Forever (23 page)

55.

S
omething big was indeed happening. Part of it Cormac saw. Part of
it was told to him. But all the bits and pieces, the muted warnings, the whispered gossip came to the same thing: a rising. In the first weeks of 1741, the town was almost empty of redcoats, their main force now down in the Indies, defending the sanctity of Jenkins’s ear. In their absence, New York Africans and New York Irishmen were meeting in Hughson’s tavern to talk about guns and death and freedom.

“You’re very…
distracted
these past days, Cormac,” said Mr. Partridge one afternoon. He looked at Cormac in a worried way. “Are you homesick?”

Cormac smiled. “Sometimes.”

“What is it that you miss?”

“Oh, just…”

He paused in the process of pulling sheets for a wine seller.

“Small things, I s’pose,” he said. “The house we had, made by my father’s hands and the help of his friends. The wet grass on a summer morning. We had a dog named Bran and a horse named Thunder. I miss them. I miss my mother telling stories. I miss my father in all ways. I miss the woods and the fields and the hearth in the house….”

Mr. Partridge stared at him.

“Well, all of us here feel the same things, in one way or another,” he said. “I feel them and the soldiers feel them and the Africans too.”

“I know that.”

“It’s why some go back,” Mr. Partridge said. “They can’t bear it. We’re like colonists on the bloody moon. And yet…” He sighed. “And yet, we might have something in our hands that’s not been seen in hundreds of years, maybe never, lad. For the King and his hired hands can’t forever impose their will on us here, can they? Not with an ocean between them and us. We might have the chance to build a country. Not a colony. A country! Imagine that! And not just a country, a republic!”

Cormac realized that Mr. Partridge saw a blankness in his face. A republic? What was a republic?

“You must read Machiavelli!” Mr. Partridge said. “I think I have a copy upstairs, and if not, I’ll find one. Not
The Prince
. That’s the book Machiavelli wrote to get a job, full of blatherskite. No, you must read the
Discourses on Livy
! Best argument ever made for a republic. Old Machiavelli knew you couldn’t have a country—or an army—or collect taxes—unless the people gave their consent. That meant,
no kings!
”

He had begun to sweat, and tamped his brow with the clean side of a printer’s rag. Then turned again to Cormac.

“There’s another reason for your… preoccupation, isn’t there, lad?”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“What’s her name?”

Cormac feigned a grin, the response that he thought Mr. Partridge expected. He didn’t answer.

“I suspected so,” Mr. Partridge said. He smiled in a dubious way and turned to the press. “Well, let’s get on with it….”

In the solitude of the night, Cormac tried to sort out the separate boxes of his life. He told himself that he must arrange them as if his mind were a type case. The largest letters were in the top drawer: they spelled out the name of the earl, and his presence in New York, and Cormac’s hope that Kongo’s men would find him. His Irish vows were in that box, and the rules of his tribe, and there were mornings when he awoke on Cortlandt Street and thought he was still five years old in Ireland, about to run barefoot on wet grass.

In the drawer below was Mary Burton. She scared him in some ways, because she lived most completely in the future, in some glorious place where she was free. At the same time, she threatened his own freedom. He wanted a woman’s body, a woman’s voice, a woman’s voice in the dark. But he could not yet imagine a life with children, in a house where he would live and die, far from home. He couldn’t imagine building a hearth that would put a soul into a house shared with Mary Burton. Not now. Not yet. He could imagine no future until he had rid himself of the pursuit of the earl.

And he felt too the thrilling pressure of the conspiracy that was building in the town. He wanted Mary Burton to be free. But he wanted Kongo to be free too, and Quaco, and Quaco’s wife, serving in the fort, and all the others: Diamond and Sandy and even the wretched Caesar, and the child of his making that would soon burst from poor Peggy. They should be free. How could he even imagine putting a child into a world where men owned other men? How could he do that and be his father’s son?

And so he volunteered his name to the conspiracy. He didn’t tell this to Mary Burton, but offered himself to Kongo, who was the leader. They met briefly one Sunday morning, and Kongo accepted him, with a dubious look in his eyes. “You help with words,” he said. “With printed words. Not with gun or torch.”

Cormac learned that Kongo had found instant allies in six Spanish blacks. The young man knew their story. They were free men under the flag of Spain, working for pay on a ship captured by an English privateer named John Lush. An apt name, said Mr. Partridge, for a man who’d been seen staggering around the taverns of New York, spending his stolen Spanish pieces of eight. “He’s a terrible fellow,” Mr. Partridge said, leaning over his trays of Caslon. “The world would be better rid of him.” Lush had plenty of other money, he explained, because the English crown insisted that anyone black was automatically a slave, a thing to be sold. It didn’t matter if they’d already been freed of their bondage by other nations; if captured, they were slaves. Lush could sell them as if they were captured horses. “Human merchandise!” Mr. Partridge roared. The six captured Spanish seamen were taken to New York, protesting in vain that they were not slaves, they were prisoners of war, men who had long since earned their freedom. The British sneered. “The laws of Spain,” Partridge said, “don’t apply to Englishmen with guns.” The black Spaniards were sold at the market at the foot of Wall Street. Mr. Partridge knew this. But so did Quaco.

“Quaco helped me know them,” Kongo said. “They will be of great help.”

Cormac didn’t mention the contact between Kongo and the Spanish blacks to Mr. Partridge, who would have understood that the Spanish blacks could serve as messengers to the fleets of Spain. Any Englishman involved in such a conspiracy could be hanged for treason. The Africans were not Englishmen, and in his heart, neither was Cormac, in spite of the English flags that billowed over Belfast. He would take his own risks. But he didn’t want to draw Mr. Partridge into the conspiracy. What Mr. Partridge did not know would protect him if the conspiracy failed.

But as he passed brief outings in Hughson’s, whispering with Mary Burton, wary of spies among the Africans and redcoats, and as he wandered in his free time down by the markets, Cormac understood that the Spanish blacks were to play a major part in the larger plan. Their leader was named Juan Alvarado. Lean, intelligent, with greenish highlights in his angry eyes. He was fluent in Spanish and could read and write that language, but he spoke Yoruba to Kongo. Cormac had heard them talking, sensed the hardness behind the words, even though he did not know their exact meaning.

He also learned that the arrival of Kongo had made the Africans believe that a rising could be victorious. Quaco told him all of this, a revelation confirmed by the attitudes of the other Africans. Now Cormac finally understood the meaning of
babalawo
.

“Prince of spirits,” Quaco said one freezing Sunday morning near the Fly Market. “Kongo have magic. White magic and black magic. He speak to gods and they speak through him. They give him gift of tongues too, so he can speak many African language, and now English.”

After a few weeks with Juan Alvarado, Kongo spoke Spanish too.

“Kongo can lead us all to freedom,” Quaco said. “My people. You people, Irish people. Not alone. Kongo can no say magic words and English go away. Men have to do that. And men can no win if bad people too big. Men need help.” He paused, glancing around the empty streets. “That why we try to reach the Spaniards,” Quaco went on. “With English, you need big guns.”

In one quick meeting on the street, Kongo told Cormac almost nothing, as if trying to keep Cormac out of the conspiracy.

“Wait,” he said. “You have your own task. The man who killed your father.”

But the plan was emerging. If the African and Irish rebels could wound the English forces in New York, if they could seize arms, if they could panic the civilian population, then Spain could take the city with a handful of ships. Timing was everything. And it was not just talk. One Saturday night, a Spanish-speaking slave named Morales disappeared. His name appeared Monday morning on a poster offering a reward. But the gossip of revolt provided a motive: Morales was already heading south, to find the Spanish in Savannah or Florida.

For Cormac, the conspiracy was like a novel read in glimpses, with many chapters missing. The falling snow provided the continuity. And one February night he went to Hughson’s at the invitation of Quaco. Irishmen and Africans arrived with snow melting on their hats and shoulders, their faces glistening as they stamped their feet and accepted hot tea or strong coffee. On this night, at Kongo’s order, there would be neither porter nor strong liquor. Mary Burton, Sarah Hughson, and Peggy were absent, and off-duty soldiers were kept out by the posting of a sign that said “Private Party.” In the street, lounging in doorways out of the snow, lone men watched for redcoats or constables. Finally Hughson tapped a spoon on the side of a metal tankard and the room hushed.

“Hear ye, hear ye,” Hughson said, and laughed in an ironical way. Cormac was deep in the crowd. Kongo stood before the blue door, while Alvarado lolled with folded arms against the back door. Quaco was at the bar, his face tense. There was an odd glint in Hughson’s eyes. Cormac noted that his face trembled, as if he were trying to decide which mask to wear.

“We’ve met here often as friends,” he said. “Tonight, we meet as allies. All here share a common condition: the lack of freedom. Many of you are slaves. Many are indentured servants. You are both—Irish and African—the property of others. That situation has become intolerable. Sinful. Criminal. We believe it’s time to do something about it.”

“Like what?” someone shouted. Cormac thought: Like freeing Mary Burton.

“This is neither the time nor the place to discuss details,” Hughson said. “The bloody British are masters of bribery, of informing, of spies. Some here might indeed be spies, and they have our warning: Betray us and you will be sorry.” Cormac glanced at Kongo. His face was skeptical, as if he too sensed that Hughson might be a prince of horseshit. “But the worry is real,” Hughson went on. “And so before we proceed, there must first be a swearing. An oath, binding us all to silence.”

“Good,” came a shout, and a murmured chorus of approval.

Hughson continued, “If any of yiz can’t swear such an oath, please leave now.”

Nobody moved. Cormac’s flesh tingled.

“Then, gentlemen, the oath.”

He cleared a space on the hard earthen floor, gesturing for men to move backward. Then, with a long-bladed knife, he cut a wide circle into the packed dirt. The men closest to the circle placed feet inside the line, then grasped hands, pushing deeper inside, while Hughson extended the border to make room for others. Cormac hesitated, thinking: What am I about to do? My only oath was sworn above the body of my father….

But he shared the feelings of these men, African and Irish, even if he felt no confidence about Hughson. He loved that thrilling word
freedom
. And he felt too that in some small way he was being admitted to the secret world of men. This was an American version of the men bound together in the Sacred Grove of Ireland.

He grasped the hands of a Spanish black named Torres and the young African named Sandy. He saw Quaco, his head bowed, holding the hands of two other Africans. Three men watched the full group: Kongo, Hughson, and Alvarado.

Hughson bowed his head and began speaking in a solemn voice, the others echoing his phrases.

“We swear (we swear) to hold secret (to hold secret) all that is spoken of here (all that is spoken of here) and to maintain (and to maintain) our faith in each other (our faith in each other) under punishment in Heaven or Hell (under punishment in Heaven or Hell) or here on the earth (or here on the earth), so help me God (so help me God).”

Kongo stepped into the center of the circle (with Cormac seeing him now as a prince of spirits) and spoke the oath in Yoruba, and the blacks responded. Alvarado did it in Spanish, and his men answered. There was a small cheer. Then Kongo assumed command of the room. He spoke in English and Yoruba, choosing words in a careful, direct way, and made the case for revolt. “Men are not horses,” he said in English. “Men have souls.” Now Cormac saw uncertainty in Hughson’s eyes. If he thought of himself an hour earlier as the leader of the revolt, that role had now been lost to Kongo. He did not look happy as Kongo used his fingers to enumerate his points. He separated the men into units of three. He reiterated the need for secrecy. Near the end, repeating this in Yoruba, he pulled one long finger across his throat, and about half the Africans laughed. Then he stepped out of the circle.

Hughson stepped forward, trying to assert again his own role. Cormac felt oddly isolated. Kongo had not assigned him to a three-man unit.

“As far as you Irish are concerned, the word is wait,” Hughson said. “Wait for word from us, from the high command. We’ll be in touch as the hour draws near. We’ll know our roles, what must be done. I’ll coordinate with the Africans. But the purpose is clear: to end these intolerable conditions.” Then he smiled. “As for now, gentlemen, the bar is open.”

A murmur. Scattered calls of “Hear, hear.” A pushing toward the bar. Some faces were flushed, as if the saying were as good as the doing. Kongo nodded at Cormac, placed fingers to his mouth, indicating they would speak later, and then went with his men out the back door into the falling snow.

Then Sarah came in from the kitchen, and the talk became politer, more guarded, less flushed with the possibility of rebellion. She laid plates on the bar piled with herrings, potatoes, hard-boiled eggs. Peggy showed up too, bursting with Caesar’s child. Cormac realized that Caesar had not been part of the group of oath-takers. And Mary Burton was nowhere in sight.