Finally the night arrived. Sometimes Mr. Partridge carried home a joint or a rib, and cooked it on an upstairs stove (for he wanted no grease anywhere near his precious stores of paper). They dined together, and at such times he was calmer, and often spoke obliquely about subjects that never appeared in a newspaper. As he did one night a few days from Christmas.
“There’s something happening in the town, and I can’t put my finger on it,” he said. “Not just poor sales in the shops. Something else. An unease…”
The cold got colder and didn’t relent. For Cormac, it was as if the Irish storm that killed so many people and crops and horses had made its way across the Atlantic. The North River was frozen solid all the way to Poughkeepsie, almost eighty miles distant. He worked in heavy clothes and slept in his overcoat and remembered the tale of Joseph and his brothers. Sometimes he saw himself huddling in the house with his father and Bran and Thunder, all of them together, refusing to give in to weather or fate. Thinking: Only one winter ago, but so long ago too. Would they both survive better if he and Mary Burton could huddle together through the frigid American nights? If he returned to his room on Stone Street, would that become more possible? But it couldn’t happen. The Hughsons would never allow her out at night, for she might end up on a runaway poster on the city’s walls. And he had no money now to pay for a room.
But in some way, the brutal New York cold and his memories of Ireland combined to revive his own search for the man who had brought him here. If the earl’s own horses had survived the Irish winter better, surely he wouldn’t have gone hunting for the horses of strangers. He could have stood on the pier and juggled while Africans eased out to sea in the wooden dungeons of the slave ships. The arctic wind had changed the earl’s life too.
In Cormac’s free time, or when running errands or delivering printing jobs, he looked with renewed passion for the Earl of Warren. Snow fell through one long night. Then fell again two days later. The piles of snow and hillocks of black ice made walking difficult, and if there were fewer people on the streets, they were revealed in greater clarity. But he felt more often now that he’d made some terrible mistake in coming to New York. He began to think that he had followed the earl to a place where he had not gone.
And then, on the day before Christmas, after dropping some printed notices at the Lutheran Church, which stood then a block south of Trinity, he turned into Wall Street and there he was.
The earl.
Getting into a cream-colored carriage in front of City Hall. Cormac’s heart jumped. His chapped hands begin to sweat in the cold. The carriage started moving east toward the waterfront. Cormac thought: Is he leaving on a ship? In this cold? No, the river is frozen, with great slabs of ice crunching against one another and bending the pilings, and it’s almost Christmas. No ship will sail.
He went after the cream-colored carriage, walking cautiously at first through the most crowded, snow-packed blocks (for business had not paused yet to celebrate the birth of Christ). He steadied his pace, afraid of attracting attention, wishing he had the sword. Thinking: I could catch him and kill him. But not without a sword. Thinking: I must know where he goes. Must know where he lives.
And then the carriage picked up speed. Cormac hurried, skipping faster, shoving aside small knots of men, sliding on glossy sheets of ice, thumping through crusted snow. The carriage turned left into Water Street, heading north, and Cormac began to run. He fell once, then again.
The carriage was too fast. It didn’t pause at any of the wharves, and rolled north. Cormac watched it vanish over the ridge and the frozen stream that spilled from the Common.
He stood there, his heart skipping beats, gasping for frigid air. His elbow ached from a fall. He bent it and gazed at the blank white haze to the north.
Thinking: He’s here.
The earl is here.
54.
Early Christmas morning, while the sky remained blue with night, Cormac rose early, dressed warmly, and hurried down to the Fly Market to find Kongo. The streets were icy, snow-packed, and empty. Windows were rimed with ice. He found Kongo in the backyard of Guilfoyle the builder, where he and Quaco were feeding a fire with scrap wood. Both wore fur hats, cloth gloves, and heavy coats, and reminded him of the Celts in their hidden grove. Quaco bid Cormac good morning, uttered an ironical “Merry Christmas,” and smiled as they shook hands.
“How is it you’re not in the big church with all the other wonderful Christians?” Quaco said.
“I’d rather be here,” Cormac said. “I need to talk to… the babalawo.”
He gestured for Kongo to step aside and speak to him alone. Kongo excused himself to Quaco and walked with Cormac to the dark side of a shed.
“Yes?” he said.
“I need your help.”
“What for?” he said, his accent slightly Irish.
“I have to find a man named the Earl of Warren,” he said. “Last year in Ireland, he caused my father to be shot dead, and in our tribe, the son must avenge the father.”
“In my tribe too.”
“I came here to find him,” Cormac said. “That’s why I was on the Fury. I’ve looked for him for many months, and yesterday, at last, I saw him. On the street. He went north in a coach, but I couldn’t follow in the snow and ice.”
“You want him dead?”
“Yes, but I’m the only one who can do it. I’ve already killed one of his men, and perhaps a second, whose hand I chopped off. It’s my responsibility, Kongo. But I hope that, somehow, you and your friends can find him for me.”
He showed Kongo a folded drawing he’d made of the earl, and the African peered at it, his brow tightening. Perhaps Kongo could spread the word among the Africans (Cormac said), to look for the cream-colored carriage and the Englishman who looked like the man in the sketch. The diamond tooth, Cormac said, pointing, and then pulling a face to show his own bicuspid. The tooth. If they find him, he said, tell me. I’ll do the rest. He reminded Kongo that the earl had made much of his fortune in the slave trade. The African glanced again at the drawing and slipped it inside his coat.
“I’ll look,” he said. “If he on this island, we find him.” Cormac hugged him, then smiled and stepped back.
“Your English is much better.”
Kongo shrugged. “I have no, uh, choice, yes? To eat, I must speak.”
But Cormac thought: His English is now too good to have been merely lifted in passing. He has been studying. Or receiving help more mysterious than studying. Babalawo. He wanted to ask Kongo more. Instead, Kongo explained that for the next week Wilson the painter had rented him out to Guilfoyle the builder. Right here. This building. No work today. No work on Christmas. But he shook his head at the shame of being as rentable as a dray horse. Then, after a long silence (one that silenced Cormac’s questions too), he took the young man’s elbow and walked him toward the shore.
“There is something… coming?” he said. “Yes, the word is ‘coming.’ To come.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there is something big to happen, as soon as winter ends.”
“What kind of something?”
“I let you know,” he said. “It’s about us. The Africans and the Irish. And the fleets of Spain.”
He glanced at the wan winter sun rising slowly across the river in Brooklyn.
“Say nothing,” he said. “Ask nothing.” He gestured toward the sun. “But know that… the gods know. The gods say yes.”
He turned and hurried back to Quaco and the fire. Cormac thought: I’ll have to wait to ask the meaning of the word babalawo.