City of Glory (20 page)

Finbar O’Toole was also at the auction, his face impassive as the bids soared and the amount earned by his daring and seamanship climbed ever higher. Joyful picked him out of the crowd and watched him for a time, then transferred his attention to the man who had crafted this drama.

Gornt Blakeman was seated to the rear of the auctioneer in a chair placed on yet another makeshift dais of kegs. He was caped and hatted, his face in the shadows, legs sprawled in front of him. One hand rested on an elaborate gold-topped walking stick. The effect was that of a king on a throne.

The last lot was cried soon after three. Now the business of paying for it all began. There were four cashers with quills and inkpots, seated at side-by-
side tables near the entrance to the warehouse, ledgers open in front of them. An iron-banded chest sat beside each man. The coins dropped into the chests with a constant clatter, mounting in hills and valleys that every once in a while a casher leveled with the side of a hand grown black with the filth of so much money. A small group of head porters stood next to the tables, checking receipts against lot numbers and, once convinced of ownership, waving the treasure out the door on the backs of the lesser porters in their charge.

Gradually, the place began emptying, and the worst of the crush was transferred to the street, where cartmen and those who’d hired them jockeyed for the best position to load the bought-and-paid-for goods. Standing in the dimness between the doors and the cashers’ stations, Joyful saw one porter, a man who seemed far too old for this sort of work, stagger and fall to his knees, clutching his breast. He started for him, but the man struggled to his feet, heaved up his load, and headed for a cart.

The lines in front of the money takers finally came to an end. The last buyer, a short, heavyset woman with an astonishing amount of chin hair, had succeeded in capturing one small lot of silk ribbons and paper fans. She paid a bit over thirty-one dollars for her goods, twelve guineas English. The casher who took the money bit hard on each coin before pronouncing it the genuine article and dropping it into his chest. Despise the British most of them might, but every New Yorker knew there was no currency more to be prized than English silver.

The woman’s booty fit into a foot-square wooden box, and she carried it herself, passing close by Joyful. Delight had hired Bearded Agnes some six months after the place opened, to look after the frocks and furbelows of the Knave’s ladies, and Agnes had become a kind of auntie to the lot of them. Stern but always fair, she went about her duties as if she were unconcerned by the contrast between herself and the pretty young things in her charge. Joyful knew better. Bearded Agnes had sneaked into the hawk’s nest one night to ask in a hushed whisper if there was some way he could permanently cut away her disfigurement. “You or your cousin, perhaps?” He’d had to say that neither of them could help her, that he’d been with his cousin when another woman with the same complaint had come looking for a cure and been sadly turned away.
Something gone awry in the makeup of her, Joyful. But nothing I’d know how to excise with a scalpel.

Bearded Agnes drew level with Joyful, then passed him by. Joyful watched her openly—Agnes incurred curious glances wherever she went—but she ignored him. He turned his head slightly, so his line of vision included Gornt Blakeman. As he’d suspected, Blakeman was eyeing them both. Know who she is, don’t you, Mr. Blakeman? And, I suspect, you know who I am. Or you think you do. He took a couple of steps in Blakeman’s direction and nodded. Blakeman looked surprised at first, then nodded back. Agnes had disappeared meanwhile. “A fine day’s undertaking, sir,” Joyful said touching the brim of his stovepipe. “My congratulations.”

Blakeman bowed. “Some of us can claim only to be businessmen, Dr. Turner. Neither hero nor surgeon.”

“That’s as may be, Mr. Blakeman. In my case the description of surgeon no longer applies.” Joyful held up his gloved left hand.

“The cruel fortunes of war, Dr. Turner. But a man of your talent will surely rise above them. I noticed you present throughout the sale.”

“I was here as an observer only, Mr. Blakeman.”

“Might I ask on whose behalf?”

“My own, sir.”

“Indeed.”

Their eyes met. Blakeman abruptly turned away and went over to the line of cashers, studying each ledger in turn, making notes meanwhile on a bit of paper. “In round numbers, something over twenty-five thousand pounds sterling,” he announced finally. “To be precise and patriotic, let’s call it two hundred and seven thousand American dollars.” He turned and said in an even louder voice, “Will you accept that figure as accurate, Captain O’Toole?”

Finbar O’Toole stepped out of the shadows, his glance roving over the four chests. “Fair enough, I expect.”

“Excellent,” Blakeman said. “And if I calculate correctly, that makes your share six thousand seven hundred of our proud United States dollars.” He began counting out coins, accumulating a hefty pile of silver and gold, and finally pushing it all in O’Toole’s direction. “Did you bring a sack, Captain? Perhaps you need the loan of one. I, as you can see, came prepared.”

Blakeman reached behind him to where a store of sturdy homespun moneybags waited on a table. “Will this do, sir?” O’Toole nodded. Blakeman handed the bag to one of the porters, now standing around waiting for his day’s wages to be paid. The man took it, held it open with one hand, and swept the coins into it, then tied it tight closed, but it was Blakeman himself who passed it to O’Toole. “Your due, Captain. Well earned.”

“Not quite.” Joyful stepped forward. “These were in the pile you counted out before this fellow here dropped them.” He dropped to one knee and picked up four coins that had fallen to the dirt floor and been kicked beneath the table by the porter. It was the man’s private dodge, not Blakeman’s, but there was no doubt whatever that Blakeman had seen it happen and said nothing.

“So, Dr. Turner”—Blakeman turned to face him—“not just a war hero, but eagle-eyed with it.”

Joyful started to say something, then felt Finbar’s hand on his shoulder. “That money you’re holding belongs to me, I believe.”

“So it does.” Joyful handed over the four coins, then nodded to Blakeman and turned and followed the Irishman out the door.

Behind him he heard Blakeman’s instructions that each head porter be paid fifteen coppers for his day’s work, ten to the under-porters. “And twenty dollars to the auctioneer. A fine job, sir. I thank you.” Not a word about Barnaby Carter. A professional auction house would have taken one percent of the profit. Barnaby, since he could not exist without the business of Blakeman Coaching, was to get nothing and like it.

“I suppose I should thank you for getting back the money that godrotting porter tried to steal.”

Joyful shrugged. “Why bother?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that it makes no difference if you have a few dollars more or less, Finbar. It’ll all be gone in a matter of weeks—or days, more likely. Depends on where you do your gambling.”

“I’m not gambling,” O’Toole protested. But he did not meet Joyful’s gaze.

“It’s a disease, old friend,” Joyful said softly. “There’s no talk of it in any of the medical literature, but I’d warrant my soul it’s a sickness as real as yellowing fever or dropsy.”

“Do I look sick to you?”

“Your symptoms aren’t the kind that show in the body. How much of your life have you spent waiting for the turn of a card or the fall of a die, Finbar? A third? Two-thirds?”

O’Toole took a long pull of the ale he was drinking with his dinner of mutton chops and beans. “Depends on how much of my span I’ve spent aboard ship,” he said. I don’t gamble when I’m at sea, lad. Never. Not just now I’m a captain. ’Twas the same when I was an ordinary tar. The ocean calms me, calms the poxing itch.”

“An itch. Is that what it is?”

The Irishman shrugged. “Only way I know to describe it. What about you then? No vices? Hero and healer, is that what they’ll write on your gravestone?”

“Not likely. And I’ve vices enough.” Jesus God, yes. But the lack of control was what separated him and O’Toole “We’re not talking about me.”

“What then? Why did you want to get Gornt Blakeman thinking on you by pushing yourself forward the way you did? Not for four poxing coins, I’m sure o’ that.”

“Let’s say I’d like him scratching a bit as well. Finbar, back in Canton, either on the trading strip or the Bogue, did you ever hear talk of a diamond big as a pigeon’s egg called the Great Mogul?”

“Not unless the talker was full of white smoke.” The devil opium. In Canton, since the British began bringing the stuff in from India so’s to have something to trade for Chinese silk, four of every ten men were said to be addicts. “I don’t think a diamond like that could—Holy Mother of God, you’re talking about the jewels in Blakeman’s private chest, aren’t you?”

Joyful leaned forward. “Lower your voice. I’m not sure that’s what was in the chest. It may have been. May. That’s all.”

O’Toole looked down at his plate, busied himself with his mutton chop, then pushed the food away. “Something else I’ve got to tell you. Fellow who came after that poxing box. Used to be the town whipper, you said.”

“What about him?” Joyful took a swallow of the tall ale in front of him, considering Finbar over the tankard’s rim.

“He’s the chucker-out at a fancy parlor house out at the edge of town on Rivington Street.”

“That has to be the Dancing Knave,” Joyful said evenly. “More gaming club than parlor house.”

“Caught the fever yourself, have you?”

“No. At least not the way you mean.”

“You’re talking about a different sort of wager.”

Joyful nodded, then leaned forward, something in him shamed by not being entirely straight with the man his father would have trusted with his life, but not ready to tell him everything despite that. “Finbar, I’ve got a ship. To make that Caribbean voyage.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. The sloop
Lisbetta.
You can get a look at her up at—”

“I’ve no need to get a look at her. She’s one o’ Devrey’s.”

“Indeed.” The papers Bastard had signed were still in the inside pocket of Joyful’s cutaway.

“So? Bastard Devrey just handed her to you? Out o’ the kindness o’ his heart?”

“Something like that.”

The Irishman shook his head. “Not good enough, lad. I’m bloody sure there’s not a chance Bastard Devrey would trouble himself to do a favor for any man named Turner. What’s his reward to be?”

“Salvation.”

O’Toole pulled an ivory toothpick from his pocket and began working on the bits of mutton stuck in his teeth. “Is it Jesus Christ you think you are then?”

“It’s complicated, Finbar. You’ll have to trust me.”

O’Toole got to his feet. “I may be a gambling fool, lad, but I’m not stupid. I don’t captain for them as tell me lies to my face. If you don’t trust me enough for the truth about your poxing cousin, you sure as hell shouldn’t trust me to run a sloop past a Royal Navy blockade, find a treasure as was buried some fifty years past, and bring it back and hand it over. If Bastard Devrey’s giving you a sloop, he can poxing well give you a captain to sail her.”

Front Street, 4
P.M.

Delight wore a pale yellow gown, trimmed in cream-colored lace, caught below her breasts with a wide blue satin ribbon that matched the one on her high-crowned straw bonnet. The same shade of blue satin faced her cream-colored parasol. As exquisitely dressed as any New York lady, she walked with her head high, though her eyes were modestly cast down. Or so it seemed. In reality, her glance took in everything.

Word was that sometimes the blackbirders did their filthy business in broad daylight; that’s why it was her custom to take Vinegar Clifford with her when she had to do some errand in the town. Today, when she was ready to leave, he wasn’t to be found, a problem she would deal with later. Stay alert, Delight. Be ready to run if you must.

Dear God, why had she come back? In York, Canada, where the trouble started—a jealous wife and an equally envious owner of a club that supplied boy whores and wanted to branch into Delight’s end of the business—a gentleman had offered to take her to London. Instead, New York, the town of her youth, had drawn her back as if it had her heart on a string, as if she could ever find what it was she’d lost here.
Dearie my soul, Miss Molly, is you sayin’ we be goin’ all the way to Canada where the devil French and them fierce Indians is?