City of Dreams (27 page)

“Get to town,” the woman screamed. “Here you, Joe Crooke! You do what I say. Get to town. Run fast as you can! Tell them to send the soldiers. Tell them the slaves are killing their masters. Go!”

The boy hesitated, transfixed by the horror of the scene. A gunshot rang out as the African who had stolen a musket managed to fire it. “Go!” the woman screamed, grabbing the boy’s shoulder and shaking him until his teeth chattered in his head. “You hear me, Joe Crooke? If you don’t, every Christian in New York will be dead before morning. Go!”

Finally the boy turned and ran.

In the orchard the ground was soaked with blood. Eight white men were dead and seven more were dying of their wounds. Amba dispatched one of those when she heard him groan. She knelt beside him and took a two-fisted grip on her club and brought it down on his head and heard his skull crack open, and screamed with joy when she reached in and with her bare hands tore out his brains.

The eleven slaves who were not part of the rebellion, who’d been brought by their masters to help fight the fire, fell back and stayed among the trees and watched those who claimed to own them being slain and did not know what to do. They had no weapons. They knew nothing of any planned revolt. They had been slaves so long they did not know the meaning of free.

Only one understood. When he saw the woman whose belly was swollen with a coming child club a man to death, he ran forward and wrested the weapon out of the woman’s hands and turned on the nearest white man. It was his master’s teenage son, a boy he’d known since he was born. The slave who had only that instant become a rebel beat the boy’s face and his shoulders and his chest with the club, and the boy fell down at his feet and the slave howled with the emotion that had only just been born inside him and turned to find the next white man he could kill.

The men who had run back to their houses to get their muskets returned to the orchard. “Fire at will!” someone shouted. There were no commanders in this battle, only seven muskets in the hands of seven white men who knew how to use them and twenty-eight slaves armed with clubs and hatchets and knives, and two muskets that had run out of shot, and one that was held by a man who had never before fired such a weapon.

Peter the Doctor had a hatchet. He had used it well. The blade dripped blood and was flecked with chips of bone. But the plan had been to kill all the whites quickly, to let none get away and spread the alarm. When he saw the men running toward the orchard with their muskets, Peter knew they had failed. “Run!” he screamed. “Run! Into the woods!”

Amba could not run, at least not very far, and Quaco would not leave her. The two Indians would not shame their ancestors by running. Most of the others didn’t move fast enough. Nine men followed Peter the Doctor in the direction of the woods to the north. Four more—the slave who had clubbed his master’s teenage son among them—ran toward the town to seek a place to hide there. The rest, including the slaves who had been brought to the orchard to fight the fire, were captured.

It was done before the red-coated detachment from the garrison could be heard coming down the road, their booted feet pounding the cobbles at double time.

“To arms! To arms!”

Christopher had been up half the night reading and it was still dark when the alarm was cried. He had to shake himself awake when the bellman ran by his window shouting the command. “To arms! To arms!”

Indians perhaps. Or the damned Dutch back again. Or maybe the French. God alone knew what the threat was this time, and it didn’t matter a great deal. He’d find out soon enough. He swung his long legs off the bed and began pulling his breeches on over the underwear he slept in. His boots next, and after that his shirt and his coat. All without the need of a candle and in less than forty seconds.

Christopher could hear the cries of the bellmen outside his window as they passed down other roads, and the muffled calls of the men of New York City as they ran into the streets, prepared to defend their homes and families.

It had been so since the colonies were founded. No government thousands of miles away could send sufficient troops to guard the New World settlers. Every colonial assembly charged the able-bodied men in its jurisdiction with the duty to own a musket and be prepared to fight in the common defense. The only exemptions were ministers and magistrates.

Christopher was neither. His weapon was in the cupboard beside the front door. He grabbed it, then found his powder horn and slung it over his shoulder.

“You going out there, Mr. Christopher? You got any idea what’s happening?”

“None, Selma. But don’t worry, whoever’s come to make mischief will be leaving soon enough.” He raised his musket in the direction of the old black woman who had looked after him since he was eleven. “A taste of this and I’ll be back by sunup for some of your johnnycakes.”

In the streets, listening to the whispered stories of his friends and neighbors, Christopher knew it wouldn’t be that simple. This time the enemy was within the gates.

Sweet Jesus. A slave revolt. A cold chill gripped his bowels. He had only old Selma, and clearly she was part of no rebellion, but others … Nearly every household in the town owned three or four blacks. Many had more. They were as necessary to ordinary, decent life as chairs and tables and bedding.

The men around him were thinking the same thing. They stood with their muskets at the ready, waiting for orders to proceed somewhere and do something, but you could see by the way they turned and looked back at their own front doors that they were considering whether the wisest course was to run back inside and protect their families from the blacks who’d been bought to serve them.

One man made a move in that direction, but before he could start a stampede a redcoat ran into Hall Place, shouting, “You there! Come with me! I need a dozen musketmen to relieve the soldiers posted at the ferry slips.”

The men peppered him with questions. Whose slaves? Where? How many? What had they done?

“Don’t know much more than you do. Only that there’s a pile of corpses out at the edge of town. Hacked apart, they were. Come this way. The governor wants every regular soldier for searching the woods, so you’re needed to relieve the sentinels.”

The redcoat waved the men forward, and the majority followed him. Christopher did not. He looked after the others for a moment, then turned and ran in the opposite direction, toward Pearl Street. Tamsyn and Red Bess lived alone, with no man for protection, and Bess had four or five slaves at least. Maybe more.

“What are you doing here? You’re no more welcome now than ever you have been.” Bess had opened the apothecary shop in answer to his wild beating on the door. Her drawstring cap was askew and under her wrapper she clearly wore no corset. Surplus flesh seemed to tumble around her, all of it quivering with fury.

“I came because I’m kin,” Christopher said, pushing past her and kicking the door shut behind him. “I have a duty to you and Tamsyn.”

“I can look after myself and my daughter.” It appeared she could. Red Bess was holding a musket that looked every bit as fit for service as Christopher’s, and she was pointing it straight at him. “I’ll thank you to leave.”

“Not until I’m sure you’re all right. It’s a slave revolt. They’ve already murdered God knows how many.”

“I know what it is. My slaves are not part of it. They’re all well fed and well sheltered and well looked after. They’ve no cause to revolt.”

An old black woman had come to the door between the shop and the private house. She stood there and said nothing, listening to her mistress, but staring at Christopher with particular attention. Or so it seemed to him.

Christopher stared back. Bess saw the direction of his glance and swung around. “Oh, it’s you, is it? You’ve been with this family longer than any of the others, Hetje. Tell him there are no rebels here. Then perhaps he’ll leave and take the Turner stench with him.”

Hetje continued to look at Christopher. She began nodding, but she didn’t say a word.

“Do as I say!” Bess shouted. “I won’t put up with your insolence forever, Hetje. I can’t be responsible for keeping my temper if you—”

“That Tom who be tending the fires and driving the wagon,” Hetje said. “He be gone.”

“Tom? But he’s …” Bess’s face was suddenly as white as her cap. “You must be mistaken. My husband bought Tom when he was a boy,” she whispered. “He has been with us for over twenty years.”

“Well, he don’t be with you anymore.” Hetje turned to go.

“Wait,” Christopher commanded. Hetje stopped walking. Been a long time since there had been a man giving orders in this house. “Where’s Miss Tamsyn? Have you seen—”

“I’m right here, Christopher. And I am perfectly fine.”

Unlike her mother, Tamsyn was properly dressed. The bodice of her yellow calico frock was carefully laced, the width of her skirt evidenced a series of stiff petticoats, and her dark hair was neatly tucked under her cap. “It was good of you to come to protect us, Christopher, but Mama and I are surely in no danger from any rebellious slaves.”

“Tom’s gone.” Bess whispered the words, staring straight ahead. “Hetje just told me. Tom’s one of the rebels.”

Tamsyn gasped. Hetje went on nodding. And looking at Christopher.

There was something remarkable in the way she was studying him. Christopher had to force himself to look away. “If one of your own slaves is with the rebels, that surely makes it clear you need a man here. I’ll stay until—”

The door opened. Christopher swung around to face whoever was coming in, musket cocked and ready.

The man was white, and he clearly did not consider himself in any danger from Christopher’s weapon. He carried one of his own, but lowered it as soon as he saw the two women. “Mistress Bess, Miss Tamsyn. I give thanks you’re both unharmed.”

It occurred to Christopher that the stranger might be someone sent by Willem. In an emergency, the responsibility for his widowed sister and orphaned niece was clearly his. But Chris had picked up the hint of a Scots accent in the other man’s words, and nothing of a servant’s tone. “May I know your name, sir?”

“Zachary Craddock. And yours?”

“This is Christopher Turner, Zach.” Tamsyn took a step forward, put herself between the two men. “Chris is my second cousin. He came to protect us.”

Craddock nodded, a brisk movement that was minimally polite but could not be mistaken for a bow. “Ah yes, Turner the surgeon. I’ve heard of you.”

“Zachary’s a trained physician, Chris. He has a degree in medicine from Edinburgh University.”

“Indeed. I am honored, sir. I haven’t—”

Bess was oblivious to the two young men standing in her apothecary shop who had just now recognized each other as rivals and declared a private war of their own. “Tom’s joined the rebels. I can hardly credit it.”

“That is alarming news, mistress. It makes me more than happy I’ve come to take you away.”

“Take us away where, Zachary?” Despite the gravity of the situation there was a lilt of sudden pleasure in Tamsyn’s words. She knew she was the prize both men sought, and in all of her entirely sheltered life she’d never been taken away anywhere. “Whatever do you mean?”