City of Dreams (114 page)

The crowd grew silent. Andrew closed his eyes.

Harmon screamed. A long, sustained howl of pain that remained echoing in the air.

The mob moaned its collective satisfaction. Andrew could feel their pleasure writhing around him, like a whore lusting during sex. “There! Ah, yes! That’s right it is!”

He opened his eyes. Had to. Couldn’t refuse to be a witness to—

To something different than his worst fears.

They were pouring buckets of liquid pitch over Harmon Leominster, and some of the women were dashing forward and flinging handfuls of feathers.

“Ye can go back to yer fine mansion now, ye blackhearted Tory traitor. And take her with ye!”

Two men dragged Josie Harmon toward the stake. At first Andrew thought they meant to tar and feather her as well. Then he realized they’d already done worse. The rear of her bustled frock was hitched up to her waist, and from the way she was being pulled across the still-frozen earth it was clear she couldn’t have walked if her captors allowed it. The backs of her fat legs were bloodied and she was sobbing with terror and pain. Sweet Christ Almighty, they had hamstrung her, cut the tendon that made her legs work. She’d never walk again.

Animals. Seven years of hell for animals like these.

“Papa! Papa! Let me through, you evil bastards! Papa!”

“Lucas! Get out of here. Go home. Your mother needs you. Go home!” Lucas was eighteen, his eldest son. If he was to be crippled or blinded or worse by these swine—

“Andrew! It’s me, Sam. Are you all right?”

Andrew had no chance to speak for himself. The man who’d come up to the hospital ward and dragged him down to the Common answered for him. “He be fine for now. But he won’t be so fine in a minute or two. Stay and watch, why don’t ye?”

“I’ll watch you on trial for bodily assault is what I’ll do.” Sam Devrey’s voice cut through the noise. His words were spoken distinctly and carried absolute authority. “Moreover, I’ll personally testify that you dared to interfere with the liberty of an American hero.”

Sam had pushed his way through the crowd by this time, young Lucas right behind him; they were even with Andrew and the men who held him prisoner. “Let him go,” Sam said. “Immediately.”

“Hero, ye says? No disrespect, but are ye mad, Dr. Devrey? He be right here all the while ye was looking after our boys. He coulda done that as well. Instead he—”

“Instead he stayed here,” Devrey boomed, silencing the other man with the volume and conviction of his voice. “In the lion’s den. Surrounded by the enemy. Risking his life every single day by transmitting information to General Washington.”

“He never did!”

The crowd had gone silent and was hanging on every word of the exchange.

“How in God’s name do you dare to say that to me?” Sam demanded. “He never, did you say? But you are wrong, sir. You know who I am, don’t you?”

“’Course I do. I already said so. Only this time yer out o’ line.”

A voice from the crowd shouted him down. “It’s Sam Devrey what’s talkin’. Saved my boy’s life at Trenton. Let him speak.”

“I’ve already said what I came to say. Dr. Andrew Turner is a hero of the war for independency. If you want a letter from General Washington that says the same you have to give me a couple of weeks to go to Virginia and get it. But if instead you want to cover yourself with shame this very afternoon, you’ll go on with your vicious attack on a man who repeatedly risked his life for all you cherish.”

There was silence while the crowd struggled to come to terms with the news. Finally a woman’s voice shouted, “Let him go.”

“Aye, do that,” someone else said. “Free him. Free Dr. Turner. Real hero, he is.”

The man who had taken Andrew prisoner sputtered a few words about Turner doctoring for the British, whatever else he might have done, and then slunk off. The men with the muskets untied Andrew.

“Come on,” Sam said in a low voice. “Let’s get away from here. Quickly, before we’re challenged for proof.”

“We can’t,” Andrew said. “There are others. Terrible things are happening. Wicked things.”

Sam grabbed his arm. “Don’t argue, damn it! Come!”

“Papa, please come away.”

Andrew looked into young Lucas’s eyes and saw the terror there. His own bowels were still churning. All the same … “I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he turned back to the crowd.

“Listen, all of you. What you’re doing, it’s—” Andrew stopped. There was no need of his words. Sam’s accusations had deflated the crowd. The change in the atmosphere was discernible. People were drifting away. Two men had begun pouring sand on the fire they’d made to heat the pitch. Someone else was starting to take down the stake.

“Come,” Sam said again. “Meg’s waiting.”

“How did you know?” Andrew asked when they were on Ann Street. Meg had given them tea and biscuits, and young Lucas poured Madeira for his father and Samuel Devrey, who was his third cousin once removed, and who had never before set foot in this house. “How did you know what was happening, Lucas? And how in God’s name did you know to get Cousin Samuel?”

“I was in town at the Dish of Fry’d Oysters and I heard about a riot on the Common. Tarring and feathering Tories, they said. I knew you were at the hospital, so I just assumed …” The boy shrugged and let the words trail away.

Andrew nodded, took a sip of the wine, and blessed the way it calmed his still-churning gut. “Very well. But you knew to go to Cousin Samuel? How—”

“He did indeed know,” Sam said. “Arrived at my front door in a tearing hurry and yanked me out before I’d time to brush away the crumbs of my dinner. Obviously not a moment too soon. You were next, weren’t you?”

“Yes. But that doesn’t explain— Lucas, I want the truth. How did you know?”

Lucas wasn’t as tall as his father, and he was dark, not fair, but he had the direct way of speaking that marked so many of the Turner men. “I followed you about,” he said. “All those years, when you went out late at night and left messages at various places. I followed you.”

“I see.” The thought of the danger his son had been in, that he himself had put the boy in, made Andrew sick at his stomach, even now. “And when Cousin Samuel and I met, you were nearby then as well?”

“Yes, sir. If you mean near the old cellar at Hall Place, I mostly was.”

“You might have been seen, Lucas. It would have been the end for Cousin Samuel, and for me and for yourself. Not to mention a wicked blow for General Washington.”

“I know, sir. I didn’t think about it at the time, though. All I wanted was to be sure you weren’t what they said you were, a Tory, Papa, who was committing treason against independency. I had to know that.”

“So, Sam.”

“So, Andrew.”

It was after eight. Lucas had left and the cousins were alone. “I owe you my skin,” Andrew said. “Maybe even my legs. Did I tell you they hamstrung poor old Josie Harmon?”

“You told me.”

“Christ, Sam, what did we do it all for?”

“I can’t believe you don’t know the answer to that.”

“I thought I did. For the right to govern ourselves, not be tormented and taxed and dictated to by men thousands of miles away with not an idea in their heads about the way of things here in America. But what have we got? They’re cattle, Sam. They’ve no sense of what is fitting, no respect for private property. They mean to sell off all the lands that belonged to the better class of people. The De Lanceys are—”

“To be first,” Sam finished for him. “Hell, they’re easy targets since young Oliver took off for London.”

“A pox on him. I hold no brief for any De Lancey, God knows. It’s the principle I’m weeping for, New York’s chance to come back and be a decent city again. I’m told they’re making a grab for Trinity’s lands as well. The Church, Sam! The radical fanatics that have been elected to the Assembly and the Council mean to rob the Church. What next, for God’s sake?”

“So you side with Hamilton. Forgive the Tories because they’re useful, and get on with the business of business.”

“What else should we do? Look at the crowd that’s piping the tune. Those black-clad holier-than-thou types preaching no drink or dance on Sunday, but on Monday catch whom you will and tar and feather and hamstring them, and do Christ knows what else. What’s the point of it, Sam? What did we accomplish?”

Sam helped himself to another glass of Madeira and sipped it before he answered. When he did he spoke quietly, pretty much anticipating the reaction he’d provoke. “Way I see it… the point’s democracy.”

“Democracy! Rule by any scoundrel can muster the votes of the ignorant rabble? Sweet Christ, I hope not.”

Epilogue

The Path of Dreams
J
UNE 1798

The Canarsie People said the knowing belongs to the old and wise, but the unfolding is in the keeping of the young. The old prevent the young from straying off the path of wisdom. The young yearn after the path of dreams. Between the two there is truth.

I

The second week of June 1798, a few days out of Canton. The sea was calm, the wind fresh. His father’s words repeating themselves over and over in his mind. “Remember this: New York’s about get rich and the devil take the hindmost. Always was. Always will be.”

Not for him. For Joyful Patrick Turner, not quite seventeen, it was about becoming a doctor.

“Holy bloody Savior,” Morgan said when he heard about his son’s ambition. “You’re a true Turner, even if you have been raised in Canton. A doctor, eh? Not an apothecary like your mother? God rest her beautiful soul.”

“Not exactly like her, Papa. Though I do want to heal.”

Morgan had fixed his one good eye on his son. “It’s what she said to you that last afternoon, isn’t it? It’s what Roisin said is sending you back there.”

“Yes, but it was in my mind before that.”

Mama, holding his hand, lying in the big bed in the house on top of the Cantonese hill, sweet breezes blowing the curtains, her whispering so he had to lean over to hear. “I know you, Joyful. I know what’s in your heart. Be a healer. Make folks well. It’s what you want. Do it. But not here. Go home. There’s loose ends need weaving, you go pick them up. New York’s where you’ll do your magic.”

“Very well,” Morgan said when Joyful told him. He was sixty-one, devastated by Roisin’s loss, and past arguing. “Very well.” Quietly, not letting his feelings show: “Go back then, with my blessing and hers. I won’t go with you. Going to stay here and be buried beside your mama when my time comes.”

“Papa, I—”

“No, don’t fret. It’s fine. I’ll write to my cousin Andrew. He was a great friend of your mama’s during the war. He’ll help you for her sake if not mine. See you into that medical school he’s part of at… What do they call it these days? Columbia College. Used to be King’s. Changed a lot of the old royal names, I’m told, and good riddance to ’em. But you remember this, boy, New York’s always been about money. Always will be.”

His father’s words in his head were so loud Joyful almost didn’t hear the voice of the man who came to stand beside him in the prow of the merchantman. Someone else who didn’t mind the sting of the salt spray and the slap of the waves, and the low persistent hum of the wind in the taut canvas overhead. “Fine afternoon, isn’t it, young Mr. Joyful Patrick?”