City of Dreams (57 page)

Phoebe was in no danger of forgetting what she knew. Simpling was as much a part of her as the air she breathed or the thoughts in her deepest heart. And caution. That, too, was bred in her bone.

She stayed beside the door to the family quarters for nearly a minute. Finally, when she was satisfied that no one was coming to investigate, she went to the shelves and reached for the jar labeled
Ascrum,
St. Peter’s wort.

Phoebe scooped some of the dried and crushed leaves into a small, hollowed stone; then she added a sprinkling of what Sally had called
Gallitricum,
a herb every housewife in the colonies knew as clary. She moistened the powder with some honey and a few drops of egg white beaten with geneva. Then, sniffing every few seconds to judge the progress of the remedy, she worked the mix with her stone pestle until it was a smooth paste. “Come here, Jan Brinker. Put your hand on the counter, aside this here candle.”

He looked warily at the flame. “Not gonna be burning me, is you, Phoebe? Not like him.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” All that money.
Jesu Cristo,
what did it matter about his hand when he be having all that money? Wait till he showed Martha Kincaid. Not all of it, mind. Waren’t nobody ever gonna know how much he really be having. But if he showed Martha a gold coin or two she’d let him—

“’Course I ain’t gonna burn you, Jan Brinker. Now give me your hand.”

The dwarf stood on tiptoe and laid his hand palm up on the wooden counter. Phoebe bent her dark head. The candlelight showed clear liquid beading in the crevices of the angry-looking red flesh. “Burned the skin clear away,” Phoebe said. “You’ll have a mark for life. Nothing I can do be changing that.”

“I be figuring as much. But if me hand turns black, will I sicken and die? I knowed a old woman once, burned her hand real bad in a fire down by the docks. After a bit it seemed the burn got better. But later she be having a black hand and her whole arm swelled up, and pretty soon she be dead.”

“That’s ’cause poison be getting into the wound and make her blood bad.” Phoebe took a small tin spatula from a drawer beneath the counter and used it to smear the burn with the paste she’d made. Brinker winced at the first touch, but after that he didn’t move. “Your blood don’t be going bad,” Phoebe said. “Not if you be doing what I tells you.”

She folded a lint bandage over the Dutchman’s hand. “Keep this packing dry. And every day you got to be taking it off and then be putting on some more of this healing potion. Here, you can have what I’ve got made up.” She scraped the excess mixture into one of the small squares of oiled cloth kept for the purpose, and tied it tightly shut with a short length of yarn. “You take this, Jan Brinker. And be doing exactly what I tell you. You gonna be fine.”

“Can I come back when it be time to put on the fresh stuff? Tomorrow? So’s you can do it. I be here well early. Before curfew. I promise.”

Phoebe was wiping her spatula and putting it away. She didn’t look at him. “No, you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said you couldn’t. Now don’t you be putting the bad
obeah
on me, Jan Brinker. I be helping you all I could. And I not be asking you for so much as a wooden penny. Even though Dr. Zachary, he be taking a whip to me if he knowed I give simples away for free. So you be making sure no bad luck comes to me just ’cause I said you couldn’t come back.”

Phoebe went to the street door and opened it. She waited for Brinker to leave.

“I can give you something for your trouble,” the dwarf said.

“Go on, get out of here. I know you don’t be having any money.”

“Not money exactly.” He smiled, thinking of Solomon DaSilva’s coins secreted in his pockets, including the Connecticut copper he’d been given to buy a simple for his burn. Brinker sidled up to Phoebe and motioned for her to lean down. “I be telling so only you can hear.”

Phoebe lowered her head. Brinker stretched his neck so he could put his mouth to her ear. Seconds later she pulled away. “You’ve got a filthy mouth in that big head of yours, Jan Brinker. Get out of here. Right now.”

Brinker chuckled. “Better be watching yerself. Any blackbird yells at a white man—even if he be a freak—she be likely to find herself in the whipping cage.”

“Just go. You got what you be coming for. Now go.”

“I be going. But you think on what I said, Phoebe. You can be sure someday I’m gonna do it. I always like the dark meat of the chicken. And when I do it, you be loving it, begging for more.”

Phoebe closed the door behind the dwarf and leaned against it, breathing hard. She’d tried every way she knew to avoid the bad
obeah,
but in the end she’d probably gotten it. Nothing to be done about that. And much remained to be done of the job Brinker had interrupted.

She returned to the jars of herbs and simples. The house had gone utterly still, but Phoebe remained cautious. She pulled each jar forward and went through the motions of dusting it, then quickly lifted the lid and scooped a small portion of the contents into one of the tin boxes she had prepared. As each box was filled, she tucked it safely into the basket she’d stowed beneath the counter. By midnight the basket was overflowing.

Like Red Bess, the family Craddock housed their slaves in the shed in the back garden. Except for Phoebe. These days her bed was a piece of worn canvas spread on the floor in the apothecary. They’d made her start sleeping in the shop a couple of months past. Right after Jethro, the seasoned slave Dr. Zachary bought the year before, asked if he and Phoebe could be married. Jethro got sent to the poorhouse for that. On a Thursday afternoon, when the public whipper did his work for those of the town as requested it. Fifteen stripes on his bare back. Phoebe was lucky. Dr. Zachary only slapped her a few times around the face and made her start sleeping on the floor in the shop.

Phoebe knew why she’d escaped a visit to the public whipper. She was valuable goods. She knew how to simple. Like her mama always said, what you knew, that be your best protection in this white man’s world.

She spread the canvas on the floor, then lay down on it fully clothed and waited without closing her eyes. After a time she heard the watchman come down Pearl Street crying, “Two of the clock and all is well on a warm and still evening.” As soon as his footsteps had faded, she got up, put on her shawl, gathered up her basket, and silently let herself out.

Jethro was waiting for her by the far side of the back garden wall. He put a hand on her shoulder and looked into her brown eyes, shining in the moonlight. “You be ready?”

Ready for a lot of things. For a long, hard trek north. For the notices Zachary Craddock be putting in the paper. Even them as couldn’t read knowed what them notices said:
Runaway slaves. Substantial reward paid.
Ready for how everyone be looking for them after that. Ready for what be happening if they be caught. Phoebe nodded. “I’m ready.”

“Come then,” Jethro said. “Time to go.”

He started for the street, expecting her to follow. Phoebe hesitated. The pungent scent of the herbs rose sharp and strong on the moist and sultry night air.

Sally Turner Van der Vries had been the first to sow every inch of soil around the house on Pearl Street with the herbs of her trade. Red Bess maintained the practice. Now, in the summer, Tamsyn kept two slaves busy tending the gardens, which continued to flourish. “Burdock,” Phoebe murmured. “I didn’t be taking none of that.”

Jethro turned back. “Get some then. But be quick.”

There was a clump not a yard away. Phoebe reached it in one long stride and crouched down and snapped a dozen rough green leaves from the lush growth and tucked them into her basket.

“Good. Come now.”

“There’s some fine henbane over there. I could—”

“No. We have to go. Watchman be coming back.” Jethro started again for the road. This time Phoebe went after him.

II

“Unbelievable!” Cadwallader Colden slammed his dispatch box onto the desk and sank wearily into his chair. “I’ve never seen the city so clogged. Took me almost an hour to fight my way here from the Broad Way. And every man jack on the streets shouting at the top of his lungs. You’ll have quite a few patients in the days to come, Dr. Devrey. Half the town will be so hoarse they’ll be braying like donkeys.”

Caleb was standing by the window, but watching the tumult had lost its appeal. He let the lace curtain fall and stepped away. “That’s what they look like. Donkeys. Every one digging in his heels and refusing to budge.”

“I take it you’re not interested in who wins the seat in the Assembly.” Colden had opened the leather box. He was shuffling his papers, rolling them into narrow tubes, and tying them with the short pieces of black ribbon he kept in the desk drawer.

“Not much,” Caleb admitted. “I can’t see that it matters who sits in the Assembly. The governor gets to do as he likes, whatever they say.”

“Well, the royal representative after all …”

Caleb watched the older man for a moment, wondering what went on beneath the powdered wig that constantly shed chalky dust over his shoulders. He was very busy slotting his rolled papers into separate pigeonholes. Tomorrow or next week, whenever Caleb again showed up at the office, they would be removed and other papers would take their place. None had anything to do with medicine; his so-called partner never saw a patient. The bastard took half the earnings of the practice but spent all his time being the surveyor general of the Province of New York and attending to his political future. “Tell me, Dr. Colden, leaving the royal prerogative out of it, are you passionately interested in the outcome of this election?”

Colden shrugged. “I voted, of course. Spent all afternoon the day before yesterday doing it.” He grimaced at the memory. In most elections—whether for the Common Council or the Assembly—thirty men voted, perhaps fifty. This time there must have been two hundred in the field up by the Freshwater Pond, all trying to line up behind their candidate. “It’s no wonder they couldn’t get a proper count. Bedlam. Everyone shouting and carrying on.”

“Not entirely happy with the notion of the common man electing his representatives, are you?”

“It’s not that,” Colden protested. “It’s just that since that damned trial everyone thinks they can say what they please and bear no responsibility.”

“Ah yes, Zenger. We’re bound to blame everything on that, aren’t we?”

“Well, what do you expect? If a jury can’t see that printing calumnies about the king and the governor is actionable, what—”

“The jury said that what Zenger wrote was the truth.”

Colden stared at him. “Dear God, Devrey, what’s that got to do with it?”

Caleb nodded toward the ruckus outside the window. “Everything, apparently. According to you that’s why they’re carrying on now. Because they think they can say what they like and not be held to account. Not to your taste, is it, Dr. Colden?”

“Look here, as I said, I went to the field, and when that didn’t suffice I went to City Hall and signed my name in their written poll. And you know full well I’m not happy with the result. But fair’s fair. De Lancey’s candidate won and we Morrisites lost. So be it.”

“Only by fourteen votes.” Caleb kept his voice mild. As if it didn’t matter much. As if he didn’t know how passionately Cadwallader Colden hated James De Lancey. Both men sat on the Common Council, and De Lancey was the major obstacle to Colden’s political ambitions. “Can’t blame the Morrisites for wanting a recount,” Caleb said. “Not when there’s only fourteen votes in it.”

Sweet Christ, he knew it wasn’t smart to bait Colden, but he couldn’t help himself. Half the takings. Every damned month.

“They’ve had their recount.” Colden started packing another set of papers into the dispatch box. “Now they’re carrying on about whether every man who signed is a legal voter. Which question, naturally enough, only pertains to the list of the other side.”

“You don’t hold out much hope, then? The Morrisites won’t overturn the election?”

“I really can’t say. Anyway, this one seat isn’t the problem. If it weren’t for that damned Cosby and his greed … Six years of squabbling. Now he’s dead and we’re left to clean up the mess.”

“Greed” wasn’t a strong enough word for the money lust of the former royal governor, William Cosby. First thing he did on arriving from London was sue Rip Van Dam for half the salary Van Dam was paid during the year he was acting governor. Cosby said the money belonged to him, since he’d already been given the appointment. There were two papers in New York. The
Gazette
had been publishing for ten years and was the official government mouthpiece. It trumpeted Cosby’s line. The
Weekly Journal
had been started two years before by the printer John Zenger. It ran articles written by supporters of Van Dam. Since the authors wrote under assumed names, it was Zenger whom Governor Cosby imprisoned for libeling the king’s representative, and thus the king.

After a year in the dungeons below City Hall the printer was finally tried. And acquitted by a jury who accepted a novel argument made by a silver-tongued lawyer from Philadelphia: it wasn’t libel if it was the truth. After that Chief Justice Lewis Morris threw Cosby’s case out of court. The governor promptly fired Morris and made James De Lancey Chief Justice.