City of Glory (10 page)

“And is it true that you’re a Barbary pirate, escaped from Tripoli when Mr. Jefferson sent American gunboats to attack, and that you have chests of gold hidden in your countinghouse?”

“Not gold,” he whispered, putting his arms around her once more. “Diamonds. Emeralds. Rubies. You must come with me some day to that City Hall built by small-minded men and help me select a proper throne room. Bedchambers as well, Eugenie LaMont Fisher, who is driving me insane. Will you do that?”

This time for answer she kissed him. But an hour later when he left, though he’d eaten his fill and his belly no longer growled, Blakeman’s crotch was as heavy as it had been when he arrived.

The Manhattan Wilderness
Above the Village of Greenwich, 7
P.M.

By evening another storm had reached the city. The summer dusk turned prematurely to dark; and lightning and thunder boomed and cracked overhead, and rain fell in sheets from the ferocious sky.

The cabin belonging to the woman the town called Holy Hannah was a hovel four miles from the southern tip of Manhattan Island, in the no-man’s-land beyond North Street, the limit of the city proper, beyond even the small rural settlement known as the village of Greenwich. The shack sat in a meadow at the edge of the thickly wooded hills that covered most of the island.

Holy Hannah had built the thing herself. The walls were rough planks nailed to tree trunks that had been stuck like posts into the ground; there were places where the gaps between them were as wide as a man’s thumb. In winter she collected rags and old newspapers and made a sort of mortar for the joints. Now, in summer, the make-do stuffing had been pulled out to let a breath of air into the windowless space. As for the roof, it was a patchwork of tin and board, and even some bricks that had once come to hand. In this downpour great drops of rain came through the cracks and splattered everywhere. Hannah could as well be standing outside.

She kicked the assorted bits of bedding spread about the floor into a single pile, and covered it with a square of tattered canvas. Then fussed with the pile a bit longer, making sure everything was as well covered as it could be. Another crack of thunder shook the walls.

There was no proper door, only a second square of canvas nailed to a bit of tree trunk acting as a lintel, and left free either side. The force of the rain was driving the makeshift barrier inward, depositing torrents of water at the entrance, churning the dirt floor into a muddy sump. Time was, there were some heavy stones about, good for weighting the bottom of the entry flap; she had no idea where they’d disappeared to.

Her shawl, a thing so old it was no color and no identifiable fabric, hung from a peg on the wall. Hannah grabbed it and put it over her unkempt mane of gray hair, then pushed the canvas flap aside and went into the meadow. You could no longer see the path trodden to the cabin through the high grass; the heavy rain had beaten down every blade equally. Couldn’t see much of anything, come to that. Except for the eerie blue-white light that came with each flash of lightning, it seemed like night.

“Hannah, why are you outside? Get back in and stay dry.”

She recognized Will Farrell’s voice before she could actually see him. Always looking out for her, Will was. His mama died when Will was eight, and without a father as would claim him, the boy had taken to living on the streets. That’s where she’d found him, huddling in a doorway on a night when the cold was a thing as could perish a body with some flesh on its bones, much less the scrawny little thing Will was then. Hannah had picked him up and carried him home. There were four or five boys living with her at the time, she didn’t remember exactly, and that night they had crowded together for warmth with the newcomer in the heart of the huddle, sustained by their combined heat. The others had disappeared, but never mind. Her boys had always come and gone as they liked, usually without so much as a thank-you or a goodbye. Not Will, though. He was the best of them.

“Get inside,” the lad shouted. She spotted his stovepipe hat, floating through the fog as if it traveled on its own. “Get a fire goin’, Hannah. I’ve brought us some proper supper.”

She almost couldn’t see what he seemed to be dragging behind him, until he got a bit closer and she made out the figure of a second boy, hunched over and wanting to hang back, except that Will had tight hold of him and was pulling him forward.

Another one. Hannah felt her heart lift.

“Do you have a name, then?” Hannah stooped over the brick-lined fire hole in the middle of the cabin and prodded a handful of wood shavings meant for kindling.

“He’s Jesse Edwards,” Will said. “Told me so when I found him.”

The shavings were damp. She kept blowing on them and repeatedly striking new sparks off the tinderbox. Still they did not catch. “And where did that happen to be?”

“Out behind Astor’s slaughterhouse on the Bowery. Same place I got that.” Will gestured to the large beef kidney waiting to be cooked. “Only I found Jesse first. He was poking around in the pit where old Astor dumps the stuff as smells too bad to do anything with. I told him I knew a better place to look,” he added with a sly smile. “But he’d have to turn his back ’fore I’d go and get something from it.”

Some months back Will had told Hannah he’d found a way to open the chest behind the slaughterhouse where Henry Astor saved choice bits of carcass he was keeping for himself, or maybe his almighty brother Jacob, who owned half the city and a bit besides. “Told you not to go there too often,” she said. “Otherwise he’ll think it out, know someone’s found the hiding place, and he’ll stop using it. We had that mutton chop only a week since.”

“Had to make an exception,” Will said, getting up to find a log to put on the fire now that Hannah had finally got the kindling going. It was a phrase he’d learned from Peggety Jack. When someone broke one o’ Peggety’s rules, Peggety would sometimes say he’d not dock the offender’s pay after all. He’d say he was making an exception out o’ the kindness o’ his soft heart, only if there was another time, well, he’d take three times the usual fine. “Had to make an exception out o’ the kindness o’ me soft heart,” Will repeated. “Jesse here was trying to eat that stinking stuff from the pit raw. So I said I’d get us a bit o’ supper and bring him here to eat it. Knew you wouldn’t mind.”

“Course I don’t mind. Birds with one wing need a nest more’n most. But they can sing same as those with two. Ain’t you gonna say anything at all, Jesse Edwards?”

“Don’t got nothin’ to say.” The boy mumbled the words into his chest and didn’t look at her.

At last the log caught and flames crackled and danced in the fire hole. “Give that kidney here,” Hannah said. Will complied, and she took a knife from her pocket and began cutting it into three pieces. “Smell that piss smell,” she chortled. “Some folks say you got to soak a kidney ’fore you cook it. But I say the piss gives the kidney flavor. When the Israelites was in the desert and the Holy One, Blessed Be His Name, sent them manna to eat—Book o’ Exodus that is—I bet it was kidney with plenty o’ piss stink still in it. Manna from heaven, that’s what we got here. Get the sticks, Will. How’d you lose your arm, Jesse Edwards?”

“In a battle. Last year.”

“You was in the war?” Will’s tone betrayed his awe.

Jesse seemed to come alive. “Aye. Aboard Commodore Perry’s flagship
Lawrence.
”

Hannah glanced sideways at him. Lord Almighty! Probably the only thing he ever did in his life made him feel a bit special. Though sure as David was a king, only thing he’d got out of it was the loss of one wing. She fixed a share of kidney onto each of three pointed sticks and handed the largest portion to the newcomer. “Don’t take but a single arm to do most things,” she said. “Like hold a bit of meat over the fire. Besides, the Holy One, blessed be His name, looks after his own. ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.’ Book of Jeremiah. Got any family, Jesse Edwards?”

“Was just me and my ma, then she died and I went to sea.”

“And where you been since last year when you was a hero with Commodore Perry?”

Jesse shrugged. “Here and there. Thought I could get work in New York, but it’s the same here as anywhere else, nobody wants me ’cause o’ this.” He nodded toward the armless shoulder. “Ain’t my fault, but—”

“Don’t whinge,” Hannah said sharply. “The Holy One, Blessed be His Name, helps those who help themselves. Book of Proverbs. He don’t hold with whining and whinging.” The smell of roasting meat prickled in the air. Not that she’d have minded if there was only a bit of stale bread for supper. Or nothing, come to that. She had long since learned she had much in common with the wild creatures in the woods to the north. She could live off her fat when she must. The Holy One made women tough as they needed to be. Despite years of living rough, she was still as round and solid as a hitching post; still had all her teeth as well. She was forty-five or forty-six, she was never quite sure, and she saw plenty of women younger than she with nothing left but gums. But she had good strong teeth, like all the women in her family, like her mother and her grandmother. How proud of their looks they’d been in their fine taffeta gowns, and dainty leather shoes, and the tortoiseshell combs in their hair. They were…

They were dead. No point in thinking on them. Particularly not when now she had two lads to look after. She could all but see the hunger on this new one. The hand holding his bit of kidney over the fire was shaking with it. “Not long now,” she said. “Just let it get a bit more cooked, then you can have at it. And we’ll see about finding you something as will earn you a few coppers. New York’s a fine city for work, and Holy Hannah’s got lots of ideas for boys as ain’t afraid of it.”

By the time they’d finished the kidney, the rain had stopped. Will pulled back the canvas flap and revealed the mottled red and gold sunset sky. “Mackerel sky at night, sailor’s delight,” he said happily. “Maybe there’ll be another ship tomorrow.”

“Not likely,” Hannah said. “This New York City is Jericho, and there’s an ambush against it and the walls are going to come down.”

Jesse looked startled. “You said it was a fine city for work and you could—”

“Ssh,” Will cautioned. “Don’t sass Hannah when she’s prophesying. She’s not herself then. Sometimes she don’t even remember what she says.”

“And Joshua set the city on fire,” Hannah said softly, staring out into the scarlet sunset. “And the flames shot up as far as the sky, and you could see them for miles around. Miles and miles.”

The rain puddled on the well-waxed wood and dripped from the oiled lines and tightly furled canvas of
Canton Star.
“Call this a storm, do you?” Finbar O’Toole shouted, laughing up at the lowering sky. “You must be getting tired.” His ship pitched and heaved in New York Harbor. O’Toole smiled broadly at the thought of what it must feel like below, with no fresh air to make it a bit easier to bear. Serves you right, you godrotting bastard.

Ostensibly, he was alone with the three men left aboard now that the ship had been unladed and moved away from the wharf to a mooring in the roads, amid the moldering sloops, schooners, and merchantmen imprisoned in the harbor by the blockade. Most of the crew had been given their wages and let go. But Blakeman had offered his captain an extra quarter percent of the profits of the sale—on top of the three percent that was his payment for the voyage—if he’d remain aboard and take charge of the ship and a few hands to tend her. A month or two, Blakeman said. Fair enough; there was no place on earth Finbar O’Toole was more comfortable than on a ship. And soon as he could get done what needed doing, there really would be only himself and the tars aboard.