City of God (58 page)

“Sure thing, guv.”

Liam hurried to help them into the brougham, but Nick waved him away and handed Carolina up himself. Then he climbed in after her and pulled the door shut on the outside world.

July 4, 1863
The Temporary Field Hospital at Cemetery Ridge,
Gettysburg in Pennsylvania

“T
ELL THE
YANG
gwei zih
to take me home,” Mei-hua said.

The driver had been with her for half a dozen years, but he was not Chinese and so would always be a
yang gwei zih
, a foreign devil. “I will tell him, Mamee.” Mei Lin leaned forward and kissed her mother’s cheek, then opened the door and climbed down. She paused just long enough to tuck Mei-hua’s book beneath the short cape of the black habit of Mother Elizabeth Seton’s Sisters of Charity. In moments it was safe and hidden. Just like her.

Except that Nicholas Turner, the this-place-red-hair
yi
of her mother’s long drama and her own, was watching, and he knew everything.

“Take her home, please,” Mei Lin called up to the driver. He clucked softly to the horses and they moved away.

Dr. Turner was alone. Mei Lin went to join him. “I didn’t want to trouble you when you were so busy,” she said. “Particularly with a stranger present.”

“Walt Whitman,” Nick explained. “The Brooklyn poet. He comes frequently to visit the army hospitals. But you…” He gestured to the habit she wore. “My dear, I had no idea. I thought perhaps you and Mr. Heinz…”

Mei Lin laughed. “You thought correctly, Dr. Turner. Fritz and I have been married for four years.” She didn’t bother to explain that neither the Catholic Church nor the government of Pennsylvania gave any trouble about an earlier marriage conducted at midnight and effected simply by carrying the bride across the groom’s threshold. “We have two sons. But Fritz is away at present with the Union Army Corps of Engineers. After this terrible battle, I wanted to do something to help. The Mother Superior of the convent Mother Manon asked to take us in when we first came said I could join them to help find the live bodies among the dead. She’s a practical woman, like Mother Manon. She simply put me in a habit the same as the others. Fewer questions to answer that way.”

“I see. I’m glad,” Nick said, adding, “not that there’s anything wrong with being a nun. I was surprised to see your mother here. She is well?”

“Reasonably so,” Manon said. “She lives with us and is happy with her grandsons, but still much fixated on the past. These days she frequently does odd things, like following me here to give me something she could just as well have given me at home.”

“The passing of years sometimes does that to people,” Nick said. “And in your mother’s case, given her experiences, it’s not surprising.”

“I suppose not. Tell me, please, your wife and children…there was never any trouble after—”

“Ah,” he said, “apparently you never heard. Kurt Chambers was killed the same night you left New York. Seems he tried to escape from custody and one of the coppers shot him.” His stomach no longer roiled when he thought about what Zac had arranged, not in the face of all the horror he’d witnessed since.

Mei Lin looked somber for a moment. Nick thought she might be saying a prayer for the repose of Chambers’s soul. Then she smiled. “I have the fondest possible memories of you and your wife and Sunshine Hill. I hope everyone is well.”

“As far as we can tell,” Nick said. “Josh is in the army, we know not
where most of the time. Blessedly Simon is yet too young to go. He and Goldie are at home with Carolina. And Ceci…” His face darkened.

“I know she married her Mr. Lee and went to live in Virginia,” Mei Lin said. “She wrote me. We were planning a visit some day.” She shook her head. “Perhaps after all this is over. What news of Zachary?”

“Very busy in Washington just now. Advising Mr. Lincoln on matters of wartime shipping and such.” Nick did not add that he too was frequently consulted by the president. Indeed, if he had not been in the nearby capital when the magnitude of this battle began to be apparent, close enough to board one of the wagons bringing medicine and doctors, he would not have been in Gettysburg at all.

One of the nuns brushed by; the sight of her reminded Mei Lin of how much there was to do. “I really must go back to work.”

“I as well,” Nick said.

“Your achievements here in the field hospitals are already a legend, Dr. Turner.”

He snorted. “I want no reputation garnered in this wretched war. My worst nightmare is that one day I will look down at the faces of the dead and dying I’m supposed to treat and see my son or my son-in-law. That I will be the one who has to tell my wife her boy is gone or my stepdaughter she’s a widow. This wretched, wretched war.”

“We are all, every moment, in the hands of God, Dr. Turner.”

“So they tell me, Mei Lin. So they tell me.”

T
HE RESOURCES FOR
City of God
were in many cases the same as those I used for the earlier three books about the Turner and Devrey families,
City of Dreams, Shadowbrook
, and
City of Glory
. They are many and varied, but Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace’s
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(Oxford University Press, 1999) remains the lodestar of these stories, all except
Shadowbrook
being chiefly set in Manhattan.

For details of the evolution and brief reign of the sailing clippers I relied on
The Clipper Ships
by Addison Beecher Colvin Whipple (Time-Life Books, 1980) and
The History of American Sailing Ships
by Howard I. Chapelle (W. W. Norton, 1935). In the matter of the arrival of the Catholic sisterhoods in the United States in general and in New York City in particular, I was much aided by
Religious Orders of Women in the United States
by Elinor Tong Dehey (W. B. Conkey Co., 1913). I also consulted
History of the New York Times 1851–1921
by Elmer Davis (New York Times, 1921) for information about that paper and its competitors. Both the latter books are long out of print and not in my own library. Without Google’s digitalization project it
would have been, while not impossible, a matter of much time and trouble to obtain them. As it was, I simply clicked my mouse a few times, then pressed Print. I mention this here in the light of the intense controversy surrounding the larger issue of Google’s efforts. At least in the matter of out-of-print and out-of-copyright books, it’s hard to imagine something more beneficial to readers and writers.

Ditto Wikipedia, which was enormously useful, particularly for information about Chinese deities and dates. Onward the Internet! Life and books would be impoverished without it.

I am yet again grateful for the kindness of friends and colleagues without whom this book would be less than it is. Some deserve special mention: The super-talented Shymala Dason and her charming husband Joe McMahon reminded me of the wonderful Hopkins poem “Pied Beauty” just as I was trying to get my mind around how to frame the religious issues that so much inform this story. Tom Kirkwood’s timely assistance saved me from having egg on my face with regard to the two words of German used herein. Janie Chang once again patiently answered my questions about transliterated Mandarin (but whatever I have mangled in my attempts to render the voices of the Chinese characters in this story is entirely my fault and in no way hers). And once more I have chosen to use Wade-Giles romanization because the Pinyin system had not been invented at the time of the story. Henry Morrison as usual proved himself first reader nonpareil and literary agent without peer. He was, I hope, amused to meet an earlier doppelgänger in these pages. Danny Baror, who sells my foreign and translation rights, continues to make it possible for my stories to reach beyond my nationality and my language—sometimes very far indeed—and I am grateful. Sydny Miner’s rare ability to wield the editorial pencil with both sensitivity and intelligence once more earns my deepest appreciation. Thanks too to the many others at Simon & Schuster whose commitment to this series continues to stand it in such good stead, particularly Michelle Rorke, Michael Accordino, Loretta Denner, and Tina Peckham.