Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain (6 page)

When she returned with Sarah's mirror, the doctor had already tried and abandoned his tins of smelling salts and
sneezing powder and was busily engaged in inserting plugs of wool into Nicolas's nostrils. With a smile and a thank you that made Nan blush, Doctor Steenwycks took the hand-mirror and placed it before the boy's mouth. He appeared to examine himself for some minutes — Sarah expected that he'd pause to comb back his hair — but he set the mirror aside with a thoughtful frown.

“No sign of respiration,” he said.

“Surely there is more you can do?” Sarah asked, recollecting the whispered remarks about the doctor's great powers. These few simple tests — hardly filling a quarter hour — could not be the substance of rumor.

“There are other techniques,” the doctor said, “which may impart happy effects. I need vinegar, garlic, horseradish. Mortar and pestle. Have you onions?”

No sooner had Nan returned from the pantry, than the Constable appeared at the door.

“Mrs. Heathcote,” he said, jacket nearly bursting over his heaving torso. Between two missing buttons, a swatch of tea-colored cloth poked out.

“Constable Morris.” Sarah rose and stepped forward. The large man's presence comforted her, reminding her, even in these horrible times, that the world had order, enforceable laws, right and wrong.

“We've captured him!” the Constable managed between labored breaths. “The Negro arsonist.”

Sarah smiled at the Constable, who appeared almost handsome as he spoke this good news. Behind her, Doctor Steenwycks removed Nicolas's shoes and poked the boy's feet with a long, sharp needle.

“Van Cortlandt's man.” The Constable shook his head. “He will certainly hang. And if I may, I would myself escort you to the gallows.”

Sarah had attended several public hangings, but never one to which she had so close a connection. Until that afternoon, crime had been only a topic she discussed with the ladies: the fact that Van Tilburgh slipped a strand of pearls from his host's dressing table, for instance, or that the Warrens had been burgled as they sat down to afternoon tea. She'd been a child the last time the slaves had risen, a mere child advised to avoid all black men and Catholics. And here she was, just turned forty, with a crime she could forever discuss with the ladies. A crime that she would laugh about as soon as Doctor Steenwycks revived Nicolas.

Doctor Steenwycks turned from his patient. “Bed linens,” he said. “Several.”

Nan ran off to the back closet where the good linens were stored. The Constable hovered in the doorway, his loss for words duly noted by Sarah who realized that the man might have intentions.

“We'll watch him hang. Isn't that right, Nicolas?” Sarah
said, turning to her son who now gazed at the ceiling with his lips stretched obscenely over cloves of garlic.

With a slight bow, the Constable excused himself, his retreating footsteps reminding Sarah of happier days. Days when her husband and Nicolas arrived home for the dinner the colored girl prepared. Days when the streets were safe from fires. Days when death belonged to other people, some of whom had most certainly been buried alive. If only she'd known the good doctor when her husband passed!

D
OCTOR
S
TEENWYCKS LEFT
Nicolas swathed in bedsheets from head to toe. “There have been cases,” he said beneath Sarah's demanding eye, “documented cases of the dead reviving.” And yes, to be absolutely certain, one should wait for at least forty-eight hours before pronouncing the matter decided. And yes, he always recommended that his patients do just that. But for her own good, to protect her gentle nature, she must not lift the cloth. Not until he could reexamine the patient, which he did two days later, pronouncing the boy dead based on the appearance of livid spots. But Sarah would have nothing of it. No. No, in fact she had realized with increasing certainty as she sat on the chair she'd pulled to her son's unmoving side and Nan hovered behind her shoulder offering endless stories to “cheer the Missus,” that her boy would not revive until his killer
had been brought to justice. Or rather, she told herself in order to remain clearheaded, she could not with confidence confirm that her son had died until the murderous black man had been hanged — an event rapidly approaching and so anxiously awaited by the good denizens of New York that it had been moved from the courthouse to the Common to accommodate the expected crowd. “Wrap him again,” she'd demanded, and the lean doctor had complied, admitting that a few more days would confirm, beyond all doubt, what he already suspected.

For those three days, Sarah sat by her son. Nan fixed tea and biscuits, fetched blankets, and carried the scented oils from the bedroom to the parlor, where Sarah applied them to her wrists and neck. She did not venture out even for her Thursday night dinner, and her absence alarmed the ladies, who called on her en masse the following day. But that afternoon, the Constable would be calling for her, and Sarah was concerned with her preparations and did not answer the door.

The execution drew Sarah from Nicolas's settee for the first time since the boy's return, and she considered her options carefully: pearls or silver? German serge or China taffety? All of New York would be watching her as she stood with her handkerchief unfurled and her hair piled in an exquisite tower by the Constable's ample side at the
front of the wooden platform, now a full seven feet higher to provide a better view of this execution. She laced her girdle as tightly as her age-swollen fingers could manage, selected her broadest hooped petticoat, which she hoped would draw her waist narrow by comparison, and brushed her cheeks with a thick layer of powder that lessened but did not conceal her unladylike ruddiness.

“Nicolas,” she said. He was her son, her fine, growing son who would one day marry a Van Cortlandt or a Beekman or some other society family. “Nicolas. Nicolas. Nicolas.” She wanted to pull back the linen cloth, to hold his face between her hands. She wanted to explain to him that his assassin would soon be hanged and that he could rise safely and return to the warehouse, where things must certainly be in disarray. She leaned low over the prostrate form, her fingers hovering and ready to unfold the tightly wrapped cloth. Behind her, her husband's portrait regarded the scene with the green-blue the artist had chosen for his eyes. His skin had a gray cast, where the smoke from the unswept fireplace had discolored the paint, ash gray over Mediterranean olive. “Nicolas,” Sarah said again. Nicolas would not recover until after the hanging. Pulling the sheet back now would be premature; pulling the sheet back now might ruin everything.

“Mrs. Heathcote.” The Constable stood at the door,
which he'd taken the liberty of opening. “I —” He stopped as he took in the widow bent like a bird of prey over her son. Daylight made the room appear dark. Had Sarah not worn a heavy coat of perfumes, she too might have noticed the rancid odor that struck the Constable so hard he nearly stumbled. “Good heavens!” he cried. “Mrs. Heathcote.”

“Why Constable Morris.” Sarah straightened, clasping her hands behind her back. “How good of you to come.”

Drawing a last breath of crisp afternoon air, the Constable stepped into the parlor. “The murderer will pay dearly for this. My poor, dear, S —” Though he began to speak her first name, he must have realized that such intimacy was inappropriate, for the word remained unsaid. “Shall we go, then?”

“Nan!” Sarah called.

The girl, who'd been sitting in the corner of the room, jumped, nearly toppling the bowl of peas she'd been shelling.

“Yes ma'am.” Though she'd waited attentively on her mistress, Nan no longer shared Sarah's optimism. Her eyes were red with the tears Sarah would not allow herself, and she preferred to sit as far from Nicolas as the room allowed.

“I need you to sit with my son,” Sarah said. “You're to offer him water if he wakes and to listen closely for any, for any … he's sure to be weak.”

Nan nodded, though her lips pressed tight against horror. Sarah had not seen such fear in the servant girl's face since the day the child arrived with one change of clothes and the promise that she could card and spin. “Yes ma'am,” she said.

Outside on the cobblestone pavement, the Van Cortlandt carriage — the finest in town, with its metal trim and high polish — stood loosely tethered. Though Sarah had condemned the carriage, as the other ladies had, for its high speeds and thoughtless presence on the city's narrow streets, she was more than happy to step, with the Constable's assistance, into the back and luxuriate on the soft pillows.

“How thoughtful,” she said, “How very thoughtful.”

“The Van Cortlandts insisted,” the Constable said. “When they heard about your Nicolas.”

Despite the cushioned seats, the ride to the Common upset Sarah's stomach, and the Constable had to demand that the carriage stop. Three times the carriage halted, and three times Sarah alighted with a kerchief to her face to cover the smile the gawking passersby brought to her lips. Everyone would soon know that Sarah Heathcote had ridden the Van Cortlandt carriage. The finest society would watch as she arrived at the hanging, delayed for her, with a nod and an offhanded comment about the violent rocking of the vehicle.

The Constable offered his thick, sweaty palm as a comfort,
and Sarah took it as she listened to his stories of the new fires that raged near the docks. “The black plague,” he said, “has descended upon us.”

“I don't understand,” Sarah said. “I just don't understand.”

The carriage stopped, and she heard the expectant crowd, hitherto concealed by the crack of horse hooves and the clap of wheels on cobblestone and the warm immensity of the Constable. Hundreds had gathered across the green lawn of the Common that abutted Collect Pond. The black men were buried there — a fact not lost to the assembled masses, who whispered that the hanged man would be laid into the very ground he swung above.

The tavern keepers had shut their establishments and now stood among the most refined gentlemen in embroidered coats and silk stockings. Children ran between the vast skirts of their gossiping mothers. The tanners and blacksmiths, even the staff of McCully's Dry Goods Store, which had shut its doors and offered a holiday in honor of the occasion, stood out on the lawn vying for better views. Beside them, the British crew of the
Happy Tidings,
which had berthed that morning, leaving the sea-weary sailors scant hours to swallow a few pints of ale before following the barmaids to the Common, hollered and sang and spread rumors that the man who was about to hang had in fact been a dreaded pirate.

Into the crowd, head high, arm entwined in the
Constable's, swept Sarah Heathcote. She felt the eyes on her, heard her name in the surrounding murmur of voices —
the widow Heathcote … the Negroes have murdered her only son … how well she carries herself … such strength of character …
She turned neither right nor left as the Constable cleared a path for her, and she strode with dignified gait to the front of the crowd. Here she waited with the Constable, despite her expectations, for a full half hour before five stout wardens carried the prisoner, hands tied with a thick length of rope, onto the platform. The prisoner kicked and bit, his lips wide with curses, his eyes wild with fear and spite. And to think he'd once been with the Van Cortlandts!

“Oh, Sarah, he is the worst sort.”

Sarah turned to find the ladies, rumpled from their fight to the front of the crowd. Faith and Margaret and Elizabeth and Mary, all wearing subdued grays and blacks.

“Well, you do look becoming,” Faith said, though her tone made the compliment snide as she examined Sarah's finest green dress and pearls.

“Green suits her,” the Constable noted.

Margaret took Sarah's hands between her own and squeezed, “We are so sorry to hear about Nicolas. Such a dear, sweet boy.”

The wardens succeeded in righting the prisoner, who stood, with one warden at his legs to weigh them down and
two more bracing his neck and back, directly beneath the crosspiece that spanned the lofting posts. The black man gazed forward, seemingly blind to the assembled audience and indifferent to the insults thrown from all sides.

“Nicolas,” Sarah said. The heat of the crowd confused her. “Nicolas is home.”

“We've taken a collection for his headstone,” Margaret said.

“Oh, dear, no.” Sarah felt suddenly panicked. “Nicolas isn't dead. Doctor Steenwycks —”

The wardens had the rope around the black man's neck. From where she stood, Sarah could have seen the veins that stood thick as string beans along either side of his throat. But she didn't turn to look. How could she watch the execution while Nicolas was rising? How could she have left her dear boy at home alone?

“Nicolas,” she said. “Oh, Nicolas.” And then she was pushing back against the crowd and struggling to force her grand skirt between the pressing bodies. Behind her, the Constable exchanged a worried glance with the ladies, who sighed and remarked that the burdens their poor friend endured took a toll upon her gentle soul. “Don't allow Sarah to leave alone,” they scolded.

The Constable followed the widow, looking over his shoulder more often than not. He knew the black man's
feet had just left the block as Sarah reached the carriage and he stepped forward to help her inside.

“I must return home at once,” she said, cheeks red from exertion. She twisted the rich green fabric of her dress. Nicolas was awaking. Doctor Steenwycks, New York's most esteemed expert in matters of life and death, had admitted the possibility. And if not, if justice did not reach her son with its tender breath, she would cradle his head one last time in her arms and bury him in a manner befitting a king — scarves, gloves, mourning rings. She would spare no expense.

With a word from the Constable the carriage set forth. This time it stopped only once: in front of her house on Bridge Street.