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with rage. When he spoke his voice trembled. “The swelling, as you call it, is a tumor. Not a boil that will profit from bleeding or lancing.”
    Van der Vries chuckled. “Jealous, are you, Englishman? These creatures, after all, ask no fee for their services. Only to fill themselves with the evil blood that is causing this poor woman such distress.”
    Lucas swallowed a protest. It was too late. Nearly every leech was now well attached. The woman’s face and neck had become a black mass, a writhing thing that grew ever larger as the jointed, hairy bodies of the worms became engorged with her blood. “You are a fool,” Lucas whispered. “Worse, you’re a criminal and a murderer. Four leeches at a time. Perhaps five. And applied to the inside of the arm, not—”
    “I seem to have forgotten my cupping tool. Careless of me, I admit.” Van der Vries was studying the fingernails of his left hand. “But hardly cause for consternation, given how far advanced this woman’s illness is. And it would do little good to take blood from her arm when any fool, even a barber who believes himself to be a surgeon, can see that the evil humors have lodged themselves in the poor creature’s throat.”
    Lucas drew a long breath. The enormity of the error was stupefying. He all but choked on it.
    Anna Stuyvesant had stayed out of their argument. Now she took a few steps toward them. Lucas took a step to his right so she could get a good look at the black and writhing thing on the bed. She gasped. “So many, Mijnheer Van der Vries.” None of her famous bossiness. She sounded as if she were pleading. “I have never … Perhaps, barber, you and the physician can possibly remove a few of the—”
    “No. We cannot.” Lucas watched one last sluggish worm make its way across the bedclothes and crawl over the bodies of its relatives until it found a bit of exposed skin behind the woman’s ear. He could have prevented that one from attaching itself, but there was no point. “Leeches have to be allowed to fill themselves until they drop off, mevrouw. Otherwise they leave their sucking tool inside the patient and the wound becomes poisonous.” He looked at Van der Vries. “Is that not correct, mijnheer?”
    “Yes, of course.” Van der Vries was leaning over his patient, staring at the worms. “But see, at least six are fixed on the goiter. It will be drained of the evil blood that—”
    “Tell me, Van der Vries, when you were healing the sick with the fashionable practitioner of physic in fashionable Cambridge, England, did you not hear of the English king’s extremely fashionable personal physician, William Harvey?”
    Van der Vries didn’t look up. “Harvey,” he murmured. “Yes, I seem to recall the name.”
    “I’m pleased to hear it. Because over thirty years ago Harvey proved that the blood circulates in the human body. The Widow Kulik’s goiter is a growth, a struma made of tissue and fed by blood from the whole body. It is not depend—”
    “At last we have reached the nub of the argument.” The Dutchman looked directly at Lucas. “You wished to cut, did you not, barber?”
    “I could have removed the goiter, yes. There is no guarantee of success, but—”
    “But definitely a guarantee of excruciating pain. Look at the size of this swelling. As big as two pullet eggs. Do you not agree it must have been growing on the woman’s neck long before my arrival in the colony?”
    “Of course.”
    “Indeed. And despite the fact that you were here and I was not, this poor creature never consulted you.”
    “Some are afraid of the knife. You know it as well as—”
    Anna Stuyvesant put herself between the two men. “Look, the leeches … They are starting to fall off.”
    “Ah, yes.” Van der Vries bent over the bed and began scooping the fat black worms into his jar. “Thank you for recalling me to my duty, mevrouw. These beauties will serve some other patient as well. Be ready for a new meal soon, won’t