“She,” said Evangeline.
“What?”
“She sure favored it.”
He laughed and looked up at the little church, separated from the world by a fence, surrounded by oak and sycamore trees that cast cool shadows onto the street and the graveyard. But there was a powerful light at the rear of the property, a light that the trees could not shield, an unnatural light that seemed to emanate from the earth itself, from the massive, thirteen-acre hole that stretched from Church Street all the way to West Street.
That was where the World Trade Center had been.
When the towers collapsed, said Peter, they sent down a horrifying cascade of debris that destroyed buildings all around them. Then had come the cloud that surged along the streets and spread out onto the rivers and across the harbor. Nothing, Peter had thought as he watched that day on television, had ever looked more like the end of the world. Nothing could have survived beneath that.
But when the cloud had settled onto Lower Manhattan, when it had buried the little cemetery and City Hall Park and every surface for blocks in a blizzard of concrete, steel, glass, paper, aluminum, gypsum, plastic, electronics, avionics, human remains, hopes, and happiness, all of it pulverized to dust, the little chapel still stood.
She tugged his elbow. “Let’s go in. Say a prayer. Thank God for outwitting Mr. Daily News.”
“And thank God for this building. Then we’ll go up to Book Row and talk to Delancey.”
As they walked into the old church, Peter’s iPhone buzzed. He pulled it out: a text message:
Mr. Fallon: Friends speak well of you. Can I interest you in saving America? Avid Austin Arsenault.
FOUR
September 1776
BY DAWN, GIL AND JAKE had hidden their muskets and shot pouches under a rock on Greenwich Road. Then they had come down Broadway and stopped at the corner of Vesey Street, right in front of St. Paul’s Chapel.
They wanted to visit the Shiny Black Cat, but the street was overflowing with British sailors queued up in front of the Cat and Quaker Fan’s and all the other whorehouses that ran down to the Hudson.
While the rebels had been retreating the previous day, the military governor had landed with a detachment of Royal Marines. Tories who had been housebound for months—or confined aboard British ships—had come out to cheer them, and now, even the whorehouses were flying the Union Jack.
“Nothin’ makes a man so randy as conquerin’ a city,” said Big Jake into Gil’s ear, “but we need to talk to Loretta. If there’s gold to be got, we’re gettin’ it. Won’t be much good livin’ in this city otherwise.”
“Might not be much good anyway, but easier with gold.”
The sight of two Yanks peering down Vesey Street attracted a redcoat corporal who was standing in front of the chapel. “Oy, you there. What are you after?”
Gil touched the brim of his hat. “We was hopin’ to get a bit of the old in and out, but you lot have been away from the ladies a lot longer than us, so we’ll just be on our way.”
“You look a touch suspicious to me.” The corporal came off the sidewalk and unshouldered his musket. He was tall and rangy, red-faced and pockmarked. He and the others leaning against the chapel fence wore the leatherneck collars of the Royal Marines. “You ain’t spies, are you?”
“Spies?” Big Jake laughed. “Us?”
The redcoat leveled his musket at his hip. “Spies.”
“They’re not spies.” Reverend Inglis, the rector of Trinity and St. Paul’s, stepped out of the chapel.
Gil had not seen him in some time. He had left the city shortly after the Declaration of Independence. But here he was back, a tall, slender, spectral presence, all in black but for the white wig and priest’s collar.
“They’re handymen about the town,” the rector went on, “and they’ve done a goodly share of grave digging for this parish. So rest easy, Corporal Morison.”
That much was true.
Gil and Big Jake both doffed their hats and thanked “his Reverence.”
“They’re good Loyalists, then?” said the corporal.
“They’re loyal members of our church.” Inglis arched his eye at Gil. He could arch his eye as well as anyone in New York.
Corporal Morison put up his musket and gave them a jerk of the head. “Be on your way, then, but I’ll be watchin’ your faces.”
“You won’t see nothin’ on ’em but smiles,” said Big Jake.
The two Waterfront Boys pulled their hats low and put their eyes on the ground. There were plenty in town who knew that they had been part of Stuckey’s company, and plenty waiting to trouble any rebel who had troubled them. The wheel of vengeance and victory was turning. When Gil and Jake saw two men painting the letters GR on a house, they simply walked on. GR stood for George Rex, which meant that the house, which had belonged to some departed Son of Liberty, now belonged to the king.
IT WAS NEAR seven thirty when they sneaked down an alley from Broad Street into a little backyard. Chickens were pecking about. The door to the privy was closed. The door to the kitchen was open.
Gil peered in. A pot of cornmeal mush was bubbling on the grate, and it set Gil’s empty stomach to growling. He swallowed and whispered, “Hello?”
In answer, the privy door slammed open and a man holding a brace of pistols stepped out. “Hands up.”
“We’re friends.” Gil shot his hands into the air.
“Friends of Rooster Ramsey,” said Big Jake.
“We’ve come to see his mother,” said Gil.
Haym Salomon lowered the guns, and the boys lowered their hands.
Gil had only seen the Jew once or twice before. His face was symmetrical, his cheekbones high, his nose a bit stronger than most. Only the accent, which sounded German, marked him as an outsider.
“The one called the Bookworm, he brought bad news last night.” Salomon looked from face to face. “But Rooster’s mother, she did not cry. She said she always expected him to die hard. She never expected he would die fighting for his country.”
“Fighting for his country?” Gil glanced at Big Jake.
“We may all die fighting for our country.” Salomon set the pistols down. “The British are arresting some of us and watching the rest.”
“Why don’t you leave?” asked Gil.
“I should. I’m a Son of Liberty, but”—Salomon shrugged—“I have a business here . . . and a girl.”
Gil nodded. Business and women. Those were things a man could understand more easily than windy ideas like liberty. “Where did Augustus go?”
“Back.”
“Back?” said Gil and Big Jake together.
“Back to find his friends on Harlem Heights. He meant you . . . yes?”
Gil said, “We come lookin’ for him.”
“And we ain’t goin’ back,” said Big Jake.
“But it may be dangerous for two deserters,” said Salomon. “I will hide you if you want.”
“We won’t be hidin’,” said Big Jake. “This is our town.”
“We work for Sam Fraunces,” said Gil, “so we have reason to be out and about.”
“And if the British stop us,” added Big Jake, “we’ll say that we’re doin’ his biddin’, deliverin’ wine to the whorehouses.”
“Right,” said Gil, “so British officers’ll have somethin’ to tickle their palates while the girls tickle their pricks.”
“Pricks?” Salomon nodded. “Pricks are something they can understand.”
Big Jake gave him an elbow. “Something every man can understand, eh?”
Salomon offered a thin smile and said that Rooster’s mother had taken to her room with a bottle of whiskey. They could have a bowl of mush and wait for her to come out, or they could come back later.
Gil doubted that there was much they could say to her. And if the Jew was being watched, best not to be seen with him. They could eat later.
Salomon said it spoke well of them that they would endanger themselv
es to comfort an old woman. He wished them luck as they hurried off. Then he kicked the chickens out of the way and went back into the privy.
AFTER A SHORT walk, Gil and Big Jake ducked into another alley and peered across Broad Street at the Queen’s Head, Sam Fraunces’s tavern, where half a dozen Royal Marines were taking their ease in the early morning sunshine.
Fraunces ran the best tavern in New York—the best food, the best wines, all served in a four-story brick building that contained the most comfortable attic that contained the most comfortable bed that Gil ever slept in—and after digging and fighting and retreating and digging and deserting and returning, after covering twenty-four miles up the island and back in twenty-four hours, his eyes were starting to spin . . . and his legs . . . were . . . feeling . . . just . . . a . . . bit . . . wobbly. . . .
“Let’s move,” Big Jake whispered. “We’re stickin’ out here like stiff dicks.”
“If anybody can help us, it’s Fraunces.”
“But the redcoats must know he was one of the Sons of Liberty, too, and he let the rebels hold meetings, and—”
British bayonets poked against their backs. British questions came quickly and less warmly than the bayonets: “Who are you?” “Where do you live?” “What are you doing?”
The answers were in part truth and in part the kind of invention that two smart street men could conjure even when their wits were clotting for lack of sleep. “We work for Sam Fraunces. We live in his attic. And we were bringing wine”—then came the part about palates and pricks and the pleasure of British officers—“and British soldiers, too.”
The redcoats liked that last part. So they took the boys into the tavern, to see Major General Robertson, the new military authority.
At the sight of these two dirty Americans, Robertson pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and held it to his nose. He didn’t look like a fighting man, thought Gil, and his handkerchief smelled of rose water. But he was probably another British career soldier, the kind who could run a city or lead a regiment.
Robertson sent for one of Fraunces’s slaves, to vouch for their story, because Fraunces had fled. But the British weren’t going to hang Fraunces, said Robertson, since he was the best innkeeper in America. They were going to bring him back and put him to work, and his family would be safe, so long as he continued to “serve the gustatory needs of His Majesty’s officers as attentively as he has always served New York’s.”
A slave named Joshua vouched for everything that Gil and Big Jake had said. He told Robertson that they were the trusted musclemen of the tavern, and if the British wanted to keep up good service until they brought Fraunces back, these men should be part of it.
So Gil and Big Jake slept again in those attic beds, and by the next morning, they were hauling ale barrels off British ships, splitting stove wood, slaughtering chickens, and listening to the chatter of His Majesty’s officers, most of whom were amused by the rebels’ amateur leadership and by the redoubts they had raised around the city, piles of dirt that had proven worse than useless for defense. Washington might hold the high ground, they said, but soon enough they would get behind him, and soon after that, they would get him on the gallows.
Gil Walker agreed.
He told Big Jake that they had made the right decision, no matter where Augustus the Bookworm had gone. Now they had to keep their heads down, obey orders, and grab their chance to get the gold.
BUT TO DO that they needed Loretta. They needed to know exactly where to look and when. And they needed to act quickly before more British officers returned from Harlem and an old Tory like John Blunt threw open his doors to lodge them.
So Gil waited each morning along the route that Loretta took to the fish market. And finally, on Friday, four days after the British landed, he saw her.
She was walking down Broad Street with a basket under her arm. She wore a loose dress and shawl, and she moved with a kind of bowlegged stiffness, as though she had been kicked, or badly used in another way.
He stepped out of an alley behind her and said her name.
She stopped, turned, held the basket against her chest as if for protection. “Gil? Gil Walker? I thought you was on the line.”
“I’ve come back.”
“You deserted?”
He brought a finger to his lips. “If anyone asks, we been here the whole time, just good loyal lads servin’ in the absence of Master Fraunces.”
She brought a hand to his chest. “I’m glad you’re back.”
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the alley. “I’ve missed you.”
Usually when he said something like that, she laughed in his face. This time, she looked down, as if to hide a tear. “I can’t be offerin’ any free gifts. Fanny give me the mornin’ off. Workin’ double shifts for a week ain’t too good for the”—she glanced at her midsection—“ for the scuttle, if you know what I mean.”
“How would you like to tell Fanny to go diddle herself?”
“Diddle herself? But she bought my indenture from my uncle. Five years.”
“We’ll buy you back. We’ll buy your corset, too, and throw it away.”
“Buy me back? With what?”
“John Blunt’s gold.”
That made her laugh. “We missed our chance. There’s British soldiers all about now, watchin’ over the loyal Tories and watchin’ all the good loyal lads like you, too.”
“Just tell us where the gold is. We’ll watch the Tory’s house tonight, make a plan, and move tomorrow.”
The bits of mascara around her eyes tightened into a suspicious web. “And then?”
“We’ll get out of here. There’s boats slippin’ away every night. We’ll get over to Jersey, buy horses, and be gone.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
He kissed her, but she did not respond. She barely inclined her head.
So he pulled back and said, “Because what you once told me is true.”
“What was that?”
“You and me are different. We were born low, but we have dreams. We’re two peas in a pod.” He kissed her again and this time, she opened her mouth against his and leaned into him, as if to tell him that he had said the right thing.
Then she slipped her arm into his and said, “Walk with me.” And as the sun rose, she told him everything she knew about John Blunt’s house and his gold.
ii.
By nightfall, the wind was rising out of the southeast.
It was a warm wind riding the edge of some distant autumn storm, and it sent ragged clouds running like spirits across the New York sky. A younger Gil Walker would have wandered away from the waterfront and gone beyond the town to some slope like Bayard’s Hill, all the better to feel the wind booming over the harbor and thundering up the Hudson and losing itself somewhere beyond the Jersey highlands. His mind would empty, and he would feel the force of nature, the breath of God himself, reminding him that he was part of something bigger.
But not tonight.
“Tonight,” Gil told Big Jake, “this wind will mask the sounds.”
“Sounds? What sounds? I thought we was just watchin’ tonight.”
Gil reached into his pocket and pulled out an iron cat’s paw and a hammer. “We do it tonight. Less chance for Loretta to act nervous in front of old Fanny Doolin.”
“Good.” Big Jake took a bottle of rum out of his pocket and swigged. “Just as easy to cut her out as cut her in.”
Gil stopped beneath a street lamp. The wind made the flame in the lamp flicker and almost blew Gil’s hat from his head. “I didn’t say nothin’ about cuttin’ her out.”
“You ain’t thinkin’ about cuttin’ me out, are you?” asked Big Jake. “You and her, runnin’ a cathouse in Jersey . . . there’s a pretty picture.”
“You’re my oldest friend and you say somethin’ like that?”
“You wouldn’t tell us about the gold when there was four of us. Now we’re just two, thanks to Loretta and her cunt
friends lurin’ us into the militia. And I’m gettin’ my share. If the Bookworm lives, he gets his share, too.”
“You been sippin’ too much rum,” said Gil.
Big Jake brought the rum bottle to his lips and took another long drink. Then he said, “Let’s get the gold. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
And they hurried through the deserted streets, Broad Street to Beaver to New, which connected Beaver Street to Wall. The street lamps cast high flickering shadows. The Presbyterian Church stared down from Wall Street. And there, at the intersection of New Street and Fluten Barrack, was the house of John Blunt.
And there was John Blunt, a bloated old man in white stockings and disheveled wig, lurching down the street behind two big Airedales. The dogs were running about, stopping, snuffling, lifting their legs. And Blunt was singing between swallows from a silver flask. It sounded like “God Save the King.”
Another Tory, thought Gil, whose world had been righted.
One of the dogs made a few circles around a spot in the street and squatted.
John Blunt said to the other one, “What about you, Prince? Have a dump for your old master. Don’t want you whimperin’ to go out in the middle of the night or shittin’ on the rugs, now, do we?”
But Prince was ignoring Blunt. He was looking toward two shadows in a doorway.
“What do you see, boy?” Blunt peered in the same direction.
Gil grabbed Big Jake and pulled him back out of the light.
The dog glanced back at his master but held his ground.
Gil wrapped his hand around the cat’s paw and waited.
But dogs were distractable creatures, especially good ratters when they saw rats, and as the other dog finished his business, he must have seen one, because he jumped up, kicked his legs at his leavings, and went racing back up the street.
Blunt called to Prince, “Come on, boy! Your brother just found quarry.”
Prince looked again toward the shadows, then he turned and followed his master.
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