Quarantine: A Novel (23 page)

Strong down there?”

“No.”

“Then this campaign doesn’t have God’s blessing and is des-

tined to fail.”

Neither of them spoke until Samuel turned his head on the

pillow and looked toward his grandmother. Miranda kept her head

down, working the needle and thread through the cloth.

Samuel got up off the bed, stepped into his shoes, and went to

the door, where he paused with his hand on the door latch. “You

know where Father slept last night?”

“Haven’t the faintest idea.”

“In the apple orchard.”

“He could use the fresh air, I’m sure.”

“Well after midnight he was walking around asking people to

drink from different bottles of wine.”

“Nothing unusual about that.”

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“No, but he’s also taken to bearing arms at all times.”

“Bearing arms?”

“Early in the evening, he had strapped on a sword and scab-

bard, but it got heavy and after a while he only had a pistol tucked inside his waistcoat.”

“Which tells you what, Samuel?”

“He’s afraid. He asks people to taste the wine, to taste the food because he’s starting to think it might be poisoned.”

Miranda put the needlepoint on the side table next to her chair.

“Well, have you?”

“No, not yet.”

Her grandson opened the door and let himself out of her bed-

room, but before he could close the door, she said, “This keeps

up, we’ll have to devise another method.”

R

After an hour of Madeira, thick slices of cheese, and bread, the haggling in Enoch’s library was too much for Giles. The wealthiest men in Newburyport were so miserly that they had offered

contributions which added up to a sum just shy of four thousand

pounds—and they did so begrudgingly, not out of concern for the

victims of the epidemic, but only because their ships would remain idle in the harbor until the quarantine was lifted. Disgusted, Giles excused himself, and he was shown to the front door by Fields.

“You have a carriage waiting, sir?” Fields knew very well that

Giles had walked.

“No, I prefer the exercise and fresh air.”

“Of course, Doctor.” Fields opened the door. “Pity but it does

look like rain.”

Giles stepped out on to the granite stoop. “The new boy.

How’s he doing?”

“I couldn’t say, sir, though I believe he’s been assigned to duties in the stable.”

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“That should suit him. I think I’ll have a walk around and see

if I can find him.”

“As you wish, sir.” Fields closed the heavy paneled door.

Giles gazed up at the sky a moment, which was overcast with

lowering clouds. He walked around the side of the house, past the garden, and as he approached the courtyard he saw Marie strolling in the apple orchard. She was wearing a green dress and carried a yellow parasol. He went down a small set of stone steps and entered the orchard, catching up to her on the far side of the pond.

“I am told you call them ‘bullfrogs’?” she said, gazing at the

lily pads on the pond. “There is one
beeg
one that comes up on the rocks every day. We play a little game of the hide the seek.”

“Hide and seek, yes.” Giles clasped his hands behind his back

as they began walking slowly around the pond. “It’s good that

you’re out of doors. I trust you are feeling better?”

“Oh, much.” They walked a moment in silence, and he

couldn’t help but notice that she allowed her arm to brush against his. “Your
remedee
worked wonders.” Closer still, and the rustle of her skirts, speaking an ancient tongue.

“Scientific discovery, it is a vast theater,” he said, and her

laughter was lighter than air. “The human anatomy is such a

mystery.”

“But that is
what attracts you to this profession, no, the mysteries of the body?”

“This is true.”

“I must admit I am intrigued by—how do you say—the
instinc-

tuals
of my body.”

“Yes, instinct is a marvelous thing, in a man, a woman—even

in a bullfrog.”

Again, she laughed, and then turned to gaze at him. Soft curls

framed her face, and her full mouth seemed swollen as though

ready to burst; it was a serious, determined mouth, but the look in her eyes was impish, conspiratorial. “Would you hold this,
s’il
vous plaît?”
She handed him the parasol, which he held above her 179

j o h n s m o l e n s

head as she opened the small purse that hung from her wrist and

took out a small silver flask. “I find the days here in your brother’s
houz
must to be boring in extremely. Like the food.” She opened the flask, took a sip, and offered it to him.

He raised the flask, thinking about how it had just touched

her lips, and it contained rum, which sent a warm flush through

him. He returned the flask to her, and they began walking again, slowly, the first drops of rain tapping on the taut fabric of her parasol.

“I suppose I must not get this dress wet,” she said. “It belongs to your mother, from the years ago when she had perhaps the first husband,
Monsieur
Sumner, no?”

“I believe so. She would have been very young when she fit

into that dress.”

“And then there was the second husband,
Monsieur
Wiggins, who was your father.”

“That’s right.”

“This happens often to the French madame. The one husband

he dies, and then she finds another, and he dies.” She took a sip from the flask, and then returned it to him. “And the children

they have these different names, and it becomes so very much

with the complications, no?”

“Yes, complicated.”

“Your mother lives with your brother.”

“Well, he is older.”

“You do not want her in your
houz?”

“I don’t have a house. I don’t have that kind of wealth.”

“I see.
Merci,
Doctor.”

“Giles, please.” He drank some of the rum and gave her the

flask.

She capped the flask and returned it to her purse. “Now I feel

most cured, Giles.” Her smile was playful, and looking at the sky she said, “The rain it is about to pour, no?”

“It is.”

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Giggling, she took hold of her skirts and broke into a run;

he followed her, and just as the rain began they entered a door

in the back of the stable, where the air smelled pleasantly of hay, horses, and leather.

R

Leander was working in the hayloft. The sudden downpour

sounded like rocks rattling on the slate roof above his head. Below, horses paced in their stalls, and then, despite the rain, he heard a noise from the back of the stable. He thrust his pitch fork into the mound of hay and went toward the ladder—but he paused when

he heard whispering, a female voice, accented and sweet. There

was the sound of footsteps below until a door closed.

Slowly, he leaned out over the loft railing. He could not

see them, not entirely, but the carriage directly beneath him,

the diligence, was rocking ever so slightly. A yellow parasol

leaned against one of the wheels. From inside the carriage there came more whispering. There were two voices, barely audible

because of the rain on the roof, a man’s and a woman’s. There

was laughter. A woman’s hand, graceful and slender, gripped

the window ledge, a small purse dangling from the wrist until

it was suddenly pulled inside, and soon a man’s frock coat was

draped over the ledge of one window, while a pair of white

silk stockings—woman’s stockings—was hung over another.

The vehicle began to sway, squeaking and groaning on its

metal springs. Leander kept perfectly still. Soon the nature of

the carriage’s motion became more repetitive, more urgent.

Leander understood what was happening now because he

had seen animals in the act. Pigs, cows, and horses, they all

mounted in some awkward way, joined desperately, it seemed,

and then fell into this same rhythm. There was gasping. There

was moaning, anguished moaning. Again, the woman’s hand

appeared on the window ledge, this time gripping the silk

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stockings so hard that the knuckles turned white. Her cries now

became utterly desperate.

So desperate that Leander wondered if he should climb down

from the hayloft and come to her assistance. He swung one leg

over the ladder, stepped down on the top rung, and began to

descend, but stopped when he saw a shadow cast from the open

door at the back of the stable. Leaning down until a rough-hewn

beam no longer obstructed his view, he saw the maid Cedella,

standing in the open doorway. Her uniform was soaked, causing

the dark fabric to cling to her. In her hand she held a wicker

basket filled with eggs. She was staring at the carriage, and then she gazed up at Leander.

He didn’t move.

She didn’t move.

The carriage rocked and swayed even more violently, until the

cries of its occupants exploded with desperate finality.

Cedella continued to stare at Leander, her eyes large with

wonder.

182

Eighteen

Miranda stood at her bedroom window, looking down

into the courtyard. She couldn’t remember a harder rain. Sud-

denly, she saw Cedella emerge from the open stable door and

run toward the house. She cradled a basket of eggs in her arms,

and when she stumbled two fell out and broke. The yokes were

quickly diluted by the rain, thin strands of bright yellow filling the crevices between the cobblestones. The girl caught her balance and rushed on toward the kitchen door.

Miranda had a good mind to put the girl out of the house.

She had dismissed staff for lesser offenses. Such would be a useful example to the rest of the household.

She was about to leave her window, when she saw something

in the darkness of the stable: something yellow, a paler yellow than the eggs—a parasol. And then Marie came out into the courtyard,

not running, but holding her skirt (one of Miranda’s old dresses, the green satin turning black with the rain) as she hurried toward the house. She seemed alarmed—perhaps because such a fine dress

might be ruined?—but there was something about Marie’s expres-

sion that baffled Miranda. For one moment the girl actually raised 183

j o h n s m o l e n s

her head and, tilting the parasol out of the way, allowed the rain to soak her face. And then she, too, disappeared into the house.

Again, Miranda was about to turn from the window when she

saw something else: beneath the roof peak, the new boy appeared

in the open hayloft door, staring down into the courtyard. He

raised his head until he saw Miranda in the second-floor window

of the house. He looked startled, as though he’d been caught in

some act of indecency, and he retreated into the darkness of the loft.

As she turned from the window, something else caught her

eye—a man running out of the stable door, his frock coat draped

over his head as a means of protection from the rain. It was Giles.

He crossed the courtyard and disappeared up the drive toward

the front gate.

Miranda took a long deep breath and exhaled slowly. She could

feel her heartbeat, rapid, faintly painful, as though she had just eaten a heavy meal.

She crossed the room, opened her bedroom door, and said,

“Fields.”

“Madame?” His voice resonated up the stairwell from the front

vestibule—when unoccupied, Fields often sat in the window-seat

there, where he could doze like a housecat. She listened to him

climb the stairs and when he reached the first landing, he looked up at her. “May I be of service, Ma’am?”

Miranda hesitated, touching her fingers to her lips.

After a moment Fields’s gaze became concerned. “Madame?”

“That new boy, what’s his name?”

“Hatch, Ma’am, Leander Hatch.”

“Bring him to me.”

“Is there a problem, Ma’am?”

“I want him sent to me. Now.”

She put her hand on the door latch but paused when she saw

the look on Fields’s face; he was clearly perturbed by the impropriety of her request.

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“Up here, Ma’am? To your bedroom?”

“That’s what I said. And tea, have Cedella bring my tea.”

R

The rain stopped as quickly as it had started, and as Giles walked to the Mall the late afternoon sun broke through the clouds.

The air was cleansed and everything—the grass, the fine gates

in front of the High Street mansions, the mane of a passing dray horse—seemed to be strung with diamonds, shimmering in the

angled light. He had not made love to a woman in a long time.

He was filled with a lightness that seemed entirely unjustified.

For some reason he wanted to go swimming, and when he came

in sight of the Frog Pond he was tempted to peel off his soggy

clothes and wade in, despite the fact that the water wasn’t even four feet deep.

On the far side of the pond there was almost a carnival atmo-

sphere. Each day since the pest-house had been established, more and more Market Square vendors had moved to the Mall to set up

their tents and stalls to peddle their wares. There were the smells of sweet taffy, boiled fish, shucked clams and oysters. A juggler moved through the crowd, brandishing gold balls in the air, and

a group of children laughed as they watched a puppet show. Giles purchased a loaf of black bread and continued on to the pest-house gate. The Reverend Cary wasn’t present, but his faithful stood