City of Dreams (14 page)

“Excellent. I shall insert a fresh reed today and another tomorrow. Then I can probably stitch the wound. Mevrouw, is the governor here?”

“No. He is at the fort. They are discussing new ways to deal with the savages.”

“In the town they say New England may be willing to help.”

“Pray God that is so. For my part, I leave such things to my brother. And he left this for you.”

The envelope she passed him was heavy. “Money,” Lucas said.

“Three guilders. A very generous payment, but as I said, we are all in your debt.”

“And the hospital remains—”

“In the charge of Mijnheer the Physician Van der Vries. Custom and usage, barber. The governor knows no other way.”

III

“Sal, would you believe it? They say the English king has given us to his brother. As a gift.” Lucas shut both halves of the barber-shop door and slid the bolts in place. “As of this moment, back in London they believe Nieuw Netherlands belongs to the Duke of York. Because His Royal Highness Charles II says it does. Did you ever hear such bloody nonsense?”

When he went out he’d wrapped himself in an Indian blanket against the pelting March rain. He carried it across the small and squalid room and set it to dry by the fire. “Not that we’re much of a gift. Damned mud’s everywhere. The streets are swimming in it.”

Sally was already sweeping away the filthy trail her brother’s boots had left between the door and the hearth. She did that constantly, but the dirt sank deep into the splintered boards and no amount of scrubbing could wash it away. Lice and fleas made happy homes in the dried mud Sally Turner could never get rid of, but she went on trying.

There was a pot of something aspiring to be a proper stew hanging over the fire. A handful of dried corn and the eighth part of a squirrel’s haunch. “Smells vile,” Lucas said, sniffing his supper. “Not your fault. I know you do the best you can with little. Anyway, about this gift business, old man Doncke’s going around saying war should be declared on all the English settlers in the colony. Fortunately every other man in the alehouse thought the idea was—”

He broke off. She wasn’t listening to him. Sally had slipped the bolts and opened the door. She was pushing the mud into the street with a worn straw broom. Fighting the gale that tried to blow it back in. Something about the way she performed that futile task terrified Lucas. Her whole body was rigid. She seemed to quiver with tension.

“Leave it, Sally. It’s clean enough for now. Come, rest by the fire. We’ll treat ourselves to a tot of geneva.”

She didn’t turn around, just went on pushing the broom against the gale, struggling to overcome the invincible rain and the wind and the mud. “Sal, leave it. You’ve done enough. For God’s sake, woman, are you hearing one word I’m saying?”

She swung around to face him, but she didn’t close the door. A gust came along and blew it wildly open, then almost shut, then open again. A torrent of dirt, and last autumn’s leaves, and small pebbles, and clots of what was probably dung blew into the room. Sally ignored it. She stood framed in the opening, both halves of the door banging behind her. “I am with child, Lucas.”

He rushed to shut the door and pull her back inside. For a few seconds he could pretend he hadn’t heard.

In the weeks since she’d run away, in between his pain over the loss of Marit, his fury over Van der Vries taking from him the opportunity to perform all but the most debased and menial surgical tasks, Lucas had told himself that his worst fear would not come to pass. Nearly two months now and he’d watched Sally day and night, fretted over her silences, over how withdrawn she was, how dark her mood, but rejoiced that she was if anything thinner than ever. To Lucas, because he so desperately wanted it to be so, that proved the savage could not have visited a half-breed bastard on his sister, and ruin on Lucas Turner.

“Come inside, Sal! Come! It’s blowing up a gale. Far worse than when I—”

“Lucas, did you hear me?” Her voice became more shrill with every word. “I am with child, Lucas. I shall have a little papoose of my very own. What have you to say, now that you’re about to be an uncle?”

Lucas shot the bolts. When he turned to her it was he who trembled.

“You can’t know for sure,” he said. “You can’t, Sally. It’s only a little over a month since—”

“Two.” She spoke more quietly than before, but with the same tone of total despair. “Two months, Lucas. And always before now my flow was as regular and as certain as sunrise.”

“Look at you, look how thin you are. If—”

“I am thin, aren’t I?” She smiled. “That’s because of all the purges I’ve taken these past weeks. Have you not noticed, Lucas, how I have run outside to use the stool night and day? And every emetic my physics can yield. Cramping poisons so strong they should certainly force a babe to be born. All to no avail. The papoose in my belly grows stronger every day. It will be neither shat out, nor vomited out, nor forced untimely between my legs.”

She crouched beside the fire and began poking absently at the logs. Lucas had never seen her like this. She was a stranger to him, this creature who had abandoned all hope, who would not trouble to preserve even a tiny particle of her dignity. He could only stand and stare at her.

“Such a strong little papoose,” Sally whispered. “Can’t you see me carrying it up the Brede Wegh in a few months’ time? Strapped to a board on my back the way the Indian women do? Won’t that be a sight, Lucas?”

Sweet Jesus, what in God’s name were they to do? If Sally really was pregnant, she might not live long enough to strap an Indian papoose to her back. The code still allowed stoning for a woman who conceived a child out of wedlock. Unlikely that the burgomasters would go that far. But she would be put in the stockade for a few days. And quite possibly tied to the ducking stool and plunged into the cistern near the Stadt Huys. Propriety demanded no less. Custom and usage, bloody Stuyvesant would tell Lucas. Never mind that he had saved both the governor’s life and his wife’s. As soon as Sally’s belly swelled and they knew, they’d drag her off to—

On the other hand, they were nothing if not a clever pair. There was bound to be a way. And could be if he gave Stuyvesant a face-saving gesture, a way out … “Sal, listen to me. I’ve an idea.”

She didn’t even raise her head. Lucas went to where she was and grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. “Listen to me, girl! Are you listening?”

At last Sally lifted her gaze. “Yes.”

“Good. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll say you have a tumor. We’ll tell everyone it’s a growth inside you. And after the bastard’s born we’ll find some way to deal with it. Give it back to the Indians, maybe. Or … We’ll worry about that when we must. Meanwhile, you’ll be safe. How can they fail to believe us? I’m a surgeon, after all. With an excellent reputation. The townspeople trust me to—”

“They’ll make Van der Vries examine me,” Sally said. Her tone had changed. She sounded more like her old self. And she was looking at him with some of the old affection. She even put her hand up to stroke his cheek. “My poor, dear brother. Do you not think I know that this is as bad for you as it is for me, that I have not considered all the possibilities? We can say I have a growth, but the good people of Nieuw Amsterdam will not be deprived so easily of a chance to enjoy a mighty scandal. Nor will they for one single moment entertain the notion that I did not invite this loathsome conception.”

Sally shook free of her brother’s grip. She began whirling and dipping and curtsying in steps Lucas would never have believed she knew, a caricature of the aristocratic ladies of London and Rotterdam. “Think of it, brother dear. Jacob Van der Vries of the red hair, and the red mustache, and the red beard, and the pea-sized brain will be called upon to decide what is truth.”

Sally grabbed on to the chair Lucas used for tooth pulling, gripped the high back with both hands, and leaned toward him. Her face glowed red in the firelight. “Consider, Lucas. Even a fool like Van der Vries will know enough to listen for the heartbeat of the child and put his fingers inside me and feel the child. Even stupid, stupid, stupid Jacob Van der Vries will know that I am pregnant. So, short of murdering him in his sleep, there’s no way to avoid the single time the drooling idiot will make a correct diagnosis.”

Lucas walked to the fire and leaned his arms on the split log that served as a mantel. For a long time he said nothing. When at last he turned back to his sister she was still standing behind the chair. Watching him.

“There’s one other possibility, Sal.” He whispered the words because he knew she’d already thought them. Because by saying them aloud he was making them real. “I could try and—”

“—and cut the child out of me,” she finished. “I’ve thought of that as well.”

“We can do it this very night, Sal,” Lucas said. “Have it over and done with before—”

“No, Lucas.”

“How can you say no? What other choice remains? Sally, do you not know what the so-called respectable people of this settlement will do?”

“I know. They can stone me, but I don’t think they’ll go that far. They’ll put me in the stockade for a few days, give me a few lashes, maybe a ducking. Then they will banish me. I will be put outside the wall and told to make my own way. Which, given the present state of affairs, is a death sentence more sure than stoning.”

Lucas could not reply.

“Do you think I mistake the way it will proceed, Lucas? Have you another suggestion for how our little mummery will unfold to entertain the good folk of Nieuw Amsterdam?”

“Yes, Sal, I do. I will cut this abomination out of you, and in a few days you will be well again and no one will be the wiser.” He was pushing everything on the table to the floor as he spoke, readying it for surgery. “Take all you’ve left of laudanum. Right now. Every drop, Sal. And give me all your stanching powder. I’ll start heating the wine and—”

“No, Lucas.”

“In God’s name, Sally! Are you mad? Why do you resist the one chance to survive this horror?”

“Because the chances of surviving your surgery are so very, very small, my dearest Lucas. Come, don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true. Women do not survive such attempts to take the babe from them. They bleed to death, Lucas.”

He looked at her for a moment but finally nodded. “Aye, Sal. That’s true. But we must take the chance.”

“I will not, Lucas. I know you can use force. I don’t think you will.”

“No, Sally, I won’t. But I will never understand why—”

“Because I am the one who trusted and was proved wrong, Lucas. If as a result I am to be turned into the wilderness to die, then so be it. What I will not allow is that you spend the rest of your days blaming yourself for my death.”

“Home! It’s over, you can all go home!”

Lucas was at the mill that early April day when the soldier sent to bring the news of the treaty rode through Nieuw Amsterdam crying the words everyone wanted to hear. The war with the savages was over. The Indians had made peace. The colonists could return to their homesteads. Now, in spring, while there was still time to plant.

Lucas ran from the redbrick mill clutching the small bag of corn, yet warm from the grinding, and began shouting Sally’s name when he was fifty yards from the barber shop.

She had been some better in the weeks since she confessed her condition to him: having shared her burden, she seemed to find it easier to bear. Now, Lucas realized as he pelted toward Wall Street, they had been offered a way out.

“Sal! Sally! Where are you? Come to the door, I’ve news. Sally!”

The door of the shop opened. Sally was already wearing her shawl, and carrying a parcel wrapped in the piece of oilskin that served for transporting those things they wanted to keep safe and dry. Lucas smiled when he saw her. “I take it you’ve heard.”

“Yes. The Indians have sworn peace. Everything we need is in here.” Sally lifted her bundle. “I even gathered up all your surgical notes. I want to go home right now, Lucas. This very instant. Please, we must.”

“No reason we can’t, Sal. None at all.”