City of Dreams (77 page)

Caleb shrugged. “Do as you like. The Council is answerable to the governor, and this commission is in his gift. Always has been. Wasn’t it that greedy fool Cosby who signed your father’s appointment to life tenure? One more of the acts of misgovernment for which the entire province rightly despises him.”

Luke growled, a sound of inarticulate rage, and lunged. Andrew grabbed him. “Father, no! Not here and not now. The patients …”

The boy’s final words rather than his grip were what stopped Luke’s charge. Every patient who was well enough had sat up in bed to watch the fracas at the door of the ward. It was scandalous to allow the indigent see their betters fighting like toughs in the street. Luke was still enough in command of his wits to know how the story would sound when it was repeated to the Council.

“You’re right, son. The patients are ill served by this argument. You will hear from me, Dr. Devrey. But, as my son properly says, not in this place at this time.” He turned to go and Andrew followed him.

“Not so brave when you don’t have a musket, are you?”

Luke was halfway down the stairs. He paused, turned, and said in a loud voice, “A good deal braver than is required to set fire to a house occupied by no one but a young woman and her servants. Almighty God forbid I’d ever be that much of a coward.”

“Are you accusing me of arson?” Caleb’s gut was roiling. “I’ll have satisfaction, Turner!” he shouted.

“Any type of satisfaction you choose,” Luke shouted back, the thought of finally putting an end to the life of Caleb Devrey warming his blood. “Whenever and wherever you say. I shall await your seconds, sir.”

“Father!” Andrew made himself whisper. Christ! A duel was no way to guarantee that Governor De Lancey would change his mind and rescind his order. There were other physicians in the city. Far easier to choose someone who had no part in the quarrel, even if Caleb Devrey was the one left dead. Andrew saw his opportunity to practice surgery, the beginning of the brilliant career he’d been dreaming of since he was eleven, slipping away. “Please, Father, this isn’t the way.”

“Silence!” Luke hissed through clenched teeth. “It’s settled. The challenge is issued.” He started down the stairs again, deliberately turning his back on Devrey.

“I’m not finished with you!” Caleb knew how unwise the words were, but he couldn’t bite them back. The rage born the night Christopher Turner told him he’d been tricked into becoming engaged to a girl who was part savage, the injustices he’d suffered while the Turners went on to acclaim and prestige, the way Jennet ignored him as if he’d never mattered … Nearly three decades’ worth of fury blazed inside him. The fire couldn’t be contained. “You bastard, Turner! Turn around and fight like a man!”

Luke felt a rush of triumph. Devrey was digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself. The fool was probably half drunk. No, two-thirds drunk. All Luke need do was not give in to the urge to pummel the rotten bastard into the ground. Control was the sharpest sword, and a weapon only he possessed. He continued down the stairs, tossing a final challenge over his shoulder, “Your seconds, Devrey. Or if you prefer, we can tell this tale to the Council.”

“Well done, Father,” Andrew said quietly. “You’ve bested him. He’s the one will be accused of creating a public row.”

They were at the door of the almshouse. Luke reached up and grabbed his cloak, throwing it on as he yanked open the door, conscious that the warden and his wife and some half-dozen trusties had heard the shouting and were crowded into the front hall, watching and listening. Fine. They would make excellent witnesses to bring before De Lancey and the Council.

The moment the door was open Andrew raced down the outside stairs ahead of his father, running to get the pair of horses they’d tethered a few feet away. The best possible end to this business was for the Turners to ride to town as quickly as they could, and get their version of the tale circulating before Devrey had a chance to advance his.

Andrew had to skirt an arriving wagon carrying six huge boulders. The indigents assigned to hard labor would spend weeks pulverizing those enormous rocks with sledgehammers that often weighed more than they did.

He ran past the load, his boots thudding on the beaten-down, mud-slicked gravel. Get the horses. Get himself and his father away from the poorhouse before any further damage was done.

“Damn your miserable skin, Turner! I said I wasn’t finished with you!” Devrey hurtled out the door and lunged for Luke’s back. He was a madman, taking the granite steps two at a time, hands outstretched, fingers bent into claws.

Luke thrust out an arm to push him away. Caleb charged again. This time Luke stood his ground and the pair of them finished in a tangled heap, rolling about on the muddy earth at the foot of the almshouse steps.

Andrew was already astride one horse, leading the other, an aging mare, by her reins. “No! Don’t fight him, Father!” He dug his heels into his mount’s sides, urging the horse forward, dragging the mare behind him. “Please, Father, listen to me! A fight’s the worst—”

The mare was accustomed to gentler treatment. She felt the insistent pressure on her bit and whinnied in protest and pulled back. “C’mon, damn you!” Andrew tugged harder on the reins. “Father, I beg you!” His mount, sensing the unrest and urgency in his rider’s voice, snorted and tossed his mane. The mare whinnied.

The cart horse, an old gray long since beaten into submission, stood alone and untethered. The driver was trying to edge around the pair of gentleman pummeling each other at the foot of the poorhouse steps. If he wanted to be home for his three o’clock dinner he had to get inside and get the warden’s permission to dump his load of boulders out back. And claim the threepence he was owed for hauling them.

Andrew tried desperately to rein in his mount, but he succeeded only in making things worse. The horse reared, nearly mauling the mare Andrew still had by the reins. At that moment a black stallion came through the gate galloping toward them at tremendous speed.

It was too much for the old cart horse. Terrified of the unfamiliar smells and sounds of confrontation, the gray tried to turn sharply and run from the danger. The wagon tilted, balanced precariously for a single moment, then cracked in two. One after another the enormous boulders crashed to the earth and began to roll toward the almshouse steps.

Morgan took in the scene the way he’d absorbed so many battles during the last three years: he was instantly aware of where his foes were and where his allies could be found.
Knowin’ without knowin’ how ye knows
, Tobias Carter had called it.
It’s a special sense, lad. Them as is born to lead, they has it. You see what you got to do and you does it. Faster’n a whore opens her legs. And without a lot of hemmin’ and hawin’ ’bout where the pussy hole’s to be found
.

The largest of the boulders was gathering speed, heading directly for Uncle Luke and Caleb Devrey. Each so intent on beating the other to a pulp that both were oblivious to the danger. Morgan rose in the saddle and dug his heels into the stallion’s flanks, urging the exhausted animal into one final burst of speed.

The stallion thundered forward. Morgan swung sideways, hanging on with one hand, using the stirrups to secure his position and give him control. Barely a second before the boulder crashed into the two men at the foot of the steps, he swept Caleb Devrey out of harm’s way. And heard his uncle Luke’s scream of agony as the boulder rolled over him.

“No matter what the provocation, you will never put Caleb Devrey to death. In fact, if he is threatened by someone else you will help him. Anything to keep him alive. Swear it, Morgan!”

“I swear, Mama.”

“Both his legs,” Andrew said. “Crushed below the knee between the poorhouse steps and the boulder.” He was white and shaking, unable to look directly at his sister.

Jane sat beside her father. Luke was stretched out on the chaise in his examining room on Ann Street. Andrew had managed to stop the bleeding, then positioned two curved barrel staves above Luke’s shattered legs so the blanket wouldn’t touch the terrible wounds and cause still more pain.

Luke’s breath came short and hard, each inhalation rattling in his chest. His eyes were closed, his skin almost blue. “I don’t understand,” Jane kept repeating. “Why would Cousin Morgan save Caleb Devrey rather than—”

“I’ve told you over and over,” Andrew said impatiently, looking at his father, not his sister. “I don’t know. But that’s what he did.”

“No, he can’t have. You must be—”

Luke’s weak voice interrupted their argument. “Andrew. Are you there, boy?”

“Yes, Father, I’m here.” Andrew went to the chaise and knelt beside it. “Rest, sir. Don’t try to speak.”

“Have to. You must …” He couldn’t find the breath to tell Andrew what he must do.

Jane leaned forward, wiping away the perspiration that broke out on Luke’s unnaturally cold forehead. “Andrew’s right, Father. You should rest. We’re both here.”

“Andrew, come closer.”

Andrew bent his head so his father’s lips were almost touching his ear. “I can hear you, Father. Just tell me what you want.”

“My wounds,” Luke whispered. “How—” A torrent of hard dry coughs choked off his words. Jane held a mug of weak ale to his lips and Luke took a few sips. The coughing subsided. “The wounds,” he repeated, “how bad?”

Andrew swallowed hard. He could say they weren’t all that serious, that they’d heal, that his father might be lame, even crippled, but he’d survive. It would be kinder, but there was too much of his Scots mother in him to allow him to take such an easy course. “They’re very bad, sir.”

“The bones … All broken?”

“Every one below the patella, sir.” Andrew had to struggle to get the words past the enormous lump in his throat. “I’m so sorry, Father. It’s my fault. If I had stayed beside you rather than running to get the horses—”

“No one’s fault. Fate, lad. Life and death. Out of our control. Except … except …”

Andrew bent closer, suspecting his father had more to say. Something about taking care of Jane, probably. “What is it, sir? Only tell me what you want and I’ll do it, I swear.”

“My legs,” Luke said. “I want you to cut them both off.”

Andrew sensed Jane staring at him and knew she’d heard the whispered words. He opened his mouth, struggled; finally the words came. “I can’t, sir. I beg you, don’t ask me. I’ve not the experience. And the pain will—”

His father was too weak and traumatized to withstand such an operation. It would kill him as surely as the gangrene that must inevitably spread from the pulverized flesh and bone. He’d die in either case, but if Andrew operated death would come during unspeakable torment. A skilled practitioner, a genius like his grandfather, might perform such a double amputation in under an hour. It would take Andrew two or three times as long. And the result? God alone knew.

Luke clutched at his son’s arm. Andrew looked down and saw that his father’s nails were turning blue. He could hear his grandfather’s voice as if the old man were standing at his shoulder.
“Keep watch on the nails and the whites of the eyes, lad. If they’re getting blue, the patient is going into shock and you don’t have much time.”

Andrew couldn’t bring himself to pull down his father’s lower lids and check the whites of his eyes. Besides, he knew what he’d see. “I can’t do it, sir. I can’t put you through so much torment when it’s—” He broke off. When it’s pointless, he was going to say. When I’m sure you wouldn’t live through such a surgery. “I haven’t the experience, Father. I’ve never amputated on my own. Only with Grandfather standing beside me.”

“He’ll be beside you now, Andrew,” Jane murmured. “If you do what Father wants, Grandfather will guide you.”

Andrew shook his head impatiently. He’s dead! he wanted to shout. Christopher Turner died less than ten days before he could have saved the life of his son. So much for all your woman’s nonsense about angels and God’s mercy and life everlasting. Let Jane take what comfort she could from her ideas and her church going. He ignored his sister and spoke to Luke. “I could get Hezekiah Jackson, sir. Grandfather trained him and he always said Jackson was a competent surgeon. He lives up in Yonkers, but if I left immediately I could bring him back by morning.”

“Worse by morning,” Luke rasped. “Maybe dead. Besides, you’re the best pupil your grandfather ever had. He always told me you’d—” He was interrupted by another fit of coughing.

Jane offered the ale again, but this time her father pushed her hand away, mastering the spasm by force of will. “Andrew, listen to me. You must do this. Only you.”

Jane turned and looked at her brother. He stared at his father a moment; then his gaze met Jane’s. “Do you agree?” he asked. “It may not—”

“I know. It may not make any difference. But Father’s right. You must try.”