City of Dreams (96 page)

The smoke was thick in Bolton’s Tavern on William Street. Worse than in most of the alehouses and slop shops of the city, because Bolton’s was where the town’s doctors drank. They wouldn’t have the windows or doors open no matter how hot it might be, or how many of them were crowded into the taproom puffing on their pipes. “Foul humors in the night air,” the men of medicine said. “Brings disease.”

Andrew Turner had never developed a taste for tobacco, but that wasn’t the reason he didn’t feel entirely at ease in Bolton’s. Luke had been a regular, but after Andrew cut off both his father’s legs and went to Edinburgh, the talk was that Christopher Turner’s grandson was a surgeon at heart, like his grandfather before him.

Andrew felt their eyes on him as soon as he came in. “Well, well,” someone murmured. “Look who’s here. Don’t see you often, Dr. Turner.”

“A hot night,” Andrew said. “I’m parched with thirst.” He fished a copper from his pocket and took a place at the nearest of the long tables. The men already there quickly made him room, but no one spoke.

Andrew reached for one of a stack of pewter cups and tapped his penny on the table to let it be known he wanted punch. The bowl started to head his way. Without an accompanying song for once. New York had given up singing. There were two British men-o’-war and two dozen British frigates moored in the harbor. The invincible Royal Navy had its guns trained on Manhattan. For the moment, the redcoats had left the island, but no one doubted they’d be back. With fixed bayonets.

“Evening to you, Cousin Andrew.”

“And to you, Cousin Samuel.”

Sam Devrey had come from the other side of the room to offer his greeting. There were a dozen men at Andrew’s table. They quickly rearranged themselves so Devrey could sit facing his cousin. The mood in a taproom could never be so grim that the drinkers wouldn’t relish an opportunity to witness a fight.

The tension between Andrew Turner and Samuel Devrey had surfaced five years earlier in 1771, when some of the town’s doctors began saying New York should have a private hospital, like the Pennsylvania Hospital down in Philadelphia. “Been going for sixteen years, the Pennsylvania has. Started as Mr. Franklin’s idea, naturally enough, but the medical men took it up. Excellent place to observe disease, and test treatments.”

“Strict rules, mind. I hear that in Philadelphia they admit no one with stubborn fevers.”

“Aye, none who can’t be cured.”

“What about lunatics? They can’t be cured, but the Pennsylvania takes them in. Went down and saw with my own eyes.”

“Only such as they can make a bit more calm,” someone else insisted. “And if we’ve any sense at all we’ll be taking subscriptions to build exactly the same sort of hospital right here in New York.”

Andrew had shown up at Bolton’s a week later, as soon as he heard about the plan. “We already have a hospital here in New York, the City Hospital. And we could do a lot more with it if private funds were available.”

“Not a proper hospital, Cousin Andrew.” Sam Devrey it was who had made the argument. “I know you prefer we call it the City Hospital, but the truth is it’s an almshouse ward for the sick indigent, society’s dregs and malcontents. That’s not the same.”

“The Pennsylvania Hospital treats the poor, same as we do.”

“Not the same as we do. They don’t let sick women bring their children in with ’em, and they turn away any with contagions unless they can be put in a separate room. You have any separate rooms for the fevered up in your almshouse hospital, Cousin Andrew?”

“Not now. There’s no space.” Andrew had turned away, appealing to the other doctors present. “But if you gentlemen cared to contribute to the building of an extension we could take such patients in.”

“Apart from anything else, your City Hospital is too far from the center of things,” Samuel Devrey said. “You must admit, you’re fairly isolated up there on the Common.”

“Absolutely,” the others agreed. “The Common’s much too far north of the city. Inconvenient.” And that settled it.

Andrew wasn’t surprised by Samuel’s opposition. More of the traditional Turner and Devrey rivalry. The new hospital Sam proposed would be a perfect counter to Andrew’s lifetime appointment as head of the almshouse hospital and the pesthouse on Bedloe’s Island. Besides, Sam had studied at the Medical College of Philadelphia. He was always singing the praises of the place. The only thing that brought him back to New York was Bede’s insistence that all his children settle nearby if they wanted their inheritance, and the fact that Samuel’s twin, Raif, was an incompetent oaf who couldn’t be expected to look after their father’s affairs when Bede died.

Now, five years since Sam insisted a new hospital must be built, Bede Devrey was seventy-four and still entirely capable of handling his affairs to suit himself, whatever Samuel thought. Meanwhile, what they called New York Hospital had yet to admit a single patient. First it burned down just before it was ready to open. Then, with Sam Devrey spurring them on, the doctors rebuilt on the original site, which had turned out to be on the Broad Way even farther north than the almshouse. Price had won out over convenience, and they’d built their damned hospital up near Rhinelander’s sugarhouse, in a spot so bloody isolated it was used for duels. And though it was finally ready to open, no one was interested. On this August night of 1776, New York was busy preparing for war.

“Warm night, isn’t it, Cousin Andrew?”

“Very warm, Cousin Samuel.”

The punch bowl had finally reached him. Andrew ladled himself a portion, put his copper in the dish in the center of the table, and pushed the bowl to his left.

Sam was puffing hard on a pipe. He leaned forward and spoke through a haze of smoke. “We missed you at today’s meeting, Cousin Andrew.”

“Oh? What meeting was that, Cousin Samuel?”

“Meeting to discuss a medical department for Washington’s army. Sixteen men agreed to serve. At least a dozen are surgeons.”

“Well, that’s what’s needed in war, isn’t it? Surgeons. Muskets seldom finish the job.”

“Exactly my point. Your skills with the scalpel are much celebrated, Cousin Andrew. Have you no intention of offering General Washington your services?”

Andrew took a long swallow of punch before he answered. “I’ve a crippled father, a wife, and three young children, Cousin Samuel. Were I a bachelor like you, perhaps. Now, I thought we came to Bolton’s to talk of medicine, not war.”

“These days everything, especially medicine, involves war.” Devrey’s voice rose so all could hear. “No man can avoid choosing a side. Not even the acclaimed Dr. Turner. So tell us, my dear cousin, are you a patriot or a Tory?”

Every man in the place was watching him. Bolton’s was no different from the rest of the New York alehouses and taverns, full of hotheads preaching independence despite the overwhelming forces marshaled against them. Andrew put down his cup and stood up. “I’m on the side of defeating illness and disease, gentlemen. Wherever and whomever it attacks.”

He turned and walked out, conscious that they were all watching him, but most of all feeling Sam Devrey’s eyes on his back.

It took Cuf better than six hours to make his way over the heavily wooded hills to the east side of Staten Island. The sky was flushed with dawn when he got to the place where they’d told him he’d find the Indian canoe. It was there, thank Christ, but the morning was too far advanced to risk setting out. He waited for night, then rubbed dirt on his face to darken his skin and smeared some on his shirt as well. He remembered Morgan’s final words: “That’s the biggest danger, Cuf. If you’re found out and you’re not in uniform, the rules say they’ve every right to claim you’re a spy and hang you without a trial. Our side would do the same.”

“Then the trick is to make sure they don’t find me out.”

Poxed sea. Much as he hated it, it always seemed to be part of his life. No moon at all this night, and thick clouds. Please God there would be fog as well. He’d need it. He had no choice but to paddle directly into the thick of His Majesty’s poxed navy.

The fog Cuf prayed for took a long time coming. He was through the Narrows—the straits between Manhattan, Staten Island, and the long island—and into the outer harbor when the first wisps of moist gray air began weaving a protective blanket around the slim, swift canoe.

Cuf got through the fleet by hugging the towering sides of the various British ships and seldom letting his paddles touch the water, mostly moving himself along hand over hand, using the sides of the vessels for purchase. He could hear the footsteps of the sentries and lookouts many yards above his head, and the guttural mutterings of the fighting men in the holds, a plank’s width from the palms of his hands.

II

“My best estimate, there’s over nine thousand redcoats. Dug in here, and here, and here.” Cuf used a stick to draw a quick outline of Staten Island on the dusty summer ground. Morgan and another man squatted beside him, examining the makeshift map with its indications of troop placements. A third man sat on a tree stump copying the information into a sketchbook.

“And the promise to runaway slaves?” Morgan asked.

“Exactly as we heard. Join George’s army, soon as the rebellion’s put down you’re a free man.”

“A little late in your case,” Morgan said with a smile.

Cuf shrugged. “The officer I talked to didn’t seem to care.”

“Holy Savior, you spoke with them?”

“Had to. They shoved a paper under my nose and told me to sign it.”

“But—”

“I only made my mark,” Cuf said softly. “They didn’t expect a proper signature and I didn’t supply one.”

“All the same, if you’re ever caught, they could say you were a deserter. That means—”

“A noose. Better than being starved out of my livelihood by their greed. Listen, I had to come right through the fleet. Luckily there was some fog. Good cover, but it may have distorted sounds. Thing is, I think I heard men speaking something that wasn’t English. German maybe.”

“Hessian mercenaries,” the man with Morgan said. “We hear there are thousands of them aboard the frigates.”

The man who was taking down Cuf’s information made a few more marks, then closed his sketchbook and stood up. “I’ll be going, gentlemen. General Washington needs this by noon.”

The head of His Majesty George III rode atop a pike outside the Blue Bell Tavern near the newly built Fort Washington in the upper reaches of Manhattan.

A little over a month earlier, in July when the Declaration was read to the town, the Sons of Liberty led a mob that toppled the Bowling Green statue of the king, sawed off his royal head, and hauled the rest of him to Connecticut to be made into musket balls. Soon after that most of the liberty boys, like Cuf and Morgan, joined Washington’s army.

The hastily assembled force was nearly twenty thousand strong, over half of it encamped on Manhattan. The talk in every alehouse and slop shop was of tactics. Not the why of independence; the when, where, and how of it.

“If the British take the city they’ll not only control the finest harbor on the coast.” The speaker drew his finger through the moisture on the table of the Pig and Whistle Tavern in Hanover Square. His listeners bent closer to study the relative positions of the rebels and His Majesty’s forces sketched in spilled beer. “They’ll close the Hudson-Lake Champlain corridor, and divide the New England hotheads from the rest of the colonies.”

“Hotheads, you call ’em? I say they be patriots.”

“Exactly my point.” Major Aaron Burr was only twenty. The brass buttons on his blue and gold uniform gleamed with newness, but he spoke with a natural authority. “Without New England to stiffen their spines, the others will roll over and wait for old George to scratch their bellies.”

Burr’s listeners nodded solemn agreement.

Washington and his generals were of the same opinion. New York was vital. The Continental Congress had given orders to hold the city, and the rebels had ringed the island with batteries of cannon and dug themselves in at Fort Washington. And on the Common. And across the East River, on the slopes above the Brooklyn ferry landing.