City of Dreams (19 page)

Sally had never before made such a quantity of laudanum at one time. When she finished decanting it she had four crockery jugs of the pale gold liquid. And one more jug made of glass, tightly corked, carefully wrapped, and hidden beneath a loose board in the floor of the simpling room. She was careful to put it there when she was sure none could see her, not even Hetje.

From the first day she’d arrived at this place as Jacob Van der Vries’s lawful wife, she’d known that the young slave was prepared to be her ally. But if there was one thing the last few months had taught her, it was to trust no one. Not the Indians she’d thought were her friends. Not the minister who said he served Almighty God. Not the brother who had protected her all her life, until he sold her for sixty guilders.
But you, my darling child, can trust me. I will not fail you.

Jacob Van der Vries had no reason to look for a hidden supply of laudanum. He looked instead at the jugs lined up on the counter in the simpling room he’d prepared for his new wife and trembled with delight. “Excellent, my dear. Excellent. I take it the quality is up to your standards?”

“I’ve made none better.”

“Excellent,” Van der Vries repeated softly. “Perhaps after the midday meal I will sample a bit. Just to be sure it is fit for my patients.”

They ate early, at Van der Vries’s insistence; it was just past two when Sally took her place opposite him at the table. The meal was silent. Sally had initiated no conversation with Jacob Van der Vries since the moment the minister pronounced them man and wife. When he spoke, she answered; otherwise she kept her lips clamped shut. Mostly, he was silent, too, except to inquire after the laudanum. Now that it was made neither had anything to say to the other.

Hetje brought the food and set the dishes in front of them. They ate.

Sally took only as much as she needed to keep the baby healthy and strong, and gagged even on that. She had to force each mouthful past the lump of rage and misery that lodged somewhere between her heart and her throat. Normally Van der Vries was a hearty eater. Today he had a few mouthfuls of venison and pumpkin and beans, then jumped to his feet. “I have eaten more than enough. I believe it is a good moment to test your laudanum, wife. Bring me some.”

“A spoonful?” She made herself sound chastened and compliant. “In some hot water perhaps?”

“Two spoonfuls.” Van der Vries smiled. “And I require no water. A fair test.”

She went to the simpling room and came back with a small tin cup containing the viscous yellow liquid. He grabbed it from her and gulped it down. Ten minutes later he was sitting in his study, puffing dreamily on his pipe, staring into the empty fireplace and smiling a vacant, happy smile.

Sally stood in the door and watched him for a bit, keeping her hands clasped over her belly all the while. Finally she turned away.

She went to the kitchen. It was small, dominated by the fireplace and the bake oven built into the wall beside it. Hetje was there, cleaning up after the meal. Sally sat down on the stool beside the table in the middle of the room. “The venison you served for dinner was excellent, Hetje. Did you get it at the butcher shop in Hall Place as I told you to?”

“Yes, mevrouw. I always be doing everything you and the master tell me to.”

“I think not,” Sally said softly. “Only when it suits you.”

“Hetje be a good slave.” The girl set to wiping the table with long sweeps of her strong arms. “Mijnheer and mevrouw never have no cause to beat Hetje.”

“I will never beat you,” Sally said quietly. “You have my sworn oath on it. And I will do everything I can to see that”—she could not bring herself to say “my husband”—“that he doesn’t beat you either. In return, Hetje, will you help me?”

“Hetje be a good slave. Hetje do everything mevrouw tells—”

“Enough, Hetje. I am in this place because I have no choice. Exactly as you are. And I am going to have a child.” Hetje stopped cleaning the table. She carried the crumbs to the wooden barrel in the corner and disposed of them. Finally she turned around. “What you be wanting me to do, mevrouw?”

“Tell me what you discovered at the butcher shop.”

“There be a lot of talk in that place, mevrouw.”

“What kind of talk? Is my brother—”

“I hear nothing about the barber. It be the butcher they talk about. He went away last month and no one seen him since. His poor wife be doing everything by herself. And her eyes be all red from weeping.”

“Weeping? Marit Graumann? Over Ankel Jannssen? I don’t believe it. Everyone knows that pig was a drunk who treated her abominably.”

“I don’t know nothing about that, mevrouw. But her eyes be half closed with crying. That’s plain enough. And she look ill.”

“And no one truly knows where her husband has gone?”

“That’s what I be hearing in the town, mevrouw. No one knows. Two of the burgomasters and the sheriff search the whole house up and down and find nothing. They say the butcher’s clothes be gone as well. And that he be saying for years he be going to sail away on a rum ship. Going to the islands, maybe.”

“And my brother, the barber? What do they say of him?”

“Nothing, mevrouw. I don’t be hearing nothing about the barber.”

Sally drew invisible lines on the table with one finger. She didn’t look at the other woman. “Shall I tell you something, Hetje? A secret? I think I shall. My brother, Lucas, and the butcher’s wife are lovers. They have been lovers for well over a year. I thought it for a time, but I wasn’t sure. Then one day, before the siege, I followed Lucas to a secret place in the woods up near the Collect Pond, Hetje. I saw the things they did to each other, my brother and the butcher’s wife. You would not believe them.”

Sally stopped speaking. Hetje was staring at Sally with her great black eyes and it was as if she could see into her soul. “You be poisoning your heart with what you watched,” she whispered. “You watch another couple loving and it poisons—”

A loud and insistent pounding cut off Hetje’s words. The two women rushed to the hall. “It must be him,” Sally said breathlessly. “The laudanum’s made him mad.”

“Not the master,” Hetje said. “Somebody be beating on the front door.”

“Dear God, maybe it’s a patient. He’s in no condition … Answer it, Hetje. Tell whoever it is the physician is not here. Say he won’t return until this evening.” Sally stepped back into the shadows near the kitchen. “Very well, now, Hetje. Open the door.”

A man stood on the stoop, back lit by the late afternoon sun. Sally had to squint to see him, but she could hear him plain enough. “English warships!” he shouted. “Four of them. Just sailed into the harbor. Tell your master. And stay inside with your doors well bolted.”

Colonel Richard Nicolls demanded the town in the name of Charles II, King of England. Stuyvesant presented him with a letter reviewing the Dutch claim to the territory. Nicolls refused to read it. “You may write what you wish, sir. If the town is not surrendered in two days’ time it will be shelled.”

The fort was crumbling. After the latest Indian war, there were fewer than sixty soldiers; no replacements had come from Holland. There was a reasonable amount of ammunition for the soldiers’ muskets, but almost none for the town’s cannon. The English terms were generous. The residents of the town could retain their property and worship as they chose. The governor hesitated, tormented by his fierce loyalty to the Dutch West India Company. The colonists had no such scruples. They demanded capitulation.

There were well over two thousand people in Nieuw Netherland. Not even Peter Stuyvesant could stand against the will of so many. He signed the terms of surrender on the eighth day of September, 1664, then retired to his extensive
bouwerie
beyond the Voorstadt, north of the wall. Nearly everyone else stayed where they were and went on with their lives, the only differences being that now they were ruled by the brother of the English king, James, Duke of York; Fort Orange had become Albany; and Nieuw Amsterdam was New York. And being English was suddenly an advantage. Of sorts. Under some circumstances.

“Been living with the Dutch for some time, have you, barber?”

“Three and a half years here in the colony. Since June of 1661. Before that I was in Rotterdam.”

“I see. Get on with them, do you? Speak the language?”

“Well enough.”

The Englishman turned a few more of the papers on his desk. The two men were in the former Stadt Huys. It was now called the City Hall, but the window at the far end of the room still looked out toward Hall Place. Not close enough for Lucas to see anything, but he kept gazing over the other man’s shoulder nonetheless, in the direction of Marit’s shop.

“They tell me you’re a surgeon as well as a barber.” Witherspoon, the man asking the questions, wore the latest fashion—a powdered wig and a pale blue satin waistcoat and dark blue velvet breeches. Called himself secretary to Nicolls, who was now the governor of New York. “I hear you’re an expert stone cutter. And that you are, as well, adept at setting broken bones and cutting away tumors.”

“I am well trained in my craft, Mr. Witherspoon. And you seem to know a good deal about us for a man who’s been here less than a week.”

“The value of taking a census, Mr. Turner. One hears so much.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s so. Now, if that is all, I’ll—”

“Of course, mustn’t keep you. Just one last thing. Did you learn your trade in Rotterdam? Among the Dutch?”

“No, sir. In London. With the English Barbers’ Company.” There was no doubt in Lucas’s mind that Witherspoon already knew as much. The Company published lists of its members every year, had been doing so for nearly a century. Men who became secretaries to colonial governors were the sort who made themselves familiar with such lists.

Witherspoon smiled. “Rare in these modern times, isn’t it, to be both a barber and a surgeon? I mean, if one is apprenticed to the English Company?”

“Extremely rare.”

“Then New York is indeed fortunate,” Witherspoon said softly. “One barber who is also a surgeon, and a physician as well. Who, as luck would have it, is married to the barber’s sister. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“And you, sir—as yet, you are unmarried?”

“As yet.”

“I see.” Witherspoon put down his pen. “Very well, you may leave.” Lucas turned to go. “There’s just one other thing, Mr. Turner. Since you’re an Englishman by blood and birth … In some ways Governor Nicolls finds this a strange place. One would expect the Dutch church to hold sway, but it appears there are, as well, Sabbatarians, Antisabbatarians, Singing Quakers, Ranting Quakers, Jews … It boggles a man’s mind. I’m told there are even a few Papists.”

“I believe that’s true.”

“But Stuyvesant … The word is that he’s as stubborn a believer in his own religion as any you’ll meet. Do you not, barber, find that a strange combination of circumstances?”

Lucas took a few steps toward the other man’s desk and pointed at the window. “Out there you have a town founded with one intent: the earning of money. If whatever God you pray to assists you in that aim”—Lucas shrugged—“then the Dutch West India Company made you welcome. Believe what you like, and keep quiet about it. More important, get on with business.”