Black Dick, I’m told, was a monkish man with three daughters and had never been unfaithful to his wife. He’d gone to sea at thirteen. According to Harold, he had a very long nose, yet not one of his features ever moved. He could barely deliver a smile; his face was stiff and brown as leather after thirty years of wind and rain on a battle ship. His brother was a much prettier man.
While Washington froze his arse at Morristown, Sir William sat in Manhattan and seized whatever pleasure he could find. He had his own secret weapon—a certain Mrs. Loring, who was better endowed than any flying bomb or cannonball. Mrs. Loring could leave a hundred men and boys in her wake. Howe’s whore, the rebels loved to call her. He’d met Mrs. Loring while he was military dictator of Massachusetts. Now she was duchess of Manhattan, with her own carriage and a brace of mean little lapdogs. Her husband, Joshua Loring, a Tory toad who had lent his wife to Sir William, was rewarded with a remarkable sinecure: commissary of prisons. The toad grew filthy rich starving American prisoners, while Mrs. Loring lived with her knight near the Battery and dictated what every other woman had to wear.
Gert was furious. She had no wish for a female commandant of cosmetics and clothes. Yet she made a conquest—Admiral Lord Richard Howe. He’d become less of a monk on our island. He had his own private closet at the Queen’s Yard. He’d never been unfaithful to his wife before, not even once. Perhaps the winter clime had quickened his blood. Or was it the miraculous aroma of the nuns? But Black Dick was not dictator of Manhattan. Sir William was, with his assassins in red coats who could rape and murder without the slightest redress. The military tribunals would never dare sentence a soldier. And I, faith, was a small part of William’s infernal machine, connected to Sir Harold Morse.
General Howe was deeply suspicious of a former page at Windsor Castle who wanted to establish a secret service on behalf of the king. And so he buried Harold, put him in charge of recruiting a brigade of Africans—slaves and freemen who could be trained as army butchers, baggage handlers, couriers, and carpenters. Harold’s first measure was to appoint me as his amanuensis with my old rebel rank of acting lieutenant. I was now in charge of gathering the Blues, as African men were often called with a mingling of fear and contempt. I could have declined Harold’s offer. But his brigade of Blues would be better off than most whites in wartime Manhattan—we would never starve.
Sir William heaped Harold with honors, made him provost marshal of all Africans on our island. ’T was a bitter task. Harold was responsible for every slave and free black. Even Clara had to report to him. And I had to keep his ledgers, like some unholy scrivener for the Crown. He had a closet inside our fort, and we’d sit above the ramparts, smoking little cigars from the Indies that had come into style long before the revolution.
The British hangman, a mulatto from Canada named Redmund, reported to us. A cultivated fellow with frilled cuffs, he served as the public whipper when he wasn’t hanging people. The Loyalists on our island objected to him, wondering if he had the nerve to hang rebellious blacks. That’s all they ever muttered about. Rebellious Blues.
Redmund liked to wear a mask, tho’ it wasn’t included in his contract with the king. No one thwarted Redmund, not even the Howes. He alone decided on the route when a man had to be whipped. He would never whip a woman, preferring to brand her with an iron.
Redmund was like a magistrate. “Elizabeth,” he might sing or say, branding the king’s initials—GR for George Rex—on a woman’s buttocks. “Pray you never steal again.” Said Elizabeth would roll her eyes as if she’d been ravished by a kiss of fire. And the hangman would arrive at our office, weeping under his mask.
“Harold, I should like to resign my commission.”
“You serve by sufferance of the king. I cannot release you. And neither can those two bastard brothers, Sir Billy and Black Dick. But do us the honor of shedding your mask.”
He removed his sheath of black velvet that made his eyes into a hangman’s merciless slits. I understood why Redmund wore a mask. He had the eyes of a sufferer, a saint bound to his victims by some invisible thread.
“I’ll run away. I’ll hide in Out Ward.”
“We’ll only hunt you down.”
“I’ll go on a rampage. I’ll molest a dozen merchants, I’ll brand their wives.”
“A pity, that. To hang such an excellent hangman. Where will we find another?”
But how could we hang him? The nuns were delirious over Redmund. I prayed that Clara wouldn’t fall in love with the fellow. But she of all the nuns seemed superstitious about the mask. And why should Clara have mingled with a hangman when she had every British officer at her feet?
Yet something else rubbed at me. Sir William could lie abed with Mrs. Loring and her lapdogs for the rest of his life, but I’ll wager he thought of one thing only: the quick demise of George Washington. He meant to kill my putative father in whatever devious and dastardly way he could. And he hid his machinations behind the grandiose mask of a peace commissioner. Ye gods! Peace for Sir William was nothing less than Washington’s burial ground.
Twenty
FAITH, THERE WAS LITTLE TO DO ON A WINTRY night without one of Gert’s supper parties, when extra lanterns illuminated the length of Robinson Street, and Holy Ground blazed like a burning barn. Madame’s soirées were the envy of British Manhattan, with nabobs and high commissioners sitting next to the nuns. But suddenly there wasn’t a single nabob or commissioner at Gert’s. Sir William had invited his whore instead, and she’s the one who insisted that the hangman appear at Madame’s table with Harold and myself. She was curious about us, this Mrs. Loring with her beehive of blond hair and a bosom that lurked like a live animal under her silk scarf. She was of a rare beauty and refinement, with but a little paint and a lorgnette that she held to her left eye whenever she engaged us in talk. ’T was a sign of her singular interest. I cannot tell if she dyed her hair. But she was the blondest lady in the room.
Gert was gracious, but I could feel her anger rise. Mrs. Loring had robbed my mother of her role as reigning queen. ’T was hard to fight such a formidable foe as Mrs. Loring. Sir William’s own officers took to calling her “the Sultana,” and a sultana she was, spying on one and all with her lorgnette.
Clara was with us, and Lord Howe, alias Black Dick. He might have had the palsy—that’s how his hands trembled at the sight of Mistress Clara, tho’ there was not a single sign on his leather face.
“Ah,” Sir William said to Harold as we sat down. “The king’s very rascal. How are you, Harry boy? Letting George Washington through the lines again?”
Black Dick took his eyes off Clara for an instant. “Little Brother, what are you talking about?”
“Sir Harold, admiral as he is, has his own novel ideas about a secret service. He encourages Washington to slink into town, set us afire, and sit with some doxy, all of an evening. And we, poor lads, our hands were tied. Would that I had been there. Then I could have promised you a show.”
“But Will,” said Black Dick, “who is the doxy?”
“That, I fear, we shall never learn. It’s beyond the powers of his secret service. My own lads trailed the big oaf to Robinson Street and lost him again. But should he grace us with a second visit, he’ll be shot on sight, or hung by his long hair. Is that plain enough, Sir Harold?”
William the Conqueror scrutinized the table. I dared not look at Gertrude. And I thought it odd that of all the people in Madame’s parlor, it was General Howe himself who most resembled George Washington. Both were giants, both had long hair, both were handsome men.
“Dick,” said the general, “did you not hear that His Majesty had to teach Harold how to eat with knife and fork? And now he plays the military man. I should think he’s Colonel Washington’s greatest ally.”
I could read their British strategy like the Bible. Sir William was longing to goad Harold into a duel. Black Dick might serve as his second. They would venture far beyond the Fields, into the no-man’s-land of Out Ward, w
here even a general could duel. Harold had to hold his tongue if he meant to stay alive.
“Milord,” I said, “Colonel Washington bears your rank. He’s America’s commander in chief.”
“Who’s that?” Sir William asked.
“Harold’s little subaltern, Johnny One-Eye,” said Black Dick, whose closet at the Queen’s Yard was close to mine.
“None other,” says I, bowing to Sir William.
“Dick, the boy’s game, I’ll give you that, more game than Silent Hal.”
“Sir,” I said, “you should not misinterpret Admiral Morse’s silence. He dare not contradict you. But were you not commander in chief, he would rip out your throat.”
“Enough,” Harold shouted, his entire head aflame, as if Redmund had branded him with a hundred irons. “You must desist. I command you.”
“And I command you to speak,” Sir William said. “He’s a saucy lad. I like him. Continue, Johnny One-Eye. Please.”
“Not until the admiral instructs me to do so.”
“All right, all right. Admiral Morse, may I have the honor of conversing with your subaltern?”
There was a madness in Harold, a rage I had never seen before, but he still nodded yes, as if all his history had come down to nothing, and he the little boy again that His Majesty had found in a forest. I loved him at this moment when he was as naked as I, with no more merit than his own skin. And I decided to duel with this tall bully, Sir William, who could relieve me of my other eye with but a nod, could pin my carcass to a tree, yet was no match for the tongue in my mouth, in spite of his schooling and his proximity to the king.
“Milord, George Washington is a general.”
“I think not. A colonel he was and a colonel he will always be,” said our William.
“More to your shame, sir, that you let him elude you. And my admiral was right to allow him into our village. He controlled him thus, like a supreme symphonist. He made music with that man, limited his diabolical damage. Had there been three fires, sir, and not one, you would have no Manhattan on which to build your headquarters. You would have a mountain of dust.”
“I like this boy,” Sir William said, breathing through his nostrils. “Let’s steal him. He should be in my family, Dick. Or yours. A true captain of the secret service.”
“I’m not your whore,” I said, looking Sir William full in the eye.
“No, I am,” said Mrs. Loring, who was a greater diplomat than I. “There will be no more quarreling at this table. I am mistress of all conversation, even if I am not mistress of this house.”
She bade me sit beside her, and I did. I had never seen my mother look so forlorn, or remain so silent. She had been superseded in her own nunnery by a woman as voluptuous as herself. Mrs. Loring had seized the music and the tempo of our meal. She did not have to flirt. She was the consort of America’s most powerful man.
“I wonder who Washington’s doxy could be,” said Mrs. Loring, looking around the table at Gertrude and the nuns. But Gert wouldn’t lower her eyes while Mrs. Loring glanced through her lorgnette.
“Perhaps some goddess of the moon,” Gert said.
“I should doubt that. I’m told his linen isn’t very clean. And what goddess could ever fall in love with a man in a shoddy shirt?”
I watched the two women duel way beyond Sir William’s head. He did not have the imagination to connect George Washington with Madame. Yet Mrs. Loring must have intuited it in a moment. I admired her intelligence and wit. I feared Mrs. Loring and longed to bite her neck. ’T was not akin to that tenderness I had toward Clara, a tenderness that kept me shy and irresolute, without the will to woo her.
I should add that while Mrs. Loring presided over us, she probed under the table with one hand like a salient, live canoe. I was not the least ashamed. I was my own secret service in regard to Mrs. Loring.
She began to parley with the hangman, who dined without his mask.
“Redmund, how unfortunate that you should have to dispatch murderers, spies, and thieves, and punish women who have done no more than steal to keep from starving.”
“Dearest one,” said Sir William, “you mustn’t upset the boy. Had I known your interest in crime and capital punishment, I could have named you a counselor to our chief justice. Confound it, I would have given you his seat. What can they do to us, Dick? We are weary of battlegrounds.”
“Yet you bombard and bayonet with much flourish and finesse,” says I.
“As a soldier must. But we are warriors who never believed in this war, Dick and I. Did we not organize a peace commission at our own expense? Did we not meet with the rebel commissioners wherever we could, empowered by His Majesty to make peace? I love this land of yours, Johnny One-Eye. I did not long to come here as a man-killer. I was ordered to do so. I should rather have been on a fox hunt with that long colonel from Virginia who calls himself commander in chief. And if I sit here and sup with you, it is out of affection.”
“Will, dear,” said Mrs. Loring, “that’s almost a declaration of surrender. And what will happen to a Tory princess like me?”
“There’s the thrust of it. That’s why I fight. To keep your husband busy so that he will forget he ever had a wife. Ain’t that my policy, Dick?”
Black Dick had lost the little string of our table talk, tho’ I could not read much into his leather face. He excused himself, bowed to Mrs. Loring and Madame, and went off with Clara. He’d abandoned the Eagle, his flagship, abandoned his charts, his telescope, and his staff, and made his headquarters at Madame’s.
Sir William sang bawdy songs about a subaltern and a French maid. And my mother? She had to endure him and Mrs. Loring in her house. She was protecting George Washington with her silence. She could not show her pique, or Sir William might have woken from his mental slumber to realize that George Washington’s moon goddess was Madame.
Gert left the table, and I followed her up to the roof, where she had her own little verandah that was like a crow’s nest. We could still hear Sir William’s songs, the stamping of his feet. My mother, who seldom smoked, began to puff on Clara’s long-stemmed pipe. She was much too unsettled to offer a draught to her only son.
“Mother,” I said, “we must leave this place. We must pack our belongings before those assassins suck on our liver.”
Finally she looked up and offered me the pipe. “And where will we go, John?”
“Anywhere,” I said, “but not a Manhattan where men have become vultures.”
“Child,” she said, “we would only find other vultures.”
“Indeed, but General Howe is not the half-wit you think he is. He will connect you to Washington, and then he will tighten the noose, lure him to Robinson Street with false signals and false reports. Go to your general, Madame, with all the girls.”
I could catch a faint smile under all the puff clouds from her pipe.
“And sit with him at Morristown? He does not need a camp wife. And he would not have one. He has America on his mind.”
“Mother,” I said, “you are that America.”
But she’d gone back inside her reverie with that infernal pipe, and there was no point in trying to reason with her. She was not reasonable on the subject of General Washington, and why should she have been? Her own life had been wound up with his in a most unreasonable way.
I went out into the winter, exhausted by our talk. The stars seemed to align right over Robinson Street. Little bonfires crackled, delivering curlicues of smoke. The crackling got into my blood. I was haunted of a sudden by Black Dick and his leathery look. I pictured him as some leper king luxuriating in all the mystery of a mask. But he was far from a leper—him with a navy at his beck and call. It drove me to despair to consider this: Clara and only Clara had enough magic to crawl under that bark he had for skin. I was the leper. And I’d have to use all my cunning to steal her away from the man in a leather mask.
Twenty-One
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE GREAT FIRE OF ’76, AND our island sti
ll sat in its own ruin. I bundled up against the bitter cold of February, while the wind howled off the Hudson, and I scrutinized Canvas Town, the tent city that was springing up in the charred remains near the river. Blacks from Westchester who began to pour into our streets, believing that Sir William would save them, now had nowhere to live. Prince Paul, the lord of Little Africa, had to accommodate them. No one else would. Wasn’t an empty room to be found in all of Manhattan. Soldiers and their wives, sweethearts, and children were swallowing the town. Their barracks could appear on any street, their canteens in some widow’s yard. The provisioners had no provisions. Farmers would cross over from Brooklyn and have nothing left but a few weevils in their potato bins five minutes after they landed. A biblical plague could have been upon us.
But I didn’t starve. Madame relied on Black Dick, using Clara as her bait. While the admiral was around, we feasted off his flagship. And when he was aboard the Eagle, Madame had her own suppliers, delirious men—Loyalists all—who abandoned their wives for a week and plowed their profits into a “honeymoon” with a particular nun. It would have mattered but little had that nun not been my Clara. I brooded that a stinking pirate could buy Clara’s affection or afford to keep her in chains, but not Johnny One-Eye, who found it impossible to bribe her with licorice she could get from Black Dick. All I could do was feed my own belly.
I had chestnuts and licorice and cones of rock candy that I would share with urchins along the road. But I had to be careful lest I cause a riot. And it was while feeding a small army of waifs on Little Queen Street, at the very edge of Canvas Town, that I heard the furious rumble of wheels. I was nearly run down. A chariot with golden doors and an insolent black driver stopped but a hair from my head.
“Boy, I’ll have you whipped.”
The driver laughed. And then I noticed who was inside his livery—Prince Paul himself, lately of Little Africa. “Sorry, Paul.”
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