The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The island of Manhattan, logged clear of trees by British desperate for firewood when confined during the American Revolution a generation before, was in winter a muddy, brushy, dreary place of second-growth wood lots, overgrazed dairy farms, fallow vegetable gardens, and leaden ponds. At its southern end, however, was my nation’s second-biggest city after Philadelphia, a commercial Gomorrah with fewer manners and more ambition than its rival. The number of merchants had quadrupled in just the past ten years, and its sixty thousand people were packed into a warren of tight streets, squeezed churches, and practical counting houses, their architects expressing a better eye for cost than art. Cobbled streets were combed by wagon wheels into lines of slush and manure, while poorer mud lanes were lined by two-story townhouses crammed with cobblers, wheelwrights, glassblowers, butchers, fishmongers, chandlers, coppersmiths, carpenters, clothiers, saddlers, bakers, green grocers, furriers, bookmakers, brewers, gunsmiths, jewellers, weavers, watchmakers, teahouses, and taverns. Like all cities, New York stank: of manure, wood smoke, human sewage, sawdust, beer, and the reek of tanneries and slaughterhouses that clustered around a polluted pond called the Collect.

It was a city of newcomers and strivers – not just the Dutch and English but New Englanders riding its commercial wave, French émigrés escaping the revolution at home, thick and industrious Germans and Swedes, entrepreneurial Jews, Spanish grandees, Negroes both slave and free, and occasionally an Indian chief, Chinaman, or Hawaiian Kanaka who gaped and were gaped at in the crowded markets. Some five thousand refugees from the slave revolts in Haiti had recently debarked, including ‘mestizo ladies with complexions of the palest marble, jet black hair, and the eyes of the gazelle,’ in the words of one journal. Indeed, there were women aristocratic, wives buxom, maids slim, servants dusky, whores powdered, actresses late-rising, and Dutch girls scrubbing stoops, their energetic bottoms oscillating with a charm that made me happy to be back home.

Magnus was an unfashionable oddity himself, with burgeoning whiskers, a mane of rusty hair, a black eye patch, and hands like hams. I enjoyed notoriety, too, from reports that I was connected to the newly risen Bonaparte. My mission was the new capital of Washington, but a flurry of invitations persuaded me to pause and take rest.

Since it was winter, the mercantile frenzy of New York was largely confined indoors, businessmen laying ambitious plans next to warming fires while the wind whistled down the Hudson, freezing fast New York’s garbage until it could be used to extend landfills in the spring. Ice floes scudded by the village of Brooklyn, and bare yardarms made crosses of snow.

The city’s primary talk was politics. After a bitter election campaign between Adams’s Federalists and the upstart Republicans, the two candidates of the latter, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, had tied in the number of electoral votes, or so the rumour went. The ballots that were cast December 3^rd would not be officially counted until February 11^th of the New Year, but the results were about as secret as Admiral Nelson’s dalliance with Lady Hamilton, half a world away. The presidency would be decided in the House of Representatives, as the framers of the Constitution had anticipated, and everyone had an opinion of how the vote might go. While Jefferson was widely acknowledged as the intellectual leader of his party, speculation was that the defeated Federalists in Congress might deny the office to the sage of Monticello and give it instead to the more ferociously ambitious and recklessly high-living Burr, a New Yorker who’d gone back on his promise to be content with second place. The jockeying was, all agreed, unseemly, ruthless, naked, and irresistible.

‘The titan Washington is gone, and lesser men are scrambling for power!’ a barkeep at Fraunces Tavern declared. ‘The age of heroes is over, the present is corrupt, and the future promises disaster!’

‘Things are normal then,’ I toasted. ‘To democracy!’

Every candidate had been tarred. Jefferson was accused of shirking military duty during the Revolution and of being a Jacobin and atheist. Incumbent John Adams was portrayed as incompetent, power-mad, and a secret ally of the perfidious British. Burr was a tin-pot Napoleon. In other words, it was little different than the sniping and backstabbing one heard in the salons of Paris, and I discounted all of it, given what lies have been told about even earnest and likable types like me. There were tales of a Federalist plot to assassinate Jefferson, arm the slaves, or seize the arsenals. Some feared civil war! Yet none of the Americans thought the undignified tumult warranted a king. The ones I drank with were as proud of democracy’s chaos as gulls playing the winds of a tempest.

‘Our congressmen will have our say, by God!’ the barflies declared. ‘They are rogues every one, but they are our rogues.’

‘Speaking as an expert on roguery, America has an above-average set,’ I seconded.

I found myself a minor Republican celebrity. Jefferson liked the French, and my peacemaking in Paris had made me the ‘hero of Mortefontaine.’ The naval war with France had sent insurance rates on a vessel as high as forty percent of the value of ship and cargo, and word of permanent peace had been received with celebration. Somehow the tale of my fireworks escape had preceded me across the Atlantic, and I was agreeably toasted as having held aloft the ‘torch of liberty.’ Someone even suggested it would make a model for a good statue, though of course nothing ever came of that idea.

I was determined to enjoy my moment of renown, since reputations turn soon enough. Being a celebrity, however, buys you little more than supper, often with dull company who expect the famed to provide the entertainment. I found my supply of silver dollars dwindling and had to take to the gaming tables to staunch the leak.

My modest fame did provide the chance for liaisons with American merchant daughters curious to know how diplomacy was waged in storied France, lessons I was happy to take to their bed. I taught them to cry ‘Mon dieu!’ at full gallop, the hypnotic bounce of their breasts providing ample testimony to the healthy diet of meat and cream in the New World. French girls, while prettier, tend towards the bony.

Magnus was disinclined to join me. ‘I told you, I had a love and lost her. I don’t want to dishonor her memory or suffer the pain of lost love again.’ The man was a monk, and just as tiresome.

‘This isn’t love, it’s exercise.’

‘Signe’s memory is enough for me.’

‘You’ll dry up!’

‘You exercise, with all the risks that go with it, and I’ll explore the map shops.’ Magnus, impatient to be going despite the inclement season, prowled New York in his cloak and broad slouch hat, looking for Freemason symbolism, Viking relics, and Indian legends. The amount of nonsense he received was directly proportional to the amount he was willing to spend for ale on those he interviewed.

I left him to it, scouting instead the holy ground the whores occupied adjacent to Saint Paul’s Chapel. But when I’d come in at three hours after midnight I’d catch Magnus reading the tomes he’d collected from the fourteen bookstores on Maiden Lane and Pearl Street, lips moving to the non-native English like a bull practicing Thucydides. He collected piles of speculative literature on the biblical origins of Indians, Masonic conspiracies, and odd pamphlets like William Cobbet’s contention that the new century started in 1800, not 1801, a theory that had set off impressive brawls near the Battery.

‘I admire your fidelity, I really do,’ I told him. ‘I resolve to copy you, eventually. But there’s more to life than a mission, Magnus.’

‘And more to life than the moment.’ He put down a book on the lost tribes of Israel. ‘Ethan, I know you have a reputation as a Franklin man and a savant, but I must say you haven’t shown why. You’ve been sceptical, tardy, procrastinating, and shallow ever since I met you, and I don’t quite understand why you’re famous at all. You don’t take our quest entirely seriously.’

I pointed skyward. ‘There’s just not much thunder and lightning in winter for us electricians. And my international diplomacy with the new president has to wait until they pick one. Why not enjoy a respite?’

‘Because we could be preparing for the test. Life is for accomplishment. If your nation was still in thrall to another, you’d understand that.’

‘I’m not so sure. The accomplishers I’ve met seem as likely to leave behind a heap of bodies, crackpot ideas, and financial ruin. Look at the French Revolution. Every time they accomplish something they’re dissatisfied with it and want to accomplish the opposite. My philosophy is to wait until the world makes up its mind.’

‘Then let’s wait in Washington, not this commercial Babylon of gossip and greed. The longer we linger in New York, the more chance our enemies have to catch up to us.’

‘I took care of our enemies in Mortefontaine, and Denmark is an ocean away! Relax, Magnus, we’re in America. And the farther west we go, the safer we’ll be.’

Still, his criticism of my procrastination rankled, and once more I vowed to reform myself. ‘Waste not life,’ Franklin had counselled. ‘In the grave will be sleeping enough.’ So I seduced a widow with hips and hair to hang onto like a frisky mare, shattered rum bottles in target practice with my longrifle, tried to teach French to dullard merchants’ sons at the Redhook Inn in return for their buying the rounds of drink, and worked with a Yankee mechanic on a turntable mechanism for a New World version of roulette. ‘Own the wheel, don’t play it,’ I advised him.

I also tried the New York lottery, making a chain necklace of my losing tickets.

This recess from reality was interrupted one day by a visit from an old employer, the maniacally ambitious Johann Jakob Astor. This German immigrant, who began as a musical instrument salesman but turned to furs, had earned far more in commerce than I’d ever even tossed away in treasure hunting. (A telling lesson, should I ever become industrious.) Astor had the drive of a dozen men, a wife who combined her blood ties to old Dutch families with a keen eye for fur, a fine new brick house on Dock Street, and the inability to enjoy anything but his ledger totals, given that he coupled his love of money with the parsimony of a preacher. When he found me at a tavern, I was the one who had to pay for the wine.

‘Gage, I didn’t think a gamesman like you would live to see thirty, yet here you are as diplomat and envoy,’ he greeted. ‘It makes one wonder if biblical miracles could indeed be true.’

‘I hear you’re doing well too, John,’ I said, feeling as usual somewhat defensive about my lack of progress. His coat was finest wool, his waistcoat was brocaded green silk, and the knob on his cane looked to be gold.

‘Rumour has it that you’re planning to venture west again,’ Astor said. He never wasted much time in pleasantries or reminiscence.

‘After consultation with the new president, when he’s chosen. I’m bearing messages of goodwill from Bonaparte and hoping to play a role in improved ties between the United States and France.’

‘Tell me the truth, Gage – is your giant Norwegian lured by the fur business? Yes, I’ve heard of him, assembling maps and asking questions about distances and compass bearings. He’s a moody sort, and people wonder what the one-eye is up to.’

‘He’s a patriot who hopes to free Norway from the Danes. I took pity on him in Paris and offered to give him introductions in Washington. Mad as a mule milker, but with a good strong back. As for me, I’ve done some scouting for Bonaparte in the past, and the first consul asked me to take a peek at Louisiana. Great things are stirring that I can’t talk about.’

‘Are they now?’ His eyes were bright as a watch fob. ‘Bonaparte and Louisiana? Now that would be a turn, to have the French back in the North American game.’

‘Napoleon’s curious, that’s all.’

‘Of course he is.’ Astor inspected me over the rim of his cup. ‘I always liked your spirit, Ethan, if not your work ethic. So if you want a job after this sojourn of yours, keep count of the fur animals you see and come back to extend our enterprise. The future is in the west, Ethan – to the Columbia and beyond, all the way to China. This is the nineteenth century! Trade is global now!’

‘Isn’t the globe far away? The other side of it, I mean.’

‘A ship can take fur to China, return with tea and spices, and double your money in a year. But the fur, Ethan, the fur! That’s the key.’

Well, that was the one thing we were likely to actually find where we were going: not mythical hammers, but small, rank, fuzzy, and rather valuable beasts. I’d count what I could, but my recollection was that the critters were rather furtive, for good reason.

I asked about the current state of the fur trade, dominated by Montreal’s North West Company.

‘Four nations are vying for empire: Britain, France, Spain, and the United States. The English have the very best furs in Canada, blast them, and the Illinois country is being trapped out. The real fortunes are going to be made west of the Mississippi. The United States must confine the British to Canada or they’ll take it all! Between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, they dominate. But Louisiana! That’s the real question. Who will control America to the Pacific? Which is why I looked you up, Ethan, even though I’m a busy man, very busy indeed. You’re in danger, you know.’

‘If you mean Bloodhammer’s enemies …’

‘I don’t know who they are or what they want, but rumours are rife that bad sorts have their eye on you. Millions of square miles are at stake, and a man who has worked for the British, the French, and the Americans in turn is in a position to make a difference – and have foes. You’re quite the momentary celebrity, Ethan Gage, but lie low, lie low. New York can be a dangerous, brutal city.’

‘Anyone who meets me knows I mean no harm.’

‘Anyone you meet could do you harm. That’s a fact. I understand you have a rifle?’

‘Made by a craftsman in Jerusalem.’

‘Keep it as close as a frontiersman, Ethan. Keep it as ready as a Minute Man.’