City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling Page A

elaborately worked silver that topped his cane and formed his peg. In the taverns and the slop shops there were endless jokes about Peter Stuyvesant tapping a jig in hell while the devil piped the tune on a silver flute. Lucas had heard them all.
    Apparently so had Stuyvesant. “I’m not popular,” he said softly, his back to the Englishman. “I know that. But I try to serve my God and my employers with all the loyalty and wit at my command. I know no way to do things except my own way. Few women could live happily with such a man. I am blessed with two. My sister and my wife. Are you telling me, barber, that I am to lose one?”
    “I did not say that. Only that I cannot help her. I know of no surgical treatment for what ails the mevrouw Bayard.”
    Stuyvesant turned around. Bathed in the red glow from the fire he looked like a demon summoned from the nether world. “Tell me only this,” he whispered. “Is it scarlatina?”
    Lucas lifted the candle and carried it closer to the bed. Judith Bayard’s mouth hung slack, half open. Lucas put his fingers below her chin and turned her face to his. He bent forward, studying her in the light of the candle flame. Finally he put two fingers in her mouth and pried her jaw wider apart. Her fevered breath was hot on his hand. “Not scarlatina,” he said. “Her tongue is neither red nor pimpled.”
    “Anna says the same. She says strawberry tongue is the only reliable sign of scarlatina.” Stuyvesant sounded more despairing, then relieved. “I can but pray you are both correct.”
    “Calm yourself, Governor. The mevrouw Anna is correct. Your wife does not have scarlatina.” Lucas carried the candle back to the table beside the door, put it down next to his instrument case. “I think perhaps it is a distemper of the throat.”
    “What can you do for it?”
    “Nothing.” Lucas did not meet the governor’s glance. “I can do nothing.”
    “She’s dying.” Stuyvesant’s voice was harsh with pain. “I summoned you because you’re my last hope. My wife is dying and you—”
    “Keep her warm,” Lucas said. “Make sure there is always someone with her, and—” He didn’t have a chance to say they must wait for the breaking of the fever and pray she survived it. Judith Bayard’s labored and hollow breathing turned to a loud wheeze, almost a whistle. A terrible sound. Both men hurried to the bed. “Judith,” Stuyvesant called. He sounded impatient with her, even angry. “Judith!”
    The wheezing was louder and at the same time more shallow as she struggled for breath. Lucas put his hand behind the woman’s shoulders and lifted her forward. “For God’s sake, stop shouting. Here, help me raise her head. More pillows. Hurry.”
    Stuyvesant piled pillows behind his wife’s back. They didn’t seem to help. Her face, a moment ago so hot and dry, poured sweat. The fever was breaking, but that hardly mattered if she could not breathe. More wheezing, faster, louder, and at the same time more gasping and ineffective.
    The governor took a backward step. “Do something,” he whispered. “Do something.”
    Lucas continued to hold the dying woman. “I can do nothing for distemper of the throat,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, I know no surgery for—”
    “Don’t tell me that! I won’t listen. You’re a man of exceptional skill. You can save her, Englishman. For the love of Jesus Christ, do it!”
    “I tell you, there’s nothing …” Lucas stopped.
    Nothing. Except for one thing. It had been in the back of his mind from the moment he’d walked into the sickroom and heard those struggling breaths. In London, years before, at the very beginning of his apprenticeship, the surgeons had spoken of a man named Severino, a surgeon in Naples. During an epidemic of the throat sickness he had saved countless lives by opening the trachea, creating a temporary airway.
    They talked about the successes. God alone knew how many had died under Severino’s knife. And