City of Dreams (112 page)

She snapped her glass closed. The last of the British soldiers were getting into the last of the longboats, which meant General Washington would soon arrive. According to the
Gazette
—and it was only last week that that wretch James Rivington had given up plastering the royal standard on his front page—the general was waiting just north of the city. He would make a triumphal entry on the heels of the redcoats. It was time to prepare.

Squaw stepped to the edge of the parapet. She’d had a pole erected there a few days before, in preparation for this very minute, and she had sewn the standard with her own hands. Her magic hands, as Mama used to call them, back when she was a girl named Jennet and her needlework was so much admired. Another life, that seemed, as if it had all happened to someone else.

She’d torn up two frocks to get the fabric she needed—a red one and a blue one—and three white petticoats. She hadn’t actually seen the thing before, but she knew how it was to be made. Thirteen alternating red and white stripes, and thirteen white stars on a blue field. The Continental Congress had voted the design official six years ago, in ’77, but this was the first day the American flag would fly over New York City. And hers, by heaven, hers would be the first of the first.

She ran the standard up the pole and a breeze came along as if on command, whipping the flag stiff. Squaw pressed her hands to her chest. No wonder her heart was beating so fast. Who wouldn’t be excited after so much worry and fear and risk? But they had won. Thank God. Thank God.

“Mistress! Bit bloody in advance o’ yerself, ain’t ye?”

Squaw looked down. William Cunningham, wearing a wig and a splendid scarlet coat, looked up. She stared at him a moment, then went down.

“Left it rather late, haven’t you, provost marshal? I believe the last longboat has already left.”

Cunningham stood beside the front door of the mansion on the Broad Way and studied the woman in front of him. Bloody Squaw bitch. Women disgusted him. This one worse than most. “I got me own arrangements. Meanwhile, I came for a final payment.”

“A final payment? Do you honestly think I’m likely to pay you any more money? Now? Today?”

“Sure I do. Way I see it, all them rebels is comin’ back now, takin’ whatever pleases ’em. How’s it gonna be if the like o’ me hangs about long enough to tell ’em the place where His Majesty’s officers got the most o’ their recreation while they was here? Best ye be payin’ me and I be leavin’ without talkin’ to no one.”

“No, Mr. Cunningham, that most assuredly is not best. And while we’re about it, I’ll inform you of something else, you bestial excuse for a man. I’ve paid you these past few years only because it was the easiest thing to do. I knew full well you had no idea where Morgan really was or you’d have gone after him, however much I paid.”

“Ye didn’t know any such thing.”

“Oh, but of course I did. And you might care to know that it’s been extraordinarily useful having His Majesty’s officers visiting my home nightly. How better to keep General Washington informed of their most personal and private thoughts?”

“Bloody savage bitch. I al’ays thought ye was a traitor.”

“Indeed. I’m everything you thought. And more. Much more, Mr. Provost Marshal. Remember that when you’re rotting in hell, as you surely will be.” Her heart was thudding so it must break out of her chest, but she didn’t care. This thing standing in front of her wasn’t a human being. He was an abomination. The suffering he’d caused was beyond measure. It demanded vengeance.

The ruby eyes of the golden horse’s head winked at her. She grabbed the walking stick and lashed out.

“Bloody whore bitch!” Cunningham snatched at the end of the ebony cane and missed. “Lift yer hand to me, will ye! I’ll see ye stripped naked and marched through the streets for the spying, lying—” The walking stick swiped his cheek. Cunningham felt the blood start from his nose. “Bitch!” he roared. “Jezebel! I’ll see ye in hell!”

Her strike at his ugly, pockmarked face had split the ebony walking stick in two. Squaw lunged with the jagged end of the piece still attached to the horse’s head. “I’ll gouge out your eyes, you devil! Blindness is only a tenth what you deserve. I’ll get your—”

The pain came in one single wave. She waited for it to crest and ebb as all pain must, but it did not. Instead it went higher, reaching from her chest into her head, stabbing her behind the eyes, taking her vision and leaving only a crimson haze. She cried out, staggered back, and fell against the stairs.

Cunningham leaped forward. Bound to be plenty worth taking from this place. Probably she had money on her as well. He was interrupted by the sound of bugles and fifes and drums. And cheers. Not very far away. Bloody hell. That bloody whore’s son Washington. Not wise for William Cunningham to be in New York when George Washington arrived. Not wise at all. He turned and ran, leaving the door open behind him.

A ray of midday sunshine found its way into the front hall of New York’s finest bordello, and the ruby eyes of the golden horse’s head sparkled in Squaw DaSilva’s lifeless hand.

II

December fourth. More than a month since he’d been home. Cuf didn’t know how most of the days had passed, how he’d eaten or where he’d slept. He couldn’t remember. He’d been drunk much of the time, and God knew how long since he’d washed. He smelled like a mule.

“Come in. I be all ready for ye.”

The woman was black and big and everyone called her Jessie Jump Up. “Used to be I was al’ays ready to jump up and dance and sing,” she’d told him the first time he’d come to her little house in an alley off Nassau Street. “But I don’t be doin’ that no more. Too old and too fat. Ought to call me Jessie Clean Yez Up these days. But folks ain’t got that much sense.”

Jessie’s place was snug and warm; in her front room she took your measurements with a length of twine, and afterward sewed you clean clothes that fit proper. In her back room Jessie Jump Up had a big copper tub sitting beside a fire that always seemed to be blazing. So before you changed into your new clothes you could have a real bath, and Jessie would even trim your hair and blade your face clean if you asked her.

Seemed as if all the horrors of the war and the redcoats hadn’t touched Jessie Jump Up, though in fact they made her business possible. The American soldiers coming home looked like urchins; not a proper uniform among them. First things they wanted were clean clothes that covered their bones, and not to smell like a pig been wallowing in slops. Jessie Jump Up served their needs and didn’t charge too much.

“Fine mornin’ it is,” she told Cuf when he appeared at her front door. “A fine early mornin’.” It wasn’t yet seven, and the weak winter sun was barely up.

“You have my things?”

“Sure I do. Got yer clothes all ready. Only ye got to pay me rest o’ what ye owes ’fore ye can have ’em.”

Cuf took a coin pouch from his pocket. A French colonel had given it to him. “Your wages, Monsieur Cuf. For extraordinary service.” He hadn’t expected anything; most of Washington’s men weren’t paid, because there was no money to pay them. But later, he counted what was in the pouch: ten guineas. And later still he learned that to raise the money the French officers had taken a collection among themselves. Because they believed that without Cuf many of them would not have survived.

He opened the pouch and counted out three shillings. “There, with what I paid before, that’s five shillings altogether.”

Jessie Jump Up took the money and tested each coin between her teeth before she nodded agreement. “That be fine. Ye can go in now. Bath’s waitin’. Ye wants me to come along and scrub the back o’ ye?”

“No, thanks. Are the clothes in there as well?”

“Yes, did everything just like you be saying. Do a lot o’ sayin’ how ye wants thing, don’t ye? A mighty lot for a man ain’t exactly one color or t’other. Where you gonna go once ye shined up yer mulatto self?”

Cuf pushed past her without answering. “I’ll be out in an hour. Maybe less. You keep your distance until I’m done.”

He shut and barred the door behind him. That was one thing that had convinced him to make his arrangement with Jessie Jump Up: when he inspected her facilities he saw that he could bar the door against any intrusions.

The water was steaming hot—he’d insisted on that as well—and he settled into it with a sigh of satisfaction.

There was only a sliver of rough brown soap, with abrasive bits of ash left behind from the making. Not like the sweet soap Roisin used to make. Clare made it now. He knew because he’d gone to her shop in Hanover Square and seen her standing beside a counter piled high with all manner of things, including squares of the sweet-smelling soap her mother had taught her to make.

Clare had seen him as well. She’d glanced up and smiled a big smile and hurried to throw open the door. Cuf hadn’t gone inside. He’d run away down the cobbled street instead. Backward, so he could keep looking at her. And she’d looked at him and called out, “Papa! Papa!” but he didn’t answer. She must know he wasn’t her papa. Deep in her bones, same as he always had.

The bath was cold by the time he got out and dried himself beside the fire. The clothes Jessie Jump Up had made for him felt good when he put them on. Not Negro slave clothes like he’d been wearing all this time: a linen shirt, not homespun, a jacket of wool, not flannel, and woolen britches, not leather. Finally Cuf tucked the dueling pistol into his waistband, made sure it was hidden by the coat, and unbarred the door.

Cuf got to the corner of Broad Street and Pearl at nearly eleven in the morning. Fraunces Tavern looked as fine as ever, having survived the destruction of the last years. Folks said Mr. Fraunces still set a fine table upstairs in his long room. Certainly there had been more than one celebration held in his tavern in the week since General Washington had marched into the city in triumph. Now the general was going home to Virginia, and he’d invited those of his officers who remained in New York to drink a final toast with him before he left.

The whole town knew about it. That’s why so many were on Broad Street, waiting to bid Washington a safe journey. Cuf stood behind a group of men who had taken a place across the road from the tavern. He kept his hand tucked inside his coat, on the hilt of the pistol. It was primed and ready to fire.
Dear God, Cuf, you wouldn’t do anything foolish? Promise me you wouldn’t.
Roisin’s voice, living in his head the way it always had.

Had to be that Morgan Turner was over there in Fraunces’s place with Washington and the rest.

Ten minutes went by. Twenty. The crowd was quiet until someone murmured, “They’re coming,” and the door to the tavern opened. Men began filing into the street, and the waiting people began to clap.

You’d think they’d have had enough of beating their hands together these last few days, but seemed as if they hadn’t. Plenty of will and strength for one last round of applause. Sounded as if it might never stop.

Cuf didn’t clap. He took the pistol from his waistband and let it hang by his side, knowing that everyone in the street was too intent on Washington and his officers to pay him any mind. He recognized a few faces immediately—Alexander Hamilton and Philip Schuyler and Richard Varick—but some he expected weren’t there, like Major Burr. Must be true that Burr had left the general’s staff because he was jealous of how much Washington relied on Hamilton. No sign of Morgan, either. Not until after Washington himself came out the door.

The shouts began as soon as the general appeared. Washington raised his hat, turning this way and that to acknowledge the greeting of the onlookers. Morgan had followed him into the pale morning sunlight. He was standing some five feet behind the general, not intruding on the homage the crowd was paying its hero. All the same, it was impossible to get a clear shot at Morgan while Washington was acknowledging the people’s cheers.

Dear God, Cuf, you wouldn’t do anything foolish? Promise me you wouldn’t.

Foolish was what he’d been doing, not what he was going to do. Foolish was all the years when he’d known the truth and let it fester in his belly. Foolish was allowing Morgan to steal everything he valued. Foolish was acting as if nothing had changed, as if Morgan was still the master and Cuf was still the slave. As if he had no right to avenge himself for the theft of his honor. That was foolish.

Washington turned and said something to Hamilton. The younger man waved his hand and someone brought a horse; the general mounted and set off up Broad Street toward the Broad Way. The tumultuous crowd surged after him. Cuf stayed where he was.

So did Morgan. A few of the others turned to him and shook his hand, and one or two clapped him on the back. Not Hamilton, Cuf noticed. There didn’t seem to be any affection between Alexander Hamilton and Morgan Turner. All the same, Hamilton was standing near enough to spoil Cuf’s aim.

Then another man came up to Morgan, one Cuf didn’t know. And after that a third. Each of them blocked the line between his pistol and the evil heart of Morgan Turner.