The Leper Colony

By Philip K Edwards

The story of a medical doctor in the period of the Civil War, a saga of the journey from his first posting in pre-war Louisiana to his death in the 1870s, the novel revolves around a fanciful form of leprosy called Cain's Leprosy and the search for its causes and development of a treatment regimen. The under-nurtured Andrew, a quick study in things scientific, is a slow study in things human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip K Edwards
• Release date: Oct 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452474342

Philip K Edwards

The author was born in Riverdale, Maryland in 1943, graduated with B.S. in engineering from the University of Maryland in 1967. In addition to writing history and fiction he holds patents in video technology and is active in local government. He and his wife Suzanne now reside on their farm in rural Pennsylvania.

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The Leper Colony

A NOVEL

by

Philip K Edwards

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

In Your Shoes Productions on Smashwords

The Leper Colony

Copyright © 2010 by Philip K Edwards

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The Leper Colony

A Civil War surgeon’s quest for the cure to a rare form of leprosy, and what he learns from his patients along the way.

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my wife, Suzanne, who, like Andrew, looks for and promotes the good in

people and events.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

NOTICE

PREFACE

PROLOGUE: JAMES WILMOTT

BOOK ONE: THE HOSPITAL FOR THE CONDEMNED

CHAPTER 1. THE DOCTOR

CHAPTER 2. THE HOSPITAL

CHAPTER 3. THE SURGERY

CHAPTER 4. THE EXAMINATION

BOOK TWO: THE SPIRITS OF WAR

CHAPTER 1. THE MUSTER

CHAPTER 2. THE JOURNEY

CHAPTER 3. THE UNDOING

CHAPTER 4. THE BAD YEAR

CHAPTER 5. THE SISTERS

BOOK THREE: THE RESTLESSNESS

CHAPTER 1. SIBLEY’S HOSPITAL

CHAPTER 2. THE PLAN

CHAPTER 3. THE GOING HOME

CHAPTER 4. THE REUNION

CHAPTER 5. THE AFFAIR

CHAPTER 6. THE SEPARATION

BOOK FOUR: A PLACE TO REST

CHAPTER 1. THE WEST

CHAPTER 2. THE FIRST DISCOVERY

CHAPTER 3. THE LEGAL BREAKTHROUGH

CHAPTER 4. THE CRISIS

CHAPTER 5. THE RESOLUTION

CHAPTER 6. A DEATH IN THE COLONY

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NOTICE:

The characters and events in this story are fictional, though some actual locations and occurrences are borrowed for this narrative.

Cain’s Leprosy is purely an invention of the author.

PREFACE

THE WORD LEPROSY comes from the Latin word lepra, which comes from the Greek word for scaly. In ancient times leprosy referred to any of several skin diseases, but now it is confined to the particular cutaneous disease caused by the microorganism Bacillus Leprae. Modern leprosy is a degenerative disease characterized by loss or exaggeration of pigment, tubercular nodules, ulceration, anesthesia in the extremities, loss of fingers and toes, decay, and death.

Leprosy can be traced to the earliest recorded history (1500 BC), and has been identified as the most widespread disease of medieval Christendom, during which period it infected millions. It peaked in the Middle Ages, and then declined rapidly to a fifth of its potency, while a similar bacillus, Treponema Pallidum, was reaching epidemic proportions in the form of syphilis. In 1860, leprosy was still common in Asia, Africa, South America, and the West Indies, and in certain isolated localities of the United States and Europe.

In ancient times, leprosy was widely prevalent throughout Asia as well as in Egypt, and among the Greeks and Romans. In the Middle Ages it became extensively diffused into Europe. In some countries–France, England, Germany and Spain–every considerable town had its leper house, in which the patients were segregated from the general population. The total number of such houses is estimated at 19,000. In England the oldest was at Canterbury in 1096 and the latest at Highgate in 1472. In the 15th century the disease underwent a remarkable diminution, and practically disappeared in the civilized areas of Europe. Also remarkable is that in some other areas it lingered–in Scotland until the 19th century, and in other places disappeared entirely. It still exists in Norway, Iceland, South Russia, Greece, Turkey, the Riviera, Spain, and Portugal.

At the turn of the twentieth century leprosy was still prevalent in many areas of the world. Called Hansen’s Disease in the United States, it was still found among the Chinese in California, in Louisiana among Cajuns, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas among Norwegians, and in Canada, in New Brunswick. By 1950 there were still 1500 to 2000 cases in the U.S., mostly in the south, of a total of between two and ten million worldwide.

In spite of tradition to the contrary, leprosy is not associated with fish or the sea, nor is it hereditary. It is, however, definitely inoculable, and can also be communicated by close contact. It is not specifically a sexually transmitted disease, though it does eventually sterilize its victims. The rapid drop in the disease in the Middle Ages was accompanied by a rapid increase of syphilis infection.

Leprosy is a parasitic disease caused by infection by the bacillus leprae, a bacterium first isolated by Armauer Hansen in 1871. Tuberculosis is very common among lepers. The essential character of leprosy is a great multiplication of cells, resembling lupus and syphilis in the tissues affected, which become infiltrated and thickened. The cells vary from ordinary leucocytes to cells three or four times their size. The regions most affected are the skin, nerves, mucous membranes, and lymph glands.

Three types of the disease are normally described: nodular, smooth (also called anesthetic), and mixed. The incubation period can be many years, and the invasion is usually slow and intermittent. The nodular type usually begins with dark red patches on the face, backs of the hands, the feet or other areas of the body. They come with a feverish attack and fade when it is gone, but only to return. After a time, the thickening becomes noticeable, and nodules appear. They are lumpy excrescences, at first pink but changing to brown. The tissues of the eye undergo degenerative changes; the eyebrows fall off. The nose and throat thicken with a concomitant change in the voice. The ears and nose thicken and enlarge. After a time the nodules break down and ulcerate, leaving open sores. The patient weakens and becomes susceptible to other disease, often tuberculosis, and succumbs in from two to several years. There are periods of temporary recovery, but the disease seldom, or never, is cured.

The smooth type is less severe. It begins with patches of dry, slightly discolored skin, not elevated, which has diminished sensitivity. Certain nerve trunks in the arm and leg thicken, and begin to degenerate. Bullae form on the skin, and the discolored patches become enlarged muscular power is diminished, tendons waste and contract, showing the symptoms of impaired nutrition. The nails become hard and clawed; perforating ulcers of the feet are common; portions of the extremities, including whole fingers and toes, die and drop off. Later, paralysis becomes more marked affecting the muscle of the face and limbs. This form may last 20 or 30 years. Spontaneous recovery occurs rarely.

Effective treatment for leprosy in the nineteenth century was restricted to cleanliness, nutritional supplements, and chalmoogra oils and their derivatives. Although there is still no cure for leprosy, there are reasons to believe that the disease has been brought under control, and the mutilations that gave the disease such a fearsome reputation will not be seen again.

Cain’s Leprosy is a related bacterial disease once identified with leprosy because of the dark spots and distorted extremities associated with it. Cain’s embodies a one-time scarring like that of chicken pox, is mostly carried in families, and was once thought to be highly contagious, but is now known to occur only in those with the recessive gene. In the modern world, its potentiality can be determined in infancy, and its occurrence prevented by the injection of a similar bacterium that results in the generation of infection-blocking anti-bodies. Another feature of the disease is the permanent enlargement of features in which the disease is present. Children have a twenty-five percent chance of inheriting the proclivity, though they will only get the disease by inoculation or close contact.

Before 1871, Cain’s lepers, if detected among the general population, were held in leper houses with genuine lepers.

...sourced in part from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

PROLOGUE

The Beginning: James Wilmott

ANDREW’S FATHER, James Wilmott, was born on a small farm on the Mersey River near Manchester, in the southwest of England, in 1790. He helped in the farming and fishing until he was twelve, when he was apprenticed to a bell founder in the port city of Liverpool. He learned reading and a little writing from the founder’s wife, and he learned how to prepare the molds for the castings, how to pour the melt into the molds, and how to cut the sprue and trim the flash. He learned the difference in strength and tone between brass bells and bronze, and how to test for voids and crystals under the surface of the finished product. When his master was occasionally commissioned to cast a silver bell, James learned how to attain the greatest strength and the sweetest tone from the least amount of the precious metal.

When his apprenticeship ended in 1814 he was invited to stay on at the foundry, but he was restless for adventure and, as the country was at the height of involvement in the American War, he signed on as a mechanic’s mate in the British navy. He had lived near the sea for all his twenty years, and when it was time to leave home he enlisted in part because he loved the water. But on the voyage to America in their small frigate Heartwhole, which the men soon shortened to Heart-hole, Hard-hole and other approximations with increasingly vulgar meanings, James soon learned about the alternating boredom, sickness, and outright terror of a life on the high seas.

When they sighted land in the New World he was elated, but when they stopped in Halifax for provisions and news, and there was no time to go ashore, he was more profoundly dejected than before. As they sailed down the Atlantic Coast, through the Cays of Florida, and across the Gulf of Mexico, often tantalizingly close to land, he concluded in his intense discomfort and with deep disappointment, that he hated sailing, and he became determined that neither the sea nor the Navy would be his home for long.

The Heartwhole and three other frigates joined a flotilla of British ships off the coast of West Florida; James counted six ships of the line and a dozen frigates the size of his or better, and he lost count of the dozens of other smaller ships, some seaworthy and some obviously riverboats, that bobbed closer to shore. After two days of deliberations the Heartwhole and another frigate, the Kate formed an escadrille with four fast river bateaux outfitted as gunboats. With the riverboats in the lead, they sailed west and into the mouth of the Mississippi River. They were to act as a diversionary force, while the ships-of-the-line, the frigates, the troop carriers, and most of the support boats sailed instead through Chandeleur Sound and directly into Lake Borgne. There they intended to mount a surprise ground attack and landing on the west shore of the Lake; eight thousand troops were to dispatch whatever resistance they might meet and march to the back door of the city of New Orleans, the largest port in America. With the frigates and gunboats shelling the city from the river, the ground forces were to attack from the rear. Their meeting was set for the first day of the new year.

Twenty miles upriver, at a sharp portside bend in its course, the escadrille encountered the enemy for the first time in two small boats that they promptly fired upon and sank. Later they received both musket and cannon fire from militia on shore, but as they were out of range, they sailed on without returning the fire. They passed Chalmette in the dark of New Year’s Eve, and on the morning of January 1, they leveled their guns against the city. From a position just east of the city, the frigates fired their twelve-pound guns while the gunboats held off a score of armed riverboats trying to get at the frigates with shot or sword.

For three days they picked at defended positions along the wharves and effected a virtual blockade of the port. For two nights they listened for the British artillery that would signal an all-out attack on the city. After two sleepless nights, James was drifting into unconsciousness when he was knocked out of his hammock by a tremendous blast–the bow of the Heartwhole had been badly damaged by a large charge of gunpowder wired to its hull by determined saboteurs who had swum out under cover of darkness.

In the confusion that followed the explosion and fire on the foredeck, the order was first given, then rescinded, to lower the lifeboats and abandon the ship. Somehow two boats containing nearly forty of the crew were deployed anyway, and because of the fire they were unable to regain the ship. They made for safety in an unlighted area just down river of the city, but they were watched as they rowed away from the burning ship and captured without a shot’s being fired immediately upon debarking. James considered it his good fortune to be one of those taken prisoner for, within moments of setting his feet on solid earth for the first time in months, he vowed never to return to the sea.

James learned from his captors that the British had landed successfully but they had been met and held up by an irregular army of Americans under a general named Andrew Jackson. They had passed several tense days under heavy guard when, on the afternoon of January 8th, suddenly there was a fusillade of musket fire just outside their compound. James was certain he would die at the hands of the Americans or be rescued by the British, and he wasn’t sure which he preferred. When two grinning Americans, muskets in hand, threw open the doors, he reflected that maybe a life at sea would be preferably after all. But the muskets had been fired in celebration–the ragtag army of American farmers had stopped the combined units of British Army and Navy at Chalmette, inflicted heavy casualties while suffering few of their own, and the British had abandoned their positions. The battle for New Orleans was lost.

The British were allowed to collect their wounded, and negotiations were initiated regarding the prisoners taken by the Americans. But only a few days later, word came that the war had been concluded by a treaty signed in Belgium more than a month before; the entire battle had been a fruitless exercise. When the British prisoners were released under guard to be returned to their units, Wilmott was one of a small number of British who declined to return to their ships.

There had been a misunderstanding regarding the departure of the two boatloads of men from the Heartwhole in the aftermath of the explosion, and they had at first been listed in the ship’s log as deserters. Their capture by the Americans confused the issue, however, for if they had deserted, how could they be prisoners of war? In ordinary circumstances there would have been a full investigation with conclusions drawn and such punishments made as were appropriate, had it not been for the sudden and anticlimactic end to the hostilities, and the return of most of the men. That several of the sailors had, in fact, fled under fire in fear for their lives, and that others had taken advantage of the melee to escape the privations and discomforts of sailing under wartime conditions, was not however, to be determined. Instead, the captain simply entered into the log that two parties of men had been deployed in pursuit of a saboteur, that they had been captured, and that several, including Third Mate James Wilmott, had seized the opportunity to desert.

The Heartwhole’s captain filed documents with the military authorities in an attempt to recover the deserters for return to England and trial, but a provost judge in New Orleans refused the request and what remained of the fleet set sail for the West Indies for repairs and provisioning. James and the other deserters were fed and housed and kept under watch by the American military, and put to work alongside the blacks brought in to clear the rubble and rebuild portions of New Orleans’ extensive dockworks, which had been scorched and splintered by cannon fire. The captain’s petition asserting that Wilmott and the others had abandoned their flag in favor of the Americans’ in the height of battle had the effect of establishing them as non-combatants. But as soon as it had become common, though mistaken, knowledge that they had been responsible for planting the explosive that silenced the Heartwhole’s guns and therefore saved much life and property in the city, they became heroes. In May of 1815 Governor Claiborne ordered their full freedom and declared them citizens of Louisiana.

By then it had been decided by the civilian government that New Orleans should have an improved levee with new docking facilities; James, with no other means of support, signed on as a carpenter’s assistant on the project, at very low wages. While working on the waterfront project he learned of a ship’s foundry in Baton Rouge that had been refitted only a year before to supply castings and borings to the Navy in support of the war effort.

Begging a day’s leave from his work, and in spite of his aversion to travel by water, he journeyed to the capital city by riverboat, made his way into the foundry building, past a cold furnace and a rack of five-inch cannon, some of which were bored and finished and others still in the state of just having their molds knocked away. He found his way into the offices, and presented himself to the owner of the foundry, a Frenchman named George Duvall. Duvall might have laughed when James Wilmott showed up asking for work, had he not been quite so close to despair. And he might have dismissed the young man without an explanation had not James begun his discourse with a compliment on the quality of the boring and the uniformity of the surfaces on the five-inchers.

Instead, Duvall said that he was sorry that Wilmott had made the trip from New Orleans, that the war’s end had sharply reduced the demand for large castings, and that in fact he was facing bankruptcy. He cursed the Navy, which had encouraged him to expand and had provided advance payments with which he was able to add a second, larger furnace, but which had now delayed shipping instructions for several completed items. The procurement officer had even hinted that some of the orders would be cancelled. Duvall had borrowed a large sum of money with an impatient officer from Credit Mobilier. Finally he stood and dismissed Wilmott with a curt, Well, you can see there’s no work here, and left James only a moment in which to thank him and take his leave.

James had no means to stay in Baton Rouge and planned to earn his way back to New Orleans the same day by acting as a handler on one of the barges that left in the late afternoons, but as it was only midday he took his time getting back to the wharves. The foundry was just upriver, on a lane that connected the upriver plantations with the city; as he walked along it reminded him of his home on the Mersey, and of the walk into Manchester on Fair days; and though in fact the similarity was scant, it made him nostalgic for the first time since he had decided to stay in America. As he re-entered the city with its graceful streets, its fine houses, the scent of magnolia and jasmine, and when he was reminded again of the quaint way the French had of dressing in the old European way, he felt really at home. When he continued into the business sector and along 3rd Street with its stern government buildings, it was at such contrast with the twisted and crowded streets of New Orleans that he was convinced in his decision, and reinforced in his desire to live and work in Baton Rouge.

It was nearly four o’clock when he found himself at the docks and noticed with some unease that there were no barges which appeared to be loaded for transport to New Orleans or anywhere else; and that unlike the busy port of New Orleans there seemed to be little or no activity of any kind. He had only some copper in his purse, and therefore, little else to do but wait for an opportunity to catch a ride south. He found a comfortable spot in what he hoped would later be the center of activity, sat back, and set his mind to wander. He thought about the old farm on the Mersey, and how close together everything was in England, he thought about the bell-caster, and how the skills he had acquired were not serving him very well at the moment, then he allowed himself to wonder whether he would really have been able to apply those skills to the casting of large guns. He mused about his work rebuilding the docks in New Orleans, and reflected happily that he would not go without food and shelter for a good while yet, as there was still much to do.

Looking about his immediate surroundings, he began to compare the port areas of the two cities. They were similar only because they were both on the same side of the same river, but they were different in almost all other respects. The docks in Baton Rouge were orderly, while the docks at New Orleans were in a constant state of chaos. The New Orleans docks had been built as extensions of levees–everything was close to the waterline, while in Baton Rouge the docks were mostly piers extended from the higher ground of the city. In Baton Rouge he had seen only riverboats–though diverse enough in design and size–while in New Orleans there was every description of floating vessel from the giant three-masted, ocean-going schooners called packet boats to the tethered barges that were constructed for a one-way trip down the Ohio.

He was daydreaming in the afternoon sun when he compared the way the two ports accommodated their ships, the wharves of Baton Rouge offering nothing but the extensions of their pilings to fasten a rope to, while New Orleans had several wooden hasts (or mooring-pins, as he had learnt to call them in America) with mechanical ratcheting devices to allow a ship not only to tie to but to heave itself forward in the absence of wind or rowing power. As he pictured the playing-out of their ankle-thick ropes, he suddenly realized that he was picturing not the usual stub of a pitch-pole with its splintery cross-tie, but in place of the pitch-pole, a finely-polished five-inch brass cannon, muzzle down and anchored in concrete, breech up and arms-ready to receive the rope! James was so taken with his vision that when he saw Duvall heading for a tavern he dared approach him with the idea of making castings similar to five-inch cannon for use as mooring pins on the new dockworks at New Orleans. Duvall listened politely, but not warmly, as the young man explained.

Not minding to be rude, but not wishing to explain just how desperate was the company’s situation, Duvall simply replied that it was a interesting idea, but that it was unlikely that the city would want to pay the price for brass pins when the same amount of money would buy several times as many made of pitch pine. He showed no inclination to continue the conversation, but as much to silence him he invited James to take a meal with him. When James explained that he was waiting for passage, he suggested instead that he take the packet boat that was due to depart at six p.m. and on which Duvall was himself intending to travel. James calculated that what he saved on the meal could be applied to pay for his passage; besides, this was the most interesting person James had met since his arrival in America.

Over a mug of beer Duvall learned about James’s background, and his experience with foundry work. James confessed that his apprenticeship in casting bells and other less massive objects than cannon might not have been directly applicable anyway, but he asserted his interest in the latter. While chewing on sausage, Duvall chided him, saying that it was a foolish time, at the end of a war, to develop in interest in casting armaments. He went on to lament, But in this godless country, there is no money in casting bells, either. Then, over some of the bitterest coffee James had ever tasted, Duvall informed him that his father, a priest without pulpit and more businessman than cleric, had seen him through a brief education as an engineer and used his small capital to set Duvall up in the foundry business. That his father had died before the foundry could get established. Duvall had struggled learning the business for over four years, and had just concluded that he was a better businessman than engineer when the war ended and brought even his ability as a businessman into question.

The arrival of the packet boat interrupted their talk, and they had to hurry to the dock, for the boat did not bother even to tie up. As they passed on board Duvall took the bursar by the arm and, cocking his head in James’s direction, said, He’s with me. Thus it was that James got a free meal and free ride, and he could honestly reflect that though his mission was not altogether successful, at least it had not cost him a penny. They spoke no more during the 4-hour passage, James standing far forward at the prow while Duvall smoked and chatted with the captain and some other men amidships. At the rear was a slave-trader standing guard over two very subdued men chained to the rail and to each other, each of greater years than their guard. James accepted without question the right of Americans to own Negro slaves, but he would never have considered even the possibility of himself owning a man, and he was uncomfortable at the sight of men in chains. When they docked in New Orleans he left the boat quickly, waving a thank you in the direction of Duvall, who was still talking with the other travelers.

James was unaware that one of the men with whom Duvall had been talking was a contractor on the riverwall project, that he supplied rough-sawn timbers for the project, and that Duvall had learned that no contract had yet been let for outfitting the docks with the trappings and rigging required for securing the variety of sea-going and river-bound vessels it was expected to accommodate. Duvall and the contractor, a fellow Frenchman named Lessoux, stayed at the riverfront for another hour discussing ways they might mutually profit from the next stage of construction. Providentially, Lessoux was also a stockholder in Credit Mobilier, the second largest bank in the city. They dined together and sketched out the essence of a partnership, and the next day Lessoux agreed to accompany Duvall at his conference with officers of Credit Mobilier. The director was sympathetic with Duvall’s position, in part because he himself was a major stockholder in a company that imported Mexican hemp and had been a supplier of rope and pulleys for rigging naval vessels. At the conclusion of their meeting, he had not only extended Duvall’s note indefinitely, but the three of them had formed a partnership to bid on rigging the new facility.

Within a week plans were presented to the Mayor, whose family-operated plantations were near Donaldsonville, about halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and were highly dependent on seasonal credit. He saw the wisdom in the plans immediately, and by the end of summer the foundry furnaces were operating again. In need of experienced founders, Duvall sent word to the young Wilmott, who had by then become a competent carpenter (though he was still without a secure position) to come to Baton Rouge. James accepted, and quickly adapted his skills to the larger scale of castings required for the rigging project. The unfinished five-inch guns were in fact modified and installed as mooring pins on the New Orleans docks, though never a word passed between Duvall and anyone else as to whose idea it had been to use them that way.

Getting rid of the unfinished naval guns at a good profit was sufficient to erase the debt under which the Works had labored, and the various castings made for the project put the company on a sound financial footing for the first time. But dock-rigging alone was not a dependable font of future business; a new source of income would have to be found. As the months passed and the project grew closer to completion, Duvall became moodier. James, meanwhile, had observed that the steam-driven riverboats were constantly having to replace their screws, and that the failures seldom occurred when the boat was conveniently near a fitter. He mentioned to Duvall that he thought he could mold a complete screw assembly in one casting, which would improve its balance and greatly increase its strength, while requiring virtually no assembly labor. Duvall asked how he would fashion the molds, and James showed him with a quick sketch. Duvall remarked that it was interesting, but said nothing more about the idea. About a month later, in the month of James’s first anniversary in America, and upon his return from an inspection of the New Orleans project, Duvall announced to the staff, Gentlemen, we are going to begin casting integral screws for the Ohio River Company.

The new screw was a big success. Although Duvall never publicly acknowledged Wilmott’s contribution, James was sure that he was appreciated, and was willing to take his continued employment as his reward. For several years, James continued to provide timely ideas on extensions of the casting and boring arts into new fields of endeavor, and Duvall continued to accept them and put them to work. In 1828, when steam power was beginning to do the work of man and horse, James suggested that the Works could manufacture a line of high-pressure steam fittings for railroad and plantation engines as well as those on riverboats. Within weeks, Duvall had secured a contract for a dozen complete sets of fittings. When the first samples turned out well, Duvall was elated; that evening he marched Wilmott down to the wharves and into the very tavern where they had first broken bread. They got drunk together and Duvall made the enigmatic statement, We’re a good partnership, James Wilmott. We’re gong to get rich on this one! In truth, it was this well-timed entry into the transportation boon of the century that made the firm a national success and, in time, Duvall a millionaire. And James might have shared in that wealth were it not for a particularly ill-timed idea which had come into his head and which involved Duvall’s sister, Lucille.

Lucille was unmarried, younger by five years than Duvall, and older by five years than James Wilmott. She lived with the likewise unmarried Duvall, and kept his house and tended the financial ledgers for the Works. At first, James had no contact at all with her, for although she worked with the figures, Duvall handled the money, and all the estimating was done by Duvall, alone at his desk. After the first year, however, Duvall would often send her to James to estimate the expenses for materials and repairs. They worked out a system of allowances and tables of estimation that increased the efficiency of the Works by over ten per cent. For his part, James admired her greatly for knowing how to manipulate the figures, and she began to find excuses to see him more often during the workdays, and into the evenings. His admiration had turned into an ardor, and he plotted ways to approach her romantically, but in spite of many opportunities, he could never carry out his plans when the time came.

For the first run of a new item James always made the molds, poured the metal, quenched and flashed the castings, and completed any machining entirely by himself. Duvall did not know that on the day James had finished the set of samples for a high-pressure steam engine and he was working alone in the late afternoon, that Lucille had been out to the floor to see the outcome. That after James showed the pieces, and how they fit together, there had been a pause in which neither knew what to say. That they had been standing close to each other without realizing it, that he had suddenly noticed her breathing. That he had turned to her and reached to embrace her, but without daring to look into her eyes, but she had turned too, and their arms had collided. That then he was forced to look at her face, at her eyes, and she was looking at him. That then they did embrace, and she said, I’ve been waiting a long time for this. And he said I, too. Later, at the tavern, when Duvall had said that magic word, partners, it was as though he already knew about them, that they were well on their way to being a family.

Lucille contrived to be alone with James several times during the next few days, and he told her about his conversation with her brother, and finally he asked her if she would marry him. Without committing herself, she went right to Duvall, not to ask his permission, but simply to share the moment with him and, she expected, to receive his blessing. He was cruel; It wouldn’t do to marry one of the help, and an English farmer half your age at that. She was stung, and confused. But you spoke of a partnership with him yourself; I thought you’d be pleased! He turned sharply toward her and nearly snarled, I spoke of no such thing, nor would I ever consider it. Don’t be absurd; you’re a silly woman.

It’s not absurd for me to marry a man of James’s talent and disposition, no matter what you say. In my view, you don’t want me to marry because you’ll loose your housekeeper. I have no desire to keep house for a man who does not care about the happiness of his sister. You might at least show some gratitude for the help I’ve given you in the business.

I have gratitude for your help exactly equal to the gratitude you have to me for providing your keep these last ten years. Marry whomever you like, but don’t expect any joy from me on the subject. Having come the closest he would to endorsing her plans, Duvall stalked out of the room, then wheeled abruptly and added, I’ll expect you to continue to do my books, and left again without receiving a reply. James was overjoyed at the news that she would marry him, and he was disappointed, but accepted her advice not to ask about the partnership for awhile.

James, who had always been careful about his money, began to save for the day they would marry. She, on her part, began to put away things with which to set up a household. He found a small house that had been damaged by fire and had been empty for several years. He bought a lease on the house and an acre of ground, and in six months he had applied his carpenter’s skills to a decent renovation. They were married by Father Durran in the month of April, 1830, though not in the church because James was a member of (or at least had been baptized in) the Church of England. George Duvall attended the brief wedding ceremony, witnessed the marriage certificate and, at the conclusion, shook hands with the priest, his sister, and James in that order, and left. Lucille moved to the small house that same day and, though she continued to attend to the Works bookkeeping needs, she seldom returned to her brother’s home again. Although she pressed her brother in private many times to give James some interest in the business, he was adamant in his refusal, and she never told James just how unlikely the prospect seemed.

The foundry, meanwhile, grew to three buildings, and then four. The original building was now fully enclosed and the first furnace was now maintained only for James’s use; the large furnace that had been constructed for the castings of large ordinance was dismantled to make more room for James’s development efforts. Duvall continued to maintain his small office in the original structure, though now clerks occupied additional inner offices that had been partitioned off from the manufacturing area. Lucille still kept a small desk just outside Duvall’s, but their conversation, never wide-ranging, had been confined since her marriage to the necessities of business. Then, on a cool October morning in 1832 she told Duvall that she was expecting a child, that there would be a period before the birth when she would want to be at home, and that he might want to get someone else to attend to the books while she was confined. He sat in silence for several moments, and then said only, You can leave anytime you want. After another pause he added, And don’t be in a hurry to come back.

Although she couldn’t fathom his reasons, she understood his meaning well. After a difficult pregnancy she gave birth to a healthy son the following April. She never returned to her position at the Works and, as there was little that Duvall seemed interested in discussing with her, she seldom called on him at home. She rededicated herself to making a home for James and seeing to the education of her son, named Andrew after James’ own father. James continued to work as an employee of the Works, and made several improvements in the art of casting small parts. In his later years he foresaw that progressive cities would soon be piping large quantities of water to industrial users under pressure, and he pioneered a self-regulating gate valve that was in prominent use for half a century. After he married Lucille he never expected anything from Duvall but his wages, and that was all he ever got.

BOOK ONE

The Hospital for the Condemned

Chapter 1. The Doctor

THUS IT WAS that Andrew Wilmott came to be born in Baton Rouge, in the State of Louisiana, in the year 1833, only thirty years after its purchase from the French, twenty-one years after it became the 18th state, and eighteen years since the infamous Battle of New Orleans ended his father’s career in the British Navy. Andrew was half-British and half-French by blood, and he was raised in the miasma of cultures that comprised the population of the lower course of the Mississippi, but he was raised to be an American.

Andrew was educated through the eighth grade at a city school. Its modest curriculum was supplemented in the evenings by his mother, who tutored him in the fundamentals of mathematics and read to him from the classics in both French and English. He took high school classes at the Holy Cross Academy, where he excelled in the science of measurements and, in 1849, at the age of sixteen, he received a secondary school diploma. He was on hand when the government was officially moved, amidst a great deal of ceremony, from New Orleans to his little city up the river.

Andrew worked without pay in his father’s laboratory during that summer, and it was observed as they stood side by side that he had reached his father’s full height of five and a half feet. He would never have the bulk of his father, however, for he had his mother’s small bones and fine features and, although he was generally dark, there was a hint of the sun in his hair and his mother’s blue eyes had turned hazel in him. That fall he departed for the old capital, where he was enrolled in the Louisiana State Seminary, where he studied Greek, Latin, Physics, and the Agricultural Sciences in a two-year course of study.

His relationship with his father had always been distant, though cordial, and with his mother, loving, though not warmly so. Thus it was a shocking but not a devastating event when, in the middle of his second year at seminary, while the entire state was in the grip of an influenza epidemic, both of Andrew’s parents contracted the disease and died within a week of each other. By the time he reached home, his uncle, George Duvall, had attended to the burials, burnt the clothing, and arranged for the Wilmott house to be leased, fully furnished and at the best possible price, to allow Andrew to complete his studies.

During his brief visit, his last to the household of his youth, Andrew packed a few personal items in a small trunk to be stored with his uncle. He visited the burial site, a public cemetery on the higher ground behind the city. Andrew was glad that they could be properly buried instead of being put up in vaults, permanently above ground, as he had seen to be the custom in New Orleans. On the morning of his return to finish out the school year, his uncle asked him whether he needed any money, to which Andrew replied, because his expenses had been met and he had a small amount of silver put aside, No, thank you, to which Duvall replied, Good.

Duvall’s parting words stung Andrew, though he showed no outward sign of it: You’ll want to find a position before term is up. There’s nothing for you here, you know. Before Seminary, Andrew had spent all of his life in