Quarantine: A Novel (37 page)

“Almost twenty.”

“Really? Well, you have steady hands.”

The doctor moved toward the door, but paused when Sameeka

asked, “Will you stay for a bite to eat, Doctor?”

“I’d love to, but the medical supplies are being offloaded and

delivered to the pest-house, and I’m terribly shorthanded.” He

glanced back at Dr. Wiggins. “This mid-August heat has only

made the situation worse—we’ve lost a lot of people in the last

day or so, and we’ve admitted several dozen more cases. It’s like watching the tide rise.”

Emanuel said, “I helped Giles in the pest-house earlier. I can

again.”

Dr. Bradshaw nodded his appreciation and started to climb

the companionway.

“I’ll come, too,” Leander said.

The doctor paused and turned around. “Hasn’t your entire

family been lost since this fever began?”

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“Yes,” Leander said.

“Then you should stay away from the pest-house.”

As he began to turn and climb the companionway, Leander

said, “No, I want to help.”

This time the doctor continued to climb the companionway,

his legs taking each step slowly. “Very well, then,” he said with resignation.

R

There was a smell, hot and familiar, a good smell. Giles opened his eyes and looked up at Marie. Strands of hair curled down across

her cheek. She was holding a bowl of clam broth. He raised his

arm and with his fingers drew her hair back from her face.

She smiled. “You must try to eat.”

Before he could speak, she brought a spoonful of broth up to his lips—the heat, the taste of the sea. He swallowed, though his throat was dry and sore. “Where’s Emanuel? Leander?” he whispered.

“Gone to the pest-house,” she said.

He tried to sit up but couldn’t—and he looked down at the

sheet over his legs.

Marie offered another spoonful of broth, which he took

reluctantly before settling back into the pillows. “Dr. Bradshaw was here?”

“This afternoon.”

He turned his head and looked toward the porthole. The small

circle of sky was a cobalt blue. “It’ll be night soon.”

She put the bowl on a table and picked up a small brown bottle.

“No more laudanum,” he said. “Not now.”

He looked at her until she said, “What?”

“Samuel and that Boston man, Mr. Clapp—what’s happened

to them?”

“Emanuel says they have been placed under arrest.” She

glanced away. “More broth?”

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He shook his head. “You’re not telling me something.”

Her eyes turned back on him, sad and wounded. “Word about

this medicine it goes through Newburyport. A mob. They stand

outside the jail, very angry.” She held her fist up to the side of her neck. “They want to
hong
these men.”

“Hang. We don’t use the guillotine here.”

“And others, too.”

“Ellsworth, the constable.”

“Oui.
And a farmer.”

“Simon Moss.”

“They cannot decide what to do with these men—the court it

is closed because of the fever, so they sit to rot on the jail.”

Giles gazed up at her for a moment. “Is there any more of that

broth?”

R

In the morning Miranda rode in an open carriage down to Lunt’s

Wharf. Benjamin drove and accompanied her aboard
The Golden

Hand.
Emanuel Lunt’s wife took them below to the cabin where Giles lay in a sleeping berth. To Miranda’s surprise, Marie was

there, rinsing out towels in a bowl of soapy water. Marie gave her a sidelong glance and continued with her work. By her dress and her manner, both severe and utilitarian, she was hardly recognizable.

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand up, Mother,” Giles said.

Though his face was pale and gaunt—more so than usual—his

eyes were bright.

“Strange,” she said, her lips trembling. “How often have you

visited my bedside? Is this your way of avoiding such duties?”

“I’m afraid it may be some time before I can provide you ser-

vice as a physician again.”

The bed sheet was draped over something square, a stool per-

haps, to keep it off his amputated leg. “Your condition may inspire me to remain healthy.”

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“Then this might be construed as a form of prevention,” he

said, smiling weakly.

“I’m still in need of your services, however, if only in an advi-sory capacity.”

“At the moment, that’s the only capacity I’m capable of—

please, sit?”

Emanuel Lunt’s wife brought a chair from the corner.

“Thank you.” Miranda sat down and took a moment to

arrange her skirts about her before looking at her son. “You know of Samuel’s fate?”

“I’m aware that he’s in jail.”

“That’s bad enough,” Miranda said, “but I’m more concerned

about the outcry all this has caused. Last night I’m told a mob

gathered outside the jailhouse.”

“They’re afraid, Mother, and they’re very angry.” Marie

came to the bed and laid a damp, folded towel across his fore-

head. “I’ve been giving this some thought,” he said. “In a few

hours it will prove to be another hot day, and I would like to

get out of this cabin—out where the air is fresh. Perhaps you

might assist me?”

“How so?” Miranda asked.

“Could you send down several of your stable hands in a

wagon—not one of your fine carriages, but that wagon I drove

to Newbury. It will take at least four strong lads to carry me up in this bed.”

“This might be arranged,” Miranda said. “But why a wagon?”

“It’s to transport me to the pest-house.”

Marie paused in her work as she rinsed more towels.

“Are you mad?” Mrs. Lunt asked.

“Thank you, my dear,” Miranda said.

“Sameeka, my mother is always seeking beneficial alliances.

Take caution.”

“Sameeka?” Miranda said, and Mrs. Lunt nodded warily. “I’ve

heard that you’re one of the most beautiful women in this port, but 299

j o h n s m o l e n s

you also possess an ample portion of common sense—something

my son does not have. In this condition, he should not be moved.”

“I’m of no use, lying here,” he said.

“But what has this to do with Samuel’s plight?”

He closed his eyes a long moment. “Just get me up to the Mall,

and we shall see.”

Miranda sighed, getting to her feet. “If I do not help, you’ll

find another way to get there, won’t you? So I will send a wagon.”

As she turned to leave the cabin, Marie said, “I must to do

everything I can for him, Madame. ”

Miranda said, wearily, “Yes, I believe you will.” She paused

at the cabin door, which Sameeka held open for her. Brilliant

sunlight came through the open hatch at the top of the compan-

ionway stairs. The air was extremely close and there was the faint smell of blood. For a moment Miranda closed her eyes against

the heat, the light. “We are not a common family,” she said,

though she didn’t seem to be talking to anyone in particular. “I may be accused of many things, and perhaps rightfully so, but I

am not common.” She opened her eyes, and turning she studied

Marie’s peasant’s clothes and the unkempt hair that clung to her forehead, which glistened with sweat. “I knew you were not

royalty,” she said, “but I didn’t realize that you are something far more substantial.”

Marie appeared confused, but then Sameeka said something

in French, and Marie looked at Miranda and bowed her head.

R

Several hours later, four stablehands came aboard
The Golden
Hand.
They tied Giles to his bed so he could be hoisted up to the deck, a slow, elaborate procedure that took place in the rising heat of the afternoon. Sameeka was by turns horrified and outraged.

Marie took charge of the operation, giving orders to the men.

Once Giles was aboard the wagon, she climbed up next to him.

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“Don’t do this, please,” he said. “Stay here with Sameeka and

the children.”

“I work at the pest-house before, and you need help,” she said.

“Besides, you can’t stop me.”

“No, I suppose I can’t.”

The wagon, pulled by two drays, moved off the wharf, and

Giles could feel every bump and jolt in his leg. He was facing

backwards, and Sameeka and her children, Francois and Domi-

nique, waved as they stood in the bow of
The Golden Hand.
It was a slow, painful journey through Market Square, up State Street, to High Street. When they entered the Mall, Giles could smell the

smoke from the pest-house fires. He could not see forward, but

as the wagon approached the gate he looked back at the trampled

grass surrounding the Frog Pond.

“It’s gotten worse,” he said to Marie, who was leaning against

the side rail of the wagon. “The vendors have closed up their

booths and moved away. Even Reverend Cary and his congrega-

tion have abandoned this place.”

“They are to be afraid.” Marie looked up toward the burying

hill, where a wagon climbed slowly toward its summit.

Dr. Bradshaw led a group of orderlies out through the pest-

house gates, giving them instructions as they carried Giles and

his bed inside the grounds. Volunteers walking between the

tents, many carrying bundles of bedclothes or pushing small

carts loaded with supplies, paused to watch him pass. Their

faces were weary, their eyes woeful but also curious. One old

woman said, “God bless you, Doctor,” before she continued

down the path.

Giles was brought into the tent next to the one that Dr. Brad-

shaw used as the office. Though the side flaps had been raised, it was stifling beneath the canvas top, and flies constantly buzzed about Giles’s face. While Marie went to find water, Bradshaw

changed the dressing on Giles’s leg.

“Eli,” Giles said. “We have the medicine here now?”

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“Yes, we’re starting to use it again, though we have so many

cases now. It’s just too early to tell if it will make any difference.”

Bradshaw glanced up from his work, and leaned over Giles’s leg

again. “But we don’t know what happened to the money we

gave to Uriah Clapp—it wasn’t found aboard the
Miranda,
and he refuses to say what he’s done with it.”

“Have them brought here.”

“Here?”

“Yes, all of them. There was a riot outside the jail last night?”

Bradshaw nodded.

“Have Thomas Poole bring them up here.”

“In one respect, they will be safer than in the jail,” Bradshaw

said. “I understand that crowd very nearly broke in last night. No mob is likely to try and break in here, eh?”

Marie returned with a pitcher of water. Giles drank two

tumblers quickly, and closed his eyes, sweat stinging his lids. He drifted off to sleep to the sounds from the other tents, the moans and cries of the afflicted. Somewhere a child was shrieking.

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on the Ground

Twenty-Nine

That afternoon Leander was put to work in the pest-

house. An old woman named Esther L’Amour gave him a wax-

coat and took him to the fire pit behind the laundry vats where, using leather gloves and a pair of long steel tongs, he filled a pushcart with hot stones. She trained him to wrap patients in

fresh linen and lay on the stones so that the heat would penetrate certain internal organs. In an hour he was working on his own.

He was walking his empty cart back to the fire pit when he

noticed the cloud of dust rising up from the direction of the Frog Pond. The volunteers working at the laundry vats were all looking in that direction, too, and soon there was a sound that seemed to come from the cloud—voices. Some were chanting, while some

merely shouted threats.

Leander left his cart by the fire pit and walked to the fence

that enclosed the pest-house—it was over six feet high, but he

could climb up on a stack of rocks and see over the top. A hay

wagon, surrounded by an angry crowd, approached the gates of

the pest-house. There were several men standing in the wagon,

all of them with their hands tied together at their waists. Leander 305

j o h n s m o l e n s

recognized Mr. Ellsworth, Simon Moss, and Samuel Sumner, but

there was also the frail old man with white hair and a beard who had been aboard
Miranda.
The crowd shouted at the men, and a few threw things at them, a head of cabbage, a tomato, and what

was either a rock or a quahog shell. The gates opened, admitting the wagon, but the crowd showed no intention of entering the

grounds. As the gates closed, they put up a series of loud huzzahs.

Leander jumped down off the rocks and ran through the maze

of tents until he reached the wagon as it came to a halt in front of Dr. Wiggins’s tent. Several orderlies helped the four men down

off the wagon, while others collected around the open-sided tent, and Leander had to push his way through so that he could see. The four prisoners were lined up before Dr. Wiggins, Dr. Bradshaw,

and Emanuel Lunt. There followed a long moment when no one

spoke, and three of the prisoners looked about at the orderlies as though they expected to be attacked—the old man, however,

stared at the ground and didn’t seem aware of anyone else.

“Thank you for coming,” Dr. Wiggins said pleasantly. “These

good volunteers have worked tirelessly, and they could use some

help—”