City of Dreams (115 page)

“I suppose it is. Mighty fine.”

“And how are you keeping after last evening?”

Joyful turned away, ashamed to meet the other man’s glance. A right fool he’d made of himself the night before. Four men, all passengers, all getting giddy from sniffing at that strange gas. And him, the youngest and the giddiest of all. “I’m well, thank you.” Damn! he could feel his cheeks reddening. He hated that he blushed like a girl. Hated hearing the soft chuckle and knowing his companion had noticed.

“Don’t look like that,” the man said. “It’s not important. First time you’re on your own, every young sprout gets carried away.”

“Do they all fall on the floor senseless?” Joyful asked. “Listen, I never thought… I’ve had rum plenty of times before. And brandy. I never expected—”

“’Course you didn’t. The gas is different. As I told you. Amazing stuff. All the rage at parties in London these days. Makes everyone into laughing fools.”

Joyful put a hand to his forehead. The place where he’d cut himself when he fell still throbbed beneath the bandage applied by the ship’s surgeon. The wound had been deep enough to require stitching. “I didn’t feel it,” he said. “Nothing. I didn’t know I was hurt.”

“No, so you said last night. You just wanted more of the gas.”

Joyful blushed again. “Amazing stuff, as you said.”

“Indeed.”

“Tell me something—if they have such remarkable things in London, why are you going to New York?”

“Good Christ, man, why does anyone go to New York? To make my fortune, of course.”

II

After so much desolation and ruin and evil, still the same dream. Get rich. Get rich.

In the end, despite bitter opposition, that was surely why the merchants of Manhattan prevailed over the rural Antifederalists in the rest of the state. In July 1788, at a raucous convention in Poughkeepsie, New York, the last of the holdouts—having been assured that individual liberties would be protected by a Bill of Rights—had agreed to ratify the Constitution. New York would throw her lot in with the others. They would be the United States of America.

As a reward New York City was made the seat of the new federal government. City Hall would become the capitol building and the new country would be run from Wall Street. “Entirely fitting,” the merchants of New York said.

On April 30, 1789, George Washington stood on the second-floor balcony of the building that had been transformed from City Hall to Federal Hall. The new seat of power.

Washington looked south toward what had been the court part of town. Toward the old Stadt Huys where they’d had the ducking stool that so terrified pregnant Sally Turner. Toward the fort with the ancient gibbet where the physician Jacob Van der Vries, his dead body covered in pitch, hung twisting in the ocean breeze.

Standing on the balcony of Federal Hall, Mr. Washington of Virginia needed only to turn his head east to look down on the spot where New Yorkers had broken Robin on the rack, and gibbeted Kinsowa, and burned Quaco and Peter the Doctor in a fire so slow it took them ten hours to die while Amba sang. The place where they put little Jan Brinker in the stocks and dislocated both his shoulders. And hanged God knows how many. Right there on Wall Street, where the nation’s first president swore the first oath of office.

New York had no time for old nightmares, or even old dreams. New York was a place of the new. New York rejoiced. Being the capital was excellent for business.

The moneyed men, they were called. The richest of the rich. Because of them, a never-ending stream of immigrants arrived, many with cash and connections, some with only hope. Soon over thirty thousand were crammed into the city that had spread itself two miles up Manhattan, as far north as what had been James De Lancey’s extensive farm.

What they called Delancey Street (being too much in a hurry to give it the old two-word pronunciation) wasn’t the countryside any longer. Neither was Grand Street, or even Oliver Street. They were thoroughfares created to make room for new houses for the new rich.

Thomas Jefferson, Virginia aristocrat that he was, couldn’t bear this throbbing, thriving, thumping place called New York City. He summoned two other influential men of politics to his house on Maiden Lane, and he and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton worked out a compromise. They would make a new capital in a neutral place. Never mind that it was a swamp at present. They’d drain it. Meanwhile they’d leave this hellhole of Manhattan and take up residence in Philadelphia.

The three prevailed. “I suppose we must go,” Abigail Adams sighed to John. “I shall make the best of Philadelphia, but it will never be Broadway.”

Seven years into independency, the Broad Way had become Broadway. In New York, faster was important. The quick get rich faster. It wasn’t unheard-of to have fifteen kinds of wine with dinner, and after the cloths were removed, the best bottled cider and every kind of ale.

However fast it might be, the creation of such wealth was never easy. Slaves helped. Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island had all abolished slavery. In 1798, as Joyful Patrick Turner sailed homeward, there were three thousand black folks in New York City. Four of every five were slaves.

Meanwhile, most of Manhattan was still the wilderness it had always been. Above North Street (later called Houston), the countryside began. The woods were thick, and the path that led to the East River shore was twisting and narrow and uneven, littered with rocks that had slid down from the hills, particularly after so much spring rain.

The slave called Laniah, usually so sure-footed, stumbled once or twice. The third time she actually fell, tearing her calico dress, skinning her knee and bruising her cheekbone. She paid the injuries no mind. “Don’t you do nothing foolish, Mistress Molly,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing stupid. Leastwise not until I find you.” Laniah spoke the words over and over, whispering them into the quiet, humid warmth of the June afternoon. “Nothing foolish, Mistress Molly. Not until I gets to you.”

She heard the voices before she saw anything. Not her mistress’s voice nor Molly’s, men calling to each other.

“Put in here. Mind the rocks.”

There was the slap of oars cutting through the water, and someone yelling to someone else to catch a line. “Need to build a mooring here, Dr. Turner. Some-wheres we can tie up to. Things would go a lot faster if you did that.”

The faster Laniah ran, the louder the voices became. She heard Lucas Turner’s answer as clearly as if he were speaking to her.

“This hospital is a temporary arrangement. We’re only here until the yellowing fever leaves the city. There, that’s your line secure. How many do you have?”

The tree-shaded path ended abruptly. Laniah was in a clearing, half-blinded by the bright midday sun.

“Got me four, Doc. Lyin’ here half dead, they is. And nine more back on the packet what ain’t in much better shape.”

Laniah’s vision cleared in time for her to see a man jumping out of a rowboat into the shallows. Two other men appeared at the same time, though not from the direction she’d come. From the big house set back a ways from the shore, divided from it by a sloping green lawn. “House is almost full, Dr. Turner,” one of them called out. “We cleared floor space for two more, but that’s rightly all.”

“Sweet God in heaven. Then we’ve taken in what? Seventy-five patients since Sunday?”

“Ninety-four, sir.”

“And the Bedloe’s Island pesthouse is full as well.” Lucas knew because he’d sent word to Andrew to send any extra bedding he had available, and gotten his father’s message that there was none. “Sweet Christ.”

The man still clinging to the prow of his rowboat motioned to the men from the house. “C’mon, lads, get these sick blighters out o’ me boat. I’ve two more trips to make,” he added, nodding toward the small single-masted sloop lying off in the middle of the broad river.

“You can’t bring me more patients,” Lucas said. “You heard them. We’ve only room for two of these.”

“I’ve four aboard,” the boatman insisted. “And nine to come off the ship afore sundown.”

“Impossible.”

“With due respect, Dr. Turner, it has to be possible, on orders from the mayor and the council. If they don’t get them what’s got the jaundice out o’ the town there’ll be a panic. Like last year.”

“Bloody fools.” Lucas wasn’t sure if he meant the politicians or the ordinary town folk, but he wasn’t asked to clarify. “Very well, you can offload these poor buggers you’ve brought today. But tell your captain to tell the mayor and the council we can’t take more unless they send canvas, and a few strong men to erect some tents along the shore. Tell them the house is full to bursting.”

Lucas turned to go back to the makeshift hospital. That was when he saw the black girl standing in the clearing. He squinted a moment, recognized her, and strode in her direction. “Laniah! It is you, isn’t it?”

She stood her ground, too shy to go forward and meet him. It wasn’t like when she sometimes served him at the pharmacy in Hanover Square. Everyone knew Lucas Turner went there ’cause he was courting Mistress Molly, for all he was twelve years older and had already been married once. When he was on the other side of the counter at the pharmacy he wanted something, and it was almost as if Laniah was in charge. Not here. “Yes, it’s me, Dr. Turner. Master Raif’s Laniah.”

“So I see. What are you doing here?”

She’d already made up her mind how she’d answer that. “Mistress Molly, she forgot something.” Laniah raised the drawstring bag she carried.

“Molly? But, Laniah, Molly had the yellowing fever last year. Both twins did. Mistress Molly and Mr. Jonathan. So why should she be here today?”

“Dearie my soul, you be having to ask her that, Dr. Turner. I only come to bring Mistress Molly what she left behind.”

Lucas shook his head impatiently. “You’re talking in riddles, and I’ve no time for that today. You heard what those men said, didn’t you? I’ve a houseful of patients to look after.”

“Mighty big house,” Laniah said, gazing toward the redbrick structure with its broad veranda. “How many rooms there be in a house like that?”

“Fourteen. We’ve four laundresses and three cleaners living in the place, as well as the patients, and the family members who come to look after them. So we’re stuffed to the rafters, as I said. Tell your master, why don’t you? Mr. Raif might be interested in sending someone up here with cures and simples. I warrant a number of them would be sold.”

“Dearie my soul, Dr. Turner, ain’t no simple as cures the yellowing fever. You gets well or you don’t and that’s it.”

Lucas sighed. “I know. But people like to think otherwise. I doubt Raif Devrey would hesitate to profit from their hopes and fears.”

“After I find Mistress Molly, talk to her, then I promise I be going back and telling Master Raif what you said.” She took a step toward the house.

“You can’t go in there, Laniah. There’s no reason for it. I already told you, Mistress Molly isn’t here. I don’t know what made you think she would be.”

Laniah thought so, because she’d already checked the City Hospital and the New York Hospital, and her mistress was in neither of them. So she could think of no alternative but this pesthouse for them as had the yellowing fever. Only place left. Not that Mistress Molly liked being where Lucas Turner was. She said he wasn’t really sweet on her. According to Mistress Molly, when Dr. Lucas looked at her he saw a big strong woman could take care of his house and his three motherless children. “I can have a look, can’t I, Dr. Turner? Wouldn’t hurt none if I had a look.”

“It’s a waste of your time, Laniah. As I told you.”

She had taken a step toward the redbrick house; now she stopped. “You absolutely sure, Dr. Turner? These things Mistress Molly forgot—” She raised the drawstring bag again.

“I’m certain, Laniah. The house isn’t as big as it looks. It wasn’t even the main house when the Kip family lived here. Only part of their farm. It’s called Belle Vue. Because the view’s so pretty,” he added. “Don’t you think it’s pretty?”

Laniah looked at the expanse of river, and the green hills and trees of the long island on the opposite shore. “I s’pose it is. Dr. Turner, you’re absolutely sure, right? Mistress Molly, she don’t be in there?”

“I’m positive, Laniah. Now go home. And don’t forget to tell Mr. Raif what I said about selling things up here. He’ll count you a clever girl for making the suggestion.”

Laniah chose a different path back, cutting across the Post Road and making her way south through the woods on the west side of the island. Sun would be going down soon. Had to be close to seven at night.

“Here in this place, Lucas? Must we bury…” Marit nodded toward her drawstring sack, Lucas’s leather pouch. “We have had so much joy here, it does not seem …”

The third trip from the town to the Voorstadt and beyond. Each time they had moved deeper into the Manhattan wilderness, leaving a trail of the body parts of Ankel Jannssen, carefully scuffling the top of each fresh hole. Now they had reached the Collect Pond, shimmering in the heat of midday. The sounds of buzzing insects filled the air.