City of God (20 page)

Oh. Oh dear.

The little woman who sometimes watched Carolina’s house from across the street was in the crowd. Carolina could see only her head, but she at once recognized the oddly shaped straw bonnet. Another woman stood beside her, her black hair wound into a tall coiffure twisted with colored ribbons. Behind her stood a tall man wearing an odd foreign robe. He appeared to be embracing her and…a swirl of smoke blotted out the vision.

Carolina struggled to see, but her eyes stung and teared, and she was being shoved in the opposite direction from where she wanted to go. She tried to push back and felt someone tugging at Sam’s greatcoat. “No. You can’t have it. Let go.” Seconds later the pressure was eased as whoever had thought to steal the garment gave up. Carolina clutched the coat and her muff ever tighter and struggled to get closer to her husband’s houses. Possibly one of the sailors spoke something other than that peculiar gibberish Samuel said was the Chinese language. English must be needed on the Devrey ships. She could ask if anyone had seen Samuel, if they knew where he was. She felt an arm encircle her.

“Please let me get you out of this terrible place,” Nick said. “It’s a dreadful night, Carolina. You’ll never find—”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. I will. I have.” She was speaking more to herself
than to Nicholas Turner. The smoke had cleared for the moment, blown away in a sustained gust of bone-chilling wind, and though there were no street lights on Cherry Street, the glow of the leaping flames reflected in the sky allowed Carolina Devrey to see her husband standing directly ahead.

Nick had kept hold of her, and they were both being shoved forward through the throng, close enough so Carolina had a clear view of Samuel. He wore a bright crimson robe and had his arms wrapped around the woman with the ribbons in her hair. At this distance it was possible to see as well that her face was painted in an exotic and foreign fashion.

Carolina did not know if the girl was beautiful or even pretty. She was too strange for such terms to apply. But she knew that the woman beside her, wizened and ugly in an ugly conical bonnet, was staring, as if she, Carolina Devrey, might be some threat to whatever it was the old woman held clasped in her arms.

A baby.

It was a baby. And Samuel was standing with them. Protecting them. Claiming ownership of all three.

She might have fainted but for the press of the crowd and Nick’s firm grip.

“Let’s go,” she heard him say. “There’s nothing to be gained by your being here. Let me take you home.”

Carolina felt him tugging her away from the tableau of Samuel with his…his what? His mistress? And her servant. And her child.

His child.

Nick was still trying to pull her away but she resisted, and the crowd seemed to take her part. The endless jostling served to thrust her nearer to Samuel and the family he preferred to her and his son.

She was close enough to touch him now, and Samuel was staring back at her, seemingly as shocked as she.

It was Carolina who found her voice first. “Good evening,” she said. “I brought you this.” She held out the greatcoat. “I’m afraid it may have been torn in all this crush.”

Sam spoke over her head. “I cannot imagine what you thought you would gain by bringing her here, Turner.”

“I did no such thing. She was determined to come. I simply—” A roar of wind and more frantic pealing of nearby bells drowned out the rest of his words.

“Get her out of here,” Sam said. “Can you do that? Will you?”

“Yes.”

Carolina heard their words but did not register their meaning. “I brought your coat, Samuel,” she said again. “It is such a dreadfully cold night. You will surely need your coat.” She thrust it towards him. Someone took it out of her hands, a little man with a horribly pock-marked face. She had not the strength to keep him from taking it, and Samuel had not moved. “You must have your coat, Samuel. Whatever that is you’re wearing, it cannot be warm enough for a night like this. Tell that man he must give you your coat.”

“Turner, for God’s sake, man. If she means anything to you at all…”

The Asian men, Nick realized, might be short and slight, but they did not lack for strength. They had formed a tight ring around himself, Devrey, and the women. It gave him enough space to pick Carolina up. He felt her body go limp in his grip and knew she’d fainted. Just as well probably. He heard Devrey say something in Chinese, and the men formed a V-shaped wedge that forced a path through the crowd and allowed him to carry Carolina back to the buggy. It had already been stripped of fringe and cushions and the carrying chest that had been strapped to the rear, but miraculously the wheels were still attached. And the horse yet stood between the traces, though the bit and bridle and reins had all disappeared.

“Eh. Deng yi deng,”
one of the men said. Nick had no idea what the words meant, but he understood the gesture. He was to wait.

Carolina was starting to regain consciousness. Nick lifted her into the buggy and got in beside her, letting her body lean against his. Minutes later the pock-marked man appeared with the necessary tack. He and one of the others hitched the horse back to the wagon and handed Nick the reins. He heard Carolina murmuring questions as she came out of
her faint, but the noise of the fire and the crowd was getting louder and he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

How in hell was he to turn the damned buggy around so they could get out of here? They were entirely hemmed in. Then he felt the rig rise just enough to free the wheels from the rutted road. Half a dozen of the men were carrying it backwards, north up Cherry Street. He had only to maintain a hold on the reins and encourage the horse to keep backing up. It was the weight of Sam Devrey’s orders, the power of his command, that had produced their unusual exit from—what? Hell for the woman now crying softly beside him, her face pressed against his arm. Paradise for Devrey apparently. Must be, since he was willing to risk so much to keep it.

And for the city of New York, at least so it seemed, death by fire.

The bitter weather was as vicious an enemy as the flames. What water was left in the cisterns had frozen solid. A dozen engine companies rushed to the East River and used their axes to cut holes in the thick ice, but the water they gained with so much effort turned at once to slush and then to ice in the hoses, and resisted the pounding feet of cadres of firemen jumping up and down on the hoses to melt ice back into the water they so desperately needed. The weak streams they did manage to aim at the inferno blew back in their faces. Fifteen hundred firemen—a number that had grown by less than three hundred in the past decade, though the city had doubled in size in the same period—were reduced to standing and watching New York burn, and to pouring brandy into their boots to prevent their feet from freezing.

Nearly the entire town south of Wall Street, the mercantile heart of not just the city but the nation, had become a fiery cauldron. Street after street was engulfed in flames. Merchants who had rushed to their premises threw whatever they could salvage out the windows, only to find that the draymen and carters who had converged on the scene were demanding more than the goods were worth to drag them away. Firemen unable to do the job for which they were such proud volunteers helped
instead to empty warehouses of tons of silks and satins and laces, only to see the huge piles they made in the streets ignited by blowing cinders and flaming bits of paper before they could be removed.

The burning debris hurtling through the air was both fed and transported by the howling wind. Later there would be reports of roofs that caught fire as far away as Brooklyn and Newark, and of firefighters as far south as Philadelphia and as far north as New Haven who saw the sky glowing red and turned out, thinking it was the outlying parts of their own cities that burned.

By three
A.M
. on Wall Street the supposedly fireproof Merchants’ Exchange had gone up, the greedy flames devouring even stone and iron. When the sixty-foot cupola crashed to the ground, the seven men who had been trying to rescue the life-size bronze statue of Alexander Hamilton had to jump out of the way to save their lives, and Hamilton’s statue was smashed to pieces by falling chunks of marble. By four the Tontine Coffee House, three blocks to the east, was ashes as well.

Men working for the city’s newspapers raced not just the flames but the sparks, sometimes beating out smoldering bits of their own clothing as they pursued their quest for bits of information that would set their next day stories apart. One reporter would tell of hearing the foreman of Eagle Engine No. 13 say that if the wind shifted and the fire jumped Wall Street, the rest of the city would burn as well, though the journalist was never able to say for sure whose idea it was to blow up two buildings in the fire’s path and deprive it of fuel.

In the face of such catastrophe anything was worth trying. Militiamen sent to patrol the streets and discourage looting supplied the gunpowder and the gambit worked. Thousands cheered the brutal, self-inflicted destruction. The barbarians were indeed at the gates, but the city had found a weapon with which to fight back.

Men desperate to do something ransacked the arsenals, tearing open cartridges however meager their yield, while officers and sailors from the Navy Yard in Brooklyn were sent for to do the demolitions, and a boatload of marines manhandled a path through the ice-clogged river to the powder house at Red Hook Point and ferried back twenty-five kegs of gunpowder.

The inferno raged uncontrollably from Maiden Lane to Coenties Slip and from William Street to the East River—those thirteen acres burned for all the next day and the following night and would smolder for two full weeks—but all the rest, everything north of Wall Street, was saved by using demolition to create a firebreak.

The lust for information about so huge a cataclysm was boundless. The penny press dug deep and mined stores of inventiveness. The first day after the fire the
Sun’s
morning run was twenty-three thousand copies. A few hours later they published an “extra” of another thirty thousand, a single day’s circulation for one paper that shattered all records. The
Herald
used illustrations for the first time to map the area of destruction, and a few days later included in one edition a two-column woodcut of the remains of the Merchants’ Exchange.

However cleverly they did it, what they reported was bleak. Four thousand clerks were abruptly out of work, along with thousands of cartmen and porters. Seven hundred buildings had been totally destroyed. Nothing south of Wall Street and east of Broad, whether made by man or installed by nature, was whole and entire. The losses were estimated at close to twenty-six million dollars, more than three times the cost of building the Erie Canal a few years before. Twenty-three of the city’s twenty-six fire insurance companies were instantly bankrupt.

There were, however, only two fatalities from among the thousands present at the fire, and the rule of law had not been entirely overturned. There were four hundred arrests for looting.

And repeated over and over again, as many times as needed to put heart into a demoralized population, was the best news: all the rest was saved.

The new and north-facing city that was marching up the Manhattan wilderness had reaped the wind and inherited the future.

“I
CANNOT CONTINUE
to live with him, Papa.”

“Carolina, he is your husband. How can you possibly make such a preposterous statement?”

“But I told you, he is—”

“You told me he is involved in some sort of dalliance. My dear child, it is shameful that you should come and discuss such a thing with me. It is still more shameful that after almost three years of marriage you are not wise enough to know that all men stray occasionally. If your mother had lived, she would no doubt—”

“Did you, Papa?”

“Did I what?”

“Stray occasionally.”

Wilbur Randolf turned away from his daughter and walked to the long casement window of his study, an outsize pane of glass made possible because the glaziers were so clever these days. He had a fine view of elegant Washington Square Park. Constructed, he knew, above a potter’s field in which God knows how many paupers had been buried. It was in the nature of man to want clearer sight of things, but also to cover over his sins.

“Carolina, you have no right to ask me such a thing. No decent woman can pose such a question, least of all to her own father.” He had not looked at another woman from the first moment he set eyes on seventeen-year-old Penelope James until the day she died, but it would only make things worse if he told Carolina that. He turned back to her. “Surely you have not been so unwise as to confront your husband with your suspicions.”

“They are not suspicions, Papa. I had suspicions for many months. Now I have certainties. I saw him with her and her child and the child’s nursemaid the night of the fire. She is a foreigner, one of the China people in his houses on Cherry Street. As for confronting Samuel, he has given me no opportunity to do so. He has barely been home at all since that dreadful night.”

“But he was there on Christmas day, Carolina. At luncheon with you and me and little Zac.”

“Because he knew you were coming and you would expect him to be there. He left before you did, if you recall.”

“Carolina, Samuel is an important man of business and a member of the Common Council to boot. The city has undergone a calamity. It is in a terrible state. A man like your husband has considerable responsibilities at a time like this.”

“He has responsibilities to me and to his son!” She had promised herself she would not shout or cry. Now she was doing both. “He does not love me, Papa. I doubt he ever did. I don’t think he loves Zac either. I waited until after the festivities of the season because I didn’t want to upset you, but—”

“I expected you at my New Year open house yesterday. I was quite disappointed that you did not come. Even at a time like this, it’s important that we keep up the old traditions, Carolina.”

“How could I come when I had no husband to escort me?”

Randolf sighed and looked with some longing toward the drinks tray in the corner. Too early. And in the matter of his daughter, too late. He should have married Lucy and given the girl a mother, perhaps some brothers and sisters. Instead he’d over-indulged her and
contented himself with whores. “Stop weeping, my dear. I shall help however I can.”

“Then Zac and I can move in with you? There’s plenty of room in this big house, Papa. And I can bring the nursemaid and even Dorothy. I will see that your comforts are not in any way compromised, I promise.”

“Carolina, have you been listening to a word I’ve said? You are Samuel’s wife legally and before God, and he is the father of your son. You cannot simply up sticks and move out of his house. The scandal would be immense, and you would be prejudicing young Zachary’s future in the most irresponsible way. What will society make of him as the son of divorced parents?”

“But—”

“No more buts, Carolina. Go home and be the dutiful wife and loving mother you were raised to be. And mind you, show Samuel no coldness in the matter of…of his marital rights. I’ve no doubt this whole business probably started in just that way. A man has needs, child. It is your duty to be available, nay, welcoming, to meet those needs. You will do the situation no good if you withhold yourself as some sort of punishment for what you perceive to be his sins. Give Zachary a little brother or sister, the sooner the better. Be the best thing for all of you.”

“Papa, I…” How could she explain about Samuel’s utter lack of interest in sharing her bed. “Never mind. I shall go home. Exactly as you say I must.”

“There’s a good girl. And I meant what I said, my dear. I shall find some sort of solution for you. I’ll make some discreet inquiries. If indeed it’s warranted, I’ll have a quiet word with my son-in-law. Quite to be expected that is. Quite the proper thing to do.”

The infant slept with Ah Chee in the room behind the kitchen, at least when Samuel was there. If it became necessary to feed Mei Lin during one of her father’s visits, Mei-hua disappeared. To that same little room in the back, Sam supposed. He didn’t care where, as long as he didn’t have to observe the process. He’d toyed with the idea of finding a wet nurse,
but decided it wasn’t practical. There was no guarantee of discretion for one thing, and for another Mei-hua would probably balk. Particularly since whoever he found would of necessity not be Chinese.

Ah Chee was equally aware of the inappropriateness of the situation. She, not the plum blossom’s mother, had given Mei-hua suck. Eighteen years before, when the plum blossom was born, Ah Chee’s breasts were not dried-up hanging-down raisins like now. And because the plum blossom’s mother, the Mei Lin for whom this little girl was named, was for a short time Di Short Neck’s favorite, she had no time to attend a squalling infant. Even one as perfect as Mei-hua had been. Perfect little baby this time too, but no way Ah Chee could wrap the plum blossom’s breasts and stop the milk from coming so she would be quickly as before for her lord. Not unless the infant was to be starved. Sometimes on the sampans that happened with girl babies. When it was decreed there were too many of them. Not this girl baby.

When Ah Chee was not holding Mei Lin and hugging her and rocking her, Mei-hua was. As long as her lord was not present. And after the fire he was in this house many more hours than before. The Lord Samuel came every day and sometimes slept all night beside his supreme lady
tai-tai
. On those occasions Mei-hua would creep into the kitchen the moment she heard Mei Lin whimper, and sit under the picture of the kitchen god and allow the baby to drink her fill.

Once the Lord Samuel came to the door and stood and watched
tai-tai
feeding her daughter. Mei-hua’s eyes were closed and she was humming a little song to her child and she did not know the Lord Samuel was there. They looked at each other, the lord and Ah Chee, and neither said anything, but next day when the Lord Samuel told the old woman the three-month-old infant must be weaned she was not surprised. “I will give you extra money every week,” the lord said. “Buy milk for her.” Extra money for Ah Chee’s secret treasure purse. Special good idea now she had both the plum blossom and the plum blossom’s daughter to protect.

Mei-hua did not want to stop giving suck to her baby. “Is she an animal that she should drink animal milk?”

“How they do things in this place. The Lord Samuel very angry if you keep on sharing your breasts with baby. Breasts get to be hanging down like this old woman’s. All men same in every place, don’t like hanging-down breasts. That’s why I fed you. So beautiful mother of plum blossom have stand-up stick-out breasts for honorable father.” She never said stinking dog turd river pirate aloud when Mei-hua could hear. Important that the gods know the plum blossom honored her father as she should. Never mind that he sold her to a
yang gwei zih
foreign devil, so now they were in this foreign devil place where a civilized wet nurse could not be found for the plum blossom’s little bud. “Here they give milk from cow. Very much not bad milk.”

Ah Chee had seen large urns of milk in the market, frothy, fresh and obviously prized by the women of this place, but she had no idea what it was used for. Nothing she knew how to cook required it. Now she understood. It must be that all women in this place gave milk from cow to babies. “After fire the Lord Samuel here more time now,” she said. “Want supreme lady
tai-tai
all for himself. Plum blossom’s little bud can drink cow’s milk.”

Mention of the fire reminded Mei-hua of a concern greater than whether she could go on suckling her precious doll. “Who was she? Why did she come here? Try to give ugly coat to the Lord Samuel. Who?”

Ah Chee shrugged. “Big ugly yellow hair. Maybe servant from where Lord Samuel does his business. Never mind.” She had been saying the same thing right along. If she tried to tell one part of the story, it would all come out. Very much better if she not have to tell the plum blossom that the yellow hair concubine had given the Lord Samuel a son when his
tai-tai
produced only a daughter. Better to convince the plum blossom that her Ah Chee knew no more than she did. “Big ugly feet. No reason to think about her.”

Mei-hua had been on her way out of the kitchen. Now she stopped and turned around and looked hard at Ah Chee. “How you know about big feet? How?”

“Flop-flop walk like a man,” Ah Chee said. “Besides, all the women in this place have big ugly feet. I tell you that many times.”

“When I asked you how you know she had yellow hair you tell me you saw under that hat thing. I did not see yellow hair. Now big feet. How?” If Ah Chee had not been holding the baby, Mei-hua would have flown at her.

Ah Chee had arranged a box lined with many cloths of silk and soft cotton beside the kitchen fire. Now she put the baby into the box and without saying a word went to the window and raised it. The air that rushed into the room was icy cold, but you could smell the burning, and wisps of smoke could still be seen rising into the sky. “Fourteen days and still some fire. Worst ever in this place. That’s what they say in the market. Over and over I tell you. Worst ever fire.”

“How you know about—”

“I tell you what I know. When whole city maybe burn up like a paper fan fall into the stove,
tai-tai
’s lord come here to be with supreme lady
tai-tai
and her daughter and even this old woman. Come so fast he not even wear something keep him warm. What difference about yellow hair big feet? What?”

“She is concubine.” The words came out of Mei-hua’s mouth even though she had promised herself she would not speak them. Now she had said them aloud, and the enormity of the truth was there in the room between herself and her servant. “She is concubine and never comes here to pay respect to supreme first lady
tai-tai
. My lord does not bring her for my approval, and talk to me about whether his concubine should have a room in this house or—”

“No room in this house. Sleep where? Where?” Ah Chee knew she had confessed her guilty knowledge and admitted the truth the plum blossom spoke. Too late to change that. The only important thing was that the plum blossom never know about the big stone house and the servants and the garden across the road. “Where?” she asked again. “On floor downstairs with Leper Face and Taste Bad and all the rest? Where?”

“I am
tai-tai
, she is concubine.”

“Yes,” Sam said. “Exactly. I have told you and told you.”

“Then why you not bring her here and—”

“It’s not how things are done in this place, Mei-hua. You are my supreme first lady
tai-tai
and I am your lord. It is not right that you keep asking me this. Not right.”

Mei-hua moved in the bed so she could look up at him, her sea-colored eyes made still larger by the sheen of tears. “Why does my lord need a concubine when I am still young? Why?”

“Mei-hua, you must not cry. It is how things are done here. I have explained. I need to have a white woman sometimes. For business.”

“Women help in your business?” Her astonishment was so great it interrupted her tears.

“No, not exactly, but I must be seen to have a white woman.”

“A woman with yellow hair and big feet? To make business?”

“In a way.”

Mei-hua settled into the crook of his arm while she took a moment to assimilate this information. Then she pulled away and sat up. “You do not make clouds and rain with her?”

“Clouds and…Oh. No, I don’t wish to do so.” It was true as far as it went. The whole truth would only make her more unhappy.

The covers had slipped to her waist, and Mei-hua was bent forward, supporting her head on her knees, looking sideways at him with her black hair hanging like a curtain over one side of her face. Her breasts were fuller than he remembered and the still swollen nipples quite excited him. Sam reached out and touched one. “Why would I want to do that with any other woman when I have you? Why?”

She giggled.

“Why are you laughing? Why?”

“Because my lord speaks exactly like a man of the Middle Kingdom, but the words come out of a
yang gwei zih
mouth.”

“If that makes you laugh, you must fill the
yang gwei zih
mouth with something else.” Sam drew her forward, and Mei-hua came eagerly, but then he stopped, holding her away from him and studying her face. “You do not give the child suck any longer? I told Ah Chee you must not.”