The Pesthouse (7 page)

Margaret raised herself quite easily onto her elbows and peered through the thinning gloom at the body slumped at the side of her bed, a silent silhouette as still and heavy as a sack of grain. Was he alive? He hardly seemed alive. She dared to push his shoulder with her foot. No sign from him. She'd not detected any body heat. Her panic was shortlived but strong enough to make her cry out loud. What had he said? The pigeon drew the toxins out through the soles of the feet. The illness was defeated, but the pigeon died. Its warm and beating heart would stop protesting and its body would be cold and silent. She stretched her leg again, pushed her toes against his chest and waited for a heartbeat. Yes, Franklin was still warm, but even so she was not sure. She pressed again. A kick, in fact. An ill-judged kick. The sort of kick to wake a dog or mule.

ONCE MARGARET had washed herself and drunk a little water, and was, she said, 'now clean enough to show my face to the day', Franklin helped her to her feet. It would do her good to sit and recover in fresh air with views from the sunlit hillside down into the still-shaded valley of her home. This was the first time she had stood since her abandonment at the Pesthouse. He had to steady and support her for the few steps to the wooden door, and the more difficult fifty steps beyond to the fallen tree trunk that he had partly covered with one of his tarps, but he was glad of that, and glad as well to see her face in open light. Her eyes, without the distraction or the competition of any hair, were huge and thrilling.

'Your color's good,' he said, something that she'd never heard when she had heavy auburn curls.

Margaret could see at once that something odd had happened in Ferrytown. There was hardly any hearth smoke for a start. And at that time of day — too early in the town for the sun to make a difference — she would have expected to see the flames of braziers and courtyard lanterns, not yet doused in households lucky enough not to have to start work 'on the nose' at first cock.

Everything was indistinct in those murkier moments of morning. Perhaps she was mistaken and nothing was unusual, except her own state of mind — and her eyesight. Her eyes were good enough when she was face to face with work or conversation. Anything beyond a hundred paces was blurred. But later, once the sun had directed its angles above the treetops on the far side of the river and into the valley, Margaret could see her home in slightly less blurred detail. By now there should be fifty fires or more, she thought. The lanes and roads should be busy, as animals were led out of the tetherings and neighbors went about their tasks. The ferrymen's raft should be taking its first plunge across the river with its paying cargo of animals, carts and emigrants. There should be at least some movement near the guest houses.

'What do you see?' she asked Franklin. 'Can you see something moving?'

He looked with her, although he didn't know what she expected him to see. 'Nothing,' he said, meaning Nothing to Worry About.

'I can't see anything either,' Margaret said. 'Maybe there's something moving by the ferry beach. Is that a cart?'

Indeed, it was a cart. But by the evening the cart would still be there at the river's edge with its bewildered owners and some others newly arrived that day, yet no one living, no one able, no one in attendance to take their crossing fees and set them safely on the far bank.

FRANKLIN HAD NOT wanted to abandon the Pesthouse so soon. He had started to take pleasure in its intimate darkness. He'd argued that Margaret ought to allow more time for her recovery; she was too weak to walk, even if it was downhill all the way. The flux was unpredictable and might return. Her shaven head would frighten people off. He was not fit enough to walk himself, as his knee was still troublesome. Besides, his brother, Jackson, had promised to return within a day or two, and if anything had gone wrong down there in Ferrytown, Jackson would certainly have come back to Franklin at once. That was his way. 'He's mightier than me.'

Margaret's immediate apprehension had been that everybody in Ferrytown had come down with the flux. And that made sense. It would explain the almost empty roads, the stillness and the absence of smoke. Everyone would be reduced to bed, too weak to move or light a fire, too battered to be visible. Her fear of such overwhelming pestilence was not illogical, or unprecedented, even though, according to her report, since the deaths of her father and the six other Ferrytowners three months before, there had not been any disease among her neighbors other than her own. She'd been the only victim of this outbreak as far as she knew, and now look at her, starting to recover after only a day or two and nothing lost except some weight and a lifetime of hair.

So Franklin was not unduly worried. If it was illness that had stifled Ferrytown, then it was a weak and passing visitor. But, in his view, he and Margaret would still be wise to stay up on the hill, at least until the fires were lit again, if not until Margaret's hair had reached a respectable length, as was normally required.

'Let's wait to hear what my mighty brother has to say,' he suggested.

'What if he doesn't come?'

'"Mighty Jackson, but Jackson mighty not."' He laughed like a boy. Immediately, he felt embarrassed to have been so childish in her presence, and blushed again. Blushed like a redhead might. 'That was our joke,' he explained, feeling half her age and suddenly recognizing with a further blushing shudder how foolish and immature and unreasonable he was to be so smitten by this woman, this sick and older woman who would regard him, surely, as a silly youth. 'That's what we always used to joke about my brother,' he repeated. 'I only meant to say, let's wait at least a day or two, until you're well enough to walk, and see if he comes up for me.'

His brother's failure to return so far had bothered Franklin. Jackson was mighty, but he was impetuous and unpredictable as well — 'mighty not', indeed — the sort of man to take off on his own for days on end. That also had been 'his way', since he'd been able to walk. The world was not a dangerous place to him, and so he could never understand why people worried about his absences. Besides, he had a thirst. If there was liquor in Ferrytown, Jackson would sniff it out and knock it back in quantity. And he'd have to sleep it off in quantity as well. So two, three days? Inconsiderate, perhaps, but not unusual.

Franklin had that morning left Margaret sitting on her tree-trunk bench and hobbled as best he could into the clearing at the top of the trail where he and Jackson had parted. Was there any sign of his brother, she'd asked. Nothing yet, so far as he could tell. Nobody coming up. Just stragglers going down, the usual travelers in family groups, alone, with horses, carts or nothing but their legs for company, a little string of refugees from Hardship House picking their way down the track for a night in bed and a country breakfast. Sea dreamers. Everything as normal, then. He tried to challenge her fears. Ferrytown, from his high vantage point, had simply looked quiet and uneventful, he said, hardly a scarf of smoke to be seen, perhaps without the usual bustle at the crossing point, no casual sound, maybe, but it still seemed flourishing to him, a sleepy habitation, blessed to be exactly where it was, staying rich at nature's bottleneck.

No casual sound
? His phrase was like a slap. Margaret could hear perfectly, even if her eyes might let her down. She knew too well the way the community was ordained, how if every single mortal there was lying down in bed, unable to lift a finger for themselves, at least you could expect, even at this distance, the dogs to be complaining and — suddenly it occurred to her — the cocks to carry out their duties for the day, proclaiming their raucous intentions to the hens as soon as the sun came up and maintaining their vanities until sundown.

She pricked her ears and concentrated. Ferrytown was not providing any noise. Again she did her best to focus on open ground, on the dark shapes of the mules and horses in the tetherings, but nothing moved, so far as she could tell, nothing was impatient for the trail or its harnesses. Indeed, it seemed that every living thing was lying down like cattle expecting rain. The only movement Margaret could now discern — other than the few recently arrived carts and people who were gathering in increasing though unusually small numbers on the river's edge — was the ferry raft itself, which was neglected and had worked itself free of its mooring posts. It was swinging in the middle stream on its securing ropes, in a river still bloated from the rains of two nights previously.

In the end Franklin did what he was asked. Well before midday, he quickly gathered up their few possessions and combined them — her few clothes, his travel kit — into one pack, which he wore forward on his chest. He threw earth on the Pesthouse fire. He cut two sticks, one for himself to support his leg, an extra wooden limb, and a spare for Margaret. There was no point in pretending that she would have the strength to walk more than a few paces and certainly not down Butter Hill, with its harsh gradient and its unpredictable gravel. The days of vomiting, diarrhea and fever had weakened her. So he wrapped the two tarps around her shoulders and stooped to let her climb onto his back, and then he tied the corner ears as tightly as he could around his waist and chest so that his warm burden was pressed tightly to his upper spine and shoulders. Finally he slipped the spare stick behind her knees and through the lower tarp knots at his waist, so that she was sitting in a kind of wood and canvas rescue chair and her legs could not dangle.

Margaret did not weigh much, scarcely more than the chest pack, it seemed. Despite the stiffness in his knee and the increased pain, Franklin could stand with the help of his stick and move easily at first. He'd carried deer carcasses in much the same way before and, on one occasion, an injured ewe that had struggled all the way back to the stead. Margaret was a more compliant burden, and actually — if only he could put aside his lasting fear of her dry and bitter breath, and his embarrassment — she was a welcome one, the softest and the warmest pack he'd ever portered. Giddup, he told himself and began the slow and painful walk from the little Pesthouse that he'd grown to like so much across the clearing to the start of the descent. They were an alarming and a comic couple all at once: the oversized limping man, not quite a giant; the emaciated, recently scalped woman, with her bone head, now almost imperceptibly fuzzed orange, warning everyone and anyone who wasn't blind to avoid her at all costs.

Margaret had refused to wear her blue scarf again. The heat and weight were still too much for her. But covering her head would have made little difference to her pestilent appearance. She had no eyebrows; they had hardly begun to regrow. And even her expression seemed scalped and ominous. But, for the time being, she and Franklin were happy anyway to be together on Butter Hill and amused to be playing piggyback, despite the fear of what they might find below. Were they in love? Well, no, not yet. He was too young and inexperienced; she was too old and inexperienced. They were, though, getting there with every step. And they were as intimate as lovers. How could they not be, with her legs pushed open, wrapped around his back, her breath and lips against his nape, her arms embracing him, clasped across his breast bone, so that — she thought, illogically — she could help him bear her own weight and share the weight of worrying? Franklin gripped her knee with his spare hand, spreading his thumb onto the clothing of her upper leg. How weak and newly thin she was.

Margaret and Franklin did not attempt to catch up with the family who were negotiating the decline with a string of pack mules ahead of them. Rather, they hung back. Margaret did not wish to chance upon a Ferrytowner or a stranger who might pass on the word to her family and neighbors of how this virgin had been wrapped around a young man's back, or how personal he seemed with her. She'd be devalued all at once. Then what? It would be better if she'd joined her pa. She was almost thankful that her shaven head gave her and Franklin the excuse they needed to keep only their own company. Besides, you would not welcome any other company if you were with a person who at the very least (in Margaret's view) had drawn the flux out of your feet or who (in Franklin's view) had allowed such arousing intimacies.

Franklin concentrated on his balance and on the tribulations of the path, measuring his steps and rationing his breaths. He was determined not to show any weakness or tiredness. Here was his chance to prove to her how useful he might be and how mature. What luck had put this woman on his back? His damaged knee had proved to be an unexpected blessing.

Once they had sorted out the problem in Ferrytown, whatever it might be, thought Franklin, he could consider more fully what he ought to do about Margaret. He would not want to part from her at once. He'd not be happy to proceed without knowing her better. But what would Jackson say if his selfish, blushing brother insisted on delaying their departure from Ferrytown or if he made a decision on his own behalf for a change and chose to stay on there at least through the winter, at least until Margaret had recovered and could be persuaded, perhaps, to join them in their emigration east? What would he say if Franklin was determined to settle his future in Ferrytown and court this woman, what? six years older than himself? To take her as his wife?

Yes, this matter of their ages was an impediment. Franklin could not avoid admitting that to himself, whatever his brother might say. She was so much older. As old as his youngest aunt, in fact. But his size made up for that, surely. Her time on earth equaled the volume of his presence. Possibly, in his view, she was all the more enticing because of the age difference. Even with her illness and her shaven head, Margaret had struck him as being irresistibly adult.

Margaret herself was too drained and fearful to think much of the future. Certainly, her personal porter was an agreeable young man, kindly featured if not exactly handsome, sweet smelling, biddable — and strong. She could not forget the patience and the tenderness he had lavished on her feet nor the mixed sensations it had given her, a breathless nausea together with a heat that was separate from the fever. It did not seem possible that he could carry her for such a length of time, down steep and difficult terrain, without stopping to rest once in a while or demanding that she at least try to walk the last part on her own two feet. She clung on to his shoulders, exuberated by the closeness of his company yet also exhausted by his efforts, because each step he took shook every bone in her body. But she was not making any place for him in her life. He'd just be another one of those missed opportunities, another passer-by whom she would miss for a day or two and then forget. All that mattered for the moment was the state of Ferrytown and her impatience for the sound of dogs and cocks.