Quarantine: A Novel (29 page)

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Miranda decided to spend some time in her garden before the

day became too hot. She wore her wide-brimmed straw hat and

weeded on her hands and knees. She had conscripted Cedella to

help, and the girl was working along the fence. After a while,

Samuel strolled out from the house and stood at the edge of the

garden. Miranda sat back on her haunches and with a handkerchief mopped the perspiration from her face. He didn’t say anything,

but just looked at the flowers, his hands in his pockets. It was remarkable that he could look so proprietary yet so utterly stupid at the same time.

“The roses are coming along nicely,” he said.

“Cedella, fetch me a glass of water.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

As the girl got to her feet, she let out a startled yelp.

“What is it now?” Miranda said.

The girl was staring at the ground. Samuel walked over, bent

down, and picked up a large dead bird by its feet. The feathers

were a glossy blue-black in the sunlight, and there was a bloody, gaping wound in its chest.

“It’s Father’s crow,” Samuel said, incredulous.

“I gather that,” Miranda said. “Must have been sheer luck. Do

get rid of it.”

Samuel tossed the bird over the high, whitewashed fence into

the street. “Done,” he said, brushing his hands together as he

walked back toward the house.

R

South of Newbury green, Benjamin and Leander came to the

farm owned by Simon Moss. They pulled the wagon inside the

barn, and Benjamin instructed Leander to begin loading it with

boxes of vegetables and fruit.

Benjamin started across the barnyard.

“Where’re you going?” Leander asked.

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Benjamin looked over his shoulder and said, “You are to

take your sweet time and stay there in the shade of the barn.

Understand?”

“No, I don’t understand.”

“If you’re going to be my assistant, you’re going to have to

just do as I say.”

Benjamin continued across the yard to a small outbuilding, and

when he opened the door Leander caught a glimpse of a woman

with long blond hair. Benjamin stepped inside and pulled the

door shut.

“‘Take your time,’ he says.” Leander picked up one of the crates and placed it in the back of the wagon. It was full of carrots—he broke one off a bunch, went over to a pile of hay, and lay down.

“I’m taking my time.” He cleaned the dirt off the carrot. “Yes,

this is fine. I’ll just eat this nice carrot, then I’ll load another crate, and then maybe I’ll take a little nap. This job could take the rest of the morning.”

As he bit into the hard, sweet carrot he heard a sound from

farther back in the barn, and it made him sit up. There were stalls with horses, but this was the sound of footsteps, running footsteps.

Leander got up from the pile of hay and walked back through

the barn. Horses gazed from their stalls with large, suspicious eyes.

The doors at the back of the barn were open and he could look

out on sloping green acres of tilled fields. Miles in the distance was the salt marsh which lay inside Plum Island. Leander stood at the edge of the shade cast by the barn roof, feeling the heat come up off the sun-dried earth. There was no one in sight, no movement

other than some birds pecking at the ground.

He turned and went back into the barn, but stopped short—

hanging on a peg just inside the door was a leather satchel. He

approached and took the shoulder strap down off the peg and held the satchel in his hands. The leather was smooth and nearly black from wear, but the flap was held closed by a new buckle. The old buckle had broken off, and one night last winter Leander’s mother 228

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had sewn this new one on—they were her stitches, tight, close

together, as familiar to him as her signature. He hung his father’s satchel up on the peg and looked down across the fields again.

There was no one in sight.

He started back toward the wagon, but then he stopped at one

of the stalls. A bay hung its head out over the stall gate and he fed it the carrot. With his free hand he rubbed the horse’s soft nose, the warmth of her breath on his face. When the horse finished

the carrot, Leander turned to go back to the wagon, but through

the open gate of the opposite stall he noticed a stack of crates. He went into the stall and lifted the lid on one of the crates. It was full of bottles. He took one out, which had a label that read
Quinine.
He looked in another crate, which contained bottles filled with powders and pills. They were labeled as well.
Calomel, tartar
emetic, mercury, castor oil. laudanum.
There were a good thirty crates, stacked up in the back of the stall.

Leander returned to the wagon, which he began loading,

slowly, with fruit and vegetables.

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Twenty-Two

The woman’s screams could be heard throughout the

pest-house, relentless, horrific shrieks that became louder than the last until, just as Giles arrived at her tent, she fainted. Dr.

Bradshaw continued to tighten the tourniquet, but he could not

stop the blood that was spurting from her arm. Giles placed both hands about the incision in her forearm. He squeezed hard, but

warm blood only gushed up between his fingers.

“I lanced her other arm this morning,” Bradshaw said, “and

had no trouble stopping it.”

Her name was Greta Bundt. She might have been fifty. Her

arms were plump and her face was the color of bread dough. Sud-

denly her body convulsed, two, three times, her arm ripped out

of Giles’s hands and blood spewed everywhere—and just as sud-

denly she sank back on the cot as though pressed down by some

enormous phantom weight and she became absolutely still. Soon

the blood stopped pulsing out of the wound in her arm. He could

feel warm blood running down his face, and below his waxed

coat his trousers were soaked. Her eyes were open, unmoving.

“She’s gone,” he said.

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He looked up and saw that Marie had stepped inside the tent.

“It is their only chance,” Bradshaw said.

“No, Doctor, it’s not.” Giles was surprised by the vehemence

in his own voice.

“You’re piling hot rocks on them,” Bradshaw said hoarsely,

“and
that
is no remedy.”

“At least it doesn’t kill them.” Immediately, Giles regretted

what he had said.

“I’ll not have a surgeon telling me how to tend to my patients,”

Bradshaw yelled. “Bleeding is sound medical practice.” He stood

up and left the tent.

Giles looked down at the dead woman as he removed his

waxed coat, streaked with blood. Marie came over and stood

beside him, and after a moment she placed one hand lightly on

his shoulder. “Did you know her?”

“I know most everybody in Newburyport,” he said quietly.

“Mrs. Bundt’s husband was one of the Hessian soldiers that stayed on after the war ended. Had a leather-dresser’s shop on Green

Street and made a fine pair of boots. He died here last week.

They had a daughter who married and moved to Vermont. She

will learn of her parents’ death weeks from now.” Giles got to

his feet, but he couldn’t yet bring himself to leave. “There will be no ceremony, no one to mourn for these people, they’ll just

be added to the pit up on Old Burying Ground Hill,” he said.

“And that fool Reverend Cary is out there, preaching that they’re dying because they’re sinners. And there’s this weather, hot and damp, and we have hardly any medicine left. It’s only going to

get worse.”

“Then we must to pray for them,” Marie said.

“Do you?”

“Yes.” She blessed herself and began murmuring in French.

Giles stared down at Greta Bundt. Already, her body seemed to

have deflated. Her mouth was pulled down at the corner, creating deep wrinkles in her chin. Now she looked as though she might

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have been in her seventies. A cart drew up outside, and two men

came into the tent to take her away.

R

After supper, Leander went up to lie on his cot. His face felt taut, burned by the sun. He removed his shirt and sat on the stool by the water bucket. As he washed himself with the rag, he noticed the skin around Horseshoe’s bite was changing colors, as Cedella had said it would—red and yellow mostly. The punctures left by his teeth

were surrounded by swollen skin, purple and black. She had taken his hand and placed it against her cheek—so simple a gesture, yet it was as though she had reached down inside of him and left a mark, a brand,
Cedella Evora.
He wanted to run his hands over her skin, to feel her fingers on his back. She had lost family to a fever, too, and when she looked into his eyes it was as though she heard him, not what he said, but what he could not say.
Cedella Evora.

As he toweled off, something unusual about his cot caught his

attention. He went over and looked at the pillow. The shape was

not right. He picked it up with one hand, but immediately let go, startled by its heavy weight. Then there was the foul smell as the slimy entrails poured out of the slit in the back of the pillow—fish guts, pink and purple and bloody, saturated the straw mattress.

R

Miranda went into the kitchen and found Cedella filling a teapot with boiling water. There were rolls and a bowl of chicken broth on a tray.

“Who is this for?”

The girl stared at her nervously.

“You always seem like you’re hiding something,” Miranda said.

“You’re worse than the papists. You’re all so . . . guilty. I asked a simple question.”

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“Yes, Ma’am.” The girl had removed the bandage and linen

from her forehead; the bruise there had begun to turn yellow at

the edges, and the swelling had gone down.

“This tea, it’s for Master Sumner?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“He was not at dinner. He has succumbed to his daily ration

of drink already?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Is he ill?”

“I believe so, Ma’am.”

“I see,” Miranda said. “All right. I’ll finish preparing his tea and bring it to him.”

“Ma’am?”

“I am his mother. Might I not tend to my ailing son?”

“Of course, Ma’am.”

Miranda went over to a counter and picked up a sugar bowl.

“Is he in his library?”

The girl nodded and put the kettle back on the hook in the

fireplace. “Shall I carry the tray for you, Ma’am?”

“Nonsense. You have other duties to attend to, don’t you?”

“Of course, Ma’am.” The girl curtsied and left the kitchen.

Miranda surveyed the kitchen. Every surface had been

scrubbed down and wiped clean, and all the iron pots were

hung up. There was the pungent smell of soap that had always

appealed to her. This was a clean, orderly house because she

made it so. She took the small vial from the pocket of her

skirt and removed the cork. After one more look around the

kitchen, she poured a few drops into the bowl of broth, and a

few more into the teapot.

R

Scrubbed down with vinegar, Giles waited for Marie outside the

pest-house gate. She arrived in a fresh change of clothes that were 236

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nothing like the silk dresses she’d worn previously; the white

blouse had simple embroidery around the neckline, and her striped skirt gave a pleasant swirl as she walked.

“Sameeka’s doing,” he said.

“She is a fine seamstress. In the islands you wear clothes that

allow one to breathe.”

They crossed the Mall and went down State Street to Wolfe

Tavern. It was about ten o’clock at night, yet there were few

patrons. Marie consumed a bowl of fish chowder, but Giles wasn’t hungry; instead he drank a pitcher of dog’s nose.

When he ordered his second pitcher, Mr. Ellsworth, one of the

senior constables, came in and stood at the bar. Giles refilled his tankard and looked at the man who, despite the heat, insisted upon wearing a wig. There had long been rumors about Ellsworth,

flaunting his authority, yet it was widely held that he would be the next high sheriff, after Thomas Poole.

“What is it?” Marie asked. When he didn’t respond, she said,

“I do not understand this expression. One minute you have the

look of exhausted—and now you look to be the one with angry.”

“It’s because I was thinking of a Mr. Clapp,” Giles said, loud

enough for Ellsworth to hear. At the bar, the constable looked

over his shoulder. “A gentleman from Boston,” Giles continued.

“A Mr. Uriah Clapp—he came to Newburyport to represent a

group of men who wished to remain anonymous. He said it was

a matter of ‘privacy and decorum.’”

Ellsworth glared at him for a moment, and turned back to the

bar, where he was speaking to Darby Conover, who operated a

chandlery down on Middle Street. Giles got up from the table.

Marie took hold of his hand, but he pulled it away. He went

over to the bar and said, “It’s a crime—the lives of our friends, our neighbors.” When Ellsworth looked at him again, he added,

“They will have less of a chance to survive this fever because the apothecaries were pilfered by an anonymous party, represented

by this Boston man.”

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“You sound like you’re making an accusation, Doctor Wig-

gins.” Ellsworth was taller, far more substantial, and though he might be a decade older, he was still a very imposing figure.