City of Glory (32 page)

She’d thought to go round the back to the kitchen entrance, but her father was waiting by the open front door. “So,” he said.

“I am sorry, Papa. I was delayed. I will begin the dinner immediately.”

She tried to push past. Vionne put out a hand and stopped her. “First, tell me where you have been.” Manon said nothing. “Look at you. Your hair is loose. Your dress is stained with grass. You are like…like…” Good God, she should be married, no longer his responsibility. “See what you look like,” he repeated. Angry with her, and with himself because he’d never made her behave.

“Like what, Papa?”

“Like a harlot.” The word burned his mouth, but Vionne could think of no other.

“I will pretend I did not hear that.” Manon tried again to move past him.

Vionne took a step to the right so he was still confronting her. “Manon, for heaven’s own sake. I am your father. I want only the best for you. But you leave the holy house of God to…To do I know not what. Tell me where you have been.”

“I cannot. If you do not let me go to the kitchen, your dinner will be much delayed.”

“I have asked the Widow Tremont to cook for us. She is in the kitchen even now. And from today she will do all the marketing.”

Adele Tremont, mantua-maker to the city’s most elegant women, had no need of additional employment. She was here because she’d set her cap for Maurice Vionne from the moment his wife died. “I see. And I, Papa? What am I to do?”

“You are to go to your room, Manon. You are to remain there and to think of the shame you are bringing on me and on the memory of your dead mother. And of how unlikely it is that, if he manages to get here from Virginia, the widowed nephew of Monsieur DeFane, or anyone else for that matter, will be interested in soiled goods.”

Pearl Street, 3
P.M.

Because it was the Sabbath and not a workday, the dinner hour of the town was promptly at three. The enticing smell of a chicken roasting before the fire drifted down the stairs of Barnaby Carter’s premises and tickled the noses of each of the five men gathered in the semidark at the rear of the cavernous warehouse.

The carriages normally on display had been returned to their customary places as soon as the Thursday sale ended. The men were seated in the shadowy interior of a large coach of the sort built to make the run between New York and Boston. Indeed, the man speaking had the sound of Massachusetts in his speech. “In Boston, gentleman, we are in a deplorable situation. Our commerce is dead, our revenue gone, our ships are rotting at the wharves. We are bankrupts, and it’s plain the so-called federal government has not the wherewithal to protect our coast. Once we have effected the arrangements we propose, it is imperative that we never allow our treasury to become so depleted. Every citizen of our new nation must contribute—”

“Surely, sir, you are not suggesting that we should tax our citizens. That is exactly what…”

Gornt Blakeman, sitting with one hand pressed to his chin, did his best to look attentive as he listened to New Hampshire’s objections to any sort of taxation. In fact, the entire, apparently endless argument, bored him. Not a ha’penny’s worth of brains among them all: Boston, Concord, or the pair from Hartford. Too bad the Rhode Island fellow hadn’t managed to join them today. He was far and away the most sensible of the New Englanders. Damn! Lucretia Carter must be a fine cook. That chicken smelled blissful. No wonder Barnaby looked so discontent at having to stand guard by the door of his warehouse while his dinner cooled in the rooms above.

Concord was still pressing his point. “It should be possible simply to apply a tariff to imported goods and—”

“Some tax on general income is bound to be required.” The elder of the two men from Connecticut had a booming voice. The younger shushed him even as he nodded agreement with the point raised.

Blakeman felt the sensation of pins and needles in his left buttock and shifted his position as far as the cramped conditions allowed. They had been sitting here the best part of an hour. Bloody waste of time. The discussion of how a central authority was to raise revenue was pointless as well as premature. The real issue was whether a few strong and capable men would seize the initiative and act on it, or try to cajole an entire legislature into seeing things their way. In New York, at least, the answer was clear. Blakeman cleared his throat. The others turned to him. “We must have power before we can determine how to exercise it, gentleman.”

“Ah, Mr. Blakeman”—Boston again—“I thought the cat had stolen your tongue.”

“I simply choose not to contribute to a discussion I believe to be taking place before its time. If we do not—”

“What of your pirates, eh?” The booming voice of the elder of the two Hartford men, his deafness excuse for interrupting as well as shouting. “Got ’em wrapped up as you promised? Going to ‘stand and deliver,’ as they used to say?”

“I believe, sir, that was ‘highwaymen.’ But I assure you, I am in close touch with the Baratarians.” According to Delight, that fool Tintin couldn’t stay away from the Dancing Knave, and he could practically see her salivate each time he mentioned his plans for putting her in charge of every whore in the city. He’d do it too. Control, that was the thing. Not this madness called democracy.

“The Baratarians,” Boston said. “Does that mean Lafitte has agreed to attack United States shipping once our scheme is in effect? I ask, Mr. Blakeman, because he has never done so before.”

“He has never before, sir, been offered letters of marque from a separate American nation.” That was the real issue and the one they were all still tossing back and forth as if it were a potato too hot to touch. Fools, the lot of them. The continent was enormous. Plenty of room for two nations, probably more if it came to that.

The younger Connecticut man winced. “It may not be necessary to go so far, gentlemen. After all—”

New Hampshire made his move. “Perhaps we can settle all this at a convention.”

Blakeman clenched his fists, but not so the others could see. Damn the man to hell. A convention. The blasted things could go on for years.

“A convention,” New Hampshire repeated. “That’s the proper way to decide these matters. We shouldn’t be traveling all the way to New York in these dangerous times, and meeting in secret. We need to call a convention and openly discuss our ideas for…”

Blakeman watched him. Go on, say it, you liverless toad. Our ideas for secession. New England and New York to form a separate nation.

“…our ideas for how to proceed,” New Hampshire finished lamely.

“I expect we are the logical venue.” One of the Hartford pair, the soft-spoken one this time. “I mean, being in the middle, as it were, Connecticut’s a sensible choice.”

The others agreed. Even Blakeman nodded. Never mind that he intended it would all be settled well before any convention could be summoned, in Hartford or elsewhere. Once New York had claimed the freedom that was rightly hers, made a swift and separate peace with Britain, and sent her merchant ships back to sea, the New England states would trip over each other in their haste to form a new confederation.

“So how did it go then?” Carter asked when he closed the door behind the last of the men to slip quietly from the warehouse to the all-but-deserted street.

“Well enough,” Blakeman said.

“They’re all with you?”

“With us, Barnaby. With us.” Blakeman clapped a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “You and the other mechanics, you do know this is how it must be? We cannot allow Madison and his War Hawks to steal our livelihoods, can we?”

“Course not,” Carter agreed.

Blakeman left and Barnaby went upstairs, but despite the lusciousness of Lucretia’s chicken dinner, he had little appetite.

Canvastown, 6
P.M.

“Cue ball to take the red to pocket three.” Joyful curled the top half of himself across the top end of the eleven-foot billiards table in the rear of McDermott’s Oyster House. “One carom on the way to the pocket,” he added. A carom was a strike and a rebound that hit another ball.

Barnaby stood to the side, eyes fixed on the table, leaning on his stick. His head was wreathed in the smoke rising from a cigar clamped between his teeth. “Double the bet says you can’t make it a triple.” Given the position of the four balls in play, a triple carom would earn thirteen points, the maximum possible in a single shot.

Joyful looked up. “Maybe. But not a chance unless you back off a ways. No wonder Lucretia let you out after dinner. Glad to see the back of you and get that noxious smoke out of her house.”

“A fine Connecticut cigar this is,” Barnaby protested. “Not your cheap pipe tobacco from the South. That’s the stuff makes your eyes water.” Not counting Joyful and himself, every man in the place had a pipe stuck in his mouth. Nonetheless, Barnaby took the cigar from between his teeth and stubbed it dead on the wall behind him. Didn’t want to put Joyful off, not when he’d refused to go near a billiards table for so long. The British were bastards, all right. But did that make Blakeman’s scheme right? He had to talk to Joyful about it.

“Pocket three,” Joyful repeated, working the stick repeatedly through the inert fingers of the glove.

Barnaby took a step backwards, so it wouldn’t seem he was staring. “How about that wager?” he asked.

Joyful put his head down again, concentrating on the shot, deciding whether to take up Barnaby’s challenge. Normally, he’d have said yes instantly. What was holding him back today? As far as he could recall, in every game he’d played with both hands, the only thing his left did was steady the cue stick. So why was it so damnably difficult to do the same with the glove? Because it didn’t feel natural, that’s why. Bloody hell, it probably never would.

The perfect moment when you felt as if the stick were simply an extension of your arm, and when every ball on the table was far too big to miss, wouldn’t come. He straightened and stepped away from the table, walked around a bit, loosening up, using the opportunity to examine the positions of the two red and two white balls from a variety of angles. “You’re on,” he said after a final squint at the lie. “One scratch of the cue ball and a triple carom, two reds and a white.” He chalked the cue for the third time. “Thirteen points against thirty coppers. You’d better have it in ready coin, Barnaby me lad. I’ll not be doing with promises.”

An oil lamp hung directly overhead, adding its smoke to the general miasma. Joyful blinked to clear his eyes, once more stretched across the upper right corner of the table, and inserted the stick through the immobile fingers of the glove. He slid it back and forth a few times, just to get the feel of things, and took his shot. The cue ball spun across the table, hit first a white and a red, sent them ricocheting into opposite pockets, then shot back to bank left, caromed off one more white, and pocketed the final red.

Carter hooted with delight. “You did it!”

Joyful was still bent over the table. He cocked his head and looked up. “You’re sounding awfully happy for a man who just lost thirty coppers.”

Barnaby’s grin stretched the width of his face. Joyful replied with one of his own.