A Breath of Snow and Ashes (101 page)

62

AMOEBA

I
TURNED THE MIRROR OF the microscope a fraction of an inch further, to get as much light as I could.

“There.” I stepped back, motioning Malva to come and look. “Do you see it? The big, clear thing in the middle, lobed, with the little flecks in it?”

She frowned, squinting one-eyed into the ocular, then drew in her breath in a gasp of triumph.

“I see it plain! Like a currant pudding someone’s dropped on the floor, no?”

“That’s it,” I said, smiling at her description in spite of the general seriousness of our investigation. “It’s an amoeba—one of the bigger sorts of microorganisms. And I very much think it’s our villain.”

We were looking at slides made from the stool samples I had retrieved from all the sick so far—for Padraic’s family was not the only one affected. There were three families with at least one person ill with a vicious bloody flux—and in all of the samples I had looked at so far, I had found this amoebic stranger.

“Is it really?” Malva had looked up when I spoke, but now returned to the eyepiece, absorbed. “However can something so small cause such
a stramash
in something so big as a person?”

“Well, there
is
an explanation,” I said, swishing another slide gently through the dye bath and setting it to dry. “But it would take me a bit of time to tell you, all about cells—you remember, I showed you the cells from the lining of your mouth?”

She nodded, frowning slightly, and ran her tongue along inside her cheek.

“Well, the body makes all kinds of different cells, and there are special kinds of cells whose business it is to fight bacteria—the small, roundish sorts of things, you remember those?” I gestured at the slide, which being fecal matter, had the usual vast quantities of
Escherichia coli
and the like.

“But there are millions of different sorts, and sometimes a microorganism comes along that the special cells aren’t able to deal with. You know—I showed you the
Plasmodium
in Lizzie’s blood?” I nodded toward the stoppered vial on the counter; I had taken blood from Lizzie only a day or two before, and shown the malarial parasites in the cells to Malva. “And I do think that this amoeba of ours may well be one like that.”

“Oh, well. Will we give the sick folk the penicillin, then?” I smiled a little at the eager “we,” though there was little enough to smile at in the situation overall.

“No, I’m afraid penicillin isn’t effective against amoebic dysentery—that’s what you call a very bad flux, a dysentery. No, I’m afraid we’ve nothing much to be going on with save herbs.” I opened the cupboard and ran an eye over the ranks of bottles and gauze-wrapped bundles, puzzling.

“Wormwood, for a start.” I took the jar down and handed it to Malva, who had come to stand beside me, looking with interest into the mysteries of the cupboard. “Garlic, that’s generally useful for infections of the digestive tract—but it makes quite a good poultice for skin things, as well.”

“What about onions? My grannie would steam an onion, and put it to my ear, when I was a wee bairn and had the earache. It smelt something dreadful, but it did work!”

“It can’t hurt. Run out to the pantry, then, and fetch . . . oh, three big ones, and several heads of garlic.”

“Oh, at once, ma’am!” She set down the wormwood and dashed out, sandals flapping. I turned back to the shelves, trying to calm my own sense of urgency.

I was torn between the urge to be with the sick, nursing them, and the need to make medicines that
might
be of help. But there were other people who could do the nursing, and no one but me who knew enough to try to compound an antiparasitic remedy.

Wormwood, garlic . . . agrimony. And gentian. Anything with a very high content of copper or sulfur—oh, rhubarb. We were past the growing season, but I’d had a fine crop and had put up several dozen bottles of the boiled pulp and syrup, as Mrs. Bug liked it for pies, and it provided some vitamin C for the winter months. That would make a splendid base for the medicine. Add perhaps slippery elm, for its soothing effects on the intestinal tract—though such effects were likely to be so slight as to be unnoticeable against the ravages of such a virulent onslaught.

I began pounding wormwood and agrimony in my mortar, meanwhile wondering where the bloody hell the thing had come from. Amoebic dysentery was normally a disease of the tropics, though God knew, I’d seen any number of peculiar tropical diseases on the coast, brought in with the slave and sugar trade from the Indies—and not a few further inland, too, since any such disease that wasn’t instantly fatal tended to become chronic and move along with its victim.

It wasn’t impossible that one of the fisher-folk had contracted it during the journey from the coast, and while being one of the fortunate persons who suffered only a mild infection, was now carrying the encysted form of the amoeba around in his or her digestive tract, all ready to shed infective cysts right and left.

Why this sudden outbreak? Dysentery was almost always spread via contaminated food or water. What—

“Here, ma’am.” Malva was back, breathless from her hurry, several large brown onions in hand, crackling and glossy, and a dozen garlic heads bundled in her apron. I set her to slicing them up, and had the happy inspiration of telling her to stew them in honey. I didn’t know whether the antibacterial effect of honey would be likewise effective against an amoeba, but it couldn’t hurt—and might conceivably make the mixture a little more palatable; it was shaping up to be more than a trifle eye-watering, between the onions, the garlic, and the rhubarb.

“Phew! What are you guys
doing
in here?” I looked up from my macerating to see Brianna in the door, looking deeply suspicious, nose wrinkled against the smell.

“Oh. Well . . .” I’d become habituated to it myself, but in fact, the air in the surgery was fairly thick with the smell of fecal samples, now augmented by waves of onion fumes. Malva looked up, eyes streaming, and sniffed, wiping her nose on her apron.

“We’re magking bedicine,” she informed Bree, with considerable dignity.

“Is anyone else fallen sick?” I asked anxiously, but she shook her head and edged into the room, fastidiously avoiding the counter where I had been making slides of fecal material.

“No, not that I’ve heard. I took some food over to the McLachlans’ this morning, and they said only the two little ones had it. Mrs. Coinneach said she’d had diarrhea a couple of days ago, but not bad, and she’s all right now.”

“They’re giving the little ones honey water?”

She nodded, a small frown between her eyebrows.

“I saw them. They look pretty sick, but nothing like the MacNeills.” She looked rather sick herself, at the memory, but shook it off, turning to the high cupboard.

“Can I borrow a little sulfuric acid, Mama?” She’d brought an earthenware cup with her, and the sight of it made me laugh.

“Ordinary people borrow a cup of sugar,” I told her, nodding at it. “Of course. Be careful with it, though—you’d best put it in one of those vials with a waxed cork. You do
not
want to chance tripping and spilling it.”

“I definitely don’t,” she assured me. “I only need a few drops, though; I’m going to dilute it down pretty far. I’m making paper.”

“Paper?” Malva blinked, red-eyed, and sniffed. “How?”

“Well, you squish up anything fibrous you can get your hands on,” Bree told her, making squishing motions with both hands in illustrations. “Old bits of used paper, old rags of cloth, bits of yarn or thread, some of the softer sorts of leaves or flowers. Then you soak the mash for days and days in water and—if you happen to have some—dilute sulfuric acid.” One long finger tapped the square bottle affectionately.

“Then once the mash is all digested down to a sort of pulp, you can spread a thin layer of it on screens, press out the water, let it dry, and hey-presto, paper!”

I could see Malva mouthing “hey-presto” to herself, and turned away a little, so she couldn’t see me smile. Brianna uncorked the big square bottle of acid and, very carefully, poured a few drops into her cup. Immediately, the hot smell of sulfur rose like a demon amidst the miasma of feces and onions.

Malva stiffened, eyes still streaming but wide.

“What is that?” she said.

“Sulfuric acid,” Bree said, looking at her curiously.

“Vitriol,” I amended. “Have you seen—er, smelled it before?”

She nodded, put the sliced onions into a pot, and put the lid neatly on.

“Aye, I have.” She came to look at the green glass bottle, dabbing at her eyes. “My mother—she died when I was young—she had some of that. I remember the smell of it, and how she’d say as I mustn’t touch it, ever. Brimstone, folk called the smell—a whiff o’ brimstone.”

“Really? I wonder what she used it for.” I
did
wonder, and with a certain sense of unease. An alchemist or an apothecary might have the stuff; the only reason that I knew of for a common citizen to keep it was as a means of aggression—to throw at someone.

But Malva only shook her head, and turning, went back to the onions and garlic. I’d caught the look on her face, though; a queer expression of hostility and longing that rang a small, unsuspected bell somewhere inside me.

Longing for a mother long dead—and the fury of a small girl, abandoned. Bewildered and alone.

“What?” Brianna was watching
my
face, frowning slightly. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, and put a hand on her arm, just to feel the strength and joy of her presence, the years of her growth. Tears stung my eyes, but that could be put down to onions. “Nothing at all.”

I WAS GETTING TERRIBLY tired of funerals. This was the third, in as many days. We had buried Hortense and the baby together, then the older Mrs. Ogilvie. Now it was another child, one of Mrs. MacAfee’s twins. The other twin, a boy, stood by his sister’s grave, in a shock so profound that he looked like a walking ghost himself, though the disease hadn’t touched him.

We were later than intended—the coffin hadn’t been quite ready—and the night was rising around us. All the gold of the autumn leaves had faded into ash, and white mist was curling through the dark wet trunks of the pines. One could hardly imagine a more desolate scene—and yet it was in a way more fitting than the bright sunshine and fresh breeze that had blown when we buried Hortense and little Angelica.

“The Lord is my shepherd. He leadeth me beside—”
Roger’s voice cracked painfully, but no one seemed to notice. He struggled for a moment, swallowing hard, and went on, doggedly. He held the little green Bible in his hands, but wasn’t looking at it; he was speaking from memory, and his eyes went from Mr. MacDuff, standing alone, for his wife and his sister were both sick, to the little boy beside him—a little boy about Jemmy’s age.

“Though I walk . . . though I walk through the valley of death, I shall . . . shall fear no evil—”
His voice was trembling audibly, and I saw that tears were running down his face. I looked for Bree; she was standing a little way behind the mourners, Jem half-swaddled in the folds of her dark cloak. The hood of it was drawn up, but her face was visible, pale in the gloaming, Our Lady of Sorrows.

Even Major MacDonald’s red coat was muted, charcoal-gray in the last vestiges of light. He had arrived in the afternoon, and helped to carry up the little coffin; he stood now, hat somberly tucked beneath his arm, wigged head bowed, his face invisible. He, too, had a child—a daughter, somewhere back in Scotland with her mother.

I swayed a little, and felt Jamie’s hand under my elbow. I had been without sleep for most of the last three days, and had taken precious little food. I didn’t feel either hungry or tired, though; I felt remote and unreal, as though the wind blew through me.

The father uttered a cry of inconsolable grief, and sank suddenly down upon the heap of dirt thrown up by the grave. I felt Jamie’s muscles contract in instinctive compassion toward him, and pulled away a little, murmuring, “Go.”

I saw him cross swiftly to Mr. MacAfee, bend to whisper to him, put an arm around him. Roger had stopped talking.