Thursd 13 June 1822
Dear R,—
How I wish I could give you the satisfaction you desire as regards my treatment of your Aunt Pearl; & how I wish even more I could demand you believe me an altogether good woman, whose desire was never to harm anyone, least of all my sister.
I fully comprehended the injustice of the way I’d treated her. That night she left, I felt as if my chest & throat had been scraped raw from within, so profound was my remorse for my misdeeds. Your father, Aunt Tem, & Abiah after a time retired to their beds, but hours passed before I could quit pacing the kitchen & Pearl’s small closet. One says, in relating such circumstances, one was thinking them over, but I was not thinking; only moving restlessly, in an agony of remorse & self incrimination. I do not know how long I walked the floorboards,—Abiah had forgotten to wind the clock, and it wound down soon after the house went quiet,—but at last the kitchen fire burned out & I realized I was too tired to wish to stoke it. I went upstairs & put down my head, and before I could fall to sleep, the memory of the dream of the spirit canoo once more presented it self to my inward eye. Once more I could see Pearl awash in slick, dark gore & hear the sad splash of my paddle in the night-time river; and of a sudden, I believed I understood what the dream had meant to reveal to me all along,—which is very like the thing you your self tell me in your letter. This revelation was not The Bridge, nor a dramatization of the ill I had so long ago done Pearl, but a simple sign for the manner in which I had made her suffer daily. In that moment, it was as if the curse I’d laid on my sister were an onion, & though I had sought to peel it all my days, I had only just then gotten past the paper to the luminescent flesh within; & I saw that the curse lay not in the words I had uttered, which had scudded across to Mannahata never to be recalled; but in the manner in which I’d allowed them to colour my behaviour toward her, ever since. For 23 years I had showered my guilt upon her, thought of protecting her, bought her gifts, worry’d on her behalf; but I had never once simply looked to see in whose interest I had done all this. Had I done so, I might have seen the depth of that streak running through her, or how she felt confined or unhappy. But you see, I did not. You see, my Recompense, you have hit your mark.
More soon,—I cannot bear to write it now,—
Mother
But there it was, clear as day in her memory.
She went downstairs at dawn the next morning when she heard Abiah go into the kitchen to light the fire. “Has Pearl come home?” Prue asked.
Abiah regarded her a moment as if she, too, had slept badly. Then she proceeded to sweep out the grate.
Prue resolved to bring her sister home. She could imagine what she looked like after the night she’d spent, but without stopping to splash her face or smooth her hair, she stood up and put on her coat.
“It won’t do you any good,” Abiah said.
Prue worked her buttons shut. “No, I imagine it won’t, but I shall go anyway”
It had grown colder since the evening before, and as most of her neighbors had been out late drinking on the landing, the Ferry Road was unusually quiet. Prue heard her chickens fussing in their coop and saw wisps of smoke beginning to curl from the Livingston and Cortelyou chimneys, but no one but her was about. Her footfalls seemed to echo against the road. There was no smoke rising from Will Severn’s chimney, and Prue hesitated before knocking on the door. As she did, she heard a baby crying from the house that had once been Ben’s, and looked over toward that door as if she could will her husband to be standing behind it, offering her courage. She knocked once, and when she heard no stirring within, knocked again, more loudly.
A moment later, Will Severn arrived at the door in his dressing gown. Prue had never seen him unshaven, but he looked as if he, too, had passed a difficult night.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so early,” she said.
“No,” he said, then cleared his throat, which still sounded thick from sleep. “It’s no bother. I trust nothing is amiss.”
Prue could not read his expression; perhaps he was merely tired. “Is my sister Pearl here?”
He nodded, but neither said more nor opened the door to her.
“May I see her?” Prue asked, though she felt it demeaning to have to.
“I’ll ask,” he said, and closed the door gently in her face.
He needn’t have done more. Prue knew she should turn and walk up Buckbee’s Alley right then, but it was almost as though her pride wished to be wounded by Pearl’s response. Some minutes elapsed before he returned wearing the same benevolent expression he offered troubled parishioners.
“Forgive me, Prue,” he said, and reached out for her hand. “I cannot make her change her mind.”
Prue’s face smarted. “It’s not your fault,” she said. If Pearl had told him everything, she was surprised Will Severn was treating her so civilly. “Please convey my apologies to my sister, and tell her that as happy as we would all be to have her back home, we would be content to be able to speak with her.”
He squeezed her hand before letting it go. “I will tell her. She wept all evening.”
“As did I,” Prue said, and turned back toward the port.
It was with a heavy heart she went back to pressing herbs in the rectifying room that day. Had she not known how to do the work by second nature, she would have spoiled the batch. She could only think how large the distillery was—how great the buildings, how prodigious its noise, bustle, and output of smoke. From the outside, she sometimes imagined it looked as if it might produce something necessary to the sustenance of a nation, not mere liquor. Yet at its center stood nothing more than herself and her sister Tem, both brokenhearted that day, to differing degrees. The manufactory was as fragile as they were.
Isaiah came to find her when the bell rang to return the workers to their posts after the midday break. “Did you eat, Prue?” he asked, coaxing her away from the press.
“I’m not hungry.”
“She’ll come home,” he said.
“No, she won’t.” Her arms ached from working the press all morning and into the afternoon. “I imagine the news is all over town by now”
He gave her a curt nod, his lips pursed as he glanced toward the window “I took lunch at Joe Loosely’s. One cannot say how gossip travels so quickly, but it was the talk of the barroom. That, and that Joe had a visit this morning from another purveyor of gin.”
This was the last thing Prue had expected to hear. “How so?”
“A new operation, called Putnam’s, on the Schuylkill.”
Had she not been so exhausted and fraught with care, she felt her heart would have jumped out of her body. “Not really?” she said, and to clarify, “John Putnam? The foreman of my father’s brewhouse?”
Isaiah shrugged his shoulders defeatedly.
There were herbs lying in the press, but she felt she must go speak to Joe right away, though she knew she would either be subject to questioning about her sister or, worse, catch her neighbors glancing sidelong in her direction. She closed her eyes for a moment.
Isaiah said to her, “If you go talk to him, please eat while you’re there.”
“Yes,” Prue said, and left to walk upferry by the Shore Road. Ezra Fischer was out on his landing with two workmen and seemed not to have heard her news, for he removed his hat and bowed pleasantly to her as she passed. His gallantry only irritated her, and she picked up her pace.
Most of the men of Brooklyn had finished their midday meal and returned to work by the time Prue arrived, but she still felt the barroom hush as she entered. The Hicks brothers turned away, as if they didn’t want to see her, and a few others coughed or made extraneous noise with their knives and forks. It had been a while since she’d gone into the Liberty Tavern. She and Joe had both done their best to smooth out the wrinkles between them, but it still made Prue feel awkward that he had not supported the bridge.
“Prue Winship,” Joe said from behind the bar. He was depositing dirty cups in a basin of water to soak.
“Is it true what I’ve heard from Isaiah?” she asked straightaway. “About John Putnam?”
Joe shook his head at her and smiled. “We can’t be certain it’s him, of course.”
“Who else learned the business of distilling from my father? And he had family near Philadelphia. It must be he.”
Joe continued to shake his head. “I told Isaiah all I knew of it, which was the representatives of Putnam Gin came by boat to exhibit their wares this morning. Said they’d been doing good business in and around Philadelphia and were looking to expand north and south. Sit down, Prue. We’ve veal cutlets; would you like one?”
Prue was so upset about her sister and John Putnam, she could not imagine how she’d eat, but she said, “Yes, thank you.”
Joe called into the kitchen to convey the order to his wife. “Never fear,” he said when he returned. “His product’s not so fine as yours.”
“You tasted it?” Prue asked.
“You’d rather I hadn’t? You wouldn’t know a thing about it, then.” Prue sat down in front of him at the bar. He drew her a pint and she sipped at it without tasting it. “Nowhere near so fragrant. But he’s selling it a good deal cheaper than you, and they claim to be getting a good business, down south.” He dried his hands, drew a pint for himself, and came around to sit beside her. “Bad day for business all around, I suppose. Did you see what Fischer was doing?”
“Standing on the landing of the New Ferry. He took off his hat to me.”
“He’s building an alehouse, right there.”
“He cannot—”
“Well, God bless the legislature, they wouldn’t grant him a license for hard liquor. But they say we’re a big enough town to support three places to drink in.” Mrs. Loosely brought out Prue’s plate, and as soon as she smelled the cutlet, Prue realized she was ravenous. “Fischer’s a weasel. Says he thinks people’ll just stop off for a pint and a boiled egg and be on their way, but I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling.”
“He hasn’t your stables,” Prue said between bites. “Nor your auction block.”
“And he shan’t, either. He’s boxed in—there’s nothing else he can buy in the area, unless Isaiah Horsfield goes under.”
Prue scanned Joe’s face to see if he meant any malice; but she told herself it was in her imagination.
“Sorry to hear the news about your sister as well,” Joe said, lowering his voice. Still, all the other patrons quieted down to listen.
“Thank you, Joe. We hope we shall remedy it soon.” She could not taste her lunch, but she ate it all to show she was not troubled by the conversation.
That evening, Tem went up to the minister’s to attempt to talk to Pearl, but she, too, was rebuffed, though she had only asked for the return of her coat and keys. To be inside their own house was unbearable—they all sat there gloomily, and Pearl’s old cat wandered around, mewling like a lost kitten—yet Prue imagined her sister and husband felt as she did, that it would be even worse to light out for one of the taverns. Prue wished their current difficulties could sit more lightly on Ben’s shoulders than on her own, but this was impossible. He loved Pearl as a sister; and his fortunes, and the bridge’s, were every bit as much tied up in the distillery as Prue’s or Tem’s.
The week passed slowly, though there was work to do at the distillery, preparing for the holidays. Each morning and evening, one of them would walk up to Will Severn’s house to ask if Pearl would see them. Each day, though Severn offered his apologies, he turned them away.
In the evenings, Prue took to sitting in Pearl’s room, as if this itself could explain the pass they had come to, or bring her home. She searched again and again through the few possessions her sister had left behind—some old underclothes, her books, her embroidery, and some knitting pins that had belonged to their mother.
“We should bring them to her,” Tem said, “so she’ll have aught to do there.”
“If she wants them, she’ll ask,” Prue replied, holding tight to the bundle of ebony pins. “I think it might be better if she grows bored. She’ll come back more quickly.”
The last thing Pearl had been embroidering was a foldback for a sheet, with a thick, satin-stitched border of jungle plants. Prue could not find the illustrations on which these had been modeled, but their outlines were traced in pencil across the blank part of the landscape. Prue had little facility with the needle, but she worked it out from where her sister had anchored it in the fabric, and began trying to stitch across the outline of a leaf. Her embroidery looked childish by comparison with her sister’s; Prue thought that if Pearl saw it, it would surely anger her. Nevertheless, she persevered. Working on this project her sister had abandoned seemed a way of being close to her; or at least, with each stitch, Prue thought she came a stitch’s distance closer to understanding the boredom that had afflicted her sister in her days at home, and that same distance closer to repenting for the wrongs she had done her.
Still, she could not sleep, knowing Pearl was abroad. She almost wished Will Severn would tell them he and Pearl had married and invited none of them; it would be better than the silence that then obtained. It would be better than to sit awake each night, once the clamor of the docks and the roads had subsided, and hear the bitter shrilling of a barn owl, and wonder what would become of her sister.
One night perhaps ten days after Pearl’s departure, Prue was sitting at the kitchen table with the needlework, and suddenly realized everything around her sounded strange. Usually she heard the rustle, if not the calls, of nocturnal creatures, but they were all quiet; instead, she thought she heard sounds out on the docks. Her first thought was, there were boys enough in Brooklyn to upend every fishing boat in Creation, if they’d set their minds to it; she imagined they had worked open the gate to the bridge and were out drinking upon it, and she only hoped none would fall to his death. She thought she heard something being dragged along either the docks or the bridge’s wooden roadway, then stopping; a moment later, it resumed, then again fell silent. Yet though the sound concerned her, she was exhausted deep in her bones; and though she tried to remain awake, she knew she must have drifted off, for she was awakened before dawn by the unmistakable sound of one of the distillery’s warning bells ringing agitatedly in the night.
She knew she did not imagine this sound, because she heard the rest of her family sitting up or resettling in their beds. “Prue?” Ben whispered. She could hear him through the floorboards, and walked as softly as she could upstairs.
He was sitting up in bed. The bell pealed thrice, then stopped; thrice again, then stopped again, which was the signal of distress. Whoever was ringing it was upset enough to choke the rope, and was not allowing the clapper to complete its swing before tugging it again. “It must be a fire,” Ben said.
Prue strained her nose but could smell nothing. Before she could answer him, he was out of bed and tucking his nightshirt into his britches. Prue went across the hall to rap on Tem’s door. “Get up,” she said. “Something’s amiss at the works.”
Tem opened her door quickly; she must have been standing there fully dressed. She had one hand on her forehead. “You’re certain it’s our bell?”
“Did you drink too much?”
Tem held up her finger and thumb to indicate a small amount.
Prue started down the stairs.
Abiah was already rummaging in the pantry and bringing forth their leather buckets. All four were crazed with a fine lattice of cracks from being stored in the dry kitchen, but they would still hold water. Abiah handed the buckets to Ben and Prue, and went to the peg for her coat. When she opened the kitchen door, Prue smelled the smoke for the first time. It was rising from the waterfront, not so thickly it obscured the view, but enough so she could not determine which building was aflame, though she could see by its proximity it belonged to the distillery.
“Look up,” Ben said, as she peered down toward the water. The very tip of the Brooklyn arm was also on fire—though again, from that vantage, she could not determine the extent of the blaze.
Prue let out a deep breath and stood transfixed. Ben went inside for all their coats; Prue put on Pearl’s, though it was tight, and let Tem wear her own. “Come, then,” Ben said, and they hurried down the hill.
Halfway down Joralemon’s Lane, the air began to thicken with smoke. Ben stopped and turned to the three women. “Tie your handkerchiefs over your noses and mouths and crouch down,” he said. “When you get to the water, wet the cloth.” He kissed Prue’s cheek and set off toward the blaze. The warning bell was still tolling, and a crowd had begun to gather, most with buckets, a few gawking.
“I am sure they know, in New York,” Tem said, shaking out Prue’s handkerchief of pocket lint. The one in the pocket of Pearl’s coat was clean. “They must have sent their engine by now”
But beyond the bell, the sounds of people shouting, and the rumble of burning wood, Prue heard nothing from the river.
The southern end of the distillery, including the windmill, appeared safe for the moment, but the end nearest the bridge was clotted with black smoke. Neighbors—not all of whose faces could Prue recognize behind their handkerchiefs—were hauling buckets of water up from the straits and dashing them at the flames, which had thus far engulfed only the rectifying house. Prue feared the machinery within would tumble like boulders if the floor beneath gave way, but her true concern was the possibility, if the cashing house caught fire, the warehouses would go next; as she thought this, she noticed the near storehouse’s door lolling open. If ignited, the stores would burn with a fierce heat and intensity. “Better to keep it off the storehouses than the other buildings,” she said to Tem. Tem said nothing in reply. They tied on their handkerchiefs and ran with their buckets around the fire’s periphery to the water. There Prue lost sight of Abiah and Tem but found Isaiah, also with his kerchief over his face like a bandit, looking out at the bridge. Its whole tip was engulfed in flame and burning like a torch.
He put his arm around her and said, “I’ve spied the engine,” directly into her ear. Otherwise she might not have heard him above the din. “God grant they can help us.”
“God grant, indeed. I’m afraid for the warehouses,” she nearly shouted to him. “I think we should let the rectifying house go, and douse the cashing room and the stores instead.”
He stepped back and scanned the scene, his blue eyes red with smoke and the reflected firelight. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Do anything,” Prue said. “I deceive myself to think it matters.” She left him and dipped her bucket into the frigid water of the straits. She could not see Ben or Tem, but was glad to see ever more people streaming down Joralemon’s Lane and the Shore Road to help.
Prue heaved the contents of her bucket at the foot of the cashing house, and others followed suit. Soon enough, people were passing buckets along three lines—one for the stores, one for the cashing house, and one for the blazing rectifying house. The water hardly affected the fire. When Prue glanced up at the Brooklyn lever, its river end was a ball of blue and yellow flame, surmounted by a storm cloud of acrid smoke. It creaked ominously, and with a crack like thunder, a section of the lever split off and tumbled into the river. People flinched, but continued to pass the buckets along. As she labored, alternately sweating from the fire and chilled from the water as it splashed, Prue remarked the bridge was burning fiercely—the timber had been well cured on installation, and pitch was as combustible as oil—but she had no time to prognosticate how the fire might spread.
No amount of water seemed sufficient to protect the casking house, for the rectifying house was burning like a kiln. Prue felt a moment of nostalgia for the beautiful copper stills and the hulking press—the machines on which her father had made his fortune and taught her his art—and could not bear to think of them melting into the hard Brooklyn sand; but it was no use feeling sentimental over machines. It was fortunate no one had been inside the buildings when the fire began, and Prue would count it a miracle if no one was killed before the fire burned itself out.
It was difficult to hear anything over the roar of the burning rectifying house, but Prue dimly heard bells clanging all over town to call people to the distillery’s aid. In addition, a smaller bell was ringing from the river itself, which Prue prayed meant the fire engine was arriving. She thought she heard men shouting from the water, and she so wanted to hear the plash of oars drawing nigh, she easily could have imagined that, too. In the meantime, the heat of the burning building seemed to push against her, and the air was so foul she could barely breathe. No more than half an hour could have passed, but Prue felt she had been engaged in this futile labor for days.
When at last she heard the engine pull abreast of the bridge, the relief that flooded her body was unlike any she had ever experienced, cool and sweet as summer rain. Marcel Dufresne came to spell her in the line, and she ran down to the river, where a scant few—mostly neighborhood children, whom she shooed angrily up to the safety of Clover Hill—were also watching. The engine all but filled a double-sized barge and had been rowed thither by a team of twenty men, some of whom were now dropping anchor to hold the lumbering machine steady. Others were uncoiling the enormous hose. Phineas Bates, standing near Prue on the strand, was calling himself hoarse, shouting, “Weigh anchor! Weigh anchor! Get the buildings first!” but the engine men could not hear him. Four of them began turning the enormous crank wheel, which let out a shrieking whine as it drew water into the belly of the machine, and most of the rest braced the hose as it filled with water and stiffened. Phineas took off his greatcoat and without warning dove into the straits and began to swim. Prue thought he would die of the cold before he reached the engine, and shouted at him in horror to turn back, but though others around joined in her cry, none would venture in after him. His slick head bobbed above the icy water like a seal’s.
Sections of the Brooklyn lever continued to burn, and landed as gigantic flotsam in the river. This debris began to rush downstream, and Prue thought it would batter the Luquers’ trash rack and tumble down the millrace to crush their wheel. As Phineas swam upriver toward the barge, those onshore screamed their throats raw trying to tell him to look out for the burning debris. As a spray began to emerge from the tip of the fire engine’s hose, the men aimed it toward the lever and slipped and struggled to control the hose’s force. It looked as if a giant serpent had risen from the straits. The water fanned out in the air, its arc much lower than that of the bridge, and Prue began to despair of its reaching its intended target. Slowly, however, the men twisted the hose and angled it farther upward; and at last it made contact with the underside of the lever. Phineas reached the barge, and one of the anchormen struggled to help him on board. Prue saw the fireman remove his coat and try to drape it around Phineas’s shoulders; the coat was not big enough and hung high above his knees. Phineas hunkered down to be out of the way.
At first the water from the hose appeared to have no more effect upon the bridge fire than that being ferried by bucket to the rectifying house; both fires continued to roar. Prue stood with her eyes watering, still barely able to breathe, praying that some of the arm might be spared and that no one might die in the effort. The engine crew were shouting to one another, but she could no more hear what they were saying than they could hear her.
The men turning the wheel began to spin it harder, and a more forceful stream bathed the bridge’s trussing. Only a few moments before, it had seemed foolhardy to hope for a good outcome, but now the dark smoke billowed more copiously and the bright core of the fire began to contract. People whooped their encouragement. Prue understood she would not know until later how much of the Brooklyn lever had been lost, but it did not appear to be half; she tried to contain her worry and tell herself it would not be an entire year’s work to rebuild. The charred tip of the lever continued to smolder, and the engine men kept the stream of water upon it. Before the flames could be stanched, however, a shout arose from behind Prue. When she turned, she saw a mass of white flame where the rectifying house had been. The building’s very shape had vanished; and it was so hot, no one was trying any longer to douse it, as it would have been too dangerous to approach those jumping, dancing flames. People stood back as if charmed, their buckets dangling from their hands. The horses in the stable, which stood between the warehouses and the abutment of the bridge, were whinnying madly, and someone hacked at the lock with an ax to free them. They bucked and thrashed their heads as they were led out, one by one, to the Shore Road. Prue saw poor Jolly go by, with the fire reflected in his wild eyes, and thought he was looking around for her, the one person who might convince him he was safe.
Suddenly a tendril of fire leapt across toward the casking house, which caught like a tinder stick. Some unlucky man stood in its way, and remained looking around him for a moment, his pants and shirt on fire, until another threw him to the ground and rolled him on the damp sand. They were both screaming. Shouts also came from the river, and the barge at last weighed anchor and began to lumber toward shore. The casking house was engulfed within moments, and the flames immediately began to lick at the near storehouse.
“Stand back!” Prue shouted to those near the building. They could not hear her over the ruckus from the river and the roar of the fire, but still she kept shouting. Those closest by her, realizing the hopelessness of her lone cry, began to echo it until it passed to those nearest the fire. They looked frantically for someplace suitable for retreat, and everyone else made way. As those closest to the storehouses scrambled back, the fire lit on the near one, and in a moment it was burning fast and hot. It was spectacular to see a thing consume itself so quickly; it nearly overwhelmed Prue with its terrible beauty. The flames spread to the other warehouse without pause, and thence to the shed that housed the timber for the bridge.
People continued to stream down to the waterfront, and the engine drew nearer the shore. It landed not far from where Prue stood, and immediately the men dragged the heavy hose up over the retaining wall and onto the strand. “Clear out!” they called, and everyone backed toward the cliffs. Phineas, still wrapped in the fireman’s small coat, walked shivering through the shallows to shore. Two other men rushed out to him and led him back by the elbows. The pump men again began turning the wheel, and the spray pushed at the fire. The men still struggled to contain the force of the hose. This fire seemed much hotter than that which smoldered on the bridge. Some noble souls continued to throw their buckets of water at the edges of the conflagration, as if those droplets could tame the raging beast. The firemen kept spraying the hose back and forth across the blaze, daring it to spread beyond its current confines.
Prue expected the whole distillery to go up, followed by the ropewalk, the ferries, her own house, and Isaiah’s. If the fire did not then spread to the trees, Brooklyn as a whole would likely be safe, as there was considerable distance between the older houses. If it managed to cross the road from Isaiah’s house to Olympia, however, it would devour the entire neighborhood, so tightly were the houses packed together. Prue felt sick with worry and guilt as she thought this, but as she did, the blaze began to succumb to the water. It still burned, but less fiercely, until at last it was chiefly burning embers and clouds of charcoal-black smoke, more foul in scent than anything she had yet known. If there was an Other Side, and if the damned were banished there, this would be their very air.
Prue stood for what seemed an age watching the men contain the fire. As the flames subsided into a quiet hiss, the firemen called out to their compatriots to slacken their pace on the wheel. The pressure in the hose lessened, and it began to drip onto the sand.
Prue could hear her own breathing for the first time since the fire had begun. When she looked around, she felt as if she’d wakened from a nightmare. Everyone was covered in sweat and grime, obscured by a thick haze of smoke, and her knees were shaking. A three-quarters moon hung in the starry sky, and despite the acrid smoke, illuminated the scene sufficiently to see.
“Miss Winship?” one of the firemen said to her, and held out his sooty hand to her through the dark mist.
She took it, though her whole body was trembling. “I can’t thank you enough,” she said. “We should have lost everything without you.”
He glanced up at the ruined, smoking bridge. “You must keep an eye on it yet; but I believe it is contained. I can hardly believe no lives were lost.”
All around, people echoed his sentiment. “I can’t thank you enough,” she repeated. Her throat burned, and she could think of nothing more to say.
He nodded and wiped his dirty brow with the back of his equally dirty hand. “God grant you won’t have need of us again.”
“I pray so,” she said, and others murmured assent. People were beginning to pull their ash-coated kerchiefs down from their sweating red faces and to sit down on the ground to rest, though the fire still smoldered.
The engine men slowly coiled the hose back onto the side of the great machine, and with bodies evidently aching with exhaustion, boarded it to row home. Though there was little light now, Prue saw Tem sitting a short distance off on the retaining wall, her head in her hands. “Who was burned?” Prue asked. “Where is he?”
“Elliott Fortune,” Abiah called to her. Prue’s heart stopped beating a moment; it might as well have been her own father. “It’s Mr. Fortune, Prue. He’s here. He lives.”
Prue made her way through the crowd to him and, had she not been so shocked by the events of the evening thus far, would have begun to cry the moment she saw him. Abiah was beside him, squeezing well water over him from a bucket, using a piece of cloth torn from her skirt. Prue could not tell if he was wincing or smiling. “Mr. Fortune?” she said.
“No need to look so frightened,” he said, looking up at her. His face was unharmed, but even in the dim light she could see his hands were blistered; and where Abiah had unbuttoned his shirt, the skin also appeared raw and slick. “It’s not so bad as it looks.”
Abiah shook her head as she kept trickling water on him. She said, “Dr. de Bouton will see him once we’ve got him home. I wanted to cool him off first.”
“I cannot abide the notion of your being injured, helping to save this distillery,” Prue said.
“No, never fear,” Fortune said, and winced over the latest application of water. “If naught else, I owed it to your father’s memory.”
Prue looked around at the wreckage of so much of her father’s dream. “Thank you,” she said.
Joe Loosely was at the outskirts of those gathered around. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d look into what Fischer had to do with this, is all I’ll say”
Others standing around murmured. “Why so?” Prue asked. The thought had not even occurred to her.
Joe snorted and turned his head to the side. “Thirty-four years this distillery has stood on this property, and with all that combustible liquor, not a single blaze.”
“Perhaps we were overdue,” Prue said. She did not exactly believe this, but had no better theory.
Joe snorted again. “Then what explains the bridge? There wasn’t any lightning this evening. I don’t know what else could have set it off so hot and fierce.”
“I agree,” Simon Dufresne said.
Elliott Fortune said, “It’s no time to think ill of our neighbors.”
Prue said, “Mr. Fischer would never—”
But someone was frantically calling, “Prue? Prue?” from the top of the hill. It was a man’s voice, high with distress, and Prue did not at first recognize it. When he hoarsely called out, “Tem Winship?” however, she realized it was Will Severn.
Jens Luquer put his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Mr. Severn? What’s the trouble?”
He did not answer, but ran down the hill toward the works. “Tem?” he said, as he began to move through the knot of people. They made way for him. He had not been standing in the smoke all that time; no doubt he could not see through it, despite the moonlight.
Tem rose from her spot on the retaining wall. “Here,” she said. She leaned over and spat into the river.
He ran toward her, but encountered Prue first and stopped, panting and leaning on his knees for support. “Heaven be praised,” he said, still catching his breath, “there is not so much damage as I’d imagined.”
“No thanks to you,” someone muttered, and another whistled to quiet him.
Will Severn continued to pant. “Prue. Tem,” he said. Tem came up behind her and put her hand on Prue’s shoulder. “She’s disappeared.”
Prue had inhaled the thick smoke for what seemed hours, but only at that moment did she feel herself unable to breathe.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She was sitting by the hearth reading when I went up to bed. When I was roused by the bells, I looked all round the house for her, but she was gone. I would have come to your aid, but I had to find her; and I’ve traveled the whole neighborhood, but she’s nowhere. She’s nowhere, Prue—her things are gone. Her clothes, Tem’s keys—everything.”
Until he spoke, Prue had felt she had borne up as well as could be expected of a person. She had just lost a fair portion of the bridge for which she’d mortgaged all her property, and she’d lost every ounce of product her factory had produced in a year. Elliott Fortune might very well die of his burns and Phineas Bates of the influenza. But when Will Severn told her Pearl was missing, she thought she might at last come undone. She stood, aware of nothing but her breath and the sound of the river running, and afraid she might faint. But in a moment, a thought arose in her mind with the vigor of a bubble in the mash tun: Pearl had been responsible for all this. Even to think it felt like blasphemy, but Prue’s imagination swiftly sought to connect the open storehouse door and the flaming bridge with the scraping sounds she’d heard earlier. She could not figure how her small sister might have rolled or dragged a cask of gin up the accessway’s incline, but the image remained with her. When she tried to drive it from her, it continued to hover nearby.
There had to be another explanation. “This cannot be,” she said to Will Severn. To the crowd around her, she asked, “Has anyone seen my sister Pearl?”
People looked around before answering, “No.”
“No one?” Prue asked, though she knew the question was redundant.
The river continued to lick past, carrying off pieces of the bridge’s debris. She did not think she could voice her suspicion of her own sister. It was bad enough to have thought such a thing, but it would be worse still to give it play in the world. What choice did she have, however? Something must be done: Pearl was unaccounted for, and all the assembled people were waiting for her to speak.
“I wonder . . .” she began, but found her dry, sooty tongue unwilling to complete the work. She cleared her throat, and went on, “I wonder if my sister might have had aught to do with this fire?”
Will Severn said, “No,” and around him people called out their confusion and concern.
“Prue,” Peg Dufresne said, “that’s not possible.”
Prue wished with all her heart Peg was correct. She said, “I believe it may be. I believe . . .” she began, but again words failed her, and she lost her train of thought. Though her body felt parched all the way through, there were hot tears behind her eyes and in her throat. “My sister has had some reason for anger toward me of late, and likewise of anger toward the bridge and the distillery.” To admit this before all the assembled company mortified Prue, yet the words came out more easily than she might have supposed. “You all know her to be of a kind disposition; but I believe it would be unwise not to consider her disappearance as somehow connected to this evening’s terrible events.” Pearl had the keys to the buildings; this would account for the open storehouse door. A missing cask of gin would explain the fire on the bridge. These facts were unbearable, given the misery the night had brought, and Prue wondered if she might erase them from her memory.
All around, people were frowning or kicking at the sand as if she’d said something inane. Only Tem answered her. “Very well,” she said, “I see your reasons; but what, then? Do you suppose she ran off? Or what do you think? She fell in the river?”
Prue turned to regard her, and saw Pearl’s very face, grimy and exhausted, looking back at her in the moonlight. “Perhaps we should . . .” she began, but felt her mind veering toward another, more awful possibility: that Pearl might have jumped. Then she turned from this explanation, as it was too frightful to bear. “Perhaps we should send out riders.”
“We should dredge the river, that’s what,” said Simon Dufresne. “If she’s fallen in, there might yet be the chance of saving her, but not for long.”
Prue said to Tem, “She must have walked off, or asked a ride of a passing carriage.”
Will Severn began to weep.
Simon said, “Reverend, excuse me, it’s no time for tears. If Pearl is in Buttermilk Channel, she may yet be alive. We need to drag it now.”
Prue’s neighbors looked as tired as she felt, and the embers were still smoking all around.
Tem drew herself taller and called out, “Anyone with a boat and nets, we would be greatly obliged if you’d help us.” She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “Anyone with a horse who would ride out toward Wall-about or Jamaica, or down toward Red Hook, we would also be thankful. Our own horses . . .” she said, and paused, listening for their anxious neighs, which echoed down from the ridge. “I believe Winship Gin’s horses are on the Ferry Road, and may be taken by anyone, if they are calm enough to ride.” People began to confer, and split off in groups to saddle their horses or retrieve their boats. Will Severn continued to lean on his knees and weep. Tem walked up to him and said quietly, “You will have Hell to pay, sir, if any ill has befallen my sister.”
He did not respond to her.
She turned to Prue. “We should go on a boat. I believe it the more likely means of finding her.”
Prue said, “I, too,” though it cost her some effort to admit it. She took Tem’s elbow, and together they walked down to their landing to climb aboard one of the barges. Ben and Marcel came on, along with two of the distillery workers to row it. Before doing anything, Ben took Prue in his arms and held her close. Over her shoulder he said to Marcel, “We shall need a net.”
“I’ll go borrow one from the dories on Butcher’s Wharf,” he said, and set out running upriver.
Cornelis Luquer came down to the water and said, “Jens is going to alert my father. If she’s in the water, that’s where she’ll end up. I’ll take a horse and head east out the turnpike. Joe has volunteered to ride up to the Wallabout.” Prue saw Jens running past, down the dark Shore Road. Up on the hill, a crowd of boys were whistling and clicking their tongues as they tried to subdue the horses.
Someone—Isaiah, no doubt—had gone back to ring one of the warning bells, and it once more pealed out across the river, calm and clear. They had sent the engine home not half an hour before, and already they were calling for New York’s help again. Ben said, “We need torches,” to someone on the strand, who ran off shouting, “Torches!” This struck Prue as sorely ironic, given what they’d all just witnessed. “She’ll be fine,” Ben said into Prue’s hair. “You’ll see.”
Prue prayed he was correct, but was preoccupied with thoughts of Pearl setting the fire. How else could it have occurred? The distillery might have gone up in smoke at any time during its operation, but at night, when the fires were cool, it was safer than a house. Barring lightning, there seemed no way to set it ablaze without a tinderbox. And as for Joe’s assertion, Prue thought Ezra Fischer had little reason to start a conflagration. He was still taken with Tem, and even had he been angered by her refusal, his business was in no imminent danger from the bridge. As Prue stood on the gently rocking barge, however, thinking through Pearl’s reasons for discontent, she found herself wondering why it had not occurred to her earlier how much Pearl might resent the bridge. She had devoted as much of herself to its planning as anyone, for the reward of a grimace of pity from Hendrik Stryker and a subsequent return to the house. Perhaps she had always hated the distillery; and if she had long known what Prue had done to her and kept the secret to herself, it would no doubt have festered.
Prue tried to talk herself away from this line of reasoning as Ben tried to coax her from what he must have thought was her sorrow and fear. But the longer she dwelt on the possibility, the surer she became in her conviction. Pearl had taken a cask, lit the rectifying house—as this was the building that mattered most to Prue—lit the bridge, and jumped or fallen into the river. They would find her washed up in the Luquers’ trash rack—exactly as their father had been found, but well pummeled by the bridge’s debris.
Marcel returned with a torch in his good hand and a fishing net slung over his other arm. Prue stepped clear of Ben’s embrace as Marcel climbed aboard and told her, “Everyone is coming. We shall all form a line, and begin to drag as soon as possible.”
Tem was pacing the length of the barge. Ben said to her, “Don’t worry, we shall find her,” but she did not seem at all appeased.
Losee’s ferryboat, manned by a stranger, was working its way across the river to enlist the New York fishermen’s aid; and meanwhile, everyone from Red Hook to the Old Ferry who owned a rowboat was pulling it down off the docks while a companion held a torch aloft. Some of the Cortelyou boys commandeered Joe’s fishing boat, which he’d built for sport and which one hardly ever saw on the water. Prue sat down on the barge’s gunwale and watched the smoke clear and boats begin to assemble in a ragged line stretching all the way across the river. It made a far less elegant span than did what was left of the bridge, but as it drifted and broke, it was beautiful all the same.
Prue had never been out on the river at night, and was surprised at the gentleness of its motion. It hardly resembled the bustling daytime river; it was calm and black except for the uneven line of flickering torches stretched like a string of beads to its far shore. Prue could hear every word her neighbors spoke—about the fire, and about the likelihood of Pearl being found in the river and not in an inn somewhere down the Jamaica road. Then the pilot of the final boat to join the New York side of the line hollered for the dredging to begin. Tem and Prue crouched together at the starboard side of their barge and gripped their net. Rachael Livingston held its other end, and Prue watched her across the six feet of water separating them. She thought Rachael was looking at her kindly for the first time in her life.
The scores of oarsmen began to row Tem retched over the water.
They had traveled no more than a few minutes before a piece of the bridge’s flotsam lodged in a net halfway down the line. Everyone stopped, tense with fear and excitement, until it was drawn in and the trapped wood cast into the water upriver, where it would no doubt knock continually on someone’s stern. After the terrible heat of the fire, the cold of the river breeze bit at Prue’s fingers and face. A great bass next held up their progress at the New York end; after that, some men drew up a broken lobster trap. At this rate, Prue imagined if her sister had hit the water living, there was no possibility she would still breathe when they found her. Seemingly inch by inch they progressed southward toward Upper New York Bay; and if they did not find her before they reached that open expanse, they would not do so until she washed up, bloated past recognition, eaten by crabs and invaded by eels.
Prue did not realize how spent she was until she found herself staring off in the distance for the spirit canoe. She knew it to be a figment of her own imagination, but she almost expected to see its vaporous form sliding silently toward land. Pearl would ride in the bow, her gray dress black with salt water, her wet hair sticking to her shoulders like kelp. The horrible sliver of boat would appear and publish Prue’s shame for the delectation of all her neighbors. But of course, this had already happened; there could be no more dark secrets her neighbors did not know. Prue thought no night could be longer than one spent waiting for news of a beloved person. Neither the spirit boat nor Pearl appeared.
They were still out on the river when dawn broke over Brooklyn’s rooftops. The light was pink as springtime in the flat, overcast sky, and empty of consolation. Many of those out on the river had not bothered to grab their coats before heading out to the blaze, and now they were shaking with cold. Tem’s lips were blue. Even in Pearl’s tight-fitting coat, Prue felt her boots and cuffs were frozen, and each time she thought she might be able to control her shivering, a new paroxysm seized her. Marcel kept freeing his maimed hand from the torch to stretch its remaining fingers.
“Does it pain you?” Prue asked him.
“When it’s cold,” he replied. “De Bouton says it should mend within a year or two.”
Whenever the line of boats halted for someone’s cry, Prue feared to look toward their nets, so clearly could she imagine Pearl’s appearance, drowned. The nets continued to bring up fish and detritus, and the boats continued to move slowly, blocking all traffic. The captains of the few ships waiting in the bay must have known what they were doing, and Prue hoped they were praying for her sister’s safe return.
Buttermilk Channel emptied into the bay just past the Luquer Mill and the tannery, and Prue understood their hopes of finding Pearl would be dashed if they did not turn her up before reaching it. No one dredged a bay.
As the snaking line approached the mill, Prue saw old Nicolaas Luquer standing atop the small, pitched roof protecting his trash rack from airborne debris. The blackened shards of timber that had fallen from the bridge had already been dragged up to shore. One of Nicolaas’s feet rested on each slope of the roof, and he faced the boats with his arms folded across his chest and his mouth hanging open. Prue had the impression he was looking straight at her, but he was far enough off, she could not say. His daughter Eelkje, three boats down, called “Father?” and the river, against its habit, was so quiet, her voice resounded off the buildings of the mill and farm.
Only after his daughter had called out to him could Prue see Nicolaas was crying; that was why his mouth hung open. Prue began to shake anew. Tem, still crouched on the deck of the barge, said quietly, “No, no, no,” exactly as she had done when their father’s body had come up in the wagon. She began patting about the bare, moldy planks as if she’d lost something.
Ben wrapped his arms around Prue from behind. He was as damp and chill as she.
Their end of the net slipped into the water, and Rachael Livingston hurried to gather it up. Prue almost wanted to jump in after it and drown, rather than see what she was about to see.
“Father, did you find her?” Eelkje called as they drew nearer.
Nicolaas’s mouth still hung open, revealing his tongue and teeth. Prue expected his “yes” or a nod of his head so completely that at first she could not discern that he was shaking his head no. Once she saw, she disbelieved it.
“You didn’t find her?” Eelkje said. They were no more than twenty feet from the small roof.
Nicolaas shook his head more forcefully and continued to cry.
The oarsmen drew Prue’s barge up to bump against the trash rack, and it came to a halt. Prue’s whole body shook as Nicolaas awkwardly crouched down.
Prue saw Pearl’s chain dangling limply from his fist, and when he opened his hand, her notecase was nestled inside, its pages so bloated, those that had not torn away were soft and open as a fan made of feathers. Prue recognized it, yet her mind would not apprehend its import, and she stared at it blankly. Someone nearby began to scream, and it took Prue a moment to realize the voice she heard was her own. As soon as she did, she stopped and stood with her hand over her mouth, shaking and crying. Ben, still behind her, held on to her, and Tem walked unsteadily across the deck to take the ruined book from Nicolaas’s hand.
The men drew the barge closer in to shore and unloaded Tem, Ben, and Prue onto the strand. Nicolaas stepped from the trash rack to the ground and placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. The men rowed the barge closer to the next one, and Rachael Livingston tossed one end of her net back to Marcel. “We’ll keep going, out to the mouth of the bay,” Marcel said to Ben.
Ben said, “Thank you.”
Mrs. Luquer was walking down the path, wringing her hands. Prue did not feel herself capable of bearing one more person’s grief; it was enough to look after her own. The flotilla set off southward, its pace slow as before. Prue kept turning to watch it over her shoulder as Ben led her up the hill to the Luquers’ warm house.
Once they were inside, Mrs. Luquer brought them dry clothing and fed them lentils and hot sweet tea. Neither Prue nor Tem could stop crying, but they were so hungry and cold, they spooned food into their mouths whenever they could quit weeping long enough to do so. When they once caught a glimpse of each other, looking as sorry as either of them ever had, they could not help laughing despite everything. Before the meal was through, Prue noticed her sister’s lips had returned to their ordinary color; and the moment they had cleaned their plates, Mrs. Luquer led them up to the one large room all her children shared, and they lay down on various beds. Prue had not even stretched her body out before she fell asleep. She awoke in a ball in the early afternoon to find Ben and Tem still sleeping, the dull sky unchanged, and no news of Pearl downstairs, except that the boats had ceased their search when they’d reached the mouth of the bay. Most of the riders had returned to Brooklyn for news and, hearing of the notebook, had not gone back out to search again.
Nicolaas Luquer drove them home in his wagon, as if they were a load of malted grain to be alchemized to gin. As his bandy-legged horses clopped up the Shore Road, Prue thought once more of the day her father had died, and of all the times she had made this journey in his company. The familiar houses and wharves looked different beneath the shadow of a life-rending misery. Nicolaas kept leaning toward them, offering hope that although Pearl had not been found, she might yet live; but Prue saw Ben did not believe this.
Isaiah had left word with Abiah asking them to find him at the distillery when they returned. Abiah had been weeping alone in the house all day, and fell onto Prue’s shoulder the moment she saw Pearl’s waterlogged book hanging from her hand. Prue held her to console her but could no longer cry herself.
“You should both continue to rest,” Ben said, brushing his hair back from his brow as if what troubled him were only a headache. “I can go to my brother.”
“No,” Tem said.
Prue echoed her. “We need to see what damage has been done, and set the men repairing it.”
“I’m sure Isaiah has done so already.”
“I need to see it with my own eyes,” Prue said quietly.
He nodded his understanding.
Oh, this is grief, Prue thought as she walked down the lane to the distillery—this soft December afternoon, overcast and mild. She had thought her heart could not bear one more hardship when her mother had died, and again when she’d lost her father; losing the promise of an infant had seemed the greatest imaginable sadness, but losing Susannah had proven how thoroughly she’d misunderstood. This emptiness, in its turn, showed her truly what emptiness was. She knew no better than anyone where the dead resided—and reflected she knew much less well than Will Severn. His faith in Heaven was solid as an old Dutch house, while hers blew in the breeze as if it were the trailing leaves of a willow. But even Prue’s scant knowledge of the Other Side sufficed to show her the dead were dead, their bodies safe in the churchyard and their souls safe who knew where. But who could say where Pearl had gone? Most likely, she had drowned, and would wash up soon in Upper or Lower New York Bay. Until she did, the possibility remained she was alive. Prue felt Pearl’s absence keenly, but could not bring herself to mourn for her until she knew without question what had become of her. This was its own rare grief—to lament her sister so utterly, and yet to hold out to herself the prospect of Pearl’s safe return.
As she reached the bottom of the hill, she saw the distillery with fresh sadness. The whole waterfront was covered with soot, and on the smoldering spots where the rectifying, casking, and storehouses had been, fires were burning, dispatching the blackened debris. Some of the workers wheeled barrows of charred wood to the bonfires, while others used the push brooms from the brewhouse to sweep ash into the river. The press appeared to have melted around its edges and now resembled a badly scarred old anvil; pieces of the rectifying stills had survived unscathed, bolts and screws and bits of twisted pipe. Men were picking through the detritus to find any such remains, trucking them down to the water, washing them, and placing them to dry on planks set out in the mill yard. Isaiah was up on the bridge, talking to C. Mather Harrison and directing two men in sweeping ash from the charred sides of the Brooklyn lever. The soot fell like a curtain of rain.
When Isaiah saw Prue, Ben, and Tem approaching, he gave the men some last instructions and hastened down. Harrison followed a respectful distance behind him. Prue noticed Isaiah had washed and shaved since the morning. Compared to the wreckage over which he was seeking to establish dominion, he appeared the picture of order. Ben drew him close in an embrace.
“Well met,” Isaiah said. After holding his brother a moment, he reached out for Prue and Tem the same.
Harrison removed his hat and stepped forward to shake Ben’s hand. “Mr. and Mrs. Horsfield,” he said, “I cannot tell you how grieved I am for your loss.”
Prue wanted to thank him, but found herself wondering if his professed grief would prevent him from making hay of their misfortune. He himself had always proven trustworthy, but she did not think she could bear to see the words in which his paper’s rival, the New-York Journal, would couch the tale.
“I know I am a mere acquaintance,” he continued, “but I have ever been a great supporter of this bridge, and I am sorry to see it—and you—brought to such a pass. If there is anything I may do—”
“Write nothing of it,” Ben said, no heat in his tone. “Leave us in peace.”
Harrison looked up at the ruined tip of the Brooklyn lever. “But anyone can see the damage to the bridge and the distillery. The Argus would be irresponsible not to print a report.”
“The other papers have sent their men already,” Isaiah offered.
Ben nodded. “Then please write nothing of our sister Pearl.”
“No, Ben,” Tem said. “If he writes a notice, it may well help us find her.”
Ben regarded her crossly, but did not respond. Prue could see how tired he was. “Very well, then, Mr. Harrison. I see there is nothing you can do.”
Harrison put his hat back on and stowed his pencil in his pocket. “You have my word, Mr. Horsfield, I shall not malign you.” Ben nodded his thanks, and Harrison bowed before setting off for the ferry. All three of them watched him go. The rhythmic sweep of the push broom kept slow time.
Isaiah waited until Harrison was well out of earshot before saying, “I have news.”
“What, has she been found?” Tem asked.
“No.”
“I believe no other news would interest me,” she said blandly. She looked over to the nearest bonfire and shook her head. “Have we any idea how much has been lost?”
“I shall take tally once we’re finished cleaning. I’ve already written the underwriters, and shall write both to Philadelphia and to England tomorrow to inquire about the cost of replacing the stills and the press. As for the orders, I have begun to contact our customers, explaining the circumstances and begging their pardon for the delay. I believe they will take pity on us.”
“They can get gin from John Putnam at a lesser cost,” Prue said.
“But of lesser quality, I’m told. And I believe people are larger than that.” He coughed into his handkerchief and pulled it away, smudged black. “But this is not the news of which I spoke. How much money was in the safe yesterday at closing?”
Tem shrugged her shoulders wearily.
“You were the last one out,” Prue told him. “You ought to have counted and locked it.”
He nodded, and the crease appeared between his brows. “Come with me a moment,” he said, and they started toward the countinghouse. He took the open stairs two at a time. As he turned his key in the lock, he said, “I have left all as I found it this morning.”
Even the countinghouse, whose windows had been closed, stank of the fire, and all the surfaces were dulled with a fine dusting of pale ash. The stove had not been lit, and the room felt chilly. Prue thought how strange the place seemed, without a pot of Isaiah’s good coffee burbling in welcome. “I don’t see anything,” Tem said.
Prue, however, did. The door to the safe was ajar, and she crouched down to peer inside. When she saw it empty, her heart flickered with anticipation, though her mind tried to quiet it. “You left the usual hundred dollars in last night?”
“Indeed,” Isaiah answered. “And I assume neither of you came down to empty it.”
Tem was shaking her head as if she’d be pleased to wash her hands of all of them.
Prue was doing her best to remain calm, but she felt she might explode. “It must have been Pearl. She had the key. She would not have taken our money only to jump in the river.”
“Exactly as I think,” Isaiah said, his face as bright as Prue believed her own must be.
“She may yet have fallen in,” Tem said.
“But we should send the riders back out at once,” Ben said. He looked too grubby and exhausted to do anything, but he said, “I’ll run to Joe Loosely’s and see whom else I can find to go,” and set off down the stairs.
Tem went to pour herself a sup of gin. She first wiped the ash from the teacup with her cuff. “Don’t look so pleased,” she said to Prue before taking her drink. “It’s still only a chance.”
“A better one than finding her book in the river,” Prue said. The joy was still fizzing in her breast like champagne. If Pearl had tried to burn down everything Prue owned, she’d had her reasons, had not succeeded, and could yet be forgiven. If she’d taken the distillery’s money, it must have been with the intention to escape, though Prue could not understand why her sister had not taken Will Severn with her, or even told him good-bye. No likeness of Pearl had ever been made, but she could easily be recognized by a stranger provided with her description. Prue thought she would be back among them soon enough. “She’s fine, Tem,” she said, though she knew how little her sister would count this. “I know it.”
Tem offered Prue the empty cup. “You know it,” she repeated, her eyes watering.
“I do,” Prue said. She did not want a drink at all.
Isaiah began moving papers about the desk. “The other question,” he said, looking at his own hands, “is how to proceed until we receive funds from our insurers.” He found the paper he was looking for, moved it to the top, and blew on it to clear it of ash.
“We’ve the money from the mortgage,” Prue said. Tem glanced at her sidelong, and in her own defense she said, “We can use it for the manufactory until we are reimbursed.”
Tem poured herself a second dram. “It seems risky,” she said.
“Not so much in winter as it would be in spring,” Isaiah said. “Ben cannot recommence building before the thaw, and surely the money will come in by then.” Tem drank, and Isaiah went on, “We have rather a dire circumstance on our hands, Temmy. We need three new buildings, a press, three stills, and a few hundred thousand gallons of gin, all simply to be back where we were on Monday.”
“Then perhaps the bridge should wait,” Tem said.
Isaiah said, “No. My brother is deeply indebted to Albany. He cannot abandon it.”
Tem set her cup down and shook her head. “I can’t think of anything, with Pearl missing,” she said. Prue understood, and suspected Isaiah did also. “Perhaps I’ll go help with the cleaning, or see if Mr. Jones can start replacing our lost casks.”
“That would be of great service,” Isaiah said.
“I do suppose it gives me hope, to know about the safe,” she said, and went glumly toward the stairs.
“Are you at all nervous?” Prue asked Isaiah, once her sister was gone. “Right now I wish your house were secure, and you not responsible for any of this.”
“I should be, either way,” he said. “I am tied to this distillery as surely as you, and likewise to the bridge.” He must have sensed her skepticism, for he said, “The chief matter is to find out if Pearl yet lives. Beyond that, I believe we can manage everything.”
Prue nodded to him and said, “I’ll go help Temmy, then. I think it’ll do us both good.”
As she walked down into the mill yard, she imagined how it would feel to find Ben galloping up the road, bearing news that Pearl had been discovered at Jamaica or Croton Point. Then she imagined their young postman bringing similar news in a day or two. Neither fantasy filled the hollowness in her belly, but each provided a measure of relief.
The grounds already appeared more orderly than when she’d arrived. If dusk was descending, she thought, it was probably good news; the day had gone on a long time already, and she would gladly start anew in the morning.
She had no basis nor history for the glimmer of optimism she felt at that moment, but there it was. She did not know if she could trust it, but she felt it rustling to resettle itself within her, exactly as would a baby. She would cherish it the same way, no matter how ill it had ever availed her to do so before.
And as if in sign she had chosen the right course, Mr. Harrison proved as good as his word. His news article the next morning gave the facts of the disaster, but did not deign to speculate about its causes. A separate item told of Pearl’s disappearance, and made an earnest entreaty for her safe return.