City Of Promise Part 6

"Is this Kelly likely to be less parsimonious with the rights to his kind of steelmaking?"

"Doesn't have 'em. Not anymore. Good people, the Kelly brothers, but foolish about business. Went bankrupt. Sold their patent to Bessemer. Who says he had anyways invented the same thing over across the ocean." Tickle shrugged. "Don't matter now. You want to know how to blow carbon out of pig iron using something that looks like this . . ." Tickle pulled another treasure out of the drawer of the desk, a drawing of a kind of furnace, an elongated oval on legs, "you got to pay Bessemer."

"Unless," Josh said, "you already know how to do it."

Trickle smiled.

The appeal of embroidered roses outlined with faux pearls had faded. Fas.h.i.+on had changed, and the years on the Ladies' Mile had refined Mollie's taste. Something a bit simpler she thought. Depending for its charm on cut and fabric.

Given that she was no longer a working woman but once more living with Auntie Eileen, Mollie had plenty of time to consider the matter of her wedding dress. She was aided in those deliberations by her aunt and Rosie O'Toole, who came frequently to discuss the matter. It was Rosie who produced a copy of Harper's Bazaar for the first week in June. The magazine had three pages of ill.u.s.trations of the latest bridal fas.h.i.+ons from France. "Something like this would be lovely on you." Rosie pointed to a dress described as being ". . . of fine white Swiss muslin, trimmed with pleated ruffles of the same, and folds and bows of white silk."

Eileen particularly approved of the silk ribbons around the waist-Mollie's was barely seventeen inches when she was laced into a good tight corset-and of the frock's modest V-neck accented with a wide bertha collar. "You're not going to bubble up over a plunging decolletage no matter how much push-up the corset applies," she said. "So this would definitely suit you." Her niece's deficiencies of bosom had been one of Eileen's minor worries these many years.

"Worn with," Mollie leaned over the copy of Harper's Bazaar-published every Sat.u.r.day, ten cents a copy or four dollars a year in advance-and read aloud, "a long blond veil held in place with a wreath of orange blossoms, with long sprays falling over the back."

"Mrs. Jackson can make that veil and headpiece for you in no time," Rosie said. Mrs. Jackson was Macy's head milliner.

"Will Mollie need to visit the store?" Eileen asked. As she'd predicted, Mrs. Getch.e.l.l had fired Mollie the day after a sketch of her niece appeared in Frank Leslie's Ill.u.s.trated Newspaper, and Mollie was identified as having gone to the Tombs to help arrange the release of the notorious Mrs. Brannigan.

"That hardly matters, Auntie Eileen. I'm let go from my job, not banished from shopping at Macy's."

"No one," Rosie said, "is banished from shopping at Macy's. The old man would be apoplectic if Getch.e.l.l suggested such a thing. But I shall make your wedding gown on my own time, Mollie darling. I'll copy this one exactly and start as soon as you get the material. No charge for my labor, of course." Leaning over to pinch the younger woman's cheek. "Made your first party dress when you were four. This one will be my present on the occasion of your marriage."

"Very kind," Eileen said. "But don't go thinking Mollie will name her firstborn after you if it's a girl. The first daughter's going to be Eileen, isn't she?"

What if she was too old to get pregnant? Spinsters who somehow managed to find a husband late in life seldom became mothers.

"Late in life as in their forties," Eileen said on the single occasion when she and her niece discussed the subject. "Women marrying elderly widowers who want a housekeeper without having to pay a wage. Nothing to do with you, Mollie."

"But you always said I'd be a spinster after twenty."

"Seen as such. Not actually dried up and past your prime. For heaven's sake, Mollie. Use the brains G.o.d gave you. You're twenty-two. How many women stop having babies at that age? Most go on adding to their broods until they're over thirty. Otherwise Brannigan's might not have been such a success." This last with a sigh for things that had been and were now lost.

A number of things, however, remained as once they were. Eileen, for example, still refused to say anything more about Teddy Paisley and his grudge. A spurned lover, Mollie thought. Probably someone she'd tossed aside to marry Brian Brannigan. Though Mr. Paisley had certainly taken it hard if he was seeking vengeance after all these years. As for Eileen's keeping her own counsel in the matter, that was less of a surprise than her continued refusal to have anything but open fires and to burn only the finest applewood. Mollie suggested it might be sensible to consider installing a coal furnace, which would prove cheaper in the long run. "It could be put in over the summer when no heat's needed, Auntie Eileen. And centrally heating the whole house involves so much less effort and mess it's bound to pay for itself in no time. You won't need a maid living in. Just one to come and clean a few days a week perhaps. Hatty can see to things between times."

"I can't abide heat from radiators. They dry out the air and that's bad for the complexion. I shall economize, of course. Just not in that way."

Her aunt had negotiated a lower monthly payment to Tammany Hall; Mollie noted it when she did the books. And certainly the payments to the butcher and the grocer and such like were less with six fewer mouths to feed. But other than the fact that the clients were gone along with the wh.o.r.es, little changed in Eileen Brannigan's life. Tiffany's even delivered the sapphire bracelet she'd ordered on the fateful visit to the grand opening of their Union Square store. "I've already paid for it," Eileen said, waving away her niece's offer to take the piece back to the jeweler. "And it's a lovely bracelet, don't you agree?"

"It's beautiful, Auntie Eileen. I just thought . . ."

"I know what you thought, dear child. But you needn't think it. Nor worry about the expense of your wedding. And don't look like that. I'm not considering a return to dipping. All those years, Mollie. All those remarkable men coming here over and over . . . I had no lack of investment advice, and I was not shy about taking it. Now, have you decided about where this marriage is to take place?"

It was a worrying question. Both the O'Hallorans and the Brannigans were Catholics, but neither family had ever taken the matter as seriously as some among the Irish. Mollie had inherited no religious fervor. Nonetheless, Josh suggested she might like to be married in St. Ann's Catholic Church over on Eighth Street. "All the same to me," he said, "as long as you're my wife at the end of it."

The pastor was not so sanguine. Mollie went to see him and produced her certificate of baptism, but it seemed there were more doc.u.ments required and she had none of them. Proof of First Holy Communion for one, and Confirmation for another. And a note from some religious authority attesting to her regular attendance at Holy Ma.s.s. "And since you insist on marrying a non-Catholic," the priest said, "we can't of course allow the ceremony to take place in the church itself. Unless your husband-to-be would like to convert. Have you suggested that, Miss Brannigan?"

Mollie didn't mind the thought of catching up on the rituals she'd missed, but she refused to tell Josh he wasn't considered good enough as he was. So a Catholic church was apparently not an option.

Suns.h.i.+ne Hill, the remote home of Josh's parents, was. Carolina Turner made the suggestion when Josh brought Mollie to meet his parents. "Nick and I were married in the rose garden on that bluff over there," she said, pointing to a spot on a cliff overlooking the East River. "If you and Josh would like to have your wedding in the same spot it would be our pleasure."

Two days later Carolina took to her bed with what Dr. Turner p.r.o.nounced a weakness of the heart, something he explained that likely had been coming on for many years and had nothing to do with Josh's upcoming marriage. The notion of a wedding at Suns.h.i.+ne Hill, however, had to be dropped.

"There's always City Hall," Josh said cheerfully. "Or any Protestant church as takes your fancy."

Mollie could not imagine arriving in City Hall wearing her lovely blush-pink, ruffled-and-bowed wedding dress, and her veil trimmed with orange blossoms. But she didn't think it likely any Protestant church would welcome Eileen Brannigan's now infamous niece as the bride, or Auntie Eileen herself as an honored guest.

"You're not allowing for the influence of my brother Zac," Josh said. "Would Grace Church over on Broadway do?"

Which is how it happened that on the third day of August in the year of Our Lord 1871, Mollie Brannigan became Mrs. Joshua Turner in perhaps the most fas.h.i.+onable Episcopalian church in New York.

They went directly from the ceremony and reception to what was to be their first home together, Zachary Devrey's s.p.a.cious, if no longer fas.h.i.+onable, brownstone on Grand Street. Zac had kept the house because it was easy walking distance to what everyone called the Devrey Building on Broadway and Ca.n.a.l, a marble palace celebrating the accomplishments of better than two centuries of the city's mightiest merchant fleet. These days, after the fearsome pounding American commercial s.h.i.+pping took in the war, Zac spent much time in England, seeking new alliances, and ways to win back lost business. He was off to Liverpool immediately after the wedding for what promised to be an extended stay. "Have the house, Josh, for as long as you need. I travel so much the place gets little use. When I'm home I've everything I require at the Devrey Building. I won't be in the least inconvenienced."

"Your brother never married?" Mollie asked as Josh closed the front door behind them.

"Never. There was talk of his having met a woman he cared for in England years ago, but she was promised to someone with a t.i.tle and a fortune, and he was apparently the underbidder."

He was behind her, helping her out of the dove gray capelet that was part of the elegant traveling costume she'd changed into after the wedding. She felt a touch on her neck as he spoke and thought at first it was his hand, then became aware of the warmth of his breath and judged the gentle caress to have been delivered with his mouth. An opinion confirmed when he dropped his hands to her waist and turned her toward him and kissed her. He'd done so a number of times in the two months since they became betrothed. But not like this. This kiss was not in any way restrained. It asked something of her, rather than merely making a promise, like those before. Mollie sensed the question, but had no idea of the reply. She stiffened.

Josh lifted his head. "Kiss me back," he said. "You did for a moment once a few weeks ago. In your aunt's sitting room," he added.

She did not need reminding. She had on that occasion been nearly overcome with her feelings for him and gone limp in his arms. Only the sound of Auntie Eileen returning with the picture she'd gone to fetch-a sketch of Mollie at age five-had brought her back to her proper senses. But such senses were no longer appropriate; she was Mrs. Joshua Turner and her husband had rights and she duties. But it was not duty making bubbles seem to rise from her toes, as if she'd downed an entire bottle of champagne and it was fizzing inside her. Mollie turned her head to look over her shoulder. "The servants . . ."

"There are none. Zac has a woman who comes to clean a few days each week, but she's not here now. You will have to see about a cook, but not tonight, my sweet Mollie. Tonight we're entirely alone. Please kiss me the way you did."

She did not need to summon limpness in any conscious way. The bubbles bursting inside took care of it. And when she felt the demands his lips were making, hers opened almost of their own accord. "So soft," Josh said when he at last lifted his head. He traced her mouth with his finger, taking its measure as if it was a gateway to all the rest of her. Not just her body, Mollie realized. Her new husband was seeking that interior she had revealed to no one. Her secret self. It was a demand she had not expected, at least not consciously, and she trembled.

"Look," he said, aware that for all the extraordinary truths of her background, and her being, at least in years, not a girl but a woman, he was making her afraid, which was certainly not his intention, "as I said, there's no cook, but I believe some provisions have been laid in. Are you hungry? We can probably find some supper."

"I'm not in the least hungry," Mollie said. "But if you are . . ."

Josh shook his head.

"Then," she said, "perhaps we should go upstairs. At least," not able to prevent a fierce blush, "I presume the-" She could not make herself say bedroom, though that was what she meant, and having just promised before G.o.d to love, honor, and obey Joshua Turner, he was her master and she belonged in his bedroom whenever he wished her to be there. But he hadn't made the suggestion, she had. She blushed a second time, more fiercely than before.

"Yes," Josh said. "We should go upstairs."

She had become so accustomed to his injury she barely thought about it. Now she was acutely aware of the tapping of his wooden leg, and the asymmetric sound he made climbing behind her up the stairs to their bridal bed. Did he sleep with the peg? And how was it involved in this activity, which after all was neither pa.s.sive nor, she imagined, particularly restful?

Mollie paused at the top of the stairs, not knowing which way to go. "Right," Josh said, pa.s.sing in front of her to lead the way. "In here." He opened the door to a large bedchamber overlooking the street. The bed, a four-poster with tied-back, dark, and heavy velvet curtains, dominated the room. Her cases, she saw, had already been brought upstairs, delivered no doubt during the interval of what they called the wedding breakfast, though it had been an elaborate luncheon served at three in the afternoon in the elegant Metropolitan Hotel on Broadway and Prince Street. "I'll leave you for a moment, shall I?" Josh said.

Mollie nodded and he started to go, then turned back to her. "Look . . . It's been a mad sort of day for you. All the excitement . . . I can sleep down the hall if you like. We've plenty of time, Mollie."

"No, Josh." All those years and all those men who came to Brannigan's because their wives were unavailable. She meant to begin as she would go on, not establish a pattern of behavior that would drive him to seek elsewhere for what she did not give. "Allow me fifteen minutes, then come to sleep in here."

"Right," he said and let himself out, closing the door softly behind him.

One of her cases was on the folding luggage stand and Mollie remembered it as the one in which she'd packed the elaborate satin nightdress she had embroidered with the roses she'd abandoned for her wedding dress. Sure enough, it was folded carefully on the top. Mollie lost no time in stripping off her gray traveling frock, and her corset, and finally her chemise and pantaloons. Then, standing in the altogether as the Brannigan's women called it, she changed her mind. She left the exquisite nightdress where it was and climbed into the bed as naked as a newborn babe.

At the last minute, when she could hear the tap of his peg signaling Josh's return, she remembered that her hair was still up and she quickly pulled out the pins and put them on the night stand and shook her head so her curls tumbled free, and scooted back under the sheets just as he opened the door.

"All right?" he inquired.

"Entirely all right."

Some of the remaining daylight of the August evening seeped through the bedroom curtains. Enough for her to see his face as, having obtained her permission, he came further into the room. He looked grave, and somehow older. Purposeful she thought. Prepared to do his duty. Suddenly she wanted to giggle, though of course she did no such thing.

She had been imagining him in a nights.h.i.+rt. Maybe even an old fas.h.i.+oned nightcap, though that seemed unlikely. The picture had not attracted her and she was glad instead to see that he still wore his s.h.i.+rt and trousers, though he'd removed his stock and the morning coat that marked him a fas.h.i.+onable groom. His shoe and stocking as well. The foot below his good left leg was bare. The blunt tip of his peg showed next to it. He pulled the s.h.i.+rt over his head and dropped it on a small chair beside the door, then crossed to the bed and sat on it with his back to her. "I know," he said, "that it's supposed to be the bride who is shy and embarra.s.sed on her wedding night, but you must admit I have more reason than most men to share the feeling."

She nodded, then remembered he wasn't looking at her and said, "I understand that. But you shouldn't be so. Not with me. I could not admire you more if you still had both your legs."

He didn't turn to face her and his voice was very low when he said, "You really mean that, don't you?"

"I really do. I love the way you've allowed yourself no bitterness over your loss, the way you never complain, and always cope. And I know you count no man your better because he has both his legs when you have one."

He didn't answer, only sat still for a few moments, and Mollie feared she may have said too much. A wise woman always allows the man to control the conversation, Mollie. Then, when he moved, she was sure she sensed greater sureness in his movements, and a greater ease with her.

Josh loosed the b.u.t.tons of his trousers, and stood up long enough to drop them and quickly afterward his cotton undersuit, and suddenly she was looking at his superbly muscled naked back. And the taut, very white flesh of his equally uncovered b.u.t.tocks. There was a leather strap around his waist and she realized it was part of the harness for his wooden leg, but she wasn't staring at that. She'd been raised in a wh.o.r.ehouse, to use Auntie Eileen's blunt language, and she'd never before seen, even from the back, a naked man.

Another of those blushes she didn't seem able to control. Never mind that he couldn't see her. He knew what she was seeing. She heard his peg drop to the floor with a soft thud. Well, that was one question answered.

Then he was beside her under the sheet and lightweight summer coverlet. His hand touched her waist first, then slid down her hip a few inches, before traveling upward over her midriff. "Well, well," he murmured. "I don't have to struggle to find you." He leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I like that very much, my darling Mollie. Very, very much."

Suddenly she was astonished at her own forwardness, and embarra.s.sed by it, though she had not been until this moment. "You must think me shameless not to have worn a nightdress. I made one, but-"

"But you guessed what would please me more," he finished for her. "And I think you are my Mollie the magnificent." Then his mouth was on hers again and there were no more words.

So what had she learned, being raised as she'd been? The mechanics were, of course, entirely familiar to her. She knew what he had and what she had and what fit where. Even all about how long the thrusts were supposed to last and what it was supposed to mean if they went on for a shorter or longer than average time. Talk of such things had been all around her when she sat at Hatty's kitchen table and heard the morning-after chatter of the women with whom she lived. But no one had ever mentioned what she was feeling now. A great wave of delight welled up and filled her. It was not a physical satisfaction of the sort that came from some pleasurable sensation such as sinking into a hot bath, or loosening a corset after a long day and scratching where it itched. It was instead more pure and more intense and considerably more profound; a sense of rightness and belonging, and even . . . however strange, a joyful power. She had something to give him that Joshua Turner wanted very much, and in the giving of it she was made at last completely alive.

For his part, Josh could feel the blood rus.h.i.+ng in his veins and the thudding of his heart, and knew he wanted to roll on top of her and drive himself toward that explosive moment of gratification his body demanded. But he held back.

His first time had been as a boy of fourteen, in the back kitchen at Suns.h.i.+ne Hill. The woman who came once a week to do the laundry had asked him to come and help her move a large kettle of hot water to one of the copper tubs in the yard, but he never got as far as the stove before she'd pushed him up against the wall and had her hand down the front of his trousers and one of her enormous b.r.e.a.s.t.s squashed against his face. Later he'd seen her laughing with the cook and the old man who looked after the stables. He figured he'd been a dare of some sort. Never mind. He was glad to have that mystery solved.

There had been any number of wh.o.r.es since, but to the best of his knowledge, he'd never been with a virgin. Least of all one he cared for as deeply as he cared for this creature who had shown herself so different from the first moment she'd taken his arm and guided him through the twists and turns of Macy's department of ladies' lingerie.

When he was paying for the privilege he didn't give a d.a.m.n what a woman might think of his mutilation. With Mollie the thought that she might be repulsed had been on his mind from the moment she agreed to marry him. Earlier even. It was why he hadn't broached the subject until Eileen Brannigan forced the issue. But he sensed no withdrawal in Mollie, no disgusted retreat because he was not whole. She'd come naked to his bed in a gesture of remarkable generosity, and she trembled in his arms in a manner that spoke more of antic.i.p.ation than fear. He loved her for both.

Josh rolled himself above her, supporting himself on arms grown enormously strong with the need always to balance his incomplete lower half, and held himself at the ready long enough to look into her face. She did not have her eyes closed in the feigned ecstasy of commercial intimacy. Instead she was looking at him and he read in her glance both surrender and demand. "Now?" he asked.

"Now, Joshua."

He met a moment of intense resistance, and saw her wince, but while he might have found enough self-discipline to hold back a bit because of it, she made it clear there was no need. Mollie rose to meet him and moved in rhythm with each thrust and he sensed her opening herself with an astonis.h.i.+ng abandon that had he not just encountered the proof of her innocence might have caused him to wonder. Not just instinct, he realized anew. The rightness of it all. Whatever they might be apart, together they were perfect and it seemed they both knew it.

6.

EBENEZER TICKLE MADE his way through Was.h.i.+ngton Square, and turned into the narrow pa.s.sage, the mews, that ran between the fine houses on the north of the park and the stables behind them. There were a few steps at the far end. They were hewn from natural stone and moss-covered and cool and damp, even now in the August heat, when the setting sun was a fiery ball in an orange sky. The steps ended below ground level at a stone outcropping and appeared to go nowhere.

Tickle knew better. He drew level with the descent, slowed his pace, and glanced over his shoulder. The pa.s.sage was empty. He clambered down the stairs to a strip of ground ankle deep in windblown trash, including a few yellowed leaves which hinted at the autumn to come, and waded through the debris to a narrow opening between it and the foundation of the adjacent building. Tickle slipped through the gap and disappeared. Anyone standing at the top of the stairs would have thought he'd been magicked into the ether.

By the time he entered the cellar known as Mama Jack's Cave, he was in the midst of a noisy cacophony of talk and music-eight-foot-tall Black Tonio wailing on his trumpet, and bearded Sally banging on the piano-and, according to a legless woman who called herself Zarina and claimed to be a gypsy gifted with second sight, the moaning and bleating and wailing of the ghosts of those who had frequented this spot in colonial days when so-called bawdy houses hid themselves in the woods. Places for folks who, like the people who came to Mama Jack's, would not be comfortable in an ordinary taproom or tavern. Freaks as some called them. Ghost freaks as well as the real ones of the present day. Their spirits occupied the shadows beyond sight.

A pair of sisters joined at the hip, until in an infamous act of desperation they cut themselves apart with a butcher's knife and bled to death.

A man with a spiny growth like a unicorn's horn protruding from his forehead.

A woman with a black growth the size of a man's fist clinging to her jaw.

The legless and armless and blind, and people whose faces were eaten away by the pox, as well as mere fugitives from so-called justice.

Dwarves.

These creatures of the past hovered just out of sight some said, but this night there were at least half a dozen little people in various parts of the large cave-really more of a cellar dug out centuries before for some long-forgotten purpose-who were alive and breathing. Tickle headed for two who sat at a low table on stools made to suit their height, each with a tankard of ale. "I've news of a sort," he said by way of greeting. "Some good and some as is not."

George Higgins, the dwarf to Tickle's right, said, "I'll have the bad first."

"Aye, save the good for an ending." The second speaker was Israel McCoy. He was built the same as they, but McCoy didn't come from the western lakes of Kentucky like Ebenezer and George. Israel had been born in Daniel Boone country, the Appalachian hills on the border between Kentucky and West Virginia, and he spoke with the slight burr of the descendants of the lowland Scots who had populated the area. There were fewer little people among the mountainmen, but dwarves were not unknown in Appalachia, where every kind of human condition showed up except good fortune and wealth.

"Seems like Trenton Clifford knows we're here," Tickle said.

McCoy showed no reaction. Higgins's face went black with fury. "How you come to know that?"

"I know," Tickle said, "because he sent someone to tell me."

"I take it," McCoy said, "this Clifford's the bad news. So what's the good?"

"Man he sent seems all right," Tickle said. "And could be he's got an interesting business proposition."

George Higgins shook his head. "Ain't no way I'm going to do business with-"

"Not with him." Tickle cut him off before he could speak Clifford's name. "The man I talked to." He leaned in close and lowered his voice. "He wants to make steel and-"

"Evening, boys." Zarina it was, she who had been born without legs. She propelled herself on a board on wheels, so her arms were the size of tree trunks and it was said she could crush bricks with her knuckles. She rolled up to their table and said, "I've been waiting for you."

"Why's that?"

"Had a revelation as concerns you."

"I don't believe in your revelations." Tickle hopped off his stool and headed for the bar. Zarina and her predictions were no match for Maude Pattycake.

Maude swore that was her true name. Not made up the way some who frequented Mama Jack's changed their names because they couldn't change whatever it was they wished was different about themselves. But whatever the name she'd been born with, Maude Pattycake was unique.