by Pete Hamill
And then at last he slept.
In the morning, the wind was making flags curl and pushing dust and paper down Cortlandt Street. A gathering wind. A wind certain to stiffen. And when he moved through the streets to deliver posters to Jameson the vintner, he felt a strangeness in the air. He searched for Kongo on the waterfront but didn’t see him, didn’t see Quaco either, or any of the other Africans he knew, and didn’t even know if Kongo still lived. He wanted to go to Hughson’s, to try one final time to get them to call off the rising. And to speak with Mary Burton. But he was afraid that if he spoke too strongly they would turn on him, accuse him of weakness, leave him out of the struggle that he wanted now to join. Mary Burton might hear his words the wrong way and turn on all of them in her bitter anger. And another form of strangeness gripped him. There were no alarms over the death of the earl, no posters, nothing in the day’s edition of Peter Zenger’s newspaper. It was as if nothing at all had happened. He thought about writing a crude letter to Bridget Riley, addressed to Lady Warren, demanding a cash payment for delivery of her late husband’s body. Write it with his left hand. To explain somehow to the constables the mystery of the vanished body. But that might only lead to a harder hunt, with rewards and informers….
And besides, the tension in the streets told Cormac another story. Something was coming that was much larger than the Earl of Warren.
Around three o’clock he hurried down to the waterfront to look for Kongo. He lolled behind the empty Slave Market, trying to look casual, and watched the two ships that would depart at four. The Carolina and the Arcadia. All cargo had been loaded, and the stevedores on the piers were smoking and laughing, waiting for the ships to sail. A few passengers appeared on the deck of each ship, but the flags showed the stiffening of the wind, blowing north from the harbor. Most passengers were in cabins or the cheap bunks belowdecks. Captains and company men chatted, examined documents, smoked seegars. Cormac stretched, as if tired after a hard day of work, gazed into the windows of a ship chandler, hoping for the sight of Kongo. One lonely redcoat leaned against the side of the deserted Slave Market, huddling out of the wind.
Then a black unmarked coach, with trunks lashed to its roof, galloped up in front of the Carolina. An African in livery, his face familiar from the earl’s stable, leaped down, called to some stevedores for help in unloading the trunks. He opened the door and offered a hand to Bridget Riley.
She gazed around, near and far, her face still marked by fear, and then saw Cormac.
She stopped. The African followed her gaze. It was too late for Cormac to back away. Bridget’s head turned toward the lone redcoat. Cormac thought: I must want to be caught, to be hanged for the death of the earl. Then the African whispered to Bridget Riley, and she threw Cormac a chilling glance and turned to board the ship.
The gangplank was raised an instant after she stepped on deck. She turned one final time, looking directly at Cormac, and then vanished into a cabin on the poop. The Carolina eased into the river, bound for Charleston. Officers barked orders. Seamen scrambled in rigging. The African watched for a while, then turned and walked toward Cormac, taking his hat from his graying head. Cormac glanced at the redcoat, saw him stretching his arms over his bored head, and moved to meet the African.
“She ask me to tell you some words,” the man said.
“Yes?”
“She ask me to tell you: Thank you very much.”
He glanced out at the departing ship, and then at some flags on the rooftops of warehouses. “She tell the constables someone hit her,” he said, “and she saw nothing that happen to her husband.”
“Much obliged,” Cormac said.
The African looked at Cormac now. “Tell Kongo,” he said. “We are with him.”
He moved to the carriage, climbed to his seat, and flicked his whip as if punctuating his brief conversation, and the horses started off, heading north.
61.
They worked across the day into the night. Around seven, Mr. Partridge was joking about the contents of a marital document asking for a legal separation, and musing on the folly of man. Then from the street they heard a shout followed by an excited response. Someone ran past the front of the shop. They went out together, locking the shop door behind them, and turned the corner. There was a red glow in the sky above Fort George. The wind was now blowing hard off the harbor. The rising had begun.
They were hurrying now, Mr. Partridge huffing with his exertions but alert to his surroundings. Citizens were running toward the fort, and they heard the word “fire” over and over again: shouted, called, bellowed. They neared the fort and then there was a surge of people, and scattered redcoats, and the sound of bells ringing. Mr. Partridge went one way, Cormac another.
Great orange tongues of flame roared and twisted angrily against the inky sky. The air was grainy with the odor of burning wood. Firemen arrived with their two new engines, but the water came in useless dribbles. The fire roared and Cormac could see now that it was also consuming the mansion of the governor, beyond the burning ramparts. Redcoats watched with muskets pointed toward the fort but with nobody to shoot. Tongues of fire were aimed at the houses on lower Broadway, and the crowd backed away. Sparks scattered into the sky, and Cormac’s mind flashed on sparks from a lost forge scattering across the Irish sky, aspiring to be stars.
He cut into an alley behind the Lutheran church, trying to see the fort from the river side. The alley was piled high with barrels and crates, and reeked of garbage. Then two other people rushed into the alley. Cormac flattened himself against the wall and saw Quaco running, holding the hand of his wife. An African woman, hair piled high, struggling to run in long skirts, panting. Behind them were two redcoats. Quaco’s eyes were alarmed and furious. He saw Cormac. Started to say something. But pulled his wife’s hand and kept running. Cormac saw a redcoat drop to a knee and take aim. And he stepped away from the wall, placing himself between the aimed musket and the fleeing African couple.
An enraged British voice: What are. Who is. Stop now.
Then Cormac jerked at the barrels and they came tumbling down with a great bumping clatter, filling the width of the alley, and Cormac ran too.
He made a wide circle to the north, crossing Broadway, and found Mr. Partridge in the crowd.
“Where did you go?” he said. “I’ve been worried sick.”
“First I was looking for you. Then I wanted a better view.”
Mr. Partridge gestured toward the burning fort.
“This could be a right disaster.”
Buckets were being passed from man to man. A portly constable named Michaels burst into the crowd, announcing another fire to the east, on the near end of Pearl Street. He asked for help and men followed him away from the glow of the burning fort. Suddenly four ferocious detonations split the air and rocked the ground, one immediately followed by the next, as the ammunition in the fort exploded. Cormac was knocked to his back. Mr. Partridge hit the wall of a house and slid down to a sitting position. Behind them, splintered windowpanes fell upon the streets. Missiles of stone and broken timber hurtled through the air. Cormac got up and hauled Mr. Partridge to his feet. Women were screaming and men shouting, and everybody was running, including Cormac and Mr. Partridge. They ran directly into Peter Zenger. He was thin, harried, trembling with excitement.
“Is zis your boy, Partridge?” Zenger said, his reedy voice thick with a German accent.
“My man, sir.”
“Can he zet type?”
“Yes.”
“Can I borrow him tonight? I have a man out zick und—”
“It’s up to him.”
“I’d be glad to help, Mister Zenger.”
“Gut. Go to my zhop now. I’ll be along in a vile.”
All night, Cormac worked for Peter Zenger. His first newspaper job. Setting type for the Weekly Journal. Correcting Zenger’s mangled English copy. Writing two brief stories himself. The reports kept coming in, gathered by Zenger himself or delive
red by citizens exploding with gossip and outrage. Reports of Irishmen laughing, Africans running away from the fires (for there were four fires now, including the fort and the mansion). Quaco and his wife were among those who ran, but Cormac wrote nothing about them. As the night went on and on, there were scarier reports: Some of the Irish and the Africans were seen with guns. Did you see zem mit guns? No, but I heard—Zank you very much. Cormac knew it was a rising, and he wanted to be part of it. But they had not asked him to join, had not assigned him a part to play. He set type. He absorbed information.
Around five in the morning, there was good news for the English, if bad for the rebels. The wind had shifted. It began blowing out toward the harbor, away from the houses of Broadway and the larger town. The third fire, nine blocks away from the fort, had destroyed a warehouse. The owner was dead. Rumor said that an African had caved in his head with a frying pan. Through the night, Zenger understood what was happening.
“Zey vant to burn New York to the ground!” he said. “It’s der Irishers und der blacks against der vites!”
Cormac forced himself not to laugh, and kept working without comment until all the forms were locked up. Zenger thanked him and paid him two shillings. His eyes were sore and bleary, but he did not go home. He walked through the ash-gritty air to Hughson’s. No lights were burning. He knocked at the back door. Nobody came to open it. He knocked again. An upstairs window opened a few inches.
“Yes, what is it?”
“I need to talk to Mary.”
“Good luck.”
“Is she asleep?”
“No,” Sarah Hughson said. “She’s flown.”
And closed the window hard.
He stood there for a long moment, then moved toward the waterfront, hoping to come around far from the fire and make his way down Broadway to Cortlandt Street. He could see a boat moving north on the river, with masked men lying low on the deck, but there were no ships of the Spanish fleet. His mind filled with dark possibilities.
She’s flown.
She’s flown.
62.
When he woke up, the city had changed forever. Until that night, the well-fed, respectable whites had convinced themselves that slaves loved being slaves. That they were happy and secure and accepted their inferiority. The Africans and the Irish both knew they were nothing (or so the theory went) and therefore were happy to have food to eat and a roof above their humble, worthless heads. Now, on the morning after, the English knew better.
The fire was out at last, the king’s fort a settling, smoking pile of glistening charcoal. Only one wall of the governor’s mansion remained standing. Cormac moved through the crowd gazing at the ruins, hoping to see Mary Burton staring in satisfaction or anger. She wasn’t among the gathering audience. But as he moved, he heard the same words dripping from angry tongues: Africans, Irish, Catholics, traitors. There were more questions than answers. Is the Spanish fleet coming? Will New York be taken and the papists installed in Trinity? Will all the whites be murdered? Someone suggested in a reasonable way that an African laborer using solder on a pipe might have accidentally set off the blaze in Fort George. He was laughed at by some and lacerated with words by others. You bloody fool, can’t you see what this is? Even a few women shook fists at him, calling him a traitor to God, King, Anglicanism, and the white race. The man backed away and then drifted out of the crowd.
In the shop on Cortlandt Street, Mr. Partridge had other news: Two Africans were under arrest for stealing silverware. Caesar and Prince. They’d buried it under floorboards in Hughson’s Tavern on Stone Street. “A true pair of master criminals!” Mr. Partridge exclaimed. “And Hughson no better! Idiots! Fools!” And that discovery of the stolen goods led to a fresh theory, one with its own banal logic: The fire at the fort was set to cover the crime. That was all. “Not a revolt, but a burglary!” said Mr. Partridge. And it seemed certain that one of the thieves, Caesar, had fathered a child with a white woman. “It’s a fever out there, lad!” More seriously, he whispered, a much wider conspiracy was being exposed.
“They have an informer,” he said. “Some Irish wench. They’ve promised her money and freedom, and she can’t stop talking.”
Cormac’s stomach flopped.
Mary Burton.
Turned informer.
Talking her way to freedom.
That afternoon the reaction began. A grand jury was convened, complete (Mr. Partridge observed) with a Grand Inquisitor named Daniel Horsmanden. The eminent jurors now had a secret list of names. And the authorities vowed to quash this treasonous revolt as swiftly as possible. Working in the print shop, often alone, Cormac tried to absorb the rush of news. The Hughsons were arrested and swiftly condemned, with Mary Burton the chief witness against them. Hughson blubbered, said a man who’d been inside the jury room, while Sarah shouted her innocence. Three more fires broke out, and the hysteria increased. Within hours, Caesar and Prince were hanged on the ridge overlooking the Collect Pond, their bodies dumped in unmarked graves in the African cemetery on Duane Street. Cormac didn’t see this happen; the event was carried into the shop by Mr. Partridge. “Stay away from these insane crowds,” Mr. Partridge warned Cormac. “They’ll be searching every face for proof of allegiance.”
English flags blossomed on many buildings, some of them sewn together overnight, serving now as declarations of loyalty to the Crown. Another fire broke out. Then Hughson was hanged, sobbing, protesting, claiming his innocence, demanding a fair hearing. As soon as his neck was snapped by the rope, young Sandy was placed above the drop. He showed no emotion. His last word before death was “Freedom!” The authorities left the two corpses dangling for days, as a warning to Africans and Irishmen. Cormac came around two days later. Hughson’s body had turned black, while the African’s body had turned white. Some of the more fanatical citizens saw this as a dark omen.
Mary Burton was hidden away somewhere, protected by agents of the grand jury, but she must not have given them Cormac’s name. His proof of this theory was simple: Nobody came knocking on the print shop door at midnight. Cormac could not find Kongo, but he was sure he was alive because even the reaction didn’t stop the fires. Flames destroyed the sumptuous home of Captain Peter Warren, no relative of the earl but the brother-in-law of James De Lancey, who was the most powerful politician in town and chief justice of the New York colony. De Lancey was enraged and as a member of the grand jury swore brutal reprisals. “He’s making this personal now,” Mr. Partridge said, “and that means more deaths, more hangings.” Then Van Zandt’s warehouse erupted in flame. Cormac sensed Kongo’s plan: to create fear and uncertainty while the rebels waited for the arrival of the Spanish frigates.
From the first day after the fire at the fort, the constables and redcoats started rounding up the Africans and the Irish and packing them into the new Bridewell prison. After three days, it was bursting. An abandoned warehouse on Water Street was seized by the army and used for more prisoners. Then several run-down private houses were filled with Africans. Shopkeepers complained that they could not operate their businesses because so many slaves and Irishmen had been imprisoned. De Lancey snarled, “You’ll have no businesses at all if we don’t smash this rabble now.”
A few men were released because, as Mr. Partridge explained, they were not on Mary’s lists. But many prisoners were threatened and beaten, and dozens were tortured. “If you torture a man badly enough,” Mr. Partridge said, “he’ll say whatever is necessary to stop the torture, even if it means lying.” Mr. Partridge refused to allow Cormac to go out on the streets—“Every young Irishman is a suspect”—and now delivered his work himself, shuffling along, trying to look old. Cormac slept with the sword in his hands.
But they didn’t come for him. Mary Burton, the great accuser, was also his guardian. He tried to imagine her at that moment, and how she felt after giving names, and what she thought about before sleep came. Was she truly carrying a child? Was it his child? Had she arranged with the grand jury
to be allowed to vanish, with a new name and new papers and some money to give her a start? Did she understand that now she would never be free? Dark avengers would track her down. If she had a child, its name would be stained by her betrayal. Perhaps she didn’t care. Perhaps she wanted to die. Perhaps she was not with child at all. Perhaps she simply wanted to erase every humiliation she had ever endured. Perhaps. Mary Burton was a perhaps.
On a Friday in April, Quaco’s friend Diamond was led to a spot of ground on the Common, sentenced to die for starting the fire at the fort. Cormac insisted to Mr. Partridge that he must be there, saying, “I know this man,” and Mr. Partridge argued, cautioned, sighed, and wished him Godspeed. The Grand Inquisitor had made his ruling: Fire must be repaid with fire. Almost every white person in town came to watch this burning at the stake, except the haughty merchants and the grand jurors who had passed the sentence. And in the crowd, Cormac saw a familiar face, now hollow-eyed, grizzled, filthy, his clothes grafted together from various shades and textures of black. The Rev. Clifford.
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away,” he chanted in a singsong voice. “What comes, goes. What goes, comes. All ends in death and fire. All ends in the flames of Hell. All sinners must burn… and we are all sinners.”
Cormac eased away from him, as if he carried some terrible contamination. So did others in the crowd. Cormac stared at the scene, trying to record every detail without being seen to write notes. A rough, freshly skinned post had been driven into the earth, with a pile of dry kindling and split logs at its foot. A man wearing a hood and a black woolen suit watched patiently while a clean-shaven clergyman in black read from a Bible. He was a more grave, more solemn echo of the Rev. Clifford, clean, clear-eyed, well-dressed, but delivering a more hopeful version of the same message. We are all sinners. Repent, all of ye, repent.