The Tory Widow (30 page)

Anne boosted up to stand on the sill. “Take hold . . .”

Sally grabbed two fistfuls of muslin nightgown.

Bracing one hand to the window frame, toes curled to the edge, Anne leaned way out, straining for a better view to the east. “Something on Cruger's Wharf is alight . . .”

“Three separate fires?” Hopping on one foot, David traveled from doorway to bedstead to chair.

Sally stared out the window, chewing her thumbnail. “D'ye think Washington's spies are putting the whole city to the torch?”

“No.” David plopped down in the chair. “Congress expressly forbid it, and the general would never disobey the rule of Congress.” Twisting around he pulled up onto one knee to view the scene. “Like most fires, I'd wager these were begat by drunkenness or carelessness.”

Anne nodded. “And spread by wind—not spies—look . . .”

Large flaming embers floated up from the fire at the Fighting Cocks. Borne on the breeze from the harbor, they scattered onto the neighboring rooftops. In the blink of an eye, six more buildings were alight.

David shook his head. “This is dangerous. Without a drop of rain in days, cedar roof shakes are as dry as a nun's gusset . . .”

“Brother!” Anne chastised.

“David's right, Annie. The rooftops are so much tinder. This fire's movin' onward with every blast of th' westlin' wind.”

David pounded the sill. “Why does no one ring the alarm?”

“Washington took the bells—for cannon.” Anne jumped down from her perch.

“Aye, and who's t' know what's become of our lovely fire pumps—gone the way of the bells, no doubt.”

Anne shrugged. “The neighborhood men like Quakenbos, who manned the fire brigades and knew to work the pumps, are long gone as well.”

The three of them stood in nightclothes, mesmerized by exploding showers of sparks and the growing wall of flames leaping and moving in tall spires. David whistled when the fire swirled in like a flood tide, flowing across Broad Way. “It's a good thing the wind is in our favor . . .”

The silhouetted figures battling the blaze had no success containing it. The breeze drove the fire northwest, and running blocks of property along the tip of the island were engulfed in roaring flames.

Anne left David and Sally at the window, and threw open the lid to the chest at the foot of her bed.

“What are ye about?”

Anne tugged a brown skirt over her nightshift. “I'm going to help.”

David said, “Don't be foolish. What can you do to help?”

“Well—I can pass a bucket of water. I can do that.”

Sally snatched up her candle. “I'm comin' wi' ye.”

David threw up his one good hand. “You're both a pair of idiots.”

“You stay with David, Sally.” Anne pulled her ink-stained linsey blouse over her head, tucking it into her waistband. “Keep an eye on the fire. If the wind shifts, you may need to evacuate . . .”

David rose on one good foot and hopped to grab hold of the bedpost. “Promise you'll be careful, sister . . .”

“I will.”

Anne took a bucket from the kitchen. She heard the mantel clock chime once as Sally bolted the door behind her. One o'clock in the morning, and the southern sky was lit up brighter than a papist church on Christmas Eve. Anne ran parallel to the wall of fire that curved along Broad Street, slowing to a stop when she reached Broad Way. Empty bucket in her fist swinging, she was immobilized by the confused scene, not certain where to go or what to do.

British soldiers were everywhere, forming bucket brigades, evacuating buildings, herding huddles of stricken women and children dressed in nightclothes and bed caps to the periphery. One company of marines armed with axes and crowbars worked at demolishing a whole row of combustible tenements to create a firebreak. Others worked as litter bearers for the injured.

“Come with me, Mrs. Merrick.” A hand slapped her on the back, and the familiar voice added, “They're calling for hands to fill the pumps.”

Anne followed Patsy Quinn all the way to where Wall Street met Broad Way. She joined the line transferring water twenty yards from the well on the corner of Wall Street to the fire engine positioned in front of a burning mansion.

A man stood on the top of the engine and aimed the protruding copper tube like a cannon at the uppermost story. Buckets and buckets of water were passed up the line and poured into the reservoir at the back end of the engine. Six strong-armed men flanking each side moved the crossbar handles up and down, working the pump.

Something was not right. For all the hands and muscle power, they only managed to produce a feeble spurting stream, half the water never even reaching the target.

“Like spitting on a bonfire,” Anne said.

Patsy leaned in, passing a bucket. “Be better off pulling out their pizzles and pissing on the fire.”

Timbers popped like musket shot, and the structure began to collapse. Brick walls crumbled inward, and in one giant sucking roar the house imploded in a ball of smoke and dust. A great golden plume of embers swirled up into the air, and everyone scattered, running as flaming brands and burning chunks rained down like the storms of hell, bouncing off the cobblestones in miniature glittering explosions.

Bucket in hand, Patsy grabbed Anne by the arm and they ran in a crouch across Broad Way, coughing and choking, raising arms to shield their faces from the intense heat, and the cinders and ash roiling through the air.

Flakes of fire alighted on the pitched roof of neighboring Trinity Church. In no time, flames crawled up toward the tall steeple, gobbling up the cedar shake skin like a swarm of locusts. Anne could not believe the tallest structure in the city was burning like a pine pitch torch. Soon the old stone walls supported a fiery skeleton of beams and rafters, looking much like a burning fist pointing one bony finger to the heavens.

All efforts came to a halt, and all eyes transfixed with a collective indrawn breath on the steeple moving in a slow, graceful list to the west—snapping and cracking—hitting the earth in a booming iridescent puff of debris.

“It's hopeless.” Anne fell back against the wall.

A mass of men and women with a gang of children tagging along came bouncing down Broad Way, shouting and shaking fists. At the forefront, pinioned between two large grenadiers, a slight, shirtless man was dragged along, sobbing, “Christ Almighty, it wasn't me! I swear it wasn't me.”

The throng fell back as the Redcoats made straight for the burning church. Like watching a macabre shadow play in silhouette, one soldier drove the suspected arsonist to his knees with a brutal musket butt to the head. Taking the stunned man by the limbs, swinging once—twice—they tossed him into the heart of the fire.

To the shrieks of those watching, the man emerged from the fire—a stumbling, howling, keening apparition—smoke rising from the top of his head and from his right leg in flames. Arms outstretched, he lurched forward, steam wafting from the seared flesh covering his shoulders and back. With their relentless bayonets, the Redcoats herded him back, poking and prodding the wailing wretch, forcing him back into the conflagration.

Gagging, Anne could not find a breath. Choking on sick, she hunkered down over the bucket of water Patsy had carried away from the line, splashing the brackish well water on her face. She sucked a mouthful from her cupped hands to wash the sharp taste of burnt hair and scorched flesh from her mouth.

“Feels like I swallowed a spoonful of sand.” Patsy squatted down beside Anne, and took a drink. Tearing two wide strips from the hem of her petticoat, she doused them in the bucket, and handed one to Anne. “Tie it on—over your mouth and nose.”

A passing Redcoat gave them each a shove with his boot. “Up off yer arses, bawds, and back to the buckets!”

Anne bristled, and rose to give the man a good piece of her mind, but Patsy snatched her by the hand. “Not this night, Mrs. Merrick. Not after how they did that poor fellow.”

The west wind swept the fire into the dense maze of wooden tenements behind the churchyard. Anne and Patsy ran past the graveyard and joined the bucket brigades trying to keep the fire from jumping over to Lumber Street.

All nearby buildings were being evacuated, and Anne passed buckets to Patsy, watching several hundred rebel prisoners stumble out from Van Cortlandt's Sugar House to be hustled into a double-file column by several companies of armed guards.

“There are some customers of mine in those lines . . .” Anne whispered, with a nod, swinging a heavy leather bucket into Patsy's hand.

“I know some of 'em as well . . .” Patsy waggled her brow. “Customers.”

Anne stiffened. This woman
knows
Jack.

Sordid images flashed through her mind, knocking the wind from her as if she'd fallen from a great height. She tugged at the swath of fabric stifling her breath. In the chaos, it was easy to forget this friendly, helpful girl with soot smudged across her forehead was the same exotic temptress she saw Jack kiss so dearly—the cause of much heartache.

In a sudden tumult, a prisoner broke free from the column, running in a mad tear toward the Hudson. Muskets propped to shoulders in an instant, and before the escapee could put twenty yards between himself and his captors, he was shot down.

“Tim!” a voice cried in anguish.

A company of Redcoats rushed in to help the guards struggling to keep the agitated prisoners in check. Patsy took off running to help the fallen man lying facedown in the dirt road, and Anne chased after her. Patsy fell to her knees and turned him over.

Anne groaned, dropping down beside Patsy. “Naught but a boy . . .”

A gaping tear in his neck pulsed a red river of blood. Like the trout Anne's father would pull from his hook and toss onto the shore, the boy stared up with round eyes, mouth opening and closing. Gulping for air, he was drowning on blood flooding into his broken windpipe.

“Oh, Tim . . .” Patsy crooned, brushing the hair from his forehead. She stroked his freckled cheek once—twice—and he died.

The sergeant of the guards stood over them and prodded Patsy with the bayonet fixed to his musket. “On yer feet.”

She stood, tottering in the dancing light from the fire, her soot-smudged face muddy with tears.

“Do you know this boy?” The sergeant was joined by a grim cohort of regulars, jostling into a ragged circle around Patsy, Anne and the dead boy. “Speak up—what's he to you?”

A hawk-nosed corporal with a face terribly pitted by the pox grabbed Patsy by the arm and gave her a shake. “Answer, you rebel bitch whore!”

Still on her knees, Anne cried out, “I beg of you, Sergeant—the girl meant only to—”

“And you”—the sergeant turned his musket toward Anne, lifting her chin with the tip of his bayonet—“you speak when spoken to . . .”

“Sergeant Frye! Put by your weapon at once!”

Edward Blankenship pushed into the circle, and the company snapped to attention. The captain rushed to help Anne to her feet. “Have you been harmed, Widow Merrick?”

“No, but who's to know what our fates might have been if you hadn't come along.” Anne glared at the sergeant in righteous Tory indignation. “I never expected to suffer by the hands of the King's men, as I've suffered by the rule of the Liberty Boys . . .”

The captain turned on Frye. “What purpose is served here, Sergeant?”

“They was giving succor and aid to the enemy, sir.”

“Blubberin' over him,” the corporal added.

Anne looked down and heaved a sigh, not even trying to control her tears. “This ‘enemy,' ” she said, “is but a boy—brought down and dying when the girl and I acted on the instinct of soft hearts. Truly, our only thought was to ease a poor soul onward, as good Christians are wont to do. I will allow we shed tears, for we are unused to schoolboys dying before our very eyes.”

“Soft hearts . . .” Blankenship repeated, and it was as if he just noticed the dead body lying in a pool of blood, “a luxury soldiers can ill afford. I'm afraid hearts hardened by battle view the world in a different light. These men have seen the damage wrought by rifles in the hands of schoolboys such as this.”

There was an earnestness in his speech Anne did not expect, and the soldiers all nodded in appreciation of his words.

“Though I deplore how you have been treated here, it saddens me to hear you equate my men with rebels of any sort. I know them to be exemplary soldiers—solid and true to the service of our King, and I know they regret their actions in this instance.”

“Captain's right—we're sorry, mum.” Frye volunteered an apology, and the rest of the men mumbled the same.

Anne nodded in acceptance.

“Back to your posts—move those prisoners to the Commons,” Blankenship ordered. “And Frye—see to the boy's proper burial.” The captain turned and bowed to Anne. “If you will permit me, Widow Merrick, I will see you to your door.”

Anne looked to Patsy. “Will you be alright?”

“I'm fine.” She nodded. “Shaken, but still whole.”

Patsy lingered, watching Anne take the handsome captain's arm, and stroll away from the fire, turning the corner to Broad Way.

The sergeant set to barking out orders. “Pennyman! Kirby! Ye heard the captain—proper burial for this rebel.” Spotting Patsy still dawdling, he jerked his musket and growled, “Off with you, imp—caused us enough trouble this night, ye have. Off with you, now.”

Ambling away, Patsy untied the mask from her neck, and used it to wipe her face. After a few steps, she did an about turn to see two soldiers carry poor Tim across the road, and heave him into the flames.