Pete Hamill - Forever

He grasped the hands of a Spanish black named Torres and the young African named Sandy. He saw Quaco, his head bowed, holding the hands of two other Africans. Three men watched the full group: Kongo, Hughson, and Alvarado.

Hughson bowed his head and began speaking in a solemn voice, the others echoing his phrases.

“We swear (we swear) to hold secret (to hold secret) all that is spoken of here (all that is spoken of here) and to maintain (and to maintain) our faith in each other (our faith in each other) under punishment in Heaven or Hell (under punishment in Heaven or Hell) or here on the earth (or here on the earth), so help me God (so help me God).”

Kongo stepped into the center of the circle (with Cormac seeing him now as a prince of spirits) and spoke the oath in Yoruba, and the blacks responded. Alvarado did it in Spanish, and his men answered. There was a small cheer. Then Kongo assumed command of the room. He spoke in English and Yoruba, choosing words in a careful, direct way, and made the case for revolt. “Men are not horses,” he said in English. “Men have souls.” Now Cormac saw uncertainty in Hughson’s eyes. If he thought of himself an hour earlier as the leader of the revolt, that role had now been lost to Kongo. He did not look happy as Kongo used his fingers to enumerate his points. He separated the men into units of three. He reiterated the need for secrecy. Near the end, repeating this in Yoruba, he pulled one long finger across his throat, and about half the Africans laughed. Then he stepped out of the circle.

Hughson stepped forward, trying to assert again his own role. Cormac felt oddly isolated. Kongo had not assigned him to a three-man unit.

“As far as you Irish are concerned, the word is wait,” Hughson said. “Wait for word from us, from the high command. We’ll be in touch as the hour draws near. We’ll know our roles, what must be done. I’ll coordinate with the Africans. But the purpose is clear: to end these intolerable conditions.” Then he smiled. “As for now, gentlemen, the bar is open.”

A murmur. Scattered calls of “Hear, hear.” A pushing toward the bar. Some faces were flushed, as if the saying were as good as the doing. Kongo nodded at Cormac, placed fingers to his mouth, indicating they would speak later, and then went with his men out the back door into the falling snow.

Then Sarah came in from the kitchen, and the talk became politer, more guarded, less flushed with the possibility of rebellion. She laid plates on the bar piled with herrings, potatoes, hard-boiled eggs. Peggy showed up too, bursting with Caesar’s child. Cormac realized that Caesar had not been part of the group of oath-takers. And Mary Burton was nowhere in sight.

After a while, Cormac went out the back door to piss against a wall. The snow was falling more heavily, whipped by a wind. Cormac finished. Then heard his name. Mary Burton was at a top-floor window, her hair wild, a shawl upon her shoulders and neck.

“Be careful of that lot inside,” she said. “They’re going to cause a lot of trouble.”

“How are you, Mary?”

“Still in prison.”

“It can’t last.”

“Wait there.”

In a few minutes, she arrived at his side, in the deep shadows beside the building. She was bundled against the cold. They embraced and he could feel the warmth coming from her body.

“You must be wary,” she said. “I’ve heard John Hughson talking to his brother, that thieving lecher from Poughkeepsie. And what he’s saying here is not what he’s sayin’ to his brother.”

“What is it they’re saying?”

“It depends on how much drink is taken,” she said. “Sometimes he brags that he’ll soon be king of New York, the ruler of all he surveys, so to speak. Then he’s to be a viceroy for the Spanish crown, with the Spanish fleet in the harbor to fight off the bloody English. Then he’s to search the whole town, while the British get organized, and take everything of value, ship it off to the south somewhere, to bloody Cuba or Mexico or some such, with him and his brother in the ship. Or he’ll make a separate peace with the British, betray everybody, have them all hanged or burned, and then get the British to make him a lord, for services rendered to the Crown, and become governor.”

“He sounds as if he doesn’t know what he wants to do.”

“Whatever the feck it is, it’ll be for to serve John Hughson, not the Africans or the Irish or anyone else, includin’ his wife.”

With that, she brushed his face with her lips and went to the back door and was gone. Through the falling snow Cormac could see a red smear of torches on the ramparts of the fort.

For two days, Cormac searched for Kongo. He must be warned. They all must be warned about the slippery secrets of John Hughson. Kongo seemed to have vanished. Finally he saw Quaco near the Slave Market and learned that Kongo had gone with his master to someplace in New Jersey. At night, Cormac tried to sort out the boxes in his type case, opening and shutting the drawers until he fell into sleep.

Then, early one Sunday morning, after another heavy snowfall, he saw Kongo in the yard behind the print shop. He was holding the reins of a horse. Cormac dressed and went out. Kongo explained that he’d been ordered north to pick up messages for his owner, Wilson the painter. He showed Cormac a signed pass allowing him to travel on horseback. Both men smiled.

“But I want to show you something,” Kongo said. “Come.” Cormac climbed on the horse’s back directly behind Kongo and began telling him what he had heard about John Hughson. He never mentioned Mary Burton, but he outlined all of Hughson’s possible ambitions.

“Thank you,” Kongo said.

“Don’t trust him,” Cormac said.

“We don’t.”

He waited a bit.

“He thinks he is using us, all of us,” Kongo said. “But we are using him.”

They rode north for hours, avoiding the few churchgoers out in the snow. That is, avoiding anyone who might be alarmed by an African and a white man sharing a horse. They went beyond those parts of the lower island that Cormac already knew. They rode beyond rocky promontories, frozen streams, open fields dotted with snug Dutch farmhouses with smoke rising from chimneys. Some land was cleared and fenced. Most remained wild. Kongo pulled his fur hat down over his face to hide his black skin. He said almost nothing, and never mentioned the rebellion or his reasons for keeping Cormac out of a three-man unit. He did nod in a conspiratorial way at a group of six Indians walking south, dressed in English clothes and heavy English boots. He pointed out two redcoats lounging outside a tavern, smoking seegars, and seeing them, he nudged the horse into dense forest, moving west across the spine of the island. The wind off the North River assaulted them, icy and hard.

They came to a small road cutting away to the west through the Bloomingdale properties, a section where virgin forests stood like walls protecting cleared land, now brilliant with snow. Kongo was cautious, alert. Animal tracks were cut all over the snow, but the animals were hidden. Kongo slowed the horse and moved into a hilly forest of dark evergreens. And then stopped and pointed. Off in the distance, on a cliff above the river, was the house of the Earl of Warren.

Cormac knew it belonged to the earl because from that distance it was an exact duplicate of the ruined house in Ireland. They moved closer, the horse snorting, steam billowing from his mouth. They saw black men off to the right taking their ease at the entrance to a stable. Just inside the stable doors was the cream-colored carriage. On the great porch of the house, facing inland, its back to the river, two white men moved back and forth on the steps. One held a musket. Over the main doorway there was an elaborate W emblazoned in gold leaf that glittered in the hard noon sun. They moved again, very quietly, maintaining a safe distance, and saw well-tramped paths through the snow from the front stairs to a kind of deck on the river side of the house. Three men were talking on the deck. Each had a musket. Cormac longed for his sword but saw that the earl had defended himself against any sort of direct assault. What had happened in Ireland would not happen here. Only a fool would charge this small fortress alone.