City of Glory

by Beverly Swerling

  “He know anything about Jesse?” Will asked. The other boy had not returned from his day’s work in the town, though Devrey’s was long since locked and shuttered.

  “Not likely,” Hannah admitted. “But never you mind, he’s a tough one, our little one-winged pigeon. He’ll be back. You’ll see. Go to sleep, boy. This be Hannah’s business.”

  Cousin Samson was waiting for her by the cistern. She’d known he wouldn’t simply go away. Stubborn as mules, all the Simsons, herself included.

  “Come away from there,” she said. “Mosquitoes will eat you alive.” Hannah had lived with the cistern long enough to know that every few days waves of the tiny insects rose from the standing water and set about feeding on any human they could find. She’d have done away with the thing if it were possible.

  Simson joined her near the chestnut tree, where Hannah had arranged stones and a plank to form a bench. “Good things, chestnut trees,” she said. “Food, shade, shelter. Can’t ask for more.”

  “You could have all that, and in much better form than you have it here, Cousin Hannah. In the Lord’s name, why don’t you come home?”

  “This is my home. Don’t got no other.”

  “You have. You could live with me. I’ve never married, you know, and I could use a housekeeper, and since we’re blood kin—” He broke off, looking at her in the light of a rising moon: the wild hair, the eyes that glittered that strange, piercing blue. Cousins or not, it was an insane idea. They said she was mad. It might well be true.

  “No home,” she repeated. “Never again since they turned me out. You should know.”

  He did. The story still made him shiver. “They’re dead and gone, Hannah. It’s time to forget and forgive. You quote the holy books. ‘Ye are my brethren…Ye are my bone and my flesh.’ You know.”

  “Book o’ Samuel,” she said. “I know. But why didn’t they forgive?” She turned and spat on the ground. “They made shiva for me. They tore their clothes and ate seudat havra’ah—”

  “A meal of consolation,” Simson whispered, “but they could not be consoled.” Lentils and eggs, round things to indicate that life was a circle, that it went on, even after loss. Traditionally prepared by friends for those who mourned their dead; in this case, for a living daughter whom her parents had declared dead to them. No wonder her mother died less than two years later and her father soon after that.

  “For seven days they sat close to the ground.” Hannah spoke the words in a low singsong, a litany of grievance she had nurtured for almost thirty years. “Seven days they did not wash their faces and my mother did not comb her hair, or use her Number Seven Cologne from Devrey’s Pharmacy, and they burned my shiva candle, and—”

  “Your parents were particularly observant, Hannah. Others in the family have married out and still been accepted.”

  “Never got a chance to marry,” she said. “They saw to that.”

  He’d been seven, maybe eight, when the scandal broke. But he remembered all the talk, the conversations that ended when any of the children came into a room. “He was lost at sea, wasn’t he? Your captain.”

  “Harmonious Grant, his name was, and I was s’posed to be with him on that last voyage. We were going to sea together, to faraway lands and places more beautiful than ever I could imagine. That’s what he said. More beautiful than I could dream. Only thing he ever saw as beautiful was me. That’s what he said.” Her voice was pitched so low Simson had to bend close to hear her. “We were going to find someone to marry us.” She turned to him, her tone remorseful rather than bitter. “’Twas my idea Harmonious give the money to Rabbi Seixas. Do a mitzvah, I said, so we will be blessed. He didn’t have the actual money left o’ course. But he could find the same amount. Made him a rich man, the thrice-back treasure did. I told him giving tzedaka, charity, is a mitzvah and it calls down a blessing.”

  Not as it turned out. The elders of the Shearith Israel Synagogue had called her parents to account. “The stewards said it was blood money. That the family must make reparation for causing it to be brought into the synagogue.” That was how Hannah’s parents had discovered their seventeen-year-old daughter planned to elope with a man twenty years her senior, a sea captain, and not a Jew.

  “Papa sent the constables to take me off the boat—the morning just ’fore she sailed, it was. We had one night together. Then Papa claimed me.”

  The story was too powerful a lesson of what happened to disobedient children to be suppressed. Hannah’s parents had taken her as far as their front door, then locked it against her and entered into mourning for a daughter who was dead. A year later they put up a headstone for her in the synagogue’s cemetery in Chatham Square. HANNAH SIMSON, DIED 1791. And all the while she was alive, begging for bread on street corners and doing Lord knew what to survive. But according to family legend, Hannah’s father had given her the money Captain Grant had tried to give Rabbi Seixas. A fortune, even today. “Twenty thousand pounds,” Samson said. “That’s what they said your father gave you. Hannah, was it true?” How could it be true? Would she today be living like this? “Is that what Turner’s talking about? Is that money his?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Folks say all sorts o’ things. Mostly lies. Our blood kin, they’re no different from the rest. As for Joyful Patrick Turner, he’s s’posed to find what’s coming to him over the water. I told him so. The Holy One, blessed be His Name, gave me the message. Find what’s coming over the water.”

  Greenwich Street, 10 P.M.

  Joyful had shadowed Bastard and Peggety Jack from the moment they left Parker’s Yard. At half nine the tar had peeled off and gone into a grog shop, and Bastard returned to his Wall Street house, took a bottle into his study, and looked set to remain there. It was not a particularly enlightening few hours. Joyful never got close enough to actually overhear a conversation, so he could not say for certain what his cousin and the flunky with him were doing as they went from shipyard to shipyard. He had a grim suspicion they were seeking recruits for Gornt Blakeman’s cause, but he couldn’t prove it. However, there was one thing sure: Bastard and Peggety Jack had apparently eaten their dinners before Joyful began following them. There was no pause for a meal while they made their rounds. Now he was bone-tired and hungry to boot.

  He had no hope of getting something to eat at Ma Allard’s. She served dinner at half three to those of her lodgers who were at home, and had the kitchen cleaned up and bolted by half four. Supper, always cold—biscuits and beer most often—was at nine, and no point looking for a crumb after quarter past. But there was usually a pie cart around the corner on Rector Street. The pieman sometimes stayed late, hoping for custom from two nearby taverns that served drink but no food.

  Joyful found the pieman packing up and getting ready to push his cart home. “Am I too late then?”

  “Too late for choice, Dr. Turner, sir. But if beef and turnip suits ye, I can oblige with the two I have left.”

  “I’m the one who’s obliged. Thank you.” He found a couple of coppers and handed them over, then ate the first pie in three quick bites, while he watched the man trundle his cart north, the wooden wheels clattering on the cobbles. Most probably, the fellow lived up in Five Points, but like so many of the laborers the town would be infinitely poorer without, he appeared when it was time to do his job and disappeared thereafter, and no one—including Joyful—worried about where he laid his head in the hours between.

  He was considering stepping into the nearest tavern for a glass of beer to wash down the second pie when he heard his name called.

  “Dr. Turner. It’s me, Jesse Edwards.”

  “Hello. What are you doing out and about at this hour?”

  “Got a message for you. The lady with the yellow hair gave it to me hours ago and said I mustn’t give it to anyone but you yourself. I been everywhere lookin’ for you since. In between doin’ Mr. Jonathan’s work, o’ course.”

  Joyful snatched the note eagerly. “You saw her then? Miss Manon? Was sh
e well?”

  “The pretty one with the yellow hair as sent me the first time. Yes sir. Came to Devrey’s lookin’ for me. Midday it was, and near as I could tell, she was fine.”

  Joyful was nearly giddy with relief. The note seemed warm in his hand, a connection to her. He almost didn’t want to read it. That she’d sent a message was a sweet truth; reading what she wrote might not be. Might be she had agreed to marry the widower from Virginia, and that’s why he hadn’t seen her for four days. “Good lad, Jesse. I’m obliged to you. Miss Manon will be as well.” He tucked the pie under his arm, reached into his pocket, and found an English sixpence and two coppers. “Here you go.”

  Jesse looked down at the coins in his palm, grinned widely, then thought of the Bible stories Hannah told him and shook his head. “The lady said she’d no money with her, and I was to ask you for three coppers and you’d give them to me. I’d have come anyways, Dr. Turner. Be dead, I would, if it weren’t for you. Here, have the sixpence back.”

  “Not a chance, Jesse. You’ve earned it.” He retrieved the pie. It was squashed, and bits of turnip and beef and coagulated gravy squeezed out the edge. No matter, Jesse was eyeing the thing as if it were manna in the desert. “Have a bite of this as well.” Joyful extended the pie in the boy’s direction. “We can split it down the middle since we’ve two good hands between us. A bit of cooperation’s all that’s required.”

  Joyful was careful to see the boy got the bigger portion, and they ate in companionable silence until Jesse said, “Better’n ship’s grub, ain’t it, Dr. Turner?”

  “Better than most ships’ grub.” The sort served to the crew as didn’t eat in the officers’ mess, certainly. “How are things at Hannah’s? You folks getting enough to eat?”

  “We manage right well. There’s my wages and Will’s, o’ course. And sometimes I find somethin’ and bring it home, and sometimes Will does. And Hannah forages in the town most days. That’s what she calls it. Foragin’. Does it powerful fine.”

  “Not likely to bring back any rice, I suspect.” He had intended to return with some before this, but trying to find out about Manon had delayed him. “How’s Thumbless Wu faring?”

  “Well enough, seems like. And he’s been coming to talk to Mr. Jonathan every day since he left Hannah’s.”

  “Whoa, Jesse. Are you saying Wu’s not staying with you at Hannah’s? Is he staying at Devrey’s then?”

  “No sir. Leastwise, I don’t think so. Wu comes to the pharmacy every day, and he and Mr. Jonathan go upstairs and talk.”

  “But Jonathan doesn’t speak Chinese.”

  “I know. I wondered ’bout that as well. The first day the other China man as came with Wu did most o’ the talking. But since then Wu’s come by himself.”

  “I see.” Ah Wong. It could be no one else. “An interesting development, Jesse. I’m obliged to you for the information.” How had Thumbless found Ah Wong?

  Jesse hesitated, then spoke. “I know I wasn’t much o’ a powder monkey, Dr. Turner. Back on the Lawrence, I mean. But I don’t think I’m as much a scaredy-cat these days.”

  “It’s not cowardice to be afraid in wartime,” Joyful put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s natural.”

  “Maybe. But I’m not afraid now. Next time Thumbless comes, I’ll go upstairs after ’em, and listen to—”

  “Absolutely not!” He thought of what Hannah had told him about Wu’s knife. “I’d have thought Jonathan harmless enough, but Thumbless Wu…You’re to do no such thing, Jesse. I forbid it.”

  Come after eleven. Safe then. Look for a basket beneath the window on the horse passage side. The note was scrawled in pencil in a shaky hand and signed only with her initials. Terse enough so if by chance it had gone astray it might intrigue, but not give them away.

  Maiden Lane was dark except for two public lamps at opposite ends of the road. A third, meant to light the middle section, had gone out. The oil lamps were unreliable, as well as smoky. There had been talk a couple of years back of opening a gasworks and brightening the city streets with gas lamps, but war had set the project aside. Tonight Joyful was grateful for the delay.

  The horse passage, a common amenity beside many of the city’s closely built houses, was a narrow walkway leading to a small stable in the rear. Well beyond any light from the street, the alley was black as pitch. He’d have to run his good hand along the wall if he was to find the basket she’d mentioned.

  The bricks were still warm from the day’s heat and were covered in the moss that thrived here where so little sun shone. Joyful began slowly, afraid he might miss whatever it was she meant him to find, moving his good hand up and down as well as forward, taking small steps lest he stumble over some obstruction he could not see. Once a scuffling sound by his feet told him he’d disturbed some creatures who thought they owned the night. Rats probably. Eight years aboard ships, where they grew to the size of cats, had not made Joyful indifferent to rats. He shuddered. If all his plans succeeded, he would build Manon a house with enough room either side to discourage rats’ nests. His fingers grazed something that could have been a rope. He pulled back, then told himself he was being a fool as well as a coward and grasped whatever it was.

  Manon felt the tug, pushed aside the curtain, and jumped up, raising the lantern she’d lit earlier. She had spent the past hour sitting on the floor beneath her bedroom window, after she’d cracked it just enough to allow the cord attached to the small basket to hang free.

  Joyful saw her framed in the window, illuminated by the lantern’s flickering light. She shook her head to signal silence, but he knew better than to call her name. Manon jerked the cord up and down to direct his attention. He looked into the basket. There was enough light from the window to see a folded note. He took it and she hauled up the basket at once, then set down the lantern, and the alley was again dark. Moments later the glow of the lantern was restored, and Manon was leaning out above him. Tall as he was, their faces were only a few feet apart.

  “Careful,” Joyful whispered. “You’ll fall.”

  “I won’t. Besides, if I did, you would catch me.”

  “Without doubt,” he said. “I will always catch you.”

  “I know.”

  “Manon, I’ve been so worried. Why didn’t you come to—”

  “It’s all in my letter. Papa has confined me to the house because I wouldn’t tell him where I was on Sunday. And he and Mr. Frank—”

  “That’s one of the things I wanted to tell you. They’ve no plans to cut the stone.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Entirely. Listen,” he pressed himself to the brick wall, taking off his hat and tipping his head back so he could see her better. “I’ve aligned myself with Jacob Astor. It’s for the sake of the country, but it also means he won’t oppose me as a trader, and the other morning, at the Tontine—”

  His words were interrupted by the sound of a watchman’s shrill whistle. Seventy-two men under the orders of a high constable named Jacob Hays silently prowled the town at night from 9 P.M. until sunrise. They traveled in pairs, and the whistle was sounded only if they caught a criminal in the act and required help from other watchmen nearby.

  There was another blast of the whistle, followed by the sound of running feet. “They’re close,” Joyful said. “Quick, put out the lantern.”

  She did and they were plunged into darkness. They heard shouts, the sound of a scuffle, and soon silence. Whatever miscreant the watch had surprised had been taken into custody and would be marched off to the New Gaol to face justice in the morning. The incident would have the watchmen who remained in the area particularly alert. “You must go,” Manon whispered.

  “Yes, I know. When—”

  “In my letter,” she whispered. “Everything. Please, Joyful, go.”

  “You are always my love,” he said, feeling her presence just above him in the black dark. “Always.”

  “And you are mine. Always mine.”

  Nonethel
ess, he called next at the Knave.

  Thursday, August 25, 1814

  Chapter Twenty-one

  New York City,

  the Dancing Knave, 1 A.M.

  FROM THE FIRST it had been their custom to settle their accounts midweek. Delight had everything ready for him. “Mostly coin,” she said as she handed over the moneybag with Joyful’s four percent share of the Knave’s earnings. “But I had to take some paper this past week. It was that or nothing at all.”

  “Paper’s definitely better than nothing at all,” Joyful said. He’d not asked for a formal accounting since the first few months of their arrangement, and he was convinced she had never cheated him. He didn’t expect she ever would, despite how much else might change. “Listen,” he said, “I might not be able to come myself for the next few weeks. I’ll send someone to collect for me.”

  They were in the little ground-floor office. Delight was seated behind the small writing table; he stood in front of it. She’d turned up the oil lamp and looked especially lovely in the glow. Diamonds sparkled in her ears tonight, and she wore a blue gown the color of the sea. “Delight…”

  “Yes?” She would not let him see her longing.

  “I…” There was no way he could find the words to say it was over between them, not without wounding her. Best just let it lie, and die a natural death. “Nothing,” he said. “I was thinking I’d send a lad next week. Has only one arm, so you’ll have no difficulty knowing he’s the one.”

  “None at all.” She stood up. “Might I ask what’s to keep you so engaged?”

  “Business. The things I’ve been sorting these past few months are coming to a head.”

  Delight leaned over to shorten the lamp’s wick and dim the light. The exquisite curve of her breasts was accented by the movement. She remained one of the most beautiful women Joyful had ever seen, and with him, one of the most giving. But he didn’t love her, at least not the way he loved Manon. If he knew why, he’d go down in history as one of the great sages. I am confined to my room, dearest, presumably until I am given to Gornt Blakeman or Monsieur DeFane’s nephew. He’d read the letter before he came. Now it was lodged next to his heart, in the same pocket with the papers giving him forty-nine percent ownership of Devrey Shipping.