“Tuesday,” the man replied. It was now Friday.

“Have you been vaccinated for smallpox?” Marcus asked, feeling his patient’s neck and examining the inside of his eyelids for signs of jaundice. Jenner’s new, safer method of preventing smallpox, which used a strain of cowpox to prevent the disease, had revolutionized medicine. Marcus felt sure this was the beginning of a brighter age for patients, with more effective cures based on stimulating the body’s responses to disease.

“No, monsieur.”

After examining him, Marcus didn’t think the man had smallpox, or yellow fever, or any of the other highly contagious diseases that struck terror into the hearts of the city’s residents. Instead, the man’s watery diarrhea and vomiting suggested cholera. With New Orleans’s poor drainage, poverty, and crowded housing, cholera was endemic.

“I’m pleased to tell you, sir, that it’s cholera, not smallpox,” Marcus reported, noting the diagnosis in his ledger. He was tracking his patients by age, which ships they had arrived on, where they were living in the city, and whether or not they had been inoculated or vaccinated. In New York, medical records like these had helped Marcus react swiftly when new outbreaks of fever occurred, and here in New Orleans they were already a resource for city officials.

“Cholera? Will it kill me?” The young man looked frightened.

“I don’t think so,” he replied. The man seemed young and healthy. It was children and the aged who seemed to be hardest hit by the illness—though Marcus would have to wait and see whether that pattern held true for New Orleans.

As Marcus gathered the herbs and tinctures he needed to concoct a medicine for his new patient, he had the unpleasant, uncanny feeling he was being watched. He looked up from his medical formulary, where he noted down his cures and their success. A man stood across the street from Marcus’s small apothecary shop. He was of an ordinary height and build, and dressed in a well-made though ill-fitting suit. He was shuffling cards and watching Marcus’s every move. Even from a distance, Marcus was struck by his mesmerizing green eyes.

“Here. I’ve made you a packet of medicine.” Marcus had mixed spearmint, camphor, and a bit of poppy together to help with the nausea and cramps. “Put a spoonful in boiling water, and sip it while it’s warm—not hot. Don’t drink it down all at once, or it will just come up again. Try to rest. You should feel better in a week or so.”

Once the patient paid for his services, Marcus went out onto the street.

Marcus was sure the fellow watching him wasn’t a vampire, but there was no telling what his grandfather might do to keep an eye on him, even if it meant employing a warmblooded spy. Marcus had hoped it would take the de Clermonts years to find him in New Orleans, but perhaps Philippe was more powerful than Marcus knew.

“Do you have some business with me?” Marcus demanded.

“You’re awfully young to be a doctor, ain’t you?” The man spoke with the slow, rollicking speech of the southern colonies, tinged with a touch of a French accent and a twang of the local dialect that was too forced to be natural. Whoever this man was, he was hiding something.

“Where are you from?” Marcus asked. “Not here. Virginia would be my guess.”

The man’s eyes flickered.

“Do you need medical help?”

“No, Yankee. I do not.” The man spat out a stream of tobacco. It scuttled a bit of eggshell bobbing on a sea of filth in the gutter.

Marcus leaned against the peeling doorframe. There was something intriguing about this man. His combination of brash insincerity and honest charm reminded Marcus of Vanderslice. Even after nearly two decades, Marcus still missed his old friend.

“Name’s Chauncey,” Marcus said.

“I know. Young Doc Chauncey is the talk of the town. The women are all in love with you, and the men swear that they feel healthier and more virile than they have in years after seeing you. Quite a racket, if you ask me.” The man smiled disarmingly. “Ransome Fayreweather, at your service.”

“You shuffle those cards like a man who likes to gamble,” Marcus said. Ransome’s swift fingers reminded him of the way Fanny handled a deck.

“Some.” Fayreweather never stopped shuffling, the cards moving smooth and quick through his hands.

“Maybe we could play sometime,” Marcus suggested. He had learned a few tricks playing with Fanny, and felt he could hold his own against this Fayreweather fellow.

“We’ll see.” Fayreweather tipped his hat with exaggerated courtesy. “Good day to you, Doc Chauncey.”

* * *

—

MARCUS FELT SURE he would see Fayreweather again, and he was right. Two weeks later, he spotted him in the Place d’Armes, peddling medicine from a small table draped in a black cloth that was weighted down with a human skull. The residents of New Orleans—brown, black, red, white, and every shade in between—milled around the square, speaking French, Spanish, English, and tongues that were unfamiliar to Marcus.

“Have you been vaccinated?” Fayreweather said in a fair imitation of Marcus.

“Yes, sir,” his prospective female patient replied. “At least, I think it was a vaccination. One of the witches scratched my arm with a chicken’s foot and spat on it.”

Marcus was horrified.

“I’m pleased to tell you, madame, that you have cholera. And I have just the treatment for you. Chauncey’s Elixir—my own receipt.” Fayreweather held up a green bottle.

Marcus continued to watch as Fayreweather performed the role of Doc Chauncey, the medical marvel from the north, recently arrived in New Orleans. After a few more patients, the trickster noticed his attention. When Fayreweather looked up, Marcus tipped his tall hat.

Fayreweather began to pack up. He looked in no hurry, but Marcus could smell a whiff of fear about him and heard his heart speed up.

“Doctor Chauncey, as I live and breathe,” Marcus said, strolling in Fayreweather’s direction. “What made you leave your storefront and take to the streets?”

“The smell of money,” Fayreweather replied. “There is more of it here than on Chartres Street.”

“Congratulations on passing the Cabildo’s examination and becoming certified to dispense medicines.” Marcus picked up the piece of paper tucked under the skull. It resembled the document Marcus had hanging on his shop wall to show he was a reputable physician and not a quack. He glanced at a knot of Garde de Ville standing nearby. Fayreweather had brass balls to fleece people within arm’s reach of the city police. “I hear the test takes three hours.”

“So it does.” Fayreweather snatched the paper from Marcus’s fingers.

“Listen,” Marcus said, dropping his voice. “I have no wish to deprive you of your liberty, or your livelihood, but please impersonate someone else.” He tipped his hat and walked away.

Marcus had taken only a few steps when Fayreweather’s voice caught up with him.

“What’s your game, friend?” Fayreweather called.

Marcus turned. “Game?”

“I know humbug when I see it,” Fayreweather said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marcus said smoothly.

“You don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.” Fayreweather smiled. “But I’ll discover your secret. You can count on it.”

After their encounter in the Place d’Armes, Fayreweather kept cropping up in the crowded city. Marcus spotted Fayreweather playing cards in the back of his favorite coffee shop. He heard Fayreweathers’s honeyed tones on Chartres Street as he tried to seduce a young widow. Fayreweather had a fiddle, and played it on street corners, drawing crowds of rapt listeners. Everywhere Fayreweather went there was life and laughter. Marcus soon envied the man.

Marcus began to look for Fayreweather as he went about his daily business, and to be disappointed when he didn’t catch the man’s sardonic green eyes or have a chance to greet him in the market. One day, Marcus shared a table with Fayreweather at his favorite drinking establishment, the Café des Réfugiés on Rue de St. Philip.

“I think you should call me Ransome,” Fayreweather suggested after they clinked glasses. “And I think you need to have some fun, Doc. Otherwise, you’re going to get old before your time.”