City of Dreams (5 page)

Loretta said, “That’s Captain Bull Stuckey. A seafarin’ man who don’t have a ship no more.”

“Like a lot of seafarin’ men these days,” said Gil.

“He’s formin’ a company of militia, all New York City lads. Sign on with him, and I’ll give you a free one.”

“Sign on?”

“Us gals is nicer to soldiers than we is to local dock rats.” She slid her hand down his breeches. “So let me take you over there.” She gave him a tug. “You can sign your name or make your mark—”

“I know how to write.” He pushed himself against her hand. “
And
read.”

“Ooh, an educated dockhand, then. They might just make you an officer. Or considerin’ the size of this”—she gave it a stroke—“they might make you a
bat
man.”

And before the night was over, all four Waterfront Boys had joined Stuckey’s company of New York militia, while Loretta Rogers and her friends had made more money in commissions from Bull Stuckey than ever they had from servicing a dozen men.

As for the king . . . they paraded his gilded head around town on a pike, then they dragged the rest of him off to Connecticut and melted him down and turned him into forty thousand musket balls.

“Good riddance,” said Gil Walker.

ii.

But nothing good happened to New York or the Waterfront Boys after that.

The British fleet, which had begun arriving in June, grew from a small grove of masts into a dense forest in a few weeks. And from that forest emerged the largest army ever sent forth by a British king. First, they built a city of white tents on the hills of Staten Island. Then they began to drill. And every afternoon their bayonets glinted in the sun, and every evening the music of their regimental bands floated across the harbor.

The Waterfront Boys listened from their post near the Grand Battery.

“We didn’t sign up to fight
them
,” said Rooster Tom.

“I fear that we did,” answered Gil.

Worse, they had signed up with a man used to meting out shipboard discipline. His recruits could sleep in their own homes. They were local militia, after all. But the man who did not appear within five minutes of the drummer’s tattoo would be marked as a deserter and dosed with thirty-nine lashes.

So Gil and Big Jake continued to live under the eaves at the Queen’s Head, where they did the heavy lifting for master Sam Fraunces. Rooster Tom lived with his old mother, who kept house for a Jew merchant named Haym Salomon. And Augustus the Bookworm lived by his wits and his charm, which had endeared him to every pretty housemaid in every manor house from Richmond Hill to Harlem Heights. But they all slept with an ear out for the sound of the drum.

“We didn’t sign up to dance a jig whenever Stuckey gives us a beat,” said Big Jake.

“I fear that we did,” answered Gil.

And worst of all, the girls at the Shiny Black Cat were no better to militiamen than they were to anyone else.

“Those doxies lied to us when we signed up,” said the Bookworm.

“I fear that they did,” answered Gil.

Most of the time, when Gil showed up with a few shillings, Loretta was busy. So he would go off to spend his money at some house where the ladies looked decidedly less virginal in the morning light.

This, Big Jake explained as they walked down Broadway one August eve, was a good example of the old saying about living and learning. Business, he said, should always be business. “Answerin’ a muster ’cause we think it might get us a bit of free finky-diddlin’ ain’t the way to join a rebellion.”

“
Now
you tell us,” said Rooster Tom.

“If I’d been sober,” said Big Jake, “I woulda told you that joinin’ any rebellion is fool’s work. We should be tryin’ to get rich off of all this, like Gil always says.”

“I didn’t do it for any free finky-diddlin’, nor knob jobs, neither,” said Gil.

“No. You did it because you’re in lo-oo-ove.” The Bookworm made a graceful little bow-and-step, like a courtier in a silk waistcoat.

Gil kicked him. “I did it because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“It don’t seem so right now,” said Big Jake.

The Bookworm laughed. “At least Loretta’s a pretty one.”

“They’re all pretty at night,” said Rooster Tom, “and they all give you the itch in the mornin’.” He stuck a hand into his breeches and grabbed. “And what are
you
lookin’ at?” he said to an old man stepping out of a nearby tavern.

If the old man was startled to see Rooster pulling his pecker in the middle of the street, he didn’t say. Rooster’s quick-match temper was known in every ward, and men said that a challenge from him should be met with a pistol or a polite retreat. The old man chose the latter.

So the Waterfront Boys strode on, as if this were any New York night . . . before there was a Continental Army on the Common or a British fleet at the Narrows, a normal night when rich men entertained in their parlors and whores entertained on the Holy Ground and young men rambled from alley to avenue in search of whatever entertainment they could find.

A few days earlier, Washington had issued orders for civilians to evacuate the city. Most had already left, and those who remained were too old to travel, or too young, or too impoverished, or too fearful of losing whatever they owned, or too opportunistic to flee when the war had given them the chance to change life’s odds.

And the Waterfront Boys were nothing if not opportunists.

Rooster Tom had shown his mates half a dozen vacant Tory houses where pewter candlesticks and Turkey carpets and pipes of good port had been left behind. The Bookworm knew about a few, too, because he knew the maids in most of them. And since it was in the natural order of things that
someone
would eventually take
anything
valuable in a vacant house, the Boys had taken that responsibility onto themselves.

What they took they carried to a pawnbroker who lived in the First Ward. What the pawnbroker gave them they spent on rum and girls.

And they had spent plenty already that night. Rum and girls. Girls and rum. Now they were looking for a different kind of fun . . . a gang of soldiers throwing dice, perhaps, or a few Massachusetts militiamen worthy of a fight, or maybe a Tory to ride on a rail.

Most nights, the streets teemed with soldiers and militiamen who were as undisciplined, drunk, and troublesome as the Waterfront Boys could be. But New York was quiet and tense, because Washington had moved half his army across the East River to Brooklyn. A fight was coming. So Broadway was mostly empty, and the Boys walked all the way to the Bowling Green without finding a bit of bother.

As he kicked along, Gil fingered the crown finial in his pocket. He had kept the piece of brass, as large as the palm of his hand, because whenever he was about to do something stupid for patriotism or lust or any other emotion, high or low, the finial reminded him that acting without thinking had its consequences.

The Bowling Green lay in darkness. But torches flickered in front of the fine house that Colonel Henry Knox now occupied at One Broadway. And Fort George glowered in the shadows beyond.

There were two soldiers in blue uniforms guarding Knox’s door, two more guarding the gate in the picket fence, half a dozen more lounging by a row of horses tethered to the fence.

Rooster went sauntering up, and the guards snapped to attention.

“Easy, lads,” said Rooster.

“Yeah.” Big Jake came out of the shadows. “We’re just lookin’ for a game of dice.”

“We don’t throw dice,” said the big sergeant at the gate. “So move on.”

“Move on, is it? In our own town”—Rooster rose on the balls of his feet, then dropped back, then rose up again, then back—“you’re tellin’ me to
move on
?”

Gil grabbed Rooster by the tail of his leather waistcoat.

The Bookworm stepped in front of the soldiers. “We’re sorry.”

“We ain’t.” Rooster whacked at Gil’s hand. “We can go anywhere we want in our own town.”

Gil said to the soldiers, “He’s just a bit—”

“A bit what?” An officer with a blue sash appeared under one of the torches.

“A bit”—Gil fumbled—“a bit . . .”

“What unit do you men belong to?” said the officer.

“None of your damn business,” said Rooster Tom.

“What
unit
?” demanded the officer. “Or are you deserters?”

Gil knew, from their size and fine uniforms, that these weren’t ordinary soldiers. They were the life guard for Washington himself. He said, “No deserters, here, sir.”

The officer turned on Gil. “I think you’re lying. I think you’re all deserters . . . lying and desertion. Do you belong to one of the units the general moved to Brooklyn today? Lying, desertion, and cowardice. Good for fifty lashes. Take them.” He swung his arm and two of the Continentals grabbed Big Jake, and two more grabbed Gil.

“I’m no deserter,” cried Gil.

“Then what
unit
?” demanded the officer.

“Mine!” A slight young man emerged from the shadows. He wore a blue uniform with deerskin breeches and brass buttons that flashed in the torchlight. “Captain Hamilton, New York Provincial Artillery.”

And before another word was said, the door of Henry Knox’s house swung open, and out stepped the tallest man that any of them had ever seen.
George Washington
.

All the soldiers presented arms. The captain pulled out his sword and raised the hilt to his chin in salute.

Washington said a few more words to Henry Knox, the
widest
man that any of them had ever seen, then he pulled on his gauntlets and strode toward the street.

One of the guards brought over his horse. The others formed a wall between Washington and the Waterfront Boys.

Washington grabbed the bridle and swung a leg onto the horse. He didn’t even look down until he was mounted, sitting flagpole straight, left hand holding the reins, right hand braced against his hip. “Did I hear word of deserters?”

“We’re not deserters, sir,” said Gil Walker.

“Then rejoin your unit, or face a flogging.” Washington kicked his horse up Broadway, with his life guard mounting and galloping after him.

Alexander Hamilton watched them go, then pivoted on his heels and said to the Waterfront Boys, “Come along, men.”

Once they were out of earshot of the guards, the Bookworm said, “I want to thank you, Alexander . . . on behalf of all my friends.”

“I won’t see New York boys bullied,” said Hamilton, “and I don’t forget favors.”

“Favors?” said Gil.

“Augustus here saved me from a beating or two at Kings College. Pity he couldn’t save himself.”

“A pity,” said the Bookworm.

“So, then”—Hamilton was heading for the Grand Battery, the row of cannons at the tip of the island—“what unit
are
you from?”

“Stuckey’s militia,” answered Big Jake.

“That explains it,” said Hamilton. “You’re lucky.”

“Lucky?” said Rooster Tom. “We’d be lucky if we wasn’t in this militia at all.”

At the Battery, half a dozen men were crouched under a torch. One of them was tossing dice against a wall. Another noticed Hamilton and cried, “Atten-shun!”

The men leaped to their feet and stuck out their chests. Someone dropped a rum bottle that rattled on the cobblestones.

Hamilton picked it up and threw it into the water. Then he said, “At ease.”

“How are we lucky, sir?” asked the Bookworm

“The British are moving on Long Island,” answered Hamilton. “It may be a feint, or they may be after Brooklyn Heights. Local units will be held here to protect the city. I expect the general thinks we’ll fight harder for our own homes.”

“That’s for fuckin’ sure,” said Rooster Tom.

“Your friend is very rude, Augustus,” said Hamilton without looking at Rooster. “Rejoin your unit, all of you.”

The Bookworm said, “Thank you, sir.”

Gil peered out at the lights of the British fleet, like harmless fireflies flicking on and off in the distance. Then he said to Hamilton, “You saved us from a floggin’, sir. It’s not somethin’ we’ll soon forget.”

T
HE
B
RITISH BEAT
the Americans so convincingly off Brooklyn Heights that only a lunatic would think that fledgling independence would not die in its nest. Washington’s escape from Brooklyn, accomplished under the cover of dark and dense fog, seemed an act of abject desperation.

And the Boys saw it all because Stuckey’s company covered the New York ferry landing during the retreat. From midnight to dawn, the boats landed and left, landed and left, disgorging troops who had been beaten, bloodied, and had barely survived. The men came ashore dragging their muskets and sometimes their mates, and many simply drifted off in search of the nearest grogshop or the quietest whorehouse.

“Scary thing,” said Big Jake.

“What?” said Gil.

“That we’re the most disciplined unit in sight,” said the Bookworm.

“I got a good mind to desert this damn army,” said Rooster.

“You’ll desert nothin’,” said Gil, “not while we’re watchin’.”

“Aye,” said Big Jake. “Do it when we’re not lookin’. I’ll go with you.”

“We signed our names,” said Gil. “If a man’s to be anything in this world, if he’s to get anything, signin’ his name ought to stand for something.”

“Still and all,” said Big Jake, “it’s a helluva way to get rich.”

T
HE DEFEAT TURNED
Washington’s army into a mob, and for a time, no amount of flogging made a difference in their behavior. Some men deserted, simply picked up their bedrolls and shouldered their muskets and started walking. The rest got after the most serious drinking, whoring, and looting yet.

Gil told his mates that they could never quit their own city, but there could be nothing wrong in looking out for themselves. So when they were released from duty each day, they “visited” more vacant Tory houses and brought more goods to the pawnbroker, so they had more money to spend.

And with so many soldiers deserting, Loretta had more time to spend with Gil.

He told himself that he was not in love with her, that she was just another person trying to make her way in a hard world, and what they did was all business.