City of Glory (18 page)

“The Spirit of the Holy One, blessed be His name, breathes where it will, Jonathan Devrey. You need not ask for a message to get one.”

Jonathan had been pasting labels on small containers of Devrey’s Elixir of Well-Being, a thick and bitter brown tonic that was the most popular of the simples sold in the shop. Now he started shuffling the bottles about as if the exact manner in which they were set out on the counter was of vital importance. “Very well, go ahead, tell me what you’ve come to say. Then get on with you. You’re not good for business, Hannah. No customer will come in while you’re here.”

“Won’t take long,” she said. “Molly sent me.”

He wasn’t surprised. As soon as she’d walked through the door, he’d suspected it would have something to do with his twin sister. From the day sixteen years earlier when she disappeared, every worrying thing that happened to him seemed to be about her. Why not a visit from Holy Hannah as well? “Molly’s been gone a long time. What’s she got to say to me now?”

“Says you’re not to worry. Says she understands.”

“Understands what? I had nothing to do with whatever happened to Molly. No one has ever accused me of—”

“Molly says she’s at peace and you shouldn’t worry. She forgives you.”

“I’d nothing to do with it.” Jonathan was shouting now, unable to help himself. “Whatever took Molly and Laniah, it was no doing of mine.”

Hannah had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Laniah a young mulatto slave who had belonged to Clare Devrey and her family, vanished the same time Molly did. Most folks thought the pair had wandered off into the Manhattan wilderness and starved or drowned, or got sucked into the quicksand that could be found in many spots in the woods. Poor Jonathan—all these years he’d been so busy denying responsibility for his sister’s disappearance, it never occurred to him that no one really thought he bore any blame. New Yorkers were too practical to worry about a crime when there was no reason to think one had been committed. “Molly says she doesn’t mind that you have all this”—Hannah waved her arm to indicate the pharmacy—“and she has nothing. She is happy you are successful.”

Jonathan took a deep breath. “Fine, I am glad to know my sister is at peace. Now, please go. And take him with you.”

It was the first indication that Jonathan had noticed the boy, who was busy making himself small behind Hannah’s back, and she took the opportunity to haul him forward so he could be plainly seen. “His name’s Jesse Edwards. Fought in the war, he did. Jesse here was with Commodore Perry. Tell him, Jesse.”

“On the
Lawrence,
” Jesse mumbled.

Jonathan was intrigued in spite of himself. “That so? Perry’s flagship?”

“Till he left for
Niagara,
aye.”

“The great battle on Lake Erie?”

Jesse nodded.

“From the size and the age of you, I’d guess you were a powder monkey. Dangerous work, lad. Is that how you lost that arm?”

Jesse nodded yet again. Near enough to the truth so he figured even Holy Hannah wouldn’t accuse him of lying.

“Well, you don’t brag on it. I’ll say that for you. Very well, you’re a hero then. Here.” Jonathan held out a bottle of Devrey’s Elixir of Well-Being. “Have one of these. Make you feel better than you can imagine. Everyone in town says the same. Costs three pennies a bottle, but no charge for you, seeing as how you’re a war veteran and a hero and all.”

Hannah still had hold of Jesse’s collar, and she shoved him forward. “Go on, take your present. But that’s the last thing you should expect from Mr. Devrey for free. He’ll pay you a wage for your work, and you touch nothing else, you hear. Otherwise—”

“Hold on! I never said anything about the boy working for me. I have no need of—”

“Course you have need. I told you I brought a message and a messenger. Molly says you’re to begin delivering things to folks as want ’em. Save those as live in the outer wards the trouble of coming here to Hanover Square. It’s a fine idea now that the city’s grown so much you’re not in the center of things. Molly says Jesse’s to work every day but the Christian Sabbath, and to have a wage of four shillings a week. Coin money, mind. And you give him a cup of hot milk and ale when he arrives in the morning and another at midday.”

“I don’t—”

“Molly says he’s also to clean the shop once a week and sweep outside the front door twice a day. And he can do things like see to those labels you were busy with when we arrived. You’ll get good value for money, Jonathan Devrey. Your poor dead twin sister says so.”

Jonathan was beginning to doubt that any of this was a message from beyond the grave. That Molly and Laniah were long dead there could be no doubt, but Holy Hannah probably knew as little about what happened to them as the next person. As for this one-armed powder monkey, everyone knew Hannah took in waifs and strays and usually put them to work in the town. Probably they brought their earnings back to her. Nonetheless…A delivery service. He knew of no shop in the entire town that offered such a convenience, and could be the lad would be useful in other ways. “Can you handle a broom with one arm, Jesse Edwards?”

“Aye, sir. I can.”

“And you could stick a label to a bottle as well?”

Hannah shoved the boy forward once more. “Don’t just say you can, Jesse. Go on, show him.”

She’d pushed him right up to the wooden counter. Jesse used his left hand to smear some of the thick paste on the back of one of the labels, then used that same hand to pick up a bottle of Elixir and put the neck between his teeth. After that it was easy to pick up the label and stick it on.

“I’ll be fluttered,” Jonathan said. “Good for you, lad. Neat and quick as if you had two arms and the hands that go with them. Very well”—he leaned over the counter and put out his right hand; Jesse took it with his left—“you are hired. Can you start now?”

“Course he can,” Hannah said. “And you might want to think about getting him some livery as well. Your expense that will be, mind.”

Livery. Well yes, it might be a good idea. Show the town he was as important as his miserable cousin Bastard, that would. “I’ll consider it.”

“And he’s to have four pennies right now. An advance against his first week’s wages.”

“I don’t see—”

“Molly said so. Only I think she meant it to be five pennies.”

“Very well, four pennies.” He reached into the cash drawer below the counter.

“Five,” Hannah insisted. “I’m sure that’s what Molly said.”

Jonathan counted five coppers into her outstretched hand, careful not to touch the dirt-encrusted skin. Jesse looked on and didn’t say a word.

As soon as she left the shop, Hannah ducked into the alley beside it. Mustn’t let Jonathan Devrey see her cackling with laughter. Messages from the dead indeed. What kind of prophesying would that be? No, this day’s work was just natural Simson canniness.

Her great-great-grandfather had been a West Indies trader and an elder of Shearith Israel, the synagogue where the town’s Jews worshiped to this day. By 1720 he had become the first provisioner to supply the Jewish community here and in the islands with meat that was butchered in the proper rabbinical manner and stamped
KASHER
. His sons had gone from butchering to supplying not just Jews but the whole town with foodstuffs. By the time her father came along, there were entire sections of New York City markets, baker’s stalls and greengrocers and fishmongers and the like, owned by her branch of the family Simson. Knowing about business was in her blood. She’d done Jonathan Devrey a good deed this day. Never mind that he thought it was—Holy heaven! What sort of being was this?

Thumbless Wu stared at the creature who was staring at him. A
gwai nui sing,
he realized after a few seconds, a foreign ghost woman. His only concern was that she not try and take what he was eating. Wu wasn’t strong enough to stand and run, but he half turned away, clutching the lump of moldy green bread to his chest.

Blessed be the Holy One! Must be some kind of Indian, though far fewer of them came into the town these days, and he didn’t look like any she’d ever seen. Didn’t matter. He was starving. Otherwise he’d not be gnawing on that disgusting bit of whatever it was that Jesse had kicked here all the way from Broad Street.

There were five major markets in the city. The Fly Market at the foot of Maiden Lane was the oldest of them, but it had been vastly improved since it was first established in Dutch Nieuw Amsterdam. Back then it took a license issued by the authorities to sell meat in the town. How else could the population be protected from dog passing itself off as beef, or feral cat in the place of chicken? These days the city fathers went still further to guard the food supply.

At the Fly Market the butchers’ stalls were sheltered beneath a slate roof held up with substantial brick pillars; there was yet another roofed-over area for the sale of fish. Women sold produce at tables whose locations had been claimed by their mothers and grandmothers, and passed on as a matter of legacy. Competition for custom was fierce, but the ultimate stamp of approval was bestowed only by New York’s wealth of public employees. There were inspectors of quality, markers and sealers of weights and measures, overseers of the porters, packers, and cullers, even one officious man whose job it was to be certain no oysters were sold between June 1 and September 30, when it was said they were not healthy.

As if any sane person would eat an oyster left to fester in this searing summer heat, Manon thought. She patted her forehead with a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and tried to appear interested in the wilted produce at the stall of Elsie Gruning. More important, she tried to appear uninterested in Joyful, standing beside her, also trying to look fascinated by the carrots and onions.

Elsie watched the couple, smiling, enjoying the little romantic conspiracy in which she’d been playing a part for many weeks. The beautiful golden-haired girl—Elsie had known her since she was little and her mama came to buy Elsie Gruning’s fresh-picked produce—like a princess she was. And the handsome young man, so tall and strong. Such a pity about his hand. Ach, not so important. It could have been some more necessary part of him. He was no less a man for the loss of a hand. And see how he cares for the girl.

“You look so distressed,” Joyful murmured. “What’s wrong? Has your father—”

“It’s not papa. At least not only papa. I—” Manon broke off. The Widow Tremont was two stalls away, buying a crock of honey. She was a mantua maker, a pillar of the Huguenot community, and she’d been chasing after Papa since Maman died. She’d love nothing better than to go running to
dear
Monsieur Vionne with a bit of gossip, passed on because, of course, she had only his good name in mind.

“Mevrouw, the carrots…” The old Dutch politeness still came naturally to Elsie. Her grandparents had been Hollanders, and both Dutch and German remained as common as English on the many farms of West Chester and Long Island. “Your papa will not believe—
Ja kum nau,
I am wasting my breath. You do not care about carrots today. Mijnheer, look—” She sensed another customer approaching her stall and paused.

The shopper, a dusky woman dressed in shabby, shapeless clothes with a shawl pulled halfway over her face, approached to within a couple of feet, then halted. Elsie waited a moment to see if she was going to ask about the carrots—New York’s poor frequently bargained for the produce the gentry didn’t want—but this one simply looked at Mevrouw Manon and her gentleman friend, then turned and disappeared into the crowd. As for the man and the girl, like mooning calves they were, right here in the open. It could lead to nothing but trouble. “Look over there, mijnheer…” Elsie prodded Joyful with one of the carrots judged not worthy and nodded in the direction of the large wooden building across the way.

The double doors to Abraham Valentine’s coopery were wide open. Joyful could see barrels of every size stacked in neat rows and apparently no one keeping any kind of watch over them. Elsie leaned forward. “Mijnheer Valentine left a few minutes ago,” she murmured. “Him he left in charge.” Her nod indicated a small boy sleeping soundly between two large oak kegs just outside the door.