Brookland (46 page)

All around, the legislators laughed, and Stryker bestowed on her an indulgent smile. “Very good, Miss Winship. We look forward to receiving
it later. If your father has the good fortune to be watching from Heaven—as I pray he does—I am certain he is most pleased with your work.”

Prue said, “Thank you.” She did not know why anyone had to bring up her poor, cursed father's whereabouts.

“It was with true curiosity Governor Jay and I greeted the proposal Mr. Horsfield has lately submitted; and the governor has charged this body to determine its worthiness. I confess I relish the opportunity to see the plans you have brought today. Do you wish to address the assembly, Mr. Horsfield?”

“Thank you, I do,” Ben said.

“Gentlemen?”

They sat down once more. Before Stryker's table was a half-moon of open space, and handing off the small roll of drawings to another porter, Ben strode forward to stand slightly to Stryker's side and before him. Pearl and Prue remained where they were, in the middle of the aisle; and Prue hoped the nerves that had beset her before her own neighbors would not trouble Ben here.

Ben cleared his throat and began. “Mr. Stryker, Mr. Willemsen, gentlemen of the assembly, I believe you all know the reason for my visit to you today. I have a plan to bridge the East River, which flows between the deepwater ports of Brookland and New York and is one of the busiest waterways in the nation. This bridge will increase commerce to and between the two ports without disrupting traffic upon the water, as it will arch over the straits in a single span. Land values on both sides of the river will rise; shipping in both ports will increase; and the state of New York will gain both in revenue and in prestige. The structure itself will employ the most modern methods of engineering. I humbly believe both bridge architects and sightseers will come from far and wide to study it.

“The bridge I have designed is founded upon the principle of the lever, by which means the very balconies above us are kept from crashing to the floor.” Some turned to glance at them, perhaps never before having considered how balconies were tethered. “This principle states that the end of a beam that appears to hang free—id
est
, the edge of the balcony—is not, in truth, unsupported. It may well hold some good amount of weight, so long as it is sufficiently strong to refer that weight
back along its length to a perpendicular member—in this case, the wall of this building—that may in its turn carry it down into the ground. No structure of appreciable size has ever before been founded upon this principle; yet all natural philosophy shows clearly it can be done. I have experimented extensively on the properties of timber, stone, and iron, and have brought with me today a model of this bridge, one two-hundred-fiftieth the size of the proposed structure. By means of this facsimile, you may both appreciate the appearance of the bridge and begin to understand the magnitude of its eventual strength. I have also brought with me a large and detailed drawing of the bridge's elevation as seen from the south, that even those of you who have never had the pleasure of visiting New York and Brookland may yet have the benefit of imagining the work
in situ
.”

Prue was impressed by Ben's apparent ease in addressing the assembly; yet she disliked listening to him claim credit for a theory she herself had devised. She knew this was the only way to get the bridge built, but it continued to bother her all the same.

“Miss Winship,” Ben said, “might you ask the gentlemen to bring in the view?”

Prue went into the entry hall and summoned the two men who still bore the heavy scroll upon their shoulders. They walked ceremoniously to the front of the room and placed it down upon its two flat ends. Ben said to them, “Once we have it set up, ask the others to bring in the model.”

“Yessir,” one said, and they both retired.

Ben took one end and Prue walked forward to take the other, though her knees still felt curious, no doubt from nerves. Ben nodded to her, and people murmured and shifted in their seats.

They began to draw the bridge open, and as its rainbow span cleared the three masts of the central ship, many of the company's chairs screeched back across the floor, and the gentlemen erupted in a volley of exclamations. Prue saw Pearl close her eyes a moment, perhaps in some private pain or rapture. They kept unwinding the scroll, and the whole crowd drew to their feet. When Ben and Prue stood at its ends, supporting it like a pair of mismatched caryatids, their assemblymen began to shout. “Good God!” cried one, and “
Jews Christus!”
another. Someone
burst out laughing, and Prue looked around for him, in a panic at the thought of being derided. When she singled him out, three rows back and wearing an odd red wig, he was obviously in a transport of joy. The other porters—nearly twenty of them, carrying the great model aloft by its base as if it were the spoils of war—came in with the representation of the bridge and laid it down at the foot of the elevation; this, too, provoked commentary. Someone was whistling clear down the scale, and Willemsen was gesticulating to his neighbor. Stryker began to rap on the table with a gavel.

“Order!” he called, but no one quieted. “Order!”

“Somebody get the senators!” a voice cried.

The assemblymen continued on volubly until their anger, indignation, delight, or surprise began to abate, and only then did they heed their speaker's repeated smacks upon the table.

“Gentlemen!” Stryker called, his tone indicating good-natured astonishment at their behavior. The legislators did not sit, but most of them quieted, cleared their throats, and straightened their wigs and robes. In the back, a conversation continued in heated whispers. “Please.”

“But sir—” someone called out.

“No.” Stryker lifted his chest and resettled his ample robe. Prue thought it no wonder he remembered her father fondly—he resembled him, both in girth and in temperament. “You will take your seats, and ask questions according to protocol.”

Most of them complied. One who remained standing raised his hand.

“Assemblyman from Westchester County?” Stryker said.

The assemblyman was huffing a bit, as if unable to calm himself down. “Sir, I agree with whoever cried out just now: We should bring in the senators. They will wish to see this.”

“The senate has business of its own, Mr. Lancaster.”

But Prue could hear a faint knock at the door; and when the porters answered it, some of the senators, curious and bewigged, stood behind it, seeking admission. “Gentlemen,” Stryker called to them, “has not the lieutenant governor enough on his agenda to occupy you this morning?”

“Indeed he has, Mr. Speaker,” one said. “But when we heard the commotion in the assembly, we gathered your business might be more interesting.”

“This is most unusual,” Stryker said. “This is entirely out of the ordinary.”

The senators, however, did not budge, and some of their peers were lining up behind them.

“Does Lieutenant Governor De Lancey give you permission to leave off your own business?”

“I do, Hendrik,” a voice called from out in the hallway. “I'm curious myself.”

The assemblymen laughed, and even Prue could not suppress a smile.

Stryker shook his great head as if there was nothing he could do to control them. “Very well, then,” he said. “File in.”

The procession of senators seemed endless; Prue knew there were three score of them. Though they regarded the drawing and the model with as much evident disbelief as had the assemblymen, they chiefly whispered among themselves as they filed in to stand around the perimeter of the hall.

When the porters closed the doors again, a few assemblymen were still standing, one of whom looked familiar to Prue. After searching long through her memory, she thought she knew who it was: Hezekiah Pierrepont, that same staunch Loyalist who, at war's end, had been forced into exile in some godforsaken barrens of New Jersey. Twenty years later, there could be no mistaking the Gallic hook of his nose, nor the slight cross of his dark eyes. He raised his chin.

“Representative from Ulster County?” said Mr. Stryker.

“Sir, what you see before you is no
bridge
,” the man said. It had to be Pierrepont—he had the same oleaginous voice. “This is, you will excuse me, a young man's fancy. And in part, I understand, a young
lady's
.” There was some quiet laughter among the desks. “In all my travels, and they have been wide, I have never seen any such structure. How would it stand?”

Stryker acknowledged another assemblyman. “Gentleman from Dutchess?”

He cleared his throat. “Bridges have supports in their middles, Mr. Surveyor Horsfield. Of all people, surely you should know it's how they remain steady.”

Without waiting for permission, another called out, “And supports would block the free flow of traffic upon the river. So you see, a bridge
won't do
.” Stryker shook his head and banged twice with his gavel, and the representative sat down, saying, “My apologies, sir, for speaking out of turn.”

Stryker turned to Ben and said, “Mr. Horsfield, can you allay the representatives' concerns?”

Ben nodded once with his chin. “I can, sir.” He put his fingers in his collar and tugged it away from his throat. How Prue envied him his man's figure—his squared shoulders and even his pointy, clean-shaven chin—for how it enabled him to stand up thus before them. She loved him dearly, and at the same time felt what seemed love's opposite: a sickening jealousy.

“Gentlemen,” he began. “A simple bridge—say, a log thrown across a rushing stream—works on a simple principle. That is, the weight of a man walking across the log does not fall straight downward (or he would plummet into the current), but is rather distributed along the length of the log, and thence to the ground at both ends. If the log be sturdy enough, he arrives safely at the other side of the stream. If it be too delicate to support his weight, it snaps, and he goes for a swim. For this reason, bridges have hitherto been built with supports, or piers, at close intervals. If they are close enough together, a man's weight need not be carried too far to be relayed safely to the ground; and the spans themselves need not be exquisitely strong to provide safe passage.

“You are correct, my esteemed representatives, that a bridge of this magnitude—its span forty-four hundred feet and its arch, at its center, one hundred fifty feet above high water, high enough to clear the masts of seagoing ships—would obstruct the flow of traffic
intolerably
were it supported by pillars with breakwaters. The piers would fill the entire waterway. This is why, for a river of the East River's importance, a bridge such as that I here propose is not only a fine innovation, but an absolute necessity.”

He motioned to the porter who bore the smaller roll of drawings, and the young man approached and handed them to him. Ben drew out the diagram illustrating how a weight was relayed from the tip of a lever back toward its support. “This top diagram shows a man standing at the farthest extremity of a lever—and to be clear, two of them, tip to tip, form the chief structure of my bridge.” Pearl had drawn Isaiah—his expression serious, and all his buttons buttoned—bending the lever slightly
downward. “If, as I earlier explained, the beam upon which he stands is strong enough, he shall return home this evening with his clothing still dry. For this to happen, his weight must travel back along the beam to here,” he said, tapping his finger over the top of the sheet at the lever's support, “the point at which the beam makes contact with the earth. This illustration below”—in which a small circle represented a weight at the tip on which Isaiah stood, and circles of ever greater circumference represented that same weight as it passed down the lever toward the ground—“shows by what proportion that weight seems to increase as it moves along the lever arm. As you can see, any weight placed upon the center of the span is referred to the end of the span and appears to be magnified, thus.

“Therefore, two primary circumstances must obtain for the bridge to hold. First, the center of the bridge, where the levers meet, must be strong enough to support any weight likely to happen upon it—two teams of oxen, to give a simple example, crossing in opposite directions. Second, the abutments shoring up the twin levers must be heavy enough to resist the rotational forces exerted upon them from the intrinsic weight of the lever arms and from any persons or vehicles thereupon. What supports the bridge at the center of its span, I mean to say, is not some prop beneath it—which is rather a primitive solution to the problem—but the increasing bulk of the
structure itself
as it approaches the ground; this, and the solidity of the connection between the base of the structure and the earth. Hence”—he pulled off the next sheet, illustrating various potential types of abutments—“my designs for structures, from the fanciful to the mundane, to keep the ends of the bridge anchored to the ground.”

Mr. Stryker asked, “Is your question well answered, Ulster County?”

Pierrepont drew a breath and said, “I am uncertain.”

“May I give another example?” Ben said, but did not wait for anyone's approval. “You will excuse me if it is of the grossest nature. How strong would you say this little bridge is before me? How much weight would you suppose it could support?”

“I couldn't say,” Pierrepont sneered. “I should think my granddaughter would like to play upon it with her dollies.”

“Very well,” Ben said. “But this model—an exact representation
of the bridge I propose to build—is stronger than it may appear. Now, bear in mind that a model cannot predict the structural integrity of the edifice it represents; the eventual bridge would be both vastly stronger and vastly heavier than this one. But the facsimile does show that the principle behind the bridge is sound.” He rolled up the drawings again and with them still in his hand, stepped onto the center of the bridge. Prue winced, but the gasp the representatives let out showed her he had chosen a good course. He took a few small jumps—far less exuberant than those he'd taken in the countinghouse—but the model did not budge. “Miss Pearl, would you join me here?” he asked.