gristle.”
Hiram, who was just as physically sturdy as his wife, with white hair and beard and pale brown eyes the color of the clay he worked so diligently, took a drink from his mug of tea. He watched Cecily make a circle in the kitchen before she went back under the table to give out a snort and push Matthew’s knee again. “She was like this a morning or two before the fire, you remember? She can tell when there’s trouble about to happen, is what I believe.”
“I didn’t realize she was such the fortune-teller.” Matthew scooted his chair back from the table to make room for Cecily. Unfortunately, the lady continued to shove her snout at him.
“Well, she likes you.” Hiram gave him a quick, joshing smile. “Maybe she’s trying to tell you something, eh?”
A day late, Matthew thought.
“I recall,” Patience said quietly, as she went back to her work, “when Dr. Godwin came to visit us last. To get his plates. Do you remember, Hiram?”
“Dr. Godwin?” Hiram’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Hm,” he said.
“What about Dr. Godwin?” Matthew asked, sensing something that perhaps he ought to know.
“It’s not important.” Hiram drank from his mug again and began to eat the last piece of corncake on his platter.
“I imagine it is,” Matthew insisted. “If you brought it up at all, it must be.”
Hiram shrugged. “Well, it’s just…Cecily, that’s all.”
“Yes? And Cecily had what to do with Dr. Godwin?”
“She acted like this that day, when he came to get his plates.”
“That day?” Matthew knew exactly what the man meant, but he had to ask it: “You mean the day he was murdered?”
“It’s nothing, really,” Hiram said, though he squirmed in his chair. He figured he ought to be used to Matthew’s ravenous questions and particularly the penetrating expression the young man gave when he knew he’d been thrown a hook. “I don’t know if it was that day, exactly, or some other day. And thank you, Patience, for bringing this subject to light.”
“I was thinking out loud,” she said, rather apologetically. “I meant no harm in the saying.”
“Will you stop that?” Matthew, his nerves on edge, stood up to get away from Cecily. The knees of his trousers were sopping with sow spit. “I’d better go; I’ve got an errand before work.”
“The biscuits are almost done,” Patience said. “Sit down, the magistrate will-”
“I’m sorry, no. Thank you for the breakfast. I presume I’ll see both of you at Lord Cornbury’s address?”
“We’ll be there.” Hiram stood up as well. “Matthew, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a pig, playing with you.”
“I know it doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t say it did. And I reject the idea that there’s any connection between Dr. Godwin and myself. I mean…in terms of being murdered.” Dear Lord, he thought. Do I have fever? “I shall see you this afternoon,” he said, and dodged Cecily making another snorting circle around him as he got out through the door and walked along the fieldstone path that led to the street.
Ridiculous! he told himself as he strode southward. To let a pig’s so-called premonitions cloud his mind, as if he really believed in such a thing. Well, some did, of course. Some said animals could foretell changing weather and such before the human breed, but to foretell murder…that smacked of dabbling in witchcraft, didn’t it? As if he held any stock in that, either!
On this fine morning it seemed the entire population of New York was out and about on the public ways. They meandered, squatted, scurried, and barked all around him, and those were just the cats, goats, chickens, and dogs. The town was becoming a veritable menagerie, as on some of those vessels arriving from England. The three- month journey had killed half the people and left their livestock to enjoy the greener pastures of North America.
The Stokelys’ pottery shop was one of the last structures of the town proper. Just north beyond their door lay the High Road, which led across rolling fields and hills crowned with thick green woodland to the distant town of Boston. The sun shimmered in gold flakes on the waters of the East and Hudson rivers, and as Matthew followed the Broad Way over a hilltop he took in the panoramic view of New York he saw every morning on his way to work.
Haze from cooking hearths and blacksmith fires hung above the yellow-tiled roofs of scores of houses, shops, and sundry buildings spread before him. On the streets moved the industrious citizens, either on foot or by horse and ox-cart. The higglers were out, selling baskets and rope and all kinds of middling merchandise from their street-corner wagons. So too on the move was the ragand-bone man, scooping up the night’s animal manure into his bucket-like cart for sale at the farmers’ market. Matthew knew where the man might find a right treasure of a pile over near Sloat Lane.
Three white-sailed skiffs advanced before the breeze along the East River. A larger sailing ship, piloted out of the harbor by two long rowers, was leaving the Great Dock to a small gathering of well-wishers and a ringing of bells at the wharfside. The area of the piers was of course a center of business and was like a beehive even before dawn, with its assemblage of canvasers, anchorsmiths, codmen, pulleymakers, riggers, tarboys, shipwrights, treenail makers, and all such cast of seaplay characters. Then, looking to the shops and buildings to the right of the docks, one peered into the domain of the warehousers and merchandisers who held sway over goods either leaving the town or coming in, which gave occupations to packers, tollers, tally-clerks, stevedores, tide waiters, scriveners, out-criers, and perchemears. At the center of town stood the stone structures of the Custom House, the mayor’s home, and the newly built City Hall, which had been constructed to bring together in one place the offices of those townsmen who oversaw the day-today politics and essentials of New York, such as the ward officers, the department of records, the legal staff, the high constable, and the chief prosecutor. Basically, as Matthew thought, they were there to keep rival businessmen from killing one another, for this might be the new world but the old savage sensibilities of London had also made the Atlantic crossing.
Matthew walked downhill into the town, his pace brisk and his destination deliberate. By the dint of repetition and the sundial that stood before Madam Kenneday’s bakery, he knew he had half-an-hour until Magistrate Powers arrived at the office. Before Matthew put a quill to paper this morning he was determined to light a fire under a pair of blacksmith boots.
For all of its cattle corrals, stables, skinning shops, warehouses, and rough taverns, New York was a pretty town. The Dutch pioneers had left their mark in the distinctive narrow facades, high stepped-gable roofs, and their penchant for weathervanes, decorative chimneys, and simple but geometrically precise gardens. All the structures south of Wall Street bore the Dutch signature, while the houses and buildings north of that demarcation were of the typically four-square English variety. Matthew had gotten into a conversation about that subject a few nights ago at the Gallop; it would be seen in the future, he contended, that the Dutch were of a pastoral mind and so strived to beautify their surroundings with gardens and parks, but the English were eager to jam their boxes onto every available space in the name of commerce. One just had to cross Wall Street to see the difference between London and Amsterdam. Of course he’d not been to either of those cities, but he had his collection of books and he was always interested in the stories of travelers. Plus he was always armed with an opinion, which made him either the hero or goat of these conversant evenings at the Gallop.
It was true, he mused as he ventured along the Broad Way toward the steeple of Trinity Church, that New York was becoming…well, how would one put it? Cosmopolitan, perhaps? That its presence and future was beginning to be noticed around the world? Or so it seemed. On any day one might see walking the cobblestones brightly robed visitors from India, or Belgian financiers the picture of serious intent in dark suits and black tricorns, or even Dutch merchants in gilt waistcoats and elaborate wigs puffing powder at each stride, indicating that enemies could meet quite profitably at the counting table. Found planning the trade of coin over wine and codfish at the alehouses day or night might be Cuban sugar merchants from Barbados, Jewish gemstone traders from Brazil, or German tobacco buyers from Stockholm. Indigo dye suppliers from Charles Town or ambassadors from numerous businesses in Philadelphia and Boston regularly visited. A sight not uncommon was that of Sint Sink, Iroquois, and Mohican Indians bringing into the town cartloads of deer, beaver, and bear skins and causing a right hullabaloo among people and dogs alike. Of course slave ships arrived at dock from Africa or the West Indies, and those slaves who weren’t purchased for duty here were sent off for auction to other localities like Long Island. Perhaps one New York household in every five held a slave; though the slaves were forbidden by town decree to gather beyond two in
