New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [150]
“I can’t hear a thing, Hudson, can you?”
“No, sir.”
And they were just pushing some more embers off the roof when Hudson noticed something. He pointed to the smoke. Albion stared, then let out a shout of triumph.
“Quick, Hudson. Tell ’em to get back. We can still save the house.”
The wind had changed.
The Master house escaped the Great Fire of New York that night. The huge charred line of destruction ran along the entire southern side of Beaver Street, but on the northern side the last two houses, next to Broad Street, were spared. The rest of the city was not so lucky. For as the wind shifted toward the eastern quarter, it carried the fire across to Broadway. A little later, shifting back again, it carried the conflagration straight up the great thoroughfare. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Trinity Church, with its noble spire, went up in flames and was a blackened hulk by morning. In the poor quarter to the north and east of it, the modest timber houses went up like kindling wood. On and on the fire swept, all that night and the following morning, from Broadway to the Hudson, until at last, some time after Charlie White’s dwelling had gone up in a single flash, it came to an end, only because, reaching empty lots, it ran out of houses to burn.
What had started the fire? Was it an accident, or deliberate arson? If arson, it must have been the Patriots. Inquiries were made. Nothing was established. One Patriot officer was caught in the city. He admitted he came there to spy, but denied that he’d started the fire. General Howe had to hang him, as a spy out of uniform—the rules of war demanded it. But the cause of the fire remained a mystery.
Hudson waited a week before he spoke to his son Solomon.
“When I was out by the fire,” he said quietly, “I saw something funny. I saw two people running away from a warehouse near the tavern. One of them looked like Charlie White.”
“That so?”
“Man with him was black. Younger. In fact, I could’a swore it was you.”
“I was at the house when you got back.”
“And before?”
“Didn’ you tell me you was once accused of starting a fire in the dark?”
“You stay out of trouble,” said Hudson, with a furious look.
Love
July 1777
ABIGAIL WAS SITTING on a folding stool, with a parasol over her head. Her father stood behind her. Weston was cross-legged on the grass. There was quite a crowd around the edge of Bowling Green: ladies, gentlemen, officers and men.
“Oh, well hit!” cried her father, as the ball soared over the heads of the crowd, and everybody applauded. “Grey’s having quite an inning,” he remarked with a smile to his daughter. Indeed, Albion had nearly fifty runs.
They were playing cricket.
There were two teams in New York now, one in Greenwich Village, just above the city, the other out at Brooklyn. But you could see children playing with bat and ball on any street in the fashionable quarter. Albion had already taught Weston how to bat and bowl. “Though I’ve nothing to teach him about fielding,” he’d laugh. “I’d hate to be batting if Weston were on the other team.”
Grey Albion had been in high favor with John Master since the night of the fire. Indeed, as the months went by he’d become like a second son to John and a favorite uncle to Weston. Though he was in his late twenties, almost as old as James, there was something boyish about him, with his handsome face and unruly hair. He would romp with Weston, make the other young officers join in a game of blind man’s buff, like so many children, or once in a while organize some outrageous practical joke upon Abigail herself that kept the household laughing for days.
She knew that other girls thought him attractive. “It’s so unfair,” they cried, “that you should have him living in your house.” But if his blue eyes melted the other girls, she had long ago decided that she was not so impressed herself. Besides, he treated her entirely as a little sister. Indeed, at times she found him almost infuriating