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  He listened out of politeness at first, but it was a fascinating story, and he soon found himself intrigued. Elizabeth Bayley she’d been. Born in 1774. Then Mrs. William Seton. When she was twenty-nine, while they were traveling in Italy, her husband died and left her with five small children. A year later, when she and her children returned to New York, Elizabeth Seton had converted to the Catholic faith. “Both the Bayleys and the Setons completely ostracized her, but she was not deterred,” Mother Louise said. “And she burned to do something for the poor.”

  “Before her conversion Mrs. Seton founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows,” Manon interrupted. “I’ve always thought it was her going over to Rome that caused New York society to withdraw its support from such charities.”

  “Protestants look at these things differently,” Mother Louise said, smiling. “I should know. I was one for thirty years.”

  The week before, at Bellevue, Nick had seen a minister go into the stone building that housed the stepping wheel. Sixteen men—prisoners mostly, though a few of the able-bodied poor were pressed into service when they were needed to make up the numbers—walking a flight of turning steps that drove a mill to grind grain; eight minutes on, eight minutes off, by the bell, sixteen hours out of every twenty-four. A preacher went daily to read to the men from the Bible. Of all the stories told about Bellevue by rich and poor, none were more fearsome than tales of the Stepping House.

  “Did you become a Catholic, Mother Louise, so you could join these Sisters of Charity?”

  “Quite the other way round, Dr. Turner. I joined Mother Seton and her Sisters for the same reason I became a Catholic. For the love of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now would you like to see something of our work here?”

  However unusual these black-clad women might be, the orphans were the biggest surprise of the visit. They looked well fed and clean; some were even apple-cheeked and rosy. Everything in the place was clean, come to that. No dark corners or droppings of vermin here. Indeed, no sloth or idleness was permitted. The children marched to and from their various tasks—including, he was told, lessons in reading and writing and numbers—in perfect drill formation. And everything he was seeing was repeated next door in the home for half-orphans also established by the Catholic Diocese and staffed by the Sisters of Charity. Because among the poor in New York, Mother Louise said, losing one parent was every bit as devastating as losing both.

  “Your Mother Louise seems a formidable lady,” Nick told Manon when they left. “I shouldn’t like to be in her bad books.”

  “No fear of that, not with you promising to come if she’d need of a doctor.”

  “Well, when she said there was no physician they could regularly call on…. You know, I don’t understand that. Surely there must be some Catholic doctor who—”

  “There are some, yes. But the Sisters are not entirely uncontroversial even among those who share their religion. New York’s Catholic doctors belong to the class that does not believe in separating itself from Protestants in every particular. And it has been at loggerheads with both the previous Bishop Connolly and the current Bishop Dubois, both of whom do.”

  “Want to separate the Catholics, you mean?”

  “From what they see as Protestant heresy, yes. The bishops are not great defenders of American notions of democracy and republicanism. Which, whatever their other faults may be, are worthy ideas much trumpeted by the Evangelicals.”

  “You know a great deal of politics, my dear Cousin Manon. Not to mention this religion to which you say you do not belong.”

  “Politics? I’m a woman, dear Cousin Nicholas. What has politics to do with me?” Long ago, when Joyful was alive, he had been deeply involved in the city’s political fortunes. But Joyful was dead, and she had been left with only one extraordinary vestige of that involvement.

  “Manon?” Nick touched her arm. “Penny for your thoughts? You seem to have gone quite far away.”

  “My thoughts are not worth a penny,” Manon said briskly. A king’s ransom more like, but she had no intention of saying that. “And if you want to know about religion, you’ve only to read The Truth Teller for the Catholic point of view, or The Protestant for that side. You can decide for yourself which tells more lies. As for these nuns, after the plague of cholera in ’32 the whole city thought them heroines because they were the only ones unafraid to nurse the sick of whatever religion. But in ordinary times the Sisters serve mostly the Irish rabble who live in Five Points, if living it can be called. I’ve not met any doctors down there.”

  “You go to Five Points often, I hear. To nurse that Irish rabble.”

  “When I can,” Manon said with a dismissive shrug. “Though to be fair, Five Points offers misery in a variety of nationalities. And there are the Negroes, of course.”

  Nick fully expected Manon to be an abolitionist, at least in her heart of hearts. He had leanings that way himself. Nonetheless, he knew it was a dangerous thing to be in New York. Slavery might have been outlawed in this state five years past, but the plantation owners mostly shipped their tobacco and cotton to Europe from New York City, just like the rest of the country. Putting them all out of business would be no favor for this town. “In Five Points,” Nick said, “are the blacks mostly runaway slaves?”

  “Not entirely. Free Negroes as well. These days most of them can’t get work either.”

  “You’re doing a good thing,” Nick said, touching her arm.

  She put her hand over his, grateful for the gesture. Sometimes, when she was bone-tired, she could not help but wonder. After an exhausting six or seven hours in those hulking tenements crammed with so much wretchedness, were the poor any better off? And did she feel any less the pain of guilt? Young men her twins would be, if she had not put Joyful first and thus lost all three. She had tried to speak about it. Once to the rector of the French Church—who didn’t understand one word, and told her she must learn to accept God’s will. Another time to Mother Louise. It doesn’t matter, my dear. No matter how grievous an error of judgement, Christ makes all things new. All you need do is say you’re sorry, that you will try to do better, and that you love. Love meets every need. For a nun, perhaps. For Catholics.

  “You’re well matched,” Nick said. “You and Mother Louise.”

  “No,” Manon replied. “No, we are not well matched at all.”

  When she was a child on the sampans of Di Short-Neck, Mei-hua had heard the women speak of the clouds and the rain, that moment when a man exploded with greatest sexual pleasure. She had never heard any talk about using a silk cloth to catch the rain part.

  That’s what the Lord Samuel did these days. He spread a silk cloth on her belly, and when he reached that moment of ecstasy, he withdrew from her and deposited his seed on the silk cloth. Later it was up to her to dispose of it. “And always supreme lady tai-tai must be on bottom and he on top. Why? Why?” she asked Ah Chee. “In past days not the same. Before you took my son from my belly the Lord Samuel liked me to sometimes—”

  “This old woman did not take son. This old woman tried—”

  “Yes. Yes. I know.” Secretly she blamed the this-place-red-hair yi who had come to take care of her after they left the place of the devil woman. He knew very important special medicine Taste Bad did not know. That’s what her lord said. So how come this-place yi didn’t put the son back in her belly? Never mind. She had other things to think about now. “Why Lord Samuel does this thing?”

  “Better than you take make-no-baby powder. More sure.”

  Mei-hua’s eyes grew round with wonder. “Yes. Yes. No think. No think. Stupid supreme lady tai-tai. Stupid.” She smacked her forehead with her hand, as if she would waken the cleverness that had gone to sleep.

  Ah Chee could not comment. Her lips were now closed tight around the hollow stick of bamboo she was using to blow air between the flesh and the skin of the fat duck she’d brought home from the market. She had carefully sewn up the openings at the neck and the tail
end of the bird, so after a few moments of determined puffing, the duck looked like a round ball. Ah Chee pinched closed the little hole she’d made to insert the bamboo stick, then she opened her mouth and let the stick fall to the floor while she sewed up the hole before too much of the air could escape. After it was cooked, the crispy, dark mahogany skin would be served separately from the succulent flesh. Very special delicious way to cook duck. Only for special very much important feasts.

  Ah Chee had learned to prepare the dish by watching a man who said he had made it for the emperor in the Forbidden City. The man had found his way to the sampans of the Pearl River when his need to swallow clouds made him an unreliable chef and the emperor decreed that the ends of all his fingers be cut off and he be turned out of the royal court. Never mind. Even with bad-to-look-at ugly short fingers, the one-time chef made the most happy in your mouth food anyone on the sampans had ever tasted.

  Ah Chee’s duck would be served to the Lord Samuel in three days time, at Chongjiu, the ninth day of the ninth month, Double Nine Feast. Very necessary to eat good food and drink chrysanthemum tea to drive away evil. Also, Lord Samuel said this double nine was his birthday. The Lord Samuel was very much too young to celebrate his birthday. Birthdays were for old people. But the plum blossom said the lord told her this double nine was the eleventh day of November in this place, and that was his birthday. Better to make a celebration here than let the yellow hair concubine get ahead of the plum blossom supreme lady tai-tai.

  Mei-hua was not thinking about the coming celebrations. She had picked up the hollow stick of bamboo and was staring at it with great concentration.

  “What? What?” Ah Chee demanded. “I need that thing. It came with us all the way from the Middle Kingdom so this old woman could—”

  Mei-hua ignored her and put the piece of bamboo in her mouth, first blowing air out, then drawing it in. After a moment she leaned over a bowl in which rice was soaking and sucked up some of the water, then she covered the hole with her finger and turned to another bowl and took her finger away and watched while the water dripped out. “So. So,” she whispered. “Like that.”

  Ah Chee’s eyes narrowed and she too drew in a long breath. She understood, and she was both afraid and very too much damn happy. The plum blossom’s scheme might work. Who could say about such things? Maybe if they burned much incense to god of happiness Fu Xing and if Ah Chee made the girl eat the strong-son soup every day…Never mind. “Bad idea,” she said, looking at Zao Shen, the kitchen god, so he would be sure to hear and understand that Ah Chee had not given her approval to the scheme. In case it went wrong. “Very bad. Very bad. If belly gets round like this,” she gestured to the inflated duck, “how does tai-tai explain to the Lord Samuel?”

  Mei-hua considered for some moments. “I will tell my lord that gods arrange such things. I will say gods are stronger than silk cloths. And that if he does not allow his son to be born, all gods, especially Chuan Yin, will be very angry and his business will not prosper.”

  Ah Chee shrugged, showing her disdain for this appeal to the power of the goddess of fertility and compassion.

  Mei-hua, who knew exactly what the old woman was thinking, stamped her tiny silk-wrapped foot. “My Lord very clever businessman. How you think he got so rich if not? How? You think it is clever business to make gods angry?”

  “The Lord Samuel does not believe in the gods of the Middle Kingdom.”

  “Then why is there a beautiful statue of Chuan Yin above the big bed. Why? Why?”

  “Chuan Yin watches bed because supreme lady tai-tai put her there.”

  True, the Lord Samuel burned much incense on the day of his wedding to the plum blossom, but only because it was the custom and everyone was watching. Ever since, not a single grain. Ah Chee would bet twenty strings of copper cash there were no altars in the house of the yellow haired concubine. “You do this thing, Lord Samuel take you back to devil woman with devil needles. Make baby come out of your belly a second time.” Her new secret treasure purse was filling again, but it had much less in it than before. “No can.” With a sideways glance at Zao Shen.

  “Yes can,” Mei-hua insisted. “Yes can. I will think of a way.”

  Ah Chee did not argue. Instead she busied herself tying a string around the neck of the blown-up duck so she could hang it from a hook in the ceiling. Over the next two days she would fan the duck whenever she passed. When she was ready to cook it, the fat would be gone and the skin as dry as paper. Very important duck hang before cooking, short fingers cook man had explained.

  When the duck was hung exactly as Ah Chee wished, she turned around to speak to Mei-hua, but the plum blossom was no longer in the kitchen. Neither was the hollow bamboo rod. Ah Chee thought of going after her to continue the argument, then decided against it. Instead she lit a joss stick and carried it to the picture of the kitchen god. He had heard everything they said. If it turned out badly, come the New Year his wife would carry tales of their stupidity to the Jade Emperor in heaven. Not good.

  Incense maybe not enough. Ah Chee found a small pale green china dish decorated with a picture of a swallow in flight, put three drops of honey on it, and carried it to the wooden table that served as Zao Shen’s altar. Sticky things to close up his ears and his mouth.

  Chapter Eight

  “I HAVE HEARD about this place, Dr. Turner. I thought it time I came to see for myself.”

  Tobias Grant was obviously winded by his climb up the four flights of stairs. Nick gave him a few moments to catch his breath and look around. No point in hiding anything and he hadn’t tried. It was inevitable that sooner or later the director would confront him concerning the activities of his small laboratory. Nick had, in a manner of speaking, been looking forward to this visit.

  “Have a seat over there by the window, Dr. Grant. And forgive me, but this won’t wait. I like to make them decent for burial. A fresh cadaver…rigor sets in quickly and makes it harder to get the job done. Bloody cold in here besides. Doesn’t help.” There was a small stove in one corner of the room, but it wasn’t adequate to fend off the invasive November chill.

  He was sewing up the belly of a woman who less than an hour earlier had died in terrible agony, holding her stomach and retching vicious brown bile. “Liver possibly,” he said, continuing with his task, “but I think it more likely the gall bladder.” He’d extracted both organs, the gall bladder still connected to the liver by the biliary tract. The bloody mass lay in a chipped china basin on a small table beside the chair he’d offered Grant. “Looks a bit like the jellied pudding they serve in the dining hall here,” Nick said cheerfully. “Not quite set. Give the liver a poke if you like, but don’t touch the gall bladder, please. Liable to burst. I’ve a mind to examine the contents in situ.”

  Grant looked up, his complexion a sickly green. Nick pretended not to notice. “See all those stiff, thickened spots on the liver? They’re the wrong color. A sure sign of cirrhosis. The whole thing should be soft and squishy like the healthy dark red bits. Comes from that cheap gin the Five Points rabble call mother’s ruin. Drink’s the Irish curse, of course, but while it’s the obvious culprit, I don’t think it’s her liver that killed poor Maggie O’Houlihan.”

  Grant at last found his voice. “I did not come up here for an exposition of medicine, Dr. Turner. Though of course I admire your inquiring mind.” He nodded towards the shelf of books and pamphlets in one corner of the room. “What”—the director looked once more at the oozing mess in the basin—“In God’s name, sir, what do you intend to do with it?”

  “Not cook it up for the patients’ supper, if that’s what you’re thinking.” The stitching of Maggie O’Houlihan’s belly was complete. Nick clipped the length of catgut and put down the needle. Not an elegant job, but that was hardly the point. He covered the body with a sheet, turned to the basin of water he had someone put here every day, and retrieved the bar of soap he kept on the shelf next to it. “I am going to examine that liver and gall blad
der, Dr. Grant.” His ablutions finished, he reached for the linen towel.

  “Dr. Turner, it appears to me that Mrs. O’Houlihan’s liver has already had a great deal of your attention.”

  “Yes, but I don’t yet know everything it has to tell me. I shall cut a series of thin sections of the organ—from the parts that look normal and those that do not—and compare them. Using that miraculous invention over there.”

  He nodded towards the long counter that held most of his kit, including the bulky and complex piece of equipment that took up most of the space. “It’s a compound microscope. The latest thing. Lenses in the eyepiece as well as the part underneath that’s called the objective.”

  The microscope had cost ninety of the three hundred dollars that Sam Devrey donated. Much of the remainder had gone on scalpels and needles and catgut and probes. Plus a few more books of course. The ones in here were only part of his collection, his private rooms were crammed with them. He’d put a little of the money by to pay an assistant, one of the students most likely, but he’d been holding off on making the offer until after this meeting, which he’d known must occur. Manon had advised Nick to confront Grant immediately, but he’d decided against it. I shall let the director come to me, Cousin Manon. My turf for the encounter, not his. So far so good.

  In spite of himself Grant was obviously fascinated.

  “What do you expect to see, Dr. Turner?”

  “For one thing, the differences in the tissues. For another, why that gall bladder is pale and yellow when it should be bright green. My guess is that the gall bladder stopped processing the bile as it should and tipped it all into the poor creature’s stomach. Ate her gut away. Just look at the biliary tract. Even with the naked eye you can see—”

  The director of Bellevue stood up and extended a forestalling hand. “Enough. Tell me instead, Dr. Turner, if, when you have the answers to all your questions, the unfortunate Mrs. O’Houlihan will be restored to life.”