courtly Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia wooed Princess Susanna, though he had already a wife and a young mistress the master of the largest plantation in the Carolinas wooed Princess Susanna, and loving no man she loved all, and loving all she loved no man, traveling through 1775 and early ’76 as a houseguest in one great mansion after another, hinting at Royal patronage to the happy few who succeeded in pleasing her, We are Royalty who comport ourselves as such was Princess Susanna’s gentle catechism to all wealthy commoners, who were privileged to offer their guest gifts of a feminine sort (pearls, jewels, and gold trinkets primarily) but dared not offend by offering outright bribes.

  Then it happened in the spring of 1776, in one of the great houses in Charleston, Princess Susanna was exposed as “Sarah Wilcox,” outlaw bondwoman and suspected murderess.

  Now did French avail her?—it did not. And did Latin avail her?—it did not. Nor her pretty little white Bible, nor the locket around her neck (with the likeness of the Queen inside), nor her pure unwavering soprano voice, nor all her tales of court. Yet though she was manacled, and subdued, and weakened, and much abused by her captors, the outlaw escaped while being transported north; and none knew where she had gone, unless it was into the very air—!

  Now God had mercy on a poor youth named Durham, now a pale young seamstress named Bethany, now Susanna Shepherd, widow, now Sarah Licht, widow, twenty-six years of age, childless, of Bush Creek, Maryland, engaged in the autumn of ’76 to a young British officer, Lieutenant William Ward of the 16th Light Dragoons, soon to perish at Trenton. And did Sarah love him?—she did not. And did she mourn him?—not for an hour. For she had her dying baby to mourn, burning with fever, misshapen head, tiny fingers and toes webbed together, she had crazed weeping Sarah to mourn, running with a drunken mob in Contracoeur, torches and pitchforks and rifles, hunting Tory traitors to the death. She would set the New World to flame, she cried, as if it were the Old! There was Mrs. William Ward, widow, a governess in a Vanderpoel household, dismissed after six months’ service for “insolence, impiety, and suspected theft,” there was Mrs. Sarah Ward, a country midwife, shrewd and close-mouthed, said to be of the Devil’s tribe, who never failed at a birth and never rejoiced at a birth, baptizing mother and babe alike with her black bitter tears.

  What seek ye, Sarah?—why, with such passion?—so Sarah
’s own mother admonished her, appearing one night by Sarah’s bedside.

  But she paid no heed, for it was not yet her time, she fluffed out her thinned hair, and slapped color into her cheeks, and gave her heart to a dashing young man named Macready, a black-bearded young horse thief from Philadelphia, Come with me, Sarah Wilcox, and do my will, Sarah, his eyes sly and slanted as her own, his face flushed with love, he could lift her in one arm if he wished, he could smother her in the bulk of his body if he wished, and Sarah cried Yes, yes, and curled like a babe in his bosom.

  Would she cut her shining hair for him?—she would. Would she dress in men’s clothing for him?—she would. Would she follow him into the countryside, into the hills, seeking plunder where plunder might be sought?—she would, she would, she wept for very joy, she gave him all the gold she had, she followed where he led her, close upon the heels of the British at Valley Forge, close upon the heels of the Americans at Jockey Hollow, where many a stray horse might be haltered and traded for cash. The War for Independence was many wars, the horses knew no allegiance to King or to General Washington, why thus should Sarah and her lover? For it is foolish to starve when one might feast, it is foolish to die when one might live, and why support a war, Macready said, if one might be supported by it? Such fine horses to be had for the taking, albeit starving, and frostbitten, and gun-shy, and wary of mankind—! And Sarah clutched at her tall dashing black-bearded lover as she had never clutched at any man, Yes, yes, Sarah wept, Morristown, and Powhatassie, and the doomed British encampment at Port Oriskany, and one day Macready was shot down by moonlight and died streaming blood in Sarah’s arms.

  Could he die like a dog, in a ditch, streaming blood, though Sarah loved him, and would have died in his place?—he could, he could, in Sarah’s very arms, though God looked down and observed the lovers’ agony.

  SARAH FLEES TO the North, Sarah flees to the South, it is the year 1780, it is the early winter of ’81, she is hunted down in Old Muirkirk, she must die in the wilds of Muirkirk swamp, years ago she lost Princess Susanna’s gold locket, it has been years since she had gold coins to toss at the horses’ hooves, she cannot plead with the soldiers in Latin, they will not pause to hear her pretty lisping French, God Himself is deaf to all her pleas. The first lieutenant fires. The second lieutenant fires. Sarah is a great-winged soaring egret but the terrible shot tears through her breast, she is a leaping doe but the shot tears through her throat, Will you not have mercy, my Lord, on one of Royal blood, but the shot tears through her heart, even as the soldiers marvel cursing at the woman’s strength, and dare not pursue her into the marsh, on horseback or afoot. How quickly the horse thief runs!—how alive, how desperate!—even as she staggers in agony, her blood cascading from her—even as the shots tear into her back—Sarah Wilcox who cannot be killed, Sarah Licht who cannot be run to earth, Sarah Macready now sinking into the soft black muck—how alive!—how alive!—the Devil’s own!—even as the soldiers fire at her fallen body, and fire yet again, and again, with curses of exultation.

  And now Sarah is dead, surely?—in the spring of 1781?

  And the great tractless swamp swallows her up.

  ONE

  “MIDNIGHT SUN”

  1.

  Do I doubt?—I do not. Does my hand shake?—it does not. Am I like other men?—I am not.”

  He smiles at his ruddy mirrored reflection, that paragon of manhood, a gentleman in the prime of life, deep-set mica-chip eyes sly with secrets, glowing with interior heat, he smiles and it is a smile, it satisfies him, though the flushed muscled cheeks would clench in rage to reveal too many strong wet white teeth. Too many strong wet white teeth.

  “Am I to be trusted?—I am. Am I a gentleman?—I am.”

  He pauses in his robust lathering of his cheeks and jaws, he examines a three-quarters profile (the left, the truly striking side of his face), hums several bars of Mozart (Don Giovanni in the guise of Don Ottavio), examines the smile again, measured, perfectly calibrated, now a slight modest downturning of the eye, an inclination of the head as well, a gentleman who wears his power lightly, who does not insist, a gentleman-stallion (assuredly not a gelding) who exhibits his charms sparingly, the very essence of “A. Washburn Frelicht, Ph.D.”

  “Am I like other men?—I am not.”

  He completes his toilet with a flourish and flings down the soapy towel, noting with admiration the light flush of the clean-shaven cheeks, the perpetual fever of the cheeks, noting with awe the hard, hard bones, his inheritance, that press against the flesh: his. Why, it is all his.

  “Do I doubt?—I do not. Does my hand shake?—it does not. Am I eager for it all to begin?—yes, yes, a hundredfold yes.”

  2.

  This day of legend, or of infamy.

  To be spoken of, written of, speculated upon, recalled with perennial controversy in the annals of American horse-racing (and gambling) circles well into the twenty-first century: Derby Day of 11 May 1909 at resplendent Chautauqua Downs, one of the first of the “playing fields of the rich.”

  At Chautauqua, at that time, speculation in the clubhouse centered as much on the mysterious gentleman gambler, the “astrological sportsman,” one Frelicht, “Doctor” Frelicht as he and his associates insisted, as of which of two great horses, Stone Street or Xalapa, would win the cup.

  Frelicht. A. Washburn Frelicht, Ph.D. A stranger to Chautauqua Falls, New York; but wasn’t his name dimly notorious in racing circles back East: wasn’t he, or an individual with a name very like his, the inventor of the “tipster sheet”? . . . beloved of gamblers and despised by honest horsemen, and just this past season outlawed from the Chautauqua track as from Belmont and Saratoga. Wasn’t Mr. Frelicht in some ambiguous way associated with “Baron” Barraclough of Buffalo, the railroad speculator; and with the seemingly disgraced congressman Jasper Liges of Vanderpoel; hadn’t he, or an individual with a name very like his, been involved in the secret selling of shares in the “newly discovered” estate of an heir of Napoleon, descended by way of an unclaimed illegitimate son?

  These rumors, amounting in essence to character assassination, circulated freely in Chautauqua Falls in the days preceding the race. Many persons had opinions of A. Washburn Frelicht who had never set eyes upon him, including the very owner of the Chautauqua track, Colonel Jameson Fairlie, who dared to speak of him to the Warwicks (brother and sister, the elderly bachelor Edgar and the widow Seraphina, former wife of the Albany banker Isaac Dove), who were Frelicht’s friends and staunch supporters. To Seraphina the Colonel spoke with his accustomed bluntness, warning her against involving herself in matters that might have been repugnant to poor Isaac, causing the widow to snap shut her black-lacquered Japanese fan, and fix her old friend with a glacial eye, and say, in a voice usually reserved for slow-witted servants: “Mr. Dove, being dead, is hardly ‘poor,’ as he was hardly ‘poor’ in life; and has no more stake in my current affairs, Colonel, than do you.”

  And this exchange, too, quickly entered the lore of that day of legend, or of infamy.

  3.

  “Stone Street,” and “Xalapa,” and “Sweet Thing,” and “Glengarry”; “Midnight Sun,” and “Warlock,” and “Jersey Belle,” and “Meteor,” and “Idle Hour” . . . nine handsome Thoroughbreds in descending order of presumed merit, competing in the Twenty-third Chautauqua Downs Derby; nine Negro jockeys in gaily colored silks armed with little whips and spurs and every manner of jockey trickery, the smallest of the riders weighing in at eighty-eight pounds and the heaviest at one hundred twelve. The public stakes are $6,000 (“The Highest Stakes in America”) and a costly engraved silver trophy, to the winner; $1,000 to second place, and $700 to third. The serious money, however, is as usual in the betting, for what is any horse race, what is this prestigious horse race, without the exchange of cash?—and without clubhouse rumors of Glengarry’s swollen knee, and Jersey Belle’s colic, and Warlock who started so poorly at the Preakness, and Midnight Sun whose owner has been racing him too frequentl
y, and the hairline crack in Meteor’s left rear hoof—or is it Xalapa’s? And Sweet Thing is said to have been “coked to the gills” last month at Belmont—or dosed with a mild painkiller for an ear infection; and there remains the bitter rivalry between the jockeys Parmelee (on Midnight Sun) and “Little Bo” Tenney (on Xalapa), and the strange flurries of betting, now Stone Street is the favorite, now Xalapa is the favorite, now Midnight Sun is up to 2–15, now Henley Farm’s Idle Hour has dropped to 1–30 . . . .If the Derby betting is too eccentric—if there’s suddenly a run on any but the two favorites—the overseeing judge has the privilege of declaring all bets off, switching the jockeys around, and an hour set aside for the hasty remaking of book: which many a horseman and gambler prays will not occur. For, the vicissitudes of chance aside, a Thoroughbred is but a horse while a race is—performed by jockeys.

  (Yet the Colonel has satisfied himself that these jockeys, this Derby, will be absolutely honest.)

  Is Washburn Frelicht, seated in the Warwicks’ clubhouse box with his hosts, one of those gamblers who fret as the hour of the race approaches, and suck at their cigars, and consult their gold pocket watches another time, and make only a polite show of attending to the band’s spirited “Blue Danube”? A neutral observer could not have said whether the handsome gentleman with the black stain eye patch over his left eye, and the meticulously trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee, and the jaunty straw hat, and the air of patrician confidence, was betraying now and then a just-perceptible apprehension, or whether, like numerous others, quite naturally in these heightened circumstances, he is merely anticipating the contest to come. A neutral observer would have guessed that so sporting a gentleman, with that steely-smiling gray gaze, those moist white teeth and ruddy lips, has placed a sizable bet; just possibly, on a “dark” horse; but could not have guessed that the gentleman has secretly made book with $44,000 of his and his clients’ money on the rangy black colt Midnight Sun—whose odds are presently 9-1.