City of Dreams (73 page)

De Lancey poured another tot of brandy into both their glasses and used the opportunity to size up his visitor. Most men grew heavier with age. Devrey was even thinner than he’d been as a young man. “Gaunt” was a better word, and there was a gray, unhealthy pallor to his skin. His appearance wasn’t helped by his being perhaps the only man in New York to wear a black cutaway coat whatever the season. As if he were in permanent mourning.

Mind, lately he had more than enough cause. According to Oliver, Devrey had managed to scrape together two hundred pounds to purchase shares in the last sailing of the
Fanciful Maiden
. He’d have needed a proxy to do that. Given the bad blood between Caleb Devrey and Squaw DaSilva, Devrey would never have been allowed to invest otherwise. Apparently he managed it, then proceeded to back the single barren voyage the
Maiden
ever made. Devrey’s two hundred could have been expected to yield a thousand, possibly two. Instead it was gone. No wonder he looked like walking death. “Well, Dr. Devrey, I asked you here because—”

There was a quick knock. “Excuse me, Your Excellency.” A servant pushed open the door and came in without waiting for an invitation. “I’ll only be a moment. More wood for the fire.”

“Yes, Philip, very well. But be quick.”

Devrey watched the houseman deftly stack an armload of logs in the fire basket beside the hearth, feeding a few fat sticks to the flames as he worked. Man was white; probably an indenture. Since the most recent Negro revolt, nearly twenty years ago, the official line said indentures were safer for the province. Caleb didn’t see it that way himself. White servants had a way about them. Arrogant. Especially when they worked in establishments like the De Lancey country seat. Even this Philip. No forehead. Black hairline that practically met his bushy eyebrows. Acted like he thought he pissed claret. Nothing he did, exactly. Just a way about him.

Neither Devrey nor De Lancey spoke while the houseman worked. The fire flared higher. The governor and his visitor edged closer to the welcome warmth. Finally Philip stood up. “Is there anything else, Your Excellency?”

“Nothing. Good night, Philip. Close the door behind you.”

“Yes, Your Excellency. Of course, sir. Good night to you both, gentlemen.”

The door closed. De Lancey leaned toward the leaping flames and warmed his hands. “Cold night,” he murmured. “Odd for this time of year … As I was saying, Dr. Devrey, I’ve a proposition for you.”

“Yes, I know. I thought we’d already gotten past that part of the discussion.”

De Lancey winced at Caleb’s lack of finesse. The man was an insufferable boor, and he’d never understand Oliver’s fondness for him. Still, Devrey could prove useful. “Now that Christopher Turner’s dead, the hospital post is available. I have been thinking that a physician would be a better choice for the position than a surgeon.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. The directorship of the poorhouse hospital carried a stipend of two hundred a year. Enough to meet ordinary expenses, keep a roof over his head, pay for a couple of servants. It might even run to a carriage and a pair of horses if he was careful. Not that he was likely to be careful. But two hundred a year for doing nothing but showing up a few times a week and administering a purge to a few diseased beggars wouldn’t put a strain on the time required by his private practice. With what he got out of that—even though it was half what it should be—he might have enough to make life worth living. Particularly now that Bede had suggested it was past time his brother move out of the family home. Sweet piss on the grass, he’d jump at the directorship of the poorhouse hospital if he could get it. The only question was whether he could meet De Lancey’s price. “Luke Turner’s in line for the post, isn’t he?”

“I suppose that’s the general assumption. But it doesn’t have to be so. The appointment’s in my gift.”

Caleb bent forward and pulled the polished glass stopper from the pinch bottle.

“Help yourself,” De Lancey said dryly.

“Thanks, I will.” Caleb poured half a tumbler of brandy. “What I’m wondering is whether I can afford to accept your offer.”

“I haven’t made it yet.” De Lancey smiled his thin-lipped smile. “As I see it, we’re exploring the possibilities.”

“Very well.” Caleb leaned back and sipped the brandy now that he had gulped enough to kill the perpetual pain in his belly. He studied the older man over the rim of the glass. “Explore away.”

“Cadwallader Colden,” De Lancey said.

“What about him?”

“I am interested in having … Let’s use the French term. It’s a fine language, even if it is spoken by fools. I’m seeking an
avenue
. To Colden’s fine mind.”

“An
avenue
. To Cadwallader’s mind. Ah, yes. I see.” Christ Jesus, his brains were addled. He should have known the moment Oliver told him his bloody brother the bloody lieutenant governor wanted a meeting. There was nothing on earth Caleb Devrey could bring to a trading session with James De Lancey other than a connection with that pompous ass Colden. Still surveyor general, and still the only opposing force to the power James De Lancey was gathering in the province. “An
avenue,”
Caleb repeated. “But that shouldn’t be a problem. Colden’s daughter’s married to your brother Peter, isn’t she?”

De Lancey shrugged. “Indeed, but Peter’s household is up in West Chester. I see little of him or his family. Besides, a man can’t be too prudent, can he, Dr. Devrey?”

“No, I expect not. Though prudence, as you well know, is not one of my stronger virtues.” No point in pretending they weren’t both aware of his reputation as a wastrel. Besides, he was long past believing that licking the behinds of the high and mighty served any purpose other than leaving a man with the taste of shit on his tongue. “Exactly what is it I can do for you in the matter of my dear friend and partner, Cadwallader Colden?”

“Nothing exactly. Not yet. I simply thought that if something came up where Colden and I didn’t see eye to eye, I might count on you to persuade him to my side of the argument.”

“Not a chance,” Caleb said flatly. No point in making a promise he couldn’t keep and ending up with James De Lancey as his enemy. However much pain he had in his belly, and however pickled with alcohol his brain might be, he still knew that much. “I have no influence with Colden. None.”

“Why not let me be the judge of that?” De Lancey said softly. “You have … Let’s find a good English word for it. Reach. Yes, that’s perfect. You have the opportunity to reach our respected surveyor general. However much time he spends away from the city, he comes in to settle his accounts with you, does he not?”

Caleb nodded. Christ, the whole bloody town knew he had to give Colden half the receipts of his practice and that that millstone had been placed around his neck by his own father. To further the Devrey fortunes from which Bede, not he, gained all the profit. Sweet piss, no wonder his gut was on fire. “He does. Come into town to settle accounts at the practice, I mean. Once a month at least.”

“Good,” De Lancey said softly. “Very good. I can conceive of an instance when that might be important.”

Caleb stared at him, then tossed back the last of the tumbler of brandy and leaned forward to refill his glass. De Lancey nudged the bottle away with an outstretched foot. The candlelight danced on the shiny black leather and the polished gold buckle of the lieutenant governor’s beautifully made shoe. “Can I take it we have an arrangement, Dr. Devrey?”

Caleb paused with his hand still reaching for the pinch bottle. Sweet piss, the only way he could affect Colden’s political choices would be to murder the turd in cold blood. And he sure as Christ wasn’t prepared to swing. Not for two hundred a year. “I don’t see what I’d be able to—”

“I told you, you’re worrying about something that’s not your concern. It will be simple enough if the occasion ever arises. I promise you that. Now, once more, Dr. Devrey, do we have an arrangement?”

Caleb hesitated. Two hundred a year. For seeing a few beggars once or twice a week. He’d use it to pay his basic expenses. Everything else would be cream. Christ, half the income from his practice would seem like a fortune once his essential needs were met. And if whatever De Lancey wanted was too dangerous, he’d deal with that when the time came. There were things he knew about Oliver and his Jewess wife and her peddler kin … Between them the family Franks and Oliver De Lancey had taken a fortune from the quartermasters of every barracks in the province, cheating the crown right, left, and center. Oliver had boasted of it a few times. Another card to play if he needed it.

Caleb drained his glass, then put it on the table. “Yes,” he said firmly. “Why not? We have an arrangement, Your Excellency.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” The gleaming shoe nudged the pinch bottle closer. “Help yourself, Dr. Devrey. Something against the chill of the evening.”

II

“Then there’s nothing you can do, Dr. Turner? You’re entirely sure?” The man was a candlemaker, a decent hardworking fellow whose callused hands, homespun shirt, and leather breeches made it apparent that the shilling he’d paid for this consultation had not come easy. He’d hung back when his wife left Luke’s house on Ann Street. Now, standing in the doorway, he whispered a final plea. “Are you entirely sure?”

Luke hated this part of the practice of medicine. He never could manage to say anything truly comforting after he delivered a death sentence. He shook his head, murmured, “Nothing, I’m sorry,” and pressed the man’s hand in a gesture of sympathy at the same time that he eased him out the door.

The man stiffened his back and walked briskly to where his wife was waiting and took her arm. Luke closed the door, took a deep breath to clear his head, and spoke without turning around. “You can come out of the shadows now, Andrew.”

His eldest living son had the Turner height, but in every other way Andrew was like his Scots mother. He had Maeve’s sturdy, well-padded frame, and her fair, curly hair and hazel eyes. Poor Maeve. She’d died six years earlier, birthing Luke’s tenth child. A girl it was, born dead. Each of Maeve’s final five deliveries had ended the same way, and they’d lost three of those who were safely born. One to the yellowing fever and two in the same instant when they were trampled by a runaway horse and wagon. It was too much for Maeve. She’d given up and died as well. Luke still missed her, but that wasn’t something he could discuss with either Andrew or Jane, his two living children.

“You remind me of your aunt Jennet,” he said when Andrew stepped away from the tall wardrobe that had provided his cover. “She used to spy on our father’s consultations at every opportunity.”

Andrew brushed some dust from the shoulder of his coat. “And did Squaw DaSilva wear a black veil back then as well?”

“Don’t use that name. It’s a scurrilous insult and I loathe it. She’s your aunt Jennet. And no, she didn’t wear a veil. She wasn’t married then, much less a widow.”

“She’s not a widow now.”

“As good as. Poor creature.”

“I wouldn’t have thought ‘poor’ was a word that applied to my aunt. Or for that matter her pirate son, my fabled cousin.”

Luke sighed. “Privateering is perfectly legal. And I know you think that at age twenty you know everything in the entire world, lad, but you don’t. Not yet. Perhaps in another year or two. Now come into the consulting room and tell me what you’re bursting to tell me.”

“I’m not bursting!”

“Yes you are. It’s written all over your face. Come along.”

Andrew followed his father into the room that served as Luke’s study, and the place where he saw those patients he did not visit in their homes. Luke took the seat behind the large pine desk; Andrew sat opposite him. “Very well,” Luke said. “Here’s your chance. Get on with it.”

“With what?”

“C’mon, lad. Let’s have a bit of Scots directness and less Turner cleverness. You think I was wrong to send that poor woman away, don’t you?”

“She’s going to die.”

“Of course. We all are. I don’t imagine that’s news to you, and I’m sure it’s not news to her.”

“You know what I mean, Father. She’s still young, and she’s going to die in a matter of months. Possibly weeks.”

“Yes,” Luke agreed, his mood becoming more somber. “She is. She has dropsy and it kills. We have no means of preventing that outcome.”

“But we don’t try. You don’t try.”

“For the love of Almighty God, Andrew, did you see her belly? It’s as swollen as if she were nine months with child. But she is not. That’s what the midwife told her and I confirmed the diagnosis. Were you close enough to hear the hollow sound when I tapped her stomach? It’s like a drum, lad. Entirely full of noxious fluids. That’s dropsy, and as we both agree, it’s a death sentence.”

“Grandfather thought a belly full of fluid like that came from a cancerated liver.”

Luke paled. For a moment he couldn’t answer. “A cancerated liver,” he whispered finally. “Are you telling me your grandfather cut open a patient’s belly and saw—”

“No, Father. Of course not. Not a live patient. In an anatomy. More than one, in fact. A few times we—”

Luke drew a deep breath. “Dear God, lad. You terrified me. I should have realized. How many anatomies did you do with your grandfather, anyway? A dozen? Two dozen?”

“More. I don’t recall exactly.”

“No, how could you? I don’t think you were more than eleven when he began taking you into his chamber of horrors.”

“It wasn’t like that, Father. Grandfather was always respectful of the dead. We always put everything back and sewed them up before sending them to be buried.”

“Yes. I’m sure. After you slit their bellies and examined their livers and … and whatever else is in those hidden places.”

Sweet Christ, look at the boy, driven by a passion to heal. And I can tell him nothing about what he wants to know. Would to God we’d had a few practical lessons at Edinburgh, and not spent so much time on theories about medicine in antiquity. But in the end it would make no difference. My son has to learn what we’ve all learned, that no surgeon can cure what he can’t see. That’s where we physicians come in. Emetics and purges get into the belly. If the job can be done, they’ll do it. “Whatever else,” he said again. “It makes little difference.”