Melissa and Tandy—who was leading the tours that day—were told about the discovery but sworn to secrecy. While Joe waited for Leslie, he found himself drawn to the main dining room, where Tandy was giving her speech to a group of college students from Columbia University.
“Imagine a very different place,” she began. “When the story of New York first began, the action was here, downtown. Times Square was a distant and savage land where the Algonquin-speaking natives still reigned. New York was first taken by the Dutch. The Dutch West India Company established a fur-trading post here in 1625. Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch colonial governor, was a tyrant. He closed the taverns at nine, for God’s sake. When the English came in 1664, they easily ousted the Dutch without a fight and renamed the city—which had been called New Amsterdam—New York, after James, Duke of York, and brother of Charles II. We stand near the Five Points area of the Sixth Ward—the area roughly bounded now by Broadway, Canal Street, the Bowery and Park Row. Disease and death were a hallmark of the poorer, more densely populated areas. People used ponds and waterways to dump refuse and sewage. And with poverty came violence and finally rebellion.
“This city is one of the places where liberty began, where battles were fought and riots surged. When you walk out the door, you’ll see the vital, high-stakes city of today. But I hope that by the time you leave Hastings House, you’ll also have a better understanding of the city beneath and all the sins buried by time.”
The city beneath.
Buried sins.
The words haunted Joe. How many people disappeared, simply vanished, as if they’d never been? The rivers were too iffy—sometimes bodies escaped whatever weights held them down and bobbed to the surface, and New York City wasn’t an easy place to dig holes where they wouldn’t be seen.
The city beneath.
But where to begin looking?
Leslie was grateful that her job allowed access to areas of the library where most people couldn’t go, and that the records regarding Hastings House were in good order.
She waded through a lot of information on the many roles the house had played during the years, having been a school and an office building, among other things. So many facades and changes had been added over the years that the building’s true contours had almost been forgotten. Only the threat of demolition ten years earlier had brought the true persona of the place to light. Additions, later ornamentation and other changes had been painstakingly researched and removed and the historic gem been brought back.
At last she reached the early history of the house. Built by a sea captain in the late 1700s, it had been left to his niece, Elizabeth, at his death.
Her heart quickened; she had never expected it to be this easy.
Elizabeth had married a merchant, Jacob Martin. Martin had remarried in 1803. The parish register commented that Elizabeth Martin, age twenty-one, was presumed dead. But there was also a notation left in the register by a priest who had not wanted to assume the task of remarrying Mr. Martin. “Jacob claimed earlier that his wife deserted him and their babe for Gordon Black, a sailor who often came to port but has not appeared since. In his haste to remarry, he has convinced the elders that Elizabeth must have perished on the journey, else she would have returned to take their babe, young Sarah. I fear that for a man to be so certain of his wife’s death, he may have been witness to it. He appears, however, to be a pillar of our dear parish, and it is she, Elizabeth, who is scorned, dead or alive, by the men of character around us.”
“Poor Elizabeth,” she whispered, shaking her head sadly. She paused a minute, feeling as if her heart had suddenly become very heavy. Matt, were you with me? Did you try to tell me first? I can see Elizabeth, talk to her. Why can’t I see you, talk to you?
“All right,” she murmured aloud. “You wanted me to help Elizabeth, and I swear I’ll do my best. Please, though…let me help you. And myself.”
She shut up. She was alone and talking to herself. Time to get back to work.
She’d had access to all these records earlier. But at the time she’d been looking for old delft plates, silver…other treasures left behind.
She went still suddenly. She was in a private section of the library; she was alone. But she’d had the feeling of being watched. A creeping sensation teased the back of her neck. She looked up. It was the way she had felt in the crypt the other night. Not at all as if she were being stalked by a ghostly presence.