‘The titan Washington is gone, and lesser men are scrambling for power!’ a barkeep at Fraunces Tavern declared. ‘The age of heroes is over, the present is corrupt, and the future promises disaster!’
‘Things are normal then,’ I toasted. ‘To democracy!’
Every candidate had been tarred. Jefferson was accused of shirking military duty during the Revolution and of being a Jacobin and atheist. Incumbent John Adams was portrayed as incompetent, power-mad, and a secret ally of the perfidious British. Burr was a tin-pot Napoleon. In other words, it was little different than the sniping and backstabbing one heard in the salons of Paris, and I discounted all of it, given what lies have been told about even earnest and likable types like me. There were tales of a Federalist plot to assassinate Jefferson, arm the slaves, or seize the arsenals. Some feared civil war! Yet none of the Americans thought the undignified tumult warranted a king. The ones I drank with were as proud of democracy’s chaos as gulls playing the winds of a tempest.
‘Our congressmen will have our say, by God!’ the barflies declared. ‘They are rogues every one, but they are our rogues.’
‘Speaking as an expert on roguery, America has an above-average set,’ I seconded.
I found myself a minor Republican celebrity. Jefferson liked the French, and my peacemaking in Paris had made me the ‘hero of Mortefontaine.’ The naval war with France had sent insurance rates on a vessel as high as forty percent of the value of ship and cargo, and word of permanent peace had been received with celebration. Somehow the tale of my fireworks escape had preceded me across the Atlantic, and I was agreeably toasted as having held aloft the ‘torch of liberty.’ Someone even suggested it would make a model for a good statue, though of course nothing ever came of that idea.
I was determined to enjoy my moment of renown, since reputations turn soon enough. Being a celebrity, however, buys you little more than supper, often with dull company who expect the famed to provide the entertainment. I found my supply of silver dollars dwindling and had to take to the gaming tables to staunch the leak.
My modest fame did provide the chance for liaisons with American merchant daughters curious to know how diplomacy was waged in storied France, lessons I was happy to take to their bed. I taught them to cry ‘Mon dieu!’ at full gallop, the hypnotic bounce of their breasts providing ample testimony to the healthy diet of meat and cream in the New World. French girls, while prettier, tend towards the bony.
Magnus was disinclined to join me. ‘I told you, I had a love and lost her. I don’t want to dishonor her memory or suffer the pain of lost love again.’ The man was a monk, and just as tiresome.
‘This isn’t love, it’s exercise.’
‘Signe’s memory is enough for me.’
‘You’ll dry up!’
‘You exercise, with all the risks that go with it, and I’ll explore the map shops.’ Magnus, impatient to be going despite the inclement season, prowled New York in his cloak and broad slouch hat, looking for Freemason symbolism, Viking relics, and Indian legends. The amount of nonsense he received was directly proportional to the amount he was willing to spend for ale on those he interviewed.
I left him to it, scouting instead the holy ground the whores occupied adjacent to Saint Paul’s Chapel. But when I’d come in at three hours after midnight I’d catch Magnus reading the tomes he’d collected from the fourteen bookstores on Maiden Lane and Pearl Street, lips moving to the non-native English like a bull practicing Thucydides. He collected piles of speculative literature on the biblical origins of Indians, Masonic conspiracies, and odd pamphlets like William Cobbet’s contention that the new century started in 1800, not 1801, a theory that had set off impressive brawls near the Battery.
‘I admire your fidelity, I really do,’ I told him. ‘I resolve to copy you, eventually. But there’s more to life than a mission, Magnus.’
‘And more to life than the moment.’ He put down a book on the lost tribes of Israel. ‘Ethan, I know you have a reputation as a Franklin man and a savant, but I must say you haven’t shown why. You’ve been sceptical, tardy, procrastinating, and shallow ever since I met you, and I don’t quite understand why you’re famous at all. You don’t take our quest entirely seriously.’
I pointed skyward. ‘There’s just not much thunder and lightning in winter for us electricians. And my international diplomacy with the new president has to wait until they pick one. Why not enjoy a respite?’
‘Because we could be preparing for the test. Life is for accomplishment. If your nation was still in thrall to another, you’d understand that.’
‘I’m not so sure. The accomplishers I’ve met seem as likely to leave behind a heap of bodies, crackpot ideas, and financial ruin. Look at the French Revolution. Every time they accomplish something they’re dissatisfied with it and want to accomplish the opposite. My philosophy is to wait until the world makes up its mind.’
‘Then let’s wait in Washington, not this commercial Babylon of gossip and greed. The longer we linger in New York, the more chance our enemies have to catch up to us.’
‘I took care of our enemies in Mortefontaine, and Denmark is an ocean away! Relax, Magnus, we’re in America. And the farther west we go, the safer we’ll be.’
Still, his criticism of my procrastination rankled, and once more I vowed to reform myself. ‘Waste not life,’ Franklin had counselled. ‘In the grave will be sleeping enough.’ So I seduced a widow with hips and hair to hang onto like a frisky mare, shattered rum bottles in target practice with my longrifle, tried to teach French to dullard merchants’ sons at the Redhook Inn in return for their buying the rounds of drink, and worked with a Yankee mechanic on a turntable mechanism for a New World version of roulette. ‘Own the wheel, don’t play it,’ I advised him.
I also tried the New York lottery, making a chain necklace of my losing tickets.
This recess from reality was interrupted one day by a visit from an old employer, the maniacally ambitious Johann Jakob Astor. This German immigrant, who began as a musical instrument salesman but turned to furs, had earned far more in commerce than I’d ever even tossed away in treasure hunting. (A telling lesson, should I ever become industrious.) Astor had the drive of a dozen men, a wife who combined her blood ties to old Dutch families with a keen eye for fur, a fine new brick house on Dock Street, and the inability to enjoy anything but his ledger totals, given that he coupled his love of money with the parsimony of a preacher. When he found me at a tavern, I was the one who had to pay for the wine.
‘Gage, I didn’t think a gamesman like you would live to see thirty, yet here you are as diplomat and envoy,’ he greeted. ‘It makes one wonder if biblical miracles could indeed be true.’
‘I hear you’re doing well too, John,’ I said, feeling as usual somewhat defensive about my lack of progress. His coat was finest wool, his waistcoat was brocaded green silk, and the knob on his cane looked to be gold.