City of Dreams

by Martin, William

  Gil waited a few moments, until he heard John Blunt cry, “A nest of ’em! Go get ’em, boys! A dirty nest of rebel rats!”

  Above the wind came the sound of hunting dogs flushing prey. Somewhere in the next block a window opened, a man shouted, “Quiet out there!” Then the contents of a chamber pot splashed into the street.

  Gil whispered to Big Jake. “Let’s go.”

  “But the wife?”

  “Her light’s just gone out.” Gil pointed up at the second story. “Likely she’s took to bed with a hair across her arse at a drinkin’ husband who loves his dogs more than he loves her. Come on.”

  The door was no problem. As with almost every front door in New York, the rebels had stripped it of brass fixtures—knockers, handles, knobs—so the key assembly would not work. A bolt or chain would be the way to lock it.

  So Gil used a Tory’s wealth against him. Only the rich could afford sidelights—little panes of glass on either side of the front door—that allowed a person to look out and the sunlight to flood in. With the end of the cat’s paw fitted neatly and a few gentle taps of the hammer, Gil broke away the glazing, lifted out the thick pane, reached inside, and threw the bolt.

  As soon as he did, the wind caught the door and blew it out of his hand. He leapt to grab it before it banged against the stopper and woke the wife.

  Then he and Big Jake stepped into the foyer. Gil closed the door and raised his hand—wait, listen. Nothing except the distant barking of the Airedales. Gil slid the bolt back into place. “Blunt and his dogs must come in by the back,” he whispered.

  An oil lamp flickered on a side table. Gil took it and led the way.

  The dining room was to the left. The polished top of a mahogany table reflected the light of a street lamp. On either side of the fireplace were raised pine panels. Loretta had said that the gold was behind one of the panels on the left of the fireplace in the dining room.

  Gil handed the lantern to Big Jake, then he tapped on each panel, but they all sounded hollow. He ran his fingers along the ridges, but he could feel no hinges or metal edges, nothing to indicate a compartment behind. He tried it all again with no more luck. Then he stepped back and looked at his friend.

  “That trollop better not be lyin’ to us,” whispered Big Jake.

  A powerful gust of wind caused one of the shutters to rattle. Gil and Big Jake both looked toward the window. They waited and watched, and Gil mentioned that everything seemed a little brighter for some reason, maybe a little redder.

  “Just your eyes playin’ tricks around this lamp,” said Big Jake.

  Gil turned back to the wall. A thick molding ran along the top, where the paneling reached the ceiling. Gil told Jake to hold the lamp higher. And there it was . . . a small lever hidden in the layered molding. Gil reached up and pulled and, miraculously, one of the lower panels swung open.

  “Aha.” Big Jake lowered the lamp and peered in and said, “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “A strongbox, with a lock, mortared into the brick.”

  Gil took out a key ring containing awls of different sizes, perfect for lockpicking. He slid one into the lock on the strongbox . . .

  And they heard someone running up the street, then a cry of “Fire! Fire!”

  “Fire?” Big Jake’s eyes widened.

  “That’s why the light looked different.” Gil kept his eyes on the strong-box.

  There was barking in the street now.

  “Shit,” said Big Jake again. “Blunt and his dogs.”

  And while Gil probed the lock, this came from the street:

  “Fire? Where?” “Call off your dogs.” “Baron! Prince! Come!” “It started in Fightin’ Cocks.” “But that’s down on the waterfront.” “Look in the sky, mister. Firebrands blowin’ everywhere. And the rebels took all the church bells so there’s no way to sound the alarm. Buildin’s catchin’ fire all over!” “My God! Samantha! Samantha! Fire! Fire!”

  The dining-room ceiling thudded as feet hit the floor in the room above.

  “Shit!” said Big Jake.

  “Stop shittin’ and hold the lamp.” Gil slid a second probe into the lock.

  Big Jake brought the lamp over Gil’s shoulder. “Hurry up.”

  There were footfalls on the staircase now.

  And Blunt was pounding on the door and shouting for his wife.

  And his dogs were barking.

  And someone else in the street was screaming, “Fire!”

  And the lock popped.

  The strongbox held two trays, each containing a hundred gold guineas, beautiful glittering coins stamped with the chinless profile of the king himself.

  Gil pulled two canvas bags from his pockets, grabbed a tray, and dumped it into a bag.

  “Hurry up,” said Big Jake.

  “We’ll get out the back,” said Gil. “But let’s get what we come for.”

  In the hallway, Mrs. Blunt was screaming as she pulled back the bolt, “John! There’s men in the house.”

  “Shit.” Big Jake turned toward the foyer.

  The door swung open and the dogs burst in.

  Big Jake dropped the lamp, grabbed a mahogany dining chair, and slammed it down on a dog. At the same moment, the lamp was shattering, and the whale oil was rolling toward the long drapes gathered on the floor, and the flame in the lamp was following the oil . . .

  Gil filled the second bag just as the second dog flew into the room.

  This one got hold of Big Jake’s leg.

  There was an angry growl, followed by Jake’s yowl, then the explosion of a pistol in close quarters. It seemed that old John Blunt went armed.

  And the oil reached the drape, followed by the flame, and the fabric ignited.

  Now Blunt was coming at them with a raised saber. “Get out of my house!”

  Gil put a shoulder into the old man’s chest and sent him flying across the room, right through one of the windows, and into the street.

  “John!” screamed Mrs. Blunt. “My dear God! John! John!”

  The dog still had Big Jake by the leg. But Big Jake had his knife out and was driving it into the dog’s side.

  And the drape erupted into red flames.

  “My God!” screamed the old woman. “Fire! Help!” She rushed for the door.

  But Gil and Big Jake leapt past her, got out the door first, and slammed it behind them. Then they turned toward Beaver Street.

  But that way lay the fire, just a few blocks to the south.

  People were stumbling from their houses to look up at the pulsing red beast inhaling buildings and exhaling sparks and smoke. Some stopped and stood and watched in awe. Others turned and rushed into their homes to grab what they could before they ran.

  And Mrs. Blunt burst from her house: “Stop! Thieves! Firebrands! Stop!”

  Gil netted the bags on his shoulder and glanced back. The old lady’s flowing white hair and windblown white nightgown made her look like an angry spirit that might fly after him in an instant.

  And rushing up from Beaver were half a dozen British sailors, shouting “Fire! Fire! Turn out! Fire! We need men! Fire! Fire!”

  The old lady was screaming and pointing at Gil and Big Jake. “They started it! They started the fire! They started the fire in my very house!”

  “Rebels!” cried one sailor. “Firebrands!” cried another. “Let’s get ’em!” And the sailors came after the Waterfront Boys.

  “Come on,” said Gil. “The other way.”

  But as Big Jake turned, Gil saw the blood on his friend’s chest.

  Blunt’s pistol had found a target.

  So Gil grabbed Big Jake by the arm and started to pull him along.

  The old lady tried to get in their way, and as they passed, she screamed at them, “I curse that money. I curse you both. So drop it right now.”

  That Gil would not do, curse be damned.

  But he could not get Big Jake to keep up, because now there was blood coming out of Jake’s nostrils, and
his legs were wobbling. Then he just stopped in the street, looked down at the blood on his shirt, and said, “A helluva way to get rich. Go on without me.”

  “No. You’re comin’ with me!”

  But the sailors were almost on them, and the old lady was still screaming.

  “Go!” said Big Jake. “But do somethin’ good with that gold.” Then he turned and threw himself into the sailors.

  Three of them went down in a heap under him, while a fourth came at Gil, who swung a bag of gold and sent the sailor sprawling. But there were more coming and old Mrs. Blunt was screaming still, screaming that Gil and his friend had started the fire, had started all the fires.

  So Gil turned and sprinted across Fluten Barrack toward Broad Street. His last sight of Big Jake was one that, in all the horrors ahead, would remain the most horrible.

  They were dragging his friend toward the Blunt house and throwing him through the shattered window, into the fire that he himself had started.

  At least Gil did not hear the screams.

  At Broad Street, Gil glanced over his shoulder. He was putting distance between himself and the vengeful furies chasing him. But instead of turning straight down Broad Street, he ran another half a block, ducked down a dark alley, then scuttled through dooryards and jumped fences and never made a false turn, because he had taken these paths a hundred times before.

  He thought about dropping the gold into the privy behind some deserted house and coming back for it later, but instead he was heading toward his only home: the attic room in the Queen’s Head . . .

  He made his way through the shadows until he reached Duke Street, and as he turned again toward Broad Street, he was struck by a wave of heat so powerful that he thought his eyebrows might singe.

  Two terrified horses were galloping toward him. A man in a nightshirt was chasing the horses. At the intersection, a man was on fire. People were slapping at him with hats and coats to put out the flames. The horses thundered past, while two old women scurried along with satchels under their arms. One shouted at Gil, “Run, sir. Run. The rebels are burning the city! There’s incendiaries everywhere.”

  And so it seemed. Everything on the west side of Broad Street was burning. And the beast was roaring higher into the sky. And Gil knew that the Queen’s Head fronted on Broad Street, so he feared that it, too, would be consumed if it hadn’t been already.

  So what to do with the gold? He had to protect it. He had paid far too much to get it. And Loretta . . . he had to protect her, too. The gold was her dream, too.

  So he turned and ran with the wind, ran with the flaming blizzard of firebrands and sparks blowing northwest across the sky, ran through streets now lit by a hideous red-orange glow, turned and ran for Loretta.

  He raced back to Wall Street, one of the few streets that cut a straight line from the East River to Broadway. A century earlier a wall had stood here to keep out the Indians. Now there were businesses, coffeehouses, the domed and pillared City Hall casting a proud gaze down Broad Street, and the Presbyterian Church.

  And at each corner, the crowd and the confusion grew, as more people poured up from the waterfront. There were blank-eyed merchants clutching their ledgers, stumbling drunks clutching their bottles, terrified wives clutching their terrified children, who clutched their doll babies and toys. And frightened rats were skittering everywhere, causing a riot of stamping and scuffling and screaming.

  Gil kept on toward Broadway and the mighty steeple of Trinity Church, the tallest thing in New York. As he passed New Street, he could not resist a look toward the Blunt house. It was a giant pyre pouring flames a hundred feet into the air, and the southwest wind was pushing the firebrands toward Broadway. And the firebrands were landing like seeds and blossoming like flowers all over Trinity’s cedar shake roof.

  When Gil ran out of Wall Street and onto Broadway, what he saw made his senses curdle.

  The fire was roaring now on both sides of the Bowling Green. And the thunderous boom whenever a building collapsed sounded more frightening than the British bombardment of a week before. And the moaning scream that rose from people in the street sounded more frightened than moans of the soldiers beneath the bombardment. And the smell of smoke and melting metals and burning flesh clogged his throat and made him want to vomit.

  So he ran north, away from the flames, just one of hundreds of people fleeing up Broadway toward the Common.

  He did not stop until he had reached the corner of Vesey Street. Then he looked back as flames leaped out of the Trinity belfry. For a few moments, the fire danced on the top of the spire, making it seem like a giant candle. Then flames burst from the roof itself and engulfed the most enduring symbol of God’s favor and royal power in the city of New York.

  “Oh, good Lord, help us!” cried a man in front of St. Paul’s Chapel.

  “The Lord helps those who help themselves!” shouted Rector Inglis, who was rushing up from Trinity, now a lost cause. “Find buckets. Find men to haul ’em! We’ll wet down the roof with water from the well and from the river. We’ll save the chapel at least.”

  A man came running with a ladder, another with buckets.

  And Gil heard Inglis calling to him. “You there! Gil Walker! Will you help us?”

  Gil shifted the bags on his shoulder and tried to answer.

  But the rector kept on: “Whatever’s in those bags, Gil, it can’t be more important than what’s in God’s house! So set them down and fetch a bucket.”

  Gil wanted to help. But the gold . . . the dream. He turned down Vesey Street.

  “Many thanks!” cried the rector. “The Lord will reward you!”

  Gil did not say what he was thinking: since the Lord helped those who helped themselves, that’s what he was doing. Instead, he shouted over his shoulder that he would be back. He was not certain that the rector heard him.

  He ran with the chapel on his left and the ramshackle whorehouses of the Holy Ground on his right. And people were pouring out of most of them to gaze up at the storm of sparks flying across the sky, and they became a stream of humanity flowing toward Broadway, while Gil swam in the other direction.

  A big British soldier came lurching toward him with a girl on each arm.

  Gil recognized Corporal Morison, the one who had stopped him a few mornings earlier.

  “Oy!” called Morison. “You there!”

  But Gil kept going. He heard Morison tell the girls that he would be right back, that he needed to teach an ignorant Yank a lesson. Then Morison called for Gil to stop.

  Gil knew he couldn’t lead this redcoat to the Shiny Black Cat, because that would lead him to Loretta. So he ducked into the graveyard behind the chapel.

  Here the shadows were deep, and the rain of sparks falling from the sky sizzled harmlessly onto the old headstones and the canopy of leaves.

  On some nights, the whores did business against the headstones and atop the crypts. Gil and Loretta had used a few cool stones themselves on hot July nights. But as New York faced a cataclysm, even the whores had stopped doing business.

  “Oy!” Morison called. “I told you to stop.”

  Gil kept going until he led the big soldier deep into the shadows.

  “I’ll say it again. Stop, or I’ll skewer your kidneys and cook ’em in a pie.”

  And now Gil heard the unshouldering of a musket, so he did as he was told.

  “That’s better. No rector to save you now, Yank, so I’ll ask you a question, and you’ll answer, like a good subject of His Majesty. What’s in the bags?”

  “Lead.” Gil turned and with all his strength, swung upward.

  A bag caught Corporal Morison on the chin. He fell back, and his hat flew off, and he struck his head on the edge of one of the crypts. Then he lay motionless.

  Gil did not bother to see if he was living or dead. Unconscious was enough.

  It was the crypt that caught Gil’s attention. The large stone container, topped with a heavy lid . . . a perfect strongbox, if he could
get into it, because he realized that he couldn’t be seen in the whorehouse with two bags of gold.

  Several other crypts were scattered among the headstones. He picked a small one—easier to move. And it was made of sandstone, lighter than granite, easier still.

  He dropped to his knees and crouched so that from the street, his shadow was all but invisible. The cat’s paw gave him just the leverage he needed to lift the slab. His head was too full of smoke to catch the puff of decay that rose. He peered inside at the top of a coffin. He reached down and felt another coffin beneath it, a second layer.

  He slid the bags into the space between the lower coffin and the crypt wall. Then he dragged the top back and set it into place with a loud thunk. Then he read the family name, “Lawrence,” and the names beneath it, a husband, a wife, a daughter, the dates of their time upon the earth, and the family motto: “The Lord seeth all and loveth all.”

  And he laughed, because this had been the crypt on top of which he had once fucked lovely Loretta Rogers. Now to find her.

  WHEN GIL STEPPED into Fanny Doolin’s parlor, he smelled rose water. She scattered it about to keep down the smells that wafted through a house dedicated to the joining of bodies—any bodies, young or old, washed or filthy. A chandelier burned cheap oil that sent smoke curling up to the ceiling. A girl in a corset and mules sat on the sofa. A blind Negro played a flute in the corner.

  Fanny was counting money at a desk directly in front of the staircase. “Why, good evenin’, Mr. Walker.”

  “Where’s Loretta?”

  “Done for the night.” Fanny wore so much mascara that when she batted her eyes, they flashed like the slave’s. “You’ll have to come back in the mornin’.”

  Gil leaned on the desk, a motion that caused Fanny Doolin to snatch at the coins between them. But Gil kept his eyes on that mascara mask. “I need to see Loretta. Now.”

  Fanny gave him a phony smile and said, very loudly, “A man here for Loretta!”

  Gil knew what she was doing. She was calling for help.

  Leaner McTeague stepped into the parlor. They called him Leaner because he liked to lean in doorways and fill them with his bulk. In taverns, he did it just to start fights. Here, he did it to control the movement of customers and girls. And he was big enough that it usually worked.