City of God (31 page)

Manon glanced down and read quickly. “But the lot is not in Five Points,” she protested.

“Of course it is not in Five Points. Forgive me Mrs. Joyful, but foolish you are being. You think you will get any nice respectable ladies like yourself to come and work in your dispensary if in Five Points it’s to be? Please, tell me how many of them go with you to be a nurse there now.”

She didn’t have to say that none did. Obviously he already knew. “This document isn’t signed,” she said instead.

“A lawyer maybe you are,” he muttered. “When I have the Great Mogul, then I will sign it. Now please, give it back to me and let us go.”

“Addie, this is Mr. Jacob Astor. My companion, Miss Bellingham.”

Addie jumped to her feet so quickly the sewing spilled off her lap onto the floor. “Mr. Astor,” she murmured. Heaven help them, were they to be put into the street?

“Close your mouth, Addie, and get on about your business. Mr. Astor hasn’t come to foreclose on us and he won’t be staying long.” Then, to Astor, “Follow me, please.”

Since she was bringing him into her bedroom, Manon left the door open. Her clothes cupboard stood against the opposite wall. She opened the double doors and began removing the hatboxes from the top shelf, taking them down one by one and stacking them on the bed. Silly to still have so many when nowadays she only ever wore a plain black bonnet in winter and an equally plain gray one in summer. The bonnets in the boxes were leftovers of another time and another life, like the one in the very last box she removed from the shelf, all pink straw and pale green satin streamers and a bunch of purple pansies stitched to the side. It had been a favorite of Joyful’s. She had opened the box only once every year since he died, to check on the thing wrapped in the blue velvet cloth.

“Have you thought how extraordinary it is that we should have such a thing, Mr. Astor?”

“I have, Mrs. Joyful.”

“What shall you do with it?”

“I am not entirely sure,” he admitted. But to possess the world’s largest diamond, for the time being that would be enough.

Manon did not remind him that years before, he and Samson Simson had said that someday this fabulous jewel might be important for the country’s future. Now, she thought, it would be only about money. She reached below the pink and green bonnet to where the precious bundle had been hidden all these years. Foolish to give it to Astor perhaps, but surely to create something as much needed as a dispensary for poor women and children, it—“Oh.”

“What ‘oh’? What is the matter, Mrs. Joyful?”

“It’s not here,” Manon said. She tipped the hatbox upside down on the bed, pawing through the tissue and sending little motes of dust dancing in the May sunshine streaming through the window. “The diamond isn’t here!”

“When is the last time you saw it?”

“Right after the New Year. I checked on it as I always do, once every year. Then I put it back.”

“Maybe in another box you put it.”

“No, it’s been in this one at the back of my cupboard ever since—”

Manon stopped speaking when she heard the thud from the sitting room. Addie Bellingham had fainted.

“W
HO DID YOU
give it to?” Manon demanded. Addie clamped her lips into a thin line. “It’s thievery, Addie, the act of a common criminal. I would never have expected it of you.”

“It fell out of the cupboard, like I said. I was looking for a bit of sewing cotton in that odd shade of yellow, and the thing fell at my feet.”

“Ridiculous,” Astor said. His normally ruddy complexion was ghostly white, and his hands were balled into fists at his sides. He seemed far more upset than Manon Turner. “All the way at the back of the top shelf, the box was. Underneath a hat. Never it could have fallen at those feet.” He looked down at the sturdy workaday boots of Addie Bellingham. “And as Mrs. Joyful says, it is robbery. If Jacob Astor also says so, do you think in the police court the Police Justice will have any doubt? To the women’s prison in the almshouse you will go for sure, Miss Bellingham.”

He had unwittingly said the words she was most afraid of hearing. Addie shrieked.

Manon recognized their advantage and pressed it. “The almshouse for at least five years, I should think, Mr. Astor. With no possibility of getting out.”

“Not five years. Ten more likely. I will tell the Police Justice ten years at least.”

Another shriek. Then, “My friend Lilac Langton, she’s the one who has it. Going to take it to a Russian man with a fancy-goods shop. To see if it was real. We never thought it could be, a thing that big. We never thought—”

Jacob Astor was staring at Addie as if seeing her for the first time. “Lilac Langton,” he said. “Certain you are that is her name?”

“Of course I’m certain. We met at Mr. Finney’s church on the Anxious Bench. Both of us giving our lives to Jesus the same night. Been friends for quite two years now. You don’t know her, do you?”

“Knowing her is maybe not how you would say it. I know who she is. The busiest and most popular lady to do abortions in all of the city.”

Addie shrieked again.

“Mr. Astor,” Manon asked, “how do you know this?”

“Because I am her landlord.”

Addie swayed, on the verge of fainting a second time, but Manon picked up a vase filled with water and spring flowers and dumped the contents over the other woman’s head.

No one answered the door to Lilac Langton’s rooms on Christopher Street. They knocked a number of times, then Mr. Astor sent the driver of his carriage to his countinghouse on Little Dock Street to get the duplicate keys he kept there. He looked his age now, pale and drawn and with a thin blue line around his mouth that Manon found quite worrying. She looked around for someplace they could wait until the driver returned. “I think I saw a café around the corner. We can go there for a short while, Mr. Astor.”

Astor shook his head and sat down on the steps of the building next to the one where Lilac Langton lived. “Here we can wait. Please to stop sniveling, Miss Bellingham. It annoys me.”

Addie blew her nose loudly, then was silent.

“I hope whoever lives here doesn’t mind our sitting outside their front door,” Manon murmured.

“It doesn’t matter if they do,” Astor said. “This building also I own.”

She should have known, just as she should have known that Addie Bellingham was more than a snoop who listened at open doors. A woman hurrying down the street went straight to Lilac Langton’s front door and knocked. Exactly as they had done. Manon jumped up and went toward her. “Excuse me, please.”

“Yes?”

“You’re looking for Mrs. Langton, I take it.”

The woman, younger than Manon, but well dressed and respectable-seeming, looked embarrassed, then lifted her chin defiantly. “I am. You as well, presumably.”

“Yes, I was. I mean I am looking for her. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

“None whatever. I came round to see her last week as well and she wasn’t here then. I suppose I’d better go to someone else now. Heaven knows the papers are full of advertisements for similar services. Mrs. Langton will lose all her custom if she continues to behave this way.”

Manon watched until the woman had walked away, then returned to Mr. Astor and Addie. “Mrs. Langton’s been gone for days and days. At least that’s what it looks like. That woman came to look for her a week ago and she wasn’t here then either.”

Addie again began to sob. Astor turned to her. “So, you told me you gave to your friend Mrs. Langton what did not belong to either of you a few days ago. This was maybe not the exact truth?”

Addie sobbed louder.

“The almshouse prison,” Manon said, “is far worse than the workhouse. Even I was afraid of the women in the almshouse prison.”

“Three weeks it is since I gave it to her,” Addie said between gasps for air. “I been round here every day for the last ten looking for Lilac, and she hasn’t been here. We was going to share. If it turned out to be real, I mean. But she—”

Astor’s carriage drove up and the driver jumped down carrying a ring hung with numerous keys.

Neither Astor nor Manon nor even Addie Bellingham was surprised to find Lilac Langton’s rooms stripped bare. There was nothing anywhere that might give them a clue as to where she’d gone.

It was dark beyond the windows of the Vandam Street lodging house. It was dark inside Manon as well, but within her was not the balmy softness of a May evening, but the bitter, soul-destroying cold of winter. “It was a wicked, wicked thing to do, Addie. I trusted you and tried to help you and you betrayed me. I’m afraid we can no longer live together. I want you to leave.”

“Now? But where will I go? I—”

“Tomorrow morning first thing. And I don’t care where you go. You are very fortunate it will not be prison.”

Not even a man as vindictive as Jacob Astor had any desire to explain how it was he knew where the world’s largest diamond could be found, or why all these years he’d allowed it to remain hidden in a widow’s hatbox. Manon had realized from the first that he would not press charges against Addie Bellingham. As for her, she had never considered the Great Mogul diamond as being her possession, so she could not imagine claiming she’d been robbed of it. Only because Addie Bellingham understood none of those things had she been so frightened by their threat of a return to the almshouse, to the prison wing no less.

“You have some money put by, I know, Addie. And I shall give you a hundred dollars.” She could not turn even Addie Bellingham into the streets without some means to survive. “There are some quite inexpensive boardinghouses here and there in the town. I’m sure you can find one. Along with your income from sewing, if you’re prudent, you will manage, Addie. Now please go to your room. Frankly, the sight of you makes me quite ill.”

“And that’s it?” Nick asked. “No sign of the stone?”

“No sign whatever,” Manon said. “Mr. Astor was quite sure he knew which fancy-goods merchant this Mrs. Langton likely had in mind, a Russian merchant on Broadway near Wall Street. He went there immediately. The man’s shop was shuttered closed and no one has seen him for days. Mr. Astor said there was a rumor he had taken ship for Europe. With a lady friend, according to some of the neighbors.”

“Your Mrs. Langton, no doubt. Incredible.” Nick sat back in the large chair behind the sizable desk that occupied his book-lined consulting room. He had already shown Manon the similar chamber for Ben Klein, the examining and treatment room they shared, and the small but impressively equipped laboratory in the rear of the suite on Crosby Street. He and Ben were now engaged in the practice of medicine in an area that had twenty years earlier been a rural fastness. These days the neighborhood was home to rich Jews of the old guard, bankers and moneymen who considered themselves entirely different from the latest wave of German Jewish tradesmen and entrepreneurs. It was home as well to Catholics of French and Spanish descent, who of course saw little to connect them to their Irish coreligionists. Both groups considered it fitting to make their home in the shadow of the very imposing Shearith Israel Jewish synagogue or, for the Catholics, close by St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The neighborhood was for Nick a world so far removed from Bellevue as to make it seem like fairyland. Manon’s extraordinary tale was of a piece with it. “A diamond as big as a pigeon’s egg,” he repeated.

“It was extraordinarily beautiful, Cousin Nicholas. To look into such a stone…I’m sorry I never showed it to you.”

“So am I. Cousin Manon, may I ask how you came to have such a thing?”

“No, dear Nicholas, you may not. It’s an incredible story involving Canton and intrigue among thieves and runaway slaves, and you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you, though I assure you it was painfully real when we were living through it.” Unlikely either that he would believe she’d once been beautiful enough for someone to want
to spirit her away on a pirate ship. “Anyway, it was really my husband’s story. I only told you as much as I have to explain why I’m looking for somewhere to rent. To open a less ambitious version of the dispensary I originally planned.”

“Astor wouldn’t make good on his promise?”

“Not once it became clear I could not make good on mine.”
To be a bargain both sides must do what is offered, Mrs. Joyful.
She shrugged.

“Wretched woman,” Nick said, unwilling to mention Addie Bellingham’s name. “And after you’d done so much for her.”

“Wretched indeed. And one of the things I’ve learned these past years is that if one does the right thing for the sake of being thanked, much less loved—well, it seldom works out that way. Now I must go, Nicholas. I see that your location here is far too grand for what I have in mind. But if you hear of anything, you will keep me in mind?”

“Of course I will.” He got up to see her to the door, then paused, “Cousin Manon, the night of the hearing at City Hall, Carolina was there as well wasn’t she?”

“I believe so, yes. For a time.”

“How do you suppose she knew about it?”

“I told her, Nicholas. I knew she would be concerned for you, as was I.” She smiled and nodded her head to indicate the luxury of his surroundings. “We couldn’t either of us know how splendidly you would land on your feet.”

St. Patrick’s Cathedral had a three-story-high vaulted ceiling, gothic-arched windows of elaborate stained glass, and a truly enormous marble altar backed by an exquisite reredos, a screen worked in gold. The eye Manon’s goldsmith father had trained recognized workmanship of the highest quality, but it gave her no joy. What in this place seemed appropriate to the memory of the humble carpenter’s son? She caught the faint scent of the incense used in the morning devotions, the whiff, she sometimes thought, of corruption and decay. This religion with its overelaborate buildings and ancient rituals and its insistence on speaking
a language dead to most for hundreds of years…but where else could she go to pour out her complaints?

Manon had sounded quite resigned when she spoke with Nicholas. But, oh, inside, in her deepest heart, she was not resigned at all. How could a God of justice permit such a thing to happen? And why come here to seek consolation?

Because after everything, my Manon, here—for you—is where I am to be found.

The voice spoke in her head, she knew she had not heard it aloud. But it was nonetheless a voice. And she had heard it.

All these months and years. All this grieving and guilt and rage at what had been meted out to her. All those prayers wrenched from a dryness that seemed it would never be anything other than an arid wasteland of unknowing. And now this.

For you, my Manon, here is where I am to be found.

She felt as if she floated beneath that magnificent ceiling, though she knew quite well she knelt still at the altar railing where she had come almost shaking her fist in anger and despair. She had as well a different and equally real awareness. That of love pouring into her, meant for her, filling every gap hollowed by years of loneliness and loss.

Manon caught her breath and held it. Then she exhaled. And everything was wonderfully and simply and beautifully clear.

It had been ten-thirty when Manon left Nicholas and walked the short distance to St. Patrick’s church. Now she came out and stood trembling with quiet joy in the midafternoon sunshine. A nearby clock chimed three times. It was late, much later than she had realized. Long past time. But at least now she knew exactly where she must go and what she must do.

“This is my last visit, Mother Louise.”

“Oh, I am distressed to hear that, Mrs. Turner.”

Manon shook her head. “I’m sorry, I am not being clear. I mean it is my last visit as a guest. My last time choosing my own way. I must return
to my lodgings and arrange my affairs. Tomorrow, if you will permit it, I will come to stay. Shall you have me?”

The nun smiled. “There is a long road to travel, my dear. And many pitfalls and temptations along the way, but of course we will have you. I have in fact been expecting you for some time.”