City of God (15 page)

“Because I’m free to do medical research. No one cares about what happens at the Almshouse Hospital. Despite all the preachers in and out
of the place, I’m free to do as I please without churchly restriction. That wouldn’t happen at New York Hospital, and in private practice…Well, I’d hardly see the range of illness one encounters at Bellevue.” Or have much in the way of access to corpses, but he didn’t say that.

“I see. And your research is important?”

“Vital. If we know the causes of disease, we may someday come to know the cure. Fevers, injuries, even such things as infant deformities.”

“Really, Cousin Nick? You honestly think we may someday be able to prevent diseases, even deformities as you say, from occurring?”

“You think I’m mad.” So had her husband when Nick first broached the topic of the benefits of research, but he wouldn’t say that either.

“Well, no. It just seems so…fanciful, I think that’s the word.”

“Cousin Carolina, you like modern things, don’t you? You lit the candle with a lucifer, and the coal in that scuttle over there is Pennsylvania anthracite, which makes less smoke and dust.”

“Yes,” Carolina agreed. “But what has that to do with—”

“Only that there are innovations in medicine too. In the past we could only react to illness after it appeared. These days it’s possible to do more, or at least we can try. There’s a theory, for instance, about illness coming from entities called germs, which can only be seen with a microscope. If that’s correct, then the simple act of washing one’s hands can make an enormous difference between health and sickness. I have a microscope and I examine…diseased things.” He smiled at her. “You must think me ghoulish.”

“No, I do not. In fact, I am quite”—she searched for a word—“quite taken with your enthusiasm,” she finished. “Now about this letter. Shall I mark my initials after the date?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.”

Dipping a quill into her inkpot, she wrote the letters C. R. D. above the wax seal, then picked up the letter and blew on it to dry the ink. “I’m just the right person to do it, aren’t I? A respectable married lady of whom no one takes the least bit of notice. The perfect witness.”

“I take notice,” he said softly. “Most particularly of the fact that you’re very kind.”

“Not at all.” She spoke quickly and decisively so there was no chance he would see that his words had brought her to the edge of tears. “I am merely practical. I do not have Cousin Manon’s single-mindedness, Cousin Nick. And I’m far too weak-stomached to care for the destitute with my own hands. But I cannot think it right that some should have so much and others be in such terrible straits. And if you could find ways to prevent disease and cure the sick…The rich become ill as well as the poor, I’ve noted.” She put the sealed and dated letter in the box, closing the lid with a small and decisive thump. “Your document will be quite safe here, I promise, in the event you should ever need it.”

“Thank you.” He stood up. There was no excuse to stay longer. “I’ll be going. And once again, I’m very grateful.”

Later, when she’d closed the door behind him, she remembered the story her mother-in-law had told about Samuel insisting that the midwife wash her hands before she climbed the stairs to attend to Carolina when she was birthing. Where would Samuel have gotten such an idea if not from Nick Turner? So the two must have met. Odd that neither man had mentioned such a meeting to her.

The entire
Chongjiu
banquet had been delicious, but the duck was remarkable. Samuel had never tasted the like anywhere in China, much less New York. Ah Chee had beamed at his pleasure even while she kept insisting it was terrible food and unworthy of the occasion. Wily old fox. She’d poison him if she dared, and they both knew it. But she could surely cook and she was devoted to Mei-hua.

His thoughts were interrupted when he turned his key in the lock of three East Fourteenth Street and the door did not open.

The residence with which Wilbur Randolf had dowered his daughter was fitted with the best of everything suitable for a dwelling of its class, including a door with a knocker of solid brass and the latest version of Jeremiah Chubb’s detector lock, which could be opened only by a key made to match the tumblers. Samuel had one such key and Carolina the
other. He tried his key again. This time the door opened immediately, meaning that when he tried it the first time, despite the lateness of the hour, it had not been locked.

The front hall was dark, but Sam saw a faint glow from the drawing room. “Carolina.”

She was sitting in an upright chair beside the door, wearing a nightdress and a satin negligee. A single lit candle was on the table beside her. The drawing room fire had long since gone out, and the November chill was as noticeable here as it had been outside.

“What’s the matter? Are you ill? The door wasn’t locked. I thought—”

“I’ve been sitting right here since ten in the evening, Samuel. I saw no reason to lock the door.”

“But why aren’t you in bed?”

“I chose to wait for you. Since, among other things, it’s your birthday. At least it was.” The clock on the mantel had chimed midnight some time ago.

“How good of you to remember. I didn’t—”

“Of course I remembered, Samuel. I’m your wife. Though I more and more doubt that you think of me as such.”

“What do you mean? Of course I think of you as my wife. Look, I’m sorry about this evening. I should have sent word that I’d be delayed.” He could still smell the faint odor of a roast of beef. She must have organized a celebration meal. A large joint, no doubt, with potatoes and probably boiled cabbage. All of which would require being cut at the table by the diner. He was never quite sure he wouldn’t gag. “It didn’t occur to me, Carolina. What can I do except apologize?”

“Nothing, Samuel. I can’t do anything either. I’ve tried. Repeatedly. But nothing I do or say seems to make you happy. So I also apologize.”

She stood up, lifting the candle as she did so. In its light he could see that her cheeks were streaked with tears. “Carolina, I’m genuinely sorry. I wish I could make you happier.”

“But you do make me happy, Samuel. Clearly the problem is that I do not make you happy.”

“Why should you say such a thing? You’re a dutiful wife and you’ve given me a strong son and—”

“Would you not like more children, Samuel? A daughter perhaps? Another boy to be a companion to Zachary?”

“Yes, of course I would. Why do you ask?”

“Why? Samuel, you have not visited my bed, much less shared it, since I was confined for Zac’s birth. What am I to think, except that I do not please you and you do not wish for me to bear you any more children.”

“That’s absurd!”

“Is it? Unless you come to my bed, how are we to get more children, Samuel? Will I conceive of the Holy Spirit, like Mary in the Bible?”

“Carolina, that’s blasphemous.” His tone was icy. “And entirely unworthy of you. Not to mention unbecoming of a lady.”

She reached past him and pushed shut the drawing room door. Then she blew out the candle.

“Carolina, what are you doing? It’s very late and I’ve a busy day tomorrow. I’m going to bed. We can discuss this further some other—”

“It’s past time for discussion, Samuel.” She walked to the front window and spread wide the velvet curtains. The street was gaslit, and there was the glow of a full moon. “In fact it’s entirely past time for words of any sort.” She turned to him and let the negligee fall from her shoulders, then reached down and pulled the nightdress over her head. “Am I so totally unpleasing to you, Samuel?”

“When you make such a lascivious display of yourself, yes.” Her belly was flat and unmarked. He didn’t know that could be the case after childbirth. One of the things he had most dreaded about allowing Mei-hua to conceive was that her exquisite little body would be marked. Carolina’s breasts had changed, however. They were fuller and the nipples more pronounced. He did not know if she herself gave the baby suck or if she had found a wet nurse. Such things were outside his domain. “Put on your wrapper,” he said. “Go upstairs.”

“No.” She took a step closer and tilted her head to look directly at him. “Not unless you agree to sleep beside me.”

“You are shameless.”

“I am, but it is desperation that has made me so. I want a normal marriage, Samuel, and a husband who—”

He did not know he was going to slap her until he did it. The sound of his hand striking her cheek reached him before he felt his palm tingle from the blow. She did not move. He slapped her again. And a third time. Then, entirely without expectation, he desired her. He had made love to Mei-hua not two hours before. What he wanted to do to Carolina was something entirely different. And, he realized, he was capable of doing it.

He intended to force her back onto the sofa, but they wound up on the floor, missing even the comfort of the Turkey carpet. He heard the sound of her body thumping against the bare wood each time he thrust. No careful withdrawal before he spilled his seed this time. With joss she’d be pregnant again.

It was over in seconds. He rolled off her and got up, adjusted the buttons of his trousers, and went out to the hall, shutting the drawing room door behind him. Closing out the sound of her sobs.

N
OT MUCH COULD
be done in a shipyard in the dead of winter, even one as well placed as Parker’s on Montgomery Street, with its East River ways in spitting distance of the harbor. In late January the river was hard frozen, the tide running dark and deep below nearly two inches of ice. Even on clear days the weak winter sun wasn’t enough to warm a half-laid keel to the point where the shipwrights could work without fear of splintering the wood. Mornings and afternoons Danny Parker kept the most skilled of his craftsmen—the ones he dare not lay off lest his rivals snag them—busy in the sheds, carving trunks into masts and thick planks into rudders, or in the chandlery, where strands of hemp were woven into sheets as thick as a man’s wrist and twice as flexible, and canvas was stretched and stitched and formed into the mainsails and jibs and topgallants and royals that would someday catch the wind and pump speed not just into a ship but into the hearts of all who saw her.

Evenings were for sitting close to the stove and nursing a glass of rum, and spreading the plans of a ship yet to be built on a nearby table. Or maybe one already built that might serve as an inspiration for something better.

“The full set,” Sam Devrey said. “The
Ann McKim
exactly as she was made.”

Danny Parker whistled softly through his teeth. “I heard those plans were under guard down there in Maryland. How did you get them?”

Devrey shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They’re authentic, that’s all you need to know.”

Parker took another swallow of his rum and leaned closer to the drawings. Much of what they showed he already knew. The
Ann McKim
was the talk of every port in the nation. Her bow was less bluff than anything afloat, and she had a low freeboard, a narrow V-shaped hull, and three masts rather than the two of the Baltimore clippers that were her forerunners. Not to mention live oak frames and a hull sheathed in copper and deck fittings of the finest mahogany and the best brass. The result was not just the fastest ship afloat able to make the China run but the most beautiful. Christ, what wouldn’t he give to build a ship like that here at Parker’s? His right arm maybe. “Does Mr. Astor know you’ve got—”

“Mr. Astor need not be troubled by these conversations. I’ve told you that before.”

“Aye, you have, Mr. Devrey. But if you’ll excuse me saying so, the money required to build a ship like this…”

“Never fear, when the proper time comes, I will put the funds in your hands.” Lately he’d been thinking he might be able to raise some money by borrowing against his collection of jade. It was hard to imagine putting his treasures at risk, but if it were necessary…No need to face that now. They needed to solve the design problems first.

“Ship like you’re after would cost a fair bit to build,” Danny said again.

Parker had no real reason not to trust Sam Devrey. He just didn’t. Old man Astor was a right bastard, of that he was certain. And he didn’t blame Devrey for wanting to have a ship or two of his own in the fleet, maybe even set up a rival firm. All the same, he needed to protect himself. “Say we came to an agreement and I did build her, would you be able to guarantee further commissions?” Astor would
drop him quick as he sneezed if he found out that Parker’s had built a rival ship for Sam Devrey. And Devrey Shipping was his largest and most important customer.

“You mistake my meaning, Danny. I’ve no intention of building a sister ship of the
Ann McKim
.”

“But she’s the fastest thing there is on the China run and—”

“Fast, yes. But too damned narrow, and only four hundred ninety-four tons burthen. She can carry only half as much as a full-bodied ship of the same size. It is not enough to be fast, Danny, I need a ship that will be profitable.”

“Then I don’t suppose we’ll be needing these.” The shipwright rolled up the plans as he spoke. “However much you had to pay to get them.”

“Keep them, Danny. Study them. I’ve made a copy and I shall do the same. Let us see what is to be learned from Mr. McKim’s exquisite folly.” The Baltimore trader who commissioned the ship had named her for his wife and put her face on the figurehead. When his ship was built, Sam had already decided, he would call her the
Mei-hua
. He’d tell Carolina he was naming the vessel for a mythical Chinese princess. Though the way things were between them now, she might not ask. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done on his birthday, but he wasn’t sorry either. She was far less demanding and more docile. Probably not pregnant, though. He suspected she’d have told him if she were. Bad joss. “Think on the
Ann McKim
, Danny. Long and narrow gives you speed but not enough lading. How can we have both?”

According to Ah Chee, it was Wood Monkey year. Some of the men said Wood Rooster, others Fire Dog. Lee Leper Face insisted it would be Water Sheep year in a few days. Bo One Ear—who was the closest thing on Cherry Street to a proper astrologer from the Middle Kingdom and who posed as an expert in
feng shui
—was certain only that this new year, celebrated always on the second new moon after the shortest sun day, would arrive in ten days’ time.

Mei-hua was insistent that they celebrate the correct new year.
“No mistake. No mistake,” she said, stamping her tiny foot. “Very important.”

Ah Chee had been attentive. She knew the plum blossom had bled in Chrysanthemum month and Good month and Closed-up-Virgin month. But there had been no evidence of blood in Last month. Now it was First month, and though the bamboo straw had not yet reappeared in her kitchen, so conceivably Mei-hua thought it might still be required in the bedroom, Ah Chee understood the urgency of the question. “Too long away from Middle Kingdom,” she muttered. “Don’t know up or down anymore.”

She would ask those for whom this was their home place.

“For the love of God, woman,” the pigman repeated for the third time, “it’s February, 1835. What else could it be after 1834? Where have you been all this time?”

Ah Chee shook her fist at him, almost weeping with frustration. “What year? What year?”

“1835,” he bellowed at the top of his voice. “Just like I keep telling you. The fourth of February, 1835!”

At home in her kitchen it took all Ah Chee’s good sense to keep from lighting ten incense sticks to make sure the pigman would come down with plague. He provided her with very special excellent ham and pork at a not too terrible price. One joss stick only. Ask that maybe he would be constipated for a week. “No shit,” she murmured as the first tendrils of scented smoke rose toward the benign face of Zao Shen. “Seven days no shit.” On the twenty-third day of Last month she had made special sweet moon cakes in the kitchen god’s honor. Best-tasting moon cakes ever, with sweet bean paste inside and honey on the top. Had to be Zao Shen would listen to her request, he might even get carried away. “No very too much no shit,” she murmured before she knelt in a deep and respectful kowtow. “One week only. Good pigman most of the time.”

Mei-hua had been napping before Ah Chee returned from the market. Indeed, she was taking many naps these days. That was another reason
to hope, though neither woman had yet spoken aloud the possibility. Now the plum blossom appeared at the door of the kitchen. “What are you asking of Zao Shen?”

“Not your business.” If the pigman suspected the real reason he was suffering, his reciprocal curses must not fall on Mei-hua. “You think only good thoughts about every people.”

Mei-hua shrugged. “What did you find out? Is it Water Sheep or Wood Monkey?” She was hoping for Wood Rooster—pride and willingness to fight were fine attributes for a son—so she did not mention that one. In case Zao Shen might choose to spite her.

“Very stupid peoples in this place. Pigman keep shouting numbers at me. 1835. He say 1835. Wouldn’t tell what year.”

Fortunately, the next day a new man arrived on Cherry Street. He was called Bo Fat Cheeks, and he’d been a cook’s helper on a Devrey merchantman until he broke his leg. One of the men from downstairs took his place on the ship’s return journey to Canton, while Fat Cheeks was installed in his place in the Lord Samuel’s lodging house. This Bo had been away from home less than a year, and he was astonished there could be doubt in anyone’s mind. It would soon become Wood Monkey year.

Ah Chee was only somewhat gratified to have been right all along. Wood Monkey was a better girl year. Chattering. Jumps around a lot. Small. But if
tai-tai
had a small son, better than no son at all. Ah Chee made plans for the new year feast. They were immeasurably improved by the fact that Fat Cheeks had brought with him a sack of mung beans and quickly understood that he must give a large share to the household of the supreme lady
tai-tai
upstairs. So Ah Chee would have proper long, white bean sprouts, not the short, stubby brown things that were all she had managed to achieve by sprouting the beans she could buy in this place. She would save most of the mung beans to make sprouts for strong son soup and use only a few for the feast to welcome Wood Monkey year. A girl year wasn’t worth more.

“Carolina, who is that peculiar creature?”

“What creature, Aunt Lucy?” Carolina did not look up from her sewing.

“Over there on the park bench.” Lucy stood by the window, gazing through the lace curtains rather than pushing them aside.

The park—really only a small square of grass and two trees and three benches, grudgingly installed by the speculators because it was easier to sell family houses when such amenities were present—was where Nurse took little Zachary on these April afternoons. Carolina immediately sprang to her feet and rushed to stand beside her aunt. A tiny woman was seated on a bench next to the one where Carolina’s baby-nurse and her son were enjoying the spring sunshine. The woman was so short her feet didn’t reach the ground but stuck straight out in front of her, and she wore the oddest imaginable conical straw bonnet. “Oh her,” Carolina said. “Very peculiar, I agree. But harmless, I’m sure.”

“How can you be sure, my dear? These days the papers are full of the most dreadful goings-on. All these horrid immigrants and their fighting and this talk of laboring people forming associations and going on…What do they call it?”

“On strike. And they’re called unions, not associations,” Carolina said, her gaze still firmly fixed on the park across the road.

“Yes, that’s it. Such times. Perhaps that creature over the way has something to do with these unions. You should notify the constable of the ward, my dear. Or even the High Constable.”

“The High Constable has more important things to be concerned with.”

“Well, yes, I suppose. But the neighborhood has a marshal, I’m sure.”

“It is not necessary to do anything, Aunt Lucy. Look, they’re coming back now.” Nurse had risen from the bench and started for home. She pushed little Zac’s pram right past the strange woman. “Harmless, as I said.” Carolina turned away, unwilling to let her aunt observe her too closely when she added, “I suspect she may have something to do with Samuel.”

“With your husband? However do you mean?”

“The shipping business deals with foreigners every day, Aunt Lucy. All the Devrey ships go to foreign ports. I expect that strange little woman is from one of them. Canton perhaps.”

“But why is she sitting over there watching this house? Carolina, I think you must—”

“I must do nothing, Aunt.” The nurse had reached the front door with her charge, and Carolina rushed to open it herself. “Give Zachary to his Aunt Lucy, Nurse.”

Cooing over the baby provided an adequate distraction. Even someone as flighty as Lucy might otherwise suspect that Carolina had seen the little woman before. God help her if her mother-in-law had been visiting. There was no question in Carolina’s mind that Celinda Devrey would have marched across the road and confronted the creature. And if that were to happen, if Carolina had actually to think about what these visits meant, of what was happening to her and to her marriage and by inference to her son, she had no idea what she would do.

Sometimes she could convince herself that terrible night five months ago had not happened. Particularly since there were no consequences. What had she been thinking? How could she have made such a wanton display of herself? No wonder her husband treated her as he did. Once, on the evening before her ninth birthday, she had sneaked downstairs after her bedtime, intending to peek into the parlor and see if Papa had laid out an array of presents as he did every year. Her papa was indeed in the parlor. Lying on the floor on top of Peg, the fat little housemaid. Bouncing up and down with such force poor Peg’s head was thumping on the carpet.

If she was treated like a housemaid, it could not be Samuel’s fault. It must be hers.

Samuel was her husband, the father of her child. If she blamed him for the coldness between them, where would she be? She was somehow an unnatural wife and quite probably an unfit mother. She must deserve to be treated exactly as Samuel treated her. Otherwise why would he do so?

Sitting on the bench, watching the house of the yellow hair concubine, even seeing her when she opened the door to let in the baby boy and the servant who looked after him, Ah Chee calculated it to be
shen
hour. Once she had heard the lord explain to Mei-hua about time in this place. Hours here, he said, were only half as long as hours in the Middle Kingdom and without names. Ah Chee could never understand about such a ridiculous way of telling time, but she did not have to. She had only to look up at the sky and see that the sun had traveled about half the way from being right overhead to disappearing altogether. So, because this was Peach Blossom month, she knew it was
shen
hour. And in this place, just as in Middle Kingdom,
shen
would be followed by
you.
This time of year it was dark by the end of
you
and the start of
xu.
Long way to go home to Cherry Street. If she did not start now, Ah Chee was not sure she could find her way.