He shook his head. “I’m sorry. You changed so, it never occurred to me.”
“Never mind, it’s no longer important. But what is important is that Blakeman never finished what he started with your Manon.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Still,” Delight said. “It’s better.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Go on.” Delight nodded toward Manon. “She’s waiting for you.”
“Delight…”
“Go on,” she said again, and Joyful left her where she stood and went to join Manon.
They’d reached the Inner Harbor by then, heading for the river. Delight turned and looked back the way they’d come. A tune floated out across the water. At least she thought it did. He played in time and he played in tune, but he wouldn’t play nothin’ but “Old Zip Coon.”
Saturday, August 27, 1814
Chapter Twenty-six
The Manhattan Woods,
Soon After Midnight
HANNAH WON’T BE SLEEPING,” Will said. “Not with it so late and neither of us back from town.”
He was right. When Joyful trotted his horse out of the woods and into the clearing, he could see Hannah there in the glittering blue-gray starlight, sitting on the bench beneath the chestnut tree. “I’m glad you brought him home,” she said when she stood up and came to meet them. “That was the right thing.”
He should have guessed. All the way from Maiden Lane he had been pondering how to tell Holy Hannah of Jesse’s death. It was not, of course, necessary. She knew. “Felt it, I did,” she said in a voice that had finished with grieving.
Jesse’s body lay across the horse’s neck, with Will sitting behind him, keeping his dead friend steady. Joyful sat behind, them, the need to keep hold of the reins giving him an excuse to have his arms around both boys. Hannah reached up and put her finger on the bullet wound in the center of Jesse’s forehead. “I was sitting right here wondering where my two lads had got themselves to, and I knew the minute that danged bullet got my one-winged pigeon. He was acting truly brave, was Jesse. He’d o’ wanted to go like that, acting brave.”
“Enormously brave.” Joyful said. “He stopped the bullet meant for me.”
“He’d be right pleased with that,” she said. “Give him here, Will. We can bury him out behind the cabin tomorrow, under them sycamore trees he liked. Don’t seem there’d be any place he’d rest better, seein’ as he had no family, and no proper religion so far as we know.”
Will allowed his friend’s body to slide free into Hannah’s arms. He and Joyful dismounted and tried to help her, but Hannah insisted on carrying the body into the cabin by herself, and didn’t let him go until she put him down on the pile of rags that had been his bed since he came to stay with them. “Only nine days since you brought him home, Will. Him and that big fat kidney from Henry Astor’s private store. You did a real good deed bringing him here. A mitzvah. You can be happy about that.”
“But I’m the one found the pirate ship.” Will was crouched beside Jesse’s body, keening over him, at last letting his grief show. “If I hadn’t o’ done that, we wouldn’t have gone after ’em and Jesse would still—”
“You saved our country, lad,” Joyful said. “I don’t think that’s putting too fine a point on it. There are still those who want to break up the Union, but Gornt Blakeman was the loudest voice among them. With him gone it’s going to be a lot more difficult for them to have their way.”
“Saved the country, did they? Seems to me that makes both my boys real military heroes. You stay with Jesse now, Will. You be his shomer. It’s a mitzvah to watch beside the dead until they’re in the earth. There’s some as say it’s the greatest good deed of all, ’cause they can’t thank you this side of the grave.”
Hannah put her hand on Joyful’s arm. He followed her outside.
“End of a lot of things tonight,” she said when they once again stood beneath the stars. “Beginning of lots of others. Twice around and thrice back. You figured any of it out yet?”
“Some maybe. The treasure’s not where my father left it. I’m sure of that. But Shearith Israel doesn’t have it.”
“They had it for a day or two. Then they gave it back. Captain Harmonious Grant, man I was going to marry, he gave it to the congregation. My doing, that was. But Rabbi Seixas and the others, they said it was blood money and they wouldn’t accept it.”
“How did this Captain Grant get it?”
“Heard talk years back, after the war with the French and their Indians. Harmonious was only a wee lad at the time, but his father had a grog shop down by the waterfront and he heard a Dutchman as had sailed with your papa talk about twice around and thrice back, seventy-four degrees thirty minutes west of Greenwich. Don’t know who else might o’ heard, but they didn’t do nothing about it. Harmonious did. His pa died in the Revolution, and soon as it was over, Harmonious sold the grog shop, got a ship, and that’s where he sailed to, seventy-four degrees thirty minutes west of Greenwich.”
She sat down on the bench beneath the chestnut tree and patted a place beside her. Joyful took it and waited. “You know where that is?” Hannah asked after a time.
“No. Somewhere in the Caribbean, but I went to sea as a surgeon, never learned to navigate.”
“Island in the Bahamas called San Salvador. S’posed to be the place Columbus landed when he came first time, to this New World, like they calls it.”
“And twice around and thrice back?”
“Bit of almighty clever that is. Clever o’ your papa to think of it the first time, and clever o’ my Harmonious to remember it all those years.”
She was quiet for a while, laughing softly to herself, as if at a joke only she knew. “Bit of almighty clever.”
Joyful waited, knowing it was best to be silent or he’d leave empty-handed yet again.
“Time now,” she said at last. “The Holy One, Blessed Be His Name, he let me know it was time. In fact, time’s what it was all about. Just south of twenty-four degrees north, that was t’other part of the coordinates. Took my Harmonious to a sweet little cove, that did, with a bit of an inlet leading away to the interior. Midday, according to the sextant, and the chronometer pointing exactly upstream.”
Hannah spoke as if she were repeating a story memorized in careful detail, not one word of the telling changed from the first recitation.
“Twice around,” Hannah said. “That meant two sweeps o’ the chronometer’s hand. Two o’clock that would be. Thirty degrees to port. Harmonious was rowing a dinghy by then. Not enough draft for a ship. Just as well, seeing how a man can row alone. He came to another cove. Just where it should be. ‘Twice around and thrice back.’ Hand o’ the chronometer goes backwards three times, that makes it eleven o’clock. Forty-five degrees to port. Rowed himself that way, and turned out Harmonious was looking straight at a twisted tree as no man was likely to forget the shape of, and sure to the Almighty, the place to bury a treasure.”
One mystery solved, but not the only one. “A treasure coming to me over the water, you said, Hannah. What did you mean by that?”
She chuckled yet again. “‘Above the water’ would o’ been clearer, but I didn’t want it to be too easy for you. Over there…” She nodded toward the cistern. “Built the thing so’s I could have a safe place for the treasure once and for all. A place to leave all that blood money, until it was to be returned to its rightful owner. Never spent a single copper from it. Never even opened the moneybag as Rabbi Seixas gave my papa, the moneybag he throwed at me the night…” She stopped speaking and shuddered. “Never mind that. It’s nothin’ to do with you. Your treasure’s behind the fourth course o’ stones down from the top. Well above the level o’ the water. Couldn’t be otherwise, else we had a flood like made Noah build the Ark. So you might say the treasure was over the water.”
Joyful stood and started for the cistern, but Hannah put out a hand and stopped him. “Been waiting for you all these years—it c
an wait a bit longer. Come back tomorrow morning. We’ll bury Jesse in the sunshine. After that, Will can help you dig out the treasure.”
Wall Street, Late Morning
Joyful walked into Blakeman’s Hanover Street premises looking stern and purposeful, letting none of his elation show. The price paid had been high, but sweet God Almighty, he had done it.
There was a single clerk in the countinghouse—no sign of Bastard—standing behind one of the tall desks. The man looked at him. “Gornt Blakeman is dead,” Joyful said. “That’s a fact, and Jacob Hays will confirm it later today.” He had himself sent word to the High Constable; where to find the pirate ship and the bodies of Blakeman and Tintin. “As for me, I’m Joyful Turner, and I wish to buy Blakeman’s interest in Devrey Shipping, I’ve got cash money in good coin. Tell me where I’ll find the attorney as handles Blakeman’s affairs.”
The clerk stared at him in silence for a moment, then shrugged. “You’re too late. Jacob Astor was here two hours past and made the same request. I expect he’s made all the arrangements by now.”
“Why?” Joyful demanded. “You said we were allies. You gave your word not to—”
“Allies yes. But my word not to buy Gornt Blakeman’s assets when they were available? I do not think so, Joyful.”
They were in Astor’s study. Astor stood by the spinning globe, turning it idly round and round. The sunlight streaming through the windows was so bright there was no need to light the globe’s interior lantern. Sea and land, mountain and meadow, blended in a blur of ivory and sepia. “Tell me when I ever said any such thing.”
“Not exactly, I grant you that. But naturally I assumed…”
“In business it is not good to assume.” Astor abruptly stopped the globe from spinning and turned to face the younger man. “And that is why I bought Blakeman’s interest in Devrey’s. Bastard’s also. That I think is a surprise.”
“That means you have fifty-one percent. You’re the majority holder.”
“Ja, my intention exactly, that was. To be the senior partner. So you will make no foolish mistakes, Joyful. So Devrey Shipping can wait out the end of this miserable war and not go bankrupt before peace comes. To have too little capital, in business that is not a good thing. This way—”
“I have capital. A very great deal.” As soon as he said it, Joyful knew that the coin equivalent to twenty thousand sterling, one hundred and sixty thousand American dollars, would seem considerably less to Jacob Astor than it did to him. Nonetheless.
“Ja, the ‘thrice back’ legacy. Very good, Joyful. I am happy for you. But you—”
“How did you even know the treasure exists? I never spoke a word to you about it? For that matter, how did you know Gornt Blakeman was dead?”
Astor chuckled and tapped his temple, much as he’d done the first time Joyful came to this room with his tale of a wondrous jewel and a scheme to divide the nation. “Observation, Joyful. Only observation.” He would not say much about Heinrich and his men in the Watch and the Police Office. But it was right he should explain a little. “Mr. Samson Simson, the Hebrew attorney. He is a good man, a sensible man. That is why Maurice Vionne consulted him as well as Mr. Mordecai Frank when the Great Mogul came first to his attention. But Mr. Simson, he is also my friend, part of the group I told you about, the ones who with me have joined to lend money to Mr. Madison. For the country.”
Ah, yes. What had Simson told him when he asked if the man were a patriot? In my fashion, Dr. Turner. “So the circle is linked,” Joyful said.
He had brought the money to Vionne’s house that very morning, coming straight from Holy Hannah’s. My guarantee of Manon’s future, sir. If you will grant me her hand. And guard this for us until we’re married. It had not been possible to give his future father-in-law such a sum without explaining where it came from. “All along I’ve been less clever by half than I thought myself—that’s true, isn’t it, Jacob?”
“No, Joyful, it is not. You are very clever, and very brave. Even einfallsreich…Ach, what is the English word? Resourceful. And now you have a choice to make, hein? I’m told there is to be a place in the Tontine. And that Mr. Colden, who is an influential man, has decided yours it should be. So will you be a money-man, Joyful?”
“I’m not sure, Jacob. I am considering it. But first I will be a Canton trader.”
“Excellent. I am happy to hear it. Look.” He spun the globe again. “This trail through the Oregon Territory, it will be a magnificent new opportunity for the whole country. My word you have. And the president and Mrs. Dolley, already I am told they are back in the Federal District. While here in New York…Look.”
Astor tugged on a cord. A large map of Manhattan unfurled. Joyful recognized it instantly, though it was a map he had heard about but not seen. In this rendition the city he knew was a tiny thing nestled on the southern tip of the island, dwarfed by a strict grid of streets and avenues that overlay the wilderness to the north, each thoroughfare divided into uniform lots.
“My friend Mr. Randal,” Astor said. “He is a remarkable surveyor. He made this for me. For the Common Council he made one as well. They have adopted the plan, but that you know, Joyful. I will tell you what you do not know. See here how Broadway makes a little turn just by what will be Seventeenth Street? Originally, it was to go straight, but I own farms just here.” Astor tapped the map. “So, I talked to my friend Mr. Randal, and to the Council…” Astor shrugged. “They are reasonable men.”
“You are a wonder,” Joyful said quietly. “It’s mad to oppose you.”
“I do not wish to be in opposition to you, my friend. Especially not now when we are Teilhaberen. Partners. Now, a good look you must have,” pointing to the map once more, “here is New York’s future. This is the city that will be.”
“Perhaps. But Devrey’s is a shipping company. We look this way.” Joyful tapped the harbor and the open ocean at the eastern edge of the plan.
“To be a successful man of business, Joyful Turner, you must be like the Roman god Janus. You must look both ways.” Joyful started to say something, but Astor held up his hand. “Wait, I am not finished. I have another proposition for you. Bastard Devrey’s Wall Street house.”
“Yes?”
“You are to marry, no? You will require a home for your wife. You do not wish to bring the lovely Mademoiselle Vionne to a boardinghouse. I bought Bastard Devrey’s house. Along with his shares. He will use the money I paid him to finish a house near me here on Broadway. Which he cannot afford and which he will probably mortgage sooner rather than later and lose soon after that. But you and I, we do not need to concern ourselves with Bastard Devrey. Consider instead this: I propose to sell you the Devrey house on Wall Street. It is no longer as fashionable as it once was, but still a fine residence, no? A good place for you and your bride. Later you can sell it and build something more grand. Meanwhile, I will take eight thousand for Bastard’s house. A fair price, no?”
“Very fair. It will be worth half again as much in a few years.”
“No doubt,” Astor agreed. “But do you know what I will do with the eight thousand you pay me? I will use it to buy eighty lots north of Canal Street. I will get them for a hundred dollars each, because now it is a war. And here”—he put a hand on his stomach—“here only a few people believe this map will ever be the real New York. But it will be, Joyful. I promise you, it will be. As for the war, soon it will end. And the country will not split apart, thanks to you. And when your house is worth twelve thousand, my eighty lots, bought for a grand total of eight thousand dollars, will be worth eighty thousand.”
Joyful knew he was correct. “Very well, I will buy the Devrey house at eight thousand. Meanwhile”—he took a step closer to Randal’s sketch of the New York to come and put his hand on what was marked as Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue—“how do I find out who owns these three lots here?” It was the meadow surrounded by woods where Holy Hannah had her shack.
Astor leaned forward. “Ac
h, that is simple. I own those lots.”
“I wish to buy them. I’m going to build a proper house there for Holy Hannah. So she can look after boys who have no homes of their own.”
“But the land, Joyful, that you do not give her?”
“No, Jacob, the land I do not give her. Only the house. For as long as she lives.”
Astor smiled. “Sehr gut. For five hundred each I will sell you the lots.”
“Two hundred,” Joyful said. “You’ve just admitted you can buy eighty lots for a hundred a piece. Two hundred each for these three is more than a fair price.”
“Two,” Astor agreed. He put out his hand. “Teilhaber, Dr. Turner.”
“Guanxi, Mr. Astor.”
“So, everything then is settled.”
“Not quite.” Joyful strode to the door to the hall and yanked it open. As he’d expected, Hai Wong was standing inches away. He held a polishing cloth and the moment the door opened he began frantically working on the nearest table. “Don’t waste your energy, Hai. I know you’ve been listening to every word. Now come inside.” And to Astor, “Do you know, Jacob, that Ah Wong’s son understands English? And speaks it? And reads it?”
“No,” Astor admitted. “These things I did not know. Though I should perhaps have guessed.”
“Except for borrowing some buckskins and reading the occasional note, I don’t think he’s used his skills to do you any harm. But he’s an ambitious lad, and his knowledge of America as well as China and the Chinese will be invaluable. I propose to send him to Canton at the earliest possible opportunity to be the comprador of Devrey Shipping. He will earn a monthly wage, and get three percent of the annual profits of the company. And if he serves us loyally and well, we agree to employ whatever blood relative he nominates when the time comes for him to retire. That way he’ll be what the Chinese call an ancestor. The founder of a dynasty.”
City of Glory Page 45
