“Ah.”
“A thought.”
Catherine left knowing she’d put a tantalizing idea in front of Maureen. She could breed coach horses. They wouldn’t be in business together. Catherine couldn’t abide that, but one would bolster the other.
As she was helped into the coach by Barker O., who had stayed in the stables with King David and Solomon, the elegant coach horses, she smiled at DoRe.
Barker O. and DoRe, while competitive, had great respect for each other. Discussing horses, training methods, enlivened them.
William, a young man Jeddie’s age, nineteen, quietly listened. It wouldn’t do to interrupt one’s elders.
As Barker O. drove the coach away, William said to DoRe, “Is it true she memorizes bloodlines?”
“She knows them back to the old king, Charles II: He had a mare, Creme Cheeks.”
Still watching the coach, putting his hands in his pockets, William looked from the coach to the formidable DoRe.
“A man good with horses can go anywhere in the world.”
DoRe stepped back into the barn, William behind him. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You go everywhere.” William’s lower lip jutted out.
“I drive the Master and Missus. I see things.” He shrugged.
“I want to ride. I want to make money. I hear they race all the time in England and France and jockeys grow rich.”
“You think the Missus will send you to France? She won’t even send you to Richmond or Williamsburg. She cares nothing about racing. Best you keep your thoughts to yourself.”
“Your son got away from here.”
DoRe rounded on William. “My son was falsely accused of murder. If he hadn’t run, that bitch”—he couldn’t help it, he used that word—“would have seen him hang.”
DoRe, circumspect, was grateful no one else was in the barn. Maureen set her people against one another spying. Someone might have tattled on him, receiving money or preference. Trust was in short supply on Big Rawly.
Defiant, reckless, William glared. “I’ll be free even if I have to kill someone.”
“Don’t be a fool, William. Don’t ever say that again. You know she has eyes and ears everywhere.”
“I’ll get away and you’ll watch me.”
With that William returned to the tack room to clean a bridle.
DoRe shook his head. The young, he thought to himself, as he also thought best to keep his distance from a hothead.
Rocking in the coach, feet on a brazier, wrapped in a fur blanket, Catherine felt a tingle of excitement. Risk pushed her on, provoked her to do better. Not a fearful person, she’d try new things. And she wanted to make money, pots of it.
She hoped France would pull things together, honor debts. Then again, she hoped other states would honor debts.
If one couldn’t make a profit, if one couldn’t get credit, commerce would be strangled. Catherine rarely wished to be a man, but when it came to business, she felt she knew more than many of the men she had observed. And she knew she could never let them know that. She would fight the anger rising in her throat by realizing how easy they were to influence. Maybe it evened out. Who was to say?
But she wanted to win and win big.
19
January 23, 2017
Monday
Harry and Marvella peered through two squares.
“This thing is huge,” Harry exclaimed.
“Is. Sean said they must dig out the entire foundation, go down to bedrock, sink in the enormous support beams to about eight feet, fill it in to finally realize the Z shape for the foundation. It’s complicated.” Marvella scanned the heavy machinery for sight of Sean. “Ah, come along, Harry. We need to go to the other side.”
The two hurried along watching for icy spots on the temporary sidewalk. Reaching the two-lane road into the cavernous excavation site, they waited. The heavy machinery was kept in the pit but foremen needed to drive their cars into the area.
Marvella checked her watch. “Ten. He’s good about time.”
Indeed he was.
Her cellphone rang. “Marvella, it’s Sean. Stay where you are. I’ll pick you up.”
Within minutes he drove up the incline in a bespattered Range Rover, the beast Rover not the pretty Velar. He hopped out, opened the door for Marvella first and then the back door for Harry.
“Ladies.” He smiled as he turned around the expensive SUV, drove them down, down, down. “Before you endure the cold, let me explain.” He pointed to the digging. “The basement, the underpinning of this structure, will of course bear five hundred thousand tons of weight, as much as the Twin Towers did. The I-beams will bear a great deal of weight. We’re building this the old way. The Twin Towers were pods affixed to a huge central steel core. When the planes hit, the spokes under the floor crumpled. The floor folded almost like a round filter in a coffee machine.”
“What an awful thing,” Marvella said.
“It’s perhaps the main reason so many people and firefighters were killed. Everything collapsed. Here we have designed supports that transverse the Z. So the ends of the Z sink deep into the diagonal. Other than that this is a conventional structure. A series of crossbeams, squares. It’s still the safest way to build a high building, a true skyscraper.”
“And you will light the top and the bottom?” Marvella had studied the design.
“We’ll use thick translucent glass cladding on top of the Z as well as the bottom. So, for instance, on St. Patrick’s Day the Z will glow in green, an inner and outer outline.”
“Sounds wonderful.” Harry loved the idea.
“One of the advantages of Richmond growing now as opposed to the early twentieth century is we are freed from building big boxes. Even if you cover them in bronze mirrors, they are still big boxes.”