Page 37 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

The prisoner being brought to the bar to receive his sentence, the Recorder, in the presence of a large number of people, addressed him in the following words: RICHARD D. CROUCHER, you have been convicted, after a full impartial trial, of an offense of the most detestable nature. . . .

—From the trial of Richard D. Croucher for the rape of Margaret Miller

New York City

July 8, 1800

“May it please the court, I have no complaint to make of Your Honors or the jury—I have no doubt I deserve punishment for my conduct—but I swear, the girl’s words are all lies!”

Richard Croucher wasn’t elegant now. Hope could just see from the back of the crowded, sweltering courtroom as he made a break from the dock, his cravat askew, his hair coming out of its queue. His lawyer grabbed him by the arm before he could fling himself at the bench.

Margaret Miller cried out, shrinking back. Hope would have fought her way to her—she still felt responsible; this girl had been injured in a room just upstairs from her while Hope, unwitting, had stewed over Levi Weeks below—but Mr. Colden stepped in front of Margaret, shielding her with his body.

“I never knew her!”

Thwarted, Croucher pointed a finger at Margaret Miller, his whole body shaking with fear and fury. “I never had any connection with that girl!”

Mr. Harison rose from the bench, his face as stony as the cliffs above New Cornwall. “It is too late now to make protestations of this sort. Your declaration, sir, is contradicted by your own repeated confessions.”

Croucher glared at Colden, at Margaret Miller, at the jury. “They’ve twisted my words—it’s lies!”

Harison raised his voice, drowning out the prisoner’s angry cries. “A jury of this country have pronounced you guilty. In several other countries a conviction of this kind would be followed by an ignominious death, but the humanity of the modern code, of this country, has instead determined that you be confined in the state prison for life. The court think themselves bound to add that it be to hard labor. You may count yourself fortunate.”

When Mr. Harison said Mr. Croucher might count himself fortunate, everyone in the room knew it wasn’t just Croucher’s avoiding execution for the rape of Margaret Miller he was talking about.

Mr. Colden had said it out loud. A trial for murder which lately took place in this city. A trial which might have tried the wrong man.

Maybe it was for the best, Hope told herself doubtfully. Maybe Mr. Croucher would suffer more with his skin cracked and calloused, in sweat-soaked homespun that chafed his skin to sores, and lice crawling through his dirt-encrusted hair, than he would with a swift and merciful death at the end of a rope.

They couldn’t prove he had killed Elma.

“Constables, take him away and see him conveyed to the state prison.”

Hope watched Croucher herded from the room, pinioned between two constables. It was justice of sorts, even if not the justice they’d wanted. At least Margaret Miller had got to see her assailant punished.

It was better, Hope thought, than having a warm posset and pretending it never happened, as Caty had recommended.

Outside, the weather had turned. The day that had begun fair had turned uncomfortably sultry. Men of business hurrying their way down Broadway turned doubtful looks to the sky, which had developed the haze that heralded a summer storm. Hope’s linen shift stuck clammily to her skin. A good storm would wash away the summer stench and the corruption in the streets. But summer rains also brought with them mud—and the fever.

Hope hastened her pace as the leaves of the enormous tree outside the Verplanck mansion began to shake ominously in the rising wind. She wasn’t the only one; all around her, carters were urging on their mules and women with shopping baskets on their arms hurried their steps.

In the house, a fire burned in the hearth despite the heat, rendering the kitchen unbearable. Hope found Caty in the garden, resolutely weeding a row of peas, although her gown was patched with sweat and her hair hung limp beneath her cap. In the corner of the garden, by the fence, Rachel was helping little Eliza pick the first of the gooseberries, showing her how to squeeze them for ripeness and trying to get her to put them in the basket instead of her mouth.

Hope stumbled to a stop just beside her sister. The walls of the Watkins house and the Forrest house seemed to press against her, making the tiny garden feel even smaller than usual. The swollen clouds turned the sky an unpleasant orange and gray. The air was thick with smoke and the refuse of a thousand households.

Caty didn’t look up from her weeding. “I won’t ask where thee have been.”

“I was at the courthouse.”

As Caty well knew. Hope had told her at breakfast where she meant to be. “They convicted him. Mr. Croucher. Mr. Colden had him convicted for the rape of Margaret Miller.”

“Not in front of the children!”

Caty cast a quick look at her daughters. “I don’t see why thee had to go.”

Hope lowered her voice, so her nieces wouldn’t hear, although she suspected Rachel knew already. Rachel saw more than Caty imagined. “It happened just upstairs from me. If I had heard anything earlier that night, I might have stopped it.”

It was more than that. “If we hadn’t been so set against Levi—”

“Are thee going to stand there gossiping all day? There’s work to be done. If thy hands be idle, thee can take the berries in to boil.”

“The jury didn’t debate more than a minute. They knew Mr. Croucher for what he is.”

Unlike Hope and Caty and Elias. “He’s to be sent to prison for the rest of his life.”

Caty yanked at a weed, shaking dirt from the stem. “It’s nice there’s justice for some.”

“For Elma too.”

Caty straightened painfully, pressing her hands against the small of her back. “If there were justice for Elma, Levi would be in the graveyard and not in Massachusetts.”

“If thee had been in court today, Caty—”

Watching Richard Croucher in the courtroom, without his silks and brocades, was like peeling back the skin of a fine red apple to see the rot and worms within; he had stunk of corruption. In the witness stand he’d been bold; in the dock, he was a craven, crawling thing. “He’s the very devil beneath that finery. Thee would have known, from his countenance alone.”

Caty snorted. “What can one tell from a countenance? Levi’s was pleasing enough, and look what was beneath it! There’s no denying Mr. Croucher is an unpleasant man—”

“Unpleasant?”

He’d raped a girl in their house and threatened to kill her if she told. Hope had seen her bruises.

“—and thee knows I didn’t want Elias to go into business with Mr. Croucher and I never thought he was of good character, but that’s nothing to what Levi did to us. If thee needs look for a devil, thee need look no farther than Levi.”

Caty folded her arms across her chest, daring Hope to contradict her.

Hope set her chin, feeling her temper rising. “Doesn’t it seem strange to thee to think we harbored two devils beneath this roof?”

“Our father wouldn’t wonder at it. Thee knows he thinks the world is thick with sinners, and nowhere more than here. Except perhaps Philadelphia,”

Caty added after a moment.

Hope wasn’t going to be lured into a discussion of their father’s grudge against Philadelphia. “Thee cannot expunge what happened by blaming Levi,”

she said, in a hard, low voice.

Caty set down her spade. “Does thee think I don’t blame myself?”

“Yes, but for the wrong things!”

Over and over again, Caty lamented how she’d been bamboozled by Levi, how she had been fooled by his charm, how she ought never have let him court Elma, should never have let Elma leave with him that night . . . conveniently ignoring what the whole city knew, that her own husband had debauched Elma and then conspired with the man who might have been Elma’s killer to hide his shame.

They might never know what happened to Elma that night, but they knew what had happened to Margaret Miller, here, in this house.

How did Caty not see?

The humidity and the heat and the tension made Hope feel like she was about to burst out of her own skin. She needed to get away from this house, from Elias skulking in corners, half-ashamed, half-defiant; from Caty, working like a fury so she’d never have to stop and think; from the ghosts of Elma and Levi, which stalked Hope through the corridors of the sprawling, unhappy house. They were living a half-life, all of them, in this mockery of a garden in which only the hardiest plants survived.

At home, her mother’s garden would be bursting with young lettuce and woolly sage leaves, bean vines twined around staves, the exuberant tops of carrots pushing up through the earth. In the woods, the wild raspberries would have turned from fuzz to orange buds, working their way to ripening.

Hope looked at her sister. “I’m going home to Cornwall.”

“In August, when the fever season starts,”

Caty agreed, seizing on the change of subject with relief. “Thee can take the children for me.”

“Not just for the fever season, Caty.”

The city had too many memories, some of them good, too many of them tainted. “Thee could come with me, with the children.”

“Thee knows what happened last time I left.”

There was no mistaking the bitterness in Caty’s voice, although she quickly put it aside again. “Elias needs me here, to help him manage.”

“Close the boardinghouse,”

said Hope recklessly. “Why stay here after what happened? It’s enough, Caty. Let’s go home.”

“What would we do in Cornwall, to earn our keep? We’d only be more mouths to feed.”

Caty tried futilely to brush the dirt from her hands. “Thee weren’t to know. Mother didn’t want to alarm thee, but Father—it’s only right he has no time to spare for worldly things. It’s not the house—we still have the house—but the rest of it, the land and the farms and the rents, he’s had to deed them away to pay his debts.”

“All of it?”

Their grandfather had left their father a wealthy man.

“Before he left for England.”

Caty was wringing her hands in her agitation. “Mother does her best—but it would be hard on her if we all came home.”

Last summer, Hope had been distracted daydreaming about the handsome carpenter back in Greenwich Street. Home was home, as familiar and comfortable as a pair of well-worn shoes. If the oatmeal had been thinner or the stew more vegetable than meat, she hadn’t noticed. There was a great deal Hope hadn’t noticed. Hope vowed to herself that she wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

“She should have told me! Thee both should have told me! I have hands and a will!”

Hope was sick of people protecting her, of all the well-meaning lies. Or not-so-well-meaning lies. “All the more reason to go back! Thee know I’m not afraid of work.”

“Would thee trim hats for the women of New Cornwall?”

Caty grimaced at her, looking almost like her old self, the sister Hope remembered before Elias.

“We could run a boardinghouse,”

Hope suggested. “The old house is large enough.”

“Who would come to Cornwall?”

“All the folks fleeing the fever.”

As she said it, Hope could see the possibilities in it. “We could run a boardinghouse by summer and trim hats by winter. I’ve never seen thee fail at anything thee put thy mind to. And think of the children! Think how happy they are there.”

Hope saw Caty glance over her shoulder at the girls, and knew she was winning. “Leave Elias here in the city; let him manage however he likes.”

That had been a mistake. Caty’s face closed. She shook her head. “My place is here. If thee truly wish to go, I’ll send thee with my blessing. And I’ll send the children to thee in August.”

Hope grasped her sister’s hands, dirt and all. “Come thyself.”

“Perhaps.”

Hope knew that meant no. Caty clung to Hope in a quick, fierce hug. “I’ll come when I can. Will thee—will thee tell Aunt Lizzy I’m sorry? For not taking better care. Of Elma.”

“She knows.”

It wasn’t just Caty’s fault; it was all of them. Hope blamed herself as well. “But I’ll tell her all the same.”

“Thee aren’t leaving us?”

Rachel’s small, anxious face looked up at her, too old for her age.

“If thee would only wait another month . . .”

Caty suggested.

The wind had turned, bringing with it the reek of the glue manufactory, boiling down hides and bones to be sent to the cabinetmakers and printers, transforming dying animals hauled to the outer edges of the city into elegant tables and learned tomes to adorn the brick houses on Broadway. Beautiful, yes, but Hope knew too much now about what went into them to admire them as she used to.

Elma had died not far from the glue manufactory, her life boiled down into so much ink for the papers.

They’d had such dreams, Hope and Elma, of what their lives in the city would be, how grand they’d become, how sophisticated. Hope could feel Elma beside her, there, in the narrow garden, leaning close to whisper, When I am married, you will come to me and wear silk and eat iced cakes.

As soon as Hope got home, after she embraced her mother and Aunt Lizzy, she would go out into the meadow and weave a crown of summer flowers, of scarlet paintbrush and fireweed, of queen of the prairie and Turk’s-cap, a chaplet for Elma.

That was how she would remember Elma. Not broken on a wooden settle, not flattened into a scandalmonger’s morality tale, but with her head ablaze with wildflowers, crowned by her own hands.

“I’m not leaving thee,”

said Hope firmly, leaning over to kiss her niece’s head. “Only going ahead a little while. I’ll be waiting for thee in Cornwall.”