City of Glory

by Beverly Swerling

  Bastard’s glass was empty. He waved it in Joyful’s direction. “Get me another. You’re daft, but I’ll listen as long as it takes me to drink it. Then you leave or be horsewhipped.”

  Joyful poured them both generous refills of the Madeira. “The plan is simple, and that’s its greatest virtue. You make over forty-nine percent of Devrey Shipping to me, and keep eleven percent for yourself. That way there’s only a small portion of the company can be taken to repay your debts. Whatever happens, the business is safe.”

  “Jesus God Almighty. You’ve balls of brass, I’ll say that for you, Joyful Patrick Turner. Do you think I care more for the company than my own skin? You’ve old DaSilva’s canniness, all right, and none of his brains. Worse, you’ve caused me to come sober.” Bastard tossed back the drink Joyful had brought him, then lumbered out of the chair and headed for the decanter.

  Joyful watched his cousin stagger back to his place beside the empty fireplace, clutching the supply of Madeira to his heart. “It’s your skin I’m talking about,” he said when Bastard was again settled. “Your life. Good Portuguese wine, not Spanish piss. A home up on Broadway, and—”

  “Already have that. Started building it three years past. Before Madison’s damned war.”

  “Yes, but you can’t afford to finish it. I’m offering you the chance to change that and take back your rightful place in society.”

  “On eleven percent of a company whose ships are putrefying in harbor, and will remain so as long as the blockade’s in place?”

  “On eleven percent, plus a silent partner’s interest in my forty-nine percent share. Together we can outvote Gornt Blakeman, but he won’t know that until it’s too late. It will be a private arrangement and remain so until we decide otherwise.”

  “You’re a madman. What in all Hades do you know about the shipping business? Gornt Blakeman will chew you up and spit you out.”

  “No,” Joyful said quietly, “he won’t. You seem to forget, Cousin, that I was raised in Canton. Blakeman’s made his fortune in coaching here. He knows nothing of the China trade.”

  “That’s what I thought. As of today I know better. All New York knows better.”

  “Blakeman was fortunate in his choice of ship’s captain who was contracted through a comprador. Gornt Blakeman gambled and won one toss. That doesn’t make him a trader of Astor’s skill. Or mine.”

  “You and John Jacob Astor in the same breath. Sweet Christ but you fancy yourself, Joyful Turner.”

  Joyful stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles, a man prepared to sit awhile. “Allow me to tell you a story. Our cousin Andrew Turner taught me everything I know about surgery. He’s a genius with a knife, as I’m sure you know, and when I had two hands, so was I. Not as good as Andrew, but definitely the next-best thing. The cutting trade’s about making connections—knowing what will happen when your knife goes in, how to accomplish the task you’ve set yourself, and get out clean, without severing arteries you can’t tie off, or cutting ligaments you never intended to touch. Trade’s about connections as well. I speak Mandarin and Cantonese. Time was, I knew every hong merchant by name. These days their sons will have taken over, and I played with most of them when we were boys together. Gornt Blakeman is an outsider who had to hire an independent comprador to find a cargo and a captain for his ship. I will choose a comprador tied so tight to me he’ll see my interests as his own. Canton works on loyalty and family ties. I can claim both. What can Gornt Blakeman match against that?”

  Bastard took a swig of Madeira directly from the decanter and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Money,” he said, swallowing a soft belch. “And after tomorrow’s sale he’ll have considerably more. I warrant, Joyful Patrick Turner, that you don’t have two coppers to rub together. Otherwise you’d have found other allies to help you come after me.”

  It was a belief that played into Joyful’s plan. “Give me the sloop Lisbetta and I’ll have a healthy stake. You and I, cousin, together we’ll make a run on Blakeman’s scrip, just as he did on yours.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “I’m not. Besides, what other choice do you have?” Joyful reached into his pocket and withdrew a sheaf of papers. “I have the agreements right here. All you have to do is sign them.”

  Bastard said nothing. Joyful stood up and went to the writing table, where a quill and an inkpot waited. After a few moments Bastard joined him. There was one moment, holding the pen, when he thought of his son in Canton waiting for the war to end so he could come home, thought of the lad’s expectations. Then he signed with a flourish. Expectations be damned. His as well as young Samuel’s. The bird in the hand was the only possibility since, as far as he could see, there were none in the bush.

  Maiden Lane, 9 P.M.

  “Marry me.”

  “I cannot. Not yet.”

  “You love me. I know you do.” Manon reached up and clasped her hands behind Joyful’s head. “I can feel the love you have for me. Take me away now, this very night, and marry me.” “You have no shame,” Joyful said. They were both whispering because they were standing in the shadows at the rear of the Vionne shop, not far from the door that led to the private part of the house, and Maurice Vionne and his special visitor were in a room above their heads. “I am in love with the most shameless female in New York.”

  “In all of these United States, more likely,” Manon agreed happily. “Now kiss me.” He did. “You burn with love for me,” she said when the kiss ended. “And I for you. So why—”

  “I have every intention of marrying you, Manon Vionne, and teaching you that you do not know everything you think you do. But not yet.” Joyful used his one good hand to disengage her arms from round his neck and stepped away.

  “My father intends to fob me off on a nephew of Pierre DeFane. He’s a widower from Virginia, and he’s looking for a wife. Papa will insist I marry him if you don’t speak first.”

  “Manon, I—” He broke off.

  “What? You’ve a secret, Joyful. I can see it in your eyes. Tell me.”

  “I can’t, not yet.” The agreements Bastard had signed were in the inside pocket of his cutaway, next to his heart; they felt like fire next to his skin, but they represented a paper claim on a nearly bankrupt company. From being ostensibly without resources he’d become a man with a mountain of debt. He might be the only man who could oppose Gornt Blakeman—for sheer volume of tonnage Devrey’s had no rival—but there was yet nothing to brag about to Manon. “Later,” he promised. “When I’ve sorted a few more things.”

  “But if—”

  “Hush.” Joyful put a finger over her lips. The sound of a scraping chair and footsteps could be heard in the room above their heads. “I must go. And as for this Virginian widower, I will take a scalpel to the most precious part of his anatomy if he so much as looks at you.” He loved seeing her blush. It was one of the many things he loved about her, the pairing of boldness and innocence.

  Manon went with him to the door. “I will see you tomorrow,” she whispered. “In the usual place. And I’ll tell you everything I’ve been able to find out.”

  She watched at the door while Joyful slipped into the street, then hurried back to the stool behind the counter. Moments later her father’s visitor appeared. He wore a cloak over a ruffled shirt, satin breeches, and a broad-brimmed hat that shadowed his face, despite the fact that it was summer and such clothes were impractical, as well as long out of style.

  He swept through the small shop, past the wooden counter and the glass cases displaying Papa’s exquisite work. The pierced silver baskets, the intricate rococo cruet stands worked in gold, the candlesticks and coffee jugs in both precious metals—none of them appeared to catch his eye. Papa hurried behind him, then dashed ahead to open the door, bowing the man out. The visitor started to leave, then swiftly turned, his cloak flaring out around his knees, and stared straight at Manon.

  She could not keep herself from staring back,
at least for a moment. Papa’s visitor was Gornt Blakeman, the man the whole town had been buzzing about since morning. Joyful told her he’d followed Blakeman to Maiden Lane and almost danced a jig with pleasure when, of all the shops he might have visited, he had entered the Vionne premises. “I thought he would, I told you so earlier today, but I couldn’t be sure he’d choose your father.”

  “I was sure,” she’d said. “If this Mr. Blakeman is as clever as you say, where else would he go but to the finest jewel merchant in the city?”

  “Still, it was wonderful joss.”

  “Our joss,” she said. “It’s our fate to be together. How did you know he was coming to Maiden Lane?”

  “I didn’t. The captain of Blakeman’s Canton Star is an old friend; he served with my father in the War for Independency. He told me he thought he’d carried a fortune in jewels to New York.”

  “If it’s a fortune, Papa will not be able to buy them all. We are not rich, Joyful Turner. And you are entirely mistaken if you believe I cannot be a happy wife unless my husband has chests of gold.”

  “Nonetheless, chests of gold you shall have. But first you must help me discover exactly what Gornt Blakeman is discussing with your father.”

  That’s when she had changed the subject by proposing to him. As she had done at least a dozen times in the last month.

  Manon had not always been so forward. They had been meeting two or three times a week for half a year. The first encounter was in March, a chance meeting at an ironmonger’s shop on Front Street. Then there was a second, also unplanned, in the Fly Market. And a few more after that. At first they kept up the pretense that they saw each other accidentally, but by the time Joyful stood beside her on the Battery on the Fourth of July holiday, listening to the reading of the Declaration of Independence that always marked the day, both knew they had contrived their coming together. The crush of the crowd allowed him to take her hand in the one of his that remained, and he’d held it for nearly five minutes. Soon after, he explained that he could not ask for her hand officially, much as he wanted to, because although he had prospects, he no longer had a secure way to earn a living. That was when Manon became the aggressor. She knew Joyful loved her the more for her eagerness, and she took it as a sign of that strength she had always looked for in a man and not found until now.

  Papa’s visitor was still staring at her. She scared back. Dear God, she would move heaven and earth to discover what Gornt Blakeman wanted with Papa if it would further Joyful’s business interests and thus her chance to be his wife.

  Blakeman broke the locked glance first. “Your daughter, goldsmith?”

  “Indeed. A great comfort to me since her mother died.”

  Blakeman leaned over and whispered something Manon could not hear. Then the visitor left and Papa closed and locked the door behind him. “What a strange man,” she said. “Whatever did he want with you?”

  “Business. Nothing to concern you. I thought I heard someone else leave the shop. Had you a customer?”

  He must be worried. Papa was always short with her when he was worried. “A gentleman, Papa. He saw the light on despite the lateness of the hour and came to ask about sapphires. I had to tell him we had none, though you were hoping for a shipment of jewels from Paris and Antwerp as soon as the blockade is lifted. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

  “You know it’s correct. Who was the gentleman? Perhaps I can interest him in pearls. I’ve two fine strands left.”

  “He did not give his name. But I don’t think a pearl necklace would interest him. Definitely sapphires, or perhaps emeralds. Did your visitor have something like that to sell, Papa? I’m sure the gentleman will return sooner or later.”

  “And the blockade will lift sooner or later. And it will snow sooner or later. And it may rain diamonds sooner or later, but I don’t think so. You should have made him consider pearls, Manon. Pearls are what we have.”

  Ann Street, 11 P.M.

  Bridey had long since gone to bed, so Andrew Turner answered the bell himself. His heart sank when he saw the black man standing on his doorstep. He was tired, and getting too old for these midnight adventures. “Mother Zion needs me, I take it, Absalom.”

  “Yes, Dr. Turner, sir. Twice over. One be a man, the other a boy. His grandson.”

  “Have you stopped the bleeding?” Andrew pulled on his cutaway and reached for his hat as he spoke. His black leather satchel was always packed and ready and waiting by the door.

  “Best I could with that turn-and-kit thing like you showed me.”

  “Tourniquet, Absalom. One word. Good for you. Let’s go then. Mother Zion calls and we can but answer.”

  In most New York churches black worshipers had to sit in the Negro pews, the back row of the gallery. The Methodists, however, had condemned slavery and integrated their services in 1787, but that didn’t mean that every member of their various congregations made nigras welcome. By 1801, with the blessing of the appropriate bishop, a number of New York’s blacks formed themselves into the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The congregation was called Mother Zion, and the members built their church where they lived, at the junction of Cross and Mott streets, in the section of the city known as Five Points.

  The neighborhood got its name from the convergence of Orange, Cross, and Anthony streets, an intersection located over what had been the remains of the old Collect Pond. Time was when the Collect was the only source of sweet water on the island—nearly every well dug on Manhattan yielded a brackish, murky flow—but people said it gave off malevolent vapors that caused yellowing fever. Andrew argued against the theory, but his was a single voice. In 1802 the city fathers filled in the last of the Collect Pond with what they called “good wholesome earth.” That left the town at the mercy of a privately owned waterworks, the Manhattan Company, a nest of profiteering vipers who brought shiploads of water from other parts of the state, but laid hollow logs rather than proper pipes and refused to supply water to flush the gutters or clean the markets. Meanwhile epidemics of yellowing fever continued with terrifying regularity, and nothing was done with the broad gutter that had been dug to allow the Collect’s overflow access to Hudson’s River.

  Officially known as Walker Street, the path the gutter traveled became the northern edge of Five Points and was called Canal Street by most New Yorkers. It was a cobbled road running either side of a grass-banked ditch, and for most of the year a small stream of water still trickled through on its way west. People living nearby tossed their garbage into the Canal Street gutter, or dug cesspools that seeped effluent into it. As a result, on a hot night like this one, the ditch sent up a stench that drifted, miasmalike, over all of Five Points.

  The horse pulling Absalom’s wagon knew the way by itself. The young man kept a loose hold on the reins, and the horse trotted through the star-shaped intersection called Paradise Square though it was no vision of paradise to which Andrew subscribed. The clatter of the wagon’s iron wheels on the cobbles cleared a path for them through the crowd of people. Looking for a breath of fresh air, no doubt, and finding instead the stink of Canal Street. Still, it was better than the hovels they called home.

  Speculators had bought the little wooden houses of the tanners and free blacks who once lived in the area and strung them together to form boardinghouses for wage earners who couldn’t afford better. Built on the swampy land around the old pond, most had started to sag and now hung like brooding hags over twisting alleys and lanes partially paved with broken bricks. Blacks—many free, the rest claiming to be so—lived in the basements. Above them lived the Irish immigrants who had been flooding the city since the 1790s. It was a combustible mix but profitable. The landlords included the mayor and most of the city fathers, but no one made any effort to limit the number of tenants who could crowd into a single room. In Five Points the residents made their own law; still, the district wasn’t as dangerous as people said. That was a fiction promulgated by wealthy whites who despised the blacks and th
e Irish equally, even as they lived off their labor.

  Andrew had come for the first time a decade earlier, when these lanes were already crowded but less rowdy. He’d been treating a patient on Chambers Street, and when he left the house, a black man was waiting for him. “Be a blessing o’ God if you be coming with me for just a bit o’ time, Dr. Turner. Cissy Fish, she be needing you real bad.”

  Andrew was accustomed to being recognized, and to the fact that the city’s poorest knew he never turned them away. He followed the man and was led to the basement of a church he later learned was Mother Zion.

  The woman called Cissy Fish had fallen into a cesspool and been attacked by rats. Her face was pretty much eaten away, along with both her hands and one foot. Andrew knew at once that she was so thoroughly poisoned that no matter how carefully he cleaned up the wounds they would turn black and fester. She’d die in agony within a few days and there was nothing he could do to stop it, but she was pregnant, close to term, judging from the size of her, and when he put his ear to her stomach, he heard the child’s heart, strong and steady. He didn’t waste time talking about the options, simply grabbed a scalpel and cut the child out of her, allowing the shock and the rapid blood loss to make a quick and merciful end to the mother’s life. The baby was a little girl; she lived, and her father, Zachary Fish, Zion’s minister, named the child Andrewena for the man who had saved her life. Since then, whenever his scalpel might be useful to a member of the black community in Five Points, someone would appear on Ann Street and bring Dr. Turner to the cellar of Mother Zion. Never the sanctuary.