The Frontiersman’s Daughter (39 page)

65

By the tenth day, Sophie Lambert and Flowner Beel had been buried, and four more lay dying. Lael leaned over the little boy, no longer crying now for lack of strength, the long-lashed eyes closed, the tiny body a mass of pocks.

“Just rock him, Lael,” Ian told her. “Just rock him oot of this world and in tae the next.”

Gently, she lifted the child and her tears fell on the little face that had once been soft and white. Not far from them, on a shared pallet, lay both the boy’s parents in the grip of fever, oblivious to their wee son. And so Lael rocked and rocked. For hours she rocked, until her arms and legs grew numb and Ian knelt beside her chair, making her stop.

“It’s over, Lael,” he was saying as gently as he could, taking the small, still body from her. When they went to bury him, she put her face in her apron and sobbed. Try as she might, even Jane, now crying as well, couldn’t comfort her. When Ian returned, he picked her up as if she was light as a corn-husk doll and carried her up the steps.

His voice was stern as he placed her on the bed. “Your strength is gone, Lael. I canna have you downstairs any longer. Jane has made you a cup of tea. Drink it and rest.”

He walked away from her then, going over to where a handsome medicine chest stood against one wall. She took a sip of tea and found it strong, almost bitter, and wondered if he’d added something to it. He was mixing medicines now, adding water, and rummaging through a drawer in the chest. She marveled at his endurance, and yet she knew his strength was not his own. God’s strength was in him. How many times had she seen him at prayer, lips moving silently as he leaned over first one patient and then another, taxed to his physical and mental limits? There had often been an unmistakable sheen in his eyes, and the sight made her own composure crumble.

It seemed odd as she lay there and watched him, how he stood so tall one minute but now leaned a bit. She saw his right hand reach out and grasp the top of the chest as if to steady himself. Then he swayed and fell, and the glass vials he had been holding shattered to pieces on the hardwood floor.

She bolted upright, the hot tea spilling on her as she dropped it in horror. By the time she reached him Colonel Barr was beside her, his own face a mask of fear.

“Dear God in heaven,” he nearly shouted, “what shall we do now?” And it seemed to Lael more anguished words had never been spoken.

Together, they dragged him to the bed. Weeping once more, Lael removed Ian’s boots while the colonel removed his linen shirt, stained with the medicines he had been mixing.

In that short time he’d already passed into unconsciousness. She lay a hand against his flushed cheek. He was burning with fever, and she knew the pox had him. Why hadn’t she seen it sooner?

“I must send for Ma Horn,” Colonel Barr said and then left them alone.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Lael took one of Ian’s hands in her own, much as he had done that first night. She looked down at his long, strong fingers, lacing them through her own. “Ian, if you can hear me, know that I will take fine care of you.” But to her own ears the pledge seemed woefully inadequate. Leaning over, she pressed her ear to his chest and listened to his heartbeat, sure and strong. He had a mild case, is all, she reasoned. Soon he would be up and they would all go on as before.

Ma Horn arrived, and though Lael was heartened to see her, she worried that at her advanced age she wouldn’t last long. In all her years, Ma Horn had never known smallpox, had only heard of it. Having lived most of her life in the wilderness, she’d never been exposed to the disease until now.

At Lael’s request, Colonel Barr rode out to see how Ransom and the Blisses fared and came back with a good report. They were likely to be fine as long as they stayed put. Lael was thankful, though it seemed a wonder that only a few miles away life went on as peaceful as before, while in this room they seemed trapped at the very gates of hell.

Just as Ian said, it helped to think of things other than the misery around them. While he’d confessed to praying and thinking of Scotland and her, she thought of him and her own homeplace, now more dear than ever before.

She was loath to leave his side. Always someone was with him, providing him the same care he’d given others, but she stayed near. Through the first days of fever she waited, for now she knew what to expect. Always the fever first and then the rash, which gave way to the unsightly pocks—with a great deal of suffering in between.

When she could no longer keep her eyes open, she lay down beside him atop the coverlet. What would have shamed her before now seemed of no consequence. When the fever climbed and he grew restless, she pulled a chair close and read aloud from his Bible. Which passages were his favorites? She wished she’d asked him sooner.

There were so many things about him she didn’t know. His middle name. His birthday. The story of his conversion. She found that he’d marked Psalm 23 with black ink and scribbled a date in the margin as well, and this she read aloud again and again until he quieted.

“He sure ain’t restin’ easy,” Ma Horn said, bringing rags and a fresh pail of water with which to cool him.

“I have some brandy in my cabin. Some rum as well,” the colonel told them. “Perhaps a good dose of that would help.”

But Lael shook her head. “I think he would oppose it. I once heard him say liquor is good for amputations and little else.”

“He ain’t got no more of that opium, does he?” Ma Horn asked, wringing out a rag. “That poppy powder is powerful stuff.”

“I believe he used the last of it on the children,” Lael said. But she rose and went to the medicine chest anyway. Lifting the lid, she read the inscription there.
Medicine Chests. Put up or Refitted at Marshall’s Drug and Chemical Store, No. 56, Beacon Street, Boston.
An assortment of vials and bottles were arranged within, bearing such bewildering titles as Scot’s Pills, Rochelle Salts, Daffy’s Elixir, Goddard’s Drops, and Seignette’s Salts. Plus a number of herbs, both benefits and simples, as they were called, stood alongside the mysterious nostrums. Only a few names were familiar: foxglove, garlic, lavender, rose hips.

The second drawer contained a collection of lancets and surgical tools, and beneath these were mortars and pestles. At the bottom was more mixing and bandaging equipment and . . . the pearls. She stopped rummaging when she saw them. They lay curled in the corner, and beneath their milky whiteness lay a letter.

For several moments she stood, transfixed. Why were her pearls on the nightstand while these—Olivia’s pearls, as she’d come to know them—lay hidden in a drawer? She should not . . . dare not . . .

With one finger she pushed the necklace gently aside and saw the face of the letter.

In an ornate feminine hand the address read,
To Doctor Ian Alexander Justus, Fort Click, Kentucke Territory
. The return address bore but three words:
Olivia Lowe, Boston
.

At once she shut the drawer.

“There is nothing—nothing but a supply of medicines unknown to me,” she told them slowly.

And an exquisite string of pearls and one mysterious, lonely letter.

66

Soon Jane lay sick and three more were buried. With Ian so ill, the task of loading the dead onto the waiting travois and digging the graves fell to Lael and Colonel Barr. Riding out in the open air was bracing, even invigorating, but pulling a dead body was another matter. By the time she’d helped dig just one grave, she was spent.

“I believe,” Colonel Barr told her, “that your father would be rather proud.”

Would he? She looked at the man she’d never truly liked, the hard-won compliment warming her. Perhaps Pa would, at that. Eyes wet, she leaned against her shovel, letting the late-winter wind lick her cape. One buried. Two more to follow. She no longer looked at the faces of the dead, for at night they’d begun to appear in her dreams.

Riding back to the blockhouse, the movement of her horse lulled her to sleep. She swayed but the colonel caught her before she fell. Her body felt strangely detached, so weary as to be beyond feeling, and her head throbbed.

“You must eat,” Colonel Barr reminded her, but she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t, till Ian and Jane were well.

That night, Ma Horn cried out from the loft. She’d been tending the doctor, wiping him down and forcing water past his cracked lips, while Lael and Colonel Barr saw to Jane and the others. At the sound of her cry they rushed up the steps, and Lael felt she would never reach the top.

Ma Horn was as shaken as Lael had ever seen her. “He stopped drawin’ breath not once but twice now. I had to work his chest hard—both times—to make it start up again.”

Lael faltered, but the colonel’s hand gripped her arm, keeping her steady. “Twice, you say?”

“Aye. And his color’s changed a mite.”

Pulling free of the colonel’s hold, Lael went to the bed. Ian’s head lay heavy on the pillow, his disheveled hair a melee of damp black strands. Ma Horn turned the coverlet back to reveal a well-muscled chest covered with the telltale red spots. Reaching out, Lael placed one hand over his heart and waited. The beat that had been so strong and sure just yesterday was barely there. Dropping down on the bed, she pressed her ear close and listened. Weak, truly.

Ma Horn was looking at her, but Lael was afraid of those old, knowledgeable eyes, afraid they would tell her what the old woman could not bring herself to say. Numb, Lael sat up but did not withdraw her hand from his chest, afraid to let go.

“He’s awful weak,” Ma Horn said. “Goin’ out to the McClarys’ plumb sapped his strength, and then he come here to all this. He ain’t stopped yet, neither to sleep nor eat, to my way of thinkin’. ”

“There’s nothing you can give him? No herb or remedy of your own making?” the colonel asked.

“All I know of is foxglove, to shore up the heart. I could make a tea and we could try and ease it down.”

“Then do it,” he advised.

Lael was hardly aware of their leaving. How long was it before Ma Horn came back up and the two of them were trickling the tea, spoonful by spoonful, down his throat? This, Lael thought, was her own doing. He had given out because she’d refused him the day he’d come nearly begging her to help him. All of her pent-up hate and bitterness and stubbornness had not only killed the McClary widow but was killing Ian as well, right before her eyes. She’d felt the weight of her sin then, and she felt it now, along with a great and crushing grief.

Oh God . . . help me!

Dropping down beside the bed onto her knees, she put her face in her hands. But she couldn’t pray. Not one word passed from her heart to her lips. “Oh God . . .” she tried again, but the simple words seemed to choke her.

Ian was mumbling now, and her head came up. She reached for his hand and squeezed it as if that alone could stop the torrent of jumbled words. He was hot—so hot—was there no help for it? Even his hand seemed to singe her own. She heard him mumble snatches of Scripture and then her own name.

“Lael . . . Lael . . .” But it was not said in joy. She’d never heard him in such anguish, and it hurt her deep down, where she’d never hurt before.

“Ian—Ian! I’m here, right here beside you. You mustn’t fret so.” She lay cool hands on his perspiring face and called for more rags and cold water. Crying now, her tears fell onto his face and chest as she tried to cool him.
Oh Ian. I love you, love you, love you . . .
Her heart kept repeating the words, though her lips stayed silent. She had no right to love him at all. Why then did she feel the need to tell him?

She thought of Pa and the loving words she’d often thought but never voiced to him. Had he sensed her love? Could love be felt—or did it have to be spoken? Since Ian had returned to her cabin that one night, she’d dared to think he loved her. She’d felt it, hadn’t she? It was in his eyes when he looked at her . . . in his voice when he spoke to her . . .

Olivia? Did he just call out her name? Nay, it was her own name she heard, uttered again and again with the same intensity and sadness.

“I’m here, Ian. Right here.”

She could not stop crying. Was this love? Wishing his pain was her own? Wanting to take his place? The love she felt for him was unlike any she’d ever known. Didn’t Scripture say that God is love? Had He given her this love? Would He now take it away?

She lay her head on his bare chest, and the next thing she knew urgent hands were shaking her awake. Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes and saw that Colonel Barr and Ma Horn were cooling him down with snow. Like a sleepwalker, she got up and walked to the small loft window. Unlatching it, she propped it open with a stick. Great, white flakes swirled in a lovely winter’s dance. She left the window ajar and returned to the bed to help them.

It was late when Ma Horn sat back, resigned. Lael knew the look, and it set her heart to pounding. “I’ll set up with him a spell,” she said dully, looking more worn than Lael had ever seen her.

But Lael would not leave him.

“All right, but if there’s any change, you fetch me quick, you hear?” Ma Horn cautioned.

She was alone with him again, but there was nothing she could do for him. Nothing at all.

The shadow of death had come into the room.