Part 23 (1/2)

”...how heavy our hearts are burdened,” Reverend Wade was saying, his hands clasped tightly before him atop his podium. ”How heavy our souls are laden, with this tonnage of guilt we bear. We live in the sorrow of the world, dear children, and this sorrow brings death to all the great possibilities that Christ would have us know. Look at what Paul says, in that verse the eleventh. He would urge us to clear ourselves, so that our minds and souls become fresh. To clear ourselves, and let go of...”

The reverend stopped speaking.

Matthew had thought Wade was simply pausing to take a breath, or to fas.h.i.+on a particular phrase, but three seconds went past and then five and then ten and still the reverend did not speak. The ladies of the congregation who were using their fans ceased almost as one. In front of Matthew, Magistrate Powers leaned forward as if to try to urge Wade to continue. The reverend stared blankly into s.p.a.ce for a few seconds more before he blinked and recovered himself, but his face had taken on a damp sheen.

”Let go of our responsibilities,” he said, and then his mouth twitched as if in an attempt to recover the word. ”I'm sorry, that is not what I meant to say. Let go of our self-recriminations. Our failings. Our harsh verdicts of ourselves, that prevent us from finding...”

Again Reverend Wade hesitated, and this time his eyes darted from face to face and his mouth moved to make words but no words were born. Matthew saw the cords in Wade's neck standing out, and the man's hands clenched together so tightly it appeared the knuckles must crack. Wade looked up toward the ceiling, perhaps searching past the pigeons for the face of G.o.d, but it seemed that even an appeal to G.o.d would not suffice, for the reverend was struck mute.

John Five stood up, but already two of the church elders were on their feet and were rus.h.i.+ng to the pulpit. Reverend Wade watched them coming, his eyes wide as if he didn't fully understand what was happening, and Matthew feared the man was going to collapse before they reached him.

”I'm all right.” It was more of a gasp than speech. The reverend lifted a hand to a.s.sure his flock, but Matthew and everyone else saw how badly it trembled. ”I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I cannot continue today.”

It was a shocking moment. The sight of the normally eloquent and resolute minister being reduced to a shaking apologist stunned even Matthew, who had already seen Wade at a weak moment. But events took a quick turn as Wade's apologies were overshadowed by the sudden tolling of a bell. It was being rung from outside in the distance, its high thin cry penetrating the shutters. At once Matthew and the others knew what it was. Heard rarely, and only in case of emergency, it was the harbormaster's bell at the Great Dock raising an alarm and a summons.

Several men put on their tricorn hats and were out the door at a run. Others followed, and even some of the women pushed out to see what trouble the bell was announcing. Perhaps with relief and looking near tears, Reverend Wade turned from the pulpit like a sleepwalker and started toward the door that led to his sanctum. He was supported by the two elders and by John Five, who had gone to the reverend's side with Constance right behind him. In another moment the congregation was in a state of utter confusion and seemed to be split between those going to the reverend's aid and those leaving the church for the dock. Still the bell rang on, as pigeons flew madly about the rafters in emulation of the human disorder below.

The Stokelys were in the aisle and going toward the street. Matthew saw Magistrate Powers striding up to give his help to Reverend Wade, but Wade was almost through the door and it appeared he was being held at both shoulders and arms by a dozen hands. Familiar faces went past, this way and that, all grimly serious. Matthew watched the door close behind Wade and his knot of churchmen, and then he thought perhaps selfishly to look for Esther Deverick but she had left her pew. Her two-feathered hat was somewhere among the well-dressed contingent of Golden Hill residents going out onto the Broad Way.

Matthew decided to also get to the street. By the time he was successful at doing this through the throng, however, the Broad Way was a clatter trap of wagons, horses, and citizens on their way to the dock. Sunday might be a day strictly of sermons, G.o.dly contemplation, and rest in other towns, but in New York business rarely took a breather and so the streets, stockyards, counting-houses, and most other establishments were nearly as busy as usual, per the discretion and religious conviction of their owners. The Golden Hillers were being helped by servants into their carriages lined up in front of the church. Matthew saw the widow's hat before he saw her, and he made his way to the carriage before the driver could flick his whip.

”Pardon me! Pardon me!” Matthew called to the woman, who was seating herself in the plush cream-colored interior across from Robert. She looked at him incuriously, as if she'd never seen him before. Matthew took the letter from his coat and held it toward her. ”The questions, madam. If you'd be so kind to-”

”Were my instructions not clear?” She tilted her head, her narrow eyes devoid of emotion but for perhaps the smallest little irritated ember. ”Were they muddy, or foggy, or shrouded in mist? I told you to give your questions to my lawyer. Good day.”

”Yes, madam, I know, but I thought you might-”

”Good day,” she repeated, and then to the driver: ”Home, Malcolm.”

The whip came down, the two horses pulled the carriage away, and Matthew was left holding the letter and feeling as if the Trinity Church pigeons had just deposited on his head their own opinions of the situation.

Twenty-Three.

The bell was still being rung. It was placed atop a watchman's tower at the dock, where in turn the watchman monitored through a spygla.s.s the signal flags from another watchtower on Oyster Island. Whatever the bell was proclaiming, its primary purpose was to call men to either take up arms to defend the harbor against attack or to crew the rescue boats. Matthew returned the letter to his coat and started walking to the dock. In another moment he caught up with the Stokelys and then almost collided with the bulk of Chief Prosecutor Bynes moving through the gathering crowd, but at the last instant he checked his progress and Bynes went past hollering for the attention of some other official just ahead.

True to the spirit of New York, the fiddlers and squeezeboxers were already out on the dockside making a din of music with their tin cups offered, two young women dressed up like gypsies were dancing around also holding out money cups, three or four higglers were hawking from wagons such items as sausage pies, cheap parasols, and spygla.s.ses, the enterprising baker Mrs. Brown was selling sugar cookies to children from a cart, and dogs chased after cats that chased after harbor rats scurrying wildly under all these feet.

Past the coiled ropes, tar barrels, and piled crates of cargo either coming or going, past the st.u.r.dy tall-masted merchant vessels tied to the dock that groaned against the breeze and current like sleepers dreaming of the open sea, out there just this side of Oyster Island could be seen a s.h.i.+p coming to port. Craning his neck to get a good look, Matthew could tell that the s.h.i.+p was in dire straits, as the old sea dogs might say. It was missing half of its mainmast and its mainsail, and was careening back and forth like a tipsy drunk to catch wind with its foresail and jibs. Two longboats-the rescue craft-were already in the water and being rowed out by eight men apiece to give aid, for even this close to safe harbor it appeared the damaged vessel might at any moment lose all rudder and turn upon the rocks that circled Oyster Island.

With the longboats going out, the alarm bell that had called the crews to action now fell silent, leaving the noise of fiddle and accordion, higglers hollering, and general calls of relief that either a pirate fleet was not intent on sacking the town or the Dutch navy had not decided to buy its colony back with a few well-placed cannonb.a.l.l.s.

Matthew felt someone jostle him and suddenly Marmaduke Grigsby was standing at his side. The printmaster was as disheveled as Matthew had ever seen him. He must have hurried here from a job in progress for he wore an ink-stained ap.r.o.n over his clothes, a great black smear lay across his bulbous chin, and black ink specks dotted the lenses of his spectacles. His white eyebrows were jumping, each to their own mysterious rhythm. ”Has anyone said what s.h.i.+p this might be?” he asked Matthew, with a note of urgency.

”No.”

”I pray it's the Sarah Embry. G.o.d's will, it has to be!”

Matthew realized Grigsby's granddaughter must be a pa.s.senger on the Embry, but whether that long-delayed s.h.i.+p was the crippled vessel struggling to make port on three sails and a prayer had yet to be seen.

Grigsby took a dirty cloth from a pocket of his ap.r.o.n and studiously inspected it until he could find a less dirty portion with which to wipe his eyegla.s.ses. Matthew glanced at him and saw sweat glistening on the gnomish man's forehead and cheeks, but then again it had become a hot day.

”I'll buy you a cup of cider,” Matthew offered, motioning toward one of the higglers who was selling the drink from a small keg on a pullcart. ”Come on.”

”Oh...yes. All right. Thank you, Matthew. I am a pitiful old wretch, aren't I?”

With two cups of cider down their hatches, Matthew and Grigsby stood together watching the longboat crews throw ropes to the miserable s.h.i.+p. It would have to be towed the remaining distance. Now that the excitement of the alarm bell had dwindled and the noontime sun was bearing down, many of the gawkers began to drift away. The fiddlers left, the squeezeboxers silenced their accordions, the gypsy dancers flitted off-probably with a number of valuables, therefore Matthew had kept his hand firmly over the pocket that held his watch and wallet-and the higglers ceased their calls and also packed up their goods and left. Perhaps twenty or so people stayed on the dock watching the nautical drama unfold.

”If it's not the Sarah Embry,” Grigsby said after a long silence, ”I fear Beryl is lost.”

”s.h.i.+ps are always late,” Matthew reminded him gently. ”You said as much yourself.”

”I know I did. I also know how easily a storm can break a s.h.i.+p in half. I'm telling you, Matthew, Beryl is lost if this is not the Embry.” He put a hand to his forehead and rubbed between the thick eyebrows, as if to calm their excitations. ”I have to tell you something I've always found amusing about Beryl. Something I always dismissed...but now it may be tragic.” He finished his eyebrow ma.s.saging and let his hand fall to his side. ”She has thought for the longest time that she is an object of bad luck. That she foists unfortunate happenings upon others, with no ill wish toward anyone. The first young beau she ever had an eye for was injured in a riding accident, snapped his tailbone, and lay in a hospital for a solid two months. Now he goes by the moniker of Bowlegged Ben.”

”It was probably just an ornery horse that threw him,” Matthew said.

”He wasn't thrown from a horse. He was trying out a new saddle in the stable, the thing somehow came uncinched, and he fell on his kadoodle right there in front of Beryl. She said she heard the bone break. The fellow wouldn't return any of her letters. I think it must have been an embarra.s.sment for him, because he'd talked himself up as such a grand equestrian.”

”That's not too terrible a tragedy. Accidents happen all the time.”

”Yes, that's what I wrote to Beryl. Then soon after that was the young man who broke out in red blotches and whose face swelled up like a strawberry when Beryl accompanied him to a party hosted by his accounting firm. After he frightened his host's children to tears his future at the firm did not appear as bright as the morning star.”

”Not bad luck,” said Matthew, watching the s.h.i.+p draw nearer. ”Just happenstance.”

”As I told her. The other things, as well, I told her were easily explained.”

Matthew's throat felt a little dry. ”Other things?”

”The Marylebone fire, for one. I said she probably shouldn't have taken the goat to school, but who would have known such a thing might happen? And the coach wreck next to her house, that wasn't her fault, either. Trees often fall across the road after heavy rains. It was just the timing of it, so soon after she'd pruned the branches.”

”I see,” Matthew said, though he did not.

The longboats were doing a masterful job of rowing the decrepit s.h.i.+p in, and what a disaster the vessel was. The entire bow under the figurehead looked to have been caved in and repaired with odd pieces of planking, jagged wood remained thrusting upward where the main mast had been torn away, ropes trailed in tangles over the sides, and the whole picture was one of both mishap and misfunction. As the longboats neared the dock and the towed craft loomed larger, one of the harbor crew cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, ”Ho! What s.h.i.+p?”

Came from a man on the nearest longboat the shouted reply: ”The Sarah Embry!”

”Oh my G.o.d! Oh Christ be praised!” Grigsby grasped at Matthew's arm to steady himself from falling, but even so his knees buckled. His weight almost took them both to the ground. ”Oh Lord, she's not drowned, she's not drowned!” Tears had sprung to Grigsby's eyes behind his gla.s.ses. Matthew in decorum focused his attention on the scene as the longboats, the rowers straining, pulled the Embry in and the harbor crew prepared to receive lines from the s.h.i.+p and lash them fast to the dock.

It was perhaps fifteen more minutes before the Embry was tied up and its anchor rattled into the murky drink, but desperate faces could be seen crowded at the portside railing. As a gangway was secured between s.h.i.+p and wharf, suddenly a long-bearded man wearing blue breeches and a filthy s.h.i.+rt that may have once been white scrambled down the planks and fell sobbing upon the dock. He was followed along the gangway by a procession of dazed, dirty people in all manner of clothing both regal and ragged but all covered with the same gray grime and green mildew, carrying bags and bundles and staggering about as if their legs had become twirly-tops. It was impossible to discern one face from another but for the fact that all men had dirty beards, all women were bedraggled wild-haired slatterns, and all children were small filthy moppets who resembled poisonous forest mushrooms.

”My G.o.d, what a voyage this must have been!” Grigsby might be a fearful old grandfather, but he was also an opportunistic scribbler with an Earwig to fill. Even without quill and pad at hand, he began working on a story. ”Where's the captain?” he asked two befuddled travelers who seemed to have lost their ability to understand English and so stumbled past. ”The captain!” Grigsby demanded of a gray-bearded, sunken-eyed gent whose mossy suit had fit him better twenty pounds ago. ”Where is he?”

The man pointed a trembling finger at the sobbing figure laid out on the dock and then staggered on, leaving one of his buckled shoes at Matthew's feet. Matthew and Grigsby both saw the captain cease his crying long enough to kiss the planks so hard his lips were surely pierced with splinters.

”Grandda!” came a half-shout, half-shriek.

”Beryl! Beryl!” Grigsby shouted in return, and pushed forward toward a figure the color of clay and dressed in what appeared to be tattered rags. The girl, if that's indeed what it was for under all that grime it was hard to tell, dropped the two canvas bags she'd been carrying and tried to run to meet her grandfather yet running was a proposition her sea-legs would not permit. Two long strides, a stagger and down she went upon the dock as if whacked across the back with a longboat oar. At once Grigsby knelt down to help Beryl up. Matthew reached them just as several other pa.s.sengers were aiding the captain to his feet and so was directly in the line of fire when the bearded nautican bellowed like a six-cannon fusillade: ”That girl!”