City of Glory (46 page)

Tintin shrugged. “Not frequently by those who wish to keep their tongues in their mouths, monsieur. But in this case I will ignore the insult. As I am ignoring your little pretense of great secrecy. If this place were not entirely safe, you would not have met me here. And I note that the one man besides ourselves who drinks at the sign of the Fife and Drum is a butcher. They tell me the butchers are entirely in your camp.”

“And who might these talkative folks be?”

“The populace of the great city of New York,
mon ami.
At least those with whom I have intercourse. Ha! That would make them all women, no? I love your English language. So many meanings for each word!” Tintin lifted the tankard, took a long swallow, then spat the beer onto the sawdust-covered floor. “
Merde!
You have brought me to a tavern where they serve cow piss. If this is to be the standard of brewers in your new nation, monsieur, I must think again about our—”

Blakeman reached across and gripped the pirate’s arm. “Hold your tongue, you ignorant bastard!”

“Let go of me.” The words were spoken very softly.

“You try my patience, pirate.”

“Let go of me.” A knife had materialized in Tintin’s free hand and was pressed against Blakeman’s wrist. “Otherwise,
mon ami,
you will have the same disfigurement as your rival.”

“I do not think so, pirate.” The butcher who had not followed Vionne into the street had come to stand behind Tintin. He held a cleaver above the head of the pirate. “Not unless,” Blakeman said quietly, “you believe that bandanna you wear can keep your skull from splitting in two.”

The tableau held for the space of three heartbeats. Then Blakeman released his hold on Tintin’s wrist, Tintin put his knife away, and the butcher faded into the shadows on the other side of the room. “Tell me about the others,” Blakeman said.

“What others?”

“Lafitte and the rest. Will they do business?”

“Jean Lafitte is always prepared to do business, and the others do as he suggests. But Barataria is a long distance away,
mon ami.
As I have said before, he is there and I am here.”

Exactly the concern. “I must be able to tell the others we have Lafitte’s agreement.”

Tintin lifted the tankard a second time, then set it down with a grimace of disapproval. “Is there nothing better than this to drink in this place?”

“Answer my question and you can go off to Rivington Street and drink Delight Higgins’s fine wines and superior ale, and gamble and whore as much as you like.”

“I do not require your permission to come or to go,
mon ami.
” Tintin leaned forward. “I thought we had established that.”

Blakeman nodded. The time to teach the pirate manners would come. It was not now. “I need to be able to assure the others that the ships that fly our flag will be unmolested, and that those flying the Stars and Stripes will be considered fair prey.”

“You and all the rest of the Americans call us pirates, monsieur. But we, Captain Lafitte and all the rest of us, we think of ourselves as honorable privateers. Give us letters of marque and…” Tintin spread his hands in a gesture that promised much, though he specified nothing.

Wednesday, August 24, 1814

Chapter Eighteen

New York City,
Ann Street, 9
A.M.

E
VERY TIME
he removed a kidney stone, Andrew thought of his ancestor, Lucas Turner, a barber-surgeon come here in 1661, when the city was Nieuw Amsterdam. Then as now, a stone was among the most painful of ailments. Those suffering with it were always the easiest to persuade to the knife. “You must stand just so, sir. On the oilcloth. Now, if you can spread your legs, and bend over and rest your elbows on this table…Yes, that’s excellent.”

The man’s moans were low and continuous, but Andrew’s patient did exactly as he was told. So had fierce old Peter Stuyvesant, according to Lucas’s journal. If the Dutch governor had been grieving with some other disease—since he couldn’t have known that Lucas Turner, Andrew’s four times great-uncle, was a surgeon of genius—he might not so readily have trusted himself to a stranger just arrived in the colony. Andrew pushed a sturdy leather bucket into position between his patient’s legs and reached for a scalpel. “Now, sir, take a deep breath and hold it as long as you can. If your lungs are in good shape, this will all be over by the time you must take another.”

In his journals Lucas claimed to be able to cut out a stone and sew the patient back up in forty-five seconds. Andrew had bested that time on one or two occasions, at least so he thought, but not in recent years. He was slowing down, whatever Joyful said. This, however, was not the time to give in to age.

He grasped the scalpel, put one hand behind the man’s hanging genitalia, spread the skin taut, and made a swift single cut from the rectum to the testes. The motion was quick enough that he’d withdrawn the knife before the patient’s howl of pain and his involuntary start could cause the blade to wander. He preferred speed to the method Lucas described, putting one arm around the patient’s waist to hold him in position, and cutting with the other. “You’re not holding your breath, sir. Try it again. That’s the worst of it over.”

Not exactly true, but a fib that comforted. Made the balance of the operation easier on both of them. Andrew used a pair of pincers to spread the wound. That drew only a muffled gasp. He could see the bladder wall now. Another cut—his patient let out a high-pitched squeal, like a cat on a hot stove—this one as fast and much shorter, and made with a smaller scalpel, hewn as they all were to razor sharpness. Good knives, as much a part of successful surgery as good cutting. He adjusted the pincers. Another yelp. There were stories of stonecutters who had inadvertently taken men’s cocks off when writhing patients twisted out of their grip. Or still worse, half off. He’d always preferred quickness and impeccable technique to strength, though either would get the job done.

The ammonia reek of the man’s urine mingled with the slightly sweet smell of blood as they mixed in the bucket. A satisfactory ping followed. And Ho Charley! A second ping after the first. Two stones, both lodged in the bladder. Andrew’s belief, formulated by the hundreds of anatomies he’d performed on cadavers that came his way when he had charge of the almshouse hospital, was that the stones appeared first in the kidneys. He’d found them there during many of those explorations when he cut to know rather than to cure. He was convinced it wasn’t until the stones worked their way down to the lower regions of the waterworks that excruciating pain drove the victims to stone cutters. And this poor bastard had been suffering twice over. “Two stones, sir. You were preparing to construct a cathedral in your innards.” Damned fortunate he was as well. No need to probe. Lucas’s journal said how grateful he’d been not to have to probe to get at Governor Stuyvesant’s stone. “Only a few pricks now, sir. I’m tidying things up and stitching the wound. If you—”

A quick knock, then the door flew open. “Excuse me, Dr. Turner, sir. There’s a—”

“Not now, Bridey.” He’d never been able to break her of the habit of coming in before she was invited. This poor devil wasn’t the first to give Bridey a display of his bare hindquarters. “Go away. I’ll come when I’m done.”

The door closed. Andrew continued tying off the blood vessels. A hundred and fifty years since his ancestor did this operation, and nothing much had changed. Not likely to either. Not unless someone could solve the problem of how much pain folks could endure under the knife. Wasn’t likely to happen in his lifetime. Maybe his son’s, or Joyful’s. He’d always thought Joyful would be the one to lead the way down the paths such a transformation would make available. Opening a chest or a belly, watching the heart pump or the intestines contract, repairing—God knew what, but something—then sewing the patient back up and having him live. Bloody marvelous that would be. Make surgeons into gods.

“Only a few seconds more, sir.” He picked up another of the catgut ligatures he’d prepared in advance and began stitching the wound. Always planned to give old Lucas’s journals to Joyful. But if Joyful truly wasn’t to practice medicine as a livelihood, they should go to Christopher. Didn’t matter how unappealing he found his flesh-and-blood heir when compared to Roisin’s boy. Fair was fair. “There you are, sir. Done.” Andrew glanced at his pocket watch. “Close to two minutes.” Terrible time. He’d blame Bridey’s interruption rather than his increasing age.

Ten minutes later the man was dressed and Andrew had led him out to his waiting carriage. “Eat a portion of this bran twice a day.” He pressed a muslin bag into the man’s hands. “And drink as much as you can get down. Even water. Never mind how bad it tastes. You must not strain at the stool. And come back and see me in a week’s time.”

He stood a moment, watching the carriage drive away. Not as many soldiers on the streets as there had been a day or two ago. Perhaps New York was not to be invaded after all.

“Dr. Turner…Sir…”

Andrew turned to the sound of his name. “Absalom. So it was you Bridey tried to announce a bit ago.” His heart sank at the thought of another trip to Five Points. As usual, he knew he would go in spite of that.

“Guess it be me, sir.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I’d already begun that man’s surgery, and there was no way I could stop it. I take it Mother Zion calls?”

Absalom shook his head. “No sir, Dr. Turner. Not like usual. I be…” He paused and looked around.

“Come inside.” Andrew hurried his caller into the front hall and closed the door behind him. “Now, what’s this about?”

“I be lookin’ for Joshua, Dr. Turner. You remember him. Boy as helped us when you were by Mother Zion last time. Boy you sent to get your cousin, the doctor with one hand.”

“Yes, I remember. Joshua. What about him?”

“He be missing two days now. Don’t be no one knows where he’s at. Reverend Fish, he be right disturbed. Joshua be a great favorite o’ Reverend Fish.”

“I’m sorry to hear that the boy has run off, Absalom. But why tell me?”

“He was mighty taken by all your fixing and patching, Dr. Turner. Talked a fair bit about it after you left. Reverend Fish, he be thinkin’ maybe Joshua come here to you. Ask to be a ’prentice or some such.”

Andrew had to tell him that he had not seen the boy. He did not speak the word “blackbirders,” but he knew it was the explanation in his mind and Absalom’s, and no doubt in that of Zachary Fish.

Maryland, the Woods Surrounding
the Federal District, 10
A.M.

The soldiers of the Fifth Maryland Volunteer Infantry were drawn from the finest Baltimore society, and they were a sight to see. Blue jackets faced with red, white pantaloons, black gaiters, white cross-belts, and heavy leather helmets topped with two sweeping plumes, one red and the other black. They’d left Baltimore the day before—accompanied by the many nigras the individual members of the regiment had hired to look after and cook for them—marching down streets lined with cheering citizenry. A fine adventure.

It no longer felt so. They’d spent an exhausting night marching back and forth from one position to another. All, as it turned out, responses to false alarms, but no less tiring for that.

That same night another company, the Annapolis militia, pitched camp within half a mile of the British pickets at the Upper Marlboro encampment. When they discovered that, outnumbered as they were, they had all but delivered themselves into the enemy’s hands, they set about moving, and did so in such disorder that they rolled their tents too loosely to fit all of them on the wagons. Many were left behind, along with other supplies they were too much in a hurry to take. The men, mostly draftees, were told to march with a ball up their muskets. As a result one accidentally killed his closest friend, and another shot a companion in the thigh. The chaos provoked a number of desertions.

Nonetheless, one way and another six thousand American men were within thirty miles of Washington. Ready to fight and, if need be, to give their lives for their country. But as the column of just over four thousand redcoats made their final approach to the spot they’d chosen to cross the Eastern Branch of the Potomac into the Federal District—the village of Bladensburg—they faced no concentrated defending force.