He blew out the candle. “Of what?”
“It’s about to happen.”
“Come in.”
She shook the snow off her shawl and sat on the edge of the fireplace while Cormac planted himself on a stool. In strings of nervous whispers, leaning forward with her hands clenched, she told him what she knew: The rising would begin on Saint Patrick’s Night. Five days hence. The fort would be set afire, Quaco’s wife liberated, the armory looted of guns, which would then be dispersed to the rebels. Others would rob the major shops and haul away all valuables and weapons from private homes. There was a list of good masters and bad. The loot would be taken to the brewery building at the foot of Stone Street. Then John Hughson’s brother would cart everything away in a sloop to exchange it upstate for more guns. While the fort was burning, certain whites would be attacked and, if necessary, killed. All bad masters. All arrogant whites, including women. Many buildings would be torched. And the Spanish fleet would then sweep into the town.
“We’ve got to leave this place,” she said. “It will be like the fires of Hell.”
“What are you saying, Mary?”
“I’m sayin’ we’ve got to run, you an’ me. I’m sayin’ that if you love me, we’ve got to pack a bag and be gone. To Philadelphia, or the bloody west, to somewhere. Maybe we could find a way to Ireland. Get out of this place, some way. We’ve got to feckin’ go….”
Her eyes were frantic and afraid.
“I can’t do that, Mary.”
She went very still then, her eyes slivering with ice.
“You can’t do that?”
“I’m obliged in other ways, Mary. To this shop and Mr. Partridge. And to something else, something that goes back to the old country.”
“You’re obliged?” Her voice was now a knife blade. “You’re fecking obliged?”
“Aye.”
“And are you not obliged to me?”
He looked at her hardening face, her disheveled hair, thinking: Am I? She saw the question on his face.
“You low bastard,” she said.
She stood up, looking around the darkened shop. A lone horse and rider trotted by in the night. The snow fell steadily.
“I’ll be goin’ then,” she said. “What happens to you will be none of my business.” There was bitterness in her voice now. “I have to fecking laugh. I actually thought you loved me. What a fecking fool I was.”
She jerked open the door.
“Don’t be looking for me in Hughson’s,” she said. “For I’ll be gone. With me child.”
She closed the door softly and hurried into the snow. Cormac grabbed a coat to go after her, but she was gone.
He stood there, his body trembling, but not from the cold. She says she’s carrying a child. Her child. But my child too. This is a girl, only sixteen, who sleeps with no men save me. A hard girl, lean and stringy and tough, but a decent girl too. And now she is enraged. She is enraged at being an indenture, a slave, caged in a city she didn’t choose. She is enraged at me. And in her rage, she might become what everyone in the Irish tribe hated above all living creatures: an informer. Able with words to create peril and havoc, flame and death. Like Samson toppling the temple upon himself. If she can’t have freedom, if she can’t have me, then feck it, bring everything down. Create ruins. Hurt everyone in sight. If Mary Burton went to the fort and told the English what she knew, Kongo and Quaco and all the Africans would be in danger of death. So would John Hughson. And so would he, whether called O’Donovan or Carson or Cormac Samuel O’Connor.
He should warn Kongo, tell him of the danger, explain his own stupidity, and take responsibility, no matter what the consequences. But if he did run through the snow and find Kongo, the Africans would almost certainly cut the throat of Mary Burton and slide her into the river. Before morning. They had too much to lose and would easily sacrifice one life to free hundreds. But (Cormac thought) if Mary Burton vanishes, so will my child. If there is a child. If she hasn’t built a lie to trap me. To make me flee with her across the North River and into New Jersey and keep going until they found a place where she would be free. Some lost, hidden grove in the back of beyond.
He glimpsed himself in a wall mirror and hurled unspoken accusations: How could you have done this? How could you have been so weak? Why didn’t you see the trouble coming? Why after sliding into that water with her didn’t you simply go away? Why did you keep going back? Again and again. Drawn to the softness within her hardness. His answers to his own questions were shapeless. Nouns without verbs. Lust. Desire. Connection. Weakness.
And then he felt a great pity for Mary Burton, seeing her moving tearfully through the snow, slapped down by his words, infuriated by his coldness, a victim in some way of that Irish story, the story of his father, the story he could not tell her. He addressed explanations to her, ones he should have made, and still might make this snowy night. You see, he told the absent Mary Burton, there’s something I must do first. Something that comes before my own life and your life and the life of any unborn child. Something I must do, because if I don’t do it, if I don’t first avenge the murder of my father, I can never be free. My vow comes before Kongo too, and before the rising. It comes before everything.
Then, just past the door, he could see a lean, coarse-skinned man peering through the glass. He wore a crumpled suit, a scarf, a wool hat. Little puffs of steam pushed from his nose. He gestured to be admitted. As if relieved to be free of his anguish, Cormac unlatched the door.
“I need a broadside,” he said. Clipped English accent, accustomed to giving orders. “Quickly.”
“We’re closed, sir.”
“Is your master here?”
“Asleep, sir.”
The man exhaled in an exasperated way.
“Make an exception. This is for a ship arriving in a week’s time. We need two hundred posters no later than Saint Patrick’s Day. We intend to fill the hoardings of the town. First ship in—”
He fumbled in his jacket for a sheet bearing the copy, explaining that the bark was named the Valiant, carrying a consignment of raw sugar, rum, and thirty-six seasoned slaves. The first ship in two and a half months, since this bloody war over a bloody ear got serious. Politely, Cormac tried to explain that the Partridge shop didn’t do slaving business, but they could handle the sugar and the rum.
“Well, in that case… I’ll have to discuss it with the earl.”
Cormac’s heart skipped several beats. “Which earl is that, sir?”
“The Earl of Warren, young man. That’s why I’ve arrived so late. He lives way up in the bloody Bloomingdale.”
“I see. In that case, sir, I’m certain we can make an exception.”
The man smiled, showing crooked teeth, and handed Cormac the sheet of paper.
“Wonderful, wonderful. You can deliver them, of course? Here are the words, in the earl’s own hand. And—”
“I’ll need directions, of course.”
“Of course.”
They briefly discussed price and paper size and type fonts, then the directions to the earl’s mansion, and off the man went.
Cormac stared for a long while at the earl’s cursive writing. In the street, the snow was turning to a cold rain. He dressed in warm clothes and slipped into the night. He moved through the rain-pelted streets all the way to Hughson’s. Slivers of light leaked from the back door, and music strummed in a muted way. He went in and ordered a porter from John Hughson.
“Bloody wet night,” Hughson said. Then leaned forward and whispered: “Meeting tomorrow night.”
“I won’t be here,” Cormac said, glancing around the crowded room, searching for Mary Burton, who wasn’t there. Nor was Kongo or Quaco, Sandy or Diamond. “The master wants me to go to New Rochelle.”