“You’ll need to be spoonfed yourself if you don’t get your filthy boots off my wall,” Gerty said, knocking Vanderslice’s feet to the ground.
“Aw, Gert.” Vanderslice gave her a piteous look. “I just wanted to see if I could feel a breeze on my legs.”
“Give me a shilling and I’ll blow on them for you.” Gerty pursed her lips, ready to do just that, but Vanderslice didn’t take her up on her offer. “When do you get paid, Claes? I am owed money.”
“You’ll get it,” Vanderslice promised. “You know I’m good for it.”
“Hmph.” Gerty knew no such thing, but she liked the young Dutchman. “I have windows to fix. If I’m not paid by Friday, you will be up on ropes and working off your beer.”
“Thanks, Gert.” Vanderslice resumed his fanning. “You’re a gem.”
“And thanks from me as well, Gerty.” Marcus put a copper token on the table. “I have to get back to the hospital. Did you get extra provisions in? Water and fuel? In case the British do come?”
“Och, you worry too much.” Gerty dismissed his words with a wave. “Now that General Washington has all these handsome Frenchmen to help him, the war will be over before Christmas.”
The ladies of Philadelphia were all in love with the Marquis de Lafayette, a nineteen-year-old beanstalk with red hair and a minimal grasp of English.
“Your marquis brought only a dozen men with him.” Marcus didn’t think that would be enough to turn away the king’s troops based on what he’d seen on the battlefield.
“La.” That was Gerty’s answer to anything annoyingly factual. “The marquis is so tall we could divide him in two and still be left with someone more fit for battle than most of my customers.”
“Just remember what I told you. Keep your patriotic opinions to yourself if the British come. Serve anyone who has proper money. Survive.” Marcus had been trying to drum this message into Gerty since the Trenton barracks had been emptied of their inoculated troops and Dr. Otto and his staff removed to Philadelphia.
“I will, I will. Now give Gerty a kiss and be on your way.” Gerty pursed her rouged lips and waited. Marcus gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek instead.
“Tell Dr. Otto that Gerty is always here for him, if he is lonely,” Gerty continued, unfazed by the lack of enthusiasm in Marcus’s embrace. “We will speak our mother tongue and remember old times.”
Marcus had met Mrs. Otto, a buxom woman who spoke little and commanded the entire family and medical staff with nothing more than frowns and her heavy step on the wards. Dr. Otto would no more seek solace from German Gerty—even if he was sorely in need of it—than impale himself on a bayonet.
“I’ll pass that along.” Marcus clapped his hat on his head, waved his farewell to Vanderslice, and headed out into the summer sunshine.
Marcus’s route to the hospital took him across most of the crowded, chaotic city. In only a few months he had grown to love Philadelphia and its inhabitants, in spite of the filth and the noise. The brick market house was filled with produce from nearby farms and rivers, even in wartime. Every tongue was spoken in the coffeehouses and taverns, and the whole world seemed to pass through her docks.
In spite of the August heat (which seemed destined never to break) and the imminent threat of British invasion (which seemed never to come), Philadelphia thrived. The streets were packed with carriages and horses, their wheels and hooves making a racket on the cobblestones. Every inch of space that wasn’t a residence or a tavern was taken up by someone making and selling something: saddles, shoes, medicines, newspapers. The air rang with the sound of hammers and the whir of lathes.
He walked west into the quieter residential streets where the rich merchants lived. The heavy summer air further muffled the sounds of servants tending to children in walled gardens, the drone of insects sipping at blossoms, and the occasional call of a delivery boy as he dropped off his wares. Marcus had never crossed the threshold of such a grand house, but he liked to imagine what it would look like: black-and-white polished floors, a curved banister reaching toward the second floor, high windows with sparkling glass, white candles in brass sconces to beat back the twilight, a room full of books to read, and a globe for imagining a voyage around the world.
One day, Marcus promised himself. One day I will have such a house. Then he would go back to Hadley and collect his mother and Patience, and bring them to live in it.
Until then, Marcus enjoyed the pleasures associated with simply being near such luxury. He drank in the honeyed scent of the chestnut trees and the tang of coffee that escaped through the windows of elegant drawing rooms. Dr. Otto had bought him a cup of the dark elixir at the City Tavern when they arrived in Philadelphia. Marcus had never tasted anything like it, having drunk only tea and the black sludge that was served in the army. The feeling of elation that accompanied the tiny cup stayed with Marcus for hours. He would forever associate coffee with witty conversation and the exchange of news. Sitting for an hour in the City Tavern with Philadelphia’s merchants and businessmen was, in Marcus’s estimation, the closest he was likely to get to heaven.
As Marcus walked, the fine houses gradually gave way to the tall brick buildings where more ordinary Philadelphians lived and worked. He traveled a few blocks farther, and the outlines of the city’s two hospitals came into view, both topped with cupolas. The Pennsylvania Hospital was attached to the city’s college and was where the university-trained physicians performed dissections and gave medical lectures. Dr. Otto, his family, and his staff were in charge of the other hospital: Philadelphia’s Bettering House for the indigent, criminal, and insane.
When Marcus stepped into the Bettering House, the entrance was filled with boxes of every size, several large wooden apothecary chests, and more doctors bearing the surname of Otto than any army should have to endure. All four men in the Otto family—Bodo; his eldest son, Frederick; Bodo’s second son and namesake, called “Dr. Junior”; and his youngest son, John, who was usually called “boy”—were busily checking their inventories. Nurses and orderlies rushed around fulfilling the doctors’ requests. Mrs. Otto alone remained serene, winding strips of bandage into tight rolls despite a hospital cat’s determination to play with them.
“There you are,” Dr. Otto said, peering over his spectacles at Marcus. “Where have you been, Mr. Doc?”
“He’s been in a tavern reading newspapers,” Dr. Frederick said. “His fingers are black, and the smell of beer is overwhelming. You might have at least rinsed out your mouth, Doc.”
Marcus bristled, his lips pressed firmly closed. He said not a word but picked up a box of stoppered bottles and took it over to Dr. Otto.
“Here is the camphor! I asked you for it three times, boy. How did you not see it? It was at your elbow this whole time,” Dr. Otto exclaimed.
John, who had recently married and was often thinking about more pleasant matters than apothecary chests and jalap, heard his name and looked around in confusion.
Dr. Otto muttered in German, clearly irritated. Marcus’s knowledge of the language was growing. He caught the words for “idiot,” “lewd,” “wife,” and “hopeless.” John heard, too, and turned pink.
“Where will you go first, Bodo?” Mrs. Otto packed her rolled bandage away in a basket and picked up another length of cloth. “To the hospital in Bethlehem to wait for the wounded?”
“I leave such decisions to the Big Man, Mrs. Otto,” the doctor replied.
“Surely we will be going straight to the battlefield,” Junior said. “They say the whole British army is at the mouth of the Elk River, and marching north.”
“They say many things, most of which turn out to be false,” Frederick observed.