City of Dreams (10 page)

Marit turned her head so she could continue to see him as she and her husband walked on. Finally she turned away.

Lucas stayed where he was, trembling with rage. When he finally dared move, the church was empty, the last of the congregation had left the fort. He was alone.

The threatened snow began before he was halfway home. When he opened the door of the barber shop and smelled the dinner Sally was cooking, he gagged. For a time he stood where he was, the wind raging behind his back, blowing snow into the barber shop.

“Lucas!” Sally turned from the fireplace. “For heaven’s sake, have you lost your senses? Shut the door before all the fire’s warmth escapes.”

He did as she asked, but he felt no difference in the temperature. His fury was an inferno. Having nothing else to feed on, it consumed Lucas himself.

Chapter Two

“I’
M GOING HOME
.”
Sally made her announcement while squatting over the narrow hearth in the barber shop, poking at the logs, though the fire didn’t need tending. Lucas stood by the open top half of the door, gazing into the frozen street.

It was the last week in January. Seven weeks into the siege. Nine days since Lucas had seen Marit after church. Twelve days since he’d touched her. He burned. He was in no mood for Sally’s nonsense. “Sweet Christ, woman, you can’t go to the cabin. How long do you think you’d survive?”

“The Indians know I’m their friend. That’s why our place is still standing and everything in it is untouched. Please, Lucas, close the door. I’m perishing with cold.”

The icy air was a small relief from the fire raging inside him, but Lucas swung the door shut.

“Thank you. Now, please look at me.”

Lucas turned. “Very well, I’m looking at you.”

“Everything I’m saying is true. Our cabin is untouched. No Indian has gone near it. You heard that young soldier tell me so this very day.”

“I heard. All it means is that the savages haven’t gotten around to our place yet.”

“No, it means that the Indians trust me. You never knew how many wounds I treated for them, Lucas. And I always traded fairly with the women and children. Besides, Tamaka used to tell me that our cabin stood on ground only women could go, a place that was forbidden to braves.”

“My God, Sal, you have a brain. How can you possibly believe the babble of a squaw brat? There are thousands of them and we have a few hundred soldiers. This is a war to the death, Sally. Those savages we don’t kill will try to kill us. Without exception.”

“I don’t believe you. Anyway, I cannot stay here any longer. I cannot.” She returned to poking at the logs, making the sparks fly. “Look at us, crammed together in this little room with the lice and the fleas, breathing the stink of blood and sweat day and night. I cannot bear it, Lucas.”

“Yes, you can.” Lucas’s tone softened. “You and I, Sal, we know all about bearing what we must.”

“Only until it can be changed. In Dover, you were the one to change things. Now it’s my turn.”

“Sally, believe me, as bad as that vile barn may have been, it was safer for us as children than our cabin in Nieuw Netherland is right now.”

“Then in God’s name, Lucas, why do we stay? Why don’t we just leave this wretched colony?”

Sweet Jesus, where did these women get such notions? “Where is there for us to go, Sal? Tell me, for I should very much like to know.”

Sally pushed her hands into her hair and lifted the temples as if she’d remove her own scalp. The gesture raised the corners of her mouth and her eyes, and she looked almost pretty. Certainly much younger. As soon as she took her hands away she was the same as always. Homely Sally, growing swiftly old. “We can go home, Lucas,” she said. “We can go home.”

Lucas crossed to the fire and kicked back a log that had fallen forward. The sparks chased themselves up the chimney. “Where’s home? London? So the surgeons can throw me in jail? Or Dover, perhaps? The old man may be dead, but if he isn’t, there’s probably enough strength left in his arm to lift the horsewhip. Rotterdam? Our places on that crowded piece of earth must be taken by now.”

“The cabin we built with our own hands. Spring will come. I must prepare to plant. If I don’t, there’ll be no physics for the year to come.”

“We’ve precious little need of physics now that Jacob Van der Vries has taken charge.”

“Exactly! And what are you doing about it, Lucas? You simply let him—”

“I spoke with Stuyvesant’s sister, after Van der Vries murdered old Widow Kulik with his damned leeches.”

“You did? Lucas, you never told me. Mevrouw Anna knows how skilled you—”

“She knows that I’m an English barber and Van der Vries is a Dutch physician.”

“But surely, after what you did … The governor must—”

“Must nothing. I made a bargain with Stuyvesant. I kept my part, and he kept his. As Mevrouw Anna so succinctly put it, that was the end.”

Sally shook her head. “Still. You can’t just sit there night after night yearning over—” She broke off.

Lucas stared at her. “Yearning?” Sally didn’t reply. “Finish what you were saying. Yearning over what?”

“Not what, who. Marit Graumann.”

An icy hand gripped his bowels and twisted. “And where did you get that idea? Is the subject of my affections a matter of discussion for the
huisvrouwen
of Nieuw Amsterdam?”

“Dear God, no. I would have told you at once if anything so dangerous were happening. It’s my own notion, Lucas. Because I can see Hall Place from the hospital windows. I see how often you call at Jannssen’s butcher shop.”

“To get the things I need for my work.” He bit out the words between clenched teeth. “Pig bladders and sheep intestines. From the butcher I pass on my way to the hospital.”

“Very well. It’s your affair. I didn’t mean to pry.” Sally put both hands on the surgical table and leaned over it as if she needed the support to stay upright. She did not lift her head when she spoke. “Lucas, about going back to the cabin … I cannot stay cooped up here like this. I cannot bear it. Whatever you say, I cannot.”

“You will bear it as long as you must.” He ran a hand through his hair and kicked at the logs again. “Enough, damn it! I forbid you to speak of this again.”

Sally stared at him. In all her life Lucas had never spoken to her in that tone or used such words. “You forbid me?” she whispered.

“Yes. Because you leave me no choice. You won’t listen to reason, so you must yield to authority. I forbid you to ever again mention leaving the town until
I
say it is safe.”

Sally went to the corner and lay down on the pile of skins that served as her bed. She stared dry-eyed at the rough timbered ceiling of the squalid little room.

Lucas took one of the journals from the locked drawer in the surgical table and began refining his account of a fistula he’d cut away six months before. He went on writing until the fire died. Then he banked the embers and went to his own makeshift bed.

In the morning, when he woke, Sally was gone.

The night was bitter, so cold the air seemed to crackle. Sally breathed deep and felt cleansed. Moonlight splashed across the path. She took long, unhampered strides, her boots crunching on the frozen earth. After all those weeks of confinement, her sense of freedom left no room for fear. Twice she heard the sound of an owl, once the cooing of a dove. They were sounds she knew, and they did not alarm her.

Pappitan made the cooing-dove sound one more time. He waited for the owl hoot, expecting it to be closer. It came, but from farther away. Pappitan was Shinnecock; his native lands were deep on Metoaca, the long island. He was fourteen and this was his first time on the warpath. Those were the reasons he had become separated from the war party when he went deeper into the woods to relieve himself. They did not make him less ashamed.

Before he returned to his village, Pappitan promised himself, he would cover his tomahawk in blood and take many scalps. That way, when the other braves told the story of how Pappitan had been lost for hours because he could not smell his own camp, only his own dung, the laughter would be friendly.

He cooed again. Again the owl answered. This time the sound seemed to come from a different place.

Pappitan clutched the fox totem that hung on the leather thong around his neck.
Lead me from this place that I may not disgrace myself. Help me to take many scalps to cover my shame.
The owl hooted again, from yet a third direction. Pappitan turned to follow where he thought it led. He had taken only a few steps when he heard the whiteface. It had to be a whiteface. No brave would make such thunderous noise simply by walking in the woods.

The enemy was coming toward him. Pappitan hid himself and waited. His heart thudded with joy and he sent many prayers of thanksgiving to the fox totem who had answered his prayer. When he returned to the war party he would bring his first scalp. The tale of Pappitan’s dung would be a man’s tale of valor, not a boy’s tale of shame.

How quiet the woods were. How sweet the fresh, cold air. Sally almost didn’t want this short journey to end. But she was anxious to see the cabin, to assure herself that everything was exactly as they’d left it, the way the soldiers said. She’d make a fire and sleep beside it. In the morning, when she woke, she’d check the root cellar and see if that big pumpkin was still sound. She’d cook a piece of it over the fire for her breakfast. Then she would see if she could snare a squirrel, so when Lucas came there would be a hot stew waiting for him.

She was pretty sure he would be with her by midday. He’d be furious, of course. But once she’d shown the way he’d be too embarrassed not to follow. He’d understand how stupid it was to linger in the stinking town when he could live in his own cabin. Yes, she was certain of it. Lucas would come. And the pair of them would be perfectly safe.

Pappitan could hardly believe that one small woman could make so much noise. He was disappointed. He had pictured himself returning to the war party carrying a soldier’s scalp and wearing the soldier’s clothes. Instead he was faced with a short, ugly woman.