One more block, and we could go no farther. Lady Seymour and me collapsed in a heap on the edge of a graveyard.
Time burned up while we lay there, caught in the sparks that flew overhead, swallowed by the noise of a city ablaze.
When I finally came to my senses, I sat up, coughed at length, and breathed in slow. It hurt, but it would not be the death of me. Lady Seymour still lay beside me, shaking her head from side to side in the dirt and muttering. I bent my ear close to hear.
“The bells, where are the bells?” she asked.
Had the fire ruined her mind? Why worry about bells?
“You’re safe, ma’am,” I said, patting her hand.
She frowned. “Why don’t the bells ring alarm?”
Her words were garbled, like she was talking underwater, but I finally understood. Every bell in every church steeple should have been ringing loud and fiercesome. But they were all gone, melted and reformed into cannons.
I stood up. Over the rooftops I could see men pouring water on the flattish roof of St. Paul’s, the buckets handed to them from a long line of people that stretched to a backyard pump. To the south, Trinity Church was not as lucky. Its tall steeple was a pyramid of fire, the flames licking the undersides of the clouds that scuttled above.
“What shall we do, ma’am?” I asked.
Her tears turned black as they rolled through the soot on her face. Her left arm and leg lay limp as if some cog within her had snapped. She did not make a sound.
’Twas up to me to make the decisions.
“Come.” I helped her to sit. “We need to make our way to safety.”
I stood to her left, draped the useless arm over my neck, and held her body tight to mine. In that manner, step by slow step, we staggered on. We passed countless people standing in the streets like statues, their toes bare on the stones, nightclothes blowing in the unnatural breeze, mouths agape. Carts rolled by carrying half-naked people, bleeding and dazed. A collection of charred bodies had been stacked on a corner, not fully covered by a blanket. A child’s boot and stocking lay in the gutter, next to an overturned rain barrel.
Step by slow step we made our way to Wall Street, then down to the seventh house on the left. She was near insensible by the time we reached it. In truth, I pinched her as hard as I could. It roused her some, and she lifted her working leg. Thus we mounted the steps of the Lockton house and entered the front door.
Chapter XXXII
Sunday, September 22–Thursday, September 26, 1776
OUR DISTRESSES WERE VERY GREAT INDEED BEFORE;
BUT THIS DISASTER HAS INCREASED THEM TENFOLD.
MANY HUNDREDS OF FAMILIES HAVE LOST THEIR ALL;
AND ARE REDUCED FROM A STATE OF AFFLUENCE TO
THE LOWEST EBB OF WANT AND WRETCHEDNESS–
DESTITUTE OF SHELTER, FOOD OR CLOTHING.
–NEW YORK MERCURY NEWSPAPER
Near five hundred homes were destroyed that night, plus shops, churches, and stables. Thousands of people were homeless, without even a change of underclothes or clean stockings. Many did not eat meat for weeks on account of the death smell that poisoned the air. The job of finding bodies was so gruesome it caused grown men to scream out loud.
They buried the dead quickly.
Folks said the fire started in a low groggery near the Whitehall Slip. From there it burned uptown, pushed by a strong wind, devouring Bridge Street, Dock, Stone, Marketfield, and Beaver, then it ran up both sides of Broadway. Almost every building from Broadway to the edge of the North River was in ruins, all the way up to the open field below King’s College. They called it “the burned-over district.”
“God’s judgment on the British,” whispered the Patriots.
“Rebel sabotage,” shouted the Loyalists.
Most figured the Americans wanted New York burned to the ground to leave the British without shelter. While the fires still raged, groups of soldiers searched for arsonists. One man, found with rosin and brimstone-tipped slivers of wood in his pocket, was tossed into a burning cobbler shop, another was quickly executed with a bayonet through the chest. Half a dozen people were hung while the fire still raged, one from the sign post of a tavern. Another was hung from his heels and had his throat slashed.
The day after the fire, they captured a schoolteacher, name of Nathan Hale, up island near the Dove Tavern. He admitted he was a spy but said he did not set the fire. There was no trial, nor proof of his guilt. They put a rope around his neck and hung him high.
Folks talked about a pretty speech he gave afore they kicked the stool away from his feet. He said he was sorry that he could die only one time for his country.
The lobsterbacks laughed at that.
I coughed up mouthfuls of soot for days. My eyes felt crusted with embers. No matter how much I rubbed them or rinsed them with clean water, they remained swole up, red, and hard to see out of. I was lucky. I was not killt nor burnt; I had not even twisted an ankle running from the flames.
All I lost in the confusion was Ruth’s doll. All I had lost was everything.
My bees a’swarmed back into my brainpan. They hummed loud so I need not ponder on the baby doll. The burned-over district looked like the inside of me. It was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started. I feared my wits had been melted by the flames, twisted and charred.
Doctor Dastuge came to examine Lady Seymour. The left side of her body had gone to sleep and would not wake. The doctor said it was an apoplexy brought on by the fire. He bled her twice and prescribed Maredant’s Drops to cleanse her blood.
Master Lockton insisted his aunt should recover in the bedchamber he shared with his wife. Madam was not pleased with the arrangement but said nothing, for a change. She visited the ruins of the Seymour house daily, waiting for them to cool enough so that she could poke through the ash with a hoe, in search of coin or melted silver.
Lady Seymour called me to her bedside when she regained her senses. She tried to thank me, but the affliction pulled at her mouth and made it hard to figure her words. I gave her the portrait of the yellow-haired man and the letters that I had stuffed in my pocket as we fled. She studied them close with her good eye, then she sobbed and both her eyes overran with tears. Madam bade me leave the room.
By the third day after the fire, the Lockton house was packed tighter than a barrel of salt cod and smelled worse. We had been invaded again. Many of the rebel houses that were occupied by the British army had burned to the ground. Soldiers found themselves as homeless as regular folk, so their commanders ordered that anyone with an undamaged home share it with the men.
We wound up with eleven fellows from Kent sleeping three to a bedchamber and using the second-floor drawing room as their common area for dining and conversating. The master and Madam moved their bedchamber to the downstairs front parlor and gave the library over to Colonel Hawkins, a high-ranking officer whose favor Lockton sought.
The cellar was turned into a barracks for five soldiers who had their wives with them. This was the Lord’s blessing on me because the women were used to cooking and cleaning for their men’s regiment. The new bosslady in the kitchen was named Sarah, a black-haired gal with a baby in her belly. She was not a friendly sort—none of them were—but she did not call me names nor seem inclined to hand out beatings.
I did miss Becky Berry, more than I thought possible.
It was odd sleeping in the cellar with strangers. They sure did snore, the women as bad as the men. Their bodies gave off noxious odors, too, gases so strong they made my eyes water. The night of the first frost, I woke up to a soldier pulling off my blanket. I lay in the dark, fists clenched and teeth sharp, thinking he meant to do me harm.
He did not. He was simply cold and in need of another layer of cloth.
Next morning, Sarah agreed I could move my pallet up to the kitchen hearth.
It was lonely sleeping without that fool doll.
Chapter XXXIII
Friday, September 27–Saturday, November
16, 1776
MANY OF THE INHABITANTS ARE COME INTO TOWN;
AND MANY OTHERS WHO WERE OBLIGED TO FLY FOR
THEIR LOYALTY ARE COMING IN DAILY.
–NEW YORK MERCURY NEWSPAPER
The autumn passed in a dogweary haze for me, with much work and little time left to ponder or breathe. Everything was cloaked in gray: oyster gray, charcoal gray, pewter gray, mold gray, storm gray, and ash. Scraps of ash floated through the air for weeks and found their way into everything, from the butter to the tea. The rains turned the ash to mud. Frost painted the ground the color of a gravestone, ashes trapped in ice.
I flaked ashy too. Momma used to rub a salve of bear fat and mint on us as winter approached so our skin would not dry and crack.
Was Ruth’s skin dry? Did anyone notice?
Ashes drifted into the hollow places in my bones and silted up my brainpan. I had the fanciful notion that perhaps we had died in the fire, that we were all lost souls, forbidden to enter heaven. When I had low thoughts like that, Curzon’s voice would call from my remembery and tell me to join him, to become a rebel.
I told that voice to hush.
With the ash so thick inside and out, I had few thoughts to spare for that fool. I figured he was dug in with the troops at Fort Washington, which seemed a good place, what with the strong walls and the cannons protecting it. Folks said the British wouldn’t attack the fort until spring.
The men drilled and patrolled. Sarah and the other soldierwives spent most of their days down at the campground doing the chores for the regiment—washing clothes in big iron pots and cooking whatever could be found to roast or stew. They did some tidying at the Lockton house and kept the officers fed too. The dirtiest jobs fell to me: water hauling, wood chopping, and chamber-pot emptying. On top of that, Colonel Hawkins claimed me for his errand girl, sending me out with messages for this captain or that sergeant or in search of snuff or hair powder or almonds. He was terrible fond of almonds.
By the time the apples were harvested, hundreds of ships crammed with expensive British goods crowded the docks. The price of food doubled and doubled again. This did not affect the Locktons nor the rich Loyalist refugees who streamed into the city toting bags of gold. We took delivery of enough potatoes to fill the bin in the cellar and had no trouble buying meat. But regular folks burnt out of their homes and penniless Loyalists refugees on the run from the rebels, they were forced to shelter in Canvastown, the new name for the burned-over district. They used tent canvas to make huts against the standing chimneys and half-crumbled brick walls. They ate beans and rice when they were lucky and begged on the streets when they were not.
One day I noticed that the plants grown from Momma’s seeds had been killed by the frost, the stalks dead on the ground, with shriveled paper leaves. A lump of mud stuck in my throat. I had forgotten to care for them. I collected the few seeds left from the flower heads and wrapped them in a scrap of cloth that I laid under the loose board in the pantry, where I had hidden my sliver of lead from the King’s statue.
As the weather turned colder, Lady Seymour’s mind cleared and her body strengthened. She could walk with help and move the crippled arm some, but her mouth still dragged at the corner and her speech was hard to follow. Madam was not entirely pleased that her husband’s aunt was mending. I heard her grumble to Lockton that “the old biddy will never die, just to spite us.”
A month or so after the fire, I was setting down a clean pitcher of water in Lady Seymour’s bedchamber whilst Madam read the newspaper aloud to her. I thought the Lady was dozing, but her eyes snapped open when Madam described how British soldiers had looted the City Hall library. They stole books, ruined paintings, and broke scientifical equipment stored there by the professors of King’s College.
Lady Seymour made Madam repeat the entire story, then demanded pen and ink and paper, fighting her way out from the blankets with her good arm. Once dressed warmly and settled at the writing table, she composed a strongly worded letter about the library destruction to General Howe, supreme commander of the Royal forces, and called for a glass of brandy and a bowl of soup.
After that it fell to me to walk with Lady Seymour along Wall Street on days when the sun was strong. She hired three seamstresses to sew her a new wardrobe and included a heavy skirt and thick woolen cloak for me in the order. I protested that I could not pay for the clothes, but Lady Seymour simply pointed to the portrait of the yellow-haired man, her husband, on the mantel and his letters stacked next to it.
“We’ll not discuss payment again,” she said slowly.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said.
After the pigs had been slaughtered and fresh pork was for sale in the market, another wave of British officers moved in and set up their camp beds in the second-floor drawing room. The long dining table was covered end to end with maps. The men would stand over them, chins in their hands, trying to figure out how to finish off the rebels. They were now scheming to finish the war in time for the New Year. Battles and skirmishes were fought on the north part of New York Island, though the city was safe.
Whilst they plotted Washington’s downfall, I dozed in a chair in the hallway in case they needed victuals or a bottle of port. Sleep was a rare and precious thing to me in those days.
The next day I was yawning hard as I trudged up to the Tea Water Pump. The November wind carried the promise of snow, and I was glad for the new cloak Lady Seymour had given me. Soon I would need rags to wrap round my hands.
My muddled head did not register the great hullabaloo at first, but then my ears awoke. Folks were shouting and hurrying toward the Greenwich Road where it dumped out onto the Commons. I was not sure what the race was for, but I lifted my skirts and joined along with it.
“They got them!” cheered a red-faced man, throwing both of his arms into the air. “They got them all.”
By the time I made it to the Commons, I had to fight my way to the front of the cheering mob. The end of the Greenwich Road was lined with British soldiers, relaxed and laughing as their prisoners—captured American soldiers—walked three to a row between their enemies through the doors of the Bridewell Prison.
“Was there a battle?” I asked a serving girl next to me.
“Up the fort,” she answered. “Them Hessians killt lots. Blood was running like water, they say. They fired them cannons from the ships. Blew arms and legs everywhere. Heads, too.”
I nodded, unable to think what I should say. A chant started in the crowd, and singing. I did not join in, nor did I throw clods of mud as many did, including the bloodthirsty girl next to me.
The rebels kept coming in, row after filthy row, most with their heads down, some limping with a crutch or an arm in a sling. Their uniforms were torn and tattered. A few walked barefooted over the icy cobblestones, flinching when hit square with mud or a rock. They carried neither flag nor weapons. Their breath billowed like they were hard-ridden horses. It hung around their heads like smoke.
He was toward the end of the line, with the other enlisted slaves, his head bent forward, his face invisible. A bloody bandage was tied above his right knee, and it looked painful to step with his right foot.
The only way I knew him was that hat, nearer brown than red now, with a rip through the brim, and the ring in his ear.
The guards shoved the last of the prisoners, including the boy with the red-brown hat, through the doors of the prison and closed them with a loud metal clang.
Chapter XXXIV
Sunday, November 17–Sunday, November 24, 1776
WE HAVE NOW GOT NEAR 5000 PRISONERS IN
NEW-YORK AND MANY OF THEM ARE SUCH RAGAMUFFINS,
AS YOU NEVER SAW IN YOUR LIFE …
–LETTER OF A BRITISH OFFICER, PUBLISHED IN
THE LONDON PACKET NEWSPAPER
I had no time to ponder Curzon’s fate. Madam commanded that a supper be thrown to celebrate the capture of Fort Washington, complete with turtle soup.
The house fair exploded with d
ust and activity. The junior officers cleared out their cots, clothing, and maps from the second-floor drawing room so we could scrub and polish it from ceiling to floor. The kitchen hearth was crowded with irons heating to press the tablecloths and serviettes.
Madam hired the cook from the City Tavern to prepare the meal. Folks said he had a way with turtles. She then chose the prettiest of the soldierwives to wait at the tables. The ugly ones and Sarah with her big belly were to stay in the kitchen to assist the cook, and wash up. My job was to ferry the food up the stairs and the dirty crockery down.
The food began arriving long before sunup, packed into crates and hauled by sleepy-eyed boys. Three turtles each the size of a footstool came in a wooden pen. The sound of their flippers scratching made Sarah yelp in fright. Two of the turtles kept their heads tight against their shells. The third stretched out his neck and watched the commotion with wet, solemn eyes.
While we scurried to finish the house, and the cook butchered the turtles and plucked the pheasants, the hairdresser arrived to tend to Madam. He spent hours applying pomantum wax, padding, and lengths of brick-colored hair to fashion a high roll on Madam’s head. The hair swept off her brow and soared into the air like a wave curling before a ship’s prow. I thought the wave might crumble, but Madam did not ask my opinion. She wanted a pot of hot chocolate made with two handfuls of sugar, which was a shocking amount.
Sarah and the cook were exchanging heated words in the kitchen. Empty turtle shells stood drying in the corner, and the cook’s assistant stirred the thick soup bubbling over the fire. I grabbed the chocolate pot and left, not wanting to see what became of the poor creatures’ heads.
As I served the hot chocolate and tidied the chamber, Madam rubbed her face with Venetian Bloom Water beauty wash, said to remove wrinkles. After that came a layer of Molyneux’s Italian Paste to make her skin white as bleached linen. It made her resemble a corpse.