City of Dreams (22 page)

“And,” said Hamilton, “as of a month ago they had not been redeemed.”

“They’re still out there?” said Gil.

Hamilton’s eyes reflected the lamplight, though the light seemed to be pouring from that powerful brain. “Still out there, still accruing interest. So bring them in, whenever you can, and unless some other disposition has been made in the interim, they will be redeemed. There are some who would fold this debt into state debts to be assumed by the new Federal government, others who would put the responsibility directly onto the states for redemption, but I take this very seriously, Gil Walker. The New Emission Money helped to win the Revolution. It’s a debt of honor. And if I have anything to say, it will always be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government.”

A
DEBT
of honor . . . full faith and credit . . .

Gil Walker fell asleep with those words rattling in his head, and his dream revived.

For weeks after, he schemed to get back into the house where the bills might have been hidden. But whenever he rode up the Bloomingdale Road, day or night, Squire Daggett or one of his family or his dogs were there.

Once, Gil saw Daggett at the Fly Market, so he hurried back to his quarters, collected a box of books, put on his best breeches and deerskin waistcoat, and rode the six miles to Daggett Manor, planning to present himself as a traveling book salesman, just to get inside.

But Squire Daggett had somehow arrived ahead of him.

And so, he went back to work. And in time, he tamped down his ambitions, as he had tried for so long to tamp down his pain.

iv.

In January, Hamilton delivered his
Report on Public Credit
, a work of enormous detail and depth that laid out the principles for creating an economy, a credit system, and a plan for paying back those who had purchased America’s debts during the Revolution. While the Congress debated Hamilton’s recommendations, Americans indulged in great flurries of speculation. Men made markets in Continental dollars, pay certificates, and bills of exchange, because if Hamilton’s plan went through, the new government would cover the debts of the states as well as the Continental Congress.

Gil Walker read the report when it was published, did his best to understand it, and found himself dreaming again about finding that mahogany box.

Then he found the next best thing: the only woman who might lead him to it.

He and one of Black Sam’s slaves were at the fish market to buy spring shad for the president’s table. Whenever he went to the fish market, Gil stopped at Blue-Point Charlie’s, a vendor who pitched his tent at the edge of the market and shucked oysters on the spot. Gil would buy a dozen oysters, look out at the place where the
Jersey
had finally sunk into the mud, eat the oysters, and congratulate himself that he was still alive.

It had taken years before he could look at the Brooklyn Flats without feeling guilt’s burden at surviving when the Bookworm and so many more had died. But now . . . every oyster tasted like the sea breeze that for all those years had taunted him with the scent of freedom.

As he tipped his head back and let the cool, juicy creature slither down his throat, he heard a woman say his name.

He almost choked on the oyster. “Nancy? Nancy Hooley?”

“I’m back.”

“Since when?”

“There’s a general amnesty. Tories who was expelled can come back, so long as they don’t lay claim to their confiscated property. And after seven years, the mistress hated Nova Scotia—”

“How long have you been back?”

“A month,” she said. “I . . . I meant to come down to the tavern, but it looks so official now, with the sign out front that says, ‘Departments of State, Treasury, and War.’ I didn’t think you’d even be there.”

He offered her an oyster, sea-fresh and succulent, with a dash of West Indian hot sauce. “It’s a fine thing to see you.”

She tipped back her head, let the oyster slither into her mouth, and licked the juice from her lips. “You look better than the last time I saw you, Gil Walker.”

“I been survivin’.”

She patted the stomach beneath his waistcoat. “Seems like more than survival.”

“And you, miss—it’s still ‘miss,’ isn’t it?”

“Still ‘miss.’ Never met anyone to match the Bookworm.”

Gil said, “You look as beautiful as the night I first laid eyes on you.”

“Naked in the river, you mean?”

“Beautiful in the moonlight,” he said.

“’Twas drizzlin’.”

“Then you were beautiful in the drizzle.”

She looked into his eyes and said, “May I have another oyster?”

They shared oysters, and a long walk back to the Woodwards’ new home on Vandewater Street.

T
HEY MET EVERY
week after that and walked the city and visited the reopened theaters and attended services at the new Trinity together.

And on a Saturday night after they had enjoyed a performance of
The Beggar’s Opera
, they went back to Gil’s bed under the eaves. And for the first time since he lay on a blanket with Loretta, he felt sweet lips on his lips, soft breasts on his chest, smooth legs around his waist . . . without paying for any of it.

They awoke the next morning to the chiming of the Trinity bells.

“Those could be wedding bells,” said Gil, “if you agree.”

She rolled against him and wrapped an arm around him. “I will agree to be with you whenever you want, Gil Walker, so long as you agree never again to frequent places where you pay for what I’ll give free of charge. But marriage? What would two servants do for money? And what better job is there for two old dogs like us?”

Gil stared up at the roof boards. “Loretta left something for me I never found.”

“What she went to Poughkeepsie for?”

“A stash of money. She must have hid it in Woodward Manor.”

She rolled off of him.

“In the room you shared with her . . . do you know was there any hidin’ places?”

Nancy pulled the sheet up around herself. “Is that why you’ve been romancin’ me? To find out—”

“I love you, Nancy. I never thought I’d say that to anyone again. But . . . if we need money, and we know where to find twenty thousand dollars . . .”

And she relaxed. She lay back on the bed. She stared up at the eaves, too. And finally she said, “There was a loose floorboard . . .”

S
O . . . PERHAPS THE
adventure of his life had not yet been lived. Perhaps there was something more ahead of him than a slow bending to the wind of time.

That’s what Gil Walker was thinking all that Sunday and all the next morning, as he awoke too early and dragged himself down the stairs to stoke the fires and dreamed of staying in a warm bed with a warm Nancy Hooley beside him.

He did not ask her for help. Now that he knew exactly where to look, this was something he would have to do himself. Another person would only make it more dangerous. And his adventures had cost the lives of too many people he loved.

So every night for two weeks, he rode the six miles to Daggett’s house. He never arrived before eight or nine o’clock. He tethered his horse in a field on the east side of the Bloomingdale Road, then he sneaked across to the front yard.

He brought two chunks of horsemeat for the dogs. But they did not run loose on cold nights. They stayed in the house, warming their master’s feet.

For the first week, Gil watched the windows and tried to determine the movement of the family by noting the movement of lanterns through foyers, up stairs, into bedrooms. And he wrote down the exact time each night that each lantern went out. During the second week, he worked his way around to the back of the house, to time their visits to the privy. In all things, people were creatures of habit. Even on prison ships, men ate and slept and shat at the same times.

He grew bolder as the nights passed. He sneaked closer to the house. He peered in the windows. Daggett read a book each night. His heavyset wife worked at her knitting. The dogs lounged by the fire.

Gil counted three Daggett children, all in their mid-teens. They concerned him because it was possible that one of them was living in a third-floor attic room.

And sneaking past the dogs might not be easy, despite their evening languor.

But there was the great oak. It extended its branches onto the sloping roof. And atop the roof were two dormers and a glassed-in cupola . . .

He found a pruning ladder in a shed in the orchard across the road. It would get him to the lower branches of the oak. Then he could climb.

On a moonless night, he decided to move. The starlight, so much more brilliant here than in the city, would guide him.

He waited thirty minutes after the lights in Daggett Manor had gone out. Time passed slowly. Three minutes seemed like thirty, ten like two hours. And it was cold, as only March nights can be cold, when the snow is gone and the hope of spring is in the air, but the frozen ground still feels like ice underfoot.

Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted. It reminded him of nights when he had done good work for the cause. Now he was doing good work for himself and Nancy.

He moved closer. He tethered the horse to the fence some hundred feet in front of the house. Then he shouldered the ladder and slinked forward.

At the base of the tree, he waited a few moments. But there was no sound, no barking from the monstrous dogs that probably slept with their master. Even the owl had stopped hooting.

He looked up at the roof. It seemed much higher from here than it had from across the road. But the shadows of the tree branches twined tight around the trunk, so he knew that once he found his footing, it would be easy to reach the top. Then it would be a simple matter to work his way out along the branch that overhung the roof.

He took two or three deep breaths, ignored the chill of cold sweat on his flanks, and began to climb. Off the ladder he boosted himself to the lowest branch and lifted. He had solid muscles from hard work, and he did not fear heights because a man who had survived the prison ships feared nothing. Five feet, then ten feet he rose, always careful, always using one hand to climb and one hand to hold.

He paused as he went past the second story and peered into the master chamber.

If he had any doubt that he was doing the right thing, the sight of Erastus Daggett and his wife, buried in bliss beneath a mountain of blankets, kept him climbing.

He decided it would be best to put the tree between himself and the window. So he swung a leg around the trunk then reached with an arm, and as he did, something burst from a hole in the side of the tree, a hole that Gil hadn’t seen because it was on his blind side: the owl, frightened from its nest.

It struck Gil in the face, knocking him off balance. He slipped and lost his grip.

Then he was falling. He dropped five feet in an instant and slammed his belly against a branch. It levered him over, so that he hit the next branch on his back. Then he flipped again and slammed his outstretched arms off another branch and then he was on the ground, on his back, looking up into the tree.

He let out a long, low groan of pain and shock.

In all the things that had happened to him, he had never once said that he could not believe what was happening to him, until that moment. He could not believe that he had just fallen forty feet and was still conscious.

He moved his legs, then he raised his hands to look at them. Nothing seemed to be broken. But he felt a pain in his gut, a pounding, throbbing thing that seemed to grow with every beat of his heart.

And then he heard a window open above him.

Erastus Daggett said, “I don’t see nothin’.”

From within, the wife said, “I heard
somethin
’. A flutterin’, a fallin’, a groanin’.”

Stay still. Stay silent
.

“The damn owl is what you heard.”

“It was bigger than an owl.”

The pain . . . the pain. . . . Stay still. Stay silent
.

He heard Daggett say, “Maybe the coons are wakin’ up. Early March . . . big coon falls out of a tree . . .”

The voice faded.

Gil looked up at the shadow of the house and the black, star-glittered sky above it.

Then a white chamber pot appeared from the second-story window, and the Daggetts’ night piss hit him in the face.

D
AWN CAME EARLY
in March. By five o’clock the sky was bright.

That, thought Gil, was a small mercy. He slumped in the saddle, his hands on the pommel, the reins trailing, his head bobbing.

The horse did not move at a gallop or a trot but a simple walk. And it stopped to nibble whenever if saw bits of winter straw grass. So it took its own sweet time to pass the Common.

Then Gil heard hooves coming toward him on Broadway.

Then he heard voices: “I’m telling you, sir, debt assumption means everything. We must give investors and creditors confidence in our ability to cover
all
American debts if we’re to be a truly federal government. It’s the only way to guarantee that the economic system—and the government itself—will work.”

“I agree,” the bigger man said, “but let us ride in peace and speak of all this at breakfast—”

Gil raised his hand and said good morning. But he could not quite tell who the two men were until one of them rounded back on him and pulled up his horse.

“Gil? Gil Walker?”

Gil recognized the voice more than the face. “Mr. Hamilton?”

“Are you all right, man? You look—”

“He looks blue,” said the other man.

“So he does, Mr. President,” said Alexander Hamilton. “What happened, Gil?”

“I like to ride in the dawn, like Mr. President here.”

“It’s good for the constitution,” said George Washington.

“Except when you . . . you . . . fall.”

“You fell? Are you hurt?” asked Hamilton.

“I fear somethin’ burst inside of me. I . . . I . . .”

And in the bright light of a cold March dawn, the last two faces that Gil Walker saw were the faces of the Revolution and the federal government: George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.