The clerk stared at him, as if trying to make some determination. Caleum looked straight ahead, reached into his purse, and retrieved two gold pieces, which he slid across the counter. When he saw them the man seemed to decide quickly and stood to show the new visitor to a room.
As he clambered up the stairs, Caleum was filled by a small burst of rage each time he lifted his stump upward. What point did any of it serve? he asked himself, in this mood. Although it was being claimed that Saratoga had changed the momentum of the war, he could only curse the master of the dead that so much toil and suffering should gain so little — other than the fulfillment of its own form. This much blood shall be let and this much death meted out, because these are the terms.
When they reached his room, the clerk put his trunk down and asked whether he required anything else for his comfort. He did. He asked the man who the best carpenter in the city was and how one might find him.
“Jacob Miles,” the clerk answered, without hesitation. “He is a shipwright by trade, but there’s been little building since the British occupied the city.”
“Send around for him first thing tomorrow,” Caleum instructed.
The man lit a lantern for his new guest, nodded, and withdrew, leaving him alone in his rented chamber. Caleum stood looking at himself in the glass over the washbasin after the clerk left, and could see plainly how much his bearded face showed the strain of the last several years. He had also lost weight during his time in hospital and found that he barely recognized himself. He was grown old, and looked what seemed to him to be half possessed in the lantern light.
He washed the dust of travel from his body in the basin, put on a clean shirt, and donned his fraying greatcoat, before leaving to go find dinner. As he made his way through the streets of the town, he was still not completely used to moving himself with his arms instead of his legs and sometimes took too ambitious a piece of ground with the crutches. He had to pause then, as if before a jump, to make certain he ended up even with his arms again and not on his backside. He propelled himself down Broadway in this fashion until he came to an inn emitting a glow that seemed to him warmer than the others on the street, and so chose to venture inside.
The room was filled with the sound of men laughing and the smell of pipe smoke, both of which he found welcoming and familiar, and he was shown to a table near a latticed window facing outside. He ordered pot roast from the menu and sat looking out on the streets of the island as he ate. It was the first satisfying meal he could remember in many months, and when he finished he was one of only a few customers remaining. Still, he was not yet ready to go and wished for the first time in his life that he smoked a pipe, so he might sit in that room a while longer, looking out on the city. However, without an excuse to linger, he paid his bill, stopping on his way out to tell the owner, a smallish Negro in a gray waistcoat, how much he had enjoyed his dinner.
“Well, you must join us again, sir,” the man replied cordially. “I will save a place for you.”
“Thank you,” Caleum said, smiling and content with the hospitality that had been extended to him. “I might do just that.” He walked back into the cold air and made his way slowly up Pearl to his hotel.
He slept well that night for the first time since his surgery and was embarrassed to be found still asleep when one of the hotel staff knocked on his door the next morning.
“Mr. Merian, Mr. Miles is here to see you,” the man announced, when Caleum at last opened the door.
He struggled to recognize the name, but then remembered his conversation from the previous evening and informed the attendant that he would be downstairs presently. He dressed quickly and took up his crutches to go meet the carpenter.
When he went downstairs, the proprietor of the hotel directed him to a room he had provided for their meeting. By the time he entered the buoyancy of the previous evening had left him entirely, and he sat down very gloomily.
“How long have you been at your craft, sir?” he asked Mr. Miles first off, wanting to know to whom he was entrusting himself but also simply to master the man and let him know what type of service he intended to have.
“Twenty years, sir,” Mr. Miles answered, although he looked to be the same age as Caleum.
“And where did you learn your trade?”
“Here in New Amsterdam. I started first as apprentice to a ship’s joiner.”
“Have you ever crafted a human leg before?” Caleum asked him, getting to the point.
“I daresay I have,” the carpenter answered. “It’s not so uncommon as you would think. I’ll only need your measurements.”
“I didn’t ask how common it was but how often you had done it.”
“Please, sir, your measurement.”
Something in the man’s voice was reassuring to Caleum and he stood up, allowing Mr. Miles to take his measure with a length of cord he took from his pocket and marked expertly with a piece of charcoal.
“What sort of wood would you like it to be crafted of?” he asked when he finished.
“What is the best and strongest you have?’ Caleum demanded.
“For strength, it is probably lignum vitae. To my mind it is harder than iron. If you don’t mind me saying, though, it’s very dear, sir.”
“Are you paying from your purse?” Caleum asked, before giving the man a gold piece weightier than any Mr. Miles had held before. “Will that be enough?”
The carpenter nodded like a mandarin. “You’ll be very pleased, sir.”
“I’ll be all the more pleased the better it fits and the sooner I have it.”
“For fit I can promise you will be satisfied. For the time it takes, sir, I make no promise, it being a leg, after all, and more art than handiwork. I will let you know as soon as it is done.”
Upon hearing that the man could not give him an estimate of how long he would have to wait, Caleum grew more irate but tried his best not to be rough with him.
“You’ll do your best, I’m sure of it,” was all he said.
“Yes, sir,” Miles answered, feeling pity for his customer. “Nothing leaves my workshop, Mr. Merian, before it reaches the highest standards.”
“Which standards are those?”
“My own, sir.”
“Good day, Mr. Miles.”
“Good day, Mr. Merian.”
The carpenter left, and soon after a lad of twelve appeared. “My father wishes to know, would you care for something to eat?” the boy asked.
It was nearing noon, and Caleum had not eaten since the night before but had little appetite. “Just a bowl of porridge,” he answered.
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied crisply, running off to tell the kitchen. He returned a short time later in a great rush, and Caleum was amazed at the gracefulness with which he managed to lay the table before withdrawing.
When he was finally left alone, Caleum ate his meal faster than was his custom, wanting to get out into the fresh air before he lost too much more of the day. He finished, put his spoon down on the tray, took up his crutches, and set out on a path of no particular choosing into the city.
After maneuvering his way first through a group of businessmen, then a brace of soldiers, he found himself on a wide bustling street, which was crowded with gentlemen leaving their offices for the midday meal. He moved himself against the onslaught of people and continued on to the foot of the street, where he came to the market, which was on the waterfront and guarded by its own cannon. Along the pier he paused and looked out over the East River to Long Island, staring down to the farthest visible reaches of its shore.