City of Dreams (61 page)

Ellen lay flat on the bed, naked below the waist, with her knees flexed. “You hold her down,” Martha told the women. “Mistress DaSilva here, she’ll do what needs doin’.”

The women all knew Ellen’s story. They nodded and took up their positions.

Jennet began. Very slowly and gently, with great caution, she inserted the thin stick into the girl’s vagina. Ellen didn’t move. Passed out from the rum, probably.

The stick went in about six inches, then met resistance. Jennet knew she was at the place where the vagina joined the womb, the
uterus,
as her father’s medical books called it. She had seen a sketch made by someone who’d been present at an anatomy when a dead woman’s belly was cut open and a living child found inside. The text clearly said that until her time came, there was only a tiny opening into a woman’s womb. Somehow she had to force her way in.

Her own babe was—

No, not now.

She pulled the stick back an inch or two, then inserted it again with more force this time. The resistance was still there. Jennet probed a second time. And a third. Still without success. Ellen came out of her drunken stupor and began to struggle against the grip of the women. Her moans grew louder. “Stop. Stop, I tell ye. I’ll birth the cursed freak bastard and kill it soon as it comes out. Stop!”

“Be quiet,” Jennet said through clenched teeth. “You’re getting exactly what you asked for.” She tried a fourth time to force the stick into the womb. And a fifth. Each thrust was more forceful than the one before. Ellen screamed.

“Mother of Jesus,” the woman with the devil’s mark chortled softly. “If you can’t take that much shoved up your twat, Ellen my girl, you’ve a lonely life ahead of you.”

“Aye, and lucky you are to get it so skinny,” the large black woman added, bearing down on Ellen’s left shoulder. “I’ve had a lot harder fucking than that most days since I was nine.”

“Aye, me as well.” The one with the short leg looked no older than Ellen; she seemed to be enjoying her part in this business. “You ought be sellin’ tickets, Martha,” she said with a huge grin. “There’s plenty o’ men would pay to watch a girl get fucked with a wooden stick.”

“Watch your mouth or I’ll fill it full o’ ashes.” Martha was standing behind the bed, stroking Ellen’s forehead, making soft, wordless sounds of comfort. “How much more you got to do, mistress?”

“I can’t say.” Jennet concentrated on her task. This time she withdrew the stick a full four inches and rammed it back in with all the force she could muster. Suddenly it seemed to be gripped by something.

“Stop, bitch!” Ellen screamed and thrashed about.

“For God’s sake,” Jennet shouted to the women, “hold her still!” She had to have gotten from the vagina to the uterus. Where else could the stick go? She pushed harder. Ellen screamed again, a wordless shriek that curdled the blood.

Martha Kincaid clamped her hand over Ellen’s mouth, muffling the girl’s anguish. She looked up. “Mistress …”

Jennet was frozen. She might actually be in the uterus, but now she had no idea what to do next.

“Mistress?” Martha Kincaid whispered anxiously. “What are you waitin’ on? Finish it.”

An operation half done was a death sentence, she’d heard her father say so a dozen times. And Lucas Turner had written that a surgeon’s first obligation was to his patient, and the second was to advance the knowledge of other surgeons.

But no matter how well Informed we Become, it is Folly to think we can ever Operate in the Black Caverns of the Belly or the Chest, or that we’ll Saw our way into the Skull. Those who imagine that some day we will Perform such Atrocities on Living Flesh are as Misguided as those who believe the Time can Come when there is Surgery Without pain.

Operating in the dark cavern of the belly, on what you couldn’t see. God help her, she was doing exactly what Lucas wrote should never be done. But Martha Kincaid had left her no choice. She was doing it for Solomon’s sake, and for the sake of their child.

Jennet shoved the stick in deeper. Ellen arched her back and struggled, but the women held her fast. “For God’s sake,” Jennet whispered, “keep her still.” She began rocking the stick, twisting and turning it. The girl on the bed had developed the superhuman strength that came with agony. She tore herself out of the grip of all but the huge black woman, and jerked her mouth free of Martha Kincaid’s restraining hand, shrieking. “I curses you all to hell I does!”

“For the love of Christ, child!” Martha shouted. “You’re making it a hundred times worse.”

Ellen had thrown them all off now. The wooden stick was still buried deep inside her body, and Jennet grimly maintained her grip on the other end. “I curse you to hell, witch!” the girl screamed as she struggled into a half-sitting position. “Forever and ever! I curse you to hell.”

Martha Kincaid managed to grab Ellen’s shoulders and wrestle her back to the bed. Finally she got her hand over the girl’s mouth. “Quiet! Bite your tongue and bear it! Do you want every man in the taproom to know what we’re doin’ in here?”

The women had drawn back from the bed, looking suddenly terrified.

“Ah, for Christ’s sake,” Martha said turning her head so she could face them, her voice weary. “Stop lookin’ like pigs about to get their throats slit. Get back where you were, all of you, and hold her down till it’s over. Sooner we’re done the less chance any out there will know what we be doin’.”

It didn’t count that every man in the taproom was himself either a freak or a fugitive. Come to something like this, they’d all make noises like gentlemen of property. A woman gets herself out of breeding, she ought to be made to feel the full rigor of the law, as they called it. As for whoever helped her to do it, flogging was too kind.

“Filling our bellies,” Martha whispered, her face hanging over Ellen’s, one hand stroking the girl’s hair even as the other kept a stifling grip over her mouth. “Givin’ us babes we love too much to leave. And us needin’ the few coppers they bring home to put a bit o’ bread in the wee ones’ mouths, that’s what makes us stay. Until they use us up, or find somethin’ better and throw us out. Come the day we find a way to stop birthin’ unless we wants to, that be the day we’re as free as they are. Ain’t a man alive can stand the thought o’ that.”

The women holding Ellen down were all looking sideways at the door to the taproom. “It’s all right,” Martha said, trying hard to sound as if she believed her own words. “Too busy fuckin’ and boozin’ they are to care what’s goin’ on in here. But holy Christ, Mistress DaSilva, are you not done yet?”

“I’m not sure.” Jennet was trying desperately to feel what she couldn’t see. “I can’t quite—”

Ellen gave a frantic jerk that almost freed her and a loud groan wormed its way around the edges of Martha Kincaid’s palm.

Jennet thrust the stick forward one last time, forcing it deeper into wherever it was. Then she twisted it around in quick circular motions. Oh God, as if she were stirring porridge.

Ellen gave another violent lurch. She still hadn’t broken free, but she had managed to yank her head away from Martha’s clasp, and she screamed. “Stop! Witch woman! You be killing me! I curse you! Stop!”

Jennet stopped twisting the stick and withdrew it. She’d done all she could. If it wasn’t enough, so be it. Ellen’s screams became whimpering sobs. Jennet’s chest was heaving. The mental and physical struggle had exhausted her. She closed her eyes and fought for breath.

“Mistress.” The girl who was holding Ellen’s right leg jostled Jennet’s arm. “Look at that, mistress.” Jennet opened her eyes and glanced down. Clots of blood and globs of mucus were oozing from Ellen’s vagina. The girl who’d spoken began to swipe at the mess with her apron.

“Not with that,” Jennet was hoarse with fatigue. “Get the cloths and hot water from over by the fire,” she whispered. “Sponge her clean.”

Tired as she was, she couldn’t turn away from her patient. So much blood. And those viscous lumps, was one of them the almost-child? If her baby, hers and Solomon’s, were aborted, would it look the same? Was it different from this filth because it was a child conceived in love?

“Mistress,” one of the women said, “can’t you do nothin’?”

She couldn’t seem to focus, but she had to. A bright red river covered the inside of the girl’s thighs. And the bed. And the hands of all who tried to stanch the flow.

“Jesus, I ain’t never thought there was that much blood in a person.” That from the young girl Martha Kincaid had threatened to make eat ashes. “Bloody awful it is. You’ve like to killed her, mistress. Look how still she be.”

Jennet rushed to the head of the bed. Ellen lay inert, her head lolling, her mouth slack. Jennet shoved the others out of the way and put her ear to the girl’s chest. She picked up a weak, thready sound, raised her head, and looked closely at her patient. Ellen’s breaths came short and choppy, and her skin had a faint blue pallor. “Dear God, she’s lost too much blood.”

“Aye, far too much blood,” Martha Kincaid said quietly. “We can all see that. Can’t you do nothing?”

Jennet went back to the foot of the bed. The hemorrhage had slowed, but even if she’d had proper ligatures of sheep’s intenstines, there was nothing she could see to use them on. Besides, her covert practice of surgery had never extended to such art. But now, totally desperate, Jennet stretched a tentative hand toward the needle and the yarn she had requested earlier.

“You gonna sew up her twat, mistress?” This from the black woman.

“Might as well,” the woman with the devil’s mark said. “She’ll not be needing it. Gone she is. God rest her soul.”

“No!” Jennet returned to the head of the bed. She listened for a heartbeat, then put her palm to the girl’s forehead. The skin was already cooling. “Get me a bit of mirror. Quickly! We can see if she’s breathing and—”

“No need.” Martha’s voice was quiet. “The likes of us, we know death when we sees it.”

“There’s something else.” Jennet couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “I can put my blood in—”

“There’s nothing you can do.” Martha Kincaid put her arm around Jennet’s shoulders, as if they were equals. “C’mon, lass. You’ve had as much trouble as one evening can bring. I’ll not let you add witchcraft to whatever your sins may be. As for poor Ellen, don’t go thinkin’ you killed her. It’s a man what done that.”

The brick walls of the DaSilva mansion on Nassau Street, though darkened by smoke and soot, still stood. But the roof was open to the sky. Both the town’s fire wagons had been trundled to the scene, but the volunteers had concentrated on dousing the neighboring houses to keep the conflagration from spreading.

That fierce the blaze had been. As if the many splendors of Solomon DaSilva’s wealth had burned more fiercely than the ordinary things in an ordinary dwelling. The whole street could easily have gone up in flames, and the next, and possibly the one after that. Everyone’s worst terror. This time it hadn’t happened. A downpour had begun shortly before midnight. At dawn it was still a steady drizzle.

Christopher drew the edges of his coat closer together against the damp and ignored the water that dripped down his neck from the brim of his tricorn. A few of the city’s ever present pigs were rooting around in the still-smoldering ashes. “You’re sure there’s been no sign of any of them?” he asked Luke for the third time. “Not Jennet or Solomon or the servants?”

“None.” Luke kicked a booted foot against the blackened remains of one of the white pillars, now a dark finger pointing accusingly at heaven. “I got here almost as soon as the thing started. The mob was standing around and watching. Some of them still held the burning torches they’d used to start the blaze.”

“And you held … that.” Christopher nodded to the musket Luke carried.

“Yes. And if I’d been in time I’d have used it. Brought it because I’d heard they were going after the town’s Jews.”

“Bastards. Solomon’s a good man. They’d no cause.”

“Good to us, at any rate,” Luke agreed. “Pity I was too late.”

“Don’t blame yourself, son. You tried. Solomon will be grateful. But you’re sure you didn’t see him or your sister? Or the servants?”

“Neither white nor black. Just a crowd of rabble stirred up by the election business. And, like I said, him.”

“Caleb Devrey.” Christopher still couldn’t quite credit it. “You’re absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely,” Luke said.

The cousins had stared at each other in the light cast by the inferno that had been Solomon DaSilva’s grand home. “Devrey was at the head of the pack.” The words were bitter in Luke’s mouth, but he took some satisfaction in saying them aloud. “He was the leader.”

“May he rot in hell.” Christopher’s jaw was white with the effort not to howl his rage. And his fear. After a few seconds he regained control. “They must be safe somewhere, Luke. Solomon would never let anything happen to Jennet. And Caleb Devrey’s feelings were no secret. A man like Solomon DaSilva … he’s bound to have taken precautions.”