31 Bond Street: A Novel by Ellen Horan

Author:Ellen Horan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Physicians, Widows, Trials (Murder), Historical fiction, Mystery & Detective, New York (N.Y.), Legal, Fiction, Historical, New York (N.Y.) - History - 1865-1898, General
ISBN: 9780061773969
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

April 22, 1857

In New York, March turns to April by way of its trees. Apple trees dot Orchard Street, left standing after the Dutch farms fell. St. Mark’s Church is known for its gnarled old pears. Washington Square is rimmed with cherry trees, the tiny petals cover the pavement like pink snow. In spring, new leaves soften the edges of the limestone edifices, and bricks and paving stones seem a part of the earth itself, with moss, sprouts, and worms wedged between the cobblestones. Magnolias bloom in church gardens, and all around the fringes of the city are stretches of wooded riverbank, with coverings of ground pine, wood violets, oak fern, and partridge vine.

Samuel sat on a log in a clearing by the river, scraping the scales off a mackerel. An Indian sat on the opposite log, carving a piece of wood. Samuel watched Katuma, in his dusty blue work pants, whittling away at the tiny piece of willow oak, smoothed into a hollow curl, not much larger than his thumb. Katuma was as tall and broad as Samuel, with skin the color of darkened butter.

There were footsteps from behind, padding along the earth of a beaten path. It was Katuma’s daughter, Quietta, in a gingham skirt with a sleek braid swinging along her back. She carried a pile of vegetables in her apron. When she reached the clearing, she emptied the vegetables into a basket and sat next to her father on the log. “Here, girl,” Katuma said, handing his daughter a carved whistle. “It sounds enough like a bird. Blow it if you see any men riding past the market toward these woods.”

Quietta worked at a fruiterer’s stall at the Greenwich Market on Christopher Street, the westernmost market in Greenwich Village, just blocks from where they sat by the river. She came down to the riverbank in the afternoons, where her father liked to sit and fish. Between the fishing hut and the city street were two acres of brambles and high brush, and the path down to the water passed an old storage shack and a broken-down building, now derelict, which shielded this part of the woods from the street. By day Greenwich Street was busy with horse-drawn lorries and lined with brick fortresses, warehouses that were filled with barrels and crates and burlap sacks—packing houses and manufactories that had swallowed up patches of the old Village. By night, the streets were empty with the workers gone. Down the slope by the river, where Samuel slept each night in the hut, the sky was large and filled with stars.

Quietta took off her shoes, padded in and out of the hut, and got some kindling for the fire. Tall trees enclosed the clearing, and the warm sunlight from the late afternoon filtered down in columns. The aspen leaves shook softly. There was a shuffling sound as soft as the wind in the leaves. A boy appeared at the clearing, coming down the path even more quietly than Quietta.

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