City of Dreams (19 page)

It is a testament to how deep the rebel fortunes have sunk. Their money is all but worthless, their leadership is bereft of ideas, and their hope of victory dims with every new “emission
.”

Those of our readers unlucky enough to hold Continentals may decide to make the trip north to Poughkeepsie. If so, remember two things: As the roads above Kingsbridge are not protected by the Crown, beware of highwaymen. And undertaking such a journey means that instead of holding forty pieces of worthless paper, you will hold only one, because currency not backed by gold is “as worthless as a Continental
.”

And the rebels have no gold. So they will not defeat the Crown
.

“New Emission Money,” said Evangeline.

“In debt now,” said Peter, “in debt then.”

“Could these be the bonds that Delancey sold to Arsenault?”

They looked at each other and a tumbler clicked.

This kind of work could be like safecracking. Spin the dials, test the theories, read the articles, and then something would fall into place. And they would take a small step toward figuring out . . . something. Debt was part of this story. And old money. New Emission Money.

“Let’s read the letter.” Peter clicked on the second attachment.

Woodward Manor, March 25, 1780

Dear Gil, The Lord still seeth all and loveth all. I have waited four years to do what we talked of. And now ’tis done . . . because men like Mr. Salomon have spoke of the country’s need. Our good deeds will come back to us many times over in the blessings of freedom, stored safe and sound in a mahogany box. I await your return to show you our investment in the future. Love, L. R
.

Evangeline read over her shoulder. “A love letter . . . about money?”

“Looks like. And a promise kept, too.”

And another tumbler clicked. With almost every item Peter had ever tracked, from the lost tea set to the first draft of the United States Constitution, there was an overarching tale of politics, business, and occasionally war, but there was a human story, too. It might be about a love affair or dream, a dream deferred or a dream fulfilled. It might have a happy ending or it might be a tragedy.

“I wonder who L. R. was,” said Evangeline.

“A patriot, it would seem.”

“A patriot who lived in the house on the site of Zabar’s.”

“As I said, there’s a lot of history in this neighborhood.”

“I wonder who Gil Walker was.”

“Fitzpatrick called him one of those tiny grains in the great machine of history.”

SIX

April 1783

G
IL
W
ALKER STOOD AT THE SIDE
of the
Jersey
and stared down at the cutter that would carry him to freedom.

He was thirty years old, but any who looked on him would have said he was forty . . . or fifty . . . or more. And he carried in his mind more horrible images than a man could conceive if he lived to a hundred.

He did not even glance at the faces around him, not at the guards whose contempt had evolved into sullen anger because their war was lost and a few prisoners still survived; not at the oarsmen in the cutter, who may have heard stories of prison ship horror but now saw evidence in the flesh; and not at the faces of the other survivors.

Gil seldom looked at faces because someone might look back, and if that happened, Gil might smile, and if he smiled, he might make a friend, and making a friend would bring only more pain when the friend died . . . as all of them did, as all of them had.

One of the guards said Gil’s name.

They all looked alike to Gil, all took their orders from brutes and were all brutes themselves. They had determined what little food the prisoners would be fed, what little warmth they would have in the freezing hulks, what little ventilation they would have in the summer heat, what few rags they would wear when their clothes wore out, what little succor they would enjoy when the dysentery came and they shit their guts out and died, or the pneumonia came and they coughed their lungs out and died, or the smallpox came and they fevered and shivered and erupted and died.

Gil hated the guards, every last one of them.

“So,” said this one, “you’ve lasted six and a half years in a place that killed most men in six months. Must make you proud.”

“I was cursed.”

“We’re all cursed, mate.”

“No”—Gil put his foot on the ladder to freedom—“I was cursed for robbing a house. My curse ends when I die. You and your friends, you’re damned for all time.”

It would not have surprised Gil Walker if the guard had thrown him overboard for that. A few years earlier, he would have hoped for such a fate. But no longer. Now that he had survived the ship, he expected that he would live a long life. He hoped only that there would be less pain ahead of him than there was behind.

He took a seat in the bow of the cutter, heard a few words of warmth from one of the rowers, and watched the shit-colored hulk of the
Jersey
grow smaller and smaller against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s greening landscape.

And he felt . . . nothing. He had felt nothing for so long that it seemed the only way to feel.

But in the middle of the East River, a breeze skittered over the water. It came out of the southwest and carried the rich smell of turned earth warming in the sun. And it reminded Gil of . . . something. He thought it was hope. He was not sure.

W
ALKING THROUGH
N
EW
York that day, he tried to remember the city that he had left. He remembered fences along alleys and in front of houses. He remembered trees in yards and along streets. He remembered shutters on windows and paint on clapboards. But most of the fences had been stripped for firewood, most of the trees cut down. The shutters had fallen off, and there was not a house that had been painted in seven years.

As for the streets themselves, there was little garbage because the pigs that ran loose rooted it up before it rotted. And the defenses that the Americans had dug seven years before were now no more than ugly piles of dirt or trenches filled with stagnant water. And the wagons and carts now made deep ruts in streets that had not been rolled or oiled for years.

Military governors in occupied cities cared little for civil works, only civil order. And until the treaty was signed, New York remained an occupied city.

Still, there was familiarity on every corner. So Gil allowed himself to look for familiar faces, but he saw none. Then he looked for happy faces, but he saw few, because the population was mostly loyalist, and most of them were preparing to leave on British transports bound for the Indies, for Nova Scotia, or for England itself.

As he walked west on Wall Street, he could see that Trinity Church still lay in blackened ruins. And the Burnt District beyond was not much more than a field of charcoal. So he turned instead at Broad Street, which would lead him past Haym Salomon’s shop and down to Fraunces’s Tavern.

Men who had come aboard the
Jersey
a few years earlier had brought news that Salomon had been arrested in 1778. The provost marshal had condemned him to death for helping prisoners to escape, but somehow, perhaps with the help of a Hessian guard, Salomon himself had escaped and fled to Philadelphia. He lived there now with his wife and children and served as broker for the Congressional Office of Finance.

That, at least, was good news.

But there had been none about Loretta.

Twice in the first month, guards had shown Gil the gold guineas that she had paid them, just so that she could gain a glimpse of him.

“And you took the money, even though we never saw each other?” Gil had asked.

“Oh, she saw you. She stood on the Brooklyn side and we pointed you out. Saw no reason to tell you, though. Maybe next time we’ll let you wave to her. Then she’ll pay even more.”

Gil had wondered about this for a few days, unsure if he would be happy to see her or angry that she was paying out their future to redcoat vultures. But thoughts of Loretta had soon faded before the stark reality of the smallpox.

Gil had noticed it first when a prisoner who slept nearby erupted in red sores.

“Best move away from him,” Gil had told the Bookworm.

“No use,” the Bookworm had said. “It’ll go through the whole ship. Any man who hasn’t had it will get it. And I never had it.”

“Me neither,” said Gil.

“Best inoculate ourselves, then.”

“Inoculate?”

“I read about it,” the Bookworm had said.

“You read too much.” Bull Stuckey had left off complaining about the poor condition of the ship and spent most of his time staring one-eyed into space.

So the Bookworm had explained that a third of the men who got the pox would die. Nine of ten who were inoculated would survive.

“I still don’t like the odds,” Stuckey had answered. “You ain’t doin’ it to me.”

But the Bookworm had convinced Gil that it was better than waiting to get sick. Then he had taken out the sewing needle that he kept in his hatband and pulled a string of thread from his shirt. With the pin, he had opened one of the pustules on the sick man’s arm and passed the thread through it to collect some of the “matter.”

Gil had rolled up a sleeve so that the Bookworm could introduce the “matter” into his arm with small pinpricks. Then Gil had done the same for the Bookworm, who had laughed nervously and said, “A hell of a way to get rich.”

Gil had sickened first, shivering through a fever, showing a small rash, but feeling better within a few days.

Soon Bull Stuckey had begun vomiting, then shivering, and he had admitted that he should have listened to the one who read the books.

But a day later, the Bookworm himself had exploded with all the symptoms, including the hideous pox. For him, inoculation did not work.

Gil had stayed at his side, as the Bookworm had stayed with Gil in Fort Washington. And Gil had done what he could to see that the Bookworm had water, though the water on the
Jersey
was something no free man would drink; that he kept his place in the eight-man mess, though the Bookworm had no appetite and the food was unfit for a rat; that there would be cool rags to bathe the agonizing pustules soon covering the Bookworm’s body; that there would be someone to mourn when Gil awoke and realized that he was staring into the open mouth and dead eyes of his friend.

Bull Stuckey had died an hour later, so he and the man he had derided as pukin’ Mary rode the dead-boat together.

Gil had envied them.

And every day, the guards had reminded Gil that his girl had not come back to the tavern where she first bargained with them.

“Guess we got all she had, or maybe she spent the rest on somethin’ good.”

Maybe she had. Maybe she hadn’t.

But Gil meant to find out. If anything had kept him alive, it was finding out.

He stopped for a moment in front of Salomon’s old storefront. An unfamiliar merchant was bent over a ledger in the office where Gil had learned so much. Now Gil could barely remember the features of Salomon’s face, let alone his tutorials on bills of exchange, debt, and credit. Times changed, people changed, but business went on.

And one place where business never ceased was the Queen’s Head, Sam Fraunces’s tavern.

Gil stopped out front for a few moments and watched in the warm April sunshine as men wobbled out with bellies full of more food than a
Jersey
mess crew would have seen in a week. He considered going around to the back. But the cooks might think he was a beggar, with his rags and eye patch and scrofulous beard. Besides, he had earned the right to go in by the front.

As the tavern door closed behind him, the bright sunlight faded to darkness. It relaxed him, because darkness had been his only comfort in the tweendecks. Then he felt the eyes turn toward him, from the dining room and the taproom. And he heard people sniffing, as if someone had dragged something foul into the room. And he realized that what they smelled was himself.

A British officer at the bar put down his brandy and said, “They may have forced us to accept a Cessation of Arms, but they can’t force us to accept the stink of rebels in the Queen’s Head. Remove that thing at once or I shall be forced to bloody my sword.”

A black servant hurried up to Gil. “You better get out, mister. That feller ain’t in a mood for”—the servant stepped back as though he had seen a ghost—“ain’t you one of them Waterfront Boys?”

“The
only
one. Where’s Black Sam?”

T
HAT AFTERNOON,
G
IL
Walker experienced pleasure such as he had not expected again until the rapture: a bowl of beef stew.

And then he slipped into a tub of hot water behind the tavern. He had boils and lice and the itch called impetigo, so the water stung as it struck, but it soothed him soon. Then it turned gray, then black, and then bugs floated to the surface and began swimming for their lives. The sight of them made Gil laugh, and he realized that he had grown so used to pain that he had forgotten what its absence felt like.