JUST AFTER ONE AM, a skiff detached itself from the thicket of wharves and moorings that jutted into the Hudson around the terminus of the Christopher Street ferry. Although the West Side of Manhattan wouldn’t truly bristle with piers and transatlantic liners for another forty years, there was nevertheless some river traffic even at this late hour; but the skiff blended into it easily, calling no attention to itself.
Constance Greene sat aft, rowing upriver on the incoming tide, to the faint creak of oarlocks and the splashes of oars. She wore a man’s outfit, that of a supercargo, cap set low over her short-cropped hair. A large bundle in the bow, covered with an oilcloth, served as more than just counterweight: beneath the canvas lay clothing, food, tools, and weapons.
The skiff’s shallow draft allowed it to skim across the water’s surface, while the planking, hand-notched and pegged, rendered its frame sturdy enough to weather a heavy sea without foundering.
Constance rowed easily, keeping her gaze on the glow that lit up the southern tip of Manhattan. As the glow faded, she piloted the skiff in a little closer to land.
It was a cold, cloudless night, and under the stars the natural features of Manhattan stood out to her practiced eye. Continuing with even strokes, she passed “Mount Tom,” the outcropping where Edgar Allan Poe had once enjoyed taking in the view. Farther north, the island’s bedrock began forcing its way upward into bluffs, leaving only the West Side Line of the New York Central at sea level—along with the ruins of shanties abandoned a decade earlier, during the land condemnation that would prepare the ground for Riverside Park.
The tiers of graded land forming the park were soon visible between patches of bare trees, and here Constance briefly shipped oars and drifted with the tide, looking carefully at the landscape to make sure of her bearings. The park’s outlines, still under construction, ended around 125th Street. Her own destination was a mere dozen blocks farther on.
She looked over her shoulder, using the dim cliffs of Washington Heights for triangulation. Then she took up oars again and brought the skiff still nearer to shore. There she continued with easy strokes, examining the twisted trees along the shoreline with care.
Once, she thought she’d found what she was looking for—but when she angled the skiff in toward land, it grounded on a muddy bank thick with undergrowth, and she quickly used an oar to push back into the river again.
A second attempt, minutes later, was more successful. She knew it before she reached it: the brace of bare plane trees, standing athwart a tangle of scrub, dead weeds, and hanging ivy. More cautiously this time, she approached the spot, expertly bringing the skiff about and letting its bow pierce the prickly curtain of winter undergrowth.
It was thicker than she remembered, however, and for a moment she was surrounded by a mass of vegetation and branches. But then the skiff broke through the mantle of undergrowth, which swung back into place with a dry rustle, sealing the gap and giving no indication it had been disturbed.
Constance shipped oars once again and let the skiff glide freely. Her nocturnal vision was acute, but under this vegetative canopy it was so dark her senses of smell and hearing became equally important. No sound but a faint lapping; no smell but that of briny, icy water and dead foliage.
Reaching forward, she retrieved a dark lantern from beneath the oilcloth and lit it, turning up the wick just enough to faintly illuminate her surroundings. This was the place: the slight opening in the rock just ahead, a familiar outcropping shaped like a moonshine jug both confirmed this was the natural water cave the pirate king who once owned this land had used to access his lair from below ground level. As her skiff entered the stony tunnel, her lantern illuminated centuries-old patterns of smoke on the granite ceiling.
More quickly now, she took hold of the oars and maneuvered the boat around the bend in the grotto. The skiff bumped against the worn rocks at the far end, and she stepped out, knelt to test the ancient bronze ring driven into the nearby bedrock, then tied the painter to it. Reassured by the silence, she straightened up and took a deep breath, shining the lantern around and refamiliarizing herself with the space.
She knew that Leng had purchased the mansion above this cave five years before. At this early point, he had not yet discovered the hidden cellar entrance to the extensive and dangerous sub-basements below, infected with damp and encrusted with niter. And it would be several more years before he discovered this secret water-level access that they ultimately led to. The last person to use this passage to the river had been the one to discover it in the first place: the pirate himself, an Englishman named Nathaniel Bell. “Bloody Bell” had established this stronghold not long after the English acquired New Amsterdam from the Dutch, and he operated as a privateer with a wink and a nod from the new English rulers, who were happy to see him prey on the annual Spanish treasure fleet. After he’d left on what turned out to be his final, fatal sea voyage, no treasure was discovered. Bloody Bell had buried it somewhere—speculation pointed to most likely the Maritimes, probably on Oak Island off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Constance held her lantern close to the walls, moving her fingers lightly over the stones that made up the far end of the grotto, occasionally applying pressure. At last she stopped before a rock face that was smoother than those around it but showed no signs of a doorway. Unsheathing her stiletto, she used the edge of its blade to lightly probe along the rock face, encountering mud and niter. On the fourth try, the blade sank deep. Carefully, she exerted downward pressure—and the blade began tracing a vertical incision without obstacle.
Constance removed the knife. Now that she’d located it, the task of unsealing the hidden door could wait temporarily. She turned back to the skiff, pulled aside the oilcloth, and—quietly, but with haste—unloaded the contents from the bow and arranged them along the damp stones nearby.