City of Dreams (38 page)

His name was Solomon DaSilva, and though he’d been born in Brazil he spoke perfect English tinged with a faint Irish lilt, the result of having learned the language as a small boy from a governess born in Tipperary. But in ten years in New York he had never been taken for Irish. He was short and stocky, flesh and muscle tightly packed on a squat frame, and very dark. He always wore a black satin coat and white satin breeches with diamond buckles, and carried an ebony walking stick topped with the head of a golden horse with ruby eyes.

The girl’s name was Jennet Turner, and she liked the walking stick best. Of all the remarkable things there were to look at and wonder about when she was with Solomon, the golden horse was the most appealing. “Here,” he said, knowing she fancied it. “You may hold it if you care to.”

“Yes, thank you, I will.” She took the stick in her elegant, long-fingered hands. “But I’m not a child any longer, Solomon. You can’t keep me entertained with geegaws.”

“That geegaw was made in Paris for the King Louis, who is now known as a saint.”

“Ah, well, that makes it far too old for me.” She gave it back to him with a quick and taunting grin. “I like young, fresh things.”

DaSilva took the walking stick and crossed his legs, relaxing against the velvetcovered cushions of his recently imported carriage. “If that’s so, why do you bother with me?”

“You know why.”

“Yes, but tell me again. I like to hear it.”

“Because I want you to give me money.”

He exploded in laughter. It was her honesty as much as her rare beauty that kept him meeting this extraordinary child. (He still thought of her as such, though she’d turned sixteen the previous winter.) DaSilva lived in a world where few said exactly what they meant—least of all, women. The directness of this girl he’d known since she was twelve was as refreshing as clear springwater. “I do give you money. And what does it buy me?”

“You don’t give me enough. And it buys you the knowledge that you are laying up treasure in heaven by giving to the poor here on earth.”

“Ah, yes, the Christian charity argument.”

She drew her supple fingers through the silk fringes that edged the carriage windows. They were tightly closed today, against the smoke and the fetid winds from the swamps. Everyone said that was where the pox came from. Never mind. Solomon’s swarthy face had a scattering of pockmarks that showed he’d already had the disease, and she knew she was immune. “Do Jews not believe in charity?” she asked.

“I suppose they do. I haven’t been near a synagogue in so many years, I can’t be sure.”

“Then you’re not afraid of going to hell?”

He shrugged. “I count on being able to make my peace before I die. But I don’t believe that will be any time soon.”

It was her turn to laugh, a low throaty chuckle. That was another thing he liked about her. She never giggled or twitted; her pleasure was always as direct as her speech. And dear God, she was beautiful. But her moods changed more quickly than the weather. Suddenly she was serious, looking at him with a remarkable intensity. “Tell me again what you said last week.”

“Which bit of my wisdom do you want repeated?”

“Don’t tease me, Solomon. You remember.”

“Yes, I expect I do. About a woman not being able to be a surgeon.” He sighed. “It’s impossible, Jennet. You know it is.”

“I do not know any such thing.” She looked away.

DaSilva touched her defiant chin with the head of the horse stick. “It’s not practical, my dear. You must put aside such notions. Society can be thwarted in some things, Jennet. This they won’t tolerate.”

“But why?” A whisper, slightly hoarse with the pain of frustration and disappointment.

“If I knew why people were narrow-minded I would tell you,” he said gently. “I don’t.” Then, very softly, “Jennet, do something for me.” She turned to him. “Take off your cap so I can see your hair.”

He’d asked for that favor many times. She did what he wanted quickly and without much thought. Her long, straight black hair was twisted into a heavy, silken braid that fell over the bodice of her simple calico dress.

DaSilva reached out, then pulled his hand back. He had never taken advantage of her innocence. Sometimes he wondered if she knew what that cost him. “Why do you never use the money I give you for a pretty new dress?”

“For one thing, there are better ways to spend it. For another, how would I explain a pretty new dress to my parents?”

“I don’t know. But they seem remarkably unconcerned about where you go and what you do.” He’d met her when a man at the Fly Market tried to say she’d only given him two coppers for her skinned hare, not the shilling she insisted she’d paid. Solomon had no idea which of them was telling the truth, but he made the man give Jennet change for a shilling—DaSilva was the man’s landlord—and drove her home in his carriage. When he asked why she’d been sent alone to shop she explained that she was the eldest daughter among six children, that her family had few slaves, and that her mother was again with child. So of course she had to help.

After that DaSilva saw her at least once a week, always like this—in the privacy of his carriage, parked outside his front door because she refused to set foot in his house.

“About your parents,” he said, “haven’t they ever questioned you about your meetings with me?” The city insisted that Christopher Turner was a scoundrel. DaSilva wasn’t entirely sure. But only a fool would fail to see the economic potential of a daughter who looked like Jennet, and no one ever said Christopher Turner was a fool.

“How could they? They don’t know I meet you.” She spoke without taking her eyes from his face. Remarkable eyes. A blue so dark it was almost violet. “I don’t wish to trouble them with such a small thing.”

“Is that how you think of our meetings? As a small thing?”

She shrugged. “Yes, of course. That’s what they are, aren’t they?”

“If you say so.” He didn’t know whether he wanted to smack her or kiss her. Both, perhaps. It was the urge to touch her that was almost overwhelming. But not quite. Patience, he reminded himself. Patience. “Some people would say keeping secrets makes you a disobedient daughter.”

“I don’t care what some people would say.”

She was still looking straight at him. DaSilva couldn’t bear it. He glanced out the carriage window and smiled. “Turn your head, my dear. That’s your father, isn’t it? Coming down the road toward us.”

Sweet Christ, it was like walking through a charnel house. Damned smoke had driven everyone off the streets. Only a few black-clad mourners scurrying about, coming and going from burials, the poor bastards. The only exception seemed to be this shiny black carriage with two white horses, sitting in front of a grand three-story redbrick mansion.

Hard to remember that not long ago Nassau Street had been the winding path through the woods that led to old man Kip’s farm. It was graded and cobbled now, paved up to the edge of the town where it joined the King’s High Road to Boston. Splendid houses either side. He could remember when they’d called this stretch Pie Woman’s Alley.

The mansion Christopher was approaching was set well back and fronted by an orchard. The leaves of the trees were grimy with soot and smoke, but the branches were so heavy with fruit they hung over the road. A pear dangled directly over the head of the driver of the carriage, a black man wearing a tall black hat and white livery with shiny gold buttons.

The driver ignored the fruit and remained motionless on his high perch, staring straight ahead. Had to mean the carriage was occupied, that he was waiting for the command to move on. Heading for one of the docks, most likely, so whoever was rich enough to own the mansion and the orchard and the carriage and the splendid white horses could get out of New York.

Christopher kept walking. He was almost abreast of the carriage when he saw a female hand reach up and draw a curtain over the window, and heard a male voice call out a command. The black man cracked his whip and the white horses began moving down the road, their hooves sending up little puffs of brick dust as they struck the cobbles.

God knew they’d left it late enough. Most who could afford to escape had already gone. The first few days, as soon as people heard there was smallpox in the town, the ferries couldn’t cope. Private craft took up the slack. The single-masted sloops and two-masted brigs usually used for goods transport to the Caribbean carried fleeing New Yorkers across the narrows to Brooklyn, or farther up the long island’s coast to Jamaica and Flushing. Some took the westerly route around the tip of Manhattan and went northward up Hudson’s River to the village of Greenwich, or went beyond it to the yet more isolated village of Harlem. Nearly eight thousand inhabitants in New York City, and just about all of them, for the time being at least, wanting to be somewhere else.

Christopher watched the elegant black carriage turn the corner and disappear, then walked on.

Nothing to see except smoke until he reached the intersection of the Broad Way and Little Queen Street, where his path was blocked by a swaybacked black nag pulling a black wagon that carried a black coffin. Christopher took off his hat and bowed his head. The shabby rig was followed by a sobbing woman dressed entirely in black. She was flanked by two men who had to hold her arms to keep her from collapsing. Sweet Christ, so much grief. The funeral cortege passed out of sight. He crossed the road and lifted the brass knocker of Jeremy Clinton’s front door.

Age hadn’t been kind to Jeremy. He and Christopher were both forty-one, but Jeremy looked older. Most of his fair hair was gone, his once slight build had turned to fat, and worst of all, the spirit had gone out of him. Jeremy had become a whiner. “Come in. What took you so long? I’ve been waiting.”

“I had to stop by the Dutch church on my way.” Christoper used the iron scraper beside the front door to remove the brick dust from his boots. “The old Dutch widow lady on Stone Street I told you about … Turned out she’s living alone surrounded by corpses.”

“Corpses? But you said you had to have a live donor, that the—”

“A figure of speech, Jeremy. There was a child with enough life left in him for our purposes.” His boots were as clean as they were going to be. Christopher stepped inside and hung his tricorn on a peg in the hall. “For God’s sake, close the door. We’ll choke to death on the smoke.”

“Personally I thank God for the smoke. It’s the only thing keeps me from thinking we’re all just sitting here waiting to die.”

“The fires do no bloody good at all. There’s absolutely no evidence they affect—” He broke off. Jeremy had never been interested in scientific argument. “Tell me something. Why do you stay? You could move the family to the country until the pox plays itself out.”

“A household of eight—five if I left the slaves behind: it would still be a considerable expense.”

Jeremy’s father and his uncle were both dead, and Jeremy wasn’t much of a lawyer. It was true he had little money. Still, “It’s not finances, old friend. It’s Marjorie, isn’t it?”

Jeremy shrugged. “She can be difficult. Particularly out of familiar places. She’s calm today, though. I did what you suggested and got a large supply of syrup of red poppies from Tamsyn’s shop. By the way, the black who served me was your Phoebe.”

“Yes. I hired her out to Tamsyn these past two years.” What a ruckus that had caused. Jennet, his eldest daughter, was closer to little black Phoebe than to her own sisters; she’d howled for days when Christopher sent Amba’s daughter away. But it hadn’t changed his mind: he needed the cash too much. “Made the arrangement as soon as old Hetje died and Tamsyn had room for another slave.”

“I didn’t know. Anyway, she seemed able enough for the work. Gave me exactly what I asked for and made the proper change. Not that there’s much left of a shilling when you buy a flagon of poppy syrup. But it quiets Marjorie a great deal. In fact, she begs for it when there’s none in the house.”

Christopher did not find that a surprise. Poppy syrup wasn’t as strong as laudanum, but he’d long since noted that both created cravings. No matter, Marjorie had to have it. Jeremy’s wife had lost her wits after they’d been married ten years, when her ninth child was born dead. Anything that dealt with her screaming frenzies was justified. “I’m glad to hear the syrup still has an effect. Perhaps it would be wise to begin with Marjorie, then. Before she … While she’s calm.”