Brookland (7 page)

“Fly Market!” Ben said, his blue eyes casting greedily around. “Iz, do you have any money?”

Prue picked Pearl up so she might see better, and exclaimed with interest whenever her sister pointed or whistled at some attractive dainty. There was so much for sale here, Prue wondered why she saw Mrs. van Nostrand at market every week, buying Brooklyn meat and cheese like anyone else; her husband could have brought home delicacies of every order for the asking. Prue's own father could have done the same, and she wondered why he didn't. The children wove among the stalls and saw smoked meats, eggs the pale colors of spring flowers, entire stalls full of cheese, bolts of fabric to rival any in Mrs. Tilley's store, and row upon row of books. Prue could imagine her father perusing them and asking the bookseller questions. Pearl was heavy, but Prue did not want to put her down; when she could rest her eyes from the visual wealth around her, Pearl watched her elder sister with an expression of love and trust far exceeding what Prue felt she'd earned. She imagined Pearl would someday outgrow this admiration, but as long as it persisted, Prue would do all she could to encourage it. Over the top of a low bookshelf, Prue saw Ben and Isaiah reading something, and she caught Isaiah's eye. “Did you know there could be so many goods in one place?” she asked.

He sucked on his lower lip while he thought it through. “I didn't know there could be so many
people
in one place. Nor so many marvelous things. Show her the book, Ben.” Ben held up a detailed illustration on waterproofing from a shipbuilding book. At the engraving's left, two workmen were uncoiling rope from a cauldron of pitch; at its right, they were wedging the rope into a seam on a rowboat's hull.

“Careful, now,” the bookseller called, “I saw those filthy mittens you stowed in your pocket.”

Ben shot Isaiah an angry glance as he put the book back down.

At the inland side of the market, Joe Loosely and his wife hove into view, looking as dazed by the sights as Prue herself felt. Matty Winship and Joe Loosely were good friends, and as they clapped each other on the shoulder, Prue noticed how of a type they were: both solidly built, with friendly features and chestnut hair. (Mr. Loosely was less well endowed in
this regard.) Prue's sharp-featured mother could not less have resembled Mrs. Loosely, who came of Dutch stock, but they greeted each other warmly. Prue shifted Pearl so her weight might rest on the other arm, and Pearl gave a contented hiss as she nestled in.

“Not at the tavern?” Matty asked. “Seems it'd be a banner day for business.”

Mrs. Loosely nodded what appeared to be her rueful agreement, and Joe said, “It is, indeed. But even an innkeeper's entitled to a holiday. Is it not so, Annetje?”

“I'm not so sure,” she said, but she was already distracted by Maggie. As the Looselys had no children, they made a pleasant fuss over their small neighbors, dirty hands and all.

“The men are looking after the place. It's only for a few hours,” Joe said. “And quite the miracle.”

“Indeed,” Matty said, though Prue was certain he did not ascribe the frozen river to God.

“Makes a man realize what a fine thing it'd be to have a bridge. We could saunter across to Fly Market on a Sunday stroll.”

“In all the time we could spare from the tavern,” Annetje Loosely said, with an arch tone Prue could tell was only half in jest.

“Have you been showing the kids the town?” Joe asked, resting his hand on Tem's head as if she were a newel post. Tem squirmed, but could have gotten free if she'd wanted to. “How'd you get charge of all these Hors fields ?”

“Simple accretion,” Matty Winship replied.

“Isaiah's in charge,” Ben offered. “And Mr. Winship's only shown us the market.”

“Then let's take 'em to City Hall,” Joe said. He looked around a moment before deciding on a direction and setting out that way with Tem. “D'ye know, Miss Temmy, that New York is important enough to have its own seat of government? Not a little farming town like our Breuckelen.” He gave the name a hearty Dutch pronunciation that made his wife laugh. Tem did not appear to care, and began to look peeved about the hand on her head. The streets themselves entranced Prue—she loved the way the buildings massed up as high as the rocky bluffs on either side of Joralemon's Lane. Ben and Isaiah ran and shouted as usual, but Prue felt an unexpected calm descend on her as she contemplated the majesty
of her surroundings and the perfect ordinariness of the people she passed.

“Hey, Matty?” she heard Joe continue, though his voice did not dispel her reverie. “I've been thinking what to do about my sign.”

“Well, you can't take it down,” his wife said. “The whole neighborhood would miss it.” The Looselys' sign depicted the king's arms in vivid color and detail, and was popularly counted one of the best works of art in Brooklyn.

“But I can't display it, either, as things stand. I wonder if Matty Winship might not employ his prodigious sign-makin' skills to render the thing more patriotical?”

“I'll think on it,” Prue's father said, and reached over to take Pearl from her arms, as if he'd intuited how heavy the child had grown. Just then, a litter of screaming piglets went running across the street, with a slave boy in hot pursuit; but even the pigs and the laughter they engendered could not draw Prue entirely from her thoughts. She enjoyed seeing the grandeur of the City Hall, and New York's big brown church, which seemed as magnificent as a cathedral compared to Brooklyn's low-ceilinged meetinghouse. She loved walking over the smooth, triangular common, and could imagine how lush it would be when the grass was green and the lilac hedges were in bloom. Her father pointed out the heavy iron bars over the door to the Bank of New-York—meant, Prue gathered, to assure people their money was safe inside. There were people everywhere in Manhattan, ten or a hundred times as many as in Brooklyn; but all she could really think was how plain this place was, and how wonderfully so. Had anyone present known how she'd misled herself with her childhood lucubrations, she might have died of embarrassment on the spot; but no one did. As she walked that day, she was attuned to her family and friends, but more deeply so to the city itself, and to the ebullient life coursing through its streets.

When Roxana called out, “The Sign of the Crossed Keys—Matty, we should feed them before they faint,” Prue was startled to realize how hungry she'd grown. She also noticed Tem tugging at her sleeve, and picked her up, though Tem immediately pushed both hands against her shoulder to try to get free.

“How can you even remember the place?” Matty asked Roxana.

She made a small plosive sound and shook her head. “It was where
we ate after we signed the papers for the property,” she said. “I wouldn't soon forget.”

Prue liked the huge placard depicting crossed keys.

Mrs. Loosely herded the children down the steps as if they were sheep.

“Whuzzis?” Tem asked, looking bothered.

Prue said, “I think we're having dinner here.” She knew Mrs. Loosely served food at the Ferry Tavern, but mostly to bachelors like Dr. de Bouton and the brothers Hicks. Prue had picked at a smoked fish on her father's plate there while idly listening to the adults discuss the news, but she had never eaten a meal away from her own table. Maggie appeared spooked by the steps leading down to the basement doorway and turned her face toward Isaiah's coat; and once they were indoors, the din that reverberated from the vaulted brick ceiling startled Prue's ears. All around, men of business were tucking into their chops as if nothing unusual were taking place outdoors. Most of them were dressed neatly, but none, she thought, so well as her father, who wore a clean collar and cuffs and a blue cravat though he was only wandering around with his family. Prue almost laughed to think she might ever have imagined such an establishment existing in the Land of the Shades; and her father, seeing the fleeting smile, brushed at her cheek to encourage it.

Joe spoke to a woman in a red apron, who led them to a large table near the rear and returned mere moments later with a heaping basket of fried oysters and clams, a pitcher of cider, and a bouquet of wooden mugs.

As the Horsfield boys grabbed for their food, Prue thought briefly of Persephone, who had eaten the pomegranate seeds in Hell and ever after been bound to the place. But the clams were sweet as sugar and the cider more alcoholic than that her mother served; there was no good argument against eating in a New York inn.

“Why're you so quiet?” Ben asked her.

She flinched a little, shy to have been caught. Roxana answered for her: “Because she's a dark-minded critter; you know that, Ben.” This made Prue want to slump down on her bench, but she could see that both her mother and Ben were still smiling and that her father had put his arm around her mother's shoulders. They remained mysterious,
though Prue felt she had learned a good deal about the world outside Brooklyn that day.

By the time the meal was through, the afternoon was already settling in toward evening; a shadow covered the whole side of the street. Tem was drooping, and Roxana slung her over her shoulder like a washrag. Prue could see her mother working up some reproach for her father, but before she could voice it, he said, “We'll get them home quick as we can.”

“Shame for such a day to end,” Joe Loosely said. “It'll be a long time before we have another holiday.”

Mrs. Loosely picked up Maggie, who had refused to eat any lunch and still looked disgruntled. Pearl got to perch on her father's shoulders; while Ben and Isaiah, as promised, moved under their own power. Prue felt relieved to find them tired enough to walk along without any shoving or games. After a few minutes weaving through traffic on the busy streets, even the adults fell quiet, and the Looselys ended up walking somewhat ahead of the rest of the party. Ben began directing Isaiah to collect mementos from the journey: a discarded newssheet, some gray New York pebbles, an apple pilfered from a cart. As they stepped out onto the surface of the water, Prue marveled at how natural it now seemed to walk over the surface of a frozen river. This was how quickly one's view could change.

“Roxy?” Matty said softly.

Prue moved away from the group as if in search of something for Ben's collection, so she might keep her parents in view and continue to listen. Her mother raised her thin eyebrows in reply.

“If we aren't—if we don't try for a boy, we shall have to train one of the girls to run the distillery.”

She dropped her head to one side, as if releasing water from her ear. “I don't know,” she said. “I suppose it wouldn't be the worst thing.”

“Not Pearlie, of course, and Tem's too little yet to know what she'll be good for. But Prue.”

Roxana caught Prue's eye and raised her chin to indicate she shouldn't be so nosy. “It's a serious business. Do you suppose you could manage, Prue?”

Prue glanced at the boys, who were lost in their endeavor. Her heart almost leapt from her body at the thought of being trained to the distillery.
This was the thing she most coveted. The machines, and the mysteries of the business, seemed such a worthwhile and practical pursuit compared to wondering where the dead resided; and she'd be able to spend whole days and years in her father's company. “I imagine I could,” she said. Then, fearing her mother would see the eagerness in her eyes and refuse her, she headed back toward the boys and pushed hard on Ben's slender back. She had no real desire to fight with him—and indeed, she grew sorry she'd started anything when he pulled her to her knees—but she didn't know what else to do with her enthusiasm.

Her father said to her mother, “I know it's what she wants. She might prove to have a talent for it.”

“She might,” her mother replied more quietly. But Prue's ears were attuned to her even as Ben reached under her coat to tickle her ribs. “She wouldn't make a mistake lightly.”

“Hey, hey,” Isaiah said, and pulled Ben off. They were both laughing. Prue was far more interested in her parents than in the boys, but she thanked Isaiah anyway.

“We'll see,” Matty said. “Perhaps in the spring.” Prue thought she could hear in his voice the hope he might still, somehow, get a son. “Matthias Winship and Daughter,” he said, as if to see if it wanted alteration.

Matthias Winship & Daughter
. It rang like a church bell; and though they might eventually have to append a final
s
for Tem, there were years to come in which it could be Prue's private demesne. She would have repeated the name in her mind indefinitely had Ben not called out, “Look!” Her gaze followed where his finger pointed, and she saw her beloved bluffs of Ihpetonga, tinged pink against the darkening sky. “That's our house, Iz!”

Prue could make out a squat white structure near the ferry landing, and some Horsfield family sheets and britches hanging stiffly on their line. Their mother had died the previous year, and the washerwoman never quite seemed to get abreast of all their laundry. “Doesn't look like much from here, does it?” she asked.

Isaiah, holding on to Ben, said, “Easy.”

There, farther south, were the sails of her father's windmill, motionless in the still air and small as a doll's arms. In the rosy light, the black crags—from whose slopes most of the cypress had been harvested to
make casks for the gin—looked neither majestic nor fearsome, but simply dull. She could make out the name of the establishment—Matth
^s
Winship, Distiller & Recter of First-Quality
Gin—beckoning to her in tall letters from one of the storehouses whose broad side faced the river. The cherry orchard was a cluster of bare twigs, and the Winship house, among the more prominent in the village, was a brown clump, like a bird's nest.

“Your place doesn't look like much, either, does it?” asked Ben.