(2007) The Pesthouse Read online

  No casual sound? His phrase was like a slap. Margaret could hear perfectly, even if her eyes might let her down. She knew too well the way the community was ordained, how if every single mortal there was lying down in bed, unable to lift a finger for themselves, at least you could expect, even at this distance, the dogs to be complaining and — suddenly it occurred to her — the cocks to carry out their duties for the day, proclaiming their raucous intentions to the hens as soon as the sun came up and maintaining their vanities until sundown.

  She pricked her ears and concentrated. Ferrytown was not providing any noise. Again she did her best to focus on open ground, on the dark shapes of the mules and horses in the tetherings, but nothing moved, so far as she could tell, nothing was impatient for the trail or its harnesses. Indeed, it seemed that every living thing was lying down like cattle expecting rain. The only movement Margaret could now discern — other than the few recently arrived carts and people who were gathering in increasing though unusually small numbers on the river's edge — was the ferry raft itself, which was neglected and had worked itself free of its mooring posts. It was swinging in the middle stream on its securing ropes, in a river still bloated from the rains of two nights previously.

  In the end Franklin did what he was asked. Well before midday, he quickly gathered up their few possessions and combined them — her few clothes, his travel kit — into one pack, which he wore forward on his chest. He threw earth on the Pesthouse fire. He cut two sticks, one for himself to support his leg, an extra wooden limb, and a spare for Margaret. There was no point in pretending that she would have the strength to walk more than a few paces and certainly not down Butter Hill, with its harsh gradient and its unpredictable gravel. The days of vomiting, diarrhea and fever had weakened her. So he wrapped the two tarps around her shoulders and stooped to let her climb onto his back, and then he tied the corner ears as tightly as he could around his waist and chest so that his warm burden was pressed tightly to his upper spine and shoulders. Finally he slipped the spare stick behind her knees and through the lower tarp knots at his waist, so that she was sitting in a kind of wood and canvas rescue chair and her legs could not dangle.

  Margaret did not weigh much, scarcely more than the chest pack, it seemed. Despite the stiffness in his knee and the increased pain, Franklin could stand with the help of his stick and move easily at first. He'd carried deer carcasses in much the same way before and, on one occasion, an injured ewe that had struggled all the way back to the stead. Margaret was a more compliant burden, and actually — if only he could put aside his lasting fear of her dry and bitter breath, and his embarrassment — she was a welcome one, the softest and the warmest pack he'd ever portered. Giddup, he told himself and began the slow and painful walk from the little Pesthouse that he'd grown to like so much across the clearing to the start of the descent. They were an alarming and a comic couple all at once: the oversized limping man, not quite a giant; the emaciated, recently scalped woman, with her bone head, now almost imperceptibly fuzzed orange, warning everyone and anyone who wasn't blind to avoid her at all costs.

  Margaret had refused to wear her blue scarf again. The heat and weight were still too much for her. But covering her head would have made little difference to her pestilent appearance. She had no eyebrows; they had hardly begun to regrow. And even her expression seemed scalped and ominous. But, for the time being, she and Franklin were happy anyway to be together on Butter Hill and amused to be playing piggyback, despite the fear of what they might find below. Were they in love? Well, no, not yet. He was too young and inexperienced; she was too old and inexperienced. They were, though, getting there with every step. And they were as intimate as lovers. How could they not be, with her legs pushed open, wrapped around his back, her breath and lips against his nape, her arms embracing him, clasped across his breast bone, so that — she thought, illogically — she could help him bear her own weight and share the weight of worrying? Franklin gripped her knee with his spare hand, spreading his thumb onto the clothing of her upper leg. How weak and newly thin she was.

  Margaret and Franklin did not attempt to catch up with the family who were negotiating the decline with a string of pack mules ahead of them. Rather, they hung back. Margaret did not wish to chance upon a Ferrytowner or a stranger who might pass on the word to her family and neighbors of how this virgin had been wrapped around a young man's back, or how personal he seemed with her. She'd be devalued all at once. Then what? It would be better if she'd joined her pa. She was almost thankful that her shaven head gave her and Franklin the excuse they needed to keep only their own company. Besides, you would not welcome any other company if you were with a person who at the very least (in Margaret's view) had drawn the flux out of your feet or who (in Franklin's view) had allowed such arousing intimacies.

  Franklin concentrated on his balance and on the tribulations of the path, measuring his steps and rationing his breaths. He was determined not to show any weakness or tiredness. Here was his chance to prove to her how useful he might be and how mature. What luck had put this woman on his back? His damaged knee had proved to be an unexpected blessing.

  Once they had sorted out the problem in Ferrytown, whatever it might be, thought Franklin, he could consider more fully what he ought to do about Margaret. He would not want to part from her at once. He'd not be happy to proceed without knowing her better. But what would Jackson say if his selfish, blushing brother insisted on delaying their departure from Ferrytown or if he made a decision on his own behalf for a change and chose to stay on there at least through the winter, at least until Margaret had recovered and could be persuaded, perhaps, to join them in their emigration east? What would he say if Franklin was determined to settle his future in Ferrytown and court this woman, what? six years older than himself? To take her as his wife?

  Yes, this matter of their ages was an impediment. Franklin could not avoid admitting that to himself, whatever his brother might say. She was so much older. As old as his youngest aunt, in fact. But his size made up for that, surely. Her time on earth equaled the volume of his presence. Possibly, in his view, she was all the more enticing because of the age difference. Even with her illness and her shaven head, Margaret had struck him as being irresistibly adult.

  Margaret herself was too drained and fearful to think much of the future. Certainly, her personal porter was an agreeable young man, kindly featured if not exactly handsome, sweet smelling, biddable — and strong. She could not forget the patience and the tenderness he had lavished on her feet nor the mixed sensations it had given her, a breathless nausea together with a heat that was separate from the fever. It did not seem possible that he could carry her for such a length of time, down steep and difficult terrain, without stopping to rest once in a while or demanding that she at least try to walk the last part on her own two feet. She clung on to his shoulders, exuberated by the closeness of his company yet also exhausted by his efforts, because each step he took shook every bone in her body. But she was not making any place for him in her life. He'd just be another one of those missed opportunities, another passer-by whom she would miss for a day or two and then forget. All that mattered for the moment was the state of Ferrytown and her impatience for the sound of dogs and cocks.

  What first disquieted them, when they emerged below the hill from the thicket of junipers, laurels and scrub oaks that flourished on the lower slopes, was the smell — sour milk and mushroom, earthy, reasty and metallic. It was an unfamiliar smell that they recognized but could not name. It was as if this new experience was one that life itself had stored for them. Now from the access path they could see the mules and horses in the tetherings, not resting and expecting rain as Margaret had imagined, or at least hoped, but spread out and gaping, alarming and unambiguous, cold as stones. They were seemingly untouched, with no wounds except the fresh ones inflicted by the crows and jays and turkey vultures that had already abandoned the hills to gather on their bodies. Dead animals, still picketed.
r />   But their alarm was manageable until Franklin spotted what he did not mistake for long as dead, piebald goats. Jackson's coat was spread out in the middle of the tetherings beside a dead mule. There was no confusing its color and its length and who its owner was. No two mothers in the world could stitch together such a piece. The body underneath seemed small, but Franklin was sure, as he stumbled forward with Margaret bouncing on his back, that he'd discover no one else but his brother, dead drunk, he hoped, and not just dead. But the body rolled too readily as he pulled at the coat. Too light, too small. A boy. He tumbled out of the goatskins as easily and weightlessly as a dog might be rolled out of its blanket. Franklin was relieved and horrified all at once. 'Who's this?'

  Margaret had not seen, at first, what had induced such panic in her porter. She could barely see over his shoulder and had to stretch her neck to discover what had caused his sudden stumbling and his cry of alarm. She saw the puzzling coat in Franklin's hand. She was puzzled even more when he began to shake its creases out and smell the fabric. 'It's Jackson's coat,' he said. The brother's name. Then Margaret spotted the body at Franklin's feet and was in shock herself. This bundle was a neighbor's son, the nightwatch boy called Nash, a boy she'd known very well since he'd been a baby and she, barely out of her teens, had been his little nurse. 'What's happened — let me see him.'

  She was too firmly trapped to his back to release quickly, so Franklin kneeled down by the side of the body, twisting so that she could see it clearly. Already it was smelling a little, like cured bacon. There wasn't any blood on the earth or on the coat. No wounds. No sign of blows or bruises.

  'There's not a mark on him,' Franklin said. 'Just look at those.' He lifted his chin to indicate the carcasses of mules, horses and donkeys. There was, as well, a single dog. Franklin closed the boy's eyes, then cleaned his fingers in the soil. 'There's not a mark on him,' he said again.

  'There's something else,' said Margaret. She had to concentrate to hit upon the oddity. She was not familiar with human corpses. But still it came to her, a chilling absence. 'No flies. These tetherings are always full of flies. They love the horses. But there's not a single one. Can you see one?' Both she and Franklin put their hands across their mouths and stepped away. They held their breath. No flies.

  So Margaret's premonition had been correct: here was pestilence, or flux of some new sort, that did not care if you were man or fly or horse or mule or (now that they were hurrying into Ferrytown and discovering more beastly cadavers at every step) chicken or hog or dog or rabbit. The ground outside the stockades was scattered with animals. Even before they found the second human victim, Margaret had begun to blame herself. Who else? She'd been the first to host this current flux — so maybe she had passed it on to her grandpa and he'd brought it back into the town once he had left her safely in the Pesthouse. And without the benefit of barbering and pigeons to protect them, every beating heart in the village had been stilled. Yes, every beating heart. She guessed exactly what she and Franklin would discover if they dared to go beyond the stockade and the palisades. Not a single fly. No living creatures, other than the few travelers and the birds that had arrived since death had done its work. No welcome from her family.

  7

  WHAT SHOULD Franklin and Margaret do, other than flee the valley as quickly as their bodies would allow? They dare not squander any time on shock or lamentation. Any thought that Franklin might have had of settling or tarrying in Ferrytown could come to nothing now. This was the habitation of the dead. The living had to turn their backs on it and speed away.

  They'd entered through the western gate, the usual threshold for emigrants, and walked a good distance from Nash's body before discovering another human form or, indeed, any greater signs of widespread disaster. At the outer palisade, they'd passed within a few paces of where Jackson had gone out, barefooted, in the middle of the night to urinate for the last time and where his mighty body was still lying, coatless, doubled-up and finally incapable of defending itself against even the beak of a crow. But Jackson was not discovered. In fact, Franklin never found his brother's body. He found only the coat and, later — possibly — his shoes. So one slim hope was allowed to take root and cling to life during the months ahead, the not uncomplicated hope that somehow Jackson had survived and might return, as big as ever, to reoccupy his piebald skins.

  There could be no such hope for Margaret's family, however. The second human corpse they found was in her compound. Her younger brother, less than Franklin's age, was still in bed, his eyes wide open, staring at infinity from his wood cot on the screened veranda.

  They persevered. Franklin held her legs. Margaret wrapped herself more tightly round his back. They went into the house. Her grandpa was in bed as well. So was her elder sister. So was her ma, her hair spread out across the pillows that all too recently she'd shared with Margaret's pa but now shared with the little serving niece called Carmena. The second brother — with Jefferson, the family rat catcher curled up at his side, the dog's ears still perked as if his hearing had outlasted death — was in the parlor, by the grate. Only Margaret's room and bed were empty. No corpses there. Her luck was inconceivable.

  Across the courtyard, in the annex house, Margaret's younger, married sister, Tessie, her husband, Glendon Fields, and their boy, Matt, were almost hidden by their quilts but unmistakable — a balding man and the tops of two brown heads with just the slightest hint of red. All the hens were dead, their feathers still as beautiful and soft as the day Margaret had gone up Butter Hill. The other dog, the little terrier Becky, had deserted from her usual guard duties at the rear door, but there was no yapping from anywhere else. The compound seemed so quiet and ordered that it was easy to imagine that at any moment this merely inert, suspended world could spring alive again, that this was only sleep and that the compound's residents were simply resting late, untroubled by the light or by the summons of their usual daily duties. Death normally expressed itself more forcibly. But here it seemed that everyone had merely tumbled into a longer, deeper dormancy than usual. The one truly ugly sight was a neighbor's dove that must have ventured out at night and died in flight, only to tumble into Margaret's yard and strike its head against a water pot. Its neck was broken, and there was blood, dried almost black, around its beak and underneath a wing.

  It was Franklin who broke the silence. 'We mustn't stay. You see how dangerous it is? Just smell the air.' But first, before she could even consider her departure, Margaret wanted at least to feel and suffer the family earth beneath her feet, so Franklin released her from her mobile chair on his back, equipped her with a walking stick, and let her lean on him while she went around and paid her brief attention to the members of her family. 'Try not to touch,' he said, but did nothing to stop her folding their arms, closing their mouths, covering their faces with their blankets, pressing a fingertip kiss onto her mother's cheek. It was a numb experience. No weeping. Margaret's body, drained already by her own illness, had shut down many of its functions, concentrating on the most urgent, which was the impulse to be dutiful quickly and then escape. Weeping was not urgent. There would be time for that. Besides, Margaret was too overwhelmed to feel much more than guilt. This slaughter surely was her fault.

  There did not seem to be much evidence of flux on her family or on any of the many non-human bodies they had passed, no traces of vomiting or diarrhea, no rashes or blood. But what explanation could there be other than that her illness of a few days — perhaps released by her to go about its mischief the moment that she had broken its murderous grip — had passed through her feet, through Franklin's hands, and started its own descent down Butter Hill, had somehow strengthened while it had dined off her and ended up so strong that it had been able to sweep away these many lives with hardly more than a bruise and a single bloody beak to signify its cruelty?

  There could be no funerals. Margaret, on her knees at the porch, between the herb pots and the little chair her father had made for his children but that now
was the resting place for their dead cat, merely said the simple words of the burial lament to herself, too dry mouthed and appalled to sing them. All of the rhyme words — done, alone, fade, gone, bone, shade — seemed to fall like dead weights from her mouth whereas whenever she'd sung or recited them before, at neighborhood funerals, the lament had always been comforting and measured and perfectly sufficient.

  Franklin and Margaret did their best to avoid encountering any more bodies too closely as he carried her through the Ferrytown lanes toward the river. That wasn't hard. There were hardly any bodies in the public spaces. So far as they could tell from what could be seen when they dared to peer through open gates into the compounds and through windows into rooms, nearly everyone, not just her own family, had died while they were sleeping. That was an oddity, surely, because a pestilence will always take the weakest first and the strongest last, so that normally the deaths would be spread throughout the day or even spread throughout a month.

  The only bodies that they did discover — dressed but fallen at the steps of their oven house — were those of the baker and his daughter, both on their backs and looking more startled, though no more ashen, than usual. Franklin was praying not to find the body of his brother, even though he was expecting to. Margaret was fearful of discovering the body of Becky, the missing family terrier. If only Becky had survived, she thought, there'd be something left to love. The thought of Becky still alive was enough to make Margaret call out her name and for Franklin to join in, except that once he understood that Becky was a dog, he called out 'Anyone?', 'Someone?', 'Is there anybody there?' And once or twice he called out Jackson's name. It must be possible that someone had survived, they reasoned, that at least one breathing body was still sick in bed and might be strong enough to tell them what had come to pass in Ferrytown.