The Third Mrs. Galway

by Deirdre Sinnott

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MCCOOKE KNEELED BY Helen’s unconscious form. He wrapped one arm around her trunk, the other went to the back of her knees.

  Augustin called to him, “She is with child. Save them, I beg you.”

  “I’ll determine if she’s in that condition,” said the doctor, lifting her from the floor and thinking that his moment had come. He’d be her savior. She’d be grateful and his stay could turn out to be very pleasant—and longer. He approached the library door. “Females exaggerate. Only a medical exam can say for certain.”

  “Be careful with her, Doctor.”

  As McCooke pushed into the hallway, he heard Augustin declare, “God, I know I am a sinner, but I beg you to please protect the baby and my wife.”

  He can pray, thought McCooke, but I’ll be the one doing the saving.

  Helen’s head was thrown back over the doctor’s arm, her milky throat, long and luxurious, exposed. He felt her warmth through her clothing. Shaking himself to clear his head, he pushed his mind to the problem at hand. She might be having a miscarriage or just an incident of suppression of the menses. The doctor had his doubts that a man over forty could produce seed strong enough to impregnate such a young wife. Not that it was impossible, but old sperm might instead produce a horror.

  As he reached the top of the stairs, he caught a glimpse of something floating near the ceiling. He staggered. Miss Duphorne’s ghost loomed over him. A waterfall of blood washed down her body, staining the front of her nightdress. His temples started to pound and his legs weakened. Fearing that he might drop Mrs. Galway, he rushed into his own room and put her on the bed. He grabbed his head. The apparition couldn’t be real. Glancing into the hallway, he calmed. She was gone, but he turned to the bed and saw Helen and his poor dead Little Darling in the exact same position. They appeared to merge. The violent pounding in his temples returned.

  Suddenly and with great clarity, he remembered that it was his attempted abortion that had started Miss Duphorne’s bleeding. When he’d determined that she carried a child, she became terrified of her parents’ reaction to her ruination. Of course, the baby can never be born, he had said, convincing her that he would carry off the procedure without any harm. Their tryst would remain secret. McCooke believed that if Miss Duphorne’s father knew that he had spoiled “Little Jenny,” the last thing he would ever see was a lead ball emerging out of the sparks and fire of a flintlock.

  She could only have been a few months pregnant. If they waited, the quickening would come, and the punishment, if caught, would be hanging rather than some other less permanent sentence.

  At his direction, she had taken extremely hot baths while drinking purgatives and laxatives, but still the proof of their sin remained. They met in the barn so that she might leap from the loft, hoping to stir the womb to spit out the fetus. Nothing happened but a twisted ankle. He knew that some men employed violence trying to kill an unborn unwanted baby, but he didn’t have the heart to injure such a female. Finally, he decided to try a direct injection of olive oil and near-to-scalding water into the womb. It might have worked, but the syringe meant to deliver the concoction must have accidentally perforated her womb.

  He closed his eyes and opened them again. Mrs. Galway lay prone on the bed. There had to be a different outcome for her, or all was lost. He noticed that his hands shook like an old man’s. The only way to calm himself and stop the trembling that had infected his entire body was to take another drink. Clearly, the few sips earlier this morning would not be enough at a time like this. Dropping to his knees, he fumbled under the bed for a bottle of brandy he had secreted there.

  After several steadying gulps, it occurred to him that they might be disturbed by the cook, who had an absolute mania against him. He decided to employ the lock on his door, lest he be stopped from rendering treatment. For all he knew, the Negro might call in some kind of Native medicine man to perform magic over the poor lady. One never knew with the colored races. No, he must be the one to bring her back to life. He turned the key and heard the lock engage with a solid click.

  Now that he thought about it—she had fought him so hard that, for her own good, she needed to be restrained. If in the middle of determining the state of her womb she began to thrash, she might tear herself apart. It only made sense to bind her hands. He removed a pillow cover and carefully knotted it around her wrists before tying the other end to the bedpost. Everything depended on this exam going perfectly.

  On her way up Third Street, Maggie saw Alvan Stewart and Pryce Anwell crossing Bleecker and heading for the porch of the Galway house. She slowed her pace. It might be dangerous for her to be seen with them. Let the doctor open the door, she thought.

  She watched them knock. They went unanswered. Damn that doctor, he might be nosing around in her kitchen, trying to get into her bedroom. The two visitors looked through the sidelight windows that framed the entranceway and appeared to be disturbed. They pounded on the door and pulled on the handle with no apparent luck. Maggie quickened her pace.

  She came to the porch, breathing hard. “Why you trying to break—”

  “Mr. Galway is in distress,” said Stewart, stopping her.

  Augustin lay on the floor in the foyer. Dropping the basket, she fumbled trying to extract a substantial key ring from her dress pocket. As soon as she got the door unlocked, she rushed to him. Stewart and Pryce followed her. All three tried to lift Galway.

  He grasped Maggie’s arm. “No. Leave me. It’s Helen. Upstairs. The doctor is examining her. The baby.”

  “Alone with her?” Maggie rose with some difficulty. “I’ll see to that doctor,” she said, rushing to the staircase. “Help him.” She climbed quickly to the second floor.

  “Assist her if you can,” said Stewart to Pryce. “I’ll take care of Mr. Galway.”

  Pryce charged up the stairs two at a time.

  Maggie entered Helen’s chambers and found them empty. She ran back out and saw the doctor’s door closed tight. Pryce came up the stairs just as she discovered that the door was locked. He moved her aside and threw himself against the solid wood. She shouldered him out of the way and again used her keys. When she opened the door, Helen lay on the bed and the doctor was drying his bloody hands on a white towel.

  “If you’ve come to save her from the white man’s medicine, you are too late.”

  “Too late?” shouted Pryce. “Is she dead?”

  “Of course not,” said the doctor, indignant.

  “Outta my way,” said Maggie.

  The doctor stepped between her and the bed. Maggie used her forearm to deliver a powerful chop against McCooke’s throat, sending him coughing and stumbling away.

  “She is my patient,” the doctor croaked. “Do not meddle with her.”

  “Get him outta here,” ordered Maggie.

  Pryce stood between McCooke and the bed. The doctor tried to go around him, but the younger man shoved him back “Step away,” he said, speaking in a slow deliberate voice. When the doctor didn’t move he pushed him until he was in the hallway. “Don’t make me knock you down the stairs.”

  Inside, Maggie quickly pulled a ladder-back chair from its place and wedged it under the door handle. Helen was unconscious. The cook smoothed down the girl’s dress and gently shook her shoulders. Her eyes blinked open and she smiled faintly.

  “I was calling for you,” she said in a faraway voice. Her brow knotted. “Is he still here?”

  “You’re safe now,” said Maggie.

  Tears fell down Helen’s face. “He was … touching me.”

  Maggie’s jaw clenched. “He’s locked out. I seen to it.”

  Helen tried to sit up. Her hands pulled against the binding at her wrists.

  “Stop now,” Maggie soothed. “You’re pulling them knots tighter. Cutting off the blood.” She inspected the bindings.

  “In my sitting room,” said Helen in the childlike voice. “Scissors.”

  By the time Maggie finished, sh
e had helped Helen to her room, washed and dressed her, and put the girl down to sleep. She carried a bundle of sheets and garments to the kitchen to soak in cold salt water. Now that she had the ammunition, it was time to realize her most fervent wish.

  At the library door, she heard Augustin’s anguished cry and went in. Stewart and Pryce were stationed at either side of the bed, holding him down. The doctor stood at the end, Augustin’s injured leg in his hands. He was pressing around the flesh with his thumbs and forefingers. Augustin whimpered in pain.

  “What you doing to him?” demanded Maggie.

  “Quiet,” said McCooke.

  Stewart replied, “It seems that his leg has sustained further damage.”

  Just then the doctor grabbed Augustin’s foot and pulled sharply. Galway screamed in agony.

  “Stop!” Maggie shouted, hurrying to the bed.

  Once again, McCooke ran his fingers over the leg, probing. Finally, he stood upright. “Sir, I’ve reset the bone. You have thrown your recovery back weeks. I would not be surprised if you have a permanent limp.” He grabbed two pieces of wood and the rolled-up bandage and began splinting the break.

  Augustin’s cries filled the room.

  “Take your dirty hands off a him, Doctor,” said Maggie. She slapped his arm away.

  “I will not be disrespected by her.” He threw the roll of bandages to the floor.

  “Maggie?” said Augustin with much difficulty. “How is Helen?”

  “I gotta talk to Mr. Augustin—alone.” Maggie picked up his hand and brought it to the side of her face. Immediately his breathing eased.

  “Perhaps we should be leaving,” said Stewart, looking at the two. He cleared his throat. “But someone must attend to that leg.” He directed his gaze at the doctor. “He seems to have an infection.”

  “And what,” asked the doctor, “would you know about that?”

  “You keep your mouth shut,” ordered Maggie. She addressed Stewart and Pryce: “It would be a particular favor to me if you’d wait in the hall.” She glared at the doctor. “Get out.”

  The doctor tugged down his vest. “Sir, I will not be ordered about by a nigger.” His eye traveled to Augustin’s hand entwined with Maggie’s. “Any nigger.”

  Augustin, his voice phlegmy and full of pain, said, “I will hear her, gentlemen. Alone.”

  Twenty minutes later, Stewart and Pryce had their hands filled with the doctor’s clothing, personal belongings, and his empty valise. They carried them to the street and placed everything on top of the medical bag that sat, as did the doctor, on the curbside.

  Maggie listened to Augustin’s uneven breathing. The opium she administered after the doctor had reset his leg put him in a stupor. Splints and wrappings had to be put on, but she let him rest before beginning the painful process. If he stirred and disturbed the break again, things would go worse for the man and she didn’t want that.

  She had been his most steady companion in life. They had lived with each other for his entire existence—with only a five-year lapse when he took rooms in New York City so that he could learn the business of finance. She had stood at his side when his parents were buried and was there when his first wife followed them into the hereafter. And now the hope that he had planted within Miss Helen was gone as well. How life whittled you down, she thought, lopping off piece after piece, until you were nothing but bone.

  Her own expectations had been similarly shaved. She was just fourteen years old on July 4, 1799, the day New York’s Gradual Emancipation Act went into effect. She had such faith back then. That summer morning, when she awakened and began helping her momma with the chores, they both talked about what life would be like after they were freed. Maggie knew that even though she had to continue to serve until 1827, any child she had would be born free, not a slave who could be sold. That expectation seemed stupid now, looking back, understanding how so many things had been beyond her control.

  The long wait proved too much for her mother. She died of fever in 1804—twenty-three years short of freedom. Young Augustin had demanded that his father give her a proper burial with a preacher. He even took Maggie’s hand at the graveside.

  Her throat tightened. The tears might gather if she kept on thinking of all that had passed. She set her jaw and decided that it was time to work—the only salve she allowed herself, besides the occasional bowl of tobacco.

  Pulling back the blanket and sheet, she saw that his leg was blotchy and pink with messy bandages covering a nasty gash where the bone had come through. She laid the back of her hand on his calf and it felt warm. Could it be that Mr. Stewart was right about an infection? Some cabbage leaves might draw out any poisons. Some honey around the broken skin would help. She would see to it, make sure he got better, now that the doctor could no longer cause trouble.

  Augustin stirred. Immediately his face curdled in pain.

  “I know you’re hurting,” said Maggie, “but I gotta splint up that leg.”

  “Brandy,” said Augustin.

  Maggie squeezed his hand. “You think you at a party?”

  A faint smile crossed his lips. “Even a priest drinks in church. Just to get him through.”

  “You gonna act like a priest now?”

  “Oh, never that bad.”

  They both laughed. Maggie got the brandy and propped him up. After several good-sized swallows, he nodded. She took three thick books off the shelves and put them next to his leg, one above the break near his knee, and two by his ankle.

  “I’m gonna need your help. I can pick up the leg, but you gotta slide them books under so that I can wrap it up.”

  “One more brandy,” he said, handing her the glass.

  As she refilled it, she said, “You about ready for religious orders.”

  He screwed up his mouth, looking grim, then downed the alcohol. He gasped and panted as she lifted his knee and foot, carefully maintaining the angle so she didn’t undo the doctor’s work. His hands quaked as he slipped each book into place, falling back against the pillows, still breathing hard when it was finished. She gave him another measure of brandy, which he had to hold in both shaking hands as she went about lining up the splints and carefully binding them to his leg.

  “You gonna be laid up for a while,” she said, minding his pain out of the corner of her eye. He grunted. “Maybe that society a yours gonna fall apart without you.”

  “The Colonization Society?”

  “Maybe if you ain’t there, they’s gonna just give up,” she said, wrapping his leg.

  “Nonsense,” he said. And after a pause, “Why bring them up?” He sipped his brandy, wincing as she tried to adjust him.

  “Oh, I don’t care. But I ain’t picking up and going to no Africa.”

  “You certainly are not,” he said.

  “But that’s what your society wants, ain’t it? All a us go? Take usselves outta their sight?”

  “That’s what some of them want.”

  “What do you want?”

  He watched her as she kept focused on her task. “I want your people to have a chance to run your own lives. I don’t think you will ever get that here. There’s too much prejudice.”

  “Don’t I run my own life?”

  “Are you looking to go off and live with Horace?” he said with a snide tone.

  Maggie met his eye. “And if I was?”

  “Are you?”

  “I ain’t,” she said, moving back to the bandages.

  “Then why are you … don’t I treat you well?”

  “I just want to know how much freedom I got.”

  “You made your choice—to stay with me.”

  “I sure did,” Maggie said, standing up straight. She leaned in, took Augustin’s glass, and went to the bar. “But I’m still the servant and you’re still the master.”

  “Damn it. Tell me what you’re on about,” he said, twisting to get a look at her. “If you want to move in with him, I can’t stop you.”

  “I don’t think
no priest swears like that,” she said, and pointed up. “Careful, He’ll hear you.” She picked up the opium bottle, added a few drops to the brandy, and handed him the mixture. “You and me, we both lived all our lives right here. Both our mommas died in this house.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “What goes on in my room is my business, right?”

  “So, this is about Horace.”

  “No. It’s about if my room is mine. Because if it’s mine, then everything in it’s mine.”

  “Legally, the furniture …” he began, then looked at her standing over him. “Well, all right, I agree, it’s all yours.”

  “Good. Then if them lousy stinking slavers ever come back, you to tell them to keep outta my room.”

  Galway stared at her, but didn’t object.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THOUGHTS SWIRLED IN Stewart’s mind as he and Pryce advanced along Bleecker Street. Galway was an opponent—even if the man refrained from joining the chorus howling for his blood. Still, seeing him so broken had shaken the lawyer. On a human level, it was a lesson about the impermanence of life. You could be working hard, doing what you thought was God’s will, only to be struck down before the task was half-finished. And what do I leave behind, he thought, a pile of legal briefs? An attempted convention that might crumble in my hands? If a startled horse runs me down, who would carry on the work?

  “That doctor is a scoundrel,” said Pryce.

  Stewart’s eyes cut to his young assistant. “One scoundrel hardly changes the equation.”

  “Oh,” said Pryce, seeming chastened.

  A few yellow elm leaves tumbled across the street. “But,” said Stewart, “one good man working for a righteous cause, why, that’s worth a hundred crooked politicians, good-hearted fools, or lying doctors.” He went quiet for a moment. “The wind blows freely, until it comes against a brick wall. Right now, the Colonization Society blows hot with federal money to send free Negroes to Africa. Almost all the most important citizens of Utica, like Mr. Galway, call themselves members of the society. Everything seems to be moving toward colonization. But if all the free men and women are transported out of America, slavery won’t die, it will entrench and expand into the territories. Do you see what I mean?”