City of Glory (59 page)

Just then the crowd surged forward, and Clifford was wedged in place by the press of bodies. Not enough room to lean back and yank Joyful from his perch; he flicked his wrist and the tension on the long leather thong relaxed. It fell from Joyful’s ankle before the scalpel could do it work.

Blakeman had seen enough to know that whatever Clifford had tried to do had failed. And damn it to hell, the crowd was buying what bloody Joyful Turner was selling. He could see it in their faces. Blakeman’s throat already felt as if a carpenter had worked it over with a rasp, but he lifted the bellow horn and summoned every scrap of breath. “Don’t listen to him! That’s the pap they fed you in ’86 in their so-called Constitution. Are you going to be fooled by it a second time? Do you call what we have now domestic tranquillity?”

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense”—Joyful’s voice came from somewhere deep inside—“promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” Not his voice alone, also that of his parents Morgan and Roisin, and his cousins, Sam Devrey and Andrew Turner, and all the rest who had given their blood to make a nation: “…do ordain and establish this Constitution—”

“Listen to me, not him!” Blakeman’s voice, magnified by the bellow horn, cut over Joyful’s. “You’re being asked to sacrifice your livelihoods for James Madison. Nothing else. A few men of the west and a little man as can’t even stop the redcoats from burning down the roof over his wife’s head.”

Finbar O’Toole had been listening to the battle of words, never taking his eyes from Joyful, who was hanging out so far from that poxed window it must need the Angel Gabriel to keep him from falling. Now O’Toole felt a collective shift of attention, to the windows of the other buildings that ringed Paradise Square.

Open, every damned one of ’em, and a face in each, some black, some white. There was Danny Parker and Hiram Walton, and at least a dozen more from the same waterfront fraternity of shipwrights. Word was, the town’s mechanics were all with Blakeman. Here was proof that word was wrong. Something—some
one
more likely—had won the shipwrights over to the side of preserving the Union.

“…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Joyful summoned every scrap of his energy into projecting the great promise that lay behind those words. The arm he was using to anchor him to the windowsill slipped a bit, and he had to pull back to counterbalance his weight. He thought he heard his name, and looked across the square to see Barnaby Carter in the window of the building across from his.

“Tell ’em, Joyful,” Barnaby called. Never mind that he and Lucretia would never see a penny of the money Blakeman owed them if the bastard’s scheme didn’t materialize. “You tell ’em how it is!” He aimed his voice at the crowd below. “That’s Joyful Turner up there, folks. A hero and the son of a hero. Listen to him.”

“We gave our solemn word,” Joyful shouted. “Are we going to withdraw it the moment there’s an obstacle in the path? Are we Americans, or feral cats who can be counted on to claw each other to the death rather than work together for the common good?”

“Are we slaves to the War Hawks and Madison? Are we…” Blakeman’s voice was the louder yet again. But just when it seemed the bellow horn was master, there was a roar of sound as Jacob Hays and seven constables came thundering up Cross Street on horseback.

The crowd that had been so powerful in its unity became an aggregation of individuals screaming in terror. Men and women who had thought there was not an inch of room in which to move realized they must find room, or be trampled beneath the pounding horses’ hooves. They clawed their way over and under and around their neighbors, piling body on top of body, anything to clear a path for the horsemen. A woman handed her infant up to the hands of strangers, then was sucked into the heart of the melee and disappeared.

“Cease and desist!” Hays shouted. “In the name of the law! Go back to your homes, or you’ll all be up the river in Newgate by nightfall.”

“Mr. Hays,” Blakeman roared into the horn as the mounted officers charged into Paradise Square. “High Constable Jacob Hays, we want you with us! We’re about a new nation’s business. Join us and live free of war and presidential tyranny!”

“Ain’t no new nation, Mr. Blakeman. Not here in New York.” Hays turned in the saddle and waved the man behind him forward. “Take that man into custody! I’m charging him with the hanging offense of high treason against these lawfully joined United States.”

The power of the crowd rose in a low roar of rage and defiance that could be felt even from the height of horseback. They might not be decided on Blakeman’s message, but they weren’t prepared to see him handed over to the law. The constable summoned to make the arrest hesitated long enough for F. X. Gallagher to take the cleaver from his belt and brandish it overhead. The other butchers did the same. Gallagher shouted something and strode forward. The butchers followed.

There was an instant of horrified stillness, the space of a single heartbeat in which every person in Paradise Square recognized that a bloodbath was now truly upon them. Then, into that moment of stunned silence, there came the crack of a gun.

A red hole appeared in the middle of Gallagher’s forehead. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, then dropped to the ground. The butchers froze, cleavers still raised above their heads. Like every person present, they tilted their heads and looked up to the buildings around the square. The men who filled the windows now had muskets on their shoulders.

Hays surveyed the extent of the display of arms. “I heard you was raising a regiment, Mr. Blakeman. But somehow I get the feeling the fellows you was counting on have taken themselves over to the other side o’ this argument.”

“No man here fights for Gornt Blakeman!” Zachary Fish hung out a window to Hays’s right. “We be the regiment of Mother Zion and Almighty God. Pledged to these United States of America.”

“Nigras,” a voice from up front near Blakeman shouted. “You folks going to let nigras shoot down a white man and get away with it?”

“Nigras!”

The crowd surged forward, the combined weight of their bodies enough to overcome even the power of the horses. A scuffle broke out near the platform where Blakeman had been standing, but he had climbed down from the pile of kegs and the butchers had fallen back to surround him.

“Nigras!” It had become a chorus. “Nigras gonna kill us all!”

Joyful looked across the square to the man he’d seen fire the rifle that took down Gallagher—as white as he was, and as redheaded to boot. One of Astor’s marksmen, probably. Would saying so prevent carnage below?

“Joyful! Take this. It will help, I think.”

Joyful turned his head, ignoring the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm him every time he moved. “Mr. Astor.”

“Jacob. Remember,
Genossen
we are. Allies. Here, take this.” Astor thrust a rolled canvas into Joyful’s good hand.

“What is it?”

“Quick, open it. You’ll see.”

Joyful shook the canvas open, looked down, and laughed out loud. It took another sick-making maneuver for him to twist again and hang the unrolled canvas above the heads of the crowd so it could be seen. “Look up here folks! Look what we’ve got!”

“Tell them Dolley Madison saved it from the British.” Astor’s said quietly. “Tell them Mrs. Dolley sent it to New York to be safe.”

“Look up here,” Joyful shouted. “It’s a painting of General Washington. Sent to us by the first lady of the land. She’s safe. So’s President Madison. And we are to keep this picture for when we build a new Federal District and a new Executive Mansion.”

The roar was one of approval this time. “General Washington!” someone called out. “Hip, hip!”

The hoorays were deafening. The crowd fell back from the mounted men in the middle of the square. “Go to your homes,” Hays called out. “Long as you’re peaceable there’ll be no trouble and no arrests.” He looked toward the place where the one man he really had wanted to take into custody had been standing. Blakeman was gone; his butchers and their cleavers as well. “Peaceable,” he said. “That’s what we want, a peaceable city o’ New York. Just like always.”

Finbar watched the crowd disperse. As soon as he was able to move, he stood beside the door of the grocery store where Joyful had been hanging out the upper window. Grand he’d been. Would have made his da proud. Be a good thing to tell Joyful that. And might be he’d mention about what happened this morning at the Knave. Heard a few stories, he had, bout Joyful and Delight Higgins. Even some as said Joyful had a financial interest in the place. Course he’d have to say he’d been there at the Knave when Delight was snatched. Might be it would come out about his being drunk for four days and losing a thousand he didn’t have.

Holy Mary and all the saints. Must be another way out of this here grocery building, because he’d seen not a lick o’ Joyful Turner coming through the door, but there he was on the other side of Paradise Square, riding up behind High Constable Hays no less. The pair of ’em kicking up a storm o’ dust as they galloped back downtown.

Maiden Lane, 4
P.M.

The shops of the goldsmiths and silversmiths were closed and shuttered and most folks busy with their dinners. The near riot up in Five Points, as well as the terrible story of the sack of the Federal District, provided enough table chatter to keep the residents of Maiden Lane away from their windows. A carriage—large, black, thickly curtained, drawn by a matched pair of black geldings—halted outside Maurice Vionne’s house and four men got out.

“Wait where you are,” Gornt Blakeman told the driver. “I don’t imagine we will be very long.”

He led the way to Vionne’s front door, raised his fist, and pounded on the wood. The goldsmith came, a napkin still tucked in his shirt front. “I was not expecting you, Mr. Blakeman. This is not a convenient time to—”

“Convenient enough.” Blakeman pushed his way inside. The three men with him followed; Vinegar Clifford and two leather-apron boys. “I’ve come to speak to your daughter, goldsmith. That’s what you suggested, isn’t it? Here I am.”

“But now is not—”

Blakeman pushed past him and headed for the door to the private part of the house. Vionne tried to block his path, but he was half the other man’s size. Blakeman shoved him out of the way and motioned his companions to follow.

The savory smell of hot food drew them at once to the dining room. Manon Vionne sat at one side of the table, an older woman across from her. Both stared in startled consternation at the new arrivals.

Vionne had rushed in behind his uninvited guests. Now he tried desperately to dispel the sense of menace with normalcy. “May I present Mr. Gornt Blakeman, ladies. He wishes—”

“I’ve asked for your hand, Miss Manon. Your father agreed.”

“Never!” Manon and her father spoke in unison. Vionne continued, “I never agreed, Mr. Blakeman. You cannot say—”

“At the moment, Mr. Vionne, I can do and say as I wish.” Not for much longer, if Jacob Hays took Joyful Turner’s side of things. “I am claiming your hand, Miss Manon. You have need of a husband. Well, you have finally snared one.”

She stood up, a pink flush rising from the scooped neckline of her frock to suffuse first the pale skin above her breasts, then her face. “I have no need of you, Mr. Gornt Blakeman.” She took a step away from the table. “Papa, I beg leave to go to my—”

“Take her outside, Mr. Clifford.”

Vionne flung himself in front of his daughter. The whip cracked once and coiled itself around his arm. His shriek of pain came from deep in his belly, and unbidden tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Papa! What are you doing, you animal!” Manon threw herself at the whipper. The nearest of the two butchers caught her with one arm. He held a raised cleaver in the other. Vionne shouted his daughter’s name, but his voice was drowned out by Adele Tremont’s scream.

“Quiet!” Blakeman roared. “I asked for your daughter like a gentleman, goldsmith. Had you treated my request with the respect it deserved, this wouldn’t be necessary. As it has turned out…” He shrugged and turned away, heading back to the front door. “Bring her,” he called to the butcher who still held Manon captive. “And make sure she doesn’t cry out. Mr. Clifford, I trust your whip to keep these two in check until we’re in the carriage, then you may join us.”