City of Dreams (97 page)

American troops were quartered in the Manhattan country houses of the Morrises and the Bayards and the Stuyvesants and the De Lanceys. James De Lancey’s eldest son had been head of the clan since his father died. As soon as he heard the Declaration he left the Bouwery Lane estate and joined the crowds of Tory supporters of the crown fleeing to England. Going home, they called it.

Other Tories chose to stay and fight. Not just the aristocrats; ordinary people who thought this lust for independence was treasonous or mad. Nearly the entire Staten Island militia joined the British army. Every day scores of men and boys from New Jersey and the long island slipped through the American lines to increase the manpower aboard the English fleet.

When the Declaration was proclaimed, Oliver De Lancey had retreated to his country residence, his great estate in Bloomingdale Village on the west side of upper Manhattan. “Until the madness passes,” he said. “After they’ve tasted some British shot.” Two weeks later, rebel soldiers arrived to chop down Oliver De Lancey’s wood lot. They said they needed it for fuel. De Lancey fired a musket into the air in protest. In reply the rebels hacked down his orchards and ornamental gardens as well. Oliver took a ship for London. That left his eldest son—also named Oliver—to look after the family fortunes in New York.

The Tories weren’t the only ones fleeing the city. A few months earlier, the population had been twenty-five thousand. By early August it was down to five thousand. “There’s streets in this here place looks like the plague’s been at ’em,” a rebel soldier from Virginia muttered. “Every house be empty.”

“Can’t blame ’em for goin’. ’Tain’t a city no more. It’s a battleground.”

On August 17 more English ships arrived. They brought some fifteen thousand additional men.

“I reckon that makes it twelve hundred cannon, say a bit over thirty thousand regimental troops, and thirteen thousand seamen available to take New York for the crown, sir.” Morgan Turner was with Washington in the fort.

“You’re sure of the numbers?” Washington’s eyes were red with fatigue.

“As sure as I can be, sir. It’s an estimate, but not a wild guess.”

“Nearly fifty thousand fighting men … I’d wager that’s the largest expeditionary force Britain has ever assembled.”

“I think it is, sir. At least I’ve never heard of anything remotely close.”

“Must have cost the better part of a million pounds, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would, sir.”

“Staggering.” Washington leaned back in his seat, long legs stretched out before him. He was a remarkably tall man. Had an inch or two on Morgan when they stood side by side. “What wouldn’t I give for a proper navy to put you in charge of, Captain Turner.” The Continental Congress had voted to have a navy but provided no money to create one. A couple of ships, the
Alfred
and the
Providence,
were commanded by a renegade Scot who called himself John Paul Jones, but they were staying clear of the massed fleet in New York harbor.

“A proper navy,” Morgan repeated. “I’d give a lot for that myself, General.”

“Yes, I’m sure you would. Even five or six frigates could make all the difference.”

“With respect, sir, in the present circumstances I’d choose schooners and brigantines. Fast ships with mobile firepower and a shallow draft. We could hide in the coves along the coast and come up from behind to harry them. I’m not saying we’d sink the British navy, but we’d give them something to think about besides shelling the city.”

“A few sloops and a brigantine or two. Good God, Captain Turner, it doesn’t sound like much, does it?”

“No, General. Not much.”

“Certainly it’s not hard to come by ships like that or the crews to sail them. Not in New York.”

Ah, yes. Morgan knew what he was being accused of, however subtly. A number of the city’s most prominent shipowners and merchants had watched the rabble-rousing tactics of Turner, Sears, McDougall, and Willet and decided that taxes imposed by London were bad, but independence in a world run by the liberty boys meant chaos and an end to profit. Besides, damned few of the shipping kings thought the rebels could win. That was the real reason they hadn’t rushed to donate a navy for Washington. They’d privateer for him, but as and when they chose. Putting vessels at Washington’s command was another matter. “Ships can be had, General. With money.”

“Indeed.” Washington stood and looked across the seemingly placid Hudson to New Jersey. The gun emplacements he’d set up on the Palisades weren’t enough. Too little firepower, too few men. Then there was the so-called Continental Congress, which couldn’t stop arguing long enough to vote any bills of finance for its army, and had no standing treasury if it did. “Money.”

“I did tell you, sir—”

“That there’s an excellent chance you could get a large sum,” Washington interrupted. “If I could find you a single ship and a crew, and spare you for a couple of months. Yes, you told me, Captain Turner.”

“With luck, no more than six weeks, sir. Have you considered the idea?”

“I have. Bearing in mind as well that you told me there’s no guarantee the treasure remains where you left it.”

Morgan wondered if someday he might regret being as frank as he had. No, not with Washington. Not after he’d made it a matter of confidence. “No guarantee,” he said again. “Though the one other person who might have found it didn’t do so.”

The older man’s eyes narrowed. “You’re certain of that, aren’t you?”

Morgan nodded. Eight years ago. His own two hands around Petrus Vrinck’s miserable neck had choked the truth out of him.

“Didn’t get nothin’. I swears it. Never had no chance. God-rotting Caleb Devrey died afore he got me a ship.”

“Where’s the paper, Vrinck? The instructions you took out of the horse’s head, where is it?”

“Yer chokin’ the life out o’ me. I told ye. Only saw it that once. Then that poxed Caleb Devrey took it. I ain’t never seen it since.”

Soon after that Vrinck had died of stab wounds sustained in a scuffle on the docks. Morgan had seen the body with his own eyes. Petrus Vrinck and Caleb Devrey, partners in hell. “I’m certain, yes, General.”

At least a dozen times he’d thought of getting a ship and a crew and going south after the hoard. He knew he could do it. He’d written the directions down and buried them for fear he might forget, but he never had.
Seventy-four degrees thirty minutes west of Greenwich. Just south of twenty-four degrees north. Twice
around and thrice back.
He could still find the treasure. For a time he’d considered moving it, but the past ten years had not been ordinary times. He was needed where he was. Besides, he’d never found the money to finance such an expedition. God knows, he’d rot in hell before he’d ask his mother to pay for it. Now he’d gladly turn over the treasure to help insure the success of the rebellion.

“I can’t swear the money is still there, General Washington. But I can give a reasonable assurance. Better than a seventy-five-percent chance, I’d say. Bullion and coinage, sir. Instantly usable.” Everyone knew Washington was a gaming man, quick to calculate the odds and place a wager. Incredibly lucky, they said. That was rubbish. Brains and daring, had nothing to do with luck.

The general stood with his back to Morgan for some moments more. When the answer came it was the same as it had been the two previous times the offer had been made. “I can’t spare you, Captain Turner.” Washington swung around and faced him, the tired eyes alive with conviction. “You’re among my most valuable officers. Money is important—but fighting experience, that’s vital.”

III

By day the American rebels made brave noises. In the dark they pissed themselves with fear. “Soon,” Washington promised. “War will come soon and the waiting will be over. That’s the worst part, the waiting.”

On August 17 notices were posted warning that the attack was near and every civilian should get out of the city.

Flossie had died in her sleep three years earlier. Squaw DaSilva was a vigorous sixty-one, but she hadn’t left her house since the night Solomon set Morgan’s ship on fire and left her to deal with his legacy of hatred. Solomon DaSilva had given her everything she valued in this life, and in the end, bit by painful bit, had taken it all away. Now there was nothing for her outside the four walls of her grand mansion on the Broad Way.

It was up to Tilda to tell her mistress what they were saying in the streets. “Gonna be a battle. We best be goin’.”

“Nonsense, Tilda. We’re safe here. No one has troubled us so far, have they?”

Squaw DaSilva’s house was exempt from quartering, and guarded by half a dozen well-armed American militiamen. It was full of whores. She had brought a choice handful of the women who worked for her to live under her private roof, and she made them available only to American officers above the rank of lieutenant.

“Be so many masts in the harbor, looks like trees be growin’ there,” Tilda said stubbornly. “Never seen so many ships. Rebels be going to lose this fight.”

Her mistress nodded behind her veil. “Yes, Tilda. I think that’s likely.”

“Well?”

“I believe British officers also have appendages between their legs, Tilda. And frequently require a place to put them.”

It was a little past midnight. The August air soft and warm, with that sweet, clean smell that follows a summer night’s rain. Six of His Majesty’s warships moved into position on the ocean side of the Narrows. Under that guard, the oars of dozens of barges and longboats made a constant rippling across the surface of the calm water. Dawn was a faint pinkness when the first of the redcoats disembarked in Brooklyn.

Two hundred rebel Pennsylvania riflemen were stationed by the beachhead. Their captain squinted into the dark and assessed the strength of the troops pouring onto the long island. After a few minutes he raised his arm and silently waved his men back into the hills.

Half an hour later, hidden by the dense woods of Brooklyn Heights, Major Aaron Burr snapped his glass shut and turned to his commanding officer. “Looks like that’s the last of them for the moment, sir. By my count they’ve landed some fifteen thousand men.”

The general was from New Hampshire. He’d taken over the defense of Brooklyn less than a week earlier and his bowels had been pure water ever since. He required a few seconds of clenching his buttocks before he could be sure he wouldn’t shit himself when he spoke. Nonetheless, he said: “We’re ready for ’em.” At least, he hoped they were. He’d never been in this poxed colony of New York before. Didn’t know a damned thing about the lay of the land. The job was his because no one else was available.

They were dug in on Brooklyn Heights, and farther back along the heavily forested and mostly impassable Heights of Guan. A fighting man’s dream of a defensive position. Except that he had perhaps five thousand men with which to hold the bloody Guan Heights against some fifteen thousand lobsters.

The odds got worse. The British sent additional redcoats and moved five thousand Hessians into the village of Flatbush. Their offensive line now stretched in a four-mile arc along the southern tip of the long island, or Nassau Island as they still insisted on calling it. Washington sent his New Hampshire general every live body he could spare, three thousand additional men.

When the maneuvering was finished seven thousand American rebels faced twenty-one thousand soldiers fighting for the British.

There was another force opposing the rebels, a termite burrowing from within. Kings County on the long island was a hotbed of Tories.

“Someone to see you, sir. A local.”

The man who came into the British command tent had to bend to keep his head from hitting the ridgepole. A farmer, by the look of him. Big like so many of these colonials, and stinking of manure. Fellow wasted no time speaking his piece. “Be four roads through the Guan Heights.” The farmer ticked them off on his fingers, speaking slowly as if he thought the English colonel might be either stupid or deaf. “The Gowanus. The Flatbush. The Bedford. And the Jamaica.”