City of Dreams (66 page)

Christopher looked thoughtful and tried to maintain the pretense that this was an ordinary conversation among gentlemen, an exchange of interesting information. “I see. Well, to expose my ignorance further, aren’t the Huron in Canada? Does the fact that you ran into them mean you were across the border?”

“I don’t think so, but I really couldn’t say. Shea’s the one who knew the woods. Anyway, our borders, what we whites say about who owns what, mean little to the Indians. And we didn’t ’run into’ the Huron. They sent a war party to intercept us and the guns before we delivered them to the Mohawk. The two tribes are bitter enemies. That mattered far more than any borders established by the English or the French.”

“I see.” There was a cloud of blue smoke between them now. It obscured Solomon DaSilva’s face and made it impossible for Christopher to read his expression. “Are you going to tell me the rest?” he asked. “What happened to Shea, for instance?”

“What happened to Shea.” DaSilva repeated the words. “What happened to Shea. Do you really want to know?”

“I expect I have to, if I’m to get you well.”

DaSilva chuckled. There was little humor in the sound. “Under the circumstances, what does ‘get me well’ mean?”

“Have you up on your feet, not lying in bed in a nightshirt. Taking an interest in your affairs, your wife, the child you’re to have.”

DaSilva took another couple of puffs on the pipe, then went on as if Christopher had not spoken, “What happened to Shea? Very well. In the simplest possible words, the Huron hacked him apart bit by bit, roasted the bits over their sacred fire, and ate them.”

Christopher opened his mouth, but no words came.

“They kept him alive for most of it.” DaSilva’s voice was calm. He might have been discussing the market price of a piece of land. “Used leather thongs to stop the blood.”

“Tourniquets,” Christopher whispered. “A French technique, I always thought.”

“Perhaps the Huron learned it from the French. Or the other way around.” He spoke in the same even tone, without emotion, the dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. Shea was able to watch them eating his flesh, gnawing on his bones, then tossing them back into the fire. He didn’t die until they cut out his heart. They ate that part of him last. Raw.”

“Sweet Jesus. And you—”

“I watched, too. As it happened they ate Shea first, so I was alive when the Mohawk raiding party attacked the village. To get back the guns.”

“I see. And afterward, I take it, the victorious Mohawks took you with them? To their village?”

“Yes. I’m the source of the guns. Not just muskets, long rifles. So the Mohawk decided it was in their best interest to keep me alive.” DaSilva lifted the stump of his arm. “As you see, the Huron kept me from bleeding to death and the Mohawk medicine women did an excellent job of healing my wounds.”

“It’s a ghastly story, Solomon, I admit. But Sweet Christ, man, seems to me you should be grateful to have survived.”

DaSilva flung back the covers. “Ghastly,” he said softly. “Yes, that’s one word for it. Not strong enough, maybe. As for ’grateful’: I might be if the Mohawks had arrived a few minutes sooner. Or a few minutes later. As it is …”

Christopher looked at the emaciated body. DaSilva’s nightshirt was twisted up around his waist. Beneath it his naked legs were like sticks, his hips as narrow as a boy’s. And Sweet Jesus Christ. He had no genitals. The testes and the penis were entirely gone.

“That’s the part the Huron eat first,” DaSilva said. “All the braves get a bite of your cock and your balls while you watch. Raw, the way they eat your heart after you’re dead. So now you tell me, Christopher Turner. How grateful should I be for my miraculous rescue?”

The first snow of the winter had begun, large, gentle flakes falling on the bare branched trees, melting into the river, melding with her tears. Jennet stood by the shore, hands clasped over her belly, face turned to the west. She was trying to understand the things her father had told her, and to consider what they meant for the future. Hers, and Solomon’s. And the child’s.

“Does he think it’s only in the marriage bed I love him? Can Solomon be so foolish he does not—”

“You are the foolish one, Jennet. It is more than his ability to possess you that’s been taken from him. It is his entire manhood. The person he was has been cruelly murdered, and a eunuch left behind.”

“A eunuch… But, dear God, Papa, it’s not my fault. I begged him to end the gun trade. Why does Solomon hate me because—”

“He doesn’t hate you, Nettie.” He was trying so hard to be gentle, to tell her what she must recognize and accept if she was not to torment herself into an early grave. “It is precisely because Solomon loved you so well that he cannot bear the sight of you now. You remind him of everything he’s lost.”

“I see. And do you believe he will ever feel any differently?”

He’d hesitated a moment before pronouncing her sentence. “I think not, my dear.”

The sun set and the twilight swiftly turned to night. The cold was bitter, but Jennet felt only the heat of her anguish. Finally, unable to contain what was inside her she began to keen. The sound was primeval, a wail of sadness bred in her bone, a legacy bequeathed by the women who had gone before her. All of them forced to do the only thing possible for a female, endure.

I
curse you to hell, witch woman.
That was what the girl Ellen said the night Jennet bungled her abortion and killed her. The girl’s father might have started the job, but Jennet had finished it, no matter what Martha Kincaid said. I
curse you to hell.
Dead Ellen had got her wish. The future that stretched in front of Jennet was impossible to imagine. So she would not try. She would simply live it day by day, however it unfolded.

Her moan rose on the wind, was carried across the river, then faded. She let it go as she let go her dreams and hopes, her love, her passion. All of it was released to the dark and the world beyond her boundaries. Jennet turned and trudged back through the snow.

The carriages were beginning to arrive, the gentlemen of New York making their way to the city’s finest bordello, seeking a respite from the weighty matters that occupied them during the day. For a few moments Jennet stood in front of the house and watched. There were many faces she recognized, wellborn and important men from the town. Oliver De Lancey, Caleb Devrey’s friend, was among them. She smiled.

For the first time she was aware of the cold. Jennet drew her woolen shawl tighter and started for the side entrance, the one Solomon had taken her through the first time he brought her here and began teaching her the uses of wealth and power.

Then, thinking better of it, Jennet Turner DaSilva—widow though her husband yet lived, pregnant with a child that was fatherless though not yet born—walked up the path and opened what she now claimed as her front door.

Book Five

The Claws Tear Out Eyes Path
S
EPTEMBER
1759-J
ULY
1760

Sometimes the path of war could not be avoided by chiefs of courage and honor, and the Canarsie People many times faced and killed their enemies.

The battle against those who threatened from the outside was judged to be worthy of fearless braves. But to fight within the People, blood against blood, was to be like a pair of eagles who rip out each other’s eyes with their fierce talons. In the end both birds are blind.

The Claws Tear Out Eyes Path was to be avoided at all costs.

Unless the
manetuac,
the blood spirits, decreed otherwise.

Chapter Nine

T
HE
S
EPTEMBER NIGHT
was dark and moonless, the stars intermittently covered by fast-moving clouds. The little boat—barely nine feet from stem to stern,
Margery Dee
lettered crudely across her bow—rode the swells with confidence, her single gaff-rigged sail taut before the wind.

The old sailor had one hand on the tiller, the other controlling the lines. His rheumy eyes scanned the expanse of empty water, but once they’d cleared the roads there was little to keep him occupied. New York harbor was crammed with vessels large and small, but no other craft had left her moorings when the
Margery Dee
did.

Queer sort of nigra he was ferrying, a mulatto. Color of coffee with a squirt of fresh milk. Half and half, sort of. Must be why he sashayed around like he thought he was a white man. Leastwise on land. Wedged into the prow, long legs bent, knees almost to his chin, hangin’ on to that God-cursed box, the nigra didn’t look so piss proud, however much white blood he might have in him. Looked like he’d rather be anywhere ’cept where he was.

“Don’t like it much, do ye?” The sailor’s chuckle disappeared into the gusting wind of the black night. “Never met one of yer kind what did. Nigras only goes to sea when the press gangs catch ’em.”

Cuf knew that wasn’t true, but he didn’t argue. The boat’s pitching and chopping made him ill. All he wanted was to do what he’d come to do, and get back on land again once he’d done it. The last part might not be easy.

So she’d told him. Squaw DaSilva, as folks called her, though she’d always been “Mistress” to him. Had to be that way, growing up in her house the way he had, belonging to her. He’d gone to the apothecary shop on Pearl Street only once every month or two, when he was sent. Phoebe—she never encouraged him to call her mama—barely spoke to him. Squaw DaSilva it was who taught him whatever he knew.

Like after she gave him the box, and the two shillings to pay for the journey to Bedloe’s Island.
Make sure no one foxes you, Cuf. Getting there will be simple. Getting back could be more difficult. You’re often wise. Be wise about this.

He’d seen her blue eyes behind the black veil she’d worn as long as he could remember. A black veil covering her face, and a black dress and a black pinafore over it. Widow’s weeds. Even though her husband was alive up there in that room where nobody but Tilda or old Mistress O’Toole ever went in or came out.

“There she be.” The seaman eased the tiller to starboard and started the small boat tacking toward the shore. “Cursed Bedloe’s cursed island. Ain’t goin’ no closer than them pilings off the shore. Ain’t gonna get poxed. Not if you pay me twice the two shillings you promised.”

Cuf peered into the darkness. He could see nothing. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your money.”

The coins were in the pocket of his shabby leather breeches. Two iron shillings, each one hammered out by a smith somewhere up in New England. Folks said no coins made here in America were real money, but nearly everyone acted as if they were. Mistress made him an allowance of four pennies a week. Sometimes they were wood and sometimes copper. It didn’t matter to him, and it would be the same with the toothless, grizzled old tar sailing this miserable excuse for a boat. “Will the sea be over my head?”

“Not a tall, strong young nigra like you. ’Course the waves be pretty high tonight. Could be … You swim, boy?”

“No. And you said I’d no need to swim.”

The old man chuckled, louder this time. “Hold yer piss. It’s me bit o’ fun, that’s all. ’Course ye can wade ashore from the pilings. They’s there so’s any who’s fool enough to want to get to the poxed place can do it. Don’t expect yer bothered none by the pox, though, are ye? Folks say nigras don’t get it. That true?”

“What’s the tide like?” Cuf asked.

The old man hadn’t really expected an answer to his question. Everyone knew nigras didn’t tell white folks their magic. Nigras kept their secrets. “Tide’s low and gettin’ lower. But it’ll be turnin’ in less’n an hour, boy. I ain’t gonna wait.”

“It won’t take me long to do what I came to do.”

The old man squinted into the dark. “You gonna take that there box on to poxed Bedloe’s poxed island?”