City of Glory

by Beverly Swerling

  Holy Hannah’s Cabin, 8 P.M.

  WU SAT ON THE GROUND, leaning his back against a tree and watching the woman called Han-nah draw a bucket of water from the cistern. Watching the yang gui zhi who spoke the language of the Middle Kingdom. Ahyee! The most dangerous foreign devil in this place.

  He and the foreign ghost woman were speaking their own speech now. Wu could overhear only a few words and understand no more than half of those. Easy to move closer, but that would put the rest of his plan at risk. Some distance away the two boys were playing a game that involved throwing a knife so its tip stuck in the ground, showing off the various ways it could be done. He had seen boys in China playing a similar game. Not him though. Never games. Never games. Third Son Wu—he could not now remember any name he’d been given before he became Thumbless—had always worked on the junk with his father. The gamblers came by night and by day, and his earliest memory was distributing the mahjong tiles to the newcomers. Eventually he learned to count the money. Then to gamble himself. Until he paid a debt with both thumbs and decided to forget everything he’d learned and start over again. Not on the junk, on land.

  Never gamble. Never gamble. Only make a place where others can let the tiles and the money run through their fingers. Thumbless Wu became an important man, a rich man who would be an ancestor. Then the British brought the white smoke from Calcutta to Canton, and he watched others become even richer.

  Ahyee! Great chests of wood, each one packed with forty big balls of the sticky black stuff that miraculously became white smoke. Forbidden. Forbidden. The emperor says so. Never mind. The chests are sold on a secret island in the River Pearl, and the buyers, all civilized men of the Middle Kingdom, pay the English traders in silver, which the traders take to Canton to pay the hong merchants for tea—ahyee! always so much tea—and silk and porcelain. Everyone happy. Except the emperor. Except Thumbless Wu.

  Men, it turned out, would pay more and sacrifice more to be allowed to draw in white smoke than to gamble, and when their brains had drifted away with the smoke, they had no money left for other pleasures. But when Thumbless Wu formed a secret society to oppose the hidden places where those who once gambled went to suck in white smoke, the men who bought the chests that came from Calcutta made every man of the Middle Kingdom who traded with them for the precious black balls swear that Wu Thumbless would have none of what they bought. Those who defied the rule they killed. So. So. When the last of the traders who dared to do business with him was dead, it was clear. To be the richest man in Canton, to be an ancestor, Thumbless Wu must first become this filthy thing reduced to begging for rice. Until here in New York he could find his own source of white smoke.

  Good plan. Good plan. In Canton he had met men who had been to Calcutta, and he learned that the black balls began when the special red flowers dropped their seed. But how to make the seed into the sticky stuff that could be sucked into the lungs as white smoke, no one could tell him that. Then he heard the American sailors brag that in New York there was everything that could be desired on this earth. Since men without number desired the sticky black stuff that made white smoke, it followed that the red flowers could also be found in America, as well as someone who knew how to make them into the precious black balls and pack them forty to a chest and send them on a ship to Canton. The rest would be done by Thumbless Wu and his many brothers and cousins and uncles, and their junks that stretched end to end in the Bogue and sailed up and down the coast of the Middle Kingdom.

  He had come far and suffered much. He would not give up everything he had gained merely to satisfy his curiosity about what the redheaded barbarian with the civilized tongue was discussing with the foreign ghost woman.

  Wu moved, slowly and cautiously; each little bounce along the earth took him nearer the trees. Soon the voices of the yang gui zhi were only a distant noise that sounded to him like throat clearings.

  “Look down there, Joyful Patrick Turner,” Hannah said. “Tell me what you see.”

  The cistern was not very deep. “Water,” Joyful said, peering over the mixed jumble of boulders and pebbles that surrounded Hannah’s hole in the ground. “And some leaves, and possibly a drowned animal or two that had the misfortune to fall in. What’s this to do with me?”

  “Told you, I did. Something shining. Very valuable. Coming over the water.”

  “That’s as may be, but not from this filthy cistern.” Joyful turned aside, took off his hat and tucked it under his left arm, and found a handkerchief with his right to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Something shining coming over the water. The Great Mogul? But how did Holy Hannah know about it? And what did she know? He had no answers to those questions, but he was sure that wherever Manon’s diamond came from, it was not this rat hole of a cistern. “We’re on an island, Hannah. The sea’s all around us. Why does your something shining have to come from these few inches of standing water?”

  “The Holy One, blessed be He, told me to ask. What do you see?” she repeated.

  “Nothing,” Joyful admitted. “I see nothing shining and nothing valuable. And if Almighty God is speaking to you, I respectfully suggest He could be a damned sight clearer.”

  Hannah shrugged. “Then the message don’t be for you. And as you’d do well to remember, Joyful Patrick Turner, ‘the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.’ Book o’ Exodus. One o’ the holiest books.”

  “The one that tells about the Children of Israel going forth from Egypt, isn’t it, Hannah?”

  “Aye.”

  “And the Egyptians chased the Children of Israel, and they wandered forty years in the desert. Never been easy to be a Jew, has it? So why would I be told the Jews had something that belonged to me?”

  “The Lord parted the sea to let the Israelites pass, and drowned the Egyptians that came after them. That’s all in Exodus as well. And don’t matter what you was told. Not unless the teller had some sense in him, and whatever it was really belonged to you, not someone else. Look into the cistern, Joyful. Tell me what you see.”

  “Nothing, Hannah,” he said, sighing. “Nothing different than I saw before.”

  “Not meant for you then.” There was an air of finality to her words. Joyful didn’t think he could change her mind with argument or cajolery.

  She bent over to heft the jug she’d filled with water. It was a great brown thing that held twenty gallons at least. Mighty heavy for an old woman. Joyful took the jug from her. “Jesse or Will should be doing this for you.” He glanced over to where the two boys were playing mumblety peg.

  “The lads do their share,” Hannah said. “And mostly they work from dawn to past dark. Ain’t many chances they get to play.”

  “Thumbless then. Where’s he got himself to, by the way?” The man had been sitting on the grass a few minutes before. Now Joyful couldn’t see him.

  She shrugged. “Thumbless don’t be strong enough to lug around jugs o’ water. Once he is, then he’ll go. As for where he is right now, probably went to do his business out in the woods behind. Does that often enough. Less, mind you, since he been eating that rice you brung.”

  “It’s what he’s accustomed to. Agrees with his digestion.”

  “Did you bring more?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Said you would.”

  “Yes,” Joyful agreed. “I’ll try and get more and bring it back.” Tomorrow perhaps, or even the next day. Let Wu build up enough of a hunger for the stuff to make him more cooperative. Knowing that the man had convinced Finbar to allow him to stow away on the Canton Star was not the same as knowing why he’d come.

  There was no way Thumbless Wu could keep up with a man on horseback, but he’d never intended to. There was still light enough for him to follow the prints made in the soft earth by the horse’s hooves. He worried that he’d lose the trail when they got to the paved roads of the city, but at least he knew what the horse of the barbarian with the red hair looked like. He would recognize it if—Ahyee! His
joss was marvelous this day. The gods were truly smiling on him. The place the barbarian was going was here at the very edge of the town.

  The trail of hoofprints led around to the back of a large and imposing house. Only a mandarin of highest standing would live in such a house. But if the barbarian had business with such a mandarin, he would go in through the gate facing the street. Instead he had tethered his horse in the rear, beside a brick wall that when Wu peeked over it revealed a small garden of luscious fruits—pears trained to climb the walls, and apple trees marching in precise rows up the middle of the square. Even better, there was a young girl working in the garden. And she was not a gwai nui sing, a foreign ghost woman like the one called Hah-nah. This was a civilized girl swaying on proper golden lilies.

  While he watched, a young man, also a civilized person, but tall the way those from the far northwest of China were, came out. He was carrying a small burlap sack on a shoulder broader than the task required. Fan. The thought made Wu’s mouth water. He fingered his knife, but knew that even with it he was no match for the young man tall as a gau leng Manchurian, and the even taller yang gui zhi barbarian who came out of the house behind him. The girl bowed herself respectfully out of their presence and went back into the house. The two men went to where the barbarian’s horse was tethered and spoke for a while, using proper Mandarin, the Chinese being especially courteous to the man with the red hair, calling him Lord and bowing repeatedly, even though the barbarian kept telling him not to do so. “But I am honored by your presence, Lord. We all are.” Over and over, as if he were the barbarian’s servant.

  They spoke about the war, who was winning and who was losing, and how soon the mandarins on both sides would talk their way to peace. Thumbless Wu knew about the war. He knew that to get to America it had been necessary for Canton Star to sail past the fighting ships of a mighty navy, and that from the moment he set foot on the diu ling boat he was at the mercy of the diu ling barbarian captain he thought of as O-too. Never mind. Never mind. He was here. And he had found the apothecary and the red flowers. And now—all gods bear witness to the quantities of incense he would burn in thanksgiving for his marvelous joss this night—he had discovered civilized people. He did not mind when he saw the young one who looked like a Manchurian put the fan in the saddlebags of the barbarian with the red hair, and he felt no anxiety when the barbarian mounted his horse and rode away. He was quite sure he was in a place where he could make guanxi, and once he did, fan would follow.

  Wu waited until the tall young one went into the house and the girl tottered back out on her golden lilies. She made his mouth water more than the fan. “Psst…” Wu hissed at her.

  The girl turned to the sound. When she saw him, her eyes opened to become too big for her face, like a small animal, startled in the night when it was caught in the glow of the lanterns of a junk coming to the shore.

  “Psst…” Wu said again, and beckoned her to him.

  Hanover Street, 8:30 P.M.

  Vinegar Clifford, wearing his working uniform of black singlet and leggings, stood motionless with his arms folded, the bullwhip dangling uncoiled from one huge fist. Gornt Blakeman’s countinghouse was old, the ceiling of the front room low, the exposed beams darkened with the smoke of the many open fires that had burned on the hearth before the Franklin stove was installed. The two tall desks stood waiting for the morning when the clerks would return and conduct Blakeman’s business. For now the whipper was alone, standing guard beside the narrow staircase that led to the private quarters.

  The thick door on the landing was firmly closed and no sound escaped from behind it.

  The upstairs room with its surplus of heavy furniture was already full of black shadows, the only relief a pool of yellow light cast by a single oil lamp burning on a table. Gornt Blakeman and his guest sat inside the circle of light, and though he knew they were secure and well guarded, Blakeman spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “It is a time for men of vision, Mr. Astor. Men who can see the glory that lies ahead.”

  “Ja, perhaps. Also a time it may be to hang for treason.”

  “I do not believe that, sir. I don’t think you believe it either.”

  Jacob Astor shrugged. “I know what I believe, Mr. Blakeman. It is to know what you believe that I am here at your countinghouse.”

  “Very well, I will tell you.” Blakeman’s face looked strange and fantastic in the lamplight. As if, like the dragon on his ship’s flag, when he opened his mouth flames would shoot forth. “First, I cannot see that it is treason for a man to consider how best to protect his fortune, indeed his very ability to earn his living, from fools who put it in peril. That such fools have been elected to their office does not seem to me to enter into it.”

  “Three responses there are to that. One is that here in New York we made a solemn agreement. Both documents we signed, Mr. Blakeman, the Declaration for Independency and later the Constitution. We joined the United States. By what right do we unjoin?”

  “The same right as was declared in that first document you mentioned. Because, ‘in the course of human events,’ as they put it, ‘it becomes necessary.’ And personally, Mr. Astor, I signed nothing. Neither is your name on the document.”

  Astor sat in a large, velvet-covered chair with a gilt frame, primly upright so his feet could touch the floor. The chair was not only uncomfortable, it was rather more grand than this crowded room under the eaves deserved. Ja, but Blakeman’s chair was grander still. A throne. So, der Kerl wollte König sein. The man would be a king. How long had he nursed this dream? “The people of New York, Mr. Blakeman, the mechanics and the ordinary workers you must have for your scheme to succeed, they are all republicans these days, against the British and for the French. They support President Madison and his war. Your man downstairs, big he is, terrifying even. But all the city he cannot keep in line with his whip.”

  “True, Mr. Astor.” Blakeman’s voice was if anything even softer. “But Vinegar Clifford and his whip are not the only means of enforcing order. I can call on others if necessary.”

  “The militia is here to defend the city against the British. When you say ‘March!’ you think they will put one foot in front of the other?”

  Blakeman waved a dismissive hand. “Not every man of New York is a member of the militia. Security will not be a problem. Take my word for that.”

  “Ja, perhaps. But how can even this great city stand alone among the nations of the world? It is a fantasy, Mr. Blakeman. Almost I might say a delusion.”

  “No, Mr. Astor. It is not. You forget, perhaps, that before there were these so called United States, there were Athens and Sparta, and later Florence and Venice…the great city-states of history.”

  “Ja, history. Ancient history. Now, in modern times, it is—”

  “In modern times things are different, I agree. I never said only New York, Mr. Astor.”

  “So? Who else? Men from Massachusetts?”

  “Some,” Blakeman admitted. “Still more from Connecticut. And perhaps Rhode Island.”

  “New England hotheads.”

  “That’s what the British called them thirty-five years ago when they met in Pennsylvania to talk rebellion. Look where that led.”

  “To where we are,” Astor admitted. “To the Union now you tell me we must leave.”

  “So that we can survive, sir. So fools cannot lead us by the nose to our inevitable defeat and impoverishment.”

  “And the rest of the world? How, please, will they not see this as an act of supreme disloyalty? Why should they again trust to keep their word those who would do such a thing?”

  “Indeed, Mr. Astor, that is where you come in.”

  This time Astor said nothing. Blakeman knew the moment had come. He rose and for a moment disappeared into the shadows at the far end of the room. When he returned, he carried a leather box about as big as a man’s fist. “Prepare yourself, Mr. Astor. I am about to show you one of the wonders of the world.”

 
; Astor had to struggle to maintain the placid expression that had served his business interests so well for so many years. Not because of what he was about to see. He was sure he knew what the box contained, and he had no particular interest in precious gems. His heart was pounding because it appeared that everything young Turner had told him was true. Which meant the risks were enormous. The syndicate he’d formed to support the war effort had purchased millions of dollars’ worth of government bonds. If there were to be, to all intents and purposes, no United States government to redeem them…eine Katastrophe.

  The box opened with a snapping sound. “One of the wonders of the world,” Blakeman repeated, whispering this time. “Here, have a look.”

  Astor leaned forward. The diamond lay on a black-velvet cushion, and immediately it seemed to gather to itself all the light in the room. All of it was drawn to the heart of the rose-cut stone, each of the diamond’s facets splitting the rays and throwing them back like so many bolts of silent but splendid thunder. “Du lieber Gott,” Astor murmured. “A diamond as big as a large walnut. Never have I even heard of such a thing.”

  “A royal diamond,” Blakeman said quietly. “A diamond that belongs in the crown jewels of a great ruler.”

  “So in this new country of yours, you will be a king? An emperor perhaps?”

  “Not a bit of it. I’m not that much of a fool, Mr. Astor. You yourself pointed out how republican are the sentiments of the ordinary folk of the city. At first I may need to, let’s say, vigorously convince them to go along with how things are to be—and be assured I’m prepared to do it—but business thrives on peace, not unrest. No, we will offer the people of New York a society where every man is the equal of every other, where those who work will never starve, and those who do not can go to their grave the paupers they deserve to be. I will be no king, Mr. Astor, and certainly not an emperor. I shall be the governor of this province. Each of the others, Rhode Island and Connecticut and Massachusetts, they will have governors as well. And from among them we will choose a president.”