City of Glory

by Beverly Swerling

  Joyful cringed, but the man’s voice was swallowed up in the noise of the tramping feet and the cacophony of competing claims and rumors.

  “Two British men-o’-war there be in the harbor. Shelling the city.”

  “Open your ears, man! Ain’t no sound o’ shells. It’s the poxed redcoats. Burned the Federal District and think to burn us down next.”

  “It’s the redcoats and the navy,” a third voice added. “The fleet’s put in up at Kips Bay, same as at the start o’ the Revolution. Got another think comin’ if they’re planning to occupy New York a second time.”

  “There are no British troops in the city!” Joyful shouted. Stupid to think you could talk sense to this throng, but he had to try. “There are no redcoats in New York. You’re all—”

  “Got us a hero here!” The man who had tried previously to identify him made a second attempt. “Fought the British off on Lake Erie and he’ll fight ’em off again. Three cheers for Dr. Turner!” Those near enough to hear cheered, with no real idea what they were cheering for or about.

  Jesus God Almighty. Reason had nothing to do with it. The crowd was a beast constructed of hundreds of otherwise ordinary people, moving to the beat of its own heart, and unstoppable unless and until it met an opposing force.

  In Paradise Square the beast had grown a second head. The butchers and cattlemen had marched south from the Bowery, through Chatham Square, and eventually to Orange Street, a narrow road that funneled them into the heart of Five Points. F. X. Gallagher had thought himself at the head of the column, but somewhere between the open area around the stockyards and abattoirs and the star-shaped intersection at the center of this urban maze, his place had been taken by Gornt Blakeman.

  Joyful spotted Blakeman and tried to shove toward him, knowing that at any moment Gornt would take the opportunity to turn the city’s fear and fury to his advantage. The crowd seethed with its pent-up need to make something happen.

  It took a few seconds for him to realize that the hand pulling at his elbow was purposeful, not simply the crush of the bodies jammed up against his. “Dr. Turner, Reverend Fish sent me. We need you!”

  Joyful managed to twist just enough to see who it was shouting in his ear. “Burney…What are you—”

  “Reverend Fish,” Patrick Burney repeated, grabbing hold of Joyful’s arm. “He says—” The throng behind them surged and Burney’s grip was broken. For a few seconds Joyful lost sight of him, then Burney was back, tugging on Joyful’s left arm this time, nearly detaching the harness and the glove. “C’mon, sir! Come with me.”

  “I can’t! I’ve got to get up there. That’s Gornt Blakeman. I’ve got to—”

  “Holy Mother of God, aren’t I after knowing who Blakeman is? C’mon, I tell you. I know what I’m about!”

  “Look, surgery can’t be the priority just now. I can’t—”

  “It’s not cutting we want. Fish says you may be the only—Ach, just come, will you!” With a mighty heave he pulled Joyful in the direction he meant him to go, away from Blakeman and Gallagher and toward the nearest alley.

  Nothing for it. Burney was determined, and Fish knew more than most about everything happening in these parts. Burney meanwhile had dragged him into the mouth of the side passage he’d been aiming for, but they were stuck there, the bodies squeezed into the narrow opening all straining in the opposite direction to the one they wanted, and creating an almost impenetrable mass. He got a look at the bloody bandage on Burney’s left hand. “What happened?” The noise in the alley was worse than in the square. He had to shout to be heard.

  “F.X. and his poxed cleaver,” Burney shouted back.

  “Soon as we get out of here I’ll—” He broke off. There was no point in any kind of normal interchange. They were in hell. Joyful fought his way into a better position, one that put Burney on his right, so he could hang on to Joyful’s good arm. “Here, take hold and we’ll bull our way forward.” They linked arms, and angled their bodies to form a wedge. “Count of three,” Joyful shouted. “One, two—three!” They lunged ahead, cutting their way through the mass. “Almost there,” Joyful heard Burney say, “get ready.”

  Before Joyful could ask what he was to prepare for, Burney had launched the pair of them against one of the alley doors. It gave at the first impact, and they half tumbled into the opening. The door slammed shut behind then and a bar slid into place. “This way,” someone whispered.

  “Where are we?”

  “Quiet,” Burney leaned in close and whispered into his ear. “That crowd out there could have the door down in a minute if it took a mind to.”

  Joyful was conscious of the blackness, the steamy heat, and something else, the sound of breathing. Jesus God Almighty, please don’t let it be rats.

  “This way. Mind how you go.”

  Burney was leading him forward as if he were a blind man. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Reverend Fish.”

  The feeling of being in a closed space gave way to the sensation of crossing an open area. There was a distinctive smell as well. It took him a few seconds to put a name to it, then he knew. Rum. The nose-prickling, alcoholic bite of the product in the making. They were in the vast expanse of a sugar house, a factory where tons of Caribbean sugar were hauled up from the docks and poured loose onto the distillery floor. A feeding ground for veritable armies of rats.

  Joyful couldn’t help himself, he stopped moving.

  “Reverend Fish is waiting. Just a little further,” Burney said.

  A few more steps, and Joyful saw a narrow shaft of light ahead. Probably coming through a loose roof tile. Or maybe his eyes were adjusting to the gloom. The breathing shadows were not rats but men, Zachary Fish’s congregants. One, near enough so a stretched-out hand would touch him, had a patch over one eye and had armed himself with a vicious-looking stevedore’s metal claw. Holy God Almighty, the sugar house was full of men with more reason than most to want things to change. How would they react to Gornt Blakeman’s promise of better days once they separated from the Union?

  “Over here.” Burney led Joyful to the right. “We have to get to the next building. Means climbing across this narrow bit. Mind the broken glass.”

  Joyful felt many hands behind him, helping hoist him through a shattered window to a makeshift bridge of rope high above the square. He forced himself to look down. Nothing but bodies as far as he could see, with Gornt Blakeman in the middle, haranguing the crowd.

  Going on for half two and the sun a fearsome thing, beating down from a cloudless sky, at its worst in the packed square. Being stifled like this—amid a crowd so huge it seemed each man, woman, and child had to fight for air—was enough to make the sane mad, Finbar O’Toole thought. Bound to be some bad things happen this day. He’d already seen one woman stumble and fall beneath the marchers a ways back on Broadway. The man who reached down to pull her up was beaten down as well. Like as not the pair of ’em were trampled to death, and he’d lay odds they weren’t the only ones. Only one way to stay alive in a crush like this, follow where it led.

  Gornt Blakeman turned his head in every direction, looking for Joyful Turner. He couldn’t spot him, but he’d wager anything he was here. Man like him, he’d not stay out of a set-to like this. Consider it his duty to be present and offer medical help, or talk the benighted masses home to their beds. Christ Almighty, you’d think the red-headed bastard tall enough to be seen despite the mob. Convenient if one of the butchers could plant a well-aimed knife. Never be a better time. Be that as it may, there were other things to be concerned with just now. “Listen to me, all of you! Listen! I’ve something to say as will put food in your bellies and those of your wives and children. Listen!”

  “Up here, Mr. Blakeman!” A few of Gallagher’s trusties had managed to haul some kegs to a place in front of a grocer’s doorway, stacking them so as to make a platform between a pair of signs that on one side touted soft-shell clams and, on the other, good fat hams. “This way, sir. Sure and
sturdy it is.”

  Blakeman accepted the help of Vinegar Clifford and one of the butchers and climbed to the top of the pile. The rest of F.X.’s men formed a semicircle around the structure, so no one could get close enough to topple it.

  “Listen!” Blakeman shouted again. This time his voice floated out over the heads of the crowd. At least those in the front ranks could hear him. “Do you want an end to this poxed blockade and this doubly poxed war? You want your jobs back? Enough food in the shops so these hams and clams and the like don’t sell for ten times what you earn in a month? Do you? I tell you this war has been wished upon us by—”

  “They can’t hear you, Mr. Blakeman! Try this.” Clifford passed up a bellow horn of the type the cattlemen used to imitate the sounds of a bull and bring the cows to the corral.

  Blakeman grabbed it eagerly. “—wished upon us by the War Hawks,” he shouted into the narrow mouth. The sound expanded in the funnel and boomed out across the square. “The men in that meeting of fools they call the Congress of the United States, the ones as voted for Mr. Madison’s war, not one of ’em’s from our New York. Not from the New England states either. Men from the west, from Kentucky and Ohio and Tennessee, they’re the ones as brought this misery on us. What do they know of our lives here on the seaboard where shipping is what puts food in our bellies?”

  A hush began among the people packed into the square itself, then spread up the side streets, silencing the noise of the slobbering beast the crowd had become. “We can’t be expected to see our wives and children starve so Mr. Madison can have his war!” Blakeman shouted into the sudden quiet. “Why should we—”

  “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…”

  It was a second voice, coming from somewhere high above the heads of the crowd. “We the people of the United States,” it called out a second time. “…in order to form a more perfect union…”

  Finbar O’Toole tilted his head back along with many of the others, all trying to see where the voice came from. Sweet Savior Jesus and Holy Mary Mother of God, it was Joyful, high above them in the second-floor window of the grocer’s building. Standing on a narrow ledge, he was. Leaning forward, so’s he could pitch his voice above Blakeman’s, bellow horn or no. “…establish justice”—Joyful’s tone was solemn, as if reciting a prayer—“insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense—”

  Joyful was conscious that most in the crowd were staring at him now, for the moment ignoring bloody Gornt Blakeman. He reminded himself to look across the tops of their heads, not straight down. He’d learned long ago that helped a bit. God help him, he surely hated heights. “Provide for the common defense, and…” What was the rest of it? “…common defense, and promote the general welfare and secure…” There was movement to the side of where Blakeman was standing. Joyful caught it just out of the corner of his eye. “…and secure the blessings of—”

  Vinegar Clifford found an empty space to the side of the protective cordon surrounding Blakeman and moved into it, straining his whole barrel-shaped body toward the upper window.

  Joyful saw him, and knew just how much hatred was concentrated in that stance. Clifford’s disease had passed to the next stage; he could piss without pain, and didn’t need the laudanum any longer. He doubtless believed the wretched tansy powder had cured him, and now he was full of loathing for the man who had seen him in the weakness of his misery.

  The bullwhip cut through the heavy, heated air with a whistling crack of sound. Joyful twisted, bending sideways away from the protection of the window frame, hanging out over nothing. His stomach lurched, but he ignored it. The deadly thong of Clifford’s whip coiled itself around his ankle. The pain was nothing he couldn’t bear. Thank Christ for the sturdy leather of his boot. He pulled back so the ledge gave him better support and dropped into a crouch, using his free hand to grab one of the scalpels he’d pocketed earlier. If he could cut the weighted tip off the thong…The people below were craning their necks to look at him, waiting to hear what he’d say next. “…and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” he yelled while struggling to get into a position that allowed him to cut the leather thong wrapped around his ankle.

  Just then the crowd surged forward, and Clifford was wedged in place by the press of bodies. Not enough room to lean back and yank Joyful from his perch; he flicked his wrist and the tension on the long leather thong relaxed. It fell from Joyful’s ankle before the scalpel could do it work.

  Blakeman had seen enough to know that whatever Clifford had tried to do had failed. And damn it to hell, the crowd was buying what bloody Joyful Turner was selling. He could see it in their faces. Blakeman’s throat already felt as if a carpenter had worked it over with a rasp, but he lifted the bellow horn and summoned every scrap of breath. “Don’t listen to him! That’s the pap they fed you in ’86 in their so-called Constitution. Are you going to be fooled by it a second time? Do you call what we have now domestic tranquillity?”

  “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense”—Joyful’s voice came from somewhere deep inside—“promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” Not his voice alone, also that of his parents Morgan and Roisin, and his cousins, Sam Devrey and Andrew Turner, and all the rest who had given their blood to make a nation: “…do ordain and establish this Constitution—”

  “Listen to me, not him!” Blakeman’s voice, magnified by the bellow horn, cut over Joyful’s. “You’re being asked to sacrifice your livelihoods for James Madison. Nothing else. A few men of the west and a little man as can’t even stop the redcoats from burning down the roof over his wife’s head.”

  Finbar O’Toole had been listening to the battle of words, never taking his eyes from Joyful, who was hanging out so far from that poxed window it must need the Angel Gabriel to keep him from falling. Now O’Toole felt a collective shift of attention, to the windows of the other buildings that ringed Paradise Square.

  Open, every damned one of ’em, and a face in each, some black, some white. There was Danny Parker and Hiram Walton, and at least a dozen more from the same waterfront fraternity of shipwrights. Word was, the town’s mechanics were all with Blakeman. Here was proof that word was wrong. Something—some one more likely—had won the shipwrights over to the side of preserving the Union.

  “…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Joyful summoned every scrap of his energy into projecting the great promise that lay behind those words. The arm he was using to anchor him to the windowsill slipped a bit, and he had to pull back to counterbalance his weight. He thought he heard his name, and looked across the square to see Barnaby Carter in the window of the building across from his.

  “Tell ’em, Joyful,” Barnaby called. Never mind that he and Lucretia would never see a penny of the money Blakeman owed them if the bastard’s scheme didn’t materialize. “You tell ’em how it is!” He aimed his voice at the crowd below. “That’s Joyful Turner up there, folks. A hero and the son of a hero. Listen to him.”

  “We gave our solemn word,” Joyful shouted. “Are we going to withdraw it the moment there’s an obstacle in the path? Are we Americans, or feral cats who can be counted on to claw each other to the death rather than work together for the common good?”

  “Are we slaves to the War Hawks and Madison? Are we…” Blakeman’s voice was the louder yet again. But just when it seemed the bellow horn was master, there was a roar of sound as Jacob Hays and seven constables came thundering up Cross Street on horseback.

  The crowd that had been so powerful in its unity became an aggregation of individuals screaming in terror. Men and women who had thought there was not an inch of room in which to move realized they must find room, or be trampled beneath the pounding horses’ hooves. They clawed their way over and unde
r and around their neighbors, piling body on top of body, anything to clear a path for the horsemen. A woman handed her infant up to the hands of strangers, then was sucked into the heart of the melee and disappeared.

  “Cease and desist!” Hays shouted. “In the name of the law! Go back to your homes, or you’ll all be up the river in Newgate by nightfall.”

  “Mr. Hays,” Blakeman roared into the horn as the mounted officers charged into Paradise Square. “High Constable Jacob Hays, we want you with us! We’re about a new nation’s business. Join us and live free of war and presidential tyranny!”

  “Ain’t no new nation, Mr. Blakeman. Not here in New York.” Hays turned in the saddle and waved the man behind him forward. “Take that man into custody! I’m charging him with the hanging offense of high treason against these lawfully joined United States.”

  The power of the crowd rose in a low roar of rage and defiance that could be felt even from the height of horseback. They might not be decided on Blakeman’s message, but they weren’t prepared to see him handed over to the law. The constable summoned to make the arrest hesitated long enough for F. X. Gallagher to take the cleaver from his belt and brandish it overhead. The other butchers did the same. Gallagher shouted something and strode forward. The butchers followed.

  There was an instant of horrified stillness, the space of a single heartbeat in which every person in Paradise Square recognized that a bloodbath was now truly upon them. Then, into that moment of stunned silence, there came the crack of a gun.

  A red hole appeared in the middle of Gallagher’s forehead. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, then dropped to the ground. The butchers froze, cleavers still raised above their heads. Like every person present, they tilted their heads and looked up to the buildings around the square. The men who filled the windows now had muskets on their shoulders.