Текст книги "The Pesthouse"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Margaret tried to keep her eyes lowered and maintain silence when the Finger Baptists were at the well. She did not want to be selected as one of the emigrants who had the honor of serving these men in their private quarters. She’d heard – more rumors, possibly, but disquieting nevertheless – that duties might include massaging and masturbating them, washing them down all over, washing their hair, providing pellets of food, pulling their clothes on and off, cleaning their teeth, and helping the fatter and the older ones to sit and rise. But only once in those winter months had Margaret been asked to do anything more intimate than draw the water and wash and dry the arms. On that occasion, one of the younger Helpless Gentlemen, who, although his arms and hands were useless, was very mobile elsewhere, a speedy walker and a man with fat, expressive lips, had lifted his face toward Margaret and, with a series of commands—“Higher,” “Lower,” “Aah, just there!”—required her to attend to an intolerable itch on the side of his face.

“Count yourself lucky,” one of the women had commented that evening. “A man can itch in many places.”

There was no escaping the evening sermons, mostly delivered by a Baptist aspirant while all the families were eating. Metals were the cause of weaponry and avarice: “Think on iron, think on gold.” Metals were invaders in a world otherwise designed from fire, air, water, earth, and stone, all of which were more or less compressed versions of each other and indestructible; “Metal has brought death into the world. Rust and fire are God’s reply.” Sometimes the emigrants, their mouths oily with food and scarcely able to restrain their laughter, were required to repeat some favorite Baptist lines out loud. The diners were always happy to join in, though hardly any of them truly felt that tins and sins were quite the twins that the Baptist songs made them out to be.

Otherwise, Margaret’s life in the Ark was without problems and without external incident. The trickle of new arrivals – which, luckily, did not include any Boses – stopped as the snow thickened and the cold intensified. The world beyond the palisades became a memory of hardship and sore feet. She did her best not to dwell on Franklin or her family in Ferrytown. The devotees, pilgrims, and disciples who had arrived during the fall kept to themselves in the evenings, preferring to concentrate on their rites and religious ambitions rather than consort with people who were less hostile to the old ways of America than piety and reason demanded. Once in a while a group of devotees, expressionless as usual and wearing their sorters’ gloves, disturbed the domestic calm of the sleeping huts by enforcing an unexpected search for hidden jewelry or any other trace of metal. A nonobservant mason brought in from Tidewater during the summer because his carving skills were unrivaled was rumored to have hidden shards of metal between the tower walls to undermine its sanctity. The devotees had not found any evidence of that, but their confidence had been undermined. So they took no chances with the integrity of their new building. If anyone was caught with as much as a half nail or a splinter of tin, his or her whole family was expelled at once, no matter whether it was the day or night or in the middle of a storm. The Ark would not abide so much as a fleck of metal.

Margaret had nothing to fear from these occasional disruptions. She had no possessions that might harbor contraband. She did not care about the tower. She was without blemish and, in their eyes at least, lived a blameless life, hoping only to pass unnoticed or, at most, to be regarded as an attentive mother. She exchanged her token for food each day and earned it back by her attendance at the well. She slept and ate and grew more confident.

At mealtimes, when they could be stared at, the Finger Baptists were a source of great amusement among the younger emigrants, including Margaret. Afterward, gathered around the candles in the privacy of the sleeping shed, their faces animated by the warmth and light, the women of Margaret’s hut could laugh and joke at will and then exchange their hopes and ambitions for the coming spring.

In some respects, Margaret had never been happier. Of course, her happiness was always haunted by the all-too-recent and all-too-memorable loss of her family, her hometown, and her only man. The very thought of them was crippling. Nevertheless, Franklin had become the perfect husband and father in her imagination and in the stories that she told to her companions. He was her lover and her friend. He was the father of Jackie. She would never look at another man until she was certain he was dead. She could not shake off entirely the receding but nagging shame and guilt she felt for her abduction of the child. But for once she was part of a community that had not known her as a girl, that did not count her coloring as unfortunate, and that could not control the way she lived her life or how she raised her daughter. She was a woman with status, a mother, a wife with a lost husband, a good friend whose wit was appreciated in the hut. Here was a warmth and neighborliness that she had never encountered in Ferrytown, where the only common interests at times seemed to be avarice, jealousy, and competition. In the Ark, among her shed companions, there was the common interest of strangers sharing their directions and their hopes.

Over the months both Jackie and the half-completed tower grew higher and more ornate. The Finger Baptists hoped to move into the lower levels when the spring and a fresh intake of both pilgrims and travelers arrived. Everybody among the emigrants dreamed of walking out through the double gates to see a sail ship in the estuary. Another month would see them free again. A month was nothing to endure. Then America could be a nightmare left behind. Even Margaret began to believe that her best future – their best future – would be beyond the ocean, that taking to the ships would not be cowardly. That dream she’d had, up in the forest on the night when she had lost her way, that dream of being once again a safe and ancient girl in her soddy at the top of Butter Hill, had been a delusion. Yes, happiness was in the east. Wasn’t that what everyone believed?

As the final days of winter passed and the moon, losing its hold, retreated back toward midnight, Margaret settled to the thought of finding passage in a ship along with her new friends. It was a comfort, in a way, to have a shared plan. She was distressed less and less by thoughts of Andrew and Melody and Acton, their son, or by recollections of her life and family in Ferrytown. Even Franklin, her Pigeon, became more remote to her, despite the many occasions when her version of him as a father and a husband was offered to the women in the Ark or the many times she dreamed of their reunion. In fact, one morning when she was still exhausted from a restless night of Jackie’s teething, she realized she could not remember many details of his face, and she could scarcely recall his family name. It wasn’t Lombard, and it wasn’t Lopate. She was relieved when, finally, the name was retrieved. Lopez, that was it! Franklin Lopez from the plains. How could she be so ready to forget that part of him, to let him slip away? That was troubling. It was as if the winter in the Ark had enriched her and robbed her at the same time.

The first truly warm day came when snow was still on the ground and the earth was hard. Spring’s breath was in the air, crying green. Margaret had checked her pot of mint for signs of life, but there were none as yet. She was enjoying the sunshine at her duty spot beside the well and dozing, despite the usual hammering of carpenters and masons at the tower and the not-so-usual cries and hammering at the outer gates of the Ark.

Jackie, now into her second year, was playing push-and-pull with another toddler. It was she who first spotted the man dismounting from a horse and running across the courtyard from the entry gate toward the tower works, followed twenty paces behind by a gang of thirty or so, all armed with swords and pikes. Metalswords and pikes, some already wet with Baptist blood. But it was not their shining blades or brass-encrusted shields or the clanking of their buckles and their armor that most alerted Jackie. It was the first man’s clothes. A pinto coat like his, in such a striking pattern, was bound to catch a child’s eye. She called out, not a word exactly, and pointed at the man, clearly amused by something. For an instant Margaret, with her poor eyesight, mistook him for Franklin. She half got up. She half cried out. But then she saw how short he was, his bandy legs, his many layers, the colored ribbons tying back his beard. She recognized his face.

Thirteen

Franklin Lopez and his forty or so fellows in the labor gang had arrived outside the Ark soon after dawn and set to work at once. They were almost eager for the exertion. Work was their one protection against the cold, the hunger, and the boredom of captivity. The masters had kept their vassals lightly clothed and underfed, but the laborers had been told that this day’s work, if it was as richly productive as was hoped, might be rewarded with an evening meal and – possibly – brief access to a fire.

“Make it quick and keep it quiet” was the only instruction for the gang, though that was easier said than done. The winter months had shut the landscape down, hardened it and left it brittle. Even walking through the dead, frost-stiffened vegetation that morning had been far from silent. The ground had snapped and clacked loudly underfoot, protesting at the weight of so much flesh, though so far only telling anyone awake inside the Ark that men and horses were passing by. That was not unusual for these spring mornings, when everyone was impatient to catch first sight of sails. The ships were coming. Any dreaming citizen with any hope was packed and ready for the sea.

Franklin, clumsy and stumbling at the best of times, had made more noise than most as they approached the palisades. He’d been strapped across the neck as punishment and then strapped again when he’d cried out in pain. His masters, he’d discovered, were quick to pick on him and were less eager to punish shorter men. Sometimes, when his anger and his despair became intolerable, he stood and stretched himself and laughed out loud, shaking all his limbs as if his humor knew no bounds. It was a way to shrive himself of all the furies. It was a laugh that did not seem (well, not at first) too impudent. Sometimes his masters laughed along with him, counted him an idiot, called him Donkey. At other times they beat him for his laugh. But usually the beating was good-humored and less painful than not laughing.

Franklin had been relatively fortunate during his captivity. The morning following his separation from Margaret, after a cold, hard night sleeping with the horses and the stolen animals at the fringes of the Dreaming Highway, Franklin, Acton Bose, and the two Joeys had been tugged awake on their leashes at first light and hurried along at the speed of the slowest horse toward Tidewater.

The horsemen did not stop to feed their charges, whose only opportunity to rest and urinate had not been pleasant. The seven rustlers had caught up with a cartload of furniture and farming tools being pulled along the highway by four heavy horses. The three emigrants who owned it, two men – brothers, with identical beards – and one wife, hoped to make themselves invisible by staying absolutely silent and making no eye contact with the newcomers, who had first ridden around them in a circle, whooping like children, and then dismounted to inspect their prey more closely.

The travelers studied their own feet without comment or expression as Franklin and his fellows were forced to sit in a line with their backs toward the cart. The family’s horses were unharnessed and their boxes kicked open and their sacks emptied onto the highway. Only their dog did not understand that nothing could be done to save them or their property. Its barking protests were short-lived. Finally, once all the valuables had been discovered and stolen and anything fragile had been broken, just for the sake of it, the heavy horses were added to the string of mules and the two men were attached to the train of captives with loops of rope around their necks and wrists. But the woman, despite the protests of her husband, who called out her name—“Marie, Marie, Marie”—well beyond hearing distance, was left behind in the attentive care of two of the rustlers. They caught up with their comrades later in the afternoon in high spirits but unaccompanied. When the husband once again called out her name, they shook their fists to silence him and made vulgar gestures. “Make another noise and you’ll be beaten,” they said, and added, “Like the dog. Like sweet Marie. That goes for all of you. We’re in the mood.”

On their fourth day of captivity, exhausted by their pace of travel, by their anger and anxiety, and by the meanness of their rations, the six hostages arrived at an encampment in ancient wasteland to the north of Tidewater. The land was far too widely strewn with rubble and debris for many trees to have survived. Only weeds and a few low scrub bushes made their living among the remains of great stone buildings and the tumbled masonry of a grand, dead city. So deep were the fallen remnants of the now shapeless structures that pools of water, little lakes, were nestling in the marble and concrete piles. The horsemen stopped in a steep-sided canyon of rubble and wreckage where the sunlight hardly penetrated. There the captives were tightly bound and shackled to an antique, purposeless engine of some kind, smelling of decay and rust, and – or so they feared – left for dead, without a jug of water or a scrap of food, any protection against the cold or any word of what their fates might be. Their only freedom, now that their captors were out of earshot, was that they could speak among themselves, exchanging names with the husband and brother-in-law of sweet Marie, who made their oddly formal introductions, observing rules of precedence that could no longer have any value.

“I have to get back to my wife,” Nike, the husband, kept repeating, as if offering an excuse not to join the others in their enforced adventure.

“We all have someone to get back to,” the older Joey said. “I have a wife and other children, too. I don’t know where they are.” He indicated Franklin. “He has a sister, and Acton has his parents and his daughter. That’s how it is for all of us. They’re lost to us, we’re lost to them.”

“You’re older than the rest of us,” replied Nike, as if age devalued Joey’s pessimism.

The younger Joey spent his time either crying or sighing deeply. He was in shock: the beating of the dog had been the cruelest act he’d ever witnessed, and inexplicable to a boy of his age. He’d no idea that anyone could be so heartless as to treat a dog as if it were…well, just an animal. But the men, once they had heard the horsemen depart and tested the silence for a while, saw this unexpected abandonment as their only chance to get away with their lives. If there was anyone to get back to, if the wife, the child, the sister, and the parents had survived, then this was the opportunity to seek them out.

The men were too tightly bound to attempt to untie any knots, but with a little wiggling each could sink his chin onto his chest and get his teeth around one of the thinner ropes. It tasted of sweat and smelled of horses and wood. But it was feasible, though not easy, to snap or chew the thin strands. Given time, it now seemed possible that they could bite through this rope, though whether that would set them free or merely damage their mouths and lips remained to be seen. They worked away, no longer wasting any energy on talk. They sounded like six feeding rats.

The best of them had broken through only a fraction of the rope when three of the rustlers, including their short and overdressed leader, still wearing Jackson’s coat, returned. They were accompanied by an elderly man who rode his horse sidesaddle and his two armed retainers. They helped him to dismount. He walked along the line of captives, nodding, shaking his head, behaving like a trader inspecting barrels of apples or bolts of cloth.

“Very well,” he said. “My offer stands. I’ll take those three.” He pointed at the brothers and at Acton Bose, but shook his head at the middle-aged potman. “And I’ll take the boy. We’ll make good use of him until he grows. What name?”

“I’m Junior Joey, mister.”

“And this one, too.” He placed his finger on the end of Franklin’s chin, buried in the hair and the threads of chewed rope. “We’ll have them digging coal.”

“No, the mountain’s not for sale,” the small man said. “We’re keeping him.”

“Well, keep him, then. The more fool you. I would have paid extra for him.” He shook hands with the rustlers, handed over the price they’d negotiated, remounted his horse, with help, and led his retainers and his four newly roped purchases out of the encampment.

“There’s much to do,” the little rustler said, inspecting the remaining Joey, now trembling with shock and fear. “I own you now, you two. I have you for eternity. Free servitude. Work hard, and then we’ll see what rations I might offer you. If you continue to devour your ropes, you’ll not be fed, except with rope.” He laughed, quite normally and merrily, his beard and ribbons shaking – the very thought of feeding them on rope! Surely they could see the funny side of that. “You call me Master or you call me Captain or you call me Chief. Those are the names I answer to. Let’s hear the sound of that. You first.”

“Master,” Joey said.

“And you, the giant.”

“Yes, Captain Chief.” The three rustlers found Franklin’s answer hilarious. They laughed like teenagers, too easily amused. That name would stick.

“I could have made a shiny profit out of you,” said Captain Chief, indicating with a flapping hand that Franklin should squat. Franklin was used to being flapped down to the ground by senior but shorter men. “I could have sold you with your four friends. Strong men like you are precious to the quarry barons and the gang masters, who pull the reins around here at Tidewater. But I’ve held on to you. Now why is that, do you suppose?” He took a step forward to whisper in his captive’s ear, so close that Franklin could smell the familiar skin of Jackson’s coat as well as the chewed tobacco on the man’s breath. “We’re holding on to you because if you’re wise as well as strong, if you’re sensible, we might decide to let you be a brother in our band. Does that appeal to you, to ride with us when we go out on business? You look as if you could be educated how to snap a man in half if you saw any profit in it.” He raised his voice, so everyone could hear. “But if you’re otherwise as well as strong, then…Well, then, you’ll be the one who’s snapped in half. You won’t be mounted on a horse. We’ll have you mounted on a sharpened pole. We’ll skin a shield with you. You have the word of Captain Chief on that.”

Franklin felt oddly hopeful after this whispered conversation. He would cooperate, be wise, be sensible. And then, as soon as he was trusted, he would try to creep away. He could imagine it, a nighttime opportunity. He would retrieve his brother’s coat. Its theft was a constant insult and a provocation and one that, in his head at least, he could revenge. Wearing it again might make him as valiant and purposeful as Jackson had always been. He’d be as light and silent as a moth when he cut loose the rustlers’ biggest horse and stole away with Joey at his back. Then he’d be on board a ship with great white flapping sails and with Margaret at his side (for he could not bear to think that she had already gone ahead of him). And all the Boses would be there, on deck, with wind-pinked cheeks, both Joeys too, the brothers and Marie, the slaughtered dog, the coastline sinking as the waters passed around the hull.

Franklin considered, too, that he might slit some throats before he fled the encampment, or take a chunk of metal to stave in their sleeping heads. Seeing that cruel and pompous Captain Chief dead in his blankets would be a satisfaction. But Franklin could not concentrate on that heavy revenge, because the more he tried to imagine it, the less likely it became. He could never make a convincing murderer. His hand was far too hesitant. He’d never be the sort to “snap a man in half,” or slit a throat, or bludgeon a head, sleeping or not. He could not make that leap. There was too great a gap between his near bank and his far.

It was not long before the rustlers also realized that despite their expectations, Franklin would not proceed to be a member of their band, a menacing comrade. He was large and powerful, for sure. And he proved to be a useful beast of burden, willing and easily tamed. But making him menacing and dangerous would be beyond the ingenuity of the Devil himself. The man might be big, but he was hardly daunting. He laughed inexplicably and too loudly every once in a while. He blushed like a girl. He did what he was told too readily. Even on that first day of captivity, after he’d been separated from the plague girl, he’d flinched at the slightest prospect of being touched, even though none of the horsemen had yet done more than lightly kick or slap him. Their horses were treated worse than that and accepted it with a flick of the ear. It wasn’t long before they gave up any hope that a crueler, tougher side to Franklin would be beaten to the surface. So they beat him idly, expecting nothing in return.

Now, on the morning of their visit to the metal soil heaps outside the Ark, it was hard for the labor gang to stay as silent as the horsemen had demanded. Breaking through the frozen topsoil with metal-headed tools was bound to be noisy, whatever efforts the men might make to dull the sound. But once the surface had been breached, the earth there was less solid than most other open ground in the sea-chilled neighborhoods of Tidewater. It was protected from the worst of the ice and the winds by the Ark’s trunk palisade and kept soft by the washing and cooking slops that were drained through sluices from the Ark every evening and were too oily to freeze. There were the first spring sun and a little melting snow to soften the ground further and to provide these raiders and their slaves with their first opportunity to do what they had planned to do for months: harvest the crop of confiscated metal. Even the captives had been looking forward to this. They might not prosper personally from what they unearthed for their masters, but the work would be less dull than the usual tearing down or grubbing out of timber, stone, and metal salvage in the debris fields beyond the town. They were almost boys again as they embarked upon their work. Every rightly constructed boy has a desire to go somewhere and dig for buried treasure. They set about the task almost cheerfully.

Much of the earth had been turned and loosened during the previous fall’s excavations and burials. The disturbed ground had not yet settled, and so it was easy to spot the trenches where so many tools, valuables, and weapons had been “restituted” by the Baptists. Breaking into these long mounds was not hard work, especially with a strong man such as Franklin wielding the heaviest mattock. Almost at once his efforts were rewarded with the tuneless clang of his blade on earth-deadened metal. One of the masters shouted out that Franklin should be more careful and use his mattock less forcibly. There should be no carelessness, no damage to their booty.

Once the topsoil had been thoroughly raked away, the labor gang gathered around to clear and search the middens with their bare hands, taking care to check for metals in every palm of soil. The slave masters had laid out three waxed blankets behind their workers: one for swords and knives and any arrow-and spearheads that had been snapped off their shafts and could be mounted and used again; a second for useful objects that might be sold, such as buckets, silverware, and platters, and reclaimable parts of saddles and wagons; and a third for trinkets, silver plate, and jewelry, the abundant riches that were understood to be buried there and that, together with the weapons, would make the masters even more powerful.

Much of the confiscated metal that they extracted had already been damaged in its burial by the Baptists and then crushed further by the months of frost and the weight of earth. Buckets that had gone in round and unpunctured came out flattened and split. Clasps and buckles were degraded. Sets of cheap knives and forks had halved their weight but doubled their bulk to rust. Sets of nails and tacks had been welded to each other by the damp. Once polished surfaces had roughened and corroded. Everything had lost its sheen and color. Everything was acned. The soil itself was dark with rust and stains.

Many of the pieces pulled clear by Franklin and his fellows were inspected, found wanting, and just thrown back into the cleared trenches, but nevertheless there was plenty worth keeping, enough to arm the horsemen from toe to teeth and make them rich. Within a short time the three blankets were heavy with pickings. They were dragged away, tied corner to corner, and lifted onto carts. New blankets were provided. Nothing of any worth could be left behind. By now the men were tired and cold and no longer excited. The treasure hunt was proving as tedious as any other work. They filled their blankets three more times before the sun gained much altitude.

It was, then, almost a relief when the work was finally interrupted by the arrival of the Baptists, a group of fifteen or so, mostly the younger devotees and gatekeepers, distinguished as ever by the devotional white tapes tied at their shoulders. But there were four of the older disciples, too, wearing their calmest faces and carrying the very weakest of the Helpless Gentlemen in an invalid chair with long lifting poles. The younger Baptists did their best to seem imposing and imperious without inviting an assault. They were armed only with their pilgrim sticks, good implements for prodding families, perhaps, but no use against metal swords and pikes. They were outnumbered, anyway. Besides the labor gang and the horses, the masters had mustered more than thirty men, all used to conflict, every one of them inclined to be a murderer.

The Baptists would not offer any short-term violence. Instead they threatened hellfire and damnation for all who soiled their hands and souls with metal. For a while, now that excavations had ceased, the only sounds were the high-pitched, fearful voices of believers and the clacking of the few winter birds that had come to see what they could find in the freshly turned soil. The Most Helpless Gentleman himself called out: “This is the Devil’s work. Enough.” A very reedy voice. Then there was the laughter of the mounted men, the sound of horses being spurred and turned, the shithering of blades from sheaths. “The Devil’s got some better work for us, I think,” the shortest of the riders, Captain Chief, said. “Now come on, boys, make meat of them. Prime cuts of Baptist for the crows.” Again his men were laughing, too readily amused.

The Helpless Gentleman would have shaken his fists in anger had he had the strength to raise his arms from his lap. He would have used his hands to save himself, despite his vows. He would at least have pressed his palms together and said his prayers. But horsemen were already at his back, determined to see him tumble from his chair. The devotee who dared to try to push away a horse was struck three times across his face and head with a heavy steel blade. The first blow cut into his cheek and across his mouth. The second, aimed at his white devotional tape, severed his windpipe and finished him. The final blow, delivered as the body fell, was just for show. It took the Baptist’s head clean off. It would have rolled a step or two had not his long nose wedged against a frozen clod of soil.

Franklin and his fellows – men who’d been added to his group in the last days of fall – were not shocked. This had been a winter of punishments and executions. They’d seen more deaths than they could even remember, including other decapitations. Two overspirited young men had tried to escape at their first opportunity, been dragged back to the encampment behind horses, feet first, and then brutally dispatched with an ax. It was a lesson to the others, according to the one comedian among the horsemen: “If you let your legs run, then we’ll make sure your blood runs, too,” and “Use your head or lose your head,” and “The man who quits is cut in bits. His toes are separated from his nose.” He never tired of rhyming threats.

The elder of the two Joeys, the potman, had succumbed during the winter to the cold, the hunger, and the string of beatings he’d received for being too small and weak for heavy work. He was worthless, anyway. The labor gang was not a charity. All its members had to earn their keep tenfold or they would perish.

Only the most obedient, the strongest, and the fittest could survive such a demanding and relentless regime. Franklin and his forty or so companions who had lasted long enough to serve in that day’s metal raiding party were hardened men, mistreated, underfed, but mostly young and muscular. How was it, then, that not one of them so much as raised a hand to save a life that morning? They had only to stretch and help themselves to freshly unearthed weapons from the spoils pile on the waxed blanket. They outnumbered their armed masters and could simply take the horsemen, who were now paying attention only to the group of Baptists, by surprise. Franklin thought of it. He clenched the muscles in his back and neck and thought of it. He thought of pulling free from the pile the heavy ax that he had just taken from the soil. A man could kill with it easily. He would take Captain Chief first, the little fellow who’d stolen and was still wearing his brother Jackson’s piebald coat. He’d add another, brighter color to the black and white and brown. And then he’d settle all the scores of winter, cracking the skulls and bloodying the faces of those hard men who’d made his life so bitter. He imagined rolling all the bodies into the trenches among the useless metal and kicking soil to cover them. He imagined kicking them until every bone in their bodies was splintered. But that was just a story that he told himself. He did not free himself. He did not fight. He did not save a life. He did nothing except stay quiet and calm, biting his tongue, watching the carnage as one by one the remaining Baptists were rounded up. How he wished that his brother might appear with his substantial temper to bring this nightmare to an end.