City of Dreams (101 page)

The roof of the Fiddle and Clogs imploded, and the great crash cut off his words. The bucket brigade had lost the battle. Flames leapt from the building and reddened the sky. “Clare, where is your mother? Where’s Roisin?” Morgan’s voice was harsh with terror and urgency.

Clare scrambled to her feet without answering. She wrapped his cloak tight around her and began running in the direction of the blazing tavern.

“Clare! Wait!” He started after her, cursing the war, the fire, the redcoats, the madness that had made him think it was justifiable to put the city to the torch. “Clare!”

Another voice was shouting the same thing. “Clare! Over here!”

He saw Roisin, backlit by the flames, running toward her daughter. She put an arm around Clare and led her away. In seconds the smoke hid them both. Morgan took a step toward where he’d last seen them, then realized he could bring them nothing but more grief.

He was a known rebel, wearing the uniform of Washington’s army. The mad impulse that made him come looking for them had served its purpose. At least he’d saved Clare’s life. Now the best he could do for Roisin and Clare was to get as far away from them as he could.

Morgan stripped one of the dead sailors of his coat and breeches and put them on over his own. Then he ran.

Ann Street was as yet untouched. Hidden in the doorway of a coal shed a few yards from his uncle Luke’s house, Morgan watched the dawn arrive. Andrew was nowhere to be seen, but his two young sons had managed to carry their grandfather into the street. Moments later, Meg joined them. It required both her and her small daughter to drag an oiled-cloth bundle tied with rope; no doubt the things Meg imagined she couldn’t do without. If they had to flee she’d forget about them soon enough. The sun was up; Andrew’s family waited. Morgan as well. It was his fault Luke couldn’t run from the fire. He had to be sure his uncle was truly safe.

The sun’s rays pierced the smoke. Now the noise seemed louder, but it wasn’t just wordless screams of horror and fear. Morgan heard voices shouting commands. English voices. Their officers were bringing the rampaging British troops under control, and finally setting them to fighting the fire. Andrew’s family also heard the sounds of the British finally restoring order. The boys carried their grandfather inside, and Meg and the little girl followed. Thank Christ.

Morgan felt his legs start to tremble. The exhaustion of the last few days was catching up with him, but he couldn’t give in yet. He’d been a rebel all his life, but this time he had a purpose. This time he was for something, not against someone. Burning the city had been his duty and he’d done it. But Holy bloody Savior, at what a price.

He had to get back to Fort Washington. No better time to make a break for it then now, while there was still so much confusion. Except he had one more place to go. Covered with soot and wearing the uniform of an English sailor, as he was, no one would pay him any mind.

It was relatively easy to get to the court part of town. The mob was heading the other way, north in the path of the fire. The old fort was still standing, as were the governor’s mansion and his mother’s house. And most of their neighbors. All were pristine and unmarked in the early morning sunshine. Even the wind knew these were the privileged people, the leaders of charmed lives.

“You there, sailor! Pick up a shovel and get moving.”

The officer who shouted the command looked at him only once, then wheeled his horse in the opposite direction. “All of you, get going,” he bellowed over his shoulder. “You’ve got your orders. Bury the dead wherever you find them.”

Morgan picked a spade out of the pile of digging tools that had been dumped in the street and fell in line behind the other English troops.

He lost count of the days, slept only a few hours at a stretch, taking cover among first one group of British sailors then another. The chaos protected him up to a point, but he was still in the city.

Holy Savior, he was hungry. He’d survived on the bits of food he could scavenge from the streets. A feast of charred pig meat once, but that seemed a long time past. He didn’t dare get in line when grub was doled out to the troops in the work details. In the few minutes’ respite while they ate they’d have time to look at him and ask questions.

All he needed was a few hours’ more luck. A little more time to get past the city’s defenses. Once he was in the woods he’d be unstoppable, at least by any bloody Englishman. Not one of them knew the paths through the trees and streams of Manhattan the way he did.

He wasn’t sure if it was the second or the third day since the fire when he saw his chance. It was midafternoon when Morgan slipped through a momentarily unguarded gate in the wall that had been erected north of Partition Street, and left the city for the Rutgers estate. Careful to avoid the house—English officers were sure to be quartered there—he made his way across Division Street onto the De Lancey property he knew so well.

Bouwery Lane would have been the most direct route north, but he’d heard the sailors talking about General Cornwallis setting up headquarters in the De Lancey house. Morgan went northwest by another smaller lane and crossed the churning canal that drained what had been the Collect Pond when he was a lad. Most called it the Fresh Water Pond these days, but it seemed much smaller than he remembered. Back then everything around here had been wild and wooded. These last years—typical De Lancey greed—more and more of the old pond had been drained and filled.

What was left was turgid, murky, and covered in a slick of green. He knelt, pushed the scum away, and scooped up the first drink he’d had in many hours. Not as sweet as it used to be, but not brackish. He still had his canteen and filled it, remembering the stories his grandfather had told of boyhood swims in the Collect Pond, and of a wooded paradise where lovers met in secret. Not anymore.

North through the fields now, staying parallel with the Boston Road, but avoiding it. Once in a while he heard the tramp of feet and the clatter of hooves on the cobbles. Reinforcements being brought down to the city, most likely. An army of occupation feared confusion above all things. If they caught him and suspected he’d been the one to start the fire, drawing and quartering would be considered too merciful.

After a time he stopped long enough to take off the soot-blackened sailor’s clothes and bury them. He went on in the tattered remains of his American uniform. If he was unlucky, there would at least be a military court, a trial of sorts.

There were fortifications everywhere. Many had been built by the Americans in the months and weeks leading up to the battle but were guarded now by men in red coats. He was slowed by the need to climb the rugged hills rather than take the roads that skirted them. It made for an exhausting journey, and he hadn’t slept properly in days. Late the first day, after a feast of juicy plums from a tree on a long-abandoned farm, he crawled into the remains of an old root cellar and closed his eyes, telling himself he’d take only a brief rest. When he woke it was a gray dawn and a whole night had passed. He ate more plums, shoved still more into his pockets, and went on.

He heard the drumroll when the sun was high overhead. The drummer was bloody close, maybe a few yards away, no more.

Morgan reckoned he was about a mile north of Turtle Bay, on a stretch of level ground leading inevitably to the next Manhattan hill. He stopped where he stood, closed his eyes, tried desperately to remember the lay of the land beyond the stand of maples immediately ahead.

The artillery field. The great cleared space where in the spring he and a few others had been training boys of thirteen and fourteen, newly arrived from Virginia and Carolina, to load and fire cannon.

He took a few cautious steps. The trees gave way to a hedgerow of thorny wild roses studded with the bright red hips of autumn, and prickly twisting vines for which he had no name. On his belly, peering through the gnarled and heaving roots of the shrubs, he saw the field. The cannons were gone. He had no idea if they’d been captured or saved. In their place, on a raised dais of raw planks, there was a gallows.

Another drumroll, this one longer than the first. Holy Savior. It was a hanging.

Morgan had tied his neckerchief around his head to absorb the perspiration. It was only partially effective in the intense heat. He had to rub his eyes to clear them of stinging, salty sweat. Finally he could see.

The man the redcoats were leading to the gallows was a civilian, with his hands roped behind him. Any farmer left in these parts was probably a Tory. So what had this one done?

Sweet Holy Savior! The man had been turned around, made to stand with his back to the gallows and facing the hedge. Nat Hale. But out of uniform. Oh, Jesus God Almighty.

“Nathan Hale, though you claim to be a captain in the army of rebellion now unlawfully marshaled against his Most Gracious Majesty, George III, you were captured wearing the dress of an ordinary citizen.” The man who spoke was a red-coated colonel, reading from a paper he held about a foot from his nose, his head drawn back so he could see the words. For his part Hale stared straight ahead, stony-faced, saying nothing.

“You admit to being in the City of New York with the intention of gaining information about His Majesty’s loyal and lawful forces, and carrying same to the renegade and treasonous General George Washington. Therefore, Nathan Hale, you are judged to be engaging in the detestable and cowardly act of spying. By order of General Howe you are to hang by the neck until dead. Sentence to be carried out immediately.”

Morgan’s hand was on the hilt of his cutlass. It was the only weapon he had. In addition to the colonel who had read the charge there were eight redcoats in the field, and the black-masked hangman. Terrible odds. That didn’t stop him from inching forward, squirming through the hedge until he reached a place where he could launch himself into the field in one thrust.

“Prisoner, do you have anything to say?”

“Only, sir, that I regret I have but one life to give for my country.”