Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2013 23:13:00 -0500
From: Jake Preston <jemtling@gmail.com>
Subject: Queering Benedict Arnold 5
Queering Benedict Arnold 5
The Arnold Mansion, Norwichtown, Connecticut: August, 1759
By Jake Preston
"Queering Benedict Arnold" is historical gay fiction. The story alternates between
twenty-first century scenes in which Jake Preston and Ben Arnold (a descendent)
investigate Benedict's life, and eighteenth-century scenes imagined by Jake and
Ben. Some characters and allusions hark back to "Wayward Island" (in nifty's file
on Beginnings). Jake Preston is the narrator in both works.
Most episodes are faithful to history, except for sexual encounters, which are
fictional. You should not read this story if you are a minor, or if you are offended
by explicit gay sex.
Benedict Arnold was an American military genius who was treated unfairly by
jealous rivals while he lived. After his death, he was demonized as the archetypal
traitor in history and folklore, but he was a target of inexplicable hatred long
before his treasonable conspiracy with John André to surrender the fort at West
Point to the British. Taken as a whole, "Queering Benedict Arnold" is an attempt
to discover the origins of that hatred. Comments welcome: contact Jake at
jemtling@gmail.com.
Nifty stories are free to Readers, but donations are encouraged.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Hannah Arnold (Benedict's mother) was the closest one gets to aristocracy
in New England. Her full name was Hannah Lathrop Waterman King Arnold.
Born September 8, 1708 as Hannah Lathrop Waterman, her father was John
Waterman, the second son of Thomas Waterman and Miriam Tracy. Her mother
was Elizabeth Lathrop, a cousin of Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, the apothecaries to
whom Benedict Arnold was apprenticed. The Watermans and Lathrops were
"founding families" in Norwichtown, and in the Congregational Church. This
fact, combined with their wealth, entitled them to sit in the front pew at church
services-a right that Hannah inherited, and passed to her second husband,
Benedict Arnold III.
Hannah first met Benedict III in spring 1730, when he was 47, twenty-five
years her senior. At that time, she knew him only as a cooper, and then as a
shipmate and friend of Absalom King (then age 27) who was courting her. Thirty
years earlier in Rhode Island, the Arnold family fortune had fallen into decline
due to the unproductive aphoria of his father (Benedict II). The family
apprenticed Benedict III and his younger brother Oliver to a cooper, so the Arnold
brothers earned a living by turning staves into barrels. Barrels were used to
transport rum, molasses, sugar, and other products, but to economize on space,
empty barrels were shipped disassembled, and had to be reassembled before they
could be used again. On the shipping docks, there was always employment for
coopers, though the pay wasn't much. It was a working-class occupation.
Early in 1730, Benedict III and Oliver heard that the sea-trading business
in Norwichtown was booming, so they sailed across the Narragansett Bay from
Rhode Island and made a new home in Connecticut, where they worked as
coopers. One of the captains on the docks was Absalom King, who owned four
trading-ships and a warehouse. Like them he was new to Norwichtown, having
emigrated from Suthold in Suffolk County, Long Island. The colonists in
Connecticut could sometimes be snobbish toward outsiders, so a friendship
developed between Absalom and the Arnold brothers. Absalom took a liking to
the older brother. During the weeks of his engagement to Hannah, Absalom took
Benedict as a lover. They modeled their friendship on Jonathan and David in the
First Book of Samuel. Absalom invited Benedict to join his crew as First Mate,
and taught him the seaman's craft. Within weeks he promoted Benedict to captain
one of his ships.
In outward appearance, Benedict III was Absalom's trusted employee and
shipmate. However so, the first time they met on the wharf, drumbeats of desire
summoned them to the covert army of lovers. Oliver was there, too, the younger
brother, oblivious to their mutual glances. Every day for two weeks, the brothers
worked together turning stacks of staves into barrels. The worked outside on the
dock when the weather was good. When it rained, they moved their work into
Absalom King's warehouse. Absalom checked on their progress more often that
was necessary. He took to bringing them lunch and eating with them. He found
few opportunities to seen Benedict alone. Oliver was always there with him.
Desperate for Benedict's affection, he invited the older brother to be his shipmate.
Benedict perceived his motivation at once. "I've had no experience in these
waters," he said ambiguously, "but if you'll teach me, I'm willing to learn."
Absalom knew that he had help Oliver, too, but if he invited the younger
brother to join his crew, he and Benedict would never find time to be alone. He
hired Oliver to manage his warehouse, a duty that he took on for extra pay while
he continued in his occupation as a cooper.
On their initial voyage as Captain and First Mate, they sailed to Charleston
with textiles, salted beef, gunpowder, and medical supplies from the Lathrop
apothecary. For Benedict, each day was a lesson in sailing. Other crew members
were leery, but Benedict was a fast learner and soon gained their confidence.
After gaining good profit from the sale of their cargo, they purchased Carolina
tobacco and rice, Barbados sugar, and Jamaican rum for their homeward journey.
For four nights and three days, they stayed aboard ship in the harbor while the rest
of crew recreated themselves in the taverns and brothels of Charleston.
On their first evening, Captain King took Benedict to dinner at a tavern
overlooking the harbor. It was a warm, windless night. The Captain requested that
a table be set outdoors, so they could dine in view of his ship. Always cautious of
thieves, he never lost sight of the harbor. Benedict asked if he had suffered loss
from thievery in the past. "No, but I've prevented it by keeping watch," he said.
The innkeeper, a stout red-haired Irishman, brought candles to the table, and a
bottle of French red wine. He knew the difference between gentlemen and rowdy
crewmen. He recommended the tavern specialty, "boxty loaded with pork and
vegetables, prepared by my own hands," he said. "It's a poor man's potato-bread
in Ireland, but the South Carolina version is a gourmet dinner." He spoke the
truth. He shooed off two harlots like flies from the table: "Let the gentlemen from
New England eat their dinner in peace! Wait till they get to their rum," he said.
The dialogue of Captain and Mate grew animated during two hours going
on three over rum. It was mariners' talk, mostly about sea-trading adventures and
distant places where Captain King had sailed, but they knew well enough to speak
softly whenever they mentioned their friendship. The Captain never spoke of his
engagement to Hannah Waterman. When the harlots approached their table, he
dismissed them with two shillings each, "quite a bit cheaper than remedies for pox
from Dr. Lathrop's apothecary," he said, referring to Daniel Lathrop, who had
studied medicine in London. They were approached by a creepy pimp, who
offered them their choice of ladies, Negro or white, or Huguenot brides for the
night, guaranteed virgins. "Eternal virginity is a Huguenot specialty," the Captain
jested. "They keep their virginity, while we go home with the clap!"
Last but not least in the nocturnal parade, two boys approached their table.
They couldn't have been older than fourteen. They offered their services as cabin
boys. Absalom said he wasn't hiring, but offered them two shillings apiece to
ward off their friends. Some sea-captains took the license of sleeping with cabin-
boys aboard ship and with whores in the harbor. Captain King was not one of
these. "Your body is the temple of God: keep it clean!" he admonished the boys.
"If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of
God is holy, which temple ye are," he said, quoting from First Corinthians. As the
boys departed our table, he said softly to me: "The local nocturnal merchants of
sex are wondering whether we are Puritans or Sodomites. These boys will chatter.
Better to let them take us for Puritans."
"Speaking of buggery, that's a perilous sea as yet unnavigated by me,
Captain King," Benedict said with accent on the vocative.
"Nor by me, as yet," Absalom replied. "Don't worry, Benedict. If there's a
storm, we'll weather it. Maybe we'll discover Paradise Island."
"If Paradise exists, I'm ready to go there," Benedict said. After some
hesitation, he added: "no matter what role I'm destined to play."
Unsteady steps took them back to the ship, encouraged by rum. They
leaned on each other for support. They raised the gangplank for privacy. "Strange
word, 'gangplank', Absalom said. "Not so strange," Benedict replied. "'Gang' is
just a contracted form of 'going', which used to mean 'walking', so a gangplank
is a 'walking plank'. Or maybe 'gang' is shortened from 'gangan', since 'go' used
to be reduplicated in the past tense. What's strange is the expression 'walking the
gangplank', which means 'walking the walking-plank'." Benedict had inherited
his father's interest in Algonquian languages, which had passed from father to son
since the time of his great grandfather, William Arnold. People who study foreign
languages always seem to have a better grammatical knowledge of their own
language.
"You're gonna 'gangan' the gangplank and be a gonner if you don't get
down to my cabin and get yourself naked," Absalom said.
"That's what I like, a Captain who takes charge," Benedict laughed. His
clothes were on the floor at his feet by the time that Absalom bolted the door and
lit a small oil-lamp on a table that was bolted to the wall.
Absalom liked what he saw: a ruddy, rough-hewn hairy body, muscular
from thirty years hoisting barrels on the docks; it complemented his rigid 'yard',
already throbbing, and his rugged countenance, which bore marks of adversity.
Benedict had the features that Absalom admired in a man. Following his example,
Absalom stripped naked. Radiant fairness of youthful skin rippled in the dim light
of the oil-lamp.
They stood face to face. Absalom stepped in close. Cocks clashed. "Hands
behind your back," he said.
"How do you win a sword fight?" Benedict asked. "Not by having the
biggest yard, I hope." Absalom had Benedict beat by a couple inches.
"You win by getting your opponent to unclasp his hands," Absalom said.
"One of us must be the proud possessor of a bugger-butt. Let the duel decide. No
rough body contact, just cock-strokes. You take a pass at me first, Benedict. We'll
take turns until one of us unclasps our hands."
Benedict thrust forward with his cock. "You've got such a pretty arse,
Absalom, all you need is this rod to complete the picture," he said.
"Nice try, but try this for size," Absalom said while he took his turn.
Benedict parried the blow with a slight torso-turn.
"Here's a boner for you virgin hole," Benedict said while he thrust at
Absalom.
"How 'bout prick through the back door," Absalom said.
Benedict returned Absalom's thrust. "Let's up the ante," he said. "Let's
play for keeps. Whoever loses the sword-fight loses his arse permanently."
"I'm up for that," Absalom said, accepting the challenge while he thrust
cock.
"Man I want that cute white ass," Benedict said while he took a pass.
Absalom parried.
Absalom returned a cock-stroke as hard as he could thrust. "Here's a
boing for the bung-hole!"
Benedict tried a frontal assault, glans to glans, "a battery ram for the
rump."
Absalom took his turn at the thrust: "You realize that when our sword-
fight is over, we'll be moving on to archery practice."
Benedict: "I'll be your Cupid and your sweet arse will be my target."
Unsteadied by rum, Absalom stumbled. To regain his balance, he put a
hand on Benedict's shoulder. Benedict steadied him by holding his side. He
guided Absalom's hand to his throbbing rod. "Cop a feel of Cupid's arrow,
bugger-boy," he smiled.
"I was hoping I'd win your arse. Still, I'm content with the result,"
Absalom said.
"I'm more than content," Benedict replied. "It'll be so much better
buggering you, knowing that you planned to bugger me."
"I guess I can take it as well as any man," Absalom said. "Don't forget
you'll be poppin' my cork, so take it easy."
Benedict pulled Absalom close on the bed. They fondled and exchanged
kisses, which led to mutual fellatio. Benedict did all he knew to prepare
Absalom's body for buggery. Absalom frog-legged and rested his ankles on
Benedict's shoulders while Benedict missioned him. Even though Absalom's
senses were dulled by rum, the penetration was painful. He stifled his cries out of
manly pride, and out of fear that he might be heard on the dock if someone was
there. Benedict's fucking was brutal at first, but by instinct he learned to moderate
selfish thrusts with a soothing massage of his partner's anal canal, and groans
turned to moans as Absalom's pain turned to pleasure. The fragrance of
Absalom's jizz permeated the cabin by the time that Benedict heaved and oozed
himself into Absalom. Both men agreed: they had made a good beginning. As
their relationship grew, they tried oral sex, too, and mutual masturbation, but their
preferred mode of sex was buggery.
Absalom married Hannah that summer (August 11, 1730). Over the next
two years they had two children, but both died as infants. Absalom and Benedict
met often in secret during Hannah's pregnancies. Sex with Benedict was
consolation for Absalom during times of mourning for his lost infants. Then in the
summer 1732, Absalom sailed to Ireland on a mercantile mission, leaving
Benedict in charge of the wharf. Absalom contracted small pox in Ireland; on the
return voyage, he got sick. When he died (Sept. 3, 1732), he was buried at sea in
the North Atlantic. Fourteen months later (Nov. 8, 1733), Hannah and Benedict
were married. On April 4, 1747, when Hannah gave birth to her sixth child, a boy,
Benedict III did not object when she proposed to name him Absalom, after her
first husband.
Thus it happened that friendship and marriage elevated Benedict III from a
lowly cooper to one of Norwichtown's wealthiest citizens. He gained control of
Captain Absalom King's ships, his wharf, and his warehouse. During the 1730s
and 40s, the sea-trading business prospered. At one time or another, Benedict
served in Norwichtown as a town surveyor, a tax collector, an assessor, and a
selectman on the Town Council. Not without a flair for ostentation, in 1736-1738
he built the Arnold family mansion on a five-acre lot overlooking the harbor, in
view of the family wharf and his trading-ships. Seen from a distance, the white-
clapboard house stood among stately elm trees, and was topped with eight
chimneys, one for each fireplace. It had a least a dozen spacious rooms. Its most
distinctive feature was a gambrel roof: the lower part was sloped at a sharp angle,
while the upper roof was pitched low to allow more headroom in the rooms on the
upper level of the house. This was a Dutch architectural style, introduced to the
colonies by seaman in the 1670s. It reflected seafaring as the basis of the Arnold
family business.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
In the Arnold Mansion, on August 15, 1759, Hannah Lathrop Waterman
King Arnold died at age 52. She got sick in April, days after Benedict, her only
son, had gone to Albany to join a New York Militia company under Captain
James Holmes. In May, his seventeen-year-old sister Hannah wrote to him, urging
him to come home. From May 21, 1759 to March 26, 1760, Benedict was wanted
as a deserter, with a 40-shilling reward on his head. He had been 'away without
leave' during the great British victories at Forts Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, and
Crown Point, and when he returned to his company (on March 26), the French
and Indian War was all but over. Even so, Benedict was restored to his unit
without punishment-possibly because his employers, Daniel and Joshua
Lathrop, were major suppliers of medical materiel to the British Army.
Hannah languished while her illness lingered. By July she knew that she
was dying. To make a virtue of necessity, she determined to make her death a
"holy" one in the Protestant English style. She had her bed moved to the library
on the first floor. She asked Benedict and Red Feather to transplant a cypress tree
outside one of the library windows. She had the boys move the grandfather clock
from the parlor to the library, so she could view its bold inscription, "Tempus
fugit," each time the clock chimed a passing hour. She wrote farewell letters to
her only surviving children, Benedict and Hannah. During sporadic moments of
activity, she rearranged books on the library shelves. The shelves near her bed
included volumes of edification: Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained,
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,
Edward Young's Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, and even a
Tanakh in Hebrew, on loan from the Lathrops' apothecary (besides
pharmaceuticals, they also sold books). She didn't read Hebrew, but kept the book
close as a talisman, in consideration of her future salvation. Next to the Hebrew
Tanakh she kept John Donne's Meditations and Jeremy Taylor's Rule and
Exercises of Holy Dying.
Members of the Congregational Church came to call. In fulfillment of
their pious duty to visit the sick, they satisfied their curiosity to see the Arnold
Mansion, noting, not without glee, that its glory was frayed around the edges, for
the Arnolds had lived in genteel poverty for almost a decade. Household duties,
once performed by servants, now fell to Hannah's seventeen-year-old daughter
and namesake, who served tea and biscuits to all visitors. Mixed feelings
notwithstanding, when visitors were admitted to the library they were awed by its
treasures: its English carpet and draperies, its panels and shelves, and several
hundred leather-bound books, some of which must have cost as much as a laborer
could earn in a year. Hannah's cousins, Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, had agreed to
sell them on consignment in the apothecary, but not until after Hannah's passing.
Hannah asked visitors to read to her from these books, especially from the
meditations of Donne and Taylor. From John Donne:
"Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man! This minute I was
well, and am ill, this minute. I am surprised with a sudden change, and alteration
to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study health,
and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises... and so our
health is a long and a regular word: but in a minute a cannon batters all,
overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence,
unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay, undeserved... summons us, seizes us,
possesses us, destroys us in an instant. O miserable condition of man!"
Her fellow Congregationalists, "Old Lights" who had resisted evangelism
during the Great Awakening in the 1740s, read to her from Jeremy Taylor,
concerning the untimely death of the Duchess of Carbery:
"From her bed of darkness she calls you to dress your soul for that change
which shall mingle your bones with that beloved dust, and carry your soul to the
same quire where you may both sit and sing forever.... She knew how to live
rarely well, and she desired to know how to die; and God taught her by
experiment."
The 'experiment' was sickness, "a dress-rehearsal for death," she
explained to visitors. "Our sleep every night is an imitation of death, and just so
when we are sick-bed is a school to prepare us for death," echoing Donne's
thoughts, and Taylor's. "My body is a sermon," she would say, "upon whose eye
sits a cloud, and the heart is broken with sickness, and the liver pierced with
sorrows and the strokes of death.... For a sick-bed is a school of severe exercise
in which the spirit is tried and its graces are rehearsed." She quoted Jeremy Taylor
from memory.
Strictly speaking, "holy dying" is supposed to be preceded by bouts of
sickness, followed by recovery to health. Sickness was a time for meditation
about death, as John Donne wrote in his Meditations. Health was a time for deeds
of charity, inspired by a previous sickness. Hannah had rarely been sick, until she
contracted the undiagnosed illness that took her life. Still, she knew the sorrow of
death. During her life she gave birth to eight children; only Benedict and young
Hannah survived. Her first two children, by Absalom, died as infants. Then
Absalom died of small pox on a voyage home from Ireland. One day late in July,
when Hannah was attended by Benedict and Red Feather, she asked them to read
a meditation from the Arnold family Bible.
"What text shall we read, Mother?" Benedict asked.
"Read the text on the fifth page," she said. Benedict turned to the page.
The heading read: "Family Registry." Benedict and Red Feather took turns
reading.
Benedict: "Benedict Arnold, August 15, 1738. Died August 20."
"That was the fourth Benedict in our family," Hannah said, "your
namesake. We call you Benedict IV, because your older brother was unable to
fulfill that role."
Red Feather: "Benedict Arnold, January 14, 1741. That's you, Benedict.
I'm so glad you're alive!"
Benedict: "Hannah Arnold, December 9, 1742." That was Benedict's only
living sister.
Red Feather: "Mary, June 4, 1745. Died September 10, 1753. Yellow
fever."
"Mary was the first of many children who died of yellow fever in
Norwichtown," Hannah said.
"I remember," Benedict said. "I was twelve."
Benedict: "'Absalom, April 4, 1747, died July 22, 1750, at age 3. Yellow
fever'. I was just nine, but I remember the funeral in the parlor."
"My little one," Hannah said. "He was named for my first husband,
Captain Absalom King, a good friend of your father. Benedict and Absalom were
like David and Jonathan. He died among strangers at sea. His life was too short,
but he knew love and friendship while he lived."
Red Feather: "Elizabeth, November 19, 1749, died September 29, 1755, at
age six. Yellow fever."
"On the next page there's a letter that I wrote to Benedict in the summer of
1753, when he was in school at Canterbury. Would you read from that, Red
Feather?"
[Note to the Reader: in the 18th century, 'ye' was a scribal abbreviation for
'the'. Notwithstanding the spelling, the word was pronounced 'the'.]
Red Feather unfolded the letter and read: "'I wright to let you know that
your poor sisters (she meant Hannah, Mary, and Elizabeth) are yet in ye land of
living. But for 3 or 4 days past we looked on Mary as one just stepping off ye
banks of time, and to all appearances, Hannah just behind. But to ye surprise of all
beholder, Mary is something revived, but I am afraid what ye event shall be.
Hannah is waxing weak and weaker, hath not got up one hour this seven days
past, and her distemper increasing. What God is about to do with us I know not.
Your father is very poor. Aunt Hyde is sick and I myself had a touch of ye
distemper, but of divine goodness it is passed off light with me.' Mrs. Arnold, this
is breaking my heart!"
"Mary died of the fever, and after that, Elizabeth, but little Hannah was
spared," Hannah said. "You must continue reading the letter, Red Feather."
Red Feather finished the letter that his friend had received at boarding-
school when he was twelve: "'My dear, God seems to be saying to all children, be
ye also ready. Pray take ye exhortation, for ye call to ye is very striking: that God
should smite your sisters and spare you as yet. Pray improve your time and beg of
God to grant his spirit, or death may overtake you unprepared. For his
commission seems sealed for a great many, and, for aught you know, you may be
one of them. My dear, fly to Christ. If ye don't know ye way, tell him. He is
guidance of ye Holy Spirit to guide you to that only shelter from death eternal.
For, death temporal we all must try, sooner or later. Your groaning sisters give
love to you. God may mete you with this disease wherever you be, for it is His
servant, but I would not have you come home for fear it should be presumption.
My love to you-beg you will wright us. I have sent you one pound chocolate.
Farewell'. It's signed, 'Your distressed mother, Hannah Arnold.' John Donne
couldn't have said it better."
Red Feather's love for Benedict deepened. He had a dim recollection of
funerals in the Arnold family, but he had no idea that Benedict had suffered so
much adversity as a child.
Weeks passed. The 'sermon' of Hannah's body seemed long and tedious
to visitors from the Congregational Church. If she was doomed to die, the Old
Lights wished she'd get on with it. By the end of July, her only visitors were Dr.
Daniel Lathrop, Joshua Lathrop, Daniel's wife Jerusha, and Red Feather,
Benedict's partner in sodomy. She felt the greatest kinship with Jerusha, her
cousin-by-marriage, for Jerusha had lost all three of her children to yellow fever
during the plague in 1748. It made no difference that their father was a physician;
Jerusha was left childless. Four years later, when Benedict III was in debtors'
prison and Benedict IV was apprenticed to the Lathrops, Jerusha treated Hannah's
son as the child she could never have. Jerusha's knowledge of botany was
legendary, especially when it came to medicinal herbs. In her garden in the
riverfront mansion on Washington Street, she taught Benedict everything she
knew. Benedict passed much of this knowledge to Red Feather, who added some
Old World remedies to the Mohegan Shaman's craft.
Hannah had mixed feelings about Red Feather. He and Benedict had been
friends for as long as anyone could remember, but in the spring of 1759 when
they became lovers, she recognized the signs. Her rough-and-tumble son, who
sometimes spoke to visitors with less civility than he should have done, treated
Red Feather with a constant tenderness that reminded her of Absalom, who
showed the same kindness toward Benedict III during the three brief years of her
first marriage. At first she blamed Red Feather, because (at age twenty) he was
two years older. "On her more advice" (to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare's
Henry V), she recognized that when these lads became lovers, it was probably
Benedict who instigated the new relationship.
For Hannah, two considerations worked in Red Feather's favor. One was
his fierce loyalty to Benedict, especially during the dangerous months when he
lived in Norwichtown as a deserter. Whenever British Army recruiters came to
town-and their visits grew frequent as the French and Indian War dragged on-
Benedict retreated to the Mohegan village, where the Shaman and Chief Benjamin
Uncas kept him hidden in their lodgings. Red Feather and his Mohegan allies,
always alert sentries, let Benedict know whenever he was in danger of getting
arrested. Second, Hannah's fellow Congregationalists were vocal in their
disapproval, because she had the gall to admit a Mohegan Indian to the inner
sanctum of her sick room.
On the day that she heard this complaint, Hannah called Benedict and Red
Feather to her bed for a private conference. "The Old Lights have spoken, my
dear son," she said. "They don't approve of Red Feather coming to the Palace of
Doom." (That's what she called the Arnold Mansion, because four of her children
had died there of yellow fever.) "Therefore, my boys, I must tell you that Red
Feather is welcome in our house at any time, and he can spend his nights here,
too, if that's what you would want."
"Bless us, Mother," Benedict said. She laid one hand on her son's head,
and the other on Red Feather's. "Let David have his Jonathan. Let Jonathan have
his David," she said.
One day while Red Feather and Benedict kept vigil, the bell could be
heard from the Church, tolling the end of a funeral. Red Feather turned promptly
to Donne's Meditation XVI: "When the Turks took Constantinople, they melted
the bells into ordnance; I have heard both bells and ordnance, but never been so
much affected with those as with bells...." When he finished this discourse, he
turned to Meditation XVIII: "The bell rings out, the pulse thereof is changed; the
tolling was a faint and intermitting pulse, upon one side; this stronger, and argues
more and better life. His soul is gone out, and as a man who had a lease of one
thousand years after the expiration of a short one, he is now entered into the
possession of his better estate...." Finally he turned to Meditation XVII:
"Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls
for him.... No man is an island entire of itself.... The bell doth toll for him that
thinks it doth...."
"You turned to the right pages, Red Feather. You read just the right
passages for Mama. How is that possible? Do you know Donne's Meditations that
well?" Benedict asked.
"I happen to like John Donne," Red Feather said. "His sentences seemed
wordy at first, but after reading Meditations aloud three hours a day for the last
three weeks, the style grows on you. Jeremy Taylor ain't bad, either."
While Red Feather grew more 'English' under the Arnold influence,
Benedict grew more Algonquian during his hideout among Mohegan villagers.
From the Shaman-Red Feather's father-he learned Mohegan medicine that
served him well later (in 1762) when he established his own shop as an
apothecary and bookseller in New Haven, thanks to a mortgage from the
Lathrops. In his religious life, such as it was, Congregationalism gave way to
Shamanism. He attended Mohegan feasts and rituals. The Shaman didn't adopt
him formally because he was already considered to be part of the family. Late in
July (1759) at a religious ritual, the Shaman uttered a prophecy directed at him:
"You must learn the Abenaki language," he told Benedict.
Late in July (1759), the Mohegans learned that Caribou Brave, the son of
Natanis (the Abenaki Chief) had been captured by Captain James Holmes and
imprisoned in Albany. This was a coup for the British Army, because the Abenaki
were France's strongest allies in the French and Indian War. Benedict served as
an informant and secret advisor to Benjamin Uncas, when the Mohegan Chief
received a request from Natanis to negotiate his son's release. Benedict told Chief
Uncas all he knew about Captain Holmes and his company, and advised Uncas
how to approach the problem. The two Mohegan brothers, Uncas and the Shaman,
accompanied Joshua Lathrop on an apothecary caravan bound for Albany, and
added to the medical supplies with gifts of their own. Joshua Lathrop, Chief
Uncas, and the Shaman requested a conference with Captain Holmes. He
remanded Caribou Brave to the custody of Chief Uncas, on condition that the
Abenaki warrior-prince would remain in the Mohegan village until the conclusion
of the French and Indian War. Caribou Brave was summoned to the conference.
The peace-pipe was passed, and he lived with the Mohegans on his honor. Back in
the village, Chief Uncas informed Caribou Brave that he had Benedict to thank
for his freedom. It was Caribou Brave's duty, he said, to teach Abenaki to Red
Feather and Benedict. From mid-August through March 1760, Red Feather,
Benedict, and Caribou Brave were a threesome in hunting, fishing, trapping and
sports, all the while communicating in Abenaki. The transition from Mohegan to
Abenaki was relatively easy-like a Spaniard learning Portuguese or Catalan-
because both are Algonquian dialects.
But I'm getting ahead of my story. Three weeks before Caribou Brave
arrived in the Mohegan village, Red Feather and Benedict became mates in
Benedict's bedroom on the second floor of the Arnold Mansion-when they
weren't sleeping in a forest wigwam, or in Red Feather's bed in the Shaman's
cabin. The Mohegans had no objection: Red Feather's love affair with Benedict
was proof that he was endowed with "two spirits," a necessary attribute in a future
Shaman. Benedict's father had no objection: it brought back fond memories of his
love affair with Absalom King. Hannah gave the boys her blessing, but expected
discretion.
Red Feather knew the story of David in its general outline, but wondered
why Benedict's mother compared them to David and Jonathan. One day early in
August, while Hannah slept, they sat in the library and poured over First Samuel
in the King James Version of the Bible. "Jonathan was already famous as a
military hero before he met David. It's important to understand that," Benedict
said. "In a lone guerilla action, Jonathan killed a Philistine prefect in Gibeah. In
the garrison there, he and his armor-bearer slew twenty Philistines while other
Hebrew warriors watched from their hiding-places in holes and caves. The
skirmish caused disorder in the Philistine camp, and emboldened the Hebrews to
victory in a major battle.
"When David, 'ruddy and handsome', first came to the Army of King Saul
and fought Goliath in single combat, the giant looked on his youth with contempt,
but after their combat, Jonathan fell in love at first sight. 'Jonathan loved David as
much as he loved his own soul'. They swore an oath of friendship. As part of the
ritual, Jonathan stripped off his cloak and his tunic, and all his garments down to
his breeches. He gave them to David, together with his bow, sword, and belt.
Dressed in Jonathan's raiment and war-gear, David led Hebrew commandos on
diverse military missions, until King Saul grew jealous of his success and looked
for ways to kill him."
"David dressed up as Jonathan, almost a disguise," Red Feather said. "It's
as if David became Jonathan's double-like you dressing up as a Mohegan,
Benedict."
"I think it's a sign that David became Jonathan's lover on the day when
they met, just after slaying Goliath," Benedict said. "Achilles and Patroklos were
similar, and they were lovers, too. Patroklos went into battle against the Trojans
disguised in Achilles's armor. That's when he was killed by Hektor."
"So David conquered Goliath's head and Jonathan's arse, all in one day,"
Red Feather quipped.
"King Saul knew," Benedict said. "He tried to kill David using diverse
ruses. When he betrothed his daughter Michal to David, the bride-price he asked
for was a hundred Philistine foreskins. He figured that David would be killed.
When David returned with twice as many foreskins, and counted them out
ceremoniously, Saul had no choice but to let David marry Michal. Then Saul put a
reward of David's head, and commissioned his courtiers to kill David, but
Jonathan appealed to the king's sense of fairness, and Saul relented. Another time
in the palace, when David was playing his harp, Saul threw a spear at David, but
it missed, and stuck in a wall. Once he sent assassins to David's house to kill him
at dawn, but Michal got wind of the plot. She helped David escape through a
second-story window, and dressed up an idol in bed to look like David. She told
her creepy visitors that David was sick. When the assassins carried the bed to the
palace, it was found to contain an idol with a net of goat's hair attached to its
head. David escaped, and lived in exile in Ramah. Even when David was living in
exile, the lovers looked for opportunities to meet, and often found them.
"King Saul tried to lure David back to the palace by means of a pretense
of reconciliation. To mark the occasion, he gave a royal feast. David suspected
that Saul's intention was evil. The lovers devised a plan to protect David.
Jonathan's task was to find out what Saul intended for David. He would send a
signal to David, by means of archery-practice. Jonathan would shoot three arrows,
as if at a target, and sent a servant-boy after them. If Saul's intention was
honorable, he would call to the boy, 'Hey! The arrows are on this side of you',
and he would accompany David to the feast. If Saul's intention was evil, he would
call to the boy, 'Hey! The arrows are beyond you', and he would depart.
"David was absent on the first day of the feast. Saul said nothing about it.
When David was absent on the second day, Saul complained, but Jonathan said,
'David begged me leave to go to Bethlehem. He said, "Please let me go, for we
are going to have a family feast in our town and my brother has summoned me.
Do me a favor, let me slip away to see my kinsmen." That is why David has not
come to the king's table'. King Saul flew into a rage, and humiliated Jonathan in
public by accusing him of being David's lover: 'You son of a perverse, rebellious
woman! I know that you side with the son of Jesse-to your shame, and to the
shame of your mother's nakedness!' He threw his spear at Jonathan. The next
morning, Jonathan went out for archery practice, and sent the signal to warn
David away. Instead of departing the scene, Jonathan sent the servant boy home
with the arrows. David and Jonathan met and wept for a long time. Sex was their
consolation. They wept again, fearing that this might be their last time together.
David wept longer."
"A beautiful story," Red Feather remarked. "Jonathan took the initiative,
having fallen in love with David at first sight. David's response was reciprocation,
not love, but Jonathan had enough love for both of them. At their last meeting, it
was David who loved most deeply."
"True," Benedict said, "but it wasn't their last meeting. Their love was
strong, and they found occasions to meet during David's years in exile. Still, the
story ends in tragedy. Saul and all three of his sons were killed by Philistines at
the Battle of Mount Gilboa. David presided at the funeral, and sang the dirge. In it
he mourned Saul and Jonathan equally, but he disclosed his heart's burden in the
last stanza. He declared his love for Jonathan:
How have the mighty fallen in the thick of battle?
Jonathan, slain on our heights! [meaning Mount Gilboa]
I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan,
You were most dear to me.
Your love was wonderful to me,
More than the love of women.
How have the mighty fallen,
The weapons of war perished!
"The preacher in the Congregational Church would deny David and Jonathan
their love, as if it was no more than loyal friendship," Benedict said.
"So, which one of us is David, and which is Jonathan?" Red Feather
asked-a dubio.
"David was the dark stranger from the wilderness, so that must be you,
Red Feather. Jonathan was the privileged prince in the court-that sounds a bit
like me."
"Your parallels are based on outward appearance," Red Feather protested.
"What about the inner reality? Jonathan loved David first, and instigated the love
affair. That would be you, Benedict; which makes me David. At first he complied
with Jonathan's wishes, but in the end, he loved more deeply."
"Ah, but David was the bugger in their buggery," Benedict said in low
tones. There was no need to make the parallel more explicit.
"Maybe that should change," Red Feather said.
Benedict looked surprised. He was happy with the way they made love.
He assumed that Red Feather was, too. "Have David and Jonathan led us into our
first lovers' quarrel?" he asked.
"That's for you to decide," Red Feather said.
The quarrel, if that's what it was, ended abruptly when Hannah stirred. In
fact she had been awake. She was dying, but she wasn't deaf. "I'm glad to find
that you boys were edified by the biblical lesson," she said. She told them to go to
bed, so she could sleep peacefully through the night.
Naked in bed, Benedict kissed Red Feather with a passion that seemed
urgent and impulsive, even for him. Body-kisses were explorations in the light of
an oil-lamp, like the first time their bodies presented as undiscovered countries.
Red Feather groped butt and fingered cleft in a sidled 69, encouraged by moans
and a hand on the till that guided him portside. Was his lover giving him license
(Red Feather wondered) to sail his sloop into a harbor that had been blocked, until
now, by an invisible adamantine boulder? Benedict's former resistance melted.
Like a diamond it morphed into watery ooze while his chest heaved, masculine-
massive, and his tight torso trembled at Red Feather's touch.
"Let me be your Jonathan," Benedict whispered.
Red Feather sprang into action. He pushed Benedict on his back, frog-
legged, and inspected the portal in the light of the oil-lamp. "Why Benedict,
you're beautiful!" he exclaimed. "So many shades of red!-like a wagon-wheel,
defined by a rim painted pink like wild rose or a garden of pinks, sprayed with
carnation, amaranth, magenta." Red Feather rehearsed the color-words he had
learned from one of the books in the Arnold library. "An inner circle: cerise with
traces of cinnabar and ochre. When I spread your cheeks, the portal opens to a
mysterious medley of vermilion, crimson, alizarin, strawberry, burgundy, and
deep inside, carmine and tuscany, the darkest of reds."
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I interrupted Ben's story: "You're making that up. How could you know
the colors of Benedict Arnold's portal?"
"It's a genetic trait," Ben said. He smiled shyly. "Aziz told me about it.
The thing he likes most about white men, he said, is their ability to dazzle the eye
and dizzy the mind with anatomical features that are totally unexpected. Red
Feather felt the same way about Benedict. Maybe David felt the same way about
Jonathan. Can I get on with my story now?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Red Feather had physical attractions, too, as Benedict found once his
attention was focused on Mohegan genitalia. If Benedict's arse was a study in red,
his lover presented a frontal study in brown. His skin tone was bronze, accented
with dark shades of auburn and light shades ranging from fawn to fallow. Streaks
of sepia could be seen on his almost-beaver-brown scrotum only by parting a
growth of dark-brown hairs. When his prick was flaccid and his foreskin
prominent, it appeared copper-brown, a shade darker than his bronze skin, with
hints of umber and russet. When it was rigid it was taupe, like a flagpole made
from the darkest shades of black walnut, and veiny with purple. In the contrast of
colors it looked almost as dark as an Arctic seal.
"Purple-veined taupe into tuscany, in a garden of pinks and wild roses," I
exclaimed, interrupting Ben's story again. "Like Aziz Rahul, the words are as
sexy as the colors."
Ben continued, ignoring my interruption: Benedict was eighteen going on
nine. Even so, he thought of himself as a man of experience. He was caught off-
balance when Red Feather introduced him to sensations that he hadn't even
imagined! First, the shock of initial penetration took his breath away. He returned
Red Feather's resolute gaze with a look of helpless compliance, forgetting his
superior strength and setting aside any inclination he might have had to push the
bold intruder off of him.
Second: a sharp burning sensation followed when Red Feather's shaft
opened his inner sphincter. He had known pain in many forms, but this was a
brand new agony. Its dissipation seemed far too gradual. Third: when his anal
canal was occupied fully by Red Feather's shaft, he was surprised by a sudden
sensation of falling, as if he had fallen asleep and then startled awake. His act of
surrender was conscious and deliberate, but his 'stumble into surrender' was
unexpected, unplanned, unsought; still, a welcome sensation. From Benedict's
facial expression, Red Feather knew that his lover had turned the corner; they
were traveling to a new destination in their sex life.
Fourth: Benedict's 'fall into surrender' gave way to a strange feeling of
fullness. At first it came as a subtle sensation, an awareness of being joined to
Red Feather, body to body. The sensation grew on him, and in him. It created an
illusion of totality, as if his whole body was occupied fully, "O agony and
ecstasy!" His anal canal and Red Feather's cock, joined in the same space and
time, seemed like the center of the cosmos.
Fifth: when Red Feather followed Nature's precepts and started fucking,
the feeling of fullness in Benedict gave way to awareness that Red Feather had
dispatched a cocky carpenter on an errand that required interior remodeling. The
rafters were too low, and needed reconstruction. "Raise high the roof-beams,
Carpenter!" This was more pain than pleasure, but it satisfied Benedict to think of
it as reciprocation, remembering that several weeks earlier, Red Feather had
endured the same for his sake.
Sixth, Red Feather fucked with ars amatoria as only an experienced
bottom knows how. He knew how to alternate between frictional humping and
gentle massage in the anal canal. He hoped to get Benedict addicted to the role.
That wouldn't happen on his first time, but his ministrations of friction and
massage introduced Benedict to anal orgasms: subtle popping and crackling
sensations in his anal canal. Benedict demanded that Red Feather fuck harder.
Intuitively he knew that the crackles and pops in his arse were induced by friction,
even though they could be felt only when Red Feather's cock came to a point of
rest.
Seventh, the roving contact of Red Feather's shaft over Benedict's
prostate stimulated seminal juices in Benedict, to such a mass of profusion that
when they shot tubular, sprayed, and oozed between two torsos locked in love, the
orgasm that came to Benedict was stronger than any he had known. So great was
his satisfaction that he made no protest when Red Feather flipped him. He arched
when Red Feather fucked, intercursal and furious. The conquest of Benedict's
arse was total, and matched by total surrender.
Eighth: the lubricious sensation of liquid silk when Red Feather poured his
seminal essence into Benedict. They shared a golden silence while Red Feather
lay over Benedict's backside, breathed into his ear (a lover's sufflation), and
soaked his rod in his own juices. A sensation of loss came to Benedict when the
cock receded and escaped the grasp of his sphincter. He said he wanted more,
whenever Red Feather had more to give.
He didn't have to wait long. The lust of possession hardened his cock and
he humped Benedict a second time, furiously, without letting up on the pressure.
Benedict moaned and howled for mercy. He groaned and told Red Feather to fuck
harder. He experienced the ninth joy of a bottom: the inextricable union of pain
and pleasure. His pleasure was enhanced by the knowledge that Red Feather had
bred him twice.
"Wow! The nine Stations of the Bottom, and Benedict hit them all on his
first time!" I editorialized. "This is about Aziz Rahul, isn't it?"
"Could be," Ben replied.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
On the morning of August 9-it was the day when Hannah wrote her
farewell letter to Benedict-a Mohegan lad came to the Arnold Mansion with
news that a unit of British Army recruiters had come to Norwichtown, searching
for a deserter named Benedict Arnold. Benedict dressed in Red Feather's
Mohegan deerskin, and fled to the woods. That day he was supposed to deliver a
cartload of medical supplies from the Lathrop apothecary to the harbor, for
shipping to Philadelphia. Red Feather took his place, and dressed in Benedict's
favorite coat and cap. Benedict was not without enemies in Norwichtown. Some
jealous townsmen pointed him out to a Sergeant-"the lad driving that long fancy
chaise studded with brass nails, flaunting the Lathrops' coat of arms on the side."
On the street to the harbor, the Sergeant and two Privates hailed him down. They
arrested him for desertion, and said he would hang in Public Square the next day,
much to the delight of by-standers. Jerusha sped to the scene and said that the
person they arrested was a Mohegan servant boy who ran errands for the
Lathrops. "What's an Indian doing in that fancy chaise?" the Sergeant retorted,
and said he should hang anyway, as a public nuisance. Fortunately for Red
Feather, the town constable intervened. "This boy is the son of the Mohegan
Shaman, and the nephew of Chief Benjamin Uncas," he said. "If you hang him,
that will be the end of peace between English and Mohegans in Norwichtown."
"If the Army can hang an innocent servant boy on the pretext of martial
law, next time they come to town, they might hang YOU," Jerusha admonished
the crowd. This tall, fair, handsome lady was the daughter of a former
Connecticut governor (Joseph Talcott). Aristocratic in bearing, in speech
articulate, Jerusha ignored the Army men as if they weren't there, and dispersed
the noisome crowd by a single sentence. Fifteen years later, when the Sons of
Liberty were stirring up anti-British sentiment in Connecticut, colonials in
Norwichtown told the story, embellished by a hanging. According to the fictional
version told in the 1770s, the life of the famous general, Benedict Arnold, was
saved when a local Mohegan lad (whose name varied with each telling) offered
himself as a substitute when eighteen-year-old Benedict was about to be hanged
for desertion.
On Wednesday morning, August 15, rumor circulated in Norwichtown
that Hannah Arnold had taken a turn for the worse. "Old Lights" of the
Congregational Church came to call. Benedict III and young Hannah stood at the
dying woman's left; Benedict IV and Red Feather stood at her right. Dr. Daniel
Lathrop, Jerusha, and Joshua Lathrop sat in chairs at her side. The Old Lights
came to pay their respects, but they left, somewhat abruptly, unable to bear the
sight of a Mohegan standing with the Arnold family in a place of honor. Hannah
was unable to speak, but she waved them away with her hand, resigned to their
prejudice.
After Hannah's death, Benedict IV took charge of the funeral, with young
Hannah and Red Feather at his side, while his father found consolation in a bottle
of rum. He selected her tombstone, bounded with Celtic flourishes on each side,
rounded on top by the image of a winged Angel of Death. Ben and I visited her
grave in the Old Norwichtown Cemetery. I copied her epitaph from the
tombstone. It had been composed by Benedict Arnold:
IN MEMORY of
Hannah ye well beloved
Wife of Capt Benedict
Arnold & Daughter of
Mr. John & Elizabeth
Waterman, (she was a
Pattern of Piety
Patience and Virtue) who died
Augst 15th 1759
Ćtatis Suae 52