City of Dreams (12 page)

A loud knock interrupted his words. Lucas went to the door but opened only the top half. It was a child. Sent to fetch something “as will loosen my pa’s bowels and sweeten his spirits.”

“Wait where you are. I’ll give you something.” Lucas shut the door, turned back to the shop. “Your laxative draught, Sal. The bitter licorice. I don’t know where—”

She was no longer sitting by the fire. Lucas felt the beginnings of alarm. With the door shut the small room was dark, the blackness relieved only by the spiked shadows cast by the fire, dancing in the gloom. “Sal, for God’s sake, where are you? I’ve got to get rid of the lad before— Ah, yes.” His voice softened, lost the edge of panic. “That’s wise. Rest is the best thing.”

She’d crawled in between the skins and wool coverlets that made her bed. Lucas knelt beside her, drew the top blanket up to her chin. “Rest,” he said again. “But first tell me where you store the tincture of bitter licorice.”

Sally stared into space. The lad knocked again on the door. “I’m coming!” Lucas called. “Don’t be so bloody impatient!” He got up and fetched one of his precious pig bladders and a handful of the bran-and-salt mix he prescribed after stone cutting or any other surgery involving the bottom half of the patient.

The child had brought a drawstring bag made of gingham. He held it open and Lucas put the bran mix at the bottom and dropped the bladder on top. “Tell your ma I said to give the old man a warm enema. Say I said to make sure she gets the liquid well up inside. Keep him sitting on the stool for hours. Fix him up and give your ma some peace besides.” The little boy gave him a wicked grin and a handful of wampum.

When he turned back to his sister she hadn’t moved. Lucas wished he could prescribe as easy a remedy for what ailed her. “Your own fault, Sally,” he whispered into the dark. “But dear God, what a price to pay for your disobedience.”

Next morning when he woke she was tending the fire. “Sal, are you well? Is there anything—”

“I’ve made corn cakes for your breakfast. There is no meat.”

Her voice sounded almost normal. And she was poking repeatedly at the logs, insistently, with more strength in her arm than he’d have imagined her to have at the best of times. “What are you doing? Will the wood not burn?”

“Aye, it burns fine.”

Lucas rose and stood behind her, peering into the fireplace. He could just make out the last shred of one of her petticoats. When he looked down he saw that she was wearing her other skirt, the dark red one she normally kept for Sunday best. She’d burned everything else. She was, he realized, following his advice. She would put what had happened behind her. So would he. “I’m ready for my corn cakes,” Lucas said.

Sally served him without a word, but at least her hair was tidy, drawn into its customary bun, and she was no longer staring into space.

II

Though Van der Vries had left instructions forbidding any surgery without his permission, Lucas took to visiting the hospital daily. It gave him an excuse to walk the length of Hall Place. Past the butcher shop.

Occasionally the shop door was open and he managed to glimpse Marit behind the wooden counter. Sometimes the old magic worked and she knew he was nearby, and glanced toward the street at the precise moment he passed. At such times their eyes locked, but it was always Marit who looked away first

Those moments of connection told Lucas what he needed to know. He dare not try and see her. She was terrified, warning him off. Small wonder. Each time he saw her she seemed to have some new bruise.

The marks on that lovely face haunted him. He lay awake most of every night, imagining Ankel Jannssen taking his belt to Marit. Or lying over her. Lucas could not decide which was worse.

The next week the door of the butcher shop was closed whenever he passed. Lucas knew that there were customers and Marit was serving them, but he never saw her.

The following Sunday morning he again hid himself in the doorway near St. Nicholas’s Church. The butcher and his wife didn’t appear. Monday afternoon, when Lucas turned into Hall Place on his way to the hospital, Jannssen was waiting for him. The butcher stepped into the road, blocking his path.

“You. English. Why do you come this way so often? I told you to take your trade to another butcher.”

“I have. I come this way because I visit the hospital to see if any need my services. Let me pass.” Lucas’s hands balled into fists. In his head he was sitting astride Ankel Jannssen, pounding his face into a shapeless pulp. Like one of the sides of beef he used to see hanging in the butcher’s storeroom.

Jannssen didn’t move. Lucas’s nails bruised his palms. He could feel the pulse in his arms. He started to shove past the other man. “Go back to your trade, butcher, and let me get on with mine.”

The man put out a hand and planted it in the middle of Lucas’s chest. “Hold your bye. I’ve something to say.”

Waves of alcohol poured off Jannssen. Talking to him was like hanging your head over a still. “Very well. Say it, then.”

The Dutchman looked around. There were four or five people in the street. The door to his shop opened and two women came out. Everyone was looking with some interest at the butcher and the barber standing in the middle of the narrow road. “Not here,” he said. “At the Wooden Horse. Tonight. Right after sundown.”

The Wooden Horse was filled with customers. The air was thick with pipe smoke, and the smell of ale and rum was overpowering. The tavern drew its trade mostly from transients—trappers and sailors and Indian fighters. Lucas never drank here: the look and the din and the smell of the place reminded him of his father’s taproom in Kent. He stood at the door for a moment, looking for Jannssen, half expecting to see his father come out from behind the bar. Carrying his horsewhip, most likely.

“English. Over here.”

Jannssen was sitting at a wooden table in a corner near the door. Lucas took a seat across from him. The smoke was so thick he could hardly see the other man. The smell of the place made him want to puke.

“Good ale in the Horse. And the best geneva and rum.” Jannssen kept his pipe clenched in his teeth and nodded toward the bar at the far end of the crowded room. “Go get what you want. I’ll wait.”

“No thanks. I didn’t come here to drink with you.” Lucas had considered not coming at all, but he’d been afraid Marit would pay the price. “Speak your piece, butcher. Then I’ll leave.”

Jannssen took a long pull from his tankard. Rum: Lucas could smell it. Jannssen kept staring at Lucas over the rim. Finally he put the drink down and wiped his mouth. “So, tell me, where are you hurrying to, English? A whore over on Princes Street, maybe? Got a stiff cock, have you? Of course, if you were married, like me, that wouldn’t be a problem. All you’d have to do is roll over in your own bed and there she’d be. Big tits, nice soft pink belly. And her thighs … You should see my Marit’s thighs, English. Round, with dimples. And her skin is like—”

Lucas leaned over and grabbed the front of Jannssen’s shirt. He spoke very softly. “Butcher, I am going to say this once, so listen carefully. If you don’t speak respectfully of your wife I am going to beat you until your face looks like a piece of meat you’ve hacked apart in your shop. Do you understand me?”

Jannssen smiled. “I understand you, English. And I am not frightened. Everyone can beat someone who is older or younger or weaker or smaller. That’s how the world works. You can beat me, and I can …”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Lucas released his hold.

“So now,” Jannssen said, “it’s my turn. Do you understand me, English?”

“I understand you.”

“Good.” Jannssen drank again. “I have a proposition for you. Sixty guilders.”

Lucas was sweating. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Money. Guilders. Or pounds if you like. Only no wampum.”

“Money for what?”

“So I can go away.” Jannssen hunched forward. His pig eyes were narrow slits. “Give me sixty guilders and you can have her. I’m off south to the islands. Barbados, maybe. Maybe Curaçao. Warm. All the rum a man can drink for a quarter of what it costs here.” He jerked his head toward the port. “There’s ships leave here for the islands every week. Sixty guilders and I’m on the next one going.”

“I haven’t got sixty guilders.”

“Pity,” Jannssen said. “Till you do, she’s mine to fuck or flog.”

Lucas stood up. He was sure he was going to vomit. A man was coming toward him. His father. Same thin strands of greasy black hair plastered over a mostly bald head. Same evil expression.

“That’s mine host,” Jannssen said smiling. “Owns this tavern. Rich. Maybe I should make the same offer to him. He’s always had an eye for Marit.” Lucas turned to go. “One thing,” Jannssen said to his back. “Don’t come near my place again. Not without the money. If you do I’ll take a horsewhip to her. That’s a man’s right, you know. With his lawful wife.”

Lucas took to walking the town, in fair weather or foul, trying to think of some way he could get sixty guilders. Two weeks went by. In all that time he saw Marit only once. It was a late February Saturday and she was carrying her basket and hurrying across the Brede Wegh. Delivering one of the scarce Sunday joints to a member of such as fancied themselves Nieuw Amsterdam’s gentry.

She saw him at the same moment he saw her. They stopped and stared at each other across a distance of maybe ten yards.

Lucas took a few steps toward her. Her face was unbruised. For the space of two heartbeats she stayed where she was, then walked on.

“Wait,” Lucas called softly. “Wait.” In these days of warpath and siege when almost the entire colony was sheltering behind the wall, the street was full of people. “Mevrouw, please, if I might speak with you a moment …”

Marit turned. She looked at him—so much love and longing in that look, though only Lucas could see it—then shook her head and hurried on.

Sixty guilders. It might as well be six hundred. Or six thousand. It was a fortune and he had no means of getting it.

The summons came the following Wednesday at midnight. “Barber! Barber! Are you in there? Open up.”