Текст книги "The Pesthouse"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Margaret had no comfort for herself, nothing sweet to take her mind off the fear that raced her heart and cramped her stomach and seemed to want her both to weep and to belch. She could not say exactly what she feared. Rapeand deathwere only words to her. Painshe understood a little more. But there was something in the faces of those men that she’d been born frightened of. She was shaking but could not steady herself. She held the baby far too firmly, until Bella opened her mouth to cry in protest. But by that time Margaret could hear the horses heading away, growing fainter. Their hoof treads on the snapping twigs and dry fall leaves would mask Bella’s noise, so Margaret let the baby cry a little and allowed herself to shake and weep and belch.

It was tempting to take this opportunity to break cover and run back toward the Boses. Her hide was damp, cold, and uncomfortable. But Margaret’s legs were jelly. And she could hardly breathe. Besides, she knew enough about horses to realize that a woman with a child to carry would be seen and caught up with before she had a chance to reach the hem of the meadow. Even if she did reach the Boses, that would be no guarantee of safety. Those men could knock them all aside like cornstalks if they wanted to. Andrew and Melody had only sharp tongues with which to defend themselves.

Margaret had no choice but to wait until sundown, when the light would be more on her side, and then, skirting the cottage and the cows, stumble back down to the track and the company, if not the safekeeping, of Bella’s grandparents. They’d have to move on straightaway. In these circumstances, none of them would want to spend the night in such a risky spot. They’d be dreaming horses. She could almost hear Franklin’s voice, saying to her, You’d have been better off sticking to the open highway.

Late in the afternoon, just about the time that Andrew was checking on the farm cottage, when the shadows of the trees lengthened to reach the place where Margaret had gone to ground, she decided it was time to move. She listened carefully, distinguishing the natural creaking of the trees from any human voices or horse sounds before judging it safe to make a dash with Bella for the forest edge. She peered through the gloaming down the slight incline and beyond the roof of the cottage, hoping to recognize the route she had followed earlier that day when she had left the Boses under a rendezvous tree on her usual quest for milk. The quickest way to safety, she saw, was to drop into the small pasture where the three cows were kept, pass close to the house, and then follow the shared path between the group of mostly uninhabited buildings. She held her breath and tried to steady her eyes. She was hoping to see no horses. No horses probably meant that the men had not returned, that they’d probably lost interest in their hunt for her and gone after fur of some other kind. They’d certainly be back by nightfall, so now was definitely the time for Margaret to run for it.

She and Bella had reached the choke of rocks above the house before Margaret heard a sound below and immediately took cover again. A small man, not young, was peering through the shutter boards of one of the rear windows. The light would have been too poor in the shadow of the house to see him clearly even if her eyesight had been good, but he was not large enough to be one of the horsemen, she thought. That did not mean that he wasn’t just as dangerous, however. Margaret would have to retreat. She waited until the man walked around the house and through the side gate to the front. When he went inside, she came out of her hiding place among the rocks, noisily dislodging a scree of small stones. The dog, still tied at the side of the house, began to bark. She had not been careful enough. The dog could have seen her, smelled her, heard her.

Now Bella started to protest, a cry of complaint. She had had nothing to eat or drink since the morning, her eyes and mouth were full of leaves, she hadn’t played all day, she hadn’t been allowed to crawl. There was milk to be had just a short distance away, but this was no time to be a milkmaid. Margaret hurried back the way she’d come. This time, protected by the deepening twilight, she kept to the edge of the trees, her finger in Bella’s mouth. If she was spotted by the horsemen now, she could at least disappear into the trees and hope to find a narrow trail that horses could not follow.

This was the worst night of her life, hollower even than her first night in the Pesthouse, more despairing even than the night of the Ferrytown dead, when at least she had had the company of Franklin. She had not brought her bedclothes with her, or the tarp or anything to eat. She wrapped Bella in her blue scarf and cradled her, tucking her tiny feet inside her tunic top, and waited for the time to pass.

After she saw the two horsemen returning in the last light of the day to their house, Margaret pushed as deeply as she dared into the trees, far enough for Bella’s now constant crying to be deadened by the trunks. The darkness was blinding. She could not see a star. Even the moon had been blocked out by the thick hammock and canopy. The trees were less than silhouettes. But Margaret would not allow herself to disappear. The child would not allow it, either. Margaret knew – had not the nursery rhymes told her so when she was just a few years on from Bella’s age? – that if there was no light, still she could create a candle in her heart and with that candle she could “beam her meanings/On eternity/And shine a purpose/On the Night.”

She whispered all the rhymes she knew to Bella, and when the girl finally fell asleep, exhausted by her own hunger, Margaret, too gripped by darkness, cold, and fear to sleep, forced herself to light that candle in her heart and make its meanings and its purposes envelop her in light. Now for a few moments, despite the awful immensity of her troubles, she could still pretend to be an optimist. In that imagined brightness, she could picture, beyond the nighttime and the trees, beyond the horses and the men, a place of greater safety, but not outside America. There were no saltwater boats or gulls. There was no Promised Land. Her place of greater safety was a soddy on a hill. She could envisage dying there, an ancient girl, her hair as long as the bed beneath her, with hands – more hands than she could count – in touch with her, and faces she could recognize and name, all saying Margaret, sweet Margaret, you loved us, and we loved you in return.

Her eyes were now accustomed to the night, and she could see. She could see the child’s face. She could see her own tough hands. She could see the fretwork of the trees, and finally a moon and owls for company. She could not stop the tears from flowing then, nor could she keep her hands and shoulders from shaking. She made owl sounds herself, sniffing and gasping for air. She felt expended and ashamed.

But weeping was a speedy sedative. Soon Margaret was calm enough to take stock of her situation. It had been a frightening day, certainly. But nothing irreparable had happened. As the night deepened, she ran each detail through her head. Apart from that scratch on the back of her hand, she’d hardly hurt herself. That idiot of a man, who’d presumed to frighten her and who would have forced himself on her given half a chance, had actually not even succeeded in touching her. The only body he had damaged had been his own, when he tumbled over, snared by his own dog leash. Now all she had to do was take good care of Bella, remain patient until the very first light, and then get back to the Boses and away to safety before anyone else was out of bed.

The rest of the night passed more quickly than Margaret had feared it would. She even dozed, although by the time dawn came she was so cold and stiff from standing with a tree trunk as her backboard that moving at all was difficult. Finding a sure route was impossible. It was easy to tell east from west, even before the first sun rays had penetrated the woods, but anything more precise than that eluded her. Besides, knowing east from west was not a lot of use for someone who could not precisely remember the position of the sun the previous afternoon when she had gone into the woods. She should have paid more attention and marked her route in some way.

Margaret studied the ground at her feet, expecting to find evidence of her walking, footprints and snapped twigs, but if they were there she couldn’t see them, not in that half-light, anyway. She was a town girl, not a countryman’s daughter. She’d not had to track any animal before. But still she could not stay where she was. She would, she decided, head east. That at least would take her in the direction of the ocean and ships. She would still be sharing a destination with Bella’s grandparents, even if their paths did not cross at once. As soon as she reached open ground, she could take stock of the landscape and any buildings that she found and get back to the Boses before they were sent crazy with anxiety. She could imagine their anger. But what else could she have done but make sure that their granddaughter was safe?

Margaret was oddly calm. She felt for the first time in her life as if she were impregnable and strong. There was so much evidence. Only she from Ferrytown had survived the flux. Only she of all the younger and fitter travelers of their campfire group on the highway had not been taken by the rustlers. And yesterday, unlike the woman displayed on the deck of the cart, she had not been raped. She was still alive, and only lost. What was more, she had an independent purpose in her arms, a girl too small and young to walk or talk or even feed herself. She didn’t need a cedar box of lucky things. Bella was her priceless talisman.

Margaret was so composed and certain of herself that she did not mind that she wasted the greater part of the morning reaching the edge of the woods, for they were beautiful, and that once she broke through to a clearing, nothing familiar was in sight, not a single building, not a reminiscent shape, not even any cultivated land, and only the footings of ancient walls and lines of metal spikes, rusted thin, as evidence that this had once been farmed many years before but now was wilderness. People had been there in better times, had lived there possibly, had died, but there was little chance that anyone would come again. People were becoming scarce. America was emptying. The land was living only for itself.

The clearing sloped a little to her right. She would not climb. That made no sense. The ocean was at sea level, as low as anyone could go. Even the place where the Boses had spent the night was on a track lower than these forests and lower than the group of treacherous farm buildings where Margaret had almost been attacked. She turned downhill, and even though she hadn’t eaten or slept, she had the energy and spirit to walk pretty fast, bouncing Bella as she went and crooning to her all the songs she’d ever learned and some she hadn’t. To be alone would have been frightening and miserable, but having Bella made her strong.

Margaret suspected the extent of her mistake only when she reached a low ridge with good views across the territory. Now she could see what seemed to be the rooftop outline of the cottage she had visited, but it was far away. She must have walked at right angles to where she’d wanted to go. Now she’d have to make up the distance. It could take another half day if the going was complicated. But she set her sights on the rooftop and struck out for it, determined to get back to the Boses by sundown. She had not counted on the snow. It offered only flakes at first, too wet to settle. But soon the flakes lightened and fattened and fell so thickly that it was hard to see ahead. Clear landmarks disappeared. That distant roof was whited out. The track was filled with snow, and when the wind came up in the afternoon, the open ground ahead of her changed shape. It would be crazy to labor on against the weather. And end up where? Again Margaret and Bella would have to spend the night away from the Boses. At least they had meltwater and some mashed berries for their supper, and an overhang of wind-bent conifers to give them shelter and a roof. Margaret lit the candle in her heart again, and slept.

Next day, Margaret was up and walking by dawn, feeling slightly drunk on tiredness and hunger but also exhilarated by the beauty of the snow-neatened land and the sharp cold light that gave clear views of where she had to head. It was mostly easy going, but wading through the deeper drifts was fun.

Once she reached the familiar open ground a little farther out from where she and the baby had earthed themselves the day before last, she did not even bother to keep to the shadows. She could not see any men, and she would hear if there were mounted horses. The little cottage looked asleep as she walked past. Two horses were tethered at the front, breathing steam and already sweating under their cover of blankets. The shutters were closed, and so the three men – she included the small man she had spotted from the choke of rocks – must be sleeping, she thought. The dog was sleeping, too, out of sight on the far side of the house – or, if it was not asleep, it was ignoring her. Her scent was now familiar.

If she wanted, she could probably stop to milk a cow. If she wanted, come to think of it, she could find a good-sized stick and give those men a beating in their beds and be gone before any one of them could lift a finger to defend himself. If she wanted, she could help herself to the two horses, to punish the men for their repulsiveness, and make her journey to the coast a little speedier. But Franklin had explained to her an age ago how horses were an expensive complication for a traveler.

“What, worse than a barrow?” she had asked.

And he’d replied, “When did you last see a barrow stabled? When did you last see a barrow eating hay? When did you last see a barrow rear up, or run off, or nip its owner?”

So Margaret just walked by, within sight of the cottage, leaving her deep footprints in the snow for anyone to follow, being reckless in the interests of speed, but keeping quiet. She was still afraid. It was wise to be afraid. But as she passed she saw an opportunity too good to miss. Only men could be so careless with their food. There was a cold larder on the veranda at the front of the house, with snow swept up by the wind against it. In a moment she was opening it. In the next moment she had helped herself to milk in a jug, a damp wrap of sour cheese, and, joy beyond joy, three hen’s eggs, already boiled hard and just a crack away from eating.

No one caught her stealing food, and no one heard her stealing away. Soon she had left the little fields behind and was back on home territory. There was the tree that marked the place where she had left the Boses. They would have spent the last two nights somewhere close, just waiting. Quite soon they would be reunited with their granddaughter. They would be angry. They would be shaking with anxiety. They had a right to be. But Margaret had a tale to tell. And there were eggs and cheese to feast upon.

Andrew and Melody Bose had left the meeting point only at first light that morning. They had spent two almost sleepless nights in a makeshift tent that they had rigged up, using Franklin’s tarp and Margaret’s thin blanket as weather shields and their own finer blankets as bedding. There had been nothing they could do except eat and wait and argue, once Andrew had returned from his expedition with no news of their granddaughter or “that diseased woman” to whom they had recklessly entrusted her. They’d finished Margaret’s taffies and the last gobbets of Ferrytown honey. They’d used up too much of their own salt fish, hoping to placate their nervous stomachs by constant feeding.

Once in a while Andrew had ventured out, armed with Franklin’s knife, which was larger than his own net maker’s knife, to see if anyone or anything was moving. All he had seen the previous day had been the three cows, pressing up close to the cottage walls for warmth. Then, once the snow had begun to fall, the only sign of any living things other than themselves had been a distant curl of smoke from a chimney that was out of sight.

They made up their minds, talking in whispers through the night. If the child was not returned by first light, they would be coldly sensible. They could presume the worst had happened. Waiting any longer would be pointless. It made no sense to sacrifice themselves to whatever horrors had befallen Margaret and Bella during the past two days and that had previously befallen Acton and the other men. Wise people do not stay, as the valley floods, to witness for themselves how high the waters will reach. They get away. The Boses, then, would do the same.

Margaret found her sodden blanket and the tarp immediately. She didn’t have to look around or call out any names to guess what had happened or what their reasoning had been. She could tell that the Boses had left only that morning. There were footprints in the snow, recent enough not yet to have lost their unambiguous shape. Later – indeed, for the rest of her life – she would wonder how easy it would have been to have caught up with them if she’d set her mind to it. If she had left immediately, then probably within just a few moments she would have been able to see them from the slight brow of the path. They would not have moved very quickly, especially without the fitter, younger Margaret to urge them on.

Margaret, though – could she ever admit it to herself? – was not inclined to hurry after Bella’s grandparents. To catch up with them was to relinquish the child, and that was something she was not impatient to do. It might have crossed her mind during the previous few days how joyful it would be to have a child of her own – this child. The thought of stealing Bella away might have stained her daydreams briefly. But Margaret would never actually have done it. It would have been wicked. She would have felt guilty to her grave. No matter that the immediate parents were dead or missing, or that the grandparents were selfish and uncaring, or that Margaret would provide the girl with a kinder future. The theft of a child was unforgivable, even though the ties of every family in the land were already hanging loose.

But for the moment, now that Bella seemed to have been delivered freely to her by the adversities of travel, Margaret did not feel wicked in the least. Or even compromised. She was not stealing a child. She was merely being slow. Anyway, she told herself, the grandparents had made their own decisions – good ones, possibly – and they had willingly abandoned Bella, or at the very least relinquished her. Margaret had kept to the rendezvous. Margaret had returned the child to the promised place. It was the Boses who had walked away, heartbroken, no doubt, but of their own free will. They probably had not believed that their son’s daughter would show up again after such a prolonged and baffling absence. They would have shed tears. They would have argued about what was best to do. But in the end they must have felt that they had little choice but to protect themselves and press on with their journey. Already they would be getting used to the loss of their granddaughter. They were not to blame. Hard times make stones of us all.

So Margaret did not hurry on to catch up with the grandparents. She dawdled. She persuaded herself that her first duty was to feed Bella with some stolen milk and mashed white of egg. Then she had to feed herself with cheese and Bella’s yolk. Then there was her blanket to be wrung out and her possessions to pack.

She realized at once, when she lifted up her back sack, that it was emptier than it ought to be. There was a water bag inside. There was the died-back mint, still in its pot. Her comb and hairbrush had not been touched. There was the spark stone and the fishing net, which Andrew Bose had dismissed as “the work of ten thumbs.” But her taffies and her scraps of food were missing. So was Franklin’s knife. Margaret dug into her clothes and checked each item, getting increasingly annoyed and upset when she could not find what she was looking for. The green-and-orange woven top that her sister had made for her and that she loved and wore only for best was not inside. Margaret hissed to herself. She could imagine Melody Bose wearing it as if it were her own. She muttered out loud a thought she knew was hollow, but because the theft of her clothes had come before the keeping of the child, it allowed her to feel that what she was about to do was justified, if only thinly – that her top was payment for the girl, a fair exchange. So now, in Margaret’s readjusted view, the Boses were not innocent. They were to blame, after all. They had brought this loss, this separation, on themselves. They’d crept away like thieves, abandoning their blood.

“I’ll love you, though,” she said to Bella, and pressed her own wet face against the child’s.