46.
And so it went as they wandered the town. Mr. Partridge didn’t always rant about cabbages and kings. He fed Cormac’s mind with geography and history, occasionally referring to a map of New York he’d bought in London. He knew exactly where they were on the maps of the world: at 73 degrees and 58 seconds west of the prime meridian, 40 degrees and 47 seconds north latitude, about halfway between the North Pole and the equator, and on a line with Madrid.
When he pointed across the East River at Brooklyn, he knew that the other island was 118 miles long. “That’s why they call it the long island,” he said. “Brilliant bit of naming, isn’t it?” The East River itself wasn’t a river at all; it was an estuary, with one side running north, the other side south, and a great dangerous place at the top of the estuary called Hell Gate. “Don’t ever try sailing it,” he said. “The water flows in from the Long Island Sound, through a narrow little channel. It tears apart every ship whose captain dares to confront it. Stay away. It’s a true gate to Hell.” And yet there was a simple reason for docking ships here on the East River, instead of the North River. The island protected them from the western winds.
“The winters are brutal here,” Mr. Partridge said, “and the summers are worse. Spring is very short because the water coming down the North River is still very cold. October is the best month, but the air is never dry—not even in October—because of the rivers and the blessed harbor. Still, it’s a perfect place to build a town, because of that harbor. Mark my words: New York will end up bigger than Boston and Philadelphia combined.”
This was not easy for Cormac to believe as they wandered through the low, cramped town. The town of shitting horses and rooting pigs. But Mr. Partridge loved it, and saw a city that Cormac didn’t see, the city that was coming. He pointed out the gabled rooftops and yellow-brick facades of the old Dutch houses, and the arrogant new Georgian houses of the English rich. The names of old families rolled from his lips: Roosevelts and Beekmans, Phillipses and Verplancks, De Peysters and De Lanceys, and, above all, Livingstons. The town was still too small for a district of the rich, as there was now in London, an area made fashionable or aristocratic through guns and money. The homes of the rich shared streets with taverns and shops and markets. “That can’t last,” Mr. Partridge said. “It never does. The rich build private fortresses. That’s part of their triumph.” The old Dutch town, he said, was huddled together, like a primitive castle, behind several pathetic wooden walls (meant to keep out marauding Indians, who no longer existed), and water came from a single well on Broadway because the Collect was too far out into the wilderness.
“Water is the big problem now,” he said, “and the town can’t grow until it’s solved. How? With aqueducts, the way the Romans solved their problem. The sooner the better. Have you ever smelled such stinking people? They use incense in the churches because the people in a crowd smell like they’ve been dead for nine days. And breakfast: How is it possible, without a major effort, to eat one’s eggs when the room smells like feet?”
Cormac started smelling feet everywhere. For two days, he could not eat eggs. Meanwhile, they looked at shops too small, and shops too large, shops that resembled prison cells, and shops made for rallies, and along the way, Mr. Partridge tried to explain the great New York political rivalry between the Livingstons and the De Lanceys. Cormac couldn’t follow its intricacies. He was too busy drinking in the variety of the town, its faces, its languages, its hand-lettered walls. Seeing it with the same joy—in spite of the stench—that filled Mr. Partridge.
“Look at all these signs, lad,” the older man said. “They’re going to feed the two of us!”
Posters adorned many walls, advertising dentists and writing teachers, elocutionists and dancing masters, goods freshly arrived from England or taken by some privateer. Shops sold cutlery, pewter, glassware, tobacco, watches, coffee, boots, trunks, tools. Sometimes their owners stood outside, shouting the virtues of their wares to those who could not read the signs. More often, posters did the shouting. Some offered rewards for runaway slaves, or runaway apprentices, or runaway indentured servants. Each of these was written in a mixture of surprise and rage. This trusted slave had stolen a horse. That Irish wench had absconded with clothing. This apprentice had lifted a master’s tools. Cormac thought the physical descriptions sounded like the Sunday customers at Hughson’s. Some probably were.
In the shops or on the streets, Cormac began seeing Africans who’d passed through Hughson’s, working as tinners and carpenters, butchers and handlers of horses, and they exchanged subtle nods of recognition. Cormac kept seeing them as runaways. Moving through the green forests to the north of the island. Heading for wilderness. And freedom. In his mind, he saw Kongo too. Wherever he was. Getting ready to run.
On days when Mr. Partridge was following his own trails, Cormac sometimes wandered down to the Slave Market at the foot of Wall Street, hoping for news of Kongo and the others. One morning he watched the landing of seventeen new Africans. Quaco was there, helping to keep them calm, but Cormac didn’t approach him. The Africans were sold at an average of fifty pounds each and then led away to a holding pen to wait for a ship that would carry them to Carolina. Forty-seven Irish men and women were also sold, their indentures assumed by speculators, and sent to separate cages. Then he saw the guard who had hit Kongo on the back with his rifle butt. He went over to him.
“Excuse me.”
“What is it?”
“Do you remember?” Cormac said. “Two weeks ago, I was here and you hit an African with a rifle butt and I asked you to stop.”
“Yes, you Oirish bastard. I remember you.”
“I want to apologize.”
“You do?”
“I know that you were just doing your work. But you see, we’d all just come off the ship after thirteen terrible weeks together and I was just—”
“Forget it.”
Cormac thought: He must know I’m feigning the apology, but he’s English. He accepts the formal hypocrisy; it always makes life easier.
“Let me ask you,” Cormac said. “Did you ever see those Africans again?”
The guard’s face tightened as he tried to recall.
“Well, I don’t know, we see a lot of them here. And they’re all blacker than fecking pitch. This is the season, before the winter. They—”
“The ones from that day, were they shipped off? To the Carolinas? Or Virginia?”
“Well, I believe—I think they were divided, actually. Most of them shipped, three or four bought here. Yes. I’m sure at least three of them stayed in New York. Including that surly bastard you were so anxious to protect.”
Kongo was somewhere in the city.
“Thanks, uh…”
Cormac offered his hand and the guard shook it.
“Adams. Francis Adams. From Liverpool.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Aren’t we all,” he said. “Aren’t we all.”
On his second Friday evening at Hughson’s, Cormac dined on ham and roasted potatoes at the bar, sipped a porter, and then passed through the blue door and climbed the stairs to his room. The door was unlocked. When he stepped inside, Mary Burton was pouring hot water into the tub. The curtains were drawn. She nodded a hello. He noticed that her features had softened in the muted yellow light of the lamp. The tub was almost full.
“Get in,” she said, “while it’s hot.”
“Thanks.”
She paused, looking at him.
“Tonight, I’ll join you,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”