On Saturday morning, he was back again at the stones, scraping, washing, polishing with emery, until by early afternoon they were gleaming. Meanwhile, two Norwegian ship’s carpenters arrived, carrying planed lumber and leather sacks of hammers and tools. After discussing measurements and placement with Mr. Partridge, they went immediately to work building a platform upon which the press would stand. Rectangular, rising about a foot off the flagstones, with a base beneath it. Almost like an altar. The Norwegians spoke little English, and said very little in Norwegian. They simply worked. With care and speed, using spirit levels for adjustments, fitting each joint with uncanny precision and exactitude. Mr. Partridge had them add a door to the platform, to provide storage space beneath the press, and they designed it so that it was flush to the sides. No locks were needed. Simple hand pressure popped it open. The smell of fresh-cut lumber helped drive out the odor of shit and time. And after Mr. Partridge peeled away the last of the gray film that clouded the windows and polished them with soap and rags, bright bars of summer light streamed in upon the fresh boards and polished stones. Cormac and Mr. Partridge smiled in delight. So did the Norwegians.
The town was shut down on Sunday, but the Norwegians didn’t observe any religion except work. As Cormac and Mr. Partridge filled chinks in the stone walls with cement and erected rope lines from which paper could be hung by pegs, the Norwegians swiftly fashioned shelves for paper and ink and type, glancing at diagrams and old woodcuts for guidance. They adjusted the legs of an old table to make it balance on the uneven flag-stones. They used a wood plane on the back door until it opened and closed as if buttered. They placed a bookcase beside the fire-place. They grunted. They muttered in Norwegian. And in the scalding summer heat they worked and worked. They worked without shirts and then without trousers. They paused to smoke seegars. They took long drafts of water. And they worked.
By Monday morning, all was ready for the arrival of the press. At a few minutes after eight, it appeared on the back of a horse-drawn wagon from Van Zandt’s warehouse, still in its huge crate. Two black men eased the crate on rollers into the backyard, then opened it carefully with chisels, then snapped the wires and cables that had kept the press suspended in the crate during the long journey. On the floor of the crate beneath the press was a long smaller crate. “Type!” Mr. Partridge said. “Without type, we print nothing!” He asked the Africans to carry the box of type inside and lay it in a corner against the wall. Then they lifted the printing press itself, an African at either end, with Mr. Partridge on the left side and Cormac on the right. Hauling and muttering and gasping for breath, they carried it around to Cortlandt Street and in through the open double doors. A small crowd had gathered to stare at them, to observe the new tenants, the beginning of a new shop. They positioned the press on its fresh new altar, moving it and shifting it until it stood exactly where Mr. Partridge wanted it to be, with space on the platform to walk around it on all sides.
As they finished, one of the Africans looked at Cormac with recognition in his eyes. They moved together out the back door, where Cormac began collecting the remains of the crate to use as firewood.
“Hughson’s?” Cormac said.
“Yah.”
“I’ll not be there for a while.”
“Yah.”
“Can you do me a favor?”
He stared at the young white man.
“I’m looking for a man. An African. A… friend. His name is Kongo.”
He looked at Cormac in a blank way that said more than he intended; the name Kongo carried weight with him.
“If you see him, tell him Cor-mac is looking for him.”
“Yah,” he said, and walked off toward the waterfront.
Back inside, Mr. Partridge sat on the lip of the fireplace, staring at his wonderful machine. He wiped his sweat-blistered brow. Cormac sat beside him and gazed at the press. It looked to him like some strange, godlike giant insect. An immense grasshopper. Or a praying mantis. They stared at it together, then stood up, exhausted by heat and toil, and bolted the creature’s feet to the platform. When they were finished, Cormac felt like singing a hymn.
“By God,” Mr. Partridge whispered, shaking a fist, “we’ve done it, lad. We’re in business.”
Not quite.
That evening, as they sat on the edge of the platform eating fish and chips from a tavern in the light of candles, Mr. Partridge grew silent. His exuberance ebbed. His body slumped. It was as if the past three days had drained him of some invincible spark.
“Are you feeling all right, Mister Partridge?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You… don’t seem all right.”
“Well…” He sighed. “The truth is, lad, I’m almost out of money. And we still need many things here…. Paper, above all. And ink, of course. And other things. This has been so bloody expensive. The storage fees at Van Zandt’s—”
Cormac unbuckled his money belt. Along with the paper money, there were eleven gold crowns left from those passed to him by his father. He pocketed one for himself and handed ten crowns to Mr. Partridge.
“Here,” Cormac said.
The older man looked embarrassed. He wouldn’t accept the money, and Cormac laid it upon the edge of the platform. He sat down with the heavy coins between them.
“No, absolutely not!” Mr. Partridge said. “You’re a boy, an apprentice—”
“I’m not a boy, Mr. Partridge. I’ve already killed a man.” He looked at Cormac with eyes wide and steady.
“You have?”
“Yes,” he said. “Maybe two.”
49.
He sketched his story for Mr. Partridge. He revealed his true name and told him everything he could remember about the Earl of Warren and what had happened in Ireland. He explained the oath of blood and tribe that had sent him here, to New York. He left out many details. But the words flowed from him like water breaking through a weir, and he felt his rage rising again as he told of the day his mother died and the day his father was murdered for a horse. While Cormac talked, the eyes of Mr. Partridge never left him. And when the young man finished, the older man stared at him for a long moment.
“How sad,” he said finally. “How infuriating. And how very sad.”
Cormac stared at his hands, which had already wielded a sword, and must wield one again (soon, he hoped, soon), relieved now that one lie had been removed between himself and Mr. Partridge: the lie of his name. Martin O’Donovan was, for the moment, dead. Cormac Samuel O’Connor was now living here on Cortlandt Street. He looked up from his hands. Mr. Partridge was staring out through the polished windows in the double doors to the unlit street.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” Cormac said.
A pause.
“Not directly.”
In the confessional intimacy of the large warm room, Mr. Partridge began to speak.
“This was eleven years ago,” he said, his voice containing a kind of echo, enforced by the emptiness of the workshop. “In a terrible London winter. I was married then to my Esther. My beloved, thin, sweet Esther. We had four children. Robert. Michael. James. And the baby girl, Catherine. I was then certain that I wanted to move us all to America, to this new land, to a place far from kings and princes, dukes and earls, a place where the children could grow up strong and prosperous. A country that was new, where men and women could correct all the mistakes of the Old World.”