Lake in the Clouds (48 page)

“Did you sleep at all?”

He raised a hand as if to push aside the question. In his usual calm manner he said, “Manny must leave the city today, under cover.”

When Hannah closed her eyes she saw him clearly, outlined in flame, his head thrown back while he shouted with the others, his fist closed around a stone. “Was he recognized?”

Will lifted a shoulder. “Madame du Rocher’s slaves took the opportunity of the riot to disappear. Only one has been recaptured.”

Hannah sat up straighter. “Did Manny have something to do with that? Did you?”

“No,” Will said. “We have never operated in such a fashion. It is far too dangerous. But Bly has accused Manny nevertheless and it will be in the afternoon papers. If Manny is found they will try him and most likely find him guilty, given the evidence.”

“But they can have no evidence, if he was not involved in the escape.”

Will pressed his hands together. “When Bly is finished with the slave he captured last night, she will give evidence to anything. She will swear that Manny organized the whole riot and encouraged them to run, or anything else that Bly wants her to say.”

Dread washed through Hannah, moved up from her belly in a flush that crawled out to her hands and made them tingle. For a long moment she could not speak at all.

“He may have left already,” Will said. “Or he may be in hiding and looking to the safety of the du Rocher slaves. He understands what Bly and the blackbirders are up to, of that you can be sure. Hannah, if there is anyone who can find his way out of the city, it is Manny.”

These were good, sensible words but they could not banish the images that rose unbidden before Hannah. Curiosity and Galileo, Selah Voyager round with child. How would she ever carry such news to them?

Will was not finished. He said, “I wanted you to be aware of the situation, in case the constables decide to question you.” He leaned forward to cover her hand with his own. “I will do everything in my power to make sure he gets home safely.”

Hannah looked Will in the eye, and found no comfort in what she saw there. “But you don’t know where he is. Is the blackbirder called Cobb after him, the one … the voyager feared so?”

“I understand how worried you are for your friends,” Will said. “But now you must leave it to the Libertas Society. Can you do that?”

She said, “You did not answer my question about Cobb.”

There was a brittleness in the way Will looked at her, worry and irritation and simple powerlessness scraping the bone. He looked away and then back again.

“Cobb went north,” he said finally. “There’s a reward he’s after.”

“So he is no threat to Manny.” It was a question he would refuse to answer but Hannah must say the words anyway.

Will said, “We are here. You must try to put all of this out of your mind for now.”

But she could not put any of it aside, not the idea of Manny in hiding somewhere nor of Cobb headed north. So preoccupied was she with these facts, she had walked half the length of the sick ward hallway before she realized that there were already people waiting outside the closed apothecary door, and that she had last seen faces like these by torchlight. A young woman with a high forehead, her skin the color of tea, her mouth filled with broken and bloodied teeth. A tall man with shaved head holding his wrist at an unnatural angle. A younger man with a scarred face, his eyes darting uneasily around himself as he cradled his ribs with both arms. When she stopped before them he met her gaze defiantly and went very quiet, as if he were waiting for her to decide between calling the constables and treating their wounds.

She said the first thing that came to her. “You’re here to be vaccinated, no doubt. Come this way, it will be just a minute until I get the office ready.”

Later it would occur to Hannah that she had been very fortunate to avoid the doctors while she treated the three rioters in the institution office. She set the broken wrist, thankful that the skin was not broken; she cleaned out the woman’s mouth and removed the remains of two broken teeth, and packed her jaw with gauze to stop the bleeding.

The man with the scarred face watched her work but his expression never changed. When she began to examine him, he turned his head aside and looked at the wall.

“You have some broken ribs on the right side. I will bind them, but you will have to take care.”

He grunted in reply, but he raised his arms in the air while she wound the bandage. His torso was covered with scars, ivory and delicate pink against black skin. A long scar an inch wide curved across the tight plane of his abdomen. It looked as though someone had tried to gut him with a dull knife and come very close to succeeding, but far worse than that was the scarring left by lashings. His back had been flayed to the muscle in places, and more than once.

That he had survived such beatings told her what kind of man he must be, one who would survive because his anger would not let him die. His back pronounced him a slave more clearly than anything he might have told her.

“How did you know to come to me? Did Manny send you?”

He studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he nodded.

“Is he safe?”

He blinked at her, and it occurred to Hannah that he might not understand. The French words came to her almost without bidding.
“Manny, est-il en sûreté?”

It was the woman who answered, her words coming muffled through her swollen mouth, in the accent of the islands. “We are none of us safe, miss. Not even you, not now.”

Early Monday morning as Cicero handed Hannah up into the carriage for the ride to the Almshouse, he pressed a note into her hand. The paper was thin and the ink was poor, but it was written in a strong, careful hand, one that Hannah did not recognize.

Hannah worked all day with the note folded in her bodice, measuring its shape and weight with every breath she took. A man who needed help. A note from a stranger about a stranger, passed to her by Cicero, who never even met her eye when he put it in her hand. A man who needed help, who dared not come to the Almshouse or the dispensary or the hospital, all places where someone without money could get treatment.

It might be Manny. It might not.

It was the worst kind of folly, and yet Hannah found herself planning. She could be away from the sick wards for an hour, if the work in the vaccination office was finished. Dr. Simon would assume she was in the nursery; Dr. Scofield would assume she had gone to the hospital with Dr. Simon; Dr. Savard
might come looking for her, but it was unlikely: Dr. Simon would be amputating a leg this afternoon, a procedure that called for many assistants.

A man needs medical help.

It could be fever or a broken bone or a knife wound. Hannah checked the lancets and scalpels she had been given by Hakim Ibrahim, instruments she had used with the supervision of Dr. Todd or Curiosity or Dr. Simon. She checked the vials and bottles strapped to the side of the bag. Her supply of willow bark for fever tea was low, and she refilled it from the crock in the apothecary.

At two, when she had finished with the last of the day’s vaccination work and she was about to close the office, Dr. Simon came in. Hannah could hide her distress, but not her surprise.

“I was just on my way to change some dressings,” she said. “I thought you would be at the hospital by now?” Making a question of it, the way Amanda did when she was offering direction to her husband.

“I was about to leave when a visitor arrived,” said Dr. Simon, with his usual quiet smile. And with that an idea came to Hannah, outlandish and very appealing all at once: she could put the note in his hand, and let herself be guided by his counsel. Dr. Simon’s antislavery sentiments were public knowledge; he would not do anything to harm people in need.

“Yes?”

“And then I remembered your vaccination.”

Hannah glanced down at herself, confused now. “I don’t understand what an unexpected visitor has to do with my vaccination. Am I overlooking something?”

“Is this not the eighth day since you were given the virus?”

“Yes.” She flushed a little to admit such absentmindedness, but Dr. Simon did not seem to be worried by this lapse on her part.

“I have a special favor to ask of you, then. Today I received a letter from President Jefferson.”

Hannah forced herself to smile and listen.

“He is very interested in this work of ours, you see, and he has asked for a supply of our virus, as fresh as possible. His secretary is here and he will take it with him to Washington. He leaves this evening.”

“Captain Lewis.” Hannah had forgotten about the president’s personal secretary entirely in the aftermath of the riot.

Dr. Simon nodded. “Yes, he mentioned to me that you have been introduced. That is a fortunate coincidence.”

Hannah made a sound in her throat, but the doctor took it for agreement.

“The president has given the captain the assignment of learning everything he can about vaccination. He has had samples of virus from many doctors, but he would like ours as well, to see if our method of preparing it for transport might be superior to the others he has been shown.”

Hannah had turned away so that the doctor could not see her face, busied herself with straightening papers on the desk. “I have no objection,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me where the virus goes once you’ve taken it.”

There was a moment’s silence and Hannah could not help it; she must turn to see his face. Dr. Simon was rarely at a loss for words, but he seemed now to be searching.

“Is there something else, sir?”

“If Captain Lewis had come earlier in the day I would not have to ask you this, but I see you’ve already finished with the other eighth-day vaccinations.”

“I have. But I’ve said I don’t mind if the virus taken from me goes to Washington with Captain Lewis. Is there some other problem I’m overlooking?”

“Captain Lewis would like to see the preservation method from its start. I am concerned for your modesty.”

Hannah could not hide her smile. “I see. Maybe it will help you to know that when I met the captain I was wearing a very fashionable evening gown I borrowed from Mrs. Todd,” she said. “Today he will see far less of me than he did that evening. If we can do this quickly, I have no objection.”

Hannah put on a sleeveless kirtle while the doctor and his guest waited in the hall. She could hear them talking as she set out the lancet and the rest of the materials the doctor would need.
Generosity,
she heard the captain say, and the doctor in response:
She has surpassed my highest expectations.

She didn’t know whether to be irritated or complimented and so Hannah satisfied herself with saying exactly what was required of her when they came in, and nothing more.

Dr. Simon, never unduly worried by long silences and concerned with providing all the information that the president might want, seemed not to notice at all. But Captain Lewis was ill at ease. Hannah was far more comfortable observing him than he was her.

His height surprised her, and she had forgotten the way his hair fell forward over a high brow. He had a straight nose and wide-set eyes that were bloodshot. Though he would not look at her directly she could see that he was suffering the effects of too much wine and not enough sleep.

Dr. Simon was far too polite to take note. He began to lecture in the tone he used with his students, quick and competent and full of sober enthusiasm. He held up the lancet.

“The vesicle is perfect, exactly as you see it in the diagrams. When I open it—” He made a decisive movement with the lancet, and Hannah registered the sting. “A very gentle touch is all that is required. You see the fluid, which many describe as pearly. This fluid contains the virus itself. Would you hand me one of the vaccinators, please? You see, those bits of ivory. It is a delicate business to catch all of the fluid on the end of the vaccinator, but you see it is flat at one end, and a hollow has been carved into it. Here we have it, kine-pox virus. Miss Bonner is now immune to smallpox.”

Captain Lewis asked good questions of the doctor, and listened carefully to the answers. Hannah might as well have been a statue sitting before him for all his attention, and it irritated her that he did not include her in the conversation.

“How long will the virus need to dry on the vaccinator?” asked the captain.

Dr. Simon said, “We have recently discovered that it is best not to let the virus dry on the ivory. Or I should say, Miss Bonner suggested it to me when she first arrived. Perhaps you should explain this, Miss Bonner.”

Hannah kept her expression still. “It was not my invention. Another physician wrote to me about his methods. The virus seems to remain active longer if the entire vaccinator is put in a small glass vial of purified water and sealed with wax.”

“A tremendous improvement,” said Dr. Simon, who had moved to Hannah’s other arm and was bent forward to extract the virus from the second vesicle. “And so much easier to pour
the contents of the vial into an incision than to rub it raw with the vaccinator itself.”

There was a knock at the door, and Dr. Simon looked up. “That will be Dr. Savard, we must go. Miss Bonner, may I ask you to finish with the captain? He would like to see our vaccination records, and I’m sure he has some questions.”

Hannah could not deny Dr. Simon such a simple request, but very much wanted to be rid of both of them. When he closed the door behind himself she first glanced at the clock that stood on the desk.

Captain Lewis said, “Perhaps this is too much of an imposition?”

Hannah cast him a sidelong glance. She took a plug of wax from a dish on the worktable and sealed the vaccinator vial, and then held it up for his inspection. “Here you are. Fresh vaccination material for the president. It is important that there be no air at all left in the vial, please note. The record books are on that table behind you. If you have no questions I have some work to attend to.”