City of Dreams

by Martin, William

  “Poughkeepsie?”

  “The Provincial Capital. She went up there about three years ago this time. Left at night on a rowboat. Took a heavy bag. I asked her what was in it, but she wouldn’t tell. I asked her what she was doin’ and she said, ‘Somethin’ good for the country, like Gil and the Bookworm would’ve wanted.’”

  And Gil knew what was in the bag.

  “She come back a few days later, without the bag. Just said she done somethin’ to help the American cause.”

  “Then?”

  “About two weeks later, she was servin’ at table. The missus and the squire was eatin’ alone. Otherwise I don’t think that the missus would’ve said nothin’, but she looked up and as sweet as you please, she said, ‘Why, Loretta, what are those sores around your nose? I do hope it’s not catchy.’

  “Loretta brung a hand to her face, and the squire looked up like a man whose wife just caught him with his finger in . . . well, I won’t say where his wife was thinkin’ he’d had his finger. Bye and bye, Loretta told me that in two years of workin’ for Fanny Doolin, she’d never once been sick, never once had the itch, but those sores looked mighty damn suspicious.”

  “Did she die from the syphilis?” said Gil with sudden impatience. “Yes or no?”

  Nancy took a deep breath then stood and walked to the edge of the dock. “’Tis a beautiful day, Gil Walker. Can you smell the springtime blowin’ in?”

  Gil stood. “Just say what happened to her, Nancy.”

  “A few mornin’s later, I found her floatin’ right here.” Nancy looked at the water.

  “Did the squire kill her?”

  “It was an accident . . . or so said a British officer who come round investigatin’. But I always figured the squire done her in. Maybe she give him a dose and . . .”

  And they were silent for a time. And then Gil turned toward the house.

  There was more to tell of the war on Manhattan Island, but for Gil, the story was finished. All that remained was for Nancy to fetch a package from her room. It was wrapped in brown paper and Gil’s name was written in the upper right corner.

  “I don’t think she ever lost faith that you was alive,” said Nancy as they stood under the big oak in front of the house. “That’s the true reason she stayed. She said she wanted to be here the day you come ridin’ up.”

  Gil took the package, held it, ran his hand over the paper and string, as if by feeling something that Loretta had felt, he could feel her. Then his fingers fumbled with the string and he felt Nancy’s hand on his.

  She said, “Don’t open it now. Wait till you’re alone, then come back and tell me what was in it.”

  “Thank you. You . . . you have a good heart, Nancy Hooley.”

  “So did Loretta.”

  THAT NIGHT, GIL Walker sat on his bed under the eaves of Sam Fraunces’s tavern and unwrapped one of the mahogany boxes. Inside was the crown finial and an envelope addressed: Gil Walker, Prison Ship Jersey, Brooklyn, New York. And written below it, in parenthesis and pencil, the words “not sent—too dangerous.”

  He opened the envelope and read the note:

  Woodward Manor, March 25, 1780

  Dear Gil, The Lord still seeth all and loveth all. I have waited four years to do what we talked of. And now ’tis done . . . because men like Mr. Salomon have spoke of the country’s need. Our good deeds will come back to us many times over in the blessings of freedom, stored safe and sound in a mahogany box. I await your return to show you our investment in the future.

  Love, L. R.

  And inside the envelope was a page torn from Rivington’s Royal Gazette, dated March 1, 1780. It was entitled, HOPELESS ATTEMPTS TO FINANCE REBELLION. And when he was done reading, Gil knew two things. The attempt had not been hopeless, because the Americans had won. And Loretta had used their gold to help. And that made him proud.

  He imagined her slipping down to the landing and taking a rowboat north. It would have been the safest way to get past the British guards at Kingsbridge. She would have stayed close to the shore, moved at night, muffled the oars . . . all things that he had described to her about Farmer Dibble’s night trips in ’76. She may even have carried a pistol for protection.

  And he imagined her arriving at the courthouse in Poughkeepsie to present her money: almost two hundred gold guineas, more than worth their weight in gold, a contribution to the faltering finances of a government that had no money.

  He hoped that she had met up with an honest government trader—someone like Salomon—a man who would give her a fair price. He reckoned that by then a gold guinea coin would have been worth a hundred dollars, because by the end of the war, he had read that a gold guinea was worth a hundred and sixty-seven dollars. So if she had traded near two hundred guineas, she would have returned from Poughkeepsie with near twenty thousand dollars worth of New Emission Money.

  But where was it? He would ask Nancy.

  SO HE WENT back to Woodward Manor the following week but was met at the door by Erastus Daggett and two huge, barking mastiffs.

  Daggett called for his wife, who came and pulled the dogs away, then he turned back to his visitor.

  Gil removed his hat. “I’m—”

  “I remember you,” said Daggett. “You was a damn suspicious one the other day, and you’re even more of it now. Don’t seem right, a man comin’ to an auction preview, then he don’t come back for the auction, but here he is nosin’ around a week later. Strikes me you’re up to no good, mister.”

  “I’m lookin’ for Nancy Hooley, the maid.”

  “She’s gone. Gone off to Nova Scotia with her mistress. And if you come sniffin’ around here again, I just might introduce you to my dogs.”

  Gil could hear them growling.

  Daggett said, “I let ’em tear a Tory informer to pieces one night. So—”

  Gil backed off the porch, got on his horse, and left.

  He could not believe that Nancy would have sailed away without a word. She had mentioned nothing of those plans to him. He could not find her in the city, though he asked after her in boardinghouses and taverns and walked the Burnt District looking for her among the prostitutes and trash pickers. His last link to Loretta was gone.

  iii.

  A man broken in health, in pocketbook, and finally in the heart may repair the places where life has broken him, or he may surrender to the broken things. Ambition may fade and mere comfort become his only goal.

  A place to labor, a place to sleep, a full belly, a few friends . . . for a man who has lost everything, these are a currency of high value.

  Simply surviving on the prison ships had taken a lifetime’s worth of resolve, and if there had been a wellspring from which Gil Walker might have renewed his soul, she was gone. So he consoled himself by breathing the free air of a new nation and by doing his job for Sam Fraunces, which meant playing a small role in a scene of high drama.

  In November, the American army paraded down Broadway. A few nights later, fireworks lit the sky. A few weeks after that, George Washington prepared to leave New York and the army he had led for eight years. So he called his officers together in the Long Room of the Queen’s Head, now known as Fraunces Tavern.

  Gil Walker poured the brandy with which Washington toasted, then he stood by, bottle at the ready, as one officer after another came up to Washington and spoke a quiet farewell. And as he refilled Washington’s glass, he saw tears in the general’s eyes.

  Gil knew that he was living something that men would speak of a century hence.

  BUT GIL HIMSELF never wept. As a boy he had learned that weeping was a sign of weakness, and showing weakness was no way for an orphan to survive in New York or for anyone to survive on a prison ship. Aboard the Jersey, men who wept at night were dead by daybreak.

  Instead of weeping, Gil kept on.

  He worked hard for his old friend. And sometimes he visited what was left of the Holy Ground and spent a few coins. And on occasion, he tried to talk with young women in
the back pews at St. Paul’s, but he found that his eye patch put most of them off.

  Then, about a year after his release, he felt ambition beginning to stir again, so he wrote to Haym Salomon in Philadelphia.

  Salomon wrote back that, though he had invested much in the Revolution and received little in the way of profit, he was still hopeful for the new nation. He added that he was considering a return to New York. “Perhaps we can pool our strengths. Your miraculous constitution and my knowledge of money may yet help us turn a profit.” But between the lines of that letter was a sad truth. Salomon’s constitution had failed. He died of consumption in early 1785.

  But Gil never stopped thinking about the New Emission Money, which paid 5 percent interest to the bearer. Nancy Hooley might have lied and kept it herself. Or it might still be hidden. Such thoughts kept Gil awake many a night.

  So once a month, under a full moon, he would travel up the island to what was now called Daggett Manor. And he would poke about near the riverbank—under rocks, in tree hollows, beneath the foundations of the now-vacant outbuildings—for places where Loretta might have hidden the other mahogany box. But he never tried the house, because he did not break into houses any longer, especially houses guarded by big dogs. And he did not think that knocking on the front door would get him anywhere, because the man who now fashioned himself as Squire Daggett did not appear to be one who would forget a face.

  THOUGH THE FRAGILE collection of American states was dead broke, New York burst back to life.

  It began when Alexander Hamilton and a handful of friends started the Bank of New York and brought order to the chaos of dollars and pounds, paper money and specie, state money and Continentals flooding the city. Merchant ships sailed in again. Men conducted business in the coffeehouses once more. And the old trenches were filled and the earthworks smoothed and the Burnt District rebuilt. And Second Trinity Church rose from the ashes.

  When Americans realized that the government they had created under the Articles of Confederation did not work, they ratified a new constitution, named New York as the capital, and inaugurated a president.

  On a warm April morning in 1789, Gil Walker joined the crowd in front of City Hall, which had been gussied up and renamed Federal Hall, to watch George Washington take the oath of office. Gil had seen Washington weep. Now he saw him stand as a god in a simple brown suit of American cloth. When Washington said, “So help me, God,” the roar was so powerful it made the glass vibrate in the windows of Wall Street and echo down Broad Street all the way to the water. Then the church bells rang. And a moment later came a thunderous feu de joie from all the cannon on all the ships up and down both rivers.

  America had traveled far, thought Gil, from the last time that a New York crowd had roared as loudly, on a July evening in 1776.

  Now there was something called a Federal government. And Sam Fraunces, named chief steward to the president, had already sold his tavern to house most of it.

  Within a few months, the departments of State, Treasury, and War had moved in. And Gil Walker, who saw to the physical care of the building, played unofficial steward to those who labored late in service to this new government.

  So it was that on a fall night, as Gil was going up to bed, he noticed a light in the Treasury office. Thinking someone had left a lamp burning, he followed the light through the outer office to find Alexander Hamilton leaning over his desk, surrounded by books and ledgers that rose like ramparts around him.

  Gil knocked and asked if His Honor would like anything. Hamilton requested a pot of strong coffee.

  Fifteen minutes later, Gil returned with the coffee and ginger raisin cake and placed them on the table. Then he stepped back, waiting for some acknowledgment.

  But Hamilton was hunched over his work, as if rooted to it by the tip of his quill.

  Finally, Gil spoke: “There’s folks say coffee at night will keep you awake, sir.”

  “That’s the idea.” Hamilton did not raise his head.

  Gil listened to the scratching of the pen for a few moments. Then he took the coffee and poured. It gurgled into the cup and sent up a little cloud of steam. Then he stepped back and cleared his throat.

  Hamilton finally looked up. “What? What is it?”

  “Some coffee, sir . . . to keep you awake.”

  “Very good. Thank you. Thank you and good night.” Hamilton turned again to the page.

  “Sorry, sir. But I was just wonderin’ what it is you’re writin’—”

  “It’s called Report on Public Credit, if you must know.”

  And Gil felt something stir in his mind or his soul. He was not sure which. He said, “There was a time when I tried to learn about credit.”

  “Did you, now?” Hamilton dipped his quill and kept his eyes on the paper.

  “Credit, a man once told me”—Gil strained to remember the words exactly—“is a lender’s faith in his fellow man and a debtor’s faith in the future.”

  Hamilton stopped writing, looked up, and said, “I like that.” Then he jotted it down on a piece of scrap paper. “Who was this wise man?”

  “A Jew named Salomon.”

  “Haym Salomon?” Hamilton set down the quill. “You knew him?”

  “Yes, sir. He got me out of the Provost Jail . . . and I went to work for him.”

  “Do I know you? Where did you serve?”

  “With Stuckey’s company, then on the Jersey. Six and a half years.”

  Hamilton stood and raised a lamp to Gil’s face. “You must have a powerful constitution to . . . I remember you now. You’re one of the Waterfront Boys.”

  “You once saved us from a floggin’, but that was a long time ago, sir. And my constitution got used up survivin’. Otherwise, I might’ve made somethin’ of myself.”

  “You were in the rearguard on the retreat from New York. One of the Boys took a bullet, didn’t he?”

  “Rooster Ramsey.”

  “Yes. I remember. A cocky fellow. . . . The stand you lads made that day . . . it helped me escape with my two fieldpieces. Come December, I used those guns to hold off the British on the Raritan and cover Washington’s retreat. So you could say that your friend’s sacrifice saved the army. Take comfort in that, at least.”

  Gil had heard stories of Hamilton. Men said that when he smiled at you and asked a question, he made you feel as if he truly meant the warmth and truly cared about your answer. In that moment, it seemed to be so.

  “Tell me,” Hamilton went on, “how’s—what was his name?—my old friend from King’s College. Augustus, Augustus the Bookworm?”

  “I’m afraid he—”

  “He didn’t make it?” said Hamilton.

  “None of them did, sir, ’cept me. We joined on a whim, but we showed what courage we could. We done our best.” And Gil Walker began to cry. In all his life, he had never cried for any of them. He had tried instead, when he lived the horrors and when he thought about them, to harden himself. Why his emotion burst forth at that moment was something he could not understand.

  Hamilton slid his chair out and told Gil to sit. Then he took the cup of coffee and put it into Gil’s hand. Then he slipped a bottle of brandy from the drawer and poured a generous shot into the mug.

  “The secretary of the Treasury fills my cup.” Gil dragged a sleeve across his nose. “Life still has its wonders.”

  “You’re a veteran. You’ve earned it. And if you’ve held onto your pay certificates, I intend to see that you’re recompensed in full.”

  Gil took a sip and felt the warmth of coffee and brandy both. “Not my pay certificates I’m worryin’ about, sir.”

  “Did you sell them for pennies on the dollar, like so many other soldiers?”

  “Not exactly. Mine’s a long story, and seein’ as you’re busy with figurin’ out the finances of the country and all. . . .”

  But Hamilton insisted he had the time.

  So Gil Walker, in the quiet of that warm room on the second floor of Fraunces�
�s Tavern, decided to tell the story. He reached into his shirt and took off the crown finial that he wore on a leather lanyard around his neck. “This is where it begins.”

  The fire crackled on the grate. The oil in the lamps silently turned to light and smoke. And the two men drank more brandy.

  When Gil was done, he drained his cup and stood. “A long story, sir. As I said.”

  Hamilton picked up the finial and turned it over in his ink-stained hand. “Why did you want to tell me all this?”

  “Well . . . just seein’ you up to your elbows in the business of money . . . it reminded me of the things I tried to learn from Mr. Salomon, back when I dreamed big dreams, back when my friends and me were the top men in town. I dreamed of understandin’ credit and debt and how to make them work.”

  “I’ve dreamed of putting my understanding into action.” Hamilton gestured to the sheets on his desk. “I’d convince Congress that a national debt can be a national blessing. As Salomon said, it reflects our belief in ourselves and our faith in the future.”

  Gil stood for a moment more, then said, “Thank you, sir. Thank you for listenin’.” He took the finial and turned to leave.

  “Do you still have your dreams, Gil Walker?”

  “It’s been a long time since I dreamed much of anything.”

  “Since you learned that your Loretta had died?”

  “I loved her sure enough, and she loved me.” Gil shrugged. “We came from hard times, hard places, but we tried to do our best with the gold—”

  “Once you’d stolen it, that is,” said Hamilton with no hint of disapproval.

  “Ill-gotten gains, yes, sir. But I’d feel better about stealin’ it if I thought that it helped America. So I’d love to know for certain if she really swapped it for New Emission Money.”