by BJ Hoff
It was the first of its kind since last summer, during the time when Cavan Sheridan had taken a bullet in Jack’s place—a bullet which had very nearly cost the boy his life. Before then there had been other threats—random ones mostly and seemingly unconnected—which Jack had discarded as the meaningless ravings of a lunatic or some hothead with an ax to grind. Even now he still wasn’t convinced that any of the earlier letters had been related to the attempt on his life.
But this latest one was different. Written in a hand that would suggest a certain measure of literacy, it gave the sense of being carefully composed, its threat ever so much more chilling because of the lack of choleric raving that had been common to its predecessors. There had been such a cold precision about the whole thing, such a complete lack of emotion throughout, that Jack had found himself more troubled by it than by any of the others.
Supposedly the motive for the anonymous writer’s umbrage had to do with the Vanguard’s current series of articles dealing with immigration—a series under Cavan Sheridan’s byline, focusing on the individual stories of immigrants whose passage and resettlement were being sponsored by the newspaper. Certainly there was no denying the undercurrent of racism that ran through the writer’s invective. There was also an obvious attempt to apply a tone of outrage against Jack’s encouragement of immigration, “an odious practice that would eventually pollute the city and the entire nation with undesirables.”
Yet despite the pervading bluster of bigotry throughout, Jack sensed there might be something else at work, something more personal behind the words. More disturbing still, however, was the fact that the malice was directed not only toward Jack himself but against the entire newspaper, along with Cavan Sheridan and anyone else who happened to be associated with the immigration project.
Quite possibly, it was the kind of grievance that could even extend to Samantha. She was a part of the resettlement program, after all.
The thought that he might have unknowingly placed Sheridan and even Samantha in jeopardy had kept Jack awake much of the night. No doubt it was also responsible for the knot of dread and hot anger building inside him now as he tramped the streets of the city in the rain.
He pulled the collar of his topcoat tighter against the cold sting of the rain, a wave of chilling isolation settling over him as he picked up his pace even more. The feeling of being cut off from everyone else was nothing new to him. He often felt himself to be a stranger in an entire city of strangers. Entire settlements existed side by side, so close that their cooking odors and the stench of their refuse often intermingled. And yet no one really knew anyone else. Each community lived within its own environment, its own boundaries. People came and went and sometimes intermarried but more often than not mated within the colony. Neighborhoods sprang up and died, but those who moved on often relocated only to build a new community in which the old traditions and customs—and insularity—were reestablished.
And so it went. And all the while no one really knew more than a few others outside his own small circle of existence.
Jack’s sense of New York was not so much that of an enormous, sprawling city but of many hidden cities, a number of which were still unknown to him and perhaps always would be. Although as a newspaperman he was probably less confined to place, less limited by boundaries, than other men, he often felt as if there were vast communities of which he knew virtually nothing.
He had spent a quarter of a century in this city, had come to love it with a strange ferocity, loved it for its weaknesses as well as its strengths. New York was a city of great power and little patience. A place teeming with grandeur and riddled with squalor. A domain that glittered with opulence and reeked with decadence. A city of sinners and saints, barons and beggars, mystics and monsters.
And always it was a city of secrets.
In a little over two decades, Jack had managed to carve out his own small monarchy in this place, had established a dominion of sorts over the publishing business while gaining for himself, if not respect, at least the stature—and notoriety—inherent with that kind of success. He had friends, and he had enemies—and he liked to think he knew one from the other.
But did he? He was no longer quite so sure. Was it possible that somewhere among these secretive, violent streets an enemy lurked—perhaps one with a familiar face but with the soul of a stranger—who harbored a hatred intense enough to destroy not only him but everything and everyone he cared about?
Over the years he had fought and defeated many an adversary.
But they had been rivals he recognized, opponents he knew well enough to anticipate. This was different. A faceless foe would be harder to trounce.
That being the case then, what he must do was learn the identity of his nemesis.
At the same time, he had to warn Samantha and Cavan Sheridan.
He felt a sudden, almost feverish urgency to reach them. He knew where to find them, of course. At this hour on a Sunday morning, there was only one place they were likely to be.
As soon as he realized the direction in which he was headed, Jack was struck by a grim sense of irony. Both Samantha and Sheridan had been anything but subtle in their attempts to lure him to Sunday morning services at Rufus’s church. Sheridan in particular was positively blatant in his efforts to see Jack “saved,” whereas Samantha was more likely to drop a light-handed invitation every now and then.
Jack’s response—routine by now—to their tactics was an offhand allusion to the effect that, short of an act of Providence, they should not pitch their hopes too high on his behalf.
Now, as he approached the Mercer Street Tabernacle, his insides still humming with a sense of urgency to reach the two of them, Jack couldn’t stop a thought of that “act of Providence” to which he’d so casually referred.
It occurred to him to simply wait outside until the service was dismissed, lest they get the wrong idea.
He had not quite reached the entrance doors when the sky opened in earnest and sent the rain pouring down in a fury. Jack stopped and looked up, scowling at the surprising force of the downpour.
After another moment and a wry mutter of resignation, he hurried up the front steps and made for the door.
13
A SHELTER FROM THE STORM
Whence came you, pallid wanderer, so destitute and lorn,
With step so weak and faltering, and face so wan and worn?
ANONYMOUS: A LAMENT FROM THE NATION
Terese felt herself surfacing through dark waters, floating back to awareness. She was cold, so cold her entire body was shaking in a frenzy. In spite of the trembling, her limbs felt leaden and useless, and a weight seemed to be pressing down on her chest, her breath coming in labored gasps.
Had the rain stopped? No…she was inside, in a place she had never seen before…lying on a cot or a bed…and she was ill…hurting…
She turned her head, and the mere effort sent a fierce pain shooting up the back of her skull. She blinked, trying to focus—and looked directly into the eyes of a lean-faced man who was stooped down on one leg beside her, watching her closely.
Terese shrunk back.
“Don’t be afraid,” the man said in a quiet voice. “You’re quite safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”
He brushed a shock of sandy-colored hair away from his eyes and tucked the blanket more closely about Terese’s shoulders.
“What…” Terese’s voice sounded muddy to her ears, thick and unnatural. Her head felt the same way. She couldn’t think of the words she needed to form a simple question.
The stranger smiled at her. “It seems you fainted,” he said in the same quiet voice.
Fainted? Had she ever fainted before?
She couldn’t remember. She remembered only a big man with a shining dome of a head and a gruff voice. And the rain…the cold, relentless rain…
“You were out for quite some time,” said the man with the light hair. “How do you feel?”
Terese’s mind was sti
ll scrambled. She found it impossible to think. Trying to ignore the pain in her head, she turned to look around her surroundings. The room was large, like a big meetinghouse of some sort, and furnished with only single cots such as her own—perhaps twenty or more—and some small tables. Most of the cots were empty, but here and there a woman or child lay sleeping or staring at the ceiling.
“Where am I?”
“You’re at the Grace Mission house. Mr. Wall brought you and the little girl here in a wagon, after you fainted. My name is David Leslie. I’m a doctor.”
Terese stared at him.
She had never met a doctor before. She studied him, trying to take his measure. He did seem kindly natured, and he had a strong, open face that somehow invited trust. But she no longer trusted any man, doctor or no.
She glanced toward the foot of the cot and saw Shona standing there. The girl’s features were drawn taut. She looked terribly frightened.
“Shona…”
“Ah, so that’s her name. She wouldn’t tell us. Is she your sister?”
Terese shook her head. “I’ve…been looking after her, is all.”
After a slight hesitation, the doctor went on. “Well, she’s all right, I think. She has something of a cold, but nothing serious. Someone will keep an eye on her until you’re up and about.”
He looked to be a fairly young man, Terese realized, and his dark blue eyes, though intense, appeared kind. But when he reached to put a hand to her forehead, she drew back.
He made a slight motion with his hand, shaking his head. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just lie still a moment, won’t you?”
His hand on her brow was warm. Somehow it seemed to leave a chill when he took it away. Terese watched as he reached inside a small black case and withdrew a bottle, then poured something into a spoon.
“I want you to take this,” he said, putting the spoon to her lips. “It won’t taste very good, I’m afraid, but it will help you.”
He put a hand behind Terese’s head, helping her to sit up. A wave of sick weakness slammed into her with the effort, and she barely managed to swallow the vile-tasting liquid.
The doctor quickly eased her back onto the cot.
For a moment the floor seemed to tilt beneath her, and Terese thought she would pass out again. But she fought the nausea bubbling in her throat, knotting her fists and pulling in a deep breath, then another.
“What is this place?” she finally asked him.
He smiled again as he closed the black case. “Think of it as a shelter from the storm,” he said. “A place to stay until you have somewhere else to go. You’ll find it clean and warm—well, as warm as one could hope for from such a drafty old house.”
He had an odd way of speaking: hesitantly, as if he might be somewhat unsure of himself, and his words came clipped and short, with a slight roll and a lift of his voice at the end. Even when he wasn’t asking a question, it sounded as if he were.
He stood, and Terese saw that he was a fairly tall man, but slender and deep eyed. He had a way of leaning slightly forward that gave his shoulders a bit of a stoop.
She was so cold! She thought she would surely freeze to death. And it hurt so much to breathe! “What’s…wrong with me?” she choked out.
He stood looking down at her. “You’re very ill. I’m afraid you have pneumonia.”
Pneumonia? Pneumonia was a death disease! It had taken the lives of her mother and her sisters.
“Am I going to die, then?” she asked him, fear churning in her stomach.
He frowned. “Not if I can help it,” he said firmly. “Tell me, how far along are you in your pregnancy?”
Terese felt her face flame at this strange man’s bluntness about her condition. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him when she replied. “Six months—perhaps close on seven.” She caught a breath. “Is—will the babe be sick too?”
“Not necessarily. And I’d caution you not to worry about that right now. Let’s concentrate on getting you well, so you can take care of your baby.” He studied her for a moment. “You’re Irish, isn’t that right?”
Terese nodded.
“And am I right in assuming that you haven’t been here—in New York—very long?”
How long had it been? A week? Two? A month? Terese couldn’t remember. Her head felt heavy and cluttered, like broken pieces of pottery about to fall free. He was asking her something else, and her mind fumbled to grasp what he was saying. But so consumed was she by the pain in her chest and the nausea driving through her in waves that she couldn’t think of anything but how utterly wretched she was.
She felt herself turning hot as a furnace. Dizziness whirled around her, and she could scarcely make out the doctor’s words as he went on. He seemed to be apologizing for his questions, for tiring her. “I’ll let you rest for now,” he said.
He went on to add something more, but his words were swept away by the sudden storm of hot, angry pain and sickness that came roaring in on her. His voice, then his face faded as Terese felt the churning black water close over her.
David Leslie watched in dismay as the girl again spiraled down into a state of semiconsciousness. Even as he fumbled for the smelling salts in his case, he knew they would do no good. She was too deeply under, too tightly trapped in the delirium-clouded stupor of a raging fever.
He also knew the chances of losing her were great. Both lungs were afflicted. Her temperature was dangerously high, and she was obviously malnourished as well. From the looks of her and the little girl, neither had enjoyed an adequate meal for days, perhaps longer.
Her condition was all too familiar to him. Among the hundreds of immigrants he had seen at the men’s and women’s mission houses over the past few months, pneumonia was a common ailment, though certainly not the only one. Bronchitis, measles, scarlet fever, and the deadly typhus seemed to ride the backs of these foreign immigrants—especially the indigent Irish—like leeches.
He had saved a number of those he’d cared for—by God’s grace and the benefit of his Edinburgh medical training—but he had lost almost as many. Pneumonia was especially treacherous for those poor travelers who came across on the “coffin ships.” Trapped in the dank, cold bowels of steerage, with an utter lack of fresh air, proper food, and the means of keeping themselves dry and warm, they more often than not arrived dangerously ill—if they arrived at all. The Irish seemed particularly victimized by the unconscionable ship owners, who often packed in three or four times as many persons as should have been allowed, then fed them nothing more than slop and foul water for weeks on end.
David pulled up a stool by the girl’s bed and again took her pulse, which was entirely too fast. Listening to her chest, he found almost no healthy sounds, but instead the whistling and the dreaded rattle that meant the pneumonia was advancing to the final, almost always mortal, stages.
He watched her for a moment. Her breathing was rapid and labored, her skin flushed an angry crimson.
“What’s her name?” he said, turning to the young girl at the foot of the bed.
The child stared at him. She had said nothing since they arrived at the mission. David was beginning to wonder if she could speak at all when she finally murmured a single word.
“T’reece.”
“Terese, is it?”
The girl nodded.
“What about her last name?”
The child looked at him, then shook her head.
The poor thing was clearly frightened half out of her wits. No telling what she had been through by now. David smiled at her, hoping to put her at ease. “And your name is Shona, isn’t that right?”
She looked at him with those sunken, woefully solemn eyes, then again gave a hesitant nod of her head.
“Well, I expect you know your last name, Shona, now don’t you?” David said lightly.
“Madden,” she said softly after a moment.
“Ah. Well, Shona Madden, I’m going to go downstairs and fetch one of the ladies to help
me. I’d like you to just come round and sit close by until I come back. All right?”
The child was obedient, he’d say that for her. Like a little martinet, she walked around the cot and sat down on the stool, her eyes fixed on the girl named Terese.
David took a last look at his patient as well. Despite the fact that she was in the throes of a devastating illness, wasted by fever and malnutrition—and swollen with child—she was difficult not to look at. At her worst—for he couldn’t imagine her being in a much worse condition—she was striking; at her best she must be absolutely magnificent. Even cropped and tangled, that russet hair was lovely. And when she’d first opened those shadowed, smoke-blue eyes, David had experienced a catch in his throat that caught him completely unawares. She was too thin by far, of course, disheveled, and frighteningly ill. But somehow none of that took away from her uncommon loveliness.
As he went downstairs, he found himself wondering again about the lack of a husband. She was wearing a ring—an unusual object cast in heavy gold. But it didn’t appear to be a wedding band. Had her man perished during the voyage? Even the strongest weren’t exempt from the ravages of an Atlantic crossing.
There had been no time to learn anything about her, really. And he suspected the child would be of no help, since apparently she didn’t even know the other’s last name.
Always, he wondered about their stories, these immigrants who risked so much to come to America. Sometimes they told him of whatever it was that had compelled them to break all ties with their past and begin new lives in a strange land.
Sometimes they failed to survive long enough to tell him anything.
His own parents had made this same life-changing decision; perhaps that fact accounted for his ongoing curiosity about other immigrants. In the case of Annice and Duncan Leslie, faith had been the motivating factor. David’s father had heard a “clear call of God” to America when David and his brother, William, were still boys. Duncan Leslie’s first congregation had been a dying church in Boston, which, by the time Duncan received a “new call” a few years later, had virtually doubled in membership.