On a Friday in April, Quaco’s friend Diamond was led to a spot of ground on the Common, sentenced to die for starting the fire at the fort. Cormac insisted to Mr. Partridge that he must be there, saying, “I know this man,” and Mr. Partridge argued, cautioned, sighed, and wished him Godspeed. The Grand Inquisitor had made his ruling: Fire must be repaid with fire. Almost every white person in town came to watch this burning at the stake, except the haughty merchants and the grand jurors who had passed the sentence. And in the crowd, Cormac saw a familiar face, now hollow-eyed, grizzled, filthy, his clothes grafted together from various shades and textures of black. The Rev. Clifford.
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away,” he chanted in a singsong voice. “What comes, goes. What goes, comes. All ends in death and fire. All ends in the flames of Hell. All sinners must burn… and we are all sinners.”
Cormac eased away from him, as if he carried some terrible contamination. So did others in the crowd. Cormac stared at the scene, trying to record every detail without being seen to write notes. A rough, freshly skinned post had been driven into the earth, with a pile of dry kindling and split logs at its foot. A man wearing a hood and a black woolen suit watched patiently while a clean-shaven clergyman in black read from a Bible. He was a more grave, more solemn echo of the Rev. Clifford, clean, clear-eyed, well-dressed, but delivering a more hopeful version of the same message. We are all sinners. Repent, all of ye, repent.
But on this late morning, his last on earth, Diamond was impenitent. He walked to the stake with his head high, his face composed, and a look of contempt in his eyes. Some turned away from his scalding look as he was tied to the post. Others cheered when the hooded man ignited the kindling. “Off to hell, you savage!” a plummy voice bellowed, while others laughed. Cormac saw the Rev. Clifford speaking directly to the sky, his words lost in the general chatter.
But then there was silence, even from the Rev. Clifford, as the flames gathered strength, and Diamond writhed and his mouth opened against his will and they could smell a sickening odor and the flames rose around the African’s head. Then Diamond screamed. He screamed and he screamed and he screamed. A woman fainted. And the screaming went on. The flames crackled and sparked and roared. And finally Diamond was burned into silence. His smoking body didn’t move. The flames kept burning, poisoning the air with the odor of ruined flesh. Some black flakes of his charred skin floated above the pyre.
And then the Rev. Clifford began to laugh. A wild, high-pitched cackle of a laugh. Laced with pleasure. With satisfaction. With death. A heavyset man shoved him rudely, as if to force him into solemnity, but Clifford fell to his knees, laughing and laughing, and rolled to his side and drew up his legs and plunged his clenched hands between his thighs until the laughter turned to tears.
Cormac felt nauseated. At what was done to Diamond. At the sight of the Rev. Clifford. He turned away, fighting off a surge of vomit. He needed clean air and there was no clean air. Others trudged away in silence, stained by the odor of burning human flesh and burning human fat and burning human blood. But as he walked south toward Cortlandt Street, Cormac noticed that some men had not had enough. Their nostrils flared, their eyes glittered, they formed angry clusters on the Common and shouted for more hangings, more burnings, more death. That night, they gathered together as the first of the mobs.
63.
Mr. Partridge was alarmed, for he had been moving among the fearful men who ran the town and were prepared to unleash the mobs. “You’re in mortal danger, lad,” he whispered. “They want every African, except the ones they own. They want every Irishman.” Cormac offered to leave, to keep Mr. Partridge out of danger. He could go to Boston or Philadelphia, or find refuge for a while in the northern forests. When this had settled down, he could return. Mr. Partridge shook his head in a vehement no.
“It might come to that, and soon,” he said, “but we’ve got work to do first.”
Together they began packing the best books and most important documents. His precious books made by William Caslon. Swift and Pope, a copy of Don Quixote in Spanish, books by Plato and Machiavelli on forming republics, sheaves of slave trading invoices. “These must be saved first,” he said. “We must hide them, in case the mobs come here.” Some went into a wide worn leather bag. He opened the storage space beneath the printing press and shoved the bag into the darkness. “Let me think about where they’ll be safe for a year or two.”
As they packed, mobs were sweeping the town. For three nights, Cormac searched for Kongo and saw white mobs beating blacks with clubs or kicking them into meat. One African, accused of stealing, had both hands chopped off at the wrist without charges being presented to the grand jury. An African woman suspected of sympathy for the rebels had her clothes torn from her body on Beaver Street and was tossed from man to man until she was sent raving through the streets, naked and alone and wailing. The decent whites closed their shutters and locked their doors: seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Cormac saw that the white men in the mobs were crazy now: muscles and faces distorted, tendons stretched like cables in their necks, hair wild. They were armed with pistols, muskets, and certainty. All of them were drinking something: rum, gin, whiskey. “Instant courage,” Mr. Partridge sneered. “To keep the shite from their trousers.” At night, their torches lurched through the streets, and there weren’t enough redcoats to control them. They shouted back and forth, one mob to another, claiming the right to certain streets, reporting on their quarries, their instant trials, instant judgments, and instant punishments. “One Irishman tarred and feathered, one nigger with his balls cut off!” When a black man was spotted, they roared like valiant warriors, although there were four of them for each black man, and they ran in pursuit like hounds after a fox.
That Saturday night, the mobs were larger, moving everywhere in their purging fury, and searching homes and shops and workplaces. Cormac suggested to Mr. Partridge that they rent a horse and move books and documents somewhere north, out of the city, to hide them, wait a few weeks, and then return when the mobs had gone quiet.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” he said. “I’ll go for a horse.”
Off he went, and then Cormac heard a mob coming down Cortlandt Street, and looked out and saw Kongo. Stones and bottles were smashing around him. He saw Cormac but kept running. Cormac grabbed the sword and stepped outside as the mob rushed by the shop.
Kongo was down, his skull bloodied. He was bent into a small target, hands covering his head, while the whites kicked at him, cursed him, jammed the blunt ends of poles into his ribs, trying to get at his balls. They were screaming fecking cannibal and goddamned savage and black bastard.
Cormac broke through, holding the sword.
“Enough,” he said. “Let him be. If you kill him, you’ll all be charged with murder. I’ll make certain of that.”