City of Dreams (6 page)

So he paid his shillings at the Shiny Black Cat. And she loosened her corset and raised her dress and let him poke her for as long as he could hold it.

Usually, she dropped her skirts when he was done and stepped out to the yard for a quick douche. But sometimes, she stayed and talked, and talk, he knew, was something she saved for her “specials.” And he liked being a “special.”

So one night, he brought her a present. In a deserted house, he had “found” two fine mahogany boxes with brass fittings—a matched set. They were empty. But he had discovered that if he slid a small piece of side molding, the bottoms of each box opened to reveal inner compartments where might be hidden jewels or money, though they were empty, too.

Still, when he gave her the boxes, she acted as if they were full of gold.

And she repaid him the best way she knew. She didn’t simply raise her dress and petticoats. She took them all the way off. Then she paraded in front of him in nothing but the corset, red satin mules, and white stockings. She let him see her front and back, arse and cunny and sweet rum titties, too. Then she pushed him back on the bed and pulled down his breeches and rode him until he was spent. Then they talked.

“So,” she said, “what’s your plan for when the British attack the town?”

“Do what Stuckey tells me to do.”

She got up and pulled on her petticoats, then her dress, but she left her breasts exposed so that he could look at them a bit longer. “I hear that you boys visit the houses of Tory toffs who went runnin’ . . .”

“I need to make my money to pay you.” He got up and pulled on his breeches.

“I know a Tory house where there’s hard coin hidden.” She tightened her corset. “Gold guinea coins.”

“Gold guineas? Why didn’t the owners take them?”

“Because they ain’t left. The wife’s sickly. So she don’t much care that her husband has me come in to ‘cure’ him once a week.”

A thumping started in the next room, accompanied by the deep groaning of a man and the theatrical urging of a woman.

“Where is this house?” asked Gil.

Loretta stepped closer to him. “I won’t tell you, but I’ll
show
you.”

“Then what?”

“Why . . . we can run . . . together.”

The thumping played more steadily against the wall.

Loretta glanced at the mirror vibrating above her little dresser and said, “We’d all like to get out of here, Gilbie. And gold’ll do it. No matter who wins the next fight, gold’ll get us through.”

“I’m
in
the next fight, thanks to you.”

“Don’t be blamin’ a girl for doin’ what she has to do.” Loretta pressed her breasts against him. “And remember, I believe in this fight as much as you do.”

“How do you know what I believe?”

“You signed up, didn’t you? You signed up ’cause the only way for the likes of us to have a chance—without robbin’ houses or whorin’—is to get free. Freedom’s the thing, Gilbie, whether you’re a young yob waitin’ by a coffeehouse for a merchant to give you an errand, or an orphan girl whose uncle sold her into . . . this.”

Gil grabbed Loretta by the shoulders. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because I like you, Gilbie, and you like me.”

Footfalls thumped down the hallway, followed by a knock and Fanny Doolin’s phony-sweet voice. “Hurry up, Loretta, dearie. This here’s a business, don’t forget.”

Loretta glanced at the door, then turned her eyes back to Gil. “And because you and me, we’re two peas in a pod. We both grew up without a pa, we both seen our ma’s die afore their time, and we both want to do better than we done.”

Gil Walker saw honesty in her eyes, no matter how obscured by mascara, more honesty than he had seen in the eyes of all the brokers on the waterfront or all the preachers at in their pulpits or all the Sons of Liberty that ever met at the Queen’s Head.

She smiled. She had all her teeth, all white as milk teeth, not yellowed, not tobacco-browned, not wine-stained. And she had hope, too. “Just trust me,” she said. “If you trust me, I’ll trust you.”

H
AD THEY ATTACKED
New York in those first days after Brooklyn, the British might have ended the rebellion right there. They could have lined the Post Road with gibbets from the Battery to Harlem Heights and hanged a rebel from every one.

But they waited almost three weeks, as if to give Washington the chance to regain a bit of discipline, as if it would not be sporting to beat so disorganized an enemy. Or perhaps they were amused to see Washington spreading his troops up and down Manhattan like a poor man spreading butter on stale bread. Once he had put troops in Harlem and at the Grand Battery and on all the beaches along the East River and in all the little dirt forts that he had built to control the city, the British began to move.

Stuckey’s company spent a Friday night on duty in a new trench that cut across Bayard’s farm, about a quarter mile north of the Common. Then Stuckey allowed them to go home to sleep. Gil expected it would be the last night that they would sleep in their own beds for a long time. So he dropped onto the feathers under Sam Fraunces’s eaves and slept with the same sense of purpose that a miser banks his pennies.

But just after dawn, he and Big Jake were awakened by a pounding on the door.

Gil popped up first. “The tattoo! We missed the tattoo! It must be the attack!”

Jake rolled over. “Hunh?”

Gil leaped to his feet. “Get up. Get dressed. Or we’ll get lashed.”

“It ain’t that,” said Fraunces through the door. “There’s a woman downstairs . . . says she’s a friend of yours.”

“A friend?” said Gil.

Big Jake popped up. “A woman?”

L
ORETTA WAS WAITING
on the street. “Fraunces wouldn’t let me come up.”

Gil turned to Big Jake. “You can go back to bed.”

Big Jake gave them a wink. “You want the room for a bit?”

“No,” said Loretta. “That ain’t what this is about.”

So Big Jake shrugged and went shambling back up the stairs.

Gil looked at the sharp shadows slanting over Broad Street. “It ain’t much more than six o’clock. I was on the line all night.”

“If the big fight’s comin’, time to show you the house, the house with the gold guineas.”

So Gil followed her through the deserted streets.

She wore common clothes and loosed her hair, and he almost told her that she looked beautiful in the morning. But he already knew her answer: Any woman would look beautiful in the morning, if she was leading a man to a stash of gold. So Gil said nothing.

They headed up Broad Street and turned onto Beaver, which was lined with gabled Dutch buildings that housed the merchants who traded the pelts that had given the street its name. But rebellion had put most of the trading houses out of business, so most of the stores were shuttered.

Then they turned onto New Street, the first street that the British made after they took the city from the Dutch. At the lower end lived artisans, craftsmen, and mechanics, who did business on the first floors and kept families on the second. But the neighborhood changed as they headed toward the Presbyterian Church that sat on Wall Street and stared down New Street like the all-seeing eye of God. The dwellings grew larger, taller,
newer
.

Halfway up the street they came to the intersection of Fluten Barrack, which cut from Broad Street over to Broadway.

Loretta stopped on the corner, near an old man who had built a fire on the street and was stirring a large pot of coffee over the flame.

“Mornin’, folks,” he said. “Care to buy some coffee?”

“Coffee?” said Gil. “Where did you get coffee?”

“Been savin’ it. Last coffee in New York, but the redcoats’ll be in our lap soon enough. So I’ll drink it now, and what I can’t drink I’ll sell. No tree bark nor ground-up shoe leather. Just fine roasted beans.”

Gil pulled three copper pennies from his pocket.

“That’ll do.” The old man snatched the coins, took a dipper from the side of the pot, and ladled out a measure of coffee.

Gil had a sip. It was hot and bitter and tasted better in the early morning than rum at midnight. He offered the dipper to Loretta, but she ignored it because her eyes were fixed on a house across the street.

“Old man,” she said. “There’s guards in front of that house.”

“You mean John Blunt’s? The Tory? Colonel Silliman of Connecticut moved in there the other day. Colonel
Gold
Silliman. Some name, eh?”

Gil stepped closer to Loretta and whispered, “That’s his actual name.
Gold
. And that’s as close as we’re getting’ to the gold in that house, I think.”

“Did I hear someone say
gold
?” Big Jake’s voice came up behind them.

“Go back to bed,” said Loretta dejectedly. “I’m doin’ the same. Alone.”

They watched her scurry off, then Big Jake said to Gil, “I been at your side since we was boys. You hold out on me when some whore tells you about a stash of gold—”

“There’s no gold, only a colonel named Gold.” Gil started walking back to the Queen’s Head.

“You better not be lyin’, boy,” cried Big Jake. “That there would be somethin’ to break up a friendship.”

“Coffee, mister?” said the old man to Big Jake.

“Coffee?” Big Jake turned. “Where in hell does a feller get coffee these days?”

iii.

The next morning, Gil Walker heard thunder though the sky was clear. A second later, he felt it rumble in his chest, then its echo rolled across the green farmlands and before he could turn toward the sound, he heard a second clap, even more powerful.

The British naval bombardment had begun.

The Waterfront Boys were back in their trench.

At the center of the line, on Bayard’s Hill, rose a fort that looked to Gil Walker like a giant dungpile. Captain Hamilton had built it, and his provincial artillery had been moved there, so now half a dozen cannon poked out of the dirt like strands of straw grass poking out of the dung.

And from the smell that rose after that first cannon blast, Gil wondered if the whole trench might not fill with dung before the day was over. Someone had shit himself.

Gil jumped up onto the lip of the trench and looked to the north. A white cloud was rising from the East River, and the thunder was rising with it.

“What do you see?” Rooster scrambled out of the trench.

“Five British ships openin’ up on the beach. Looks like Kip’s Bay.”

“Kip’s Bay? That means we’re cut off.”

“You men!” Bull Stuckey came striding along the top of the trench. “Get in line.”

“But, Captain,” said Big Jake, “we thought the redcoats would land down at the Battery. Ain’t that why we pulled back to here? To form a second line?”

“No tellin’ where they’ll land,” answered Stuckey. “So we got Washington up in Harlem, and Henry Knox in the city, and good men up and down the island.”

“But if they’re landing north of us and south of Washington,” said the Bookworm, “they’ll cut us off like one of the heads of Cerberus.”

“Save that fancy talk,” said Stuckey. “Do as you’re told or take a floggin’.”

“Well, I ain’t stayin’ to get flogged nor trapped neither.” Rooster reached down to pick up his musket, and Bull Stuckey kicked him square in the ass.

Rooster went headfirst into the trench, then he popped up with the musket clubbed. “No man lays a hand to me, and no man kicks me, neither.”

Stuckey’s answer was a kick to the jaw that knocked Rooster cold. Then Stuckey pulled out his pistol and looked up and down the trench line. “The next man who challenges me, I’ll shoot him down like a dog, so help me God.” Then he strode off.

And Big Jake looked at Gil. “Rooster was right. We should have deserted.”

A
LTHOUGH IT WAS
the Sabbath, the Supreme Being did not seem offended by the British attack. Otherwise, thought Gil, he might have done something to stop it.

Soon Henry Knox himself was retreating from the city, bringing cannoneers but no cannon, and bringing the thousand men in Colonel Gold Silliman’s brigade but no gold (as far as Gil could tell). Silliman’s Connecticuts crowded into the trench with the New Yorkers, and Gil smelled more shit. He knew it was not any of his friends. He hoped it was not one of the New Yorkers.

All morning, the Waterfront Boys watched and listened and waited. They saw the glinting of shouldered muskets as other American units retreated across the folds in the green landscape. They saw flashes of red—British troops, expanding their beachhead from east to west across the island. They saw flocks of birds flushed from cover before advancing troops. And still the men on Bayard’s Hill waited.

Then, just before noon, a rider approached from the north. He wore the blue sash of a major and was flanked by two big dragoons.

“That’s Aaron Burr,” said the Bookworm. “A Princeton man.”

“Princeton, eh?” Gil took a drink from his wooden canteen. “That means he should have more sense.”

“It means he’s an educated man,” said the Bookworm.

Big Jake laughed. “We’re
in
this fix thanks to educated men.”

Burr reined up in front of the dungpile fort and shouted, “Who’s in charge here?”

Colonel Silliman, who was striding back and forth atop the trench, stopped and said, “I am!”

Colonel Knox, who was striding back and forth atop the rampart, stopped and said, “I am.”

Burr looked from rail-skinny Silliman to mountain-belly Knox, and said to Knox, “You should retreat, sir, or your whole regiment will be cut off.”

“We’ve received no orders,” said Knox.

“Stay here and be sacrificed, then,” said Burr.

“We have no orders, and no option for escape,” Knox shouted, “so we’ll put our faith in Captain Hamilton’s cannon and our strong position.”

Hamilton’s little cocked hat appeared on the rampart above his little red face.

“My compliments to the captain for his skill at piling dirt upon a hill,” answered Burr. “But your fort has no bomb-proof and no water, and it’s a damned hot day for September, sir.”

“I’ll say.” Big Jake upended his empty canteen.

“It’s my opinion,” Burr went on, “that a detachment of British could take this . . .
fort
. . . with a single howitzer.”