Back Bay (12 page)

September 1814

H
orace Taylor Pratt’s carriage pulled slowly away from his house on Pemberton Hill and headed down Court Street. It was midnight. Except for the saloons and taverns still throbbing with life, the city was still. An early autumn chilled the air. A layer of clouds swallowed the moon and promised rain before morning.

From her bedroom window, Abigail Pratt Bentley watched the carriage swing through a pool of light beneath a street lamp and turn south onto Tremont Street. For three nights, her father, her nephew, and Wilson, the family’s footman, had been leaving the house—an hour later each night—and not returning until daybreak. Each morning, her father had become more nervous and irascible.

When she asked him the nature of his nocturnal travels, he told her that he and the boy were fishing the night tides. She laughed and asked him playfully if a one-armed man could bait a hook. He left the room without answering.

She sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if she should follow the carriage. Unlike most young Boston women, she rode well and kept a horse for her weekend gallops into the countryside. She could easily trail the carriage and find out where they were going. She knew that her father was unpredictable, and he had become increasingly volatile as the war quickened his advance into old age. Now that she was mistress of his house, it was her duty to know that he was not endangering his grandson or himself.

She removed her robe and began to dress. Her body was lithe and athletic, with firm, muscular legs and breasts that turned up petulantly, like pouting children. She was proud of her body. Most women of her age and class had already begun to slide away from youth. They ate too much, bore too many children, and never exercised, a practice considered most unladylike. Or they ate too
little and spent their day playing the spinet while waiting for their husbands to come home. Abigail Pratt Bentley had waited for one husband who went to sea. She would not wait for another, and she would not see her body grow old before its time.

A knock at the door. Abigail wrapped her robe around herself once more. “Yes?”

The door opened and a dark-haired apparition in a white nightgown appeared at the threshold. Franconia Hampshire Pratt was tall, slender, and impossibly frail, with the frightened eyes of a deer venturing too close to man.

“Abigail, are you awake?” Franconia spoke to the bed.

“Yes, Franconia,” said Abigail gently.

Franconia was startled to hear the voice coming from the shadows. She jumped back.

“Relax, dear,” said Abigail. “What’s troubling you?”

Franconia took a tentative step. She was the widow of Horace Pratt II. “It’s young Horace. He’s gone. And so is Father. I’m terribly worried.”

Abigail smiled. “Go back to sleep, Franconia. They’ve gone fishing on the night tide.”

“Fishing?” Franconia sat on the edge of Abigail’s canopied bed and stared into space. “Then it’s true.”

“What’s true?”

“What Father says about the war. It’s ruined us. We can’t even afford to buy food. Our men must sneak off at night to bring home what we eat.”

Abigail sat next to Franconia and put an arm around her shoulder. “Father pampers young Horace terribly, dear. When the boy said he wanted to fish at night, away they went. I assure you, we’re not starving.”

“And we’ll have food on the table if they don’t go fishing?”

“Yes, dear.”

Franconia smiled. Almost as an afterthought, she became angry. “Well, I wish Father would tell me these things. He acts sometimes as though young Horace were his son and I a dotty old aunt interfering in the boy’s upbringing. I am his mother, and I should know when he’s going off fishing at midnight.”

“I agree. We shall have a long talk with both of them in the morning.” Whenever Franconia was upset, Abigail promised a long talk in the morning. It always soothed her.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Franconia after a moment’s thought. “Father loves Horace. That’s all that matters.”

Abigail led Franconia back to her room and put her to bed. It was too late to go riding after the carriage now. Abigail herself would have a long talk with Father in the morning. Unless he came home with fresh flounder.

The carriage rocked down Tremont Street, past Gardiner Greene’s hillside estate and King’s Chapel. When it rolled past the Old Granary Burying Ground, Horace Taylor Pratt tipped his broad-brimmed hat and bowed his head. He owned as much real estate in that cemetery as he did on the waterfront, and he had been paying his respects for forty years. His brother Ephraim, three of his children dead in infancy, and his wife Alicia, who had died in 1805, were all buried there. And headstones above empty graves commemorated his son Horace and son-in-law James Bentley, both lost at sea. Soon enough, he told himself, he would be taking his place beside his wife and his left arm, which he had buried in the family plot after Bunker Hill, but he did not intend to go into the ground without a fight, and not until the future of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile was secure.

The carriage swept past the new Park Street Church, with its majestic steeple reaching higher than anything else in the city, and then along the Boston Common Mall, recently planted with a row of elms that as yet resembled large twigs stuck in the mud.

Pratt shivered. He pulled his cape tight around his shoulders, but it didn’t warm him. The ride down Tremont Street, especially at night, when the new buildings were all in shadow, chilled him deep in the pit of his stomach. He was passing his own gravesite with his grandson at his side. He told himself he should contemplate the renewing cycle of life, but he could think only on its inevitable change.

In his boyhood, Tremont Street and the Common had been rural countryside, and the city had been clustered near the waterfront. A
granary had stood on the site of the Park Street Church, and Pratt had bought wheat and rye there for his mother’s baking. Pratt’s father had been a sailmaker who also kept dairy cows. Each morning, young Horace Pratt had milked the cows, then led them from the family home on Summer Street up to the Common pastureland. Horace had always favored the grazing on Beacon Hill, just above the Common. Although John Hancock’s family had owned the land, they rarely bothered if a few cows strayed up from the public pasture. On warm summer afternoons, Horace would lie on top of the hill, stare out to the ships moving through the harbor, and wonder what strange ports they had seen, what exotic cargoes they carried. Today, there were so few cows within the city that it was necessary to import manure each spring to keep the Common green. And the Statehouse, with its gleaming copper dome, sat in Hancock’s pasture like a Greek temple above its Athens.

Father down the street, where the hay scales, a school, and a theatre had once stood, the Colonnade Row, a quarter mile of red-brick townhouses, looked out across the Common toward the Back Bay. And even that was changing. In 1795, its waters had washed against the west edge of the Common. Then, land developers had cut off the top of Mt. Vernon Hill, dumped it onto the flats, and fashioned Charles Street, an approach road to the houses they built on the remnants of the hill.

Pratt’s city was changing as quickly and inexorably as his body was deteriorating. He prayed for just a few more years to prepare his company and his heirs for the future galloping toward them. He had worked too hard building Pratt Shipping and Mercantile to see it die when he did. Just a few more years under his direction and the company would last. Just a few more years to train young Horace, and Pratt could pass on in peace, for as long as young Horace or his descendants directed the company, Horace Taylor Pratt would live.

Through the trees on the Common, Pratt could see the dark waters of the Back Bay stretching off toward Gravelly Point. Someplace out there, he hoped to find a few more months for himself and his company. If only Lovell would arrive.

“Do you think the British captured him at sea?” asked young Horace.

“It’s possible. Or he might never have left Washington. Not everyone has the stomach to carry out bold plans.”

“I thought you had great faith in Dexter Lovell.”

“He’s getting old, Horace. The spirit of adventure rarely burns bright in old men. You have a very unusual grandfather in that respect. You should be proud that he allows you to partake of his adventures.”

“I am, sir. And thank you again for the pistol.” He patted the leather pouch at his side. Inside it was a small flintlock, powder, and shot.

“If we should be accosted, don’t hesitate to use it. Gravelly Point is deserted, but the war has made brigands of many men, and you never know where they may lurk.”

The boy’s eyes flashed with excitement, and Pratt smiled indulgently. The old man had not intended to involve his grandson so deeply in his scheme, but he knew that there was little danger, despite his warning, and little chance that anyone would discover them out on Gravelly Point. Pratt and Lovell had decided on the point because of its seclusion and relative safety. Along the waterfront, there were military patrols, constables, and a steady stream of drinkers and whoremongers who would find it strange to see a strongbox rowed ashore and placed in the carriage of a noted Boston businessman. In the Back Bay, however, there was only the water, the meadow on Gravelly Point, and the cover of night.

It was time for young Horace to learn that life in the business world demanded more than the ability to balance books and predict the needs of buyers in Boston and China. It required men who relished intrigue and took advantage of every opportunity, even if they had to spend their nights waiting for a rowboat at the edge of a tide flat.

The carriage clattered past the old fortress on Boston Neck and headed inland. The Neck was three quarters of a mile long. At its narrowest point, 130 feet of land separated the Back Bay from the South Boston Channel. During storm tides in the eighteenth century, the Neck was submerged and Boston became an island. But
sea walls had been built, and spacious homes, standing bleak, treeless, and unprotected, now lined the first quarter mile of the Neck. At Dover and Washington streets, the Neck began to widen toward Roxbury. Two houses occupied opposite corners of the intersection, and two empty blocks of land stretched out behind each of them. A half mile south, at Washington and Lenox streets, the Neck was nine blocks across, extending from the edge of the South Boston Channel on the east to the mouth of the Back Bay’s Easterly Channel on the west.

The distance from Pratt’s home to Lenox Street was three and a half miles, and the ride took nearly an hour. A light rain had begun to fall by the time the carriage turned west toward Gravelly Point.

Young Horace Taylor Pratt III felt his heart begin to pound as they moved deeper into the darkness. The south end of the Neck had been cut into neat blocks fourteen years before, but except for the houses along Washington Street, the area was uninhabited, a desert of vacant lots and wild-growing shrubbery waiting for the day when Boston would need more space. Young Horace reached into his pouch and took out the pistol.

Pratt heard the hammer click gently into place. “Leave it uncocked,” he said evenly.

“What about the brigands and highwaymen?”

“They’ll give you ample time to cock the gun and aim. I’ll not have you shooting your leg off in a bouncing carriage. Your mother would be very upset.”

The boy uncocked the pistol. “My mother is always very upset,” he grumbled. “You can’t ever be certain of what she’s thinking or why.”

“Speak respectfully of your mother, boy. I’ll not have you grousing.”

Young Horace stared out at the darkness. “Yes, sir.”

Pratt studied the boy for a moment, then threw his arm around him. “You can always rely on your grandfather, son. I’m your rock.”

Young Horace wanted to pull away from the old man, with his yellow teeth and sour breath, but he endured the embrace. He had learned early in life that his grandfather would satisfy his every
whim, if he studied diligently, listened carefully when Pratt spoke, and responded warmly to the old man’s affection. Most fifteen-year-olds did not enjoy expressions of physical affection from anyone, much less their grandfathers, but the boy knew of no one his age who carried a new pistol and rode down the Neck each night to await smugglers on Gravelly Point. He was having a most exciting summer, and he managed to smile.

The carriage came to an abrupt halt, and Pratt almost fell on the floor. “Good God, Wilson, drive more carefully or you’ll kill us all!”

A wizened face peered into the compartment. A top hat covered a few wisps of gray hair, and the complexion was so pale that it seemed almost iridescent in the dark. “Sorry, sir,” he said unconvincingly. “I didn’t see the end of the road.”

“You saw it last night and the night before.”

“Last night and the night before, the clouds weren’t coverin’ up the moon. How the hell do you expect me to see the end of the road in the rain when you won’t let me burn my goddam lanterns?” Wilson had been driving Pratt’s coach since 1783, and he paid little deference to a man he knew so well.

“Just get us to the point before the tide turns.”

Wilson snapped the reins and called gently to the horses. The carriage left Lenox Street, which ended a hundred yards short of the Easterly Channel, and forged onto a path just wide enough to pass. The horses tried to stop, but Wilson urged them on. The brush fell away. Wilson climbed down and guided the horses across a footbridge that spanned the narrow channel. They were on Gravelly Point.

“Perhaps tonight,” whispered Pratt to his grandson.

The Back Bay spread in front of them like liquid onyx. A mile or so to the east, the outline of Beacon Hill loomed black out of the water, like a breaching whale harpooned by the West Boston Bridge and secured to the Cambridge mainland.

Young Horace climbed out of the coach, gun in hand, and looked about. Satisfied that there was nothing awaiting him in the darkness, he ran to the edge of the water and squinted into the rain. He hoped to see a red lantern. Lovell had promised to light one when he rowed under the West Boston Bridge.