City of God (13 page)

Like black crows they were, wearing black bonnets with a floppy ruffle and black dresses with a short cape and a high neck and long sleeves. Nick was confronted with a pair of them sitting primly on straight-backed chairs. The younger said nothing, only fingered the string of wooden beads hanging at her waist. The talkative one, whom Manon had introduced as Mother Louise, had a long, sharp nose, exactly like a crow’s beak. And apparently she read minds. “You are thinking how odd we look, Dr. Turner, and how unfashionable. Mother Seton was in Italy when her husband died, and she adopted the style of dress of widows there. And we after her.”

“No, really, I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort.”

Her chuckle was rich and warm. “It doesn’t matter, we’re quite accustomed to being oddities. We’re the first in this city, you see. In Mother Seton’s day there were a few nuns representing various congregations in other states and many in Europe, but in New York, in 1804, there were none. If that were not the case she might have joined a congregation, rather than starting a new one.”

He listened out of politeness at first, but it was a fascinating story, and he soon found himself intrigued. Elizabeth Bayley she’d been. Born in 1774. Then Mrs. William Seton. When she was twenty-nine, while they were traveling in Italy, her husband died and left her with five small children. A year later, when she and her children returned to New York, Elizabeth Seton had converted to the Catholic faith. “Both the Bayleys and the Setons completely ostracized her, but she was not deterred,” Mother Louise said. “And she burned to do something for the poor.”

“Before her conversion Mrs. Seton founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows,” Manon interrupted. “I’ve always thought it was her going over to Rome that caused New York society to withdraw its support from such charities.”

“Protestants look at these things differently,” Mother Louise said, smiling. “I should know. I was one for thirty years.”

The week before, at Bellevue, Nick had seen a minister go into the stone building that housed the stepping wheel. Sixteen men—prisoners mostly, though a few of the able-bodied poor were pressed into service when they were needed to make up the numbers—walking a flight of turning steps that drove a mill to grind grain; eight minutes on, eight minutes off, by the bell, sixteen hours out of every twenty-four. A preacher went daily to read to the men from the Bible. Of all the stories told about Bellevue by rich and poor, none were more fearsome than tales of the Stepping House.

“Did you become a Catholic, Mother Louise, so you could join these Sisters of Charity?”

“Quite the other way round, Dr. Turner. I joined Mother Seton and her Sisters for the same reason I became a Catholic. For the love of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now would you like to see something of our work here?”

However unusual these black-clad women might be, the orphans were the biggest surprise of the visit. They looked well fed and clean; some were even apple-cheeked and rosy. Everything in the place was clean, come to that. No dark corners or droppings of vermin here. Indeed, no sloth or idleness was permitted. The children marched to and from their various tasks—including, he was told, lessons in reading and writing and numbers—in perfect drill formation. And everything he was seeing was repeated next door in the home for half-orphans also established by the Catholic Diocese and staffed by the Sisters of Charity. Because among the poor in New York, Mother Louise said, losing one parent was every bit as devastating as losing both.

“Your Mother Louise seems a formidable lady,” Nick told Manon when they left. “I shouldn’t like to be in her bad books.”

“No fear of that, not with you promising to come if she’d need of a doctor.”

“Well, when she said there was no physician they could regularly call on…. You know, I don’t understand that. Surely there must be some Catholic doctor who—”

“There are some, yes. But the Sisters are not entirely uncontroversial even among those who share their religion. New York’s Catholic doctors belong to the class that does not believe in separating itself from Protestants in every particular. And it has been at loggerheads with both the previous Bishop Connolly and the current Bishop Dubois, both of whom do.”

“Want to separate the Catholics, you mean?”

“From what they see as Protestant heresy, yes. The bishops are not great defenders of American notions of democracy and republicanism. Which, whatever their other faults may be, are worthy ideas much trumpeted by the Evangelicals.”

“You know a great deal of politics, my dear Cousin Manon. Not to mention this religion to which you say you do not belong.”

“Politics? I’m a woman, dear Cousin Nicholas. What has politics to do with me?” Long ago, when Joyful was alive, he had been deeply involved in the city’s political fortunes. But Joyful was dead, and she had been left with only one extraordinary vestige of that involvement.

“Manon?” Nick touched her arm. “Penny for your thoughts? You seem to have gone quite far away.”

“My thoughts are not worth a penny,” Manon said briskly. A king’s ransom more like, but she had no intention of saying that. “And if you want to know about religion, you’ve only to read
The Truth Teller
for the Catholic point of view, or
The Protestant
for that side. You can decide for yourself which tells more lies. As for these nuns, after the plague of cholera in ’32 the whole city thought them heroines because they were the only ones unafraid to nurse the sick of whatever religion. But in ordinary times the Sisters serve mostly the Irish rabble who live in Five Points, if living it can be called. I’ve not met any doctors down there.”

“You go to Five Points often, I hear. To nurse that Irish rabble.”

“When I can,” Manon said with a dismissive shrug. “Though to be
fair, Five Points offers misery in a variety of nationalities. And there are the Negroes, of course.”

Nick fully expected Manon to be an abolitionist, at least in her heart of hearts. He had leanings that way himself. Nonetheless, he knew it was a dangerous thing to be in New York. Slavery might have been outlawed in this state five years past, but the plantation owners mostly shipped their tobacco and cotton to Europe from New York City, just like the rest of the country. Putting them all out of business would be no favor for this town. “In Five Points,” Nick said, “are the blacks mostly runaway slaves?”

“Not entirely. Free Negroes as well. These days most of them can’t get work either.”

“You’re doing a good thing,” Nick said, touching her arm.

She put her hand over his, grateful for the gesture. Sometimes, when she was bone-tired, she could not help but wonder. After an exhausting six or seven hours in those hulking tenements crammed with so much wretchedness, were the poor any better off? And did she feel any less the pain of guilt? Young men her twins would be, if she had not put Joyful first and thus lost all three. She had tried to speak about it. Once to the rector of the French Church—who didn’t understand one word, and told her she must learn to accept God’s will. Another time to Mother Louise.
It doesn’t matter, my dear. No matter how grievous an error of judgement, Christ makes all things new. All you need do is say you’re sorry, that you will try to do better, and that you love. Love meets every need.
For a nun, perhaps. For Catholics.

“You’re well matched,” Nick said. “You and Mother Louise.”

“No,” Manon replied. “No, we are not well matched at all.”

When she was a child on the sampans of Di Short-Neck, Mei-hua had heard the women speak of the clouds and the rain, that moment when a man exploded with greatest sexual pleasure. She had never heard any talk about using a silk cloth to catch the rain part.

That’s what the Lord Samuel did these days. He spread a silk cloth on her belly, and when he reached that moment of ecstasy, he withdrew
from her and deposited his seed on the silk cloth. Later it was up to her to dispose of it. “And always supreme lady
tai-tai
must be on bottom and he on top. Why? Why?” she asked Ah Chee. “In past days not the same. Before you took my son from my belly the Lord Samuel liked me to sometimes—”

“This old woman did not take son. This old woman tried—”

“Yes. Yes. I know.” Secretly she blamed the this-place-red-hair
yi
who had come to take care of her after they left the place of the devil woman. He knew very important special medicine Taste Bad did not know. That’s what her lord said. So how come this-place
yi
didn’t put the son back in her belly? Never mind. She had other things to think about now. “Why Lord Samuel does this thing?”

“Better than you take make-no-baby powder. More sure.”

Mei-hua’s eyes grew round with wonder. “Yes. Yes. No think. No think. Stupid supreme lady
tai-tai
. Stupid.” She smacked her forehead with her hand, as if she would waken the cleverness that had gone to sleep.

Ah Chee could not comment. Her lips were now closed tight around the hollow stick of bamboo she was using to blow air between the flesh and the skin of the fat duck she’d brought home from the market. She had carefully sewn up the openings at the neck and the tail end of the bird, so after a few moments of determined puffing, the duck looked like a round ball. Ah Chee pinched closed the little hole she’d made to insert the bamboo stick, then she opened her mouth and let the stick fall to the floor while she sewed up the hole before too much of the air could escape. After it was cooked, the crispy, dark mahogany skin would be served separately from the succulent flesh. Very special delicious way to cook duck. Only for special very much important feasts.

Ah Chee had learned to prepare the dish by watching a man who said he had made it for the emperor in the Forbidden City. The man had found his way to the sampans of the Pearl River when his need to swallow clouds made him an unreliable chef and the emperor decreed that the ends of all his fingers be cut off and he be turned out of the royal court. Never mind. Even with bad-to-look-at ugly short fingers,
the one-time chef made the most happy in your mouth food anyone on the sampans had ever tasted.

Ah Chee’s duck would be served to the Lord Samuel in three days time, at
Chongjiu,
the ninth day of the ninth month, Double Nine Feast. Very necessary to eat good food and drink chrysanthemum tea to drive away evil. Also, Lord Samuel said this double nine was his birthday. The Lord Samuel was very much too young to celebrate his birthday. Birthdays were for old people. But the plum blossom said the lord told her this double nine was the eleventh day of November in this place, and that was his birthday. Better to make a celebration here than let the yellow hair concubine get ahead of the plum blossom supreme lady
tai-tai
.

Mei-hua was not thinking about the coming celebrations. She had picked up the hollow stick of bamboo and was staring at it with great concentration.

“What? What?” Ah Chee demanded. “I need that thing. It came with us all the way from the Middle Kingdom so this old woman could—”

Mei-hua ignored her and put the piece of bamboo in her mouth, first blowing air out, then drawing it in. After a moment she leaned over a bowl in which rice was soaking and sucked up some of the water, then she covered the hole with her finger and turned to another bowl and took her finger away and watched while the water dripped out. “So. So,” she whispered. “Like that.”

Ah Chee’s eyes narrowed and she too drew in a long breath. She understood, and she was both afraid and very too much damn happy. The plum blossom’s scheme might work. Who could say about such things? Maybe if they burned much incense to god of happiness Fu Xing and if Ah Chee made the girl eat the strong-son soup every day…Never mind. “Bad idea,” she said, looking at Zao Shen, the kitchen god, so he would be sure to hear and understand that Ah Chee had not given her approval to the scheme. In case it went wrong. “Very bad. Very bad. If belly gets round like this,” she gestured to the inflated duck, “how does
tai-tai
explain to the Lord Samuel?”

Mei-hua considered for some moments. “I will tell my lord that gods arrange such things. I will say gods are stronger than silk cloths. And
that if he does not allow his son to be born, all gods, especially Chuan Yin, will be very angry and his business will not prosper.”

Ah Chee shrugged, showing her disdain for this appeal to the power of the goddess of fertility and compassion.

Mei-hua, who knew exactly what the old woman was thinking, stamped her tiny silk-wrapped foot. “My Lord very clever businessman. How you think he got so rich if not? How? You think it is clever business to make gods angry?”

“The Lord Samuel does not believe in the gods of the Middle Kingdom.”

“Then why is there a beautiful statue of Chuan Yin above the big bed. Why? Why?”

“Chuan Yin watches bed because supreme lady
tai-tai
put her there.”

True, the Lord Samuel burned much incense on the day of his wedding to the plum blossom, but only because it was the custom and everyone was watching. Ever since, not a single grain. Ah Chee would bet twenty strings of copper cash there were no altars in the house of the yellow haired concubine. “You do this thing, Lord Samuel take you back to devil woman with devil needles. Make baby come out of your belly a second time.” Her new secret treasure purse was filling again, but it had much less in it than before. “No can.” With a sideways glance at Zao Shen.