City of Dreams (40 page)

There was only one other business this far from the town. Dolly’s Shipyard was considerably east of the tanneries. It had spread itself over the area abutting a recently built wharf on the East River. Normally a hive of activity, these days the shipyard was empty. Those who did not have the pox cowered, terrified, in their homes; those already stricken were too ill to work. The only sign that Dolly’s wasn’t a ghost yard was the small cluster of people waiting for the girl in the gray cloak.

They were nearly a dozen people, women and children, paupers who lived in the old shacks the freed blacks had built around the swamps before they were forbidden to own land in the aftermath of the revolt of 1712.

What could she do for them? Caleb had heard his father say often enough that Christopher Turner was practically a pauper himself, so Jennet couldn’t be giving them money. And there was no way she could have enough food left to feed these people.

All those years in Edinburgh … Endless nights he’d lain awake dreaming of Jennet, thinking of how she must be growing up. Taller, her breasts a little fuller. He’d wondered whether her waist was still as tiny. And he had dreamed of her hair. Jennet’s glorious hair would still be shining ebony. And her eyes would stay as big, and as dark a blue.

This past week his reveries had changed. Instead of rejoicing that Jennet was still the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen—and, God be praised, still not married—he’d lain awake trying to figure out what she was doing in Dolly’s Shipyard.

The routine never changed. As soon as Jennet arrived she opened the door of an old shed. The misbegotten children and their haggard mothers crammed themselves into it. Jennett went in after them and pulled the door shut. Soon after that the women and their children started leaving, a few at a time, sneaking off into the shadows as if they were afraid to be seen.

In God’s name, what was she doing in there?

Caleb had made up his mind. Today he’d have the answer.

Fourteen people had ducked into the shed when she arrived. He waited until eleven of them had gone, then walked boldly up to the door and threw it open.

The windowless shed was lit by a couple of candles. He could see Jennet quite clearly. She was seated on a low stool, and one of the two remaining urchin children stood between her splayed knees. She held the boy’s bare arm in one hand. In the other she held a lancet.

“So, Cousin Caleb.”

“So, Cousin Jennet.”

It was the morning of the next day. They were standing on the wooden bridge that spanned the old canal basin at the foot of Broad Street, looking out to an inner harbor that was as deserted as everywhere else in the city. They might have been, as Jennet had said, on the moon. Caleb said that perhaps if they had been, what she was doing would not be so horrifying.

“Truly detestable. And that’s quite apart from the fact that it’s against the law and does no good.” He kept staring at the water, because if he looked at her he could not be as stern as he must be. For her sake. “It is entirely unnatural.”

“How can you say variolation is unnatural? It’s—”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“What, then?”

“I meant it is deeply offensive to see a young woman with a lancet in her hand. That is what goes against nature.”

“Against nature!” She held up her two hands, the long slim fingers spread so that each was lit by the sun that managed to show itself down here where the sea breeze had blown away the smoke. “Please do not think me immodest, Cousin Caleb. I can work magic with these hands. Surely that is a gift from God and it is meant to be used.”

He was unmoved by her passion. “You are a female. To see you hold a lancet is disgusting and unnatural.”

She dropped her arms to her sides. “That is certainly an opinion shared by many people.”

“By every decent person. Jennet, you must promise me you will stop this thing. Swear you’ll stop it. If you do not, I … I shall have no choice but to tell your father what I know.”

“My father would not object.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“I do.”

“Then have you told him what you’re doing?”

She looked away and didn’t answer.

“I knew you hadn’t. Your father is a highly intelligent man, for all—” he broke off.

“My father never did any of the things they accused him of. And he believes in variolation.”

Caleb had removed his hat and tucked it under his arm. When he shook his head, the red hair he’d inherited from his aunt Bess and his grandfather Jacob Van der Vries glinted in the sunlight. Jennet liked the fact that he did not wear a wig, and that he was a head taller than she was. His stubbornness was less appealing.

“I am sure your father would not approve of a young woman administering variolation, even if he truly believed in it,” he insisted. “And I refuse to accept that your father would advocate such a dangerous and heathen practice.”

Jennet’s green-and-white dress had long sleeves that tied at the wrist with a green ribbon. She stretched out her left arm and with her right hand undid the bow. Then, slowly and carefully, she started to roll up the sleeve.

Caleb stared, unable to take his eyes from the vision she was revealing. Her wrist was as delicate as a flower stem. The skin of her arm was as white as her face, and flawless. There wasn’t so much as a freckle. Was it true of all of her? Were her thighs as white and firm, her midriff, her breasts … He swallowed hard. “What are you doing? I don’t think you ought to—”

“Be quiet, Cousin Caleb. I don’t care what I ought to do. I would have thought you realized that by now. I care about two things only. The first is showing you this.”

She had rolled back her sleeve as far as her shoulder. Its curve was as perfect as any he’d ever seen. He could imagine her in a ball gown like the ones worn by the grand ladies of Edinburgh society. Blue satin, perhaps, the same color as her eyes, with her shoulders entirely bared and her bosom swelling above … “What’s that?”

She was tapping the upper portion of her right arm with one finger of her left hand, drawing his attention to a scar about two inches across and an inch long. “That is the mark left by the variolation my father performed on me.”

He kept looking at her white skin, at the puckered, distinctive scar. “Are you telling me that’s where you got the idea? From your father?”

“No. I got the idea from reading the exchange of views between Mr. Mather and Dr. Douglas. And it seemed to me that the minister made a great deal more sense than the physician in this regard.” She rolled down her sleeve as she spoke, with the same care she’d taken in rolling it up. “I learned to do it properly from watching my father, however. He is a very skilled practitioner, as I’m sure you know.”

“I don’t believe you.” Caleb spoke in a whisper. Damn her, she took his breath away as well as his wits.

“What don’t you believe? You must believe that I’ve been variolated, since I’ve just shown you the scar. As for the variolation protecting one from the pox, you admit to following me around the town for a week, so you know that I go where I will, without fear and without infection. It therefore follows that the variolation is effective, and you must—”

“No! Some people have a natural immunity. I do myself. We have always known—”

“Cousin Caleb.” She held out her arm to him and smiled so sweetly that it seemed impossible the same red mouth had just been saying such provocative things. “Will you tie my sleeve for me? I cannot make a proper bow with one hand.”

“Yes, of course.” Easy to say. His fingers felt swollen to twice their normal size as he fumbled with the thin strand of ribbon that pulled the cuff tight around her slender wrist. He was terrified his hat would come loose from under his arm and he’d make a fool of himself chasing it up Broad Street. “Look, dear Jennet, I don’t blame you for wanting to believe in something magical like var—”

“You mean, as opposed to the cures the doctors and physicians and apothecaries offer?” she said, so gently that it didn’t seem as if she’d interrupted him. “The strong purges twice a day, and the constant bloodletting? The broth made of sheep’s purslane and sugar syrup to sweeten the internal humors, followed by a vigorous emetic, nux vomica perhaps, to bring forth the dangerous fluids in the belly?”

“We do what we can.” He was finished with the bow. Caleb let her go. “I admit it’s not perfect, but the pox is a disease of the most virulent nature. That’s why deliberately spreading it, even among the poor beggars you’re trying to—”

“Not one of the ‘poor beggars’ has sickened with the pox after I variolated them. Nor have I, nor has my father or my mother, nor my two brothers, nor my three sisters. We are all of us here in this plagued place, breathing the wretched smoke the stupid government bids us rely upon in place of a real cure, and we are none of us ill. How do you explain that, Caleb Devrey? What did they teach you in Edinburgh that is stronger than the evidence of your own eyes?”

He could think of nothing to do except clap his hat back on his head. Jennet was still looking at him. “I can’t explain it,” he said finally. “I admit to knowing nothing to disprove your ideas.”

Jennet sighed. “I am so glad. You cannot know how glad I am, Cousin Caleb.”

The intensity with which she spoke was startling. “You are? Why?”

“Because that tells me that you’re an intelligent man. Only a fool insists on believing what he’s believed before when contrary evidence is presented to him.”

“And that’s what pleases you, that I’m not a fool?”

“Indeed. Caleb, do you remember my telling you there were two things that interested me? You never asked me what the second was.”

If he could keep her talking it didn’t matter what she said. As long as she spoke she must stay here with him in the sunlight on the bridge overlooking the still and silent harbor, with those few strands of her jet-black hair escaped from her white cap and fluttering around her face, and her blue eyes looking directly at him. “Did I not? Very well, Cousin Jennet, I am asking now. What is the second thing?”

“That although I am a woman, I mean to practice surgery and open an infirmary to serve the poor. And it strikes me, dear cousin, now that you’ve returned from Edinburgh with a degree in medicine: the simplest way to accomplish that would be to marry you. So that’s what I shall do.”

III

“It appears that the young people have quite made up their minds.” Will Devrey was plainly uncomfortable entertaining his cousin Christopher, but determined to do his duty. “And now that the pox seems to have left the town, I suppose we may as well arrange for the banns to be cried.”

Susannah Devrey had been shocked at the suggestion that Christopher Turner should be invited to the Devrey home, but indifferent to the engagement of Caleb and Jennet.

Bede, the Devreys’ older boy and the one who would take over his father’s business, had always been his mother’s favorite. She’d tried to feel more for Caleb, but when he announced his desire to go to Edinburgh and study medicine she had washed her hands of him. Susannah could not imagine wanting to be around sick people all the time. So Caleb could marry whom he liked, even the daughter of the family black sheep, and she would not trouble herself. But Susannah found it unthinkable that Christopher Turner should be invited to sit in her Wall Street drawing room and take tea.

Will compromised by meeting his cousin in his ground-floor office. The charts detailing the voyages of his eleven ships were pinned to the walls, and there was a jug of brandy on the desk between them. Will poured a glass for each of them. “Considering that the children are only second cousins, it doesn’t seem we need—”

“They aren’t related by blood in any case.” Christopher took his drink, got up from his chair, and began studying one of the charts on the wall. An excuse to turn his back on Will. A supercilious bastard, and rich as bloody Croesus. “Lucas Turner adopted my father. Nicholas was Ankel Jannssen’s son.”

“Yes, quite. Odd, wasn’t it, the way Ankel Jannssen disappeared? I’ve always wondered if—”

“My ancestor was a stumbling drunk who could barely walk for the amount of liquor he poured down his gullet daily.” Christopher was willing to shame himself just to rub Will Devrey’s nose in the cesspool his son would marry into. “Ankel Jannssen probably wandered off into the woods and was killed by a savage, or drowned in a swamp.”

“Yes, probably. And as you say, since there is no blood shared, we have not those grounds to object to the desires of our young.”

“Some other grounds perhaps, Cousin Will?”

“No, of course not. I just meant—”

“Yes, I know.” One reason he hadn’t argued more strongly when Jennet insisted she wanted to marry Will Devrey’s boy was because he took some pleasure in thinking how the bastard would squirm at the thought. “Have to be honest with you. I can’t give Jennet much of a dowry. Thanks to your nephew-in-law.”

“I realize that. Zachary Craddock means well, but he can be intemperate at times. As for dowering your daughter, under the circumstances I should think we might …”