City of Dreams (100 page)

A blonde doxy appeared, wearing a blue gown cut low enough to show off a truly delicious pair of tits. Prettiest thing he’d seen since leaving London, parading her painted face on the same street that housed the mansion of the Royal Governor.

“I see we’ve neglected one of our duties in welcoming you to our city, gentlemen.” The whoremistress shoved Amarantha forward. For a moment Howe thought she was going to fondle one of his officers right there in the street. Holy Christ, maybe even himself!

Instead Amarantha lifted her skirts high enough to show off her delightful ankles and ran in front of him, flashing a gorgeous smile. Straight to the flagpole.

They’d obviously rehearsed this. In seconds the girl had hauled down the rebel arms. One of Howe’s men started forward to take the thing from her, but the general raised a hand. “Let her be. They’ve planned this little drama. Let’s watch it all.”

The older woman stepped into the middle of the cobbled road and took the bit of cloth from Amarantha. At that moment one of the horses cleared his bowels. Squaw DaSilva walked over and dropped the rebel standard on the pile of steaming manure. Then she handed something to Amarantha. The girl hurried back to the flagpole, fixed the new flag in place, and quickly hoisted it. A breeze snapped into position the arms of His Majesty, George III.

“Now, gentlemen, you know you are indeed welcome. May I invite you into my home for refreshments, General Howe? And any of your officers who care to join you, of course.”

“On behalf of my men and myself, I must refuse your kind hospitality for the moment, mistress. There’s much to be done. But may I assume we’ll be welcome another time?”

Squaw DaSilva dropped a deep curtsy. “At any hour of the day or night, General. My house is yours. And its amenities, of course.”

Howe swept off his hat and bowed elegantly, though he was still astride his horse. “Indeed, Mistress DaSilva. His Majesty’s gracious reign is restored.
Toujours la gaieté,
mistress,
toujours la gaieté!”
He turned in the saddle, raised the hand that still held his gold-braided hat, and waved toward the musicians. There was first a loud drumroll, then the pipers began to play.

One after another the doors of the Broad Way houses were opened and the residents stepped into the street.

Squaw waited until she was sure all her highborn fancy neighbors had shown themselves and gotten the good look at her she knew they craved. Then she slowly turned and walked back to her house. Head high. Her naked face, lined and ravaged by time though it now was, raised to the sun.

V

Holy bloody Savior, it was hot, an October Indian summer with a vengeance. Despite the heat, Morgan wore a heavy ankle-length cloak over his blue uniform. Without it he was in peril for his life. As he’d told Cuf, get caught out of uniform and you’d be hanged for a spy. Rules of the game.

He was full of advice. So damned smart. Captain Morgan bloody Turner. Knew bloody everything. Howe would trap the rebel troops like hares in a burrow, he’d told young Burr. Well, Burr had gotten the troops safely out of the city to Fort Washington. Now Morgan Turner was the hare. By choice. Because someone had to see what was happening, and no one knew New York better.

Over a week now he’d been living in darkened doorways down by the docks, hiding among the empty ale kegs outside the taverns and slop shops. Calculating every step before he dared take it. There was no one in the city he could truly trust. Not now.

Just about everyone who supported the rebel cause had fled New York the moment Black Dick’s bombardment began nearly a week before. Once Howe and his troops were landed, Tories from every colony had rushed to the city to take the place of the departing rebel patriots. As for the redcoats, they’d quickly settled into the finest houses and buildings of the town. Howe was living in the governor’s mansion. City Hall on Wall Street was his administrative headquarters. King’s College, over on Park Place, had been turned into a military hospital.

Morgan had spent a couple of hours the previous afternoon watching the British wounded being moved into the college, making deductions from the last numbers he’d given Washington, and conscious all the while of Andrew. His cousin had been everywhere, checking each stretcher as it was carried inside, directing the entire operation. Andrew Turner, a bloody Tory. Morgan’s mother as well. So be it. As he readied the oil-soaked rags Morgan told himself he didn’t feel concern for either of them.

The old Fighting Cocks tavern on Whitehall Slip had been turned into a British amenity along with so much else. Squaw DaSilva had filled the Cocks with common whores, a bordello for ordinary seamen and soldiers. The doxies in her house—the house he’d grown up in, by God—were the youngest and prettiest. Reserved for His Majesty’s officers.

The thought made Morgan tremble with fury, but when he forced himself to be calm he judged the availability of whores for both officers and troops a good thing. Protected the decent women from the appetites of the victors. Not that there were many decent women left in the city. The day before the assault on New York began he’d spoken to Cuf about Roisin and Clare and made Cuf take a bit of money to help them get out of the town. They must be gone by now. Cuf was cautious by nature.

Morgan poured the last of the whale oil over the rags along the base of the old timber-framed building. He’d siphoned the oil out of a number of the street-lamps that lined the city. It hadn’t been difficult. The lamplighters, like most of the laboring people of New York, were rebel supporters. They were long gone, and Howe had yet to appoint replacements. The oil-filled lanterns were easy targets after dark. As for the rags, he’d scavenged them from the rubbish that lined the roads.

The last of the oil dripped onto the bits of linen and wool and homespun. The building would go up like tinder. This was his great contribution to the noble and just cause of independence: burning the city he’d been born in. Scorched earth had been the policy of every retreating army since Julius Caeser, Morgan knew, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

He paused for a moment, then lifted his face to test the wind. Coming from the southwest. Excellent. All he had to do was start the job and the wind would finish it. Take out all the most important buildings and make New York a lot less comfortable for the bastards.

His grandfather’s old house would go as well. No way that could be avoided. Hall Place was little more than a long spit from the Fighting Cocks. Never mind. His maiden aunts, Wella and Cecily, had gone north to join their sister in Boston some months before and the empty house had been taken over by redcoats. As for Uncle Luke, his Ann Street house was three-quarters of a mile north. Besides, Andrew was free as a bird, riding high on the Tory wave of victory. He’d look after his wife and children and his legless father.

Morgan kicked the last of the rags into place and headed for the doorway across the road where he’d hidden a tin box that held a glowing coal cadged from a street fire made by some English marines cooking their supper. The box still felt uncomfortably hot. Thank Christ, the coal hadn’t died on him.

Morgan had started back across the road when he heard the raucous singing. He jumped back into the shadows, one hand still holding the hot box, the other beneath his cloak on the hilt of his cutlass.

Three marines turned the corner. The town was full of the bastards. Black Dick must’ve given them all shore leave. This lot were stinking drunk, arms linked and singing at the top of their lungs. Something about Mistress McGowdy’s twat. No prize for guessing where they were going. Bloody holy Savior. Why now?

“This be it.” One of the marines stopped walking and brought his companions up short in the middle of the street. “The Fighting Twats, as we be callin’ it now.”

“Hell with that. I want to fuck ’em, not fight ’em.”

“C’mon, then. They ain’t comin’ into the street and bending over to offer their backsides. ’Ey, what’s this?” The marine prodded the line of rags with the toe of his scuffed boot.

One of the others bent closer to see. “Don’t be nothin’. Jus’ some protection against drafts is all. C’mon, you want to inspect the facilities or put yer tool in somethin’ is wet and warm?”

The marines went inside. Morgan darted across the road and flung the coal into the rags. He watched the flames travel the length of the oil-drenched line, then begin licking at the wooden walls of the tavern. When he was sure the fire was well started, he disappeared into the waterfront shadows.

There were no trained firefighters to bring out the pump wagons and organize the bucket brigades. Rebels every one, they’d left the city with Washington’s army. Within minutes sparks from the blazing roof of the Fighting Cocks tavern ignited one of the old Dutch houses on nearby Hall Place, then leapt across the road to devour the barber pole erected over a hundred years earlier by Lucas Turner. Soon the old house was burning. In some mockery of politeness the flames started at the front door and moved through the entrance hall. Marit Graumann’s picture was consumed first, then Lucas’s portrait crashed to the ground and became ashes.

Hall Place, Bridge Street, Beaver Street: the flames demolished entire blocks. Within two hours most of the houses built when New York was Nieuw Amsterdam were gone. Great numbers of women and children perished in the inferno. The alarm bells and church bells had long since been taken by the rebels to be turned into musket balls, so there was no way to warn the sleeping town. Those who were roused in time ran screaming into the streets, fighting their way through the smoke and the hail of cinders, mostly heading north toward the Common, with the flames licking at their backs.

A little after two in the morning the wind shifted. South by southeast now, and almost gale force. A storm of fire attacked the old Church Farm neighborhood, where all the houses were made of wood. The Church Farm houses were consumed in a quarter of an hour. The fire, strengthened, moved on.

All night the sky was ablaze, lit by the flames of the burning city. On the high hills of northern Manhattan and across the Hudson on the New Jersey Palisades rebels stood cheering as they watched. When the steeple of Trinity Church, that bastion of the aristocratic colonials who had never stopped calling England home, crashed to the earth the American observers whooped and howled in joy.

In the choking smoke and fierce heat of the city streets the enraged redcoats took their revenge. The soldiers and sailors had been sent to fight the blaze, but houses in the path of the fire were first looted, then left to burn. Dozens of locals were slaughtered as they ran for safety.

At three in the morning the Fiddle and Clogs yet stood. Roisin and Clare were part of a line of neighbors moving buckets of water from a nearby well to the tavern and the houses in the immediate vicinity. Clare lost count of the times she used her bare hands to beat out embers that landed on her skirts.

When other hands grabbed her from the rear and pulled her out of the line she thought it was someone stronger wanting to take her place in the bucket brigade. “No, please, I’m all right. I can go on. I only—”

“Shut up, bitch! Wanted to burn us out, did ye? Torch the town if yer precious Washington couldn’t hold it. We’ll give ye something to remember for yer pains.”

There were six of them, British sailors. They dragged her away from the tavern, into the field where she’d played as a child, and systematically, one after another, they raped her. The fifth man was the worst, the most savage. He bit her left nipple almost entirely off. But it was the sixth who when he was finished with her drew his cutlass, and the one who’d bitten her so badly who dragged him away.

The two men were the only ones left in the field. The others had gone in search of more loot. “No, leave her be,” the biter said in a harsh whisper. “We’ve given her something to remember us by. Let the bitch live and remember it.”

“She can say it was us. If Black Dick has an inquiry she’ll tell. Staring up at me she was, all the while. She’ll know it was me.”

“Well, if that’s all yer worryin’ about…” The sailor who wanted Clare left alive pulled his dagger from his belt and turned to where the girl still lay on the ground. “It’s only her eyes as can make trouble for us. And they’ll come out easy enough.”

Morgan had reached the edge of the field not seconds before. He was still running when he drew the dagger from his boot and threw it. The blade buried itself between the shoulder blades of the attacking sailor and the man dropped in his tracks. The other saw what had happened, howled, and turned, searching for the enemy. Morgan was already behind him. He grabbed the sailor’s hair, yanked his head back, and with one savage swipe of the cutlass slit his throat.

The second dead sailor fell to the ground. Morgan kicked his corpse aside, then knelt next to Clare. “Oh, God … I’m so sorry. Here, lass, let me get you to safety.” She said nothing. He whipped off his cloak and covered her with it. “Clare, it’s Morgan Turner, your father’s friend, I want—”