City of Dreams (21 page)

Lucas stared at the infant in Marit’s arms. “He’s
what?”

“A foundling. Sent to us by God. I’m sure of it. I’ve never conceived, Lucas. I doubt if I—”

“Where did you get him? When? How are you feeding him?”

The baby cried. Marit leaned forward and kissed the tiny face. She held the child close and began rocking back and forth. “Hush,” she whispered. “Your voice is too loud, Lucas. You are making him cry.”

“Marit, I have to know what—”

“I opened the door and there he was. First thing this morning. It was barely dawn. And I am feeding him with milk from my neighbor’s cow. Look, I’ll show you.” Marit dipped a corner of a piece of cloth into the bowl of milk on the table beside her. She put the cloth to the infant’s lips. He sucked eagerly. “See, he is a smart boy, our Nicholas. He knows—”

“Our Ni— Marit, listen to me. We are to be married this afternoon, less than three months since … since you are without a husband. That is already a huge concession. Since no minister will perform the ceremony, a justice of the peace will preside. That is a second huge concession.”

“You told me Governor Nicolls has made it legal anywhere in New York for a couple to be married by a justice of the peace.”

“Yes, he has. That doesn’t mean the people are going to accept it.”

“The English are in charge now.” She dipped the cloth in milk a second time and gave it to the baby. “The people have to accept what the English say.”

“They have to act as if they accept it, but they don’t—”

“Look, Lucas, at his eyes. Wide apart like yours. And his forehead is like yours. I think he looks like—”

“Marit, what are we going to do if people stop coming to me for treatment?”

“You are the only real surgeon in New York, the only one people trust.”

“There will be many more now that we are an English colony. Marit, please, we cannot keep this child. It is madness.”

Marit held the baby closer. When she looked up at Lucas her large blue eyes were shiny with tears. “Whatever Ankel did to me,” she whispered, “whatever he threatened to do to me, I would not stop loving you. I risked everything because I love you so completely, Lucas. Now I love this child the same way. He is the only son I will ever have. How can you ask me to give him up?”

Lucas knelt beside her. “Only because it’s so dangerous, my love. Because it will put us in so much peril.”

Marit reached for his hand and placed it on the baby’s chest. The infant was entirely swaddled in flannel; only his tiny face showed. Lucas could feel the small heart beating beneath the soft cloth. The child seemed strong, healthy. “Your son,” Marit whispered. “Sent to you by God.” Lucas knew what she wanted him to feel but he did not feel it. There was for him nothing but risk in this tiny creature Marit had so quickly come to love. “No,” he whispered. “Not my son, Marit.”

He stood up and walked to the window. It was nearly three. Most people had gone home for their dinner. Hall Place was deserted. “Have you considered whose child he might truly be?”

“No. And I do not care, Lucas. God placed him on the doorstep for me to find. He is to be our son. Nicholas Turner.”

Lucas sighed. “I see God told you the boy’s name as well.”

Marit shook her head. “Do not mock me, Lucas. Listen to me: if we do not keep him, we will be turning our back on God’s gift. Terrible things will happen to us. We have been fortunate so far. We have … We have done everything we had to do and suffered no ill consequences. But if we do not share our luck with this little boy, everything will change.”

“Marit, how are we to explain a newborn? What are people to think?”

“That Ankel left me with child,” she said calmly. “And who can prove differently?”

“But no one saw you with child. No one—”

“No one noticed. They noticed only my constant weeping these months since—”

“The onion wife,” he said softly. He’d been teasing her with the phrase since she began keeping a peeled onion in the storeroom, inhaling the fumes until tears streamed down her cheeks and she looked like a grieving widow.

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “The onion wife. But no longer, Lucas. After today, the joyful, contented wife of the barber. And the mother of Nicholas.”

“Ankel Jannssen’s legacy,” Lucas whispered. “Very well, so be it.”

Van der Vries searched the entire house, from the simpling room to the attic. When he was finished he went again to stand at the foot of Sally’s bed. “Tell me once more what happened.”

“My labor began. Hetje helped me. The child was born dead. This morning at four of the clock. I did not wish to look at the corpse. Hetje got rid of it for me.”

The slave was kneeling beside the fireplace meanwhile, laying the logs for a new fire. Van der Vries walked over to her. “What did you do with the child?”

Hetje looked up at him. “Mevrouw said she don’t want it be buried anywhere around here. So I be tying a rock to that baby and go down by the wharf and throw it in the sea. No one never going to see that dead baby, Master. You don’t have to worry about that. Only the fishes be going to—”

Van der Vries began unbuckling his belt. “Let’s just see if you tell the same story after—”

“No!” Sally struggled to sit up in the bed. “You must not beat her. The baby is dead. You wanted it gone and it’s gone. What else can you want to know?”

“That I’m not being duped,” Van der Vries said softly. “That my wife and my slave are not taking me for a fool.”

“We are not.” Sally looked directly at him. “And beating Hetje, or me for that matter, will do nothing to sweeten the atmosphere in your household, Jacob Van der Vries. It will not make your simpling room more productive.”

“Ah yes, my simpling room. That raises another question. Why I slept so soundly for so long. Not even in my own bed, but in my chair. How did that happen, mevrouw? Have you any notion?”

“Hetje knows that you enjoy the brew I make from poppies. She did not know it was not for use in cooking. I have explained to her. It will not happen again.”

Van der Vries looked from one woman to the other. “See it does not,” he said finally. Then: “Hetje, leave us. I wish to speak privately with the mevrouw.”

Van der Vries waited until the door closed; then he approached the bed and suddenly, without warning, threw back the quilt. Sally cowered. “Stay where you are,” Van der Vries commanded.

She half raised herself on her elbows, staring up at him. Van der Vries spent some time looking at her, though he did not disturb her nightdress. Finally he put his hand on her belly. It was still swollen, though considerably smaller than it had been, and soft and flabby where before it had been hard. “I feel no heartbeat,” he admitted.

“In God’s name, how could you? I told you, the child was born dead some nine hours past.”

“Yes, you told me.” He took his hand away. “Very well. The matter is closed. We will discuss it no further. Governor Nicolls is giving a reception for the townspeople next week. I wish you to attend with me. It does a man no harm to have an English wife in these times. You have turned out to be a greater asset than I ever imagined, mevrouw. Well worth sixty guilders.”

Sally didn’t see him for two days. Then, on the third night after her child had been born, as she lay staring at the ceiling, trying to imagine how she was going to bear the rest of her life, her door opened. Van der Vries stood there, carrying a candle.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

“Yes. What do you want?”

He came into the room, closed the door behind him, then walked to the bed. “I want what it is your duty to give me,” he said softly. “My marital rights.” He set the candle on the night table, then reached forward and threw back the quilt. “Now, mevrouw, lift your linen. I wish to see exactly what it is I have bought.”

This time Sally didn’t cower. She pulled the hem of her nightdress to her neck. Hetje had wrapped her breasts to keep the milk back. Van der Vries looked at the bindings and nodded. He examined the rest of her. “Skinny,” he muttered under his breath. “No bargain for looks. But there are other advantages.” He leaned over, blew out the candle, and climbed on top of her.

Book Two

The Seeing Far Path
D
ECEMBER
1711-J
UNE
1714

In the days before the coming of the Europeans, when each autumn the Canarsie departed the High Hills Island of Manhattan and crossed the Sun-Coming River to spend the winter on the long island of Metoaca, they left behind two women. That way the
manetuac,
the blood spirits of Manhattan, would not feel deserted.

The older of the staying-behind women was she who was most skilled in making medicine; the younger was her apprentice. At least once during each winter the older woman would lead the younger along what the Canarsie called the Seeing Far Path, up and down the steep and icy hills, and across the frozen streams and rivulets to the side of the island that faced the Sun-Going River. There, where the frigid wind never ceased to blow and you could see over the water to the land of the distant mountains, was the place of the holy stones the medicine women wore around their necks.

The stones were red.

Red was for healing.

Also for blood.

Blood was for life. And for the most sacred oaths.

Chapter Four

O
N THE LAST NIGHT
of the year of 1711 they came to Peter the Doctor with a red hen.

Kinsowa the Ibo had stolen the hen from his master’s coop. It was a feat of great daring. The colonists prized their chickens, most knew exactly how many they had, and everyone knew the role the birds played in the making of West Indian magic. That was why the freed slaves, men like Peter the Doctor living on the Negro plots around Beekman’s Swamp, were not allowed to keep chickens. Kinsowa the Ibo was a brave man.

They were all brave.

The word had passed in whispers. Among those who had been born in the old slave compound in the woods. To two of the Indians who’d been left behind as slaves when the rest of their clan were driven north. To a dozen Africans not long off the ships. To the very few who were what New Yorkers called seasoned slaves, blacks bought from the West Indies, though it was hard to talk rebellion to the seasoned slaves with their permanently welted backs and their dead eyes.

Altogether they were thirty-six converging on the cabin that night. All slaves except for Peter the Doctor, who had been given his freedom according to the terms of his master’s will. Peter the Doctor had promised to help them. If they could bring him a hen.

The thing was possible only because they were in New York where there were no plantations, no overseers, no guards. In New York most slaves lived two or three together, under their master’s roof or adjacent to it, and went freely about doing their master’s business. A few could easily meet and talk. And those few could meet and talk and scheme with a few more. But it was also possible—easy—to be betrayed in New York. That’s why they had come to Peter the Doctor.

He was not a West Indian, but his woman had been. She had drowned in the swamp, but people said her spirit had gone into Peter the Doctor and now he had her West Indian magic. He had the
obeah.

Singly and in pairs they came, avoiding the light of the full moon, dangerous, yet so auspicious for their undertaking, staying in the shadows, saying nothing, barely breathing. Until they were all together. With free Peter the Doctor. With brave Kinsowa the Ibo who had stolen the red hen. With the old white man with the sick arm.

The white man was hidden by the brambles that surrounded the swamp. He watched the blacks assemble and he shook with fever and with fear. He stayed only because he was too terrified to run.

The light in the cabin came from a small fire in a pit in the middle of the single room. Peter the Doctor stood beside the fire holding the hen, the others around him in a circle of silent power. Peter raised the hen above his head. The bird clucked fiercely and tried to beat its wings and peck at Peter’s hands. But when he spoke to the bird it became silent and docile in his grip.
“Coo-ha,”
Peter whispered. “
Jaba, jaba, jaba. Coo-ha.
”