City of God

by Swerling, Beverly

  “Can you hear me, Samuel?”

  “Carolina?” Sam raised his head and tried to focus. “It’s you, isn’t it?” “Yes, it’s me.” He was lying on a wooden bed, the mattress ripped in places so she could see the straw stuffing beginning to poke out. There were no sheets and only one pillow. In the old days, when he had slept beside her most nights, Sam had insisted he must have at least two pillows to be comfortable.

  The room was so small there was barely room for the bed, a tiny table beside it, and a large tank of some sort. The place smelled as well. Not just from dirt and unwashed flesh, but something sickly sweet. “Are you sure you can hear me, Samuel? It is very important I speak with you.”

  “How did you get here? How did you know where…Oh. Turner. It has to have been.”

  “Cousin Nicholas has nothing to do with my being here. I have come to discuss business. Can you please get up? It’s very difficult speaking to you when you are sprawled in that fashion.”

  Sam struggled to a sitting position. His ornate long-stemmed pipe was within reach, and he desperately wanted to smoke another blob of opium—he’d been doing little else since that poxed day of the reading of Wilbur Randolf’s will—but he resisted. Whatever brought Carolina here, he had to deal with it. At least well enough to make her go away and leave him in peace. Time enough to smoke then. “What do you want?”

  “Your signature,” she said, reaching into the drawstring bag hanging from her wrist. “On this piece of paper.”

  “What is it?” He squinted to see, but it wasn’t possible in the dim light. “Divorce papers? That’s what you want, isn’t it? So you and—”

  “These are not divorce papers, Samuel. It is rather too late for that.” Papa’s words came back to her as clearly as the day nine years past when he first spoke them. Think of Zachary’s future, Carolina. What will society make of him as the son of divorced parents? “Have you a quill?”

  Sam stood up. He felt terribly dizzy for a moment, but he knew from experience it would get better if he could manage to stay on his feet. He reached out a hand and touched the wall for support. That helped. “I can find a quill if I need one. But not unless you tell me what you want me to sign.”

  I cannot think, Mrs. Devrey, that your husband will actually sign a document such as this. So said Mr. Gordon James. Maybe she should have gone to a different lawyer and not given yet another of the family’s sordid secrets into the hands of the man who already knew so many, but that would have meant many more explanations. I promise you he will sign, Mr. James. I am certain of it.

  “It is a bill of sale for the ship being built in Danny Parker’s yard on Thirty-fourth Street. You are selling it to me for the sum of ten dollars.”

  Sam stared at her and wiped a hand over his eyes, but Carolina had not disappeared. She was not a dream, a cloud-induced mirage. “You’re mad. You must be. How did you find out…No, never mind about that. How can you think I would—”

  “Sell me the ship? Because it is in your best interest to do so.”

  The dizziness was increasing, and he felt sick, as if he might vomit. Perhaps all over Carolina’s black mourning frock. He tried taking his hand from the wall and standing up to his full height so he could look down on her, but he staggered and had to put the hand back for support. “You’re mad,” he said again. “How is signing away my ship for ten dollars in my best interest?”

  “Because I am offering you another consideration as well. You pay ten dollars and sell me the ship Danny Parker is building, and you secure the right to stay where you are. You and your mistress and her child and her servant—all of you may remain right here. You may even continue to collect the rents from your Chinese lodgers. At least for the time being,” she added, wanting him to know that withholding those rents was yet within her power. “Otherwise I shall evict the lot of you.”

  “You can’t. You don’t have possession…” Then, as some bits of clarity pierced the opium fog, “The Jew, August Belmont. He’s behind this, isn’t he?”

  “In a manner of speaking. He sold me these two houses, Samuel, which I have purchased on Zachary’s behalf. They are part of his trust, and as you know, I am the sole trustee. So I have the power to put you all on the street, and I shall do it unless you sign this bill of sale for the new ship.”

  Samuel shook his head. “I won’t. I’m your legal husband, and that means that whatever is yours is mine.”

  “You’re not listening, Samuel. I don’t own the houses, Zachary does, but it is I who control their disposition. I am also in possession of the note you signed with August Belmont.”

  He sagged as if the weight of something entirely too heavy to be borne had settled on his shoulders, and leaned against the wall to prevent himself from falling. “You’re a witch from hell, Carolina Randolf. I should have known it years ago.”

  “Carolina Randolf Devrey,” she corrected. “You gave me your name in St. Paul’s Church, Samuel Devrey, and for the moment it suits me to keep it. As for being a witch, perhaps I am and what of it? You are in my debt, Samuel. More precisely, in debt to the trust I manage. However, I am prepared to forgive all in return for your signature on this bill of sale. If, on the other hand, you do not sign, I will put your Chinese whore and her bastard child and her servant on the street. Where will they go, Samuel? Who will take them in? Where will you go? I’m told Astor has already replaced you at Devrey’s.” She toyed with telling him of the note she’d sent to Astor, anonymously of course, about the menage on Cherry Street but decided against it. “If you try to return to Fourteenth Street I will set the coppers on you and make such a public stench as New York has never before had the opportunity to smell.”

  “You wouldn’t. What about the children?”

  “They are young. They would grow past it. You aren’t young, Samuel.”

  Sam stared at her a moment more. “Hell witch,” he said, then staggered a step closer to the tank and fell to his knees. Was he going to beg, she wondered? And why did she not feel more elation at the prospect?

  The pen and the inkpot and his journal were under a loose floorboard. He kept them handy so that he could make notes of his experiments, but hidden so no one else could read the observations he’d been recording. His hands were trembling so it wasn’t easy to prize up the board. He wanted to ask for her help, but he would not. Finally the thing lifted. He retrieved the pen and the ink and started to let the floorboard drop back into place, but Carolina extended the pointed toe of her leather boot to prevent it. “That book,” she demanded, “in the hole. What is it?”

  Sam had hold of the floorboard. Wreck of a man that he was these days, he could still summon enough strength to smash it down on her foot. He looked up at her and realized she knew that as well. Slapping her, once even blacking her eye, beating her about the legs with a riding crop. It used to help. Not anymore. The time when physical violence directed at Carolina somehow eased him was apparently past. Quiet, that’s all he wanted now, and, if he told the truth, to swallow clouds. “I’ll extend our bargain,” he said. “The book contains all the secrets of the ship. You need the one as well as the other. I will give it to you in return for one thing more.”

  “What is it?”

  “The little girl. My…Mei Lin.” The words were thick and heavy in his mouth, and the smell of opium somewhere in the building was driving him nearly frantic with longing. “Mei Lin,” he said again.

  “Yes? What about her?” Surely he wasn’t suggesting she adopt his bastard.

  “She goes to school. Nuns. Madams of the Sacred Heart. They call her Linda Di. She must keep on going. Half Chinese. It’s her only chance. You will pay her tuition.”

  “How much?”

  “One hundred dollars a term.”

  She didn’t ask to be born, Carolina. “Very well.”

  “Until she is eighteen?”

  “Until then. You have my word.” She moved her foot and stretched out her hand for the notebook.

  Sam handed i
t to her.

  When Carolina went outside, the child was waiting. Impossible to know how much she might have heard. “You’re called Linda Di, I’m told.”

  Mei Lin curtsied. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you attend a school taught by Catholic nuns.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The Convent of the Sacred Heart on Mulberry Street.”

  Carolina took one of her visiting cards from the drawstring bag, which now held Samuel’s journal and the document giving her ownership of the vessel under construction in Danny Parker’s auxiliary yard. “Here,” she said, handing the card to the girl. “This is my name and my address. I take it you can read.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Call me Mrs. Devrey.” God knows what the child thought her mother might be called. “And if you need anything. Or if something happens to your father. Indeed, anything you think I should know about, come and see me.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “DOES SHE HAVE a name, Mr. Parker?” It was, Carolina knew, considered the worst possible luck to change a ship’s name.

  “Not yet. Owner’s privilege to pick the name. I’ve been waiting for Mr. Devrey to say.”

  “Well, as you know, I am now the owner.” She nodded at the document Danny Parker clutched in his hand. He’d kept hold of it all the while they surveyed the ship. The keel and the ribs were rising from stocks erected above ways headed directly into the river. That was the ordinary manner of such things, Carolina knew. What was not ordinary was that in this instance the whole affair was tented beneath a vast expanse of tarpaulin supported on thick posts, the frontmost set in the river itself. The arrangement might not have been necessary up here in the Thirty-fourth Street wilds, but obviously they had put a high price on secrecy. Besides, it kept out the worst of the November winds and thus helped the quest for speed. Carolina knew all about the Houqua and the race for Canton. It was now her business to know such things.

  The soft slap of water lapping at heavily oiled canvas was the only sound to be heard. It would have been pitch black had Danny Parker not held a lantern. They stood amidships, the lantern’s yellow glow illuminating the length of the vessel stretched either side. “One hundred and seventy feet stem to stern, not counting the bowsprit,” Parker said. “And thirty-three feet across the beam. There’s nothing larger afloat. Might never be. She’ll lade eleven hundred tons.”

  “You’re proud of her, aren’t you, Mr. Parker?”

  “Aye, I am. Mr. Devrey and I designed her. After his experiments, o’ course.”

  She had spent hours poring over Samuel’s notes of those experiments. “And you believe she will be the swiftest ship as well as the biggest? Because of her flat keel?”

  Danny didn’t let on how surprised he was that she should know such a thing. “I do. Her keel and her length,” he added. “Those seem to be the key. Plus how much sail she’ll carry.”

  “Eleven hundred tons of fresh tea that arrives soon after harvest. That will fetch a fair price at auction, don’t you think, Mr. Parker?”

  “Aye, it will. And twenty-five percent of the gain mine. That was the arrangement, Mrs. Devrey. I’ve a note signed by your husband.”

  “I will honor the agreement, Mr. Parker. You need have no fear on that score.” Danny Parker’s participation in the profit was noted in Samuel’s book, so she was not surprised. August Belmont, however, would not consider himself bound by the agreement. Thus Mr. Parker’s twenty-five percent share would come entirely out of her earnings. Fair enough. Businessmen as let greed rule them are inevitably headed for ruin, Carolina. One of the lessons she’d learned at Papa’s knee, when Wilbur Randolf talked to her because he had neither wife nor son with whom to share his ruminations, back when it would not have occurred to either of them that one day she might own the majority share in the fastest ship afloat. “But, Mr. Parker,” she said, “you must promise not to hold me liable if we lose our gamble and she founders.”

  Parker nodded. “That’s how we laid it out. Me and Mr. Devrey.”

  “Then that will be our agreement as well. I will require a new note between you and me speaking directly to that. I’ll have my attorney draw it up.”

  “Do that,” he said. “I’ll sign.”

  Cold as it was outside the tarpaulin, it suddenly seemed to Carolina very close in the damp dark beneath it. She took a handkerchief—edged in black lace because she was still in mourning for her father—from her muff and dabbed at her face. “That’s it then. We prosper or fail together, Mr. Parker.” Carolina held out her hand.

  Danny hesitated a moment, then he took it. “So we do, Mrs. Devrey. What about a name for her, then? Seeing as you’re the new owner.”

  She had toyed with Zachary Celinda or even a made-up combination such as Zac-Ce or Cezac. Then, the night before, she’d wakened from a sound sleep and known exactly what the name of the vessel was to be.

  “She’s to be called Hell Witch, Mr. Parker.” Samuel had said she was a witch from hell; perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was entirely unnatural for a woman to be so exhilarated by these matters of business, but she had Samuel Devrey to thank for whatever she’d become. He had not permitted her to be the wife she’d longed to be. Now she and her ship would sink into oblivion or sail to glory together. “Hell Witch,” she repeated.

  “I fear it won’t be easy getting a crew to sign on to sail a ship with that name, Mrs. Devrey.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Parker. I think it will be very easy once she’s seen to be the most beautiful thing ever to set sail from New York. Anyway, we will tempt them.”

  “With what?”

  “Money, of course. Bonuses for getting her to Hong Kong and back in the fastest time ever made.” So much promised to so many meant that her own profit, the profit accruing to Zachary’s trust, might turn out to be little or nothing at least on the maiden voyage and perhaps the next one or two as well. But according to Samuel’s notebook, a ship like this might make two round-trip voyages in a year. So they would sail on to fabulous riches together, Carolina Randolf Devrey and her Hell Witch. And would that repay her for everything she had suffered at Samuel’s hands? Yes, because it must. “Hell Witch, she is,” she said.

  They took her down river to Parker’s main yard at the foot of Montgomery Street on the evening of June 13, 1844, triple reefed but still catching all the breezes that customarily rose after sundown, and waited until sunup the following morning to send her into the inner harbor at the foot of South Street. Early as it was, a crowd had gathered. There was no way it could not be so. The tarpaulin had come off two months before, when the masts of Hell Witch rose a hundred and forty feet into the air.

  Hell Witch. As long and sleek as a greyhound, with a razor-sharp bow and a rounded stern and a hull that rose above the waterline in graceful concave curves. Painted black she was, with a blood-red stripe, and her figurehead a woman with golden hair streaming in the wind. Modeled after Carolina Devrey herself, people whispered. But when Carolina’s ship moved into the outer harbor and at last released her sails, they had something else to talk about.

  Hell Witch rode beneath a cloud of canvas such as New York had never seen. The Houqua had sailed two weeks before and they’d thought her rigging remarkable. But this…Never seen the like. Probably never will again. Not after she goes below the waves at the Cape. Mainsail, topsail, topgallant, and royals, those were not strange sights to New Yorkers. But Carolina Devrey’s ship carried as well a skysail so high it might, someone said, be a napkin to tie beneath God’s chin. There was as well an assortment of other sails hung on extended yards either side of the normal rigging, and triangular sails between the masts, and still more hanging from the bowsprit. One by one, or so it seemed, they were unfurled and caught the wind, and the exquisite craft glided towards her destiny.

  “There’s never been anything to match her,” Carolina murmured. “Never.”

  “Never,” Nick agreed, putting his arm around her waist and drawing her close, something he cou
ld do only because they had total privacy inside Mr. August Belmont’s carriage. Belmont had lent it to Carolina for the occasion, along with his driver, and they were parked hard by the South Street dock that belonged to Devrey Shipping, peeping through the carriage’s curtained windows. The ship—which did not fly the gold lion and crossed swords of the Devrey arms on the owner’s pennant run up to mark the occasion, only the initials, HW—became a white speck on the horizon. The crowd began to disperse, all talking, everyone with an opinion. And each as good as the next for the moment. It would be months before the fate of Hell Witch would be known for sure.

  Carolina squeezed Nick’s hand. “Captain Paxos,” she said, speaking aloud her greatest worry. “Do you think I did the right thing?”

  “I think you followed your best judgment. There’s nothing else you could do.”

  The captain is as important as the ship. So said Samuel’s notes. The right man can bring her through the Atlantic gales, the Cape’s fifty-foot waves, or the monsoon winds, indeed the weather of any time of year. But he must be as finely tuned to his purpose as the vessel.