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.
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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
Ætatis Suae 52