City of Glory (66 page)

“But I’m the one found the pirate ship.” Will was crouched beside Jesse’s body, keening over him, at last letting his grief show. “If I hadn’t o’ done that, we wouldn’t have gone after ’em and Jesse would still—”

“You saved our country, lad,” Joyful said. “I don’t think that’s putting too fine a point on it. There are still those who want to break up the Union, but Gornt Blakeman was the loudest voice among them. With him gone it’s going to be a lot more difficult for them to have their way.”

“Saved the country, did they? Seems to me that makes both my boys real military heroes. You stay with Jesse now, Will. You be his
shomer.
It’s a
mitzvah
to watch beside the dead until they’re in the earth. There’s some as say it’s the greatest good deed of all, ’cause they can’t thank you this side of the grave.”

Hannah put her hand on Joyful’s arm. He followed her outside.

“End of a lot of things tonight,” she said when they once again stood beneath the stars. “Beginning of lots of others. Twice around and thrice back. You figured any of it out yet?”

“Some maybe. The treasure’s not where my father left it. I’m sure of that. But Shearith Israel doesn’t have it.”

“They had it for a day or two. Then they gave it back. Captain Harmonious Grant, man I was going to marry, he gave it to the congregation. My doing, that was. But Rabbi Seixas and the others, they said it was blood money and they wouldn’t accept it.”

“How did this Captain Grant get it?”

“Heard talk years back, after the war with the French and their Indians. Harmonious was only a wee lad at the time, but his father had a grog shop down by the waterfront and he heard a Dutchman as had sailed with your papa talk about twice around and thrice back, seventy-four degrees thirty minutes west of Greenwich. Don’t know who else might o’ heard, but they didn’t do nothing about it. Harmonious did. His pa died in the Revolution, and soon as it was over, Harmonious sold the grog shop, got a ship, and that’s where he sailed to, seventy-four degrees thirty minutes west of Greenwich.”

She sat down on the bench beneath the chestnut tree and patted a place beside her. Joyful took it and waited. “You know where that is?” Hannah asked after a time.

“No. Somewhere in the Caribbean, but I went to sea as a surgeon, never learned to navigate.”

“Island in the Bahamas called San Salvador. S’posed to be the place Columbus landed when he came first time, to this New World, like they calls it.”

“And twice around and thrice back?”

“Bit of almighty clever that is. Clever o’ your papa to think of it the first time, and clever o’ my Harmonious to remember it all those years.”

She was quiet for a while, laughing softly to herself, as if at a joke only she knew. “Bit of almighty clever.”

Joyful waited, knowing it was best to be silent or he’d leave empty-handed yet again.

“Time now,” she said at last. “The Holy One, Blessed Be His Name, he let me know it was time. In fact, time’s what it was all about. Just south of twenty-four degrees north, that was t’other part of the coordinates. Took my Harmonious to a sweet little cove, that did, with a bit of an inlet leading away to the interior. Midday, according to the sextant, and the chronometer pointing exactly upstream.”

Hannah spoke as if she were repeating a story memorized in careful detail, not one word of the telling changed from the first recitation.

“Twice around,” Hannah said. “That meant two sweeps o’ the chronometer’s hand. Two o’clock that would be. Thirty degrees to port. Harmonious was rowing a dinghy by then. Not enough draft for a ship. Just as well, seeing how a man can row alone. He came to another cove. Just where it should be. ‘Twice around and thrice back.’ Hand o’ the chronometer goes backwards three times, that makes it eleven o’clock. Forty-five degrees to port. Rowed himself that way, and turned out Harmonious was looking straight at a twisted tree as no man was likely to forget the shape of, and sure to the Almighty, the place to bury a treasure.”

One mystery solved, but not the only one. “A treasure coming to me over the water, you said, Hannah. What did you mean by that?”

She chuckled yet again. “‘Above the water’ would o’ been clearer, but I didn’t want it to be too easy for you. Over there…” She nodded toward the cistern. “Built the thing so’s I could have a safe place for the treasure once and for all. A place to leave all that blood money, until it was to be returned to its rightful owner. Never spent a single copper from it. Never even opened the moneybag as Rabbi Seixas gave my papa, the moneybag he throwed at me the night…” She stopped speaking and shuddered. “Never mind that. It’s nothin’ to do with you. Your treasure’s behind the fourth course o’ stones down from the top. Well above the level o’ the water. Couldn’t be otherwise, else we had a flood like made Noah build the Ark. So you might say the treasure was over the water.”

Joyful stood and started for the cistern, but Hannah put out a hand and stopped him. “Been waiting for you all these years—it can wait a bit longer. Come back tomorrow morning. We’ll bury Jesse in the sunshine. After that, Will can help you dig out the treasure.”

Wall Street, Late Morning

Joyful walked into Blakeman’s Hanover Street premises looking stern and purposeful, letting none of his elation show. The price paid had been high, but sweet God Almighty, he had done it.

There was a single clerk in the countinghouse—no sign of Bastard—standing behind one of the tall desks. The man looked at him. “Gornt Blakeman is dead,” Joyful said. “That’s a fact, and Jacob Hays will confirm it later today.” He had himself sent word to the High Constable; where to find the pirate ship and the bodies of Blakeman and Tintin. “As for me, I’m Joyful Turner, and I wish to buy Blakeman’s interest in Devrey Shipping, I’ve got cash money in good coin. Tell me where I’ll find the attorney as handles Blakeman’s affairs.”

The clerk stared at him in silence for a moment, then shrugged. “You’re too late. Jacob Astor was here two hours past and made the same request. I expect he’s made all the arrangements by now.”

“Why?” Joyful demanded. “You said we were allies. You gave your word not to—”

“Allies yes. But my word not to buy Gornt Blakeman’s assets when they were available? I do not think so, Joyful.”

They were in Astor’s study. Astor stood by the spinning globe, turning it idly round and round. The sunlight streaming through the windows was so bright there was no need to light the globe’s interior lantern. Sea and land, mountain and meadow, blended in a blur of ivory and sepia. “Tell me when I ever said any such thing.”

“Not exactly, I grant you that. But naturally I assumed…”

“In business it is not good to assume.” Astor abruptly stopped the globe from spinning and turned to face the younger man. “And that is why I bought Blakeman’s interest in Devrey’s. Bastard’s also. That I think is a surprise.”

“That means you have fifty-one percent. You’re the majority holder.”

“
Ja,
my intention exactly, that was. To be the senior partner. So you will make no foolish mistakes, Joyful. So Devrey Shipping can wait out the end of this miserable war and not go bankrupt before peace comes. To have too little capital, in business that is not a good thing. This way—”

“I have capital. A very great deal.” As soon as he said it, Joyful knew that the coin equivalent to twenty thousand sterling, one hundred and sixty thousand American dollars, would seem considerably less to Jacob Astor than it did to him. Nonetheless.

“
Ja,
the ‘thrice back’ legacy. Very good, Joyful. I am happy for you. But you—”

“How did you even know the treasure exists? I never spoke a word to you about it? For that matter, how did you know Gornt Blakeman was dead?”

Astor chuckled and tapped his temple, much as he’d done the first time Joyful came to this room with his tale of a wondrous jewel and a scheme to divide the nation. “Observation, Joyful. Only observation.” He would not say much about Heinrich and his men in the Watch and the Police Office. But it was right he should explain a little. “Mr. Samson Simson, the Hebrew attorney. He is a good man, a sensible man. That is why Maurice Vionne consulted him as well as Mr. Mordecai Frank when the Great Mogul came first to his attention. But Mr. Simson, he is also my friend, part of the group I told you about, the ones who with me have joined to lend money to Mr. Madison. For the country.”

Ah, yes. What had Simson told him when he asked if the man were a patriot?
In my fashion, Dr. Turner.
“So the circle is linked,” Joyful said.

He had brought the money to Vionne’s house that very morning, coming straight from Holy Hannah’s.
My guarantee of Manon’s future, sir. If you will grant me her hand. And guard this for us until we’re married.
It had not been possible to give his future father-in-law such a sum without explaining where it came from. “All along I’ve been less clever by half than I thought myself—that’s true, isn’t it, Jacob?”

“No, Joyful, it is not. You are very clever, and very brave. Even
einfallsreich…Ach,
what is the English word? Resourceful. And now you have a choice to make,
hein?
I’m told there is to be a place in the Tontine. And that Mr. Colden, who is an influential man, has decided yours it should be. So will you be a money-man, Joyful?”

“I’m not sure, Jacob. I am considering it. But first I will be a Canton trader.”

“Excellent. I am happy to hear it. Look.” He spun the globe again. “This trail through the Oregon Territory, it will be a magnificent new opportunity for the whole country. My word you have. And the president and Mrs. Dolley, already I am told they are back in the Federal District. While here in New York…Look.”

Astor tugged on a cord. A large map of Manhattan unfurled. Joyful recognized it instantly, though it was a map he had heard about but not seen. In this rendition the city he knew was a tiny thing nestled on the southern tip of the island, dwarfed by a strict grid of streets and avenues that overlay the wilderness to the north, each thoroughfare divided into uniform lots.

“My friend Mr. Randal,” Astor said. “He is a remarkable surveyor. He made this for me. For the Common Council he made one as well. They have adopted the plan, but that you know, Joyful. I will tell you what you do not know. See here how Broadway makes a little turn just by what will be Seventeenth Street? Originally, it was to go straight, but I own farms just here.” Astor tapped the map. “So, I talked to my friend Mr. Randal, and to the Council…” Astor shrugged. “They are reasonable men.”

“You are a wonder,” Joyful said quietly. “It’s mad to oppose you.”

“I do not wish to be in opposition to you, my friend. Especially not now when we are
Teilhaberen.
Partners. Now, a good look you must have,” pointing to the map once more, “here is New York’s future. This is the city that will be.”

“Perhaps. But Devrey’s is a shipping company. We look this way.” Joyful tapped the harbor and the open ocean at the eastern edge of the plan.

“To be a successful man of business, Joyful Turner, you must be like the Roman god Janus. You must look both ways.” Joyful started to say something, but Astor held up his hand. “Wait, I am not finished. I have another proposition for you. Bastard Devrey’s Wall Street house.”

“Yes?”

“You are to marry, no? You will require a home for your wife. You do not wish to bring the lovely Mademoiselle Vionne to a boardinghouse. I bought Bastard Devrey’s house. Along with his shares. He will use the money I paid him to finish a house near me here on Broadway. Which he cannot afford and which he will probably mortgage sooner rather than later and lose soon after that. But you and I, we do not need to concern ourselves with Bastard Devrey. Consider instead this: I propose to sell you the Devrey house on Wall Street. It is no longer as fashionable as it once was, but still a fine residence, no? A good place for you and your bride. Later you can sell it and build something more grand. Meanwhile, I will take eight thousand for Bastard’s house. A fair price, no?”

“Very fair. It will be worth half again as much in a few years.”

“No doubt,” Astor agreed. “But do you know what I will do with the eight thousand you pay me? I will use it to buy eighty lots north of Canal Street. I will get them for a hundred dollars each, because now it is a war. And here”—he put a hand on his stomach—“here only a few people believe this map will ever be the real New York. But it will be, Joyful. I promise you, it will be. As for the war, soon it will end. And the country will not split apart, thanks to you. And when your house is worth twelve thousand, my eighty lots, bought for a grand total of eight thousand dollars, will be worth eighty thousand.”