(2007) The Pesthouse Read online

  'Turn your head, Mags, if you can,' he instructed her. 'Pull your scarf across your face, let them mistake you for...' He couldn't think that she resembled anything, except a woman at death's door riding in the wrong direction with her back turned to the sea. He did his best to hide her from the stares and even from the necessary greetings. He pulled the horse into the thickets whenever he heard voices coming or the sound of carts and bridle bells. He made her duck into impasses of rock until the path was clear. And if anybody happened to get close to them or called wanting directions or news, he answered for the two of them, trying not to draw attention to himself by being either too unfriendly or too welcoming. If anybody asked, he'd claim his granddaughter was simple, not bright enough to speak: 'Best let her float in her own company,' he'd say.

  So Margaret and her grandpa took half a day to reach the nearest woody swaggings in the sash of hills, where the rocky scrubland of the ascent relaxed into softer meadows and clearings of grass and highland reed, before the darkness of the woods and the distant, snowcapped mountain pates. The view was wasted on them. They hardly bothered to look back. The old man had to get home, while Margaret wanted nothing more than to sleep. She'd rather die than undertake another climb like that. So for her, the first sight of the Pesthouse at the edge of the hunter's bald was a relief.

  Unlike the tree-trunk barns and cabins in the valley, the hillside hut had not been built for comfort. It was at core a woodsman's soddy, constructed out of sun-dried turfs, fireproof and wind-protected, much loved by mice but easily collapsed. Indeed, it had collapsed from time to time, in those far regretted days when it had had little use, but since that healthy time, that time of remedies and cures, the Pesthouse had been strengthened by an outer wall of boulders, dry built and sturdy. There was a sleeping bench inside, a hearth and chimney stack, a leather bucket and some pots.

  Margaret hid in the undergrowth to empty her bowels — no blood, good luck — and then collapsed into the grass while her grandpa set to work. He swept out the soddy with snapped pine brooms, beat the stones with sticks in case any snakes had taken up residence, and set the fire in the stone grate with kindling and a striking stone. Provisions and a water bag were hung from roof branches above the fire, where they'd be marinated in wood fume and safe from little teeth. He gathered bracken and country corn for Margaret's bed. She rested her three lucky things on her chest — a silver necklace that was old enough to have been machined, a square of patterned, faded cloth too finely woven to have been the work of human hands, some coins from the best-forgotten days, all inside a cedar box — and lay down on the bed, with Grandpa's help. He placed an unfired pot of cough syrup made from onions mashed in sugar on the floor at the side of her bed: 'Watch out for ants, Mags.' He touched her forehead with his thumb, a finger kiss. 'I'm ashamed to leave you here. I hope it grows. Thick and long.' He wiped his hands again on a vinegary rag, then he and the horse were gone, and she was sleeping. When she woke, somewhat revived, it was already evening. The trees were menacing — they wheezed and cracked. Bats feasted on the early moths. The undergrowth was busy with its residents, and Margaret, Red Margaret, the Apricot, the drained and fragile woman in the hills, that applicant for unexpected death, felt shocked and lost, bewildered and unloved. Why had she been singled out? Why had the archer released his arrow into her? Such misfortune was too much to face alone — the pestilence, the pain, the degradation and the restless meanness of the night that she must spend on her own father's deathbed, breathing his last air. She coughed, a friendless cough, and had to listen to the trunks and branches coughing back, like wolves, too much like wolves for her to dare to sleep again. She'd never feared trees before. In daylight, trees had let her pass, ignored her almost, pretended not to notice her. But now that the moon was up, the forest seemed to be alert and mischievous.

  The Pesthouse occupant took comfort from her talismans that night. She passed the necklace through her fingers, recognizing and remembering the contours of each engraved link; she rubbed and stroked her piece of cloth; she smelled the cedar in the little box. Finally, she weighed the coins in her hands, the pennies and dimes and quarters that she had found among the pebbles on the river beach. She fingered all the images in the dark and tried to recognize the heads of people from the past, mostly short-haired men, one with a beard, 'In God We Trust', one with a thickish pony-tail bouncing on his neck, one heavy chinned and satisfied. Was that the eagle she could feel? Where were the leafy sprigs and flaming torch? Was that the one-cent palace with the twelve great columns at the front? She dragged her nail across the disk to count every column and tried to find the tiny seated floating man within, the floating man who, storytellers said, was Abraham and would come back to help America one day with his enormous promises.

  3

  FRANKLIN HAD NOT EXPECTED SO much rain. Anyone could tell from how brittle the landscape was that, in these parts at least, it had scarcely rained all season, and what clouds there'd been that day had been horizon clouds, passers-by, or overtakers, actually, for they were heading eastward, too — but hardly any time had gone before the last light of the day threw out its washing water, splashing it as heavily as grit on the brittle undergrowth and setting free its long-stored smells, part hope and part decay. The rain was unforgiving in its weight. It meant to stay and do some damage and some good in equal parts. It meant to be noticed. It meant to run downhill until it found a river and then downstream until it found a sea. 'If you're looking for the sailing boats, just follow the fallen rain' was the universal advice for inexperienced travelers.

  Franklin couldn't sleep through this. He couldn't even sit out such a downpour. He'd have to find some better shelter. He shook out the leaves from his bedding, wrapped the two already damp tarps around himself and limped as best he could onto a rocky knoll from which he could peer into the darkness and through the rain from a greater height. He hadn't noticed any caves or overhanging cliffs or any forest thick and broad-leafed enough to offer hope of staying dry for very long. This was the kind of rain that wouldn't rest until its job was done.

  Now Franklin considered the little boulder hut on the fringes of the clearing, with its gray scarf of smoke. It was the sort of place where inexperienced or incautious robbers might make their den, well positioned for picking off stragglers, even though anyone with any sense would give it a wide berth. But Franklin would take the risk — despite Jackson's warnings but also because of his brother's stinging accusation earlier that day that 'Only the crazy make it to the coast' — and see if he could bargain any shelter there. He'd lost his bearings in the storm and in the darkness, though, and couldn't quite remember where he'd seen the hut. On the forest edge, for sure, but where exactly, how far off? What residue of light remained was not enough to spot its chimney. He sniffed for wood smoke but sniffed up only rain. He'd have to stumble in the dark and trust to luck, and still take good care not to wake any hostile residents, though the chances were it was just a woodsman's cabin or some hermitage, a no-choice place to rest his knee and stay dry for the night.

  No matter where he stumbled, he could not see the outline of a roof, as he had hoped, or any light, but he was old enough to know where anyone would build a hut if there was free choice. Not entirely under trees, for a start, and not in earthy shallows where bogs might form. But half in, half out. Not too exposed to wind or passers-by. But looking south and on flat ground, preferably face on to a clearing.

  It was her coughing that led him to her, finally — the hacking, treble cough of foxes but hardly wild enough for foxes. A woman's cough. So now Franklin knew the place, and where it stood in relation to the far-too-open spot where he had rolled his cocoon. He took his bearings from the coughing — waiting for it to break out, then subside, and then break out again — and from the heavy outlines of the woodlands and the hillside. He shuffled through the soaking grasses, taking care not to snap any sticks, listening for beasts below the clatter of the storm, until he could hear the tell-tale percussion of
the rain striking something harder and less giving than the natural world, something flat and man-made. And now indeed he could hear and see the black roofline of a hut and a chimney stack. Then, between the timbers of its door — but for a moment only — he caught the reassuring and alarming flicker of a candle flame, just lit from the grate. He knew exactly what that meant: whoever was inside had heard him creeping up. They had been warned and would be ready.

  Franklin hung his back sack on a branch, pulled off his tarps and took out his knife, its blade still smelling of the meadow onions they had found and eaten raw earlier that day. The lighted candle meant that the occupant (or occupants) was nervous, too. So he grew more confident. Now he made as much noise as he could, trying to sound large and capable. He called out 'Shelter from the rain?' and then, when there was silence, 'I'm joining you, if you'll allow.' And finally, 'No cause for fear, I promise you,' though he was more than a little fearful himself when there were no replies. The boulder hut was big enough to house a gang of men in addition to the coughing woman, all armed, all dangerous. A man with a knife, no matter how tall he was, could not defend himself in the dark against missiles, or long pikes, or several men with cudgels. He tried again: 'I'm a friend. Just say that you'll welcome me out of the storm, or else I'll step away.' A test of hospitality. Some coughing now, as if the cougher had to find a voice from far away, and then, 'Come only to the door. Don't open it.' The woman's voice. A youngish voice. Already he was blushing.

  For a door, the hut had little more than a barricade of rough pine planks. Franklin said, 'I'm here.' He peered between the planks and could just make out the dark form of one person, resting on one elbow in a bed, backlit by a wood fire in a grate. Nothing to be frightened of. Nothing physical, at least. Some traveler, perhaps, who just like him was suffering from knees and needed shelter for a while. 'I'm going to drown unless I come inside,' he said. She coughed at him. No Stay Away, no Come.

  Franklin pulled the door aside with his left hand, resting his right hand with the knife on the low lintel at his chin height. She held her candle out to get a better look at him and in its sudden guttering of light they saw each other for the first time: Red Margaret was startled first by the size of him, two times the weight and size of her grandpa, she thought, and then by what she took to be a face of honesty, not quite a handsome face, not quite a beauty boy, but narrow, healthy, promising, a face to rescue her from fear if only he would dare. Franklin saw the bald, round head of someone very sick and beautiful. A shaven head was unambiguous. It meant the woman and the hut were dangerous. He stepped back and turned his head away to breathe the safer, rain-soaked air. He was no longer visible to her. The door frame reached only his throat. He put the door back into place and reconciled himself to getting very wet and cold that night. 'A pesthouse, then,' he said out loud, to show — politely — that he understood and that his curtailed friendliness was sensible. Too late to call his brother back, though calling out for Jackson was Franklin's first instinct, because if there was disease in the Pesthouse, there could well be disease down there, among the inhabitants of Ferrytown.

  Now the woman was coughing once again. Her little hut was full of smoke, he'd noticed. And her lungs, no doubt, were heavy with pestilence, too. Dragging his tarps behind him, he crashed his way back through the clearing and undergrowth into the thickest of the trees, where the canopy would be his shelter. He had been cowardly, he knew. He had been sensible. Only a fool would socialize with death just to stay warm and dry for the night. He found a partly protected spot among the scrub oaks just at the top of Butter Hill where he could erect a makeshift tent from his stretched tarps and protect himself a little. His decision to stay up in the hills to rest had clearly been a foolish one. Jackson had been right as usual. A crazier, more reckless man would have faced the risks of pressing on, injury defied, and enjoyed the benefits of a warm bed, surely better for a limping emigrant than sharing a stormy night with bald disease, no matter how eye-catching it might be.

  Franklin's knee had worsened in the rain and during his latest stumbles through the sodden undergrowth. Its throbbing tormented him. It almost ached out loud, the nagging of a roosting dove, Can't cook, cook, cook. Even when, in the early quarters of the night, the storm had passed, and the moon, the stars and the silver lake had reappeared, he could not sleep. Her face was haunting him, her face in the candlelight (that celebrated flatterer) with its shorn scalp. He might have touched himself with her in mind, despite his pain, had not the valley raised its voice above the grumbling of his knee and the hastened beating of his newly captured heart. The dripping music of the woods was joined by lowland drums. There was the thud and clatter of slipping land, a sound he could not comprehend or recognize — he knew only that it was bad — and then the stony gust, the rumbling, the lesser set of sounds than thunder that agitated the younger horses and the ever-childish mules out in the safety of the tetherings.

  On Butter Hill, above the river crossing where west was granted access to the east, Franklin Lopez sat alarmed, entirely unasleep, in his wet tarps, the only living witness when the silver pendant shook and blistered — a pot, a lake, coming to the boil.

  4

  JACKSON HAD TAKEN a liking to the modest town, with its smoke and smells and the clamor of voices, livestock and tools. Even though he had arrived at its boundary fences a little after dark, a few trading stalls were still set up, warmed and lit by braziers and lanterns, where he was greeted by dogs, his palms and tongue inspected for infection by gatekeepers, and told at once what the tariffs were — how much he'd have to pay to cross their land, the cost of food and shelter for the night, the onward ferry fee. He would be welcome as a guest if his face was free of rashes, if he wasn't seeking charity, if he didn't try to win the short-term favors of a local woman, and if he put any weapons — and any bad language — into their safekeeping until he traveled on. Weapons, rashes, charity and short-term favors of any kind were 'off the menu', he was told. But, otherwise, they had good beds, fresh bread, sweet water and easy passage to the other bank 'for anyone prepared to keep the peace and pay the price'. What had he to offer in return? He had only his coat to trade, he told them, and any labor that they might require of him during the few days that it would take his brother, Franklin, to recover from his exaggerated laming.

  All the traders at the gates seemed interested in his piebald coat and gathered around him, admiring his mother's stitching and marveling at its immodest pattern. But their interest was mostly an excuse to question their oversized visitor and stare at him. None would purchase the coat, no matter how little he wanted in exchange. It was too grand for them. Nobody they knew was tall or outlandish enough for such a garment, they explained, and there was little likelihood that another man of such height and in need of protection against the cold and rain would pass through their community. Nevertheless, the traders were careful and flattering in their dealings with Jackson Lopez, as strangers always were, he'd found. His height and strength earned him promises of work in exchange for lodging: there were sacks of grain to stack and store for winter in the dry lofts and, as ever, there was wood to cut and sewage to be carted out, all familiar tasks. They even promised him a single bed. For once he wouldn't have to share his body space with Franklin.

  Jackson need never sleep with his brother again. He was free to stop just one night in Ferrytown and then move on alone the next day, unencumbered. He was tempted to, or certainly he'd played out the idea as he'd come down the hill still irritated by the unwelcome waste of time.

  His brother had been a constraint, even before his knee had let them down. Younger brothers often are. They're the sneaks who tell your parents who broke the bowl or lamed the mare or stole the fruit. They're the ones who hold you up, pleading caution, wanting home. They're the ones who'd choose to go roundabout Robert to avoid danger rather than to smell it out and face up boldly — and unblushingly (as Jackson always would) — to the argument, the snake, the bear, the cliff face or the enemy.
And older brothers have no privacy, unlike older sisters, for whom privacy is considered fundamental. No, the first-born males are expected to share their blankets with all the younger ones, and share the work, and entertain the others in the evenings with the light of just the single candle, and travel — even migrate! — in a pack, as if no future were possible, except in the others' company. It certainly was dead right, that traditional warning to anyone with itchy feet, that there is no better way of getting to resent a friend, whether it's a brother or a neighbor, than by traveling with him.

  'You take good care of him,' his mother had instructed every time they'd left the farm buildings for a day of work, all the way through his childhood and adolescence. And those had been almost her final words to Jackson when her sons had set off toward the boats two months previously. 'You take good care of him.' She still saw Franklin as a boy who needed to be tied by ropes to someone bigger and more trustworthy. She hadn't said, 'And you take good care of yourself.' Perhaps he ought to start. Walking down the hill alone, at his own pace, had been an unexpected pleasure that he might happily prolong, on this side of the water and beyond. He'd sleep on it. He'd make his mind up once he'd tested the local hospitality and found someone to trade with him. No matter what he decided — return to Franklin and that maddening laugh of his (as seemed dishearteningly inevitable) or hurry on (the thrilling fantasy) — he had to freshen his or their supplies of food.

  As it happened, while Jackson was walking in past the tetherings toward the guest house, savoring his recent freedom and the prospect of his first good meal for many days, the boy called Nash was on his way to begin his night of caretaking with the local and passage animals. He was wheeling a smoking barrow with a cargo of glowing stove stones from the family grate bedded in earth to keep him warm. He had pushed some sheets of thin cloth up the back of his shirt as well, but he still expected to be cold, especially in the period just before sunup, and — on that night at least — he expected to be wet. He could smell the coming rain, and the bats, always trustworthy forecasters of a storm, were out unusually early in search of rain-shy insects.