City of Glory

by Beverly Swerling

  Tammy Tompkins squinted up at the face now hovering some six inches above his own. “Not your lookout. I got to…Say, I know you. You’re Bla—Mr. Blakeman. I seen you when we came into harbor.”

  “Say that I am, that still doesn’t tell me why I shouldn’t roll you into the gutter and go on my way.”

  “Don’t you be doin’ that, Mr. Blakeman. No sir. Not when I got valuable information you should have.”

  Tompkins struggled to his feet—Blakeman pointedly offered him no assistance—and staggered a bit until he found a hitching rail he could lean against. “Valuable information,” he repeated. “Worth a bit it is.”

  “Worth not summoning my chucker-out to finish the flogging that seems to have been started aboard my ship? Which you doubtless deserved.”

  “Didn’t do nothin’ deserves no cat. Should o’ been let go ashore, like I asked. Had to take watch instead. Cap’n now, he goes ashore whenever he bloody well pleases.” Tompkins began rhythmically kicking the toe of one boot against the upright of the hitching rail.

  “Is that your information? That Captain O’Toole comes ashore as he chooses? That’s hardly worth your time, much less mine.” Blakeman started to walk past the tar. Tompkins put out a hand to stop him and Blakeman quickly brushed it off. “Keep your filthy hands away from me. And either tell me something important enough to make me stand here and listen, or get out of my sight.”

  “It’s important. I swears it. But you can’t ’spect a bloke to spill his guts for nothin’ but a smile, can ye? Even the likes o’ poor old Tammy Tompkins deserves a bit o’ somethin’ for all the trouble he’s took to come and tell you what he knows.”

  Blakeman reached into his pocket and found a few coppers. Tompkins smiled and extended a horny hand to receive them, then looked up disappointed.

  Another search through his pockets produced a guinea. More than he’d intended to offer, but the only other money he had easily to hand. Blakeman dropped the coin in Tompkins’s outstretched palm.

  “Bless me! That’s fine, sir. Glad enough to tell you about the Chinaman, I am now.”

  Blakeman suppressed a sigh. A wasted guinea.

  “Knowed he was aboard, I did, for some weeks,” Tompkins said. “Would o’ reported it right away, ’cept I saw how he was what you might call a personal guest o’ the cap’n.”

  “Guest? What are you talking about?”

  “A stowaway, Mr. Blakeman. On the Star. A Chinaman down in the after magazine where the gunpowder was, and the rum. That’s how I knowed. ’Twas my job to organize bringing up the rum whenever it was wanted. Took three o’ us to manhandle them kegs up through the cap’n’s cabin. First couple o’ times weren’t nothin’ you might call notable, then, third time I think it was, I smelled something awful. I moved some things about, and there he was, huddled back in a little corner. I’d o’ raised the alarm right then, ’cept I figured the cap’n had to know. Seein’ as the only way to get down to the after magazine is through the cap’n’s quarters.”

  It could be true. Blakeman struggled to assess the possible threat to two props of his plan, the box and the cargo. But he’d already sold the cargo and reaped the profit, and the box and its treasure were unharmed and in his possession. So what could a Chinese stowaway have to do with him? “You have to be mistaken.”

  “No sir, Mr. Blakeman. Saw him with me own eyes, I did, first night we was in harbor. Cap’n brought the stowaway above decks and rowed him ashore his own self. I swear it.”

  Greenwich Street, 5:30 A.M.

  The note was delivered by a small black lad who handed it to Joyful without a word. Come at once. Bring your kit. The boy will show the way. It was signed simply A. T. “Did Dr. Turner give you this?”

  “I don’t be knowing his name. Dr. Turner, he be a cutter?”

  “A surgeon. Yes.”

  “Then prob’ly that be him.”

  Joyful had come to the door in his shirtsleeves when his landlady summoned him. He turned and headed up the stairs, long legs taking them two at a time. “Wait for me. I’ll return straight away.”

  Moments later he was back, wearing his cutaway and carrying the black leather satchel that contained the tools of his trade. Correction, his former trade. “Is Dr. Turner all right?”

  “Don’t be knowin’ that,” the boy said.

  “What do you know?” Joyful put on his stovepipe and led the lad out the door.

  “Only as I be supposed to bring you to Mother Zion.”

  “In Five Points?” The boy nodded. Joyful was not surprised. Andrew had began his doctoring in the almshouse hospital years ago, and he’d been treating the poor ever since. “What’s your name?” Joyful asked.

  “Joshua.”

  “Very well, Joshua. How did you get here?” The sky was flushed dawn pink and the street was silent, and empty of any kind of transport.

  “Runned all the way.”

  “Yes, well you’re younger than I. And fortunately not too heavy for Mary Jane to bear the added burden.”

  Joyful stabled the piebald mare at Foster’s Livery, a few steps from the boardinghouse. She was old but serviceable. It took no time to saddle her. Joyful swung himself up, then reached down for the boy. Moments later they were trotting north up Greenwich Street headed for Five Points.

  Joyful smelled blood as soon as he entered the church’s cellar. He had shrugged his coat off and opened his satchel before his eyes adjusted well enough to the dimness to see Andrew bent over a table in the far corner.

  His cousin was stitching, from the look of it. “Choose a patient and get started,” Andrew called out. “Those you can probably help are over here by the window.”

  Joyful had to pick his way over the bodies of a dozen black men to get to the spot Andrew indicated. Three appeared to be dead. At least two others were soon to be, and there was little he or Andrew could do about it. But just below the grimy, head-high slit of a window that let in a modicum of light from the street, there was a man with his hands pressed to his face, moaning. Joyful dropped to his knees beside him.

  A few feet away Andrew finished sewing up the man he’d been attending and moved to another. “Leave me, Absalom,” Joyful heard him say. “I can do this with Joshua’s help. You go and assist my cousin, Dr. Turner. He has only a single hand, so you must supply your two in place of the one that’s missing.”

  Joyful’s patient had lost an eye, gouged out in a fight from the look of it. The eyeball was hanging by a few strands of sinew and one distended artery that fortunately had not been severed in the attack. He’d have bled to death by now otherwise.

  He turned to get a scalpel from his satchel and found there was no need. The young man Andrew had called Absalom had already selected the best one for the task and was holding it out. “This be the one, don’t it, Dr. Turner, sir?”

  “The very one, Absalom. My cousin has trained you well.”

  Absalom grinned and began preparing sutures.

  Joyful held the scalpel in his teeth while he moved the stuffed glove that supplied for his left hand into position below the hanging eye to act as a support, making sure he didn’t cut through the man’s cheek and add to his troubles. Damn, he didn’t want to cut the glove either. “There are cloths in there on the right.” He jerked his head toward the open satchel. “Fold a few into a pad and give it to me.”

  Absalom was quick as well as clever; it was done in a few seconds. “Well done, Absalom. Now give this fellow one of those dowels to bite on. Yes, that’s it.”

  Joyful swabbed enough blood out of his good eye so the man could see. He was staring at the surgeon in terror.

  “This is going to hurt like bloody Hades,” Joyful said cheerfully. “But with any luck you will neither bleed to death nor be poisoned by your wound. And when I’m done, you’ll still have one good eye. Think on that. Quite a few of that lot over there”—he jerked his head in the direction of the inert bodies by the door—“have not been anywhere near as fortunate. Now bite down as
hard as you can on that bit of wood and we’ll get started.”

  Five minutes later he’d cut away the eyeball, tied off the severed blood vessels, and stitched the eye closed. “Neat enough so you won’t frighten small children after it heals,” Joyful said. The man, however, had passed out and didn’t hear him.

  It took the better part of the morning for Andrew and Joyful to patch up seven of the wounded and pronounce six others dead. Joyful was only formally introduced to the man Andrew called Reverend Fish when he and his cousin were led from the cellar-turned-surgery to a small room off to one side. There was a pitcher of ale and some biscuits waiting for them.

  “My cousin, Dr. Joyful Turner,” Andrew said. “Joyful, this is Reverend Zachary Fish, the minister here at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.”

  “I be pleased to meet you, sir,” Reverend Fish said. “And very grateful for your assistance this day.”

  Joyful shook the minister’s hand. “Glad to have been able to help. But I’m left wondering about the wielders of those very effective knives that made ours necessary.”

  “As am I.” Andrew poured ale for himself and the other two men. “There appears to have been if not a war, at least an all-out battle. With F. X. Gallagher’s men, I presume.”

  Reverend Fish shook his head. “That may come, but this was an engagement of a different sort. Black man against black man,” he said softly. “Warring gangs with allegiances that be important only to them. We do not, it seems, have enough violence visited upon us from outside, so we must be doing evil to ourselves.”

  Silence for a time, broken by Andrew. “The first time I cut into the flesh of a Negro, Reverend Fish, I realized that we all bleed the same color. It should therefore not come as a surprise that we all lay claim to the same idiotic vices.”

  “I think—” Joyful was interrupted by a loud knock on a door that led to the street.

  Fish got up, opened the door a crack, and stood speaking in low tones to someone neither Andrew nor Joyful could see. After a few moments he turned back to the two doctors. “My neighbor, Mr. Patrick Burney, has urgent need of a physician. He lives quite nearby, so he knew you gentlemen were here…”

  Fish left the request unspoken. Andrew started to rise. Joyful extended a restraining hand. “I’ll deal with it. You were here and working well before I arrived.” The older man was ashen with fatigue. “Go home, Cousin Andrew. Get some rest.” He turned to Reverend Fish, “You’ll see that he does?”

  The minister nodded. “Absalom be taking him back by wagon. If you could hurry, Young Dr. Turner. I believe the need be pressing.”

  Outside, the sunlight was blinding and the noise of the street came as a shock. Joyful had arrived in Five Points in the relative hush of dawn; It was past noon now.

  The district was a mass of horses and pushcarts and wagons and people. In addition to the rolling stock used to transport and display commodities, there were countless women carrying trays of goods slung from their necks with leather straps. Each one hawked her wares while elbowing aside neighbors to the right and left.

  Reverend Fish had sent Joshua to guide Joyful to where he was needed. The boy darted into an alley between the church and a rickety wooden building. Joyful had no idea where he was, but his guide apparently did. The boy stopped beside a door painted bright yellow with a large green cross splashed across the top half. Joyful remembered hearing tales of the gangs of Five Points, how they identified their territory with symbols of one sort or another. “Mr. Burney,” Joshua said, “he be in here.”

  “Thank you. Joshua, you must wait. I’ll never—”

  “No fear, Dr. Turner. The lad will wait on ye.” Burney had magically appeared at the door, opening it only a crack and motioning Joyful inside before he slammed it quickly shut, throwing a pair of bolts and sliding a large bar into place. “Upstairs,” he said.

  Joyful followed him up three flights of creaking stairs, the passage so narrow his shoulders brushed the walls either side.

  “She’s in here.” They had reached what seemed to be the top of the house.

  “She?”

  “My daughter Brigid Clare. She’s three.”

  Burney threw the door wide open and stood aside. Joyful knew what to expect. The child would be burning with fever, suffering from one of the many illnesses that beset the young, whether they lived in a slum like this or in a mansion like Astor’s. Damned little he’d be able to do for her; cupping and bleeding and administering tincture of mercury, but they never cured anyone of anything as far as Joyful knew.

  They were in an attic with barely enough headroom for Burney and not enough for Joyful. The child lay on a pile of rags in one corner of a room that had been created by erecting three walls under the eaves. The smell of dirt and damp was overwhelming. There was something else as well, something dead and rotting swiftly in the heat.

  Joyful crouched and went to the child. Every muscle in his body ached after the hours of surgery. “Hello, Brigid Clare.”

  He put a hand on the little girl’s forehead. She was cold, remarkably so, considering the sweltering heat. And clammy. Shock? Joyful lifted one of her eyelids. The whites were bluer than they should be. She was covered with an assortment of rags, and he reached beneath them for the hand closest to him. There was no resistance. He pulled the hand free. The pulse was faint, thready, and he noted the nail beds were blue as well. Definitely shock. And no damage apparent to the parts of her body he could see. Joyful lifted the blankets. Both legs looked normal. He turned to Burney. “How long has she been like this?”

  “All morning. Ever since she got bit.”

  He should have guessed. “A rat?”

  “Yes.” Burney nudged something with the toe of his boot. “This one here. I bashed him stone dead while he was still on her.”

  “Where?” Joyful opened his satchel while he waited to be shown the wound.

  Burney stepped forward and moved the coverings aside. “Her backside. Right here.” He rolled the child on her side; she made no protest. “Did what I could, but it weren’t much. Sucked out some o’ the blood, and put a bandage on the place where the flesh was torn. Then, when I heard there was doctors next door, occurred to me…”

  “Yes. I understand. Let me see.” Joyful leaned over to study the wound. It was ragged, and oozing but not gushing blood. “You say you sucked blood from her when it happened?”

  “Right away. That’s what we did in the old country. Me ma, she always sucked the poison out o’ rat bites.”

  “Mine did the same,” Joyful said. Irish common sense, Roisin would have called it. “You did the right thing.” He was probing the wound as he spoke. The child moaned once. “I’ll clean this up, cut away the ragged edges, put in a few stitches,” he said. “You’ll have to help me. I’ve only one hand.”

  “I know,” Burney said, kneeling beside him. “Not to worry.”

  “Not to worry indeed. You’ve already done the best that can be done for her.”

  Ten minutes and he was done. Brigid Clare had sniffled a bit and gasped once or twice. Now it seemed to Joyful she was warming up, and she looked more alert. “There’s a good chance she’ll recover.” He stood up as well as he could in the low-ceilinged space, feeling the blood race back into his legs, making them tingle. “Most important thing is not to let the injury become septic.” Joyful had shaken a generous amount of powdered yarrow into the wound before he stitched it. Now he reached into his satchel, retrieving an ampule of a thick dark green oil. “It’s a cleansing balm,” he explained. “You should change those bandages morning and night. Put a little of this on each time.” Peppermint and sumac steeped in camphorated oil. Roisin had never given him any formal training in her Woman of Connemara skills—that wasn’t permitted—but some things he’d learned simply by being around her.

  Burney put out a hand to take the balm, then pulled back. “I’ve no money to pay ye.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Take it. For Brigid Clare’s sake.” />
  The Irishman snatched at the vial. “Good of ye. And good to help Reverend Fish.”

  “Do you know him well?” Listening to Andrew and the minister, he’d have thought the Irish and the blacks to be deadly enemies.

  “Well enough.” Then, as if he could read the thoughts of the other man, “Don’t make a lot o’ sense nigras and whites hating each other, not when we’re all poor and jumbled in together here.”

  “No sense at all,” Joyful agreed. He started down the stairs, and Burney came after. They’d reached the last landing before the barred door when Joyful felt the other man’s hand on his shoulder. “I know who you are,” Burney said.

  Joyful wasn’t sure he knew what the man meant. “Yes, well…”

  “I mean I know you were with Perry. One of the heroes of Erie.”

  “There have been many battles since then and many other heroes. Besides, I didn’t fight. Just patched up those who did.”

  “Still,” Burney said. “Are we going to win, do you think, Dr. Turner? Will we stay independent?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Sure, that’s what I think as well. Glad to hear an educated man like yourself agrees. The United States for all time. That’s why I don’t exactly see why they’re formin’ the regiment.”

  “What regiment is that?”

  “The one as is going to be the army of the new country. I reckon ’tis a daft notion. But they’re payin’ three coppers when you sign up, and promisin’ there’ll be ten per day when the army is fully established. Brigid Clare’s ma died when she was born. Me and me little girl, we’re alone here. A man does what he must, Dr. Turner.”

  “Yes, he does.” Burney was no longer looking him straight in the eye. “I understand. Still, it would be useful to know who it is raising this regiment.”

  Burney looked up the stairs, as if he thought someone might have appeared to overhear them.

  “I was christened Joyful Patrick,” Joyful said. “We Irish have to look after each other, especially when something’s downright foolish. Like talk of a new country. A name, Mr. Burney.”