Pete Hamill - Forever

Either way, she might choose silence. If she was truly married, or could persuade others that she was, she would now own everything that the earl had owned when mysterious robbers broke in and committed murder. She would own the property in New York and the property in Carrickfergus. She would own his shares in the trading company. Better to vanish. Go home to Ireland or England instead of standing as witness in a trial that would make her name known from here to London and certainly provoke scrutiny.

He got out of bed and found a newspaper to see what ships might be sailing on the morrow. The war had cut the number to two, when there would normally be ten. But neither ship was bound to cross the Atlantic. One was going to Charleston. The other to Nova Scotia. Cormac thought: It must be the war with Spain. But if Bridget Riley couldn’t leave, performing her grief for a small audience, then why would she not talk? The constables might suspect that she had a hand in the killing. Particularly if she had married the earl, if there was a certificate, a will. After all, the constables were faced with a mystery. There was much blood in the earl’s study, but why was there no body? What mere thief would steal a body? If they suspected Bridget Riley, she would surely save her own skin. She would describe the African and the Irishman. Cormac’s breath quickened in fear. And then another face appeared in his jangled reverie, another woman who might be carrying a child. Where was Mary Burton? What was she doing with her rage? What could be brewing through this long night that would come for him in the day?

And then at last he slept.

In the morning, the wind was making flags curl and pushing dust and paper down Cortlandt Street. A gathering wind. A wind certain to stiffen. And when he moved through the streets to deliver posters to Jameson the vintner, he felt a strangeness in the air. He searched for Kongo on the waterfront but didn’t see him, didn’t see Quaco either, or any of the other Africans he knew, and didn’t even know if Kongo still lived. He wanted to go to Hughson’s, to try one final time to get them to call off the rising. And to speak with Mary Burton. But he was afraid that if he spoke too strongly they would turn on him, accuse him of weakness, leave him out of the struggle that he wanted now to join. Mary Burton might hear his words the wrong way and turn on all of them in her bitter anger. And another form of strangeness gripped him. There were no alarms over the death of the earl, no posters, nothing in the day’s edition of Peter Zenger’s newspaper. It was as if nothing at all had happened. He thought about writing a crude letter to Bridget Riley, addressed to Lady Warren, demanding a cash payment for delivery of her late husband’s body. Write it with his left hand. To explain somehow to the constables the mystery of the vanished body. But that might only lead to a harder hunt, with rewards and informers….

And besides, the tension in the streets told Cormac another story. Something was coming that was much larger than the Earl of Warren.

Around three o’clock he hurried down to the waterfront to look for Kongo. He lolled behind the empty Slave Market, trying to look casual, and watched the two ships that would depart at four. The Carolina and the Arcadia . All cargo had been loaded, and the stevedores on the piers were smoking and laughing, waiting for the ships to sail. A few passengers appeared on the deck of each ship, but the flags showed the stiffening of the wind, blowing north from the harbor. Most passengers were in cabins or the cheap bunks belowdecks. Captains and company men chatted, examined documents, smoked seegars. Cormac stretched, as if tired after a hard day of work, gazed into the windows of a ship chandler, hoping for the sight of Kongo. One lonely redcoat leaned against the side of the deserted Slave Market, huddling out of the wind.

Then a black unmarked coach, with trunks lashed to its roof, galloped up in front of the Carolina. An African in livery, his face familiar from the earl’s stable, leaped down, called to some stevedores for help in unloading the trunks. He opened the door and offered a hand to Bridget Riley.

She gazed around, near and far, her face still marked by fear, and then saw Cormac.

She stopped. The African followed her gaze. It was too late for Cormac to back away. Bridget’s head turned toward the lone redcoat. Cormac thought: I must want to be caught, to be hanged for the death of the earl. Then the African whispered to Bridget Riley, and she threw Cormac a chilling glance and turned to board the ship.

The gangplank was raised an instant after she stepped on deck. She turned one final time, looking directly at Cormac, and then vanished into a cabin on the poop. The Carolina eased into the river, bound for Charleston. Officers barked orders. Seamen scrambled in rigging. The African watched for a while, then turned and walked toward Cormac, taking his hat from his graying head. Cormac glanced at the redcoat, saw him stretching his arms over his bored head, and moved to meet the African.

“She ask me to tell you some words,” the man said.

“Yes?”

“She ask me to tell you: Thank you very much.”

He glanced out at the departing ship, and then at some flags on the rooftops of warehouses. “She tell the constables someone hit her,” he said, “and she saw nothing that happen to her husband.”

“Much obliged,” Cormac said.

The African looked at Cormac now. “Tell Kongo,” he said. “We are with him.”

He moved to the carriage, climbed to his seat, and flicked his whip as if punctuating his brief conversation, and the horses started off, heading north.

They worked across the day into the night. Around seven, Mr. Par tridge was joking about the contents of a marital document asking for a legal separation, and musing on the folly of man. Then from the street they heard a shout followed by an excited response. Someone ran past the front of the shop. They went out together, locking the shop door behind them, and turned the corner. There was a red glow in the sky above Fort George. The wind was now blowing hard off the harbor. The rising had begun.

They were hurrying now, Mr. Partridge huffing with his exertions but alert to his surroundings. Citizens were running toward the fort, and they heard the word “fire” over and over again: shouted, called, bellowed. They neared the fort and then there was a surge of people, and scattered redcoats, and the sound of bells ringing. Mr. Partridge went one way, Cormac another.

Great orange tongues of flame roared and twisted angrily against the inky sky. The air was grainy with the odor of burning wood. Firemen arrived with their two new engines, but the water came in useless dribbles. The fire roared and Cormac could see now that it was also consuming the mansion of the governor, beyond the burning ramparts. Redcoats watched with muskets pointed toward the fort but with nobody to shoot. Tongues of fire were aimed at the houses on lower Broadway, and the crowd backed away. Sparks scattered into the sky, and Cormac’s mind flashed on sparks from a lost forge scattering across the Irish sky, aspiring to be stars.

He cut into an alley behind the Lutheran church, trying to see the fort from the river side. The alley was piled high with barrels and crates, and reeked of garbage. Then two other people rushed into the alley. Cormac flattened himself against the wall and saw Quaco running, holding the hand of his wife. An African woman, hair piled high, struggling to run in long skirts, panting. Behind them were two redcoats. Quaco’s eyes were alarmed and furious. He saw Cormac. Started to say something. But pulled his wife’s hand and kept running. Cormac saw a redcoat drop to a knee and take aim. And he stepped away from the wall, placing himself between the aimed musket and the fleeing African couple.