31 Bond Street (21 page)

May 14, 1857

S
amuel opened his eyes to the spokes of sunbeams dancing through the branches. He had dozed. He was lying on his back on a cool bit of earth in the dappled shade of an oak tree. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and he listened to the sound of the water at the riverbank as it slapped against the sides of the wooden skiff.

He had left the skiff down near the water. Samuel had a crumpled newspaper page in his hand that he had picked up on the street to check the date. According to the headline, the trial was at day eight and the defense was at the bar. It was still not over.

For the last three days, Samuel had been drifting through the bay. After the trial began, Katuma had said it would be safest for Samuel to take to the river and wait it out afloat. Katuma had borrowed a boat, a little wooden skiff with a rudder and single sail. Katuma and Quietta padded up and down the path from the hut to the water, filling it with provisions: buckets and blankets, string and some tools, as well as bottles of ale. When Samuel was ready to depart, the boy showed up, and seeing them with the boat ready,
turned to Katuma first, and then Quietta, appealing to them: “Can I go? Can I go, too?” Quietta laughed and said “Bird, you’re not the one they are hunting.” And Katuma said, “I promise, I’ll take you out fishing later when the shad are running.”

It was because John didn’t accept no for an answer, and kept jumping up and down pleading, and because Samuel could see that there was a spell of warm weather ahead, mild enough to sleep under the stars, and because the boy was good company and was keen on boats, that Samuel said, finally, “Let him come. We’ll go to Canarsie Landing, and I’ll bring him back in a few days.”

“Is it wise?” asked Quietta, looking at her father.

“It might be a good thing, to get him out of the way of this murderous business. It’s no place for a child,” Katuma said.

John hollered, “Yahoo!” and scrambled aboard. Now, three days later, Samuel had brought the boy back as he had promised, so that he could visit his mother.

The day they set sail, they got a strong push from Katuma, and the hull scraped against the shallow river bottom and floated them off into the current. Samuel and John navigated the crowded harbor, dodging the schooners and barges, taking turns at the rudder, the other lying low. It was not unusual to see a Negro on the water. Negroes were ideal haulers on the oyster scows that trolled the flats. There were plenty of boys afloat, too, some skipping school on rafts, others running away for good, finding work in the crow’s nests of ships. But a Negro and a towheaded boy together on an open boat might be a peculiar sight. In the expanse of the busy waterway, they caught no more notice than the bobbing pieces of timber that floated over the wakes of the tall ships.

The first night was spent at the Sandy Ground on Staten Island, where there was a village of whitewashed cottages made up of slave runaways out of Virginia. Now two generations old, the village had
a Negro minister and a Negro doctor and a Negro running the general store. Everyone there had heard about the trial going on in the city. Samuel picked up other news as well, like which ships were slavers and which ships unloaded barrels of rum and rowed them to the wooded inlets before the customs men came aboard to fix a tariff, and which ones were running guns, selling them to the unmarked ships huddled just over the horizon. “Pirates!” exclaimed John, excited by thoughts of treasure.

The following morning, Samuel and John set sail again, drifting past the lighthouse at Robbins Reef, past Swinburne Island, the island that held those quarantined with smallpox, past the full-masted Navy fleet, charging at them from the Lower Bay. They drifted around the Bay Ridge, into Gravesend Bay where the Brooklyn Flatlands emptied into miles of waterways and creeks and sandbars. They found a sandy island in the Canarsie fishing ground and spent the next days fishing in the sunshine and trolling the beaches. John walked around in the shallows with a net, far out in the water, ankle deep, his pants rolled up, as if he were heading right into the iridescent sky, with the sun catching the top of his head like a lighthouse beacon.

At night they dug a fire pit into the sand. They drank cool brown ale in bottles stopped with wax that Samuel placed in the water to chill. The fish roasted until the soft white flesh fell from the bones. They ate slowly and talked late into the evening. Samuel told John about his home in Virginia where he had grown up in a shack near a field of tobacco.

“Where’s your pa?” asked John. Samuel told him that he was gone, up to heaven.

“Mine, too,” John said looking out at the horizon. “Where’s your ma?” and Samuel said she was gone also, taken away when he was a boy, but he didn’t tell him about the men that pulled her through
the door of the shack as she grabbed for her children, one after another, until they pried her hands off them and took her wailing into the night. He told him instead about the washerwoman, a slave on the plantation who wore a wrapped headdress, and cleaned clothes in big vats, and watched over the children who weren’t old enough to work the fields.

“After the sheets were hung wet on the lines between the old oaks, she sat us down with the Bible and taught us to read.”

“So that’s how you learnt?” asked John.

“That was just the beginning,” said Samuel. “After I started, I couldn’t stop, and I took that old book and wrote those words over and over. If you do that, you can read anything. That’s why I kept practicing.”

John nodded, thinking. It was dark now, and John began to talk. He told Samuel about that morning he showed up at 31 Bond Street during the storm and took the tray upstairs and opened up the door to Dr. Burdell’s office and saw his neck near cut from his head. He spoke in a hushed tone, the way a boy does when he tries to appear proud and brave.

“I’m sorry you had to be the one,” said Samuel. “You’re too young to set your eyes upon such bloodshed.”

“Wasn’t so bad,” said John, shrugging, but the boy had a tremor in his lip and a look in his eyes like he had stored this memory down deep. “Samuel, how come you never told me about the buggy ride? Where you went the night before, when you was driving Dr. Burdell?”

“We rode around town, doing business, that’s all.” Samuel remembered that evening well, a fugue of blasphemy that wasn’t fit for a boy’s ears. “I can tell you this, when Dr. Burdell got out of the carriage, he was carrying a satchel of money, most of it gold.”

“Gold? Where did it go?”

“Disappeared, I guess.”

“Stolen? Or maybe stashed away—I always thought he had a treasure hidden somewhere. I know he had a secret place in that wardrobe,” said John. “He kept things hidden, that’s for sure.”

“What kind of secret place?”

“I was cleaning the stove in the bedroom once when he was in the office and I think he forgot I was there. I heard him go in the wardrobe, and he was there one minute and the next he disappeared. I heard him making noises at one of the cabinets, and when I looked up, he had vanished altogether. Then some time went by, and I heard him in the office again.”

“What do you mean ‘vanished’? Show me which cabinet.” Samuel pulled his letter fold out of his rucksack where he kept sheets of paper. Some were already scrawled with the Bible quotes that he gave John to practice. He handed John a piece that had a fragment of writing and turned it over to the blank side and gave him a pencil so he could make a diagram. John drew the office and bedroom as two rectangles, and then another rectangle between them to show the wardrobe passage.

“Here,” said John. “There is a long row of cabinets, and this one here is a tall one, with hanging clothes. At the bottom is a drewer,” he said, making an
x
.

“Drawer,” corrected Samuel.

“Yes,” John said. “Well that’s where I heard some noises, like he was pulling it out. When I looked in, he had disappeared, like he vanished inside. Maybe there is a hiding place under.”

“Hm,” said Samuel, “I don’t know about that, because the ceiling space is too shallow for a man to lower himself into. It’s the parlor that’s directly below.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw,” said John, and Samuel put the paper away and they started to eat shellfish, breaking open a pile of
mollusks. The moon rose in a haze of stars turning the shoreline into a silvery ribbon. They held the shells right over the fire until the fish roasted, then blew to cool it and swallowed it right down.

“I ain’t never tasted anything so good,” said John, the brine slipping down his chin.

“Have not ever,” corrected Samuel.

January 31, 1857

E
mma heard the resounding clatter of hooves outside, and she ran to the window as a sleek pacer pulled to stop. It was Mr. Wicken with Augusta.

Dusk was settling like a dark shroud over an already dark day. Dr. Burdell’s carriage was still waiting below. He was still downstairs in his room. Her heart was still irregular, and she still clutched the document she had taken from the safe.

She unrolled the document and fingered it gently. Opening it, she saw right away that it was something she did not recognize, something else altogether. It was not a deed—it was printed with a floral border and was written with penmanship in an overly ornate fashion.

Certificate of Marriage
January 14, 1857

Dr. Harvey Burdell and
Emma Hempstead Cunningham
Are hereby joined in Holy Matrimony
By all the forces of God,
in the presence of the
Reverend Uriah Marvine

Thoughts were scrambling and turning over in her mind. At first glance, she felt as if she was witnessing a phantom, like a day in the future that was part of a dream. A marriage? With her name and Dr. Burdell’s? It was dated in the past, just two weeks earlier. But within seconds she realized that this dislocation was not pleasurable but forebodingly real. A false marriage was not a gift but an omen—the certificate was created so he could sell her property. If the sale was happening soon, the deed must be with him. Her thoughts raced along—to the woman at the hotel and the tickets to Europe, and the lease of the house and the visitor, Mrs. Stansbury. His actions were not random. His plans were rapidly unfolding, and none of them included her. She was in the way, and as long as she was inside this house, she was in danger.

She gripped the paper to her breast and leaned against the wall with her eyes shut. She heard someone enter her room. She jumped with fright.

“Mother.” It was Augusta standing at her door, her curls out of place.

Emma tried to make sense of her daughter’s presence. “You scared me,” she began.

Augusta’s mouth trembled. “I dropped my purse and lost my keys. I could have left them in the carriage.” She led out a sob. “Mr. Wicken is a terrible man.”

“What has happened? Has he hurt you?” asked Emma, alarmed.

“No, but he made advances. I resisted him, and I shall continue to resist him.”

Emma turned to the window, where she saw the flash of a cape
and Dr. Burdell’s carriage pull away. He was gone again. “Get your sister, and come back to my room,” she ordered.

“Mother, didn’t you hear me? Mr. Wicken says he will marry me, but I will not do it,” she stated adamantly. “He is not who you think he is. He took me up the Yorkville Road in his racing chariot, and we stopped at an inn for some ale. Then he took me far into the woods, by the river, and he tore at my dress. He said he is my fiancé.”

“Augusta, you should be honored at the prospect. You cannot hold yourself above all mankind, or there will be no marriage and no prospects for your future.”

“He forced himself and I fought him. I scratched his face, for he has no right to such brutality. Mother is it true, have you arranged my marriage to him?”

“Do not speak ill of Mr. Wicken,” Emma said. She remembered her plan to see him tomorrow, and in her vulnerable state, she certainly needed an ally, with his ability to give advice and protection. “You are a foolish girl to spurn him! He has our best interests in mind.” Emma looked strange, her eyes wild. “Go! Go get Helen, and bring your nightclothes with you. We need to be together tonight. We will sleep in this room.” She would keep her daughters with her close together in her bedroom tonight, and in the morning Emma would see Helen off, with Samuel driving her to the train, where a chaperone from the school would take Helen north. After the carriage returned, she would make haste to see Ambrose Wicken. She hoped he would help her. He would certainly know how to retrieve her stolen claim.

Augusta stood staring, uncomprehending. She saw the trunks on the floor and the room in an unusual state of disarray.

“Get your sister and come down here! Bring her down!” Emma insisted.

Augusta stood defiantly, with tears at her eyes, and then started
for the door. “You will not rule me, Mother. I know my own mind. I won’t marry that man against my will. Besides,” she said, now lacing her words with controlled venom, “Mr. Wicken despises me and I despise him back.”

Dr. Burdell wrapped his cape and placed his satchel on the carriage seat. Samuel drove, at his direction, to Gramercy Square. They reached a residence with a shiny brass plate and the owner’s initials next to the house number. Dr. Burdell pounded the knocker and a servant appeared and handed him a packet. He returned to the carriage and told Samuel that the next stop was Union Square. They stopped before the row of political clubs, the street deep with waiting carriages. It was six o’clock, and Samuel hadn’t eaten. Dr. Burdell ordered him down. “Come inside with me.”

They entered the men’s club, passing through the bar, lined with crystal and mirrors. No one looked up at the man and his Negro servant as they passed. Behind the barroom were gaming rooms with tables covered with felt. They were empty, and when they reached a door with smoked glass, Dr. Burdell stopped and took off his cloak. “You will stay close by me all evening, unless I dismiss you,” he whispered to Samuel. He lifted the flap of his frock coat, revealing a pistol in a holder at his waist, easily reached by a swift hand. Samuel knew that the gesture was a message that business was going to be discussed and Dr. Burdell wanted to ensure his silence. His presence was required, for his muscle and bulk were a looming protection and a threat to the others, if anything were to go wrong. But if Samuel tried to bolt, Dr. Burdell could easily dispatch him with a hard steel ball ripping through his flesh.

They entered through the door to a smoke-filled room, a private dining room. Men were standing and milling about, talking to
gether. A gentleman looked up as Dr. Burdell entered. “He is here,” he said, tapping the next man on the shoulder. Everyone turned toward them. “We were not sure if you would change your mind again. You have gone behind our backs several times now and then returned.”

Dr. Burdell simply looked at them without nodding. There were plates of food spread out around an oval table, banquet style, and papers laid out on one end where the table was clear of platters.

“I am here to give you what you have asked for,” Dr. Burdell said, handing them the packet of papers he received at Gramercy Square. A man laid them out across the table next to the others.

“Send your manservant to the kitchen where he can eat,” said one.

“No, he is to stay here, with me,” Dr. Burdell said, glancing at Samuel, who posted himself against the wall of the room, near the door. He carefully observed the men present, for he had been hearing these renegade plans for months. He intended to report back to the Reverend, as he had done before. Samuel eyed everyone in the room carefully, making note of their physical appearance and attire, down to every stitch on their broadcloth suits, memorizing each face like a caricature indelibly etched on a printing plate. He had seen many of them before. Two months earlier, after a late meeting in another smoke-filled room, they discussed slave ships and fugitive rings, and the best way to bypass the customs men in New York Harbor. Afterward, they all piled into Dr. Burdell’s carriage. Someone with a Southern accent directed Samuel to Mercer Street, behind Broadway, where carousers in top hats weaved among stage doors and into the darkened entrances of brothels, identified by the glow of a flame in a red-tinted bowl.

At the corner of Prince Street, he was ordered to stop at a house of faded stucco with no markings. It was a large residence, but the patched façade and worn marble steps were a sign of its decline. Dr.
Burdell told Samuel to follow. In the foyer, a woman with a paste of white flour across her face greeted them.

“The beautiful Delia,” crooned the Southerner, lifting her hand to kiss it. “I am here to show my Northern friends the finest of Southern virtue.” The madam’s chest, no longer buoyant, was held upright in a tight corset.

“Come along then,” she said, sashaying into the parlor, where divans and fringed ottomans were scattered about. On every seat was a young woman in a billowing skirt, attended by a Negress, a girl kneeling on the floor, fanning her mistress. The offerings were belles or slaves. One by one, the men chose a girl and passed out of the room, headed up the staircase.

The girl assigned to Dr. Burdell insisted she was only fifteen. She was not fifteen, maybe twenty. She wore piles of ringlets that looked silly on a woman her age. As they passed out of the parlor, Dr. Burdell stopped before Samuel and said to the girl, “Never mind. I won’t be staying after all.” Then he turned to Samuel and said, “Let’s get out of here. I have another meeting at Delmonico’s.”

“But, sir, don’t you want to see my bloomers?” protested the girl. “My daddy says I am the naughtiest girl in Louisiana.”

“Tell your madam that I’m not impressed.” Dr. Burdell put on his hat and walked toward the front door. “And tell your daddy, I think you’re just another trollop.”

In the clubroom on Union Square, the same men now eyed Dr. Burdell with suspicion. “So you are now interested in our terms. We have conferred among ourselves,” said one man, “and come up with a portion for your share of the profits. I think you will be satisfied.”

“I am here to finish this up,” said Dr. Burdell.

“We are almost finished. These documents come from an advocate at Gramercy Square, who sealed our signatures to this deal. It is only left for you to sign.” Samuel recognized the man speaking
as a New Yorker, a party boss, a round man with a tweed coat. And he had watched carefully when they stopped at the residence of the advocate, making a note of the brass plate on the door, with the monogram
A.O.H.

“I will sign when I am assured that my terms will be met,” said Dr. Burdell.

“Your share of profits shall be a payment of twenty percent.” It was the man in a tweed coat speaking. He pulled aside some of the papers and directed Dr. Burdell to sign.

Dr. Burdell hesitated and then said, “We spoke of two portions,” he said abruptly.

“You will be making your commission from every Negro hide going through this port. At four hundred dollars a head for every freedman sent back South, that is a quite a bounty.”

“What about the guns and munitions?”

“And the same for every rifle shipped out.”

“That would suffice, as long as I also receive my full price for the land.” Dr. Burdell started to move to the papers, shuffling through them.

“We will pay you for the land. It will be the depot for our operations. One day we will develop it to be the main port connecting the waterways to the railroad, to control all goods traveling from the South and across the ocean and the continent. With this sale, I see we have finally seduced you to the Southern point of view.”

“I have no point of view.”

Another man spoke. “This is not just business. Many of us are New Yorkers and we are aligned with the principles of the Southern Wing. If you sign these papers now, you will assure your share of profits, and then you will go downtown to meet the emissary from the syndicate. He will pay you in cash directly for your land. It will be deeded to the Louisiana Corporation.”

“What if there is a change in government, or a blockade or a
revolt?” asked Dr. Burdell gruffly. “What are my assurances that I will receive future profits in that event?”

“Once the Corporation has control, there will be no room for revolt. With guns and slaves as our currency, we will operate our business in the underground until our political aims are secured. We will run the Negroes south along the same routes that they flee North. We have set up our men along their trails, who bag them at both ends. When slavery is legalized again in the North, it will be like minting money.”

Samuel felt his stomach lurch. For months, he took the information from these meetings back to the church, where it was written down. Then the preacher warned the network of city abolitionists and station agents outside the city, who sent word to the Quaker farmers that transported runaways in their vegetable carts across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. With the inside information, they were able to alter their routes, avoiding the targeted roads, using older cow paths and Indian trails through the swamps. Now, with these papers on this table, there was a larger plan in place that left no place to run.

The men paid Samuel little attention, but as they talked, one or another’s eyes would dart around, sometimes alighting on him. Samuel did not know if he could stand by any longer or keep himself from springing at these men like a jackal. He had hoped one day to peer at the bottom of this vile well, but so far no bottom was in sight. His muscles tensed, but he remained motionless against the wall, watching each man’s hands, for it was not only Dr. Burdell who carried a pistol.

“Let’s finish,” said Dr. Burdell. He signed the papers that had the advocate’s seal and fancy markings. Dr. Burdell only glanced at them, signing one after another, hurrying to be done. He took a note with an address penned on it, where he was to pick up his cash.

“As for the change in political winds, we find that Mayor Wood has outlived his purpose,” said a man, watching Dr. Burdell sign. “We need a stronger grip. Removing him as our candidate is just the beginning. With New York in place, we can determine the next president, who will unite us under the South.”

“Gentlemen, lift your glasses,” called out another. “I propose a toast—‘To a Southern reign. New York and Washington, commerce and cotton, united at last.’” There was a clinking of glassware and chuckling. “To our next president, Jefferson Davis.” Everyone sipped except Dr. Burdell, who did not drink. Another man toasted, loudly, “And to our next mayor, a man loyal to our cause, Abraham Oakey Hall.”