Brookland (60 page)

On the New York side, the bridge would be founded in the blasted-out schist, but the Brooklyn footing required a foundation stone so vast, it had taken the quarry the entire spring to mine it. As it had floated down the Hudson on eight tethered barges, there had been rumors it had stopped the flow of traffic in both directions; Prue thought it would be only a matter of time before it appeared in the balladeers' songs. When it arrived at Winship Gin, Jens Luquer saw it from the stillhouse window, and without thinking sounded the warning bell, closing down the works. Though he was later abashed to have been so frightened by the thing, it proved just as well production had ceased, for Ben needed every hale man in the village to attach the ropes to it and lay down the logs along which it would be rolled. He had already sent notice to farmers as far off as Bedford and Midwood that he would need to borrow their teams of oxen when the great stone arrived; now he sent out runners to call the favor due. The next day, twenty-three teams of oxen arrived. Prue had never seen so many of the beasts. She had thrilled at their great size and strength when her father and Ben's had set the foundation stones for the distillery; now they seemed to fill the entire mill yard. Ben strung the lead ropes from the stone over a set of pulleys twenty times larger than those for the cranes; from the pulleys, he attached the ropes to the snorting beasts. And with the distillery's men in the water, fighting to hold the barges steady, and the bridgeworks' men alongside them, trying to coax the stone along, he gave the command to begin heaving it up toward shore.

It took four days to drag it to the brink of the pit, and though no lives were lost in the process, some limbs were broken, and Prue shuddered to think what might go afoul when at last the stone settled into place. As she and Tem watched from the countinghouse, she kept thinking of Susannah, who would have been a fat, six-months baby by then, and was instead all desiccated skin and brittle bone. She continued to pray Susannah's life would prove enough for this monstrosity she'd dreamed. She thought her prayers must have been answered, for when the stone settled into its place on the morning of the fifth day, with a crash that shook the distillery buildings and sent a wave out into the river that slopped onto the wharves of New York, everyone was still safe. She oversaw the payments to the farmers, and ordered out liquor for the men.

Atop the gigantic stone on the Brooklyn side, and within the pit on New York's, Ben and Prue instructed the men in beginning to construct the stone feet of the abutments. This was not quite the method Matty Winship had used to secure the buildings of his distillery against the fluctuations of the sand, but it was similar; Prue hoped it would suffice to steady something as large as the bridge. The evidence suggested it would. As the twin abutments grew, the men filled some of the excavated sand and rubble back in around them, so that the structures seemed to grow from the ground itself.

Prue learned from her men that at the work's commencement, the two teams had laid a wager with each other as to who would finish their foundation first. Everyone suspected the Brooklyn side would take longer under a female supervisor than New York's would under the bridge architect himself, so the New York crew had given Brooklyn's a ten-day handicap. When young Aiphonsus Weatherspoon told her of this, realizing only too late it was something he ought not to have related, Prue wished she were Tem, so she might swear about it or drink herself into oblivion at the Twin Tankards. In repeating the story to Ben, she nearly shouted with frustration. But when her team at last lost the bet, she assumed their debt, and out of her own pocket treated the men to a night at the Liberty Tavern. In this way she both filled Joe's coffers—she hoped tempering his opposition to the bridge—and earned the reluctant respect of her men. Weatherspoon, Domer, and Osier had never begrudged her their admiration, as it was she who had originally given them
employ; but they were bashful of her in front of the other men, so their support had hitherto done her little good.

It soon became obvious that building the anchorage required constant supervision, and Prue made a deal with Marcel Dufresne: They would trade off days overseeing the Brooklyn work crew, that both might continue to fulfill their duties in the distillery. Ben continued to take the boat each day to Manhattan.

Had Prue never before spent a sleepless night, she felt the Brooklyn anchorage should have caused her to do so. All its crenellations and spires required the genius of a master builder, and who was she but an amateur? New York's pyramid would be equally complex, but she trusted Ben better than she trusted herself. Night after night, she imagined wagons and pedestrians ascending the roadway via the vaulted tunnels in the two structures' middles, then imagined some ill-placed stone plummeting free, or a passing stonemason expressing disgust at the way she had her workmen mix their mortar.

“I don't see why you fret so,” Ben said one morning as his barge was about to embark for the New York side. “There shall be no second-rate masonry, no mortar squelching out from between stones. We are building according to the most modern and scientific methods, and those of our men who are not expert craftsmen now shall be so before the frost.”

Prue thought it typical he should address her concern with blithe good cheer. She was still too wrought up about the previous evening's dream to answer him.

“Prue, really,” he said. “If you're so concerned, have Marcel supervise the men for the day, and come across with me. I'll make sure you know how it should be done.”

“You needn't patronize me,” Prue said.

Ben shrugged his shoulders. “And you needn't worry over something you understand perfectly well.”

Though Prue did not concede his point, she left Marcel in charge of the Brooklyn works and spent the day observing Ben's methods for finishing and laying stones. The experience drove home what she had always known: that it was best to check the plans thrice before making any irrevocable step, and that attention and care could avert most accidents. She could not force herself to love the work as Ben did—she was still sometimes raw with sorrow over Susannah's death, and learning of the men's
wager as to her competence rekindled her jealousy of her husband—but she could try to imitate his good cheer with the workmen.

In this manner, and with a building season of unprecedented good weather, the anchorages stood nearly complete on both sides of the river by November of i 800. Before the close of the season, the footings supported the stubs of the iron struts from which the arms would soon spring. Though the blunt-topped pyramid would eventually rise another twenty feet into the air, and though the Brooklyn abutment yet lacked all the distinguishing marks that would make it a fancy, these stone constructions had a gruff beauty all their own, and they dwarfed the landscape from which they sprang. Pearl's original elevation for the bridge had seemed massive when first she'd drawn it, and the second model—still being tested each day for its responses to weight and weather—had been large enough to bridge a body of water in its own right; but nothing had prepared Prue for the sheer size of the emerging structure. In relation to houses, manufactories, the straits, and even the cliffs of Ihpetonga, the footings seemed to have been left behind by a race of giants. They were on the same scale as the mountains Prue had viewed up the Hudson; nothing local could compare to them. As she went about the work of the distillery, Prue sometimes glimpsed the Brooklyn anchorage from the corner of her eye, and she would feel as if she'd suddenly turned a corner in a strange city and come upon it, by accident, for the first time. At such moments she felt an emotion she could only describe as awe—a brightness in the chest; a sense of wonder that such a thing existed in the world, quite apart from her role in creating it. She realized with humility what a marvel it was such a bridge could be built at all, let alone partly by the authorship of her own hand.

Prue further marveled that the first season of building had ended without loss of life. (The newspapers also remarked this. Mr. Harrison attributed it, in the
Argus
, to “Benjamin & Mrs. Horsfield's punctilious care in supervision”; the others, to luck.) There had been numerous injuries—burns, fractures, blows to the head; in the worst thus far, a rope transporting a large stone had broken, and the impact had shattered both feet of unlucky George White, whom Dr. de Bouton believed would never walk again—but none had proven fatal. The men were superstitious enough to spit to protect themselves at the beginning of each day, and religious enough to visit Will Severn's church far more regularly than the locals; but
ancient Elliott Fortune, who'd grown friendly with some of them while drinking his evening pint, told Prue they all believed, more or less sincerely, she must have done some kind of witchcraft to protect the works. She had known Fortune all her life, and considered telling him her thoughts about Susannah and the miscarried child protecting the works; but she soon thought better of it, and kept silent. If the workers wanted to think she'd blessed the place, she would accept that benediction.

The laborers could not stay the winter. Though there was a few weeks' extra pay to be earned laying in stores for the next building season and securing the building sites against vandalism, there would be no work thereafter; and no matter how hearty they claimed to be, the men could not sleep in tents through the frost. Prue and Tem managed to find places for some in the distillery, and others found positions with the Luquers and Schermerhorns. A few traveled up the straits to Queen's County to see if employment might be had at the Longacre Brewery. Olympia was still growing, so there were floors to lay and laths to plaster; the same was true in Manhattan, which continued to swallow up her forest in northward expansion, and to replace old farmsteads with city blocks. The rest of the men would return to their families, some bearing the fruits of eight months' labor, while those who'd taken advantage of the proximity of the Liberty Tavern and the Twin Tankards would go home with lighter pockets. Before leaving, however, many signed contracts to return the following April. Ben and Prue counted this a true success. If any spell had been cast, Prue thought, it was in the care the men gave their work. She was anxious to retain such meticulous laborers as long as possible.

The last stragglers had left the encampment by late November. Where ordinarily would have stood the dry stubs of a year's mown grain, the ground was pocked as from musket fire from hundreds of tent staves, and worn bare from the traffic. What dull brown grass remained was matted down in circles, as if deer had lain there. “Looks like the war all over again,” Mr. Livingston said to Prue in passing.

“I daresay we are less harmed by my bridgeworks than by enemy occupation,” she replied.

Mr. Livingston fingered the fine brim of his hat. “I hope you prove correct. Good day, Mrs. Horsfield.” He continued up the Ferry Road toward Joe's tavern.

Prue stalked along her fence. She was riled by his unkindness, but remembered that he had been almost ruined by the quartering of British troops; no doubt the sights and sounds of the war remained fresh in his memory. Furthermore, she knew he was skeptical of the bridge, and supposed she should expect him to lash out against it.

Though the distillery still hummed and the docks still thronged, Brooklyn seemed quiet with the bridgeworks shut down. For eight months, it had kept her and her husband busy from dawn to dusk, six days a week; without its clamor and tumult, even the proprietor of a flourishing manufactory had time to mourn a lost child, and to wonder why no sign of one who might take her place had yet appeared. As Prue paced the length of her back fence, looking northwestward to Manhattan, she could remember the intensity with which she'd believed that city another sphere of existence. She could almost imagine the past twenty years hadn't happened: that her parents and Johanna still lived, Will Severn had never come among them, and Ben and Isaiah were simply her dear friends, the web of obligation that now bound them as far from her imagination as the empire of Japan.

The distillery was preparing to ship large orders to fuel the debaucheries of Christmas and Twelfth Night and to provision the taverns before the waterways froze. This was what Winship Daughters Gin did every year at this time; but of course, a great deal had changed. Each time she looked out to the river, Prue saw the Gothic archway rising from her property and the great pyramid looming on the far horizon. If Susannah had remained with them, she would have been nearly a year old: sitting, perhaps crawling, and with a mouth full of teeth. She might have known how to say a thing or two, “Mama” or “dog.” Prue knew it was foolish to imagine she had bartered one for the other—she scoffed at herself for it, much as she derided herself for ever having thought the damned lived in New York City—yet the thought persisted, and with it, its own irrational mathematics. Would she give back this bridge, she asked herself, if she might have her daughter? What galled her more than her propensity to ask was that she didn't know the answer. Prue hoped wherever Susannah Horsfield had gone, she was pleased with the work her parents had done, and did not curse them for having inadvertently traded her for it.