City of Dreams (25 page)

Moses Smythe died of the pox and left Bess a widow when she was twenty-nine and pregnant. She lost their three young sons in the same epidemic. Soon after her daughter was born, Bess sold the small Smythe farm in Yonkers and took herself and the baby back to her mother’s house. Within two years, the simpling room where Sally dispensed her special Health-Giving Tonic—a penny a pull from the barrel on the wooden counter—had become a proper apothecary shop, the first in New York. Eighteen years later it remained the only one.

Bess had learned much of her mother’s art of compounding simples, but she was by nature a woman of business who saw no reason to be content with a penny if you could have a shilling.

The shop still sold Health-Giving Tonic and it was still made according to Sally’s receipt, laced with laudanum she’d first added from her secret supply. The only difference was that customers could no longer bring their own containers and have them filled for a penny no matter what their size. Bess had found a potter to make her small crockery jugs, each of which held about a gill, as much as a man might swallow in a gulp. She filled the little jugs from the barrel and sold them for a penny each. People still got the tonic for the price they’d always paid; they just got less of it. And came back with their pennies more often.

Tamsyn was putting a jug of Health-Giving Tonic in the hands of a purchaser when Bess opened the door that led from the house to the shop. “Here, you,” she called out, “that’s a penny. We don’t give credit or take barter.”

“He knows, Mama. Jeremy’s already paid.”

“Oh, it’s you, is it? I don’t wonder you’re feeling poorly, what with all your drinking and carousing. You should buy two of those. You probably need them.”

“One will do me for the moment, Mistress. That way when I need more I’ll have an excuse to return and bid good day to Miss Tamsyn.”

Bess narrowed her eyes. “Like as not you’ll find me or one of my Negroes to serve you. Miss Tamsyn has other things to do. And you’d best not bring your friend with you. I told you that months past, Jeremy Clinton, and I haven’t changed my mind. No Turner is welcome here. Christopher Turner least of all. And if he—”

“Mama, you’re getting yourself worked up over nothing. Cousin Chris isn’t here. He never comes to the shop.”

“No, he sends this one instead. I know exactly what the pair of you have in mind, young man, and—”

Jeremy turned to her and held his coat wide open. “Look, Mistress Bess. I am as you see me. You may check my pockets if you like. I swear I don’t have Chris Turner hidden anywhere on my person.”

Tamsyn put her hand over her mouth to hide a giggle. She was tall and slender, like her father. Her hair was dark like her father’s, too, and a few curls escaped from her drawstring cap. And when she tried that way to suppress her laughter, Tamsyn looked so much like Moses that Bess had to look away lest anyone see she was an old fool who could still weep for the man she’d lost. “If you want nothing else, you’d best be going.” Her voice was rough.

“I am, Mistress Bess, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Going. See, I’m gone.” Jeremy pulled the door closed behind him. The bell jangled, then was silent.

Bess turned to her daughter. “Is that all he bought, the tonic?”

“Yes, Mama. Only that.”

“And were there no other customers this past hour?”

“Two, Mama. One bought a tincture of chamomile for the gout, the other four jugs of tonic.”

Bess pulled open the money drawer and peered inside. Six pennies; two were even proper coins from England. The other four were wood, but in New York that made no difference. Queen Anne was said to be truly interested in New York, and she’d been a dozen years on the English throne, but she was no more inclined to grant the colony a mint than had William and Mary before her. Among New Yorkers wooden pennies were as much legal tender as those made of copper. Nonetheless, Bess frowned when she saw the accumulation in the drawer. “This means I didn’t hear the bell. According to you, Tamsyn, I missed the bell twice.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mama. I was here.”

“Yes, you were.” Bess was still staring at the money. And calculating. “But if you sold a tincture of chamomile for tuppence, and four jugs of tonic … no, five including Jeremy’s, you’re a penny shy.”

Tamsyn dropped Jeremy Clinton’s copper coin on top of those already there. It made a satisfactory ping. “All accounted for, Mama.”

Bess nodded. “Yes, now so it is.”

Tamsyn folded her hands and looked demure, giving no indication of the quickly scrawled note she’d tucked up her sleeve.

High up in her room under the eaves, Hetje stood by the window. All her teeth were gone and her hearing wasn’t what it had been—she blamed Miss Bess’s screaming for that—but her eyes were as sharp as ever. She’d watched Jeremy Clinton from the moment he left the simpling room and walked down the path and out the front gate.

She was watching him now. He crossed the road and turned up Coenties Alley, walked past the Jews’ houses, approached the redbrick mill facing Stone Street. A gust of wind came along and nudged the broad blades atop the mill’s tall tower. Braked they must be because they didn’t spin, only shuddered a bit. Master Jeremy hunched forward, clutching his hat. In a moment he’d round the corner and she wouldn’t be able to see him.

He hadn’t cleared Jews’ Lane before the other one came to join him. Hetje squinted to see better, but Christopher Turner was hard to miss. The Black Giant, they called him; showed you what white folks knew. If he’d been black—at least, if his father’d been black—a lot of things would be different. For one thing, Hetje wouldn’t have Miss Bess screaming at her all the time. Telling her she was going to hell for breaking an oath she never took.

If Mistress Sally’s firstborn had been born black—or even brown—Hetje could have taken him to the slave compound the way she planned, and maybe Mistress Sally could have bought him back and spared them all a lot of tears.

But it wasn’t that way. And it wasn’t Hetje’s fault the mistress’s baby had black hair but white skin. And it surely wasn’t Hetje’s doing that, after she’d lived almost six years with the master, Mistress Sally couldn’t face any more.

“Help me, Hetje. You have to help me.”

Hetje was a good slave. She’d helped Mistress Sally do almost anything she wanted until the day Sally died. Some things though, Hetje took no part in. Putting that length of twine around the master’s neck while he slept, and twisting it around and around on a wooden darning egg until his eyes fairly popped out of his skull—Hetje just watched while that happened. The only thing she helped with was stuffing him into a burlap sack and, when night came, dragging the sack from Pearl Street to the gibbet down by the fort. And piling up the boxes and hefting the master up, and putting the old noose around his neck and leaving him hanging there. Hetje did do that with the mistress, but Hetje hadn’t poured any pitch. Mistress Sally did that all by herself. And afterward, when Mistress started searching for the little boy she’d made Hetje take away, Mistress did that alone as well.

Hetje had thought on all those things plenty of times. Decided there wasn’t any point in telling it. It was just how life had worked itself out. If she hadn’t given the baby to Mistress Marit and Master Lucas, for sure the old master would have killed him. And Christopher Turner would never have been born. So Mistress Bess could shout and scream as much as she liked. Old Hetje, she wasn’t saying anything different from what she’d said before.

III

Singly or in pairs, they went to the special place. For weeks after the night of magic out by Beekman’s Swamp, one or another would move silently through the night to the chosen place, and kneel down and say the
obeah
words Peter the Doctor gave them for protection, and begin to dig.

It was Peter who thought of using the field behind the Crooke orchard. The Crooke place was out at the edge of town, one of the last you could get to from the paved part of the Broad Way, and so far back from the road no one would see them. House and field were separated by a barn as well as an orchard. They could bury their stolen knives and clubs in Crookes’ field.

Just to make sure, Peter the Doctor had brought the
obeah
to the chosen place. He brought strong magic to make the ground always soft for digging, and to make it certain that no one of the people living in the house would come out to use the stool while a hole was being dug. The
obeah
was why not a single one of the Crookes’ six slaves ever spotted the freshly turned earth, or reported anything suspicious to their masters.

The
obeah
kept their secret. Nearly six weeks and they had not been betrayed, nor were they tempted to betray one another. That was how strong was the magic of Peter the Doctor. He made them invincible. The oath-takers thought of freedom coming soon, and they rejoiced.

Later, Bess always insisted that the bell on the shop door had jangled with a different tone that February morning. She swore it had been more forceful. Tamsyn thought that was nonsense, but she never said. When you grew up with Red Bess you learned to keep some things to yourself.

“Good afternoon, ladies. I can’t tell you how glad I am to find you here. In truth, I am overjoyed.”

Bess had been pouring a large jug of freshly made Health-Giving Tonic into the barrel. She stood on the wooden counter; Tamsyn’s arms wrapped around her legs to steady her. Seeing the fine-looking young man who had expressed such pleasure in meeting them, the girl let go long enough to gather up her skirts and drop a quick curtsy. “Good day to you, sir. Is there something you wish to purchase?”

“I have no doubt that sooner or later I shall wish to purchase every remedy you stock.” The young man took off his hat and bowed in Tamsyn’s direction. Without the tricorn he looked even better. He wore no wig—his faint accent marked him as a Scot, and Scots seldom indulged in such frippery—and his hair was a warm golden brown, much the same color as his eyes. It was tied neatly at the back of his neck with a black grosgrain ribbon. “You are Miss Tamsyn, are you not? And this must be the lady the whole town calls Mistress Bess.”

“Red Bess is what they call me. And you can’t have been here long or you’d have heard that.”

“Mistress Bess,” the man said firmly. “And if your task is finished, will you allow me to help you down?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just reached up, put his two hands around Bess’s waist, and despite her substantial bulk, swung her easily to the floor.

“Considering how fond of my dinners I am, young man, that was most impressive.”

“Nay, Mistress, I’m the one that’s impressed. Back in Edinburgh they told me it was foolhardy for a trained physician to come to New York. They said there wasn’t a proper apothecary to be found, that every housewife fancied herself adept at simpling, and that as a consequence one must bear the burden not only of prescribing one’s chosen remedies, but of preparing them. Yet the moment I landed I heard of your shop, and here I see a truly amazing array.” He waved his hat at the display of tall glass jugs with their carefully lettered labels.

Bess nodded. “Well, Edinburgh’s not a surprise. Your burr is well hid, but it’s there nonetheless. But a trained man of medicine? As young a one as you? Are they apprenticing physicians straight from the birthing bed in Scotland these days?”

“Mama!” Tamsyn’s cheeks were bright pink. “What will our visitor think if—”

“Nay, please, Miss Tamsyn, you must not trouble yourself. I take no offense. Your mother’s question is entirely to the point.” The young man turned to Bess. “I know that long years of apprenticeship are still the fashion here in the colonies, Mistress, but we have more modern methods at home. I have spent three years studying at the university in Edinburgh, with professors skilled in every kind of medicine. I am, in fact, not simply a physician. I am fortunate enough to hold the degree of Medical Doctor.” He made a second bow, considerably deeper than the first, and meant to include both women. “Zachary Craddock, M.D., ladies. And I am, as I said, most powerfully content to make your acquaintance.”