City of Dreams (41 page)

“Yes?”

“We might overlook that formality. Here, have another drink.”

“No, thanks. Don’t let me stop you, however.”

“I shan’t.” Will poured his fourth brandy. His forehead was beaded with sweat and he made a conscious effort to change the subject. “That chart you’re looking at, it’s the route of my latest ship. The eleventh. Making her maiden voyage. She’s called the
Susannah.
After my wife, of course.”

“Of course. I take it you expect her to be profitable.” Susannah was well known to spend money faster than even Will Devrey could make it.

Will didn’t take offense. He’d never curbed Susannah’s extravagances because it gave him pleasure to be seen as a man who could afford them. “Very profitable. See here”—he got up and went to stand beside Christopher and tapped the chart with a stubby finger—“that’s the first leg of the journey. New York to the Indies, carrying timber and flesh and fish and butter and biscuit.”

“The first leg. The
Susannah’s
not coming straight back, then? I thought the West Indies ships always brought back rum. Or at least sugar for the making of it.”

“Not this one. She’s going on to Newcastle, where she’ll unload her cane and take on coal for ballast. Then to London, where she’ll lade some of the mother country’s pleasures for us poor colonials.” Will allowed himself a wry grin. “Nothing but the best for the
Susannah.
She’ll be bringing back choice furniture and cloth, the finest satins and laces. All the made goods that fill our best markets. Named her well, didn’t I?”

“So it seems. But why no trip to Africa for blacks? Is that not the better part of your trade?”

“Was once. Less so now. No, the
Susannah’s
not a Guinea ship. No point in building more of those at the moment. Van Dam and the Council insist we lessen the proportion of blacks in the province. Safer to bring in white servants, they say. Indentures. You ask me, it’s not how many slaves we have but how well we discipline ’em that matters. However”—he tapped the chart again—“we are His Majesty’s obedient servants. Now sir,” returning to his desk and upending the brandy decanter into his glass one more time, “to get back to the business at hand. Shall we say three weeks hence for the wedding?” He had no idea why Caleb wanted to marry a pauper’s daughter, but there it was. Susannah wanted the boy out of the house, getting on with his life. As for Will, anything that made for peace under his roof was welcome. “How about it, Christopher? Three weeks.”

Christopher glanced at the calendar on the wall. “That would make it … January tenth. A few weeks before Jennet’s seventeenth birthday. I can see no objection.”

Will smiled a small smile that didn’t seem to reach his eyes. “The tenth of January in the year of Our Lord 1732 for the wedding of Miss Jennet Turner to Mr…. No, no, I’m told that the fashion now is that I must say ‘Doctor.’ To Dr. Caleb Devrey. That should please them. Please Caleb, at any rate. I expect three weeks is about as long as he’s willing to wait.”

“I have news for you.” Jennet was holding the walking stick, stroking the gold horse’s head. “I’m to be married.”

Merda!
He felt as if he’d been punched in the belly.
Filho da puta!
DaSilva clenched his fists until the knuckles whitened. But what could he expect? Her father was a virtual beggar, but she was a young woman and a rare beauty. Of course she’d marry. But
merda!
Not so soon. “Does your father not think you’re too young?”

“He did at first. But Caleb and I insisted. We told him we would run off if he didn’t agree.”

“I see.” She was looking out the window, avoiding his direct glance. “You are a headstrong child, Jennet Turner. I think if I were your father I would put you over my knee and give you the spanking you deserve.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“Not your daughter. And my father has never beaten any of us. He does not approve of beating.”

“I said ‘spank.’ It’s entirely different.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what you think. Caleb’s papa and mine have agreed. The first banns are to be cried this Sunday. The wedding will be on the tenth of January in the new year.”

“And who is this Caleb?” The first shock had passed; he could breathe a little easier now. His words did not sound quite so strained in his own ears. She, of course, had noticed nothing. Whatever she thought of him, it would not occur to her that he would be distraught by the thought of her marrying. “Is he in any position to support a wife?”

“Oh that.” She waved her hand as if such considerations were of no importance. “He is Caleb Devrey, and his father is Will Devrey. So there is plenty of money.”

Filho da puta!
“Will Devrey. I see. Well, you are right, there is plenty of money.” Something else occurred to him, another straw to grasp. “But you and Devrey’s son … are you not cousins?”

“Second cousins, and that by adoption. There is no objection. So it’s all settled.”

She turned to face him. “I haven’t told you the best part. Caleb is a doctor of medicine, just returned from studying at the University of Edinburgh. After we’re married we shall devote our lives to bringing medical care to the poor.”

“An interesting plan.” DaSilva reached over and took his walking stick from her hands. “Does your husband-to-be agree with it?”

“Of course. Caleb always does whatever I say.” He snorted and she blushed. “Well, he does after a bit. Sometimes I must persuade him first.”

“I think you will be miserable—”

“What a terrible thing to say! Why would you wish misery upon me, Solomon?”

“I don’t. You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say I think you’ll be miserable if you marry a man who always does everything you say.”

Jennet shook her head. “No, you are quite wrong about that. Caleb suits me perfectly. We shall be blissfully happy. On January tenth my life begins. And what of you, Solomon, shall you give me a fine wedding present?”

“Perhaps”—he held up the walking stick—“I shall give you this.”

When Marit and Ankel Jannssen lived in the house on Hall Place, the front room had been the butcher shop. After Lucas married Marit it was his barbering room and surgery. When young Christopher Turner became the most celebrated cutter in the city he took his tools to his patients’ homes and was welcomed as a savior. In those days, the front room of the little house was the family parlor, and Jane had dreams of being a fine lady and entertaining New York City society. Since Christopher’s fall from grace, the room was once more a place of sweaty labor. He wrote there, taught there, and, when he had the chance, saw patients there.

That December night he’d brought every candle in the room to the small table beside the fire, concentrating all the light into a single yellow pool. In the middle of the light a woman sat alone, shoulders hunched, fair head bowed. Her name was Martha Kincaid, and she’d kept her shawl over her hair until Christopher insisted she remove it. Now it was clutched in her lap and trailing on the floor, ignored in her general misery and shame.

Hezekiah Jackson, far and away the cleverest of the three students who had answered Christopher’s latest advertisement offering instruction in surgery, hovered behind the patient he had brought to his teacher. Christopher stood to her side. Both men stared intently at the woman’s face.

She had a growth on her jaw the size of two plump Christmas oranges. A series of uneven mounds set one on the other, it spread from her earlobe to the corner of her mouth. The thing was pocked and pitted and covered in what appeared to be black boils. It was so grotesque she refused to be on the streets except after dark, and then only with the black shawl covering her head and most of her face.

“The tumor extends to the larynx below and the pharynx behind,” Hezekiah Jackson said. “So it’s not operable, is it?”

Christopher made no reply. Instead he stretched out his hand and gently fingered the lumps.

“According to the three physicians she’s seen,” Hezekiah continued, “it’s an osteo-sarcoma, and they cannot be treated.”

The woman winced. Not, Christopher thought, because of his feather-light touch. “Mr. Jackson, your patient has a facial tumor. In my experience, that does not make her deaf. It’s a lesson worth remembering.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“Be quiet, Mr. Jackson. At least until I have completed my examination.”

Christopher leaned a little closer, probed a bit more deeply. The gesture brought his face out of the shadows into the candlelight. The woman looked into his eyes. Hers were brown, and her skin, apart from the tumor, fair. In her twenties, he guessed, healthy except for this repulsive thing on her face and quite possibly pretty without it. He returned to his study of the tumor, running his fingers over it repeatedly, using his sense of touch to plumb the thing’s secrets. Aware that she was staring at him all the while.

Christopher ended his examination, but he didn’t immediately straighten up. “You are married, mistress?”

“Aye. To Tom Kincaid the miller. At least, I s’pose I must still say as I’m married to him.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“Ain’t what most folks mean when they says ‘married.’ Tom Kincaid won’t have me in his bed these five years past. Not since this thing began growing.”

Her directness startled him. Christopher pulled back, out of the light. “Yes, well, sometimes—”

“Sometimes,” she finished for him, “a woman’s so ugly a man can’t be blamed if lookin’ at her face turns his stomach.”

A little gasp followed that statement. Not from Martha Kincaid. She spoke as if she were discussing the day’s weather, or the eggs her backyard chickens had produced that morning.

Christopher looked toward the sitting-room door. Could be that Jane had come to see what was keeping him so late. The shadows were deep and still. He took a step toward the door. Martha Kincaid’s voice stopped him. “This thing. It’s something as will kill me, ain’t it?”

Christopher returned his attention to his patient. “I will not lie to you. An osteo-sarcoma is usually fatal.” She winced again. It seemed to be the only response she made to any sort of pain. “But for that to be the result you must first have the thing. And you, I think, do not.”

There was an audible gasp of dissent from Hezekiah Jackson. “But three practitioners said—”

“Donkeys are popular in New York, Mr. Jackson. There are at least that many jackasses to be found on the city streets on any given day. For God’s sake, man, feel right here.” He grabbed his student’s hand and put it on the woman’s cheek. “No, don’t bear down like that. You eliminate any chance to know what the thing has to tell you. Lightly. Only run your fingers over it.”

“It moves.”

“Exactly. And an osteo-sarcoma does
not
move. It is a cancer anchored in the bone. This is a cyst attached to muscle and skin.” Christopher looked from Jackson to the patient. “I can help you, mistress. Do you wish me to proceed?”

He expected her to leap at the chance. Instead she hesitated. “You gonna cut?”

“Yes, some cutting is involved.”

Martha Kincaid said nothing.

“I have saved a great many more than I ever lost,” Christopher said softly.

Sweet Christ. He was reduced to this, to begging for the chance to use the scalpel and the lancet. Because his hands itched to do so. Because it was what he’d been born to do. “In any event,” he added, “you shall eventually die, Mistress Kincaid, as must we all, but not because of the growth on your face. You can go on living, with or without it. The choice is yours.”

She raised her hand and touched the tumor. “It moves, you say.”

“It does.”

“I don’t feel it move.”

“You are a woman. Females are not inclined by nature to be successful in such an exploration.”

She nodded. “But three practitioners,” she whispered, “and all of ’em said—”

“What did they do for you, these three? Blistering? Bleeding? Purging?” She nodded again. The deformity moved up and down with her head. “And did any of those affect the growth?

She shook her head. “No.”