New York City, September 29, 1842
To George Robert Christie,
my grandfather, grandson of a Shetland crofter, who took the time to record our family's stories
And to Tom, who never let me give up
Iam apprentice to smithy Peter O'Reilly, first cousin of Billy Tweed, who happens to be the only person I know in the City of New York who was actually born here. Billy found me five months before, wandering lost and confused, when I first stumbled off the ship from Liverpool. The O'Reilly Forge shoes horses for the city's high and mighty, and I wouldn't have the work if it wasn't for Billy. Its low ceiling and soot-coated walls on Eighth Street and Broad Way are near Washington Square, where I often wander at dusk, damp grass at me toes, trying not to forget the stark, windblown hills of me island home.
Back in me homeland I'm wanted for one crime I committed and one I did not, so having the chance to learn the blacksmith trade is beyond me wildest dreams. I'm fourteen now, but still remember the day years ago when Andrew Johnson first noticed me eyeing his forge back home. I was too small to reach the anvil, so he gave me a stool. Then he handed me the smooth iron hammer.
"Give 'er a good swing now, lad!" He chuckled, cradling me wee hand in his massive, calloused paw. Together we struck the glowing rod, still soft from the orange coals of the forge. And when he dropped the newly flattened piece into a bucket of water, I screamed with delight as warm steam hissed wildly into the air.
The steam was still rising when me Daa walked in.
"Robertsons are no smithies!" he said, grabbing me with both hands. His fingernails digging deep into the pits of me arms. And then he dragged me, red-faced, out the door.
Here in New York, me Daa couldn't be farther away. And instead of fishing for cod in wee boats on treacherous seas, beholden to merchant Wallace Marwick, who owns our croft, I spend me days on firm ground. Make a fair wage. Answer to no one.
Or so I thought.
"Ah, Chris Roberts," Billy Tweed said, using the name I gave meself when I first arrived in America. Billy thinks I'm from Ireland, near Belfast, and I haven't said otherwise.
Billy likes to surprise you, coming up from behind. And whenever he appears at the forge, everyone stops talking. Even Peter O'Reilly himself.
"My cousin tells me you're a hard worker," he said, peering over me shoulder. He can't be more than twenty himself, but he speaks like he's forty.
"Thank you." I smiled, pleased at the recognition, striking extra hard a strip of red-hot iron on the anvil.
"And you're enjoying your room on Pearl Street?"
I hesitated, thinking of the endless shouting through the thin walls. The rats on the floor, the gunshots from the street. "Aye, Billy. I'm grateful for a place to rest me head."
"Well," he continued, circling round me as he spoke, glancing at the other men busying themselves to our left and right, taking in every detail, like a schoolmaster surveying his pupils. "It's clear you've added some meat to your bones since the day we met. Earning wages enough to feed you, I see?"
"Aye, it's true, Billy," I said. "It's the first time in years I've had the chance for more than one meal a day. They say I've grown three inches in the last month!"
He was standing beside me when I felt the cool metal of the coin slip down the leg of me breeks and clink to the floor. In fact, had I repaired the tear in me pocket when I'd meant to, it might never have happened. But when I stooped to pick it up, Billy's spry fingers got there first.
When he saw the coin, it was as if everything ended and everything began, all at the same time.
"What's this?" he asked.
I tried to grab the coin from his open palm, but his fingers clamped down like a vise.
"I know Peter's been paying you," he said with a smirk. "But not in Pine Tree Shillings."
Peter whistled from across the forge. "Haven't seen one of those in years. Where'd you get that, boy?"
I glanced at Peter and then back at Billy. "A friend."
"Did you hear that, Peter O'Reilly?" Billy laughed. His brawny, six-foot frame towered above me. "He says he got it from a friend!"
Peter chuckled and me face grew hot. For a moment I thought of grabbing Billy around the neck till he let it drop, but even I knew his reputation for a mean left jab.
"So, in other words," Billy said, loud enough for all the men of the forge to hear over the pounding hammers and wheezing gush of bellows, "you stole it!" And as he spoke everyone, as if on command, roared with laughter.
"No!" I shouted. I'd been called a thief before, and it wasn't going to happen again.
"Ah, come now," Billy said, nearly knocking me over with a slap on the back. "Why do you think I like you so much? Peter O'Reilly or any of these boys can tell you fast fingers lead to great things here in the City of New York."
"Aye," I said, looking nervously about me, "a badge of honor to the rest of you, perhaps. Now, may I please have me coin back?"
The piece was worthless-Reverend Sill had said as much-so it couldn't mean anything to him.
As I pleaded, Billy held it above me in his palm, just out of reach.
"The man I got it from," I explained, careful with me words, "the man who had it before me-he was from New York."
"Was he now?" Billy murmured. He rubbed his finger over the coin's surface-a surface I had examined so closely for so many months I could have etched its twin in the dark. "And did this coin-owning man have a name? Or was it perhaps a buxom young lass from the backstreets of Belfast?"
The men roared with laughter once again, and Billy beckoned them closer so they could have a look.
"Livingston," I blurted. "Sam Livingston."
And the moment I said the name, Billy's eyes flashed.
"You know him!" I gasped, me heart beginning to race. Could it be, he was still alive?
"Hmm," Billy said, a smile tugging at his lips. "Now there's a name I haven't heard in years."
I wondered how a lad as young as Billy knew a man as old as Sam, who, should he even still be alive, would be well into his eighties. "Could you tell me where I'd find him, then?" I asked, lowering me voice. "I've been asking for weeks. No one seems to know the name."
He paused a moment. His broad chest filled his vest and jacket, and he looked me up and down with those deep-set eyes. And then a smile stretched across his well-fed cheeks. They say Billy Tweed studied bookkeeping and I know it's true. As he speaks, it's as if he's adding, subtracting, and balancing all that surrounds him.
"Perhaps."
He dangled his words before me, brushing his calloused knuckles across his chin. "'Course, I'm a busy man. And this sort of information is hard to come by…"
Man? Hah! He was as tall as anyone I'd met in America, but even me brother, John, looked older.
"I'll do whatever it takes," I said, without hesitation. Like a fool. "You've done so much for me. I'd be happy for the chance to repay you." As I spoke I thought I heard Peter O'Reilly gasp. But I could tell Billy was pleased.
"Is that so?" Billy asked.
Then me throat suddenly tightened as his shrewd eyes locked onto mine. "'Course, I'd need to know why you're interested," he said, pocketing me coin as he turned to the door. "And then, of course, what you'd be prepared to do for an introduction."
I swallowed hard, me leather apron hot to the touch from the blood-orange coals beside me. Everyone in New York, it seemed, was escaping his past, and I was no exception. Me real name is Christopher Robertson. I am a Shetlander. And the true story of Sam Livingston and that coin was something Billy Tweed, of all people, could never know.