City of Dreams (87 page)

“No, that’s not necessary. I’m fine. But I wish you’d let me get you something.”

“Ain’t nothing I be needing, mevrouw.” She had the veil in place but he could tell she was grieving. No good at all being the richest woman in New York when you had so little of what mattered. Jan Brinker licked his parched lips.

“Please,” she said, leaning toward him. “You must drink something.” She poured a little ale into the tankard. A fine tankard it was, beautifully made. If things were different she’d have been asking him where he got it, craving something the same for herself. “There, that’s better,” she said when he’d drunk a bit. “I should go, Jan. I’m tiring you.”

“Be plenty of time I’ll have to rest when I’m in me grave. Soon enough now. Stay a little, mevrouw.”
Jesu Cristo,
how much should he be telling her? And what chance was there she didn’t already know? Didn’t matter. Not now when he was so close to the end. “Mevrouw, the girl, Roisin, she has a daughter. Five years the child be. Name’s Clare.” He tried peering through the veil.

“Yes, I heard about Cuf’s child. Is Clare white or black, Jan?” Her voice sounded unconcerned, but then it always had.

“White skin, mevrouw. But she have black hair. Black as Cuf’s.” And as straight and shiny as Mistress Jennet’s had been when she was a young beauty and he’d rescued her from the howling mob heading down Nassau Street. But if she wanted to know that she’d know it already. “Not much you don’t be hearing, is there, mevrouw?”

“Not much, Jan.” She’d known about the child for years. Everyone said the girl was Cuf’s daughter. It must be true. If the likes of Roisin Campbell had birthed Squaw DaSilva’s grandchild she’d have been knocking on the door demanding money before she was out of the borning bed. Besides, it was common knowledge the whore knew how to rid a woman of a child she didn’t wish to bear.

Sometimes when she closed her eyes she could still feel herself thrusting the wooden stick into Ellen, trying desperately to find a way into the uterus. “Roisin is a clever healer, isn’t she, Jan?”

“The best. So many women be going to her it be a wonder no magistrates be coming to find out why.”

She knew he was probing because he already suspected the truth. Ah well, all these years, so much loyalty, she owed him that. “Don’t worry, Jan. I see to it that the authorities cause Cuf and Roisin Campbell and their child no trouble. I always will.” And so she would. For Cuf’s sake. And because Morgan cherished the man who had been the companion of his childhood.

“
Ja
, mevrouw. I be thinking you be doing that.”

Weariness overcame him. Jan Brinker closed his eyes. After a few moments he slept and she tiptoed to the door and reclaimed her cloak and stepped into the street.

The bright red glow in the sky was unmistakable. “Dear God, fire.”

“Yes, mistress.” Rudolf came out of the shadows. “Fire. Just got going right and proper.”

“At the Battery?”

“No, right close by here. A bonfire. Not to worry, mistress, I can take you back without going near it.”

“No.” She drew her cloak closer. “I want to see.”

“Mistress…”

“Take me there.”

The blaze was on a hill. It rose ten feet high, sparks shooting into the night. Truly amazing, particularly now, when the price of firewood had tripled in the last few years. There was talk of the poor freezing to death this winter, and there were more poor than ever before in the city. Every ship that docked in New York brought new immigrants. Most wanted land and immediately went west, but many stayed and added to the numbers scavenging for the limited work available. Not to mention the numbers ready to stand around the flames of a wasteful bonfire and scream curses into the night.

Fools, Squaw thought. They did the same thing every November on what they called Pope Day. Official New York said it was Guy Fawkes Day, and that it commemorated saving the Houses of Parliament in London from a papist plot to blow them up. By long tradition the governor gave a ball and a fancy supper, but the laborers and craftsmen living here on the Church Farm had no interest in Parliament. Each year they burned a likeness of the pope and screamed out their hatred of Catholics.

Twice fools as far as she was concerned. Once for wasting the firewood. A second time for thinking any religion made a difference. Protestant, Catholic, or Jew, if there was no work they all went to bed with their bellies empty.

But it wouldn’t be Pope Day for nearly a week.

The mob had built a scaffold a little distance from the blaze. A pair of scarecrows hung from the gibbet. They represented the devil whispering into the ear of the lieutenant governor.

The effigy was only a rough likeness, but she easily recognized Cadwallader Colden. She’d seen him just once close up, but it had been a memorable meeting that took place within days of his becoming governor. She had asked three things: for Caleb Devrey to be removed as physician overseer of the almshouse hospital. For the job to be guaranteed to Andrew Turner whenever he returned from Edinburgh. And for Luke Turner to be paid a pension for life equal to four-fifths of his former salary. Every one of her demands was met.

At the height of his power Cadwallader Colden had been then, but he’d been no match for her. He still wasn’t. Andrew had arrived from Edinburgh two weeks past, and immediately put in charge of not only the hospital but the Bedloe’s Island pesthouse. Luke was still collecting his pension. Meanwhile, Caleb Devrey scurried around the town like a black cockroach afraid of the light.

A low rumble began, like the sound of distant thunder. The crowd spraying its collective venom. “It be bad, mistress. Best we go.”

“Yes, Rudolf, we will. Only a moment more.”

They were at the foot of the hill, on the fringe of the activity and hidden by the shadows, but it was possible to see what was happening merely by looking up to the crest. The frenzied mob had converged on the gallows and were rocking the structure back and forth. The effigies swung wildly. In seconds the whole thing crashed into the heart of the bonfire.

The flames soared still higher, piercing the night, and the horde howled in an ecstasy of hate. She touched Rudolf’s arm. “We’ll go now. There’s nothing more to see.”

When she got home she learned that Colden had taken refuge on a man-o’-war in the harbor. The stamps had been unloaded under cover of darkness and locked away in City Hall. Somehow the mob found out and rampaged through much of the town, ripping up gardens, breaking lamps and windows, and threatening to pull down houses. Not hers. It hadn’t been touched.

And still more news. In the midst of the chaos the
Fanciful Maiden
had slipped quietly into New York harbor and dropped anchor.

II

The pesthouse stood by itself fifty yards back from the shore, the only structure on Bedloe’s Island. It was two stories high, each floor lined with wooden bedsteads topped with straw. The only partition was at ground level, where they’d built a half-wall to separate the attendants from the patients.

“Good Christ,” Andrew muttered, “it’s a death sentence.”

“Begging your pardon, sir?” The man who was showing him the second institution the city had made over to his care was stooped, one leg was considerably shorter than the other, and he walked only with the help of a stick. “Was you speaking to me, sir?”

“No, I was not. But I am now. Johnson—that’s what you said your name was, right?”

“Right, sir. Harry Johnson.”

“And you’re in charge of this … what are we supposed to call it? House of Quarantine?”

“That’s right, sir. S’posed to look after any tars as is brought here ’cause they’s poxed. From the ships what come to the harbor, sir.”

And any New Yorker with the same misfortune, according to the law. “Tell me something, Johnson, why did you take this godforsaken post?”

“Didn’t have no choice, sir. Not me nor any of the lads. Got here only an hour afore you did, sir. Took us out o’ the jailhouse this morning, they did. Brought us straight here. But leastwise they say the grub’s better.”

Good Christ. “Johnson, have you been variolated?”

“No, sir. Never, sir. Never done nothin’ but stole some candles.”

“Variolation’s not a crime, man. Whatever they tell you. It can save your life.”

“Gives you the pox, don’t it, sir?”

“A mild case. Then you can’t get it again. Have you ever had the pox, Johnson?”

“Not me, sir. Crispin, he’s one of me mates, sir. Came over this mornin’ same as the rest of us. He had it. Got the pockmarks all over him, Crispin does.”

“So you say. I want to see for myself. You, Crispin, everyone, I’ll see you next door in that little room.” There were three patients upstairs. All stinking to high heaven and at death’s door, their variolae dried up and fallen off along with most of their skin. Never mind, he’d find enough live serum to serve the purpose. “I’ll be ready in half an hour.”

“You makin’ that be an order, sir?”

His first instinct was to say no, that it was entirely up to them. There was some risk to variolation, after all. But without it the verdict was certain. “It’s an order, yes. Every single one of you. In half an hour.”

There were five men altogether. They’d been taken from the New Jail on the Common that very morning, to replace the last group that had drawn this cursed duty, and—Andrew would wager his last shilling on it—had died of the pox. Johnson and two of the others showed no evidence of having had the disease.

The job was finished in ten minutes. “You’ll feel poorly for a day or two,” Andrew told them, wiping his lancet on a rag. He remembered the story his grandfather had told about Cotton Mather and invisible worms that crawled around spreading the disease. In Christopher’s notes, the ones that had been given to him along with Lucas Turner’s journals, there was a note about wiping a scalpel or a lancet after use. To protect against the possibility of the invisible worms. “May be that you’ll raise a fever. And certainly a few pox. Don’t be frightened. You’ll recover.”

Please God, let it be so. He’d been extremely cautious about how much pus mixed with their own blood he gave them. A stint in one of His Majesty’s prisons didn’t leave you with much health to fight off even the mildest case of the pox. “Until you feel perfectly well, you don’t set foot out of this part of the pesthouse. Not a single foot, do you hear me? The pair of you who’ve had the pox, you’ll have to see to the patients by yourselves for the time being. And look after your mates.”

There was nothing else he could do here. Andrew packed up his instruments and prepared to leave. “Johnson, signal a boat to come and pick me up.”

“That means I have to put me foot outside this part of the pesthouse, don’t it, sir?”

“Yes. It does. Don’t worry. Going outside is no danger. I meant you shouldn’t go on the wards.”

The rules of quarantine on Bedloe’s Island required vessels of any size to stand off. Only small boats could approach, and only if they were bringing patients or had been summoned to carry away a passenger.

Johnson waited with him by the landing. A lighter pulled rapidly toward them, rowed by four men. Andrew knew how much they hated the task. Bedloe’s Island was the most feared place in the province.

“Begging yer pardon, sir.”

“Yes, Johnson, what is it?”

“Over there, sir, by that big boulder. Me and the lads, sir, we be looking at it earlier.”

“Looking at what?” The freezing November wind blew across the water, whipping his fair hair back from his forehead, feeling like iced darts on his cheeks. There was the smell of early snow on the air. Andrew drew his heavy gray cloak tighter around his tall frame.

“If ye’d jus’ come and take a look, sir …” The man had no jacket and was dancing up and down, but it wasn’t the cold. It was agitation.

The boat had almost reached them. Reluctantly, Andrew turned his back on it. “Very well, show me.”

Johnson led him to an immense granite outcropping ten yards from the south wall of the pesthouse. “There it be, sir.”

“It’s a boulder, man. And no surprise the workmen didn’t try and move it. It’s huge.”

“’Tain’t the stone, sir. What’s puzzling me and the lads … It’s them, sir.” Johnson used his stick to point at a series of holes.

Andrew took a step closer. The holes were scattered around the perimeter of the boulder, apparently at random. Freshly dug, every one of them. A dozen by rapid count, only the width of a single spade, but each one something less than two feet deep.

“What ye be thinking, sir?”

“Good Christ, man. I’ve no idea.”

“Think it be ghosts, sir? The ghosts of ’em as was poxed and died here? Digging ’emselves up from under the earth?”

“No, I do not.”

“Ahoy! Dr. Turner! We’re ready to take you aboard, sir!” The lighter had reached the landing and upped its oars. An officer was standing in the prow, hands cupped to his mouth, shouting against the wind. “Ahoy! Dr. Turner!”

Andrew turned and began hurrying toward the shore. “No ghosts, Johnson. Anyway, no one’s buried here. Didn’t they tell you what to do with the dead?”

Johnson was racing to keep up with him, hopping along on his one usable leg and his stick. “Didn’t tell us nothing, sir. Only as the grub’d be better.”

“The dead are to be wrapped in canvas, Johnson. You’ll find plenty of it in the stores. Tight shrouded and bound with hemp, then thrown into the ocean off the other side of the island. No one’s buried here, man, so they can’t be digging themselves up.”