The Pesthouse (11 page)

His knee had noticeably improved. It shifted in its socket once in a while. But it was much less painful. And it was hardly swollen. Nevertheless, every step Franklin took still seemed burdened not only by the weight of his own body and the lesser weight of Margaret and their possessions but also by the load of sorrow that finally began to take its toll on him. He had been too shocked and overcome by disbelief when he'd first observed the many dead. Then he'd been too busy in Ferrytown itself to feel much more than numb docility. But here — now that he was rid of Ferrytown and the sight of any corpses — the grief was overwhelming. Brother. Ma. He bore the weight and pushed against the water and the mud. He also wept. Just tears, no sobbing, no heaving chest. He felt as inundated as the landscape he was pushing through. The tears leached from his eyes, drawn out by gravity alone, it seemed.

Franklin could not tell if Margaret was watching him. Her eyes seemed wet as well, and hardly shut. He knew he ought to care if he was being observed by a woman, but he did not.

'I'm unhappy for my brother,' he explained to the body in the barrow. He could not use the word
crying
, although he was certain now that Margaret had been watching him. Such feebleness as his could never pass unwitnessed.

Jackson would have been appalled, especially as this display of weakness and emotion was partly in his name. His death or disappearance had occasioned some of the tears. No, Jackson would have said that weeping was undignified and cowardly. It showed a lack of self-respect.

When he'd been small and keen to keep up with his brother, Franklin had submitted himself to all the usual boyish rituals: allowing himself to be cut to bond a friendship with blood, submitting to being marked on the forearm with a smoldering twig, letting the dogs take meat scraps from his lips, handling ill-tempered snakes. Risks without purpose, he had thought. But Jackson and his comrades, quick to intimidate the smaller, well, the younger boy, had always warned him against refusing or admitting pain, or flinching. 'Be calm and silent. Be undismayed,' they'd said, the last word being one they'd heard the adult men use approvingly. Dismay was something for the girls. If you could cause dismay in girls, then that was satisfying. But Franklin could not be calm and silent in the face of dogs and twigs and snakes and knives. He could not bully girls. And certainly he was never undismayed. He had let Jackson down too often. He had always been dangerously close to tears. He still had the all-too-minor burn marks on his arm to remind himself of that.

Margaret, in fact, had hardly paid any attention to Franklin or anything he'd said since the middle of the afternoon. She was recovering in sleep. She would not even remember crossing to the east bank of the river. She had not heard the crashing and the splintering of the bridge. The boat barrow had been too safe and — nearly — comfortable. Franklin's hand was steady, his voice was soothing, and consciousness was hardly bearable, so she had clung to sleep. She could not say exactly what her dream had been, but this was certain: when she woke, the bridge and village were far behind and marked only by distant plumes of smoke. Her head was full of animals and frights and characters: three beds confused (the one at home, now ash; the Pesthouse bunk; the barrow, bucking like a ship, her feet caressed, her scalp torn free of hair by devils with wooden hands, the smell of death and vinegar); two bearded men (that Abraham, and that other, younger one but just as tall, her toes pressed into him); two birds (one pigeon burdened by the weight of plague, tumbling with its failing wings to crash among the sleepers at the foot of Butter Hill, and one of her neighbors doves, its neck broken, and black blood crusting on its beak).

But now that she had slept enough, Margaret could hear Franklin's voice, driving her beds and men and birds away. His word
unhappy —
'I'm unhappy for my brother' — had woken her. Her eyes were open slightly more, he noticed at once. Her chin was pointing at him attentively, and so he raised his voice a little. 'If he was here, if he was still alive — he
might
be still alive — he'd tell us what we need to do. He'd know the way.' She almost seemed to move and nod. 'And you're unhappy for your whole family More unhappy than I could ever be. For just one brother. I still have a little hope. I understand.'

He saw now that he or, at any rate, the mention of her family, now not
whole
at all, had made her cry. Full tears. Her cheeks were red and wet, and he felt better — no —
relieved —
for seeing them. Women are fortunate, he told himself. They are allowed to weep. They are encouraged to. That was how the duties of the world had been assigned. Crying for the women. Spitting for the men. Jackson could spit a fire out if he wanted to.

'My brother wasn't frightened of anything,' he added under his breath. A curse almost.

That aunt — the aunt who had strapped the healing pigeon to Franklin's feet when he was a sick boy — had not been very fond of Jackson and had judged his fearlessness to be infantile and foolish. 'Your brother's like a child, to be afraid of nothing,' she'd said, when Jackson was already bearded. Franklin had felt both ashamed and validated to hear her speak so disloyally. 'If his bed was on fire, he'd rather sleep with flames than run for water. Like a fool. If there was plague in the house, he'd rather die than cover his nose.' Franklin almost smiled to think of it. She was the perfect aunt for any nervous boy, because she had considered determination and bravery dishonest. (Although when she herself had died among the thousands during the Grand Contagion when Franklin was just starting on a beard of his own, she'd departed without a murmur of complaint, indifferent to death's indifference.)

These moments with his wise, dead aunt brought Franklin's weeping to an end. Wishing her or Jackson back on earth again, wanting to return to Ma, fearing the future, would not solve anything. Regret would not reveal a route ahead, and fighting for his manly dignity would not help. Dignity does not provide a supper. But he would at least attempt to remain undismayed for once. He had to find the confidence to deal with their immediate problems. If he wanted to survive himself and also take good care of Margaret like a neighbor, like a suitor, he would have to toughen up and sharpen up.

First, he'd need to understand the territory, to remember how to find his bearings from the pole star and the sun without his brother's help. And when the sun or stars were hidden by clouds or mist, he'd have to read direction from winds and birds and lichen. Only then could they decide a route that might take them to the drinking places and the beds, and the supplies of food and forage for travelers. What sort of welcome would they get now that they were among not their own people but 'the others' who might consider that they had no right to water or to go in peace or even to be alive? That they'd find out as they went along.

Franklin listened to the forest more intently now. He needed its advice. He felt lighter, weaker, suddenly, less able to manage the barrow and its cargo. He had to stop and rest. It was almost too dark to go on anyway. He had already given up any hope of reaching a welcoming community with beds for hire for that night. They were still too deep in the woods. Besides, there could be no welcome for a woman as ill as Margaret would still seem to be to any strangers. He had held out a little hope, however, that there could well be a trapper's habitation among the trees where they might bargain the use of a shed or beg hot food. Or an unused night shelter, possibly. Or a woodsman's abandoned soddy where they could be as snug as they had been inside the Pesthouse what seemed an age ago. He worried that Margaret might not survive a night without some shelter or some heat, even with the barrow as their bed. And he could not imagine lighting a fire for her or constructing a dry, roofed refuge in such deep mud.

In the end — the end of that day's light — they had little choice but to spend the night out in the open. There would be no habitations for a day at least, and Franklin was too tired to take another step. He did as much as he knew how. He let the barrow stand in open ground in water only ankle deep and as far from falling leaves and timber as was possible in such a busy wood. He gathered up their bulkier possessions — the clothes, the cattle skins, the coil of rope, the weighted fishing net — and made a pillow out of them at the head of the barrow. He stowed the valuables and the food, such as it was, in his own back sack and hung it from a branch that he hoped would prove inaccessible to animals. He suspended the water bags, too, and the flagons of juice.

Now there was room on the barrow for the making of a double bed, with a blanket, the second tarp and his brother's goatskin coat as the coverings. Finally Franklin placed the pot of kitchen mint at the end of their bedding, just beyond the reach of her feet. He climbed in next to Margaret, his two knives at his side, the hunting bow and arrows within reach. He stretched out, fully clothed, trying not to miss his supper or feel the unexpected cold, as all too quickly the forest yielded to the darkness that it loves.

Margaret was asleep again but breathing evenly. He joined her without difficulty. The day was failing, and there was nothing else to do. Either sleep, or lie awake and shiver. He should not complain that Sister Sun had denied him candles and warmth for this night when she had already provided so much daylight for free, and so much fine, unseasonable heat. And there they slept, back to back, the pale-faced shaven woman and the younger man, in their great wooden wheeled bed, between the canopies of trees, like children in a fairytale, almost floating, almost out to sea. So, finally, some happiness.

A COLD NIGHT had burdened the trees in frost, the season's first, and stiffened the standing water and the pools of mud with a glazing of ice. The couple had slept well. Margaret was the first to stir. She woke alarmed. All she remembered at first was that everything was either dead or up in flames. She could not remember what had happened the previous afternoon, after Ferrytown, or how they'd ended up enveloped by such unexpected woodland. It took her a moment to focus her eyes as usual. The distance always looked as if it needed a wipe, and she had trouble telling faces from afar. But she could soon see and appreciate what Franklin had set up for them the night before: the clearing in the wood, the barrow as a bed, the tarps and coat that kept them warm, the familiar pot of herbs at her feet, still flourishing in spite of everything. She sniffed the frosty air. Her nostrils were clear. Her body seemed to ache a little less. Her hands and throat were reassuringly cold.

There was a moment of unease, or at least apprehension, when she saw Franklin at her side, in bed with her to all intents and purposes. She'd never even been kissed by a man other than a relation. Until a few days previously, when Franklin had massaged her feet, she had hardly been touched by one. She understood that these were pressured times when conventions and proprieties didn't count for much. She felt, as well, that Franklin was most likely a man to trust. His laugh — how it shook his whole body down to his knees and fingertips, rather than simply creasing his face, how it seemed to loosen him and soften him — was attractive and unexpectedly womanly. She had seen him weeping, too, the day before, and that had been heartening in ways she could not begin to understand. He was a decent boy, she thought. A little nervous, possibly, and kinder and more gentle than his size might suggest. She probably owed her life to him. He had become her plague-removing pigeon in her imagination. And she allowed that she might owe her future life to him. But these were only daydreams and too comforting. For the moment, at least, she needed to be tougher, to chasten herself as coldly and as bluntly as she could, and to acknowledge how grave her situation was, Franklin or no Franklin. Ferrytown was history. Her family were ancestors. Her home was ash. Any chance she had was in the east, beyond the ocean. Most of her countrymen and countrywomen had already realized that. Her journey there had already begun. That was clear, and non-negotiable. She'd have to make the best of it.

Margaret pulled on her sandals and swung her legs over the side of the barrow. She ought to test her strength, she had decided, before her fellow woke. The trees were noisy with a rising wind and the susurrus of leaf fall. The ground was soft and reluctant to bear her weight, but she succeeded in taking a dozen steps around the barrow, touching anything she recognized. The pot of mint was heartening. She was relieved by how strong she felt: not strong enough to walk a great distance, perhaps, but sufficiently robust to busy herself around the clearing, checking what provisions they had got, what clothes he'd brought for her, what food and drink there was. There was no sign of her cedar box with its three talismans. Franklin had put it somewhere safe, no doubt. She was surprised only to find the platters and the silver wedding cup, touched to see that he had packed a comb and brush for her, and glad to discover the flagons of juice. This was juice that she had squeezed herself from apples and berries.

By the time she'd drunk more than her share from one of the flagons — her thirst was still not satisfied — Franklin was awake and sitting up in their shared bed just watching her.

'I've decided,' she said, resolving as she spoke that she would, at the very least, take him as a brother.

'Decided what?'

'Decided that I'll call you Pigeon. That's my name for you. Franklin sounds too dignified.'

'You think that I'm not dignified?'

'Not with that limp. How is your knee today?'

'It's better than it was

'And I'm better than I was as well, so, then... you see?'

'So, then, what should we do?'

'We eat, of course. You have a bow. Shoot something for our breakfast. Suddenly I'm starving.'

While Franklin was out of sight in the forest, though hardly silent, Margaret stretched their coil of rope between two trees and hung the net from it. She would fish for birds and with any luck would have food already cooked when he returned. His catch could be their supper. She found the spark stone and the pouch of tinder, but there was nowhere dry enough on the ground for her to start a fire. So she emptied the mint plant from its pot, that doorstep friend from her old home, and replanted it in the heavy silver cup that had been a showpiece heirloom in her family for a hundred years and more but never used before. Now the plant had to be the best-appointed mint in America. She firmed it in with extra, muddy soil around its tangle of stringy roots, then smelled her hands. That made her even hungrier.