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The next day, Thursday, June 14, promised to be an exceptionally fine one. The clouds that had covered the sky for most of the night had finally dispersed, driven away by a steady wind blowing from the south. All that remained was a vast expanse of pale blue, crossed by a few birds already singing cheerfully.
Although the sun had not yet risen, everything suggested it would be an ideal day for strolling along the banks of the Hudson.
Unfortunately, François could not afford such a luxury. He had risen even earlier than the day before in order to go to the docks and try to arrive first. His effort proved futile. It seemed as though the crowd of job seekers had spread the word, or perhaps even spent the night there, to be certain they would not arrive after the battle was already lost.
As the day before, a selection took place. As the day before, only a few were chosen after a large number of enslaved men had been hired. And once again, François left empty-handed. No clerk's positions were offered that day.
He went straight to the shipyard. There too, he was advised to return the following day. Some repeated this routine every morning for months without seeing their situation improve.
François felt no disappointment. He had expected as much even before arriving.
Curiously, he placed far greater hope in the apothecary Liam had mentioned. He had already imagined himself assisting the man, while discreetly gathering information for the King of France.
But he also had to build two networks of agents solid enough not to collapse only weeks or months after his departure. They also had to be effective enough to meet the expectations of Marshal de Contades and the old Governor Vaudreuil.
His time on the docks that morning had not been wasted. It had allowed him to carefully observe the faces of those who had been turned away. What he needed was a man desperate enough to accept his gold, whatever the cost in return, yet still possessed of a minimum of common sense.
The one he had selected, and who seemed ideal to begin with, was the forty-year-old from the previous day, the man who had watched several of his employers shut their doors for good. In his eyes, François had recognized the despair he was looking for.
From his manner, François judged that the man was running out of options. To him, he was like a fruit not quite ripe, one that could soon be picked and savored. He intended to observe him a little longer, but his intuition told him he would make a good agent.
On his way back, François noticed two armed sloops preparing to sail. Their unusually low waterline betrayed a heavy cargo. The ships were waiting for the tide to head out to sea, bound for England.
Ahead of him, the city was slowly waking. Some, however, had been awake long before him. From a large red-brick building came the warm scent of fresh bread, teasing his nostrils and instantly making his mouth water, though it was only bread.
In front of the bakery, a middle-aged woman armed with a broom and wearing her flour-dusted apron almost proudly was sweeping her doorstep in preparation for opening.
The John Simmons Tavern was also coming to life. Inside, he found Liam seated at a small round table near a window overlooking the street, finishing his breakfast. In his hand, he held a modest mug of lukewarm beer.
He wore a plain coat, brown tending toward gray, a little worn at the edges but clean. Despite his limited means, Liam paid great attention to his appearance.
In this line of work—as in many others, really—appearance mattered greatly when it came to inspiring trust. Competition was fierce, and he could not afford to lose customers over something so easily avoided.
His hands were immaculate, his nails especially so; his face freshly shaved; his hair neatly combed; and his shirt so well whitened one might have thought it new.
"James, there you are!" he exclaimed upon seeing him enter, wiping the corner of his mouth with a small handkerchief that was more gray than white. "Hmm, I take it things didn't go well."
"No, indeed," François sighed as he sat down across from his roommate and new friend. "Too many hands, not enough work. I was told to come back tomorrow."
"Hmm… Well, that's still better than a flat 'no,' though I'm afraid it's little more than a polite formula. Very well. In that case, we'll go see the apothecary I told you about yesterday," he said, draining his mug before turning to the half-finished bowl of oat porridge. "Have you eaten already?"
"Yes. Quickly, before going to the docks. But tell me… isn't it a bit early to visit your apothecary?"
"Probably," Liam admitted, pausing with his wooden spoon in midair. "He should open in… an hour and a half, I'd say. If you like, you can come with me in the meantime. I have to visit a patient."
François raised an eyebrow.
"Are you sure? Won't my presence be a bother?"
"Why would it be? There's no reason. And besides, you'll see how I work. It would please me, and it might give you a clearer idea of what an apothecary expects from a clerk."
François nodded, and a few moments later they left the tavern together.
The house they were heading to lay not far from Little Boston. Along the way, the two men talked, and François learned more about Liam.
"Even though I left Trinity College in Dublin without a degree, and what I learned there about medicine was mostly theoretical, I wouldn't say those years were wasted. I learned a great deal all the same."
"How long did you say you stayed there? Five years?"
"Four. Good years, in some respects… though there were, well, a great many painful moments."
His gaze shifted subtly, but his voice remained steady, as though he were speaking of a chapter long since closed.
"My presence there was never truly welcome. I wasn't a student in the proper sense, and they never failed to remind me of it. Tsk, as if I could forget. I kept to myself, stayed out of the way. I spent most of my time reading, whenever I was allowed access to the books. The library alone was worth all the inconveniences. And I did make a few friends—though I'm no longer in contact with most of them. That's a bit sad, but that's life."
"Are they doctors too? The ones you're still in touch with."
"One of them, yes. But his situation is hardly better than mine. The other changed paths. He became a clerk in Cork for a large company. I hear from him rarely, one letter every six months at most. The last was to announce his marriage. Ha! It's rather amusing. When I knew him, he swore he would never marry, that he would keep his freedom. He was very fond of women. I couldn't even begin to say how many he courted back then."
François smiled softly.
"Marriage isn't such an unpleasant prison. It all depends, I suppose, on the jailer."
Liam burst out laughing. Small tears formed at the corners of his eyes.
"No doubt! I hope she has enough backbone to rein in his excesses. Hey! She must, if she managed to get him down on one knee!"
He laughed even harder, drawing a few curious glances from passersby. When he finally calmed down, he turned slightly toward François.
"And you, James—are you married?"
François gave nothing away.
"No. Why do you ask?"
"Well, you spoke of marriage with a certain confidence."
A fraction of a second was enough to shape an acceptable reply.
"Not really. I was mostly thinking of my parents. They were happy together. I only truly realized it after my mother's death. My father suffered greatly. He lived a few more years, but… inside, he had already joined her."
Liam fell silent, suddenly regretting having stirred such a painful memory. François, for his part, played his role with perfect ease.
He had leaned on a thought he had already had before: what his own life would become if Onatah were to disappear. The idea had seemed unbearable. He would be devastated, broken, and would never be able to love again. But for his children, he would go on living.
Yet if his entire family were to perish, he doubted he would have the strength to go on for long. Perhaps he would end up slipping a rope around his neck.
The thought briefly darkened his gaze. Liam noticed it and hastened to change the subject.
"I'm not married either," he resumed, attempting a lighter tone, "but one has to admit that taking care of a woman is expensive, isn't it? Ah, if only I had money… When I first walked through the gates of Trinity College, fully aware that I would never be admitted like the others, I was nonetheless convinced that hard work would eventually earn me recognition. How mistaken I was…"
François gave a faint grimace. Liam's disenchantment felt strangely familiar. Times changed, but not that unspoken promise made to studious young men: work hard, and the world will reward you. A promise rarely kept.
In his other life, he had not experienced it personally, but he knew that many young graduates ended up in precarious jobs, wholly unrelated to their studies.
"I truly thought it would be easier here, in the New World. I should have asked more questions back then."
"Is there much discrimination against Catholics in New York?" François asked.
Liam shrugged lightly.
"Less than in Ireland, that's true, but it's far from what I'd hoped. The worst of it, I think, is the competition. It's truly fierce."
He let out a deep sigh and continued speaking, unafraid of being judged. François listened closely, occasionally punctuating his confidences with a question or a remark.
On their first evening together, he had asked him bluntly whether he had anything against Catholics or the Irish. François had replied that he could not care less—that he might just as well have been Jewish, Muslim, worshipped the spirits of his ancestors, or the elements of nature. Since then, Liam had spoken to him with almost complete trust.
"Ah, thank you for listening, James," he said at last. "It did me good to talk. Hmm, sorry if I burdened you with my troubles."
But François waved his concerns away with a gesture.
"You're not bothering me at all. Keeping everything to yourself, having no one to talk to—that's exhausting."
And that, he thought, I know all too well, recalling the long years spent carrying his secret like a burden. Thank heaven I have Onatah and the matriarch. I was deeply unhappy before.
He placed a warm hand on Liam's shoulder.
"If you ever need to talk, I'll be here. You truly seem to need it."
"That's kind of you. If only more people were like you, the world would be a better place. Oh, we're here. This is the house."
François smiled, keeping his thoughts to himself, then lifted his eyes toward the house they were approaching. It was utterly ordinary, almost identical to the others on the street: narrow, worn, two stories high, and pressed tightly between its neighbors as if to shield itself from the wind.
Liam knocked on the door, two sharp raps followed by a third, lighter one.
After a few moments, a woman opened the door. She appeared to be in her late thirties, but fatigue had hollowed her features and made her look older. When she recognized Liam, her expression immediately softened, though worry still lingered.
"God be praised. Come in, Mr. Kelly."
She cast a quick, hesitant glance at François.
"A friend," Liam explained without lingering, removing his tricorne, as plain as the rest of his attire. "He's assisting me today."
That seemed sufficient. She stepped aside to let them in.
But before crossing the threshold, Liam took two handkerchiefs from his satchel and soaked them generously with vinegar. He handed one to François, who looked at it with a mixture of skepticism and disgust, yet placed it over his nose and mouth.
"Don't touch anything unnecessarily," he murmured through the cloth. "And breathe slowly."
Inside, the air smelled of wood, smoke, staleness, wax… and something else, undefined. With the vinegar-soaked handkerchief, François perceived nothing but a harsh, stinging odor that burned his nostrils.
The main room was steeped in gloom, as though light itself might be the source of the evil. Liam immediately asked the woman to open the shutters wider and let some air in.
"Has there been any change in your husband's condition?"
"Yes," she managed to answer through a wrenching sob. "He's still coughing just as much, but last night… last night, he coughed up blood."
Liam slowly nodded. François, standing slightly back, had no difficulty grasping the seriousness of the sign. It was a bad omen.
They moved to a small bedroom at the rear of the house, where the air was stale. Liam once again asked that the shutters be opened. Daylight revealed a man lying on the bed, his shirt wide open. His sweat-soaked chest rose unevenly, violently shaken by each coughing fit.
Though he was drenched in sweat, he murmured that he was cold. His hands, clenched around the blanket like those of a castaway clinging to a plank, trembled incessantly. His face was pale and hollow, and his slightly bluish lips were cracked like parched earth.
Discreetly, Liam motioned for his friend to remain back. He stepped up to the bed and placed two fingers on the man's wrist.
"Good morning, Mr. O'Rourke. This is Mr. Kelly. Can you hear me?"
The man laboriously opened his eyes and nodded feverishly. That simple gesture seemed to cost him a considerable effort.
Liam observed his breathing, listened to the faint wheezing that accompanied it, studied the tone of his skin. He then laid his hand flat against the chest without touching the skin directly, then against the back. He gently tapped certain areas, ear cocked, as though searching for a flaw in the workings of a machine.
François watched the scene from a distance, keeping his thoughts to himself. He was no physician and knew very little, yet his inner diagnosis was far from optimistic.
"When did you tell me the coughing began?" Liam asked after a long moment, without taking his eyes off the patient.
"At the end of winter," the woman replied in a trembling voice, her hands clasped against her chest as if in prayer. "We thought it would pass with time, with the return of fine weather… but his condition only keeps worsening."
Liam nodded, grimacing behind his handkerchief.
"And the fever?"
"It comes and goes. He sweats a great deal at night, but says he feels cold all the time, even when I add more blankets."
The physician straightened and stepped away from the bed.
"He seems to have lost weight since my last visit. Is he eating?"
"Barely. He has almost no appetite… I try to force him, but almost nothing goes down."
Liam nodded again, without visible surprise.
"Mr. O'Rourke," he said, placing a reassuring hand on the patient, "do you feel pain in your chest?"
A faint nod and a muffled groan answered him.
"Here?"
"Mmnh…"
The physician stepped back two paces and turned to the woman.
"Last time, I bled him. Did it have any effect?"
She shook her head.
"I see. We shall try again, so that the poison may be drawn out of his lungs. I will also give him remedies to ease his pain and reduce the fever. But most important is rest. And he must eat. Do your best to help him regain weight. Avoid raw milk. And renew the air in the room several times a day."
François longed to intervene at the mention of bloodletting, but judged that the best course of action, for the moment, was to remain silent. After so many years spent in this century, he understood the logic at work and had a vague grasp of humoral theory. But unlike Liam—and nearly all Western physicians—he knew that this practice was useless, even dangerous.
Blood was precious. It should not be taken from a patient already weakened. This was not how one healed the sick; on the contrary, it was an excellent way to weaken them further and possibly send them more quickly to the grave.
To challenge the practice in front of the patient would be to attack Liam's image directly, his authority.
In any case, even if I said it's nonsense, superstition disguised as science, no one would believe me. All the great scholars insist it is reliable. I think that even if I had been a physician for twenty years, I wouldn't have been listened to any more.
Liam then took an odd glass vial from his satchel, containing a thick amber liquid, and filled a full spoon.
"This should soothe his throat. He coughs too much, that's why your husband coughed up blood."
Then he produced a large jar in which several leeches writhed. He applied five or six to the man's chest and watched the vile little creatures latch on and slowly gorge themselves. When he judged it sufficient, he detached them one by one and returned them to their container.
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
"I will not lie to you, madam. His condition is serious. But as long as he breathes like this, as long as he can swallow and respond, there is hope."
Neither reassuring, nor brutal.
Before leaving the room, Liam asked one final question:
"Do any other members of the household show the same symptoms? The children?"
"No. Thank God!"
"Good. Keep them at a distance as much as possible. And watch them closely. It could be hereditary."
At these dreadful words, the woman burst into tears, no longer able to contain her emotions.
The physician gathered his few belongings and left the room. The woman accompanied them to the door, thanking Liam in a low voice, as though speaking too loudly might break something fragile, and pressed a small coin into his hand.
Once outside, the door closed behind them, the two men were able to remove their handkerchief.
"This isn't good, is it?" François asked in a dark voice.
"No. Indeed. His chances are very slim. I am not certain I can cure him. To tell the truth, it is possible that no one can, save God."
François hesitated.
"So there is no remedy at all?"
"None that is truly effective, I fear. This is what we call phthisis. Sometimes tuberculosis. An ancient disease, already described in classical treatises. Great physicians have studied it for centuries, but in the end, all we can offer are recommendations, ways to ease suffering, sometimes to slow its course."
"And to prevent people from falling ill? There is no vaccine?"
Liam stopped and looked at him, puzzled.
"A what?"
"A vaccine. A sort of protection. An injection of the disease, but in a much weaker form, so that the body learns to defend itself. Something like that."
The young physician stared at François as though he had just suggested cutting off a healthy man's head to spare him a possible future headache. He shook his head, more firmly this time.
"There is nothing to be done. We are not even certain of the origin of this affliction. Many believe the answer lies in the patient's blood—that it is transmitted at birth. In that case, there is truly nothing to be done. Others, like some who teach at Trinity College, believe it to be the result of a disordered life: excessive intellectual labor, a sedentary existence, too many late nights, the abuse of certain foods… But I have never been convinced by that theory."
François reflected for a moment, searching for words that might convey his meager modern knowledge without sounding foolish.
"And… could it not simply be a disease transmitted through the air? He coughs, after all—so he expels germs. Perhaps he was infected through contact with another person?"
"You use words I do not know, rather strange ones… but I think I understand what you mean. You speak of invisible particles. I have heard of this theory, but it is far from unanimous. Where did you hear of it?"
"Nowhere. It was… just an idea, that's all."
Liam smiled openly and resumed walking.
"You truly are astonishing, James. Tell me, have you ever considered studying medicine?"