Текст книги "The Pesthouse"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

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Now, with Margaret’s cold and clammy feet in his hands, Franklin felt unwell himself. His body ached. His throat was dry. His shoulders and neck seemed fixed. His eyes were watering. His hands were tingling. But he chose to hold on to her feet and massage them, exactly as his mother had massaged his feet when he was young. He pressed his thumbs against each toe, he pushed against the hollows of her ankles, he worked his knuckles against the soles, he stroked each nail. She seemed to push her legs against his hands, as if she knew what he was drawing out of her. He did not want to let her go, not even when he heard the first arrivals of the day begin to come out of the woods and make their way down Butter Hill to reach the longed-for welcome at a town just blocked from sight, as usual at that time of the day, by mist.

Six

Perhaps she would have gotten better anyway, but as usual nature’s undramatic remedies would remain unrewarded. Margaret was bound to credit her rescue to Franklin’s busy hands. At first she had been startled by the pressure of his thumbs on her soles and heels and by his shocking, intimate invasion of the gaps between her toes. No one had played with Margaret’s feet since she’d been a child. Certainly since she had been ten years old or so, she had been taught how precious her body would be in securing a husband but how untouchable it should remain until that man had revealed and committed himself with an exchange of labor or of goods. The phrase “The virgin pulls the plow” did not mean that in Ferrytown the young unmarried women were put to work in the fields, but that a pure girl would be worth a pair of horses or a team of oxen in a marriage contract. You wouldn’t get a brace of rabbits for a girl who’d drifted.

When she’d been younger, Margaret had hardly dared even to touch herself for fear of losing value, but lately, as time and opportunity elapsed and it seemed less likely that any man in Ferrytown would volunteer to embrace a wife whose lovely, tempting copper hair was such an ancient omen of disaster and such a sign of waywardness, she had broken that taboo. She was, at thirty-one, she had admitted to herself, a woman who might be a daughter and a sister and an aunt, but never a wife or mother. Her body would retain its value and remain unshared.

But she’d been approached many times by the strangers who had traveled through her town and who evidently did not share her neighbors’ wariness of redheads. She’d had her rear slapped more than once. She’d had her fingers kissed. And one fine-mannered man, her father’s age, had proposed a midnight meeting place beyond the palisades where they might talk and hold each other’s hands. She’d often wondered what might have happened had she done what he’d suggested, where she might have ended up, if she hadn’t opted instead to seek Ma’s advice, with the result that it was her brothers and her father who went out at midnight with their sticks to honor his proposal.

So this caressing of the feet was something both alarming and overdue. She had been tempted to protest. To kick this stranger, even. To judge his touch as cheapening. But who doesn’t like their feet caressed? Who isn’t weakened and disarmed by such discreet attention? It helped that Franklin spoke to her while he was working on her feet, making less of a stranger of himself. He recounted how his mother had tipped him on his back and “loved his feet” when he was very small, and even not so small, a teenager. He talked about his patient aunt and the pigeon that had cured him when he was young. If this was something that a mother and an aunt might do, then surely it was innocent.

Except it could not feel entirely innocent. Margaret found it hard to tell if this narrow fever that encompassed her, this breathlessness, this pounding of her heart, this fresh disorder that seemed to want to shake and flex her by the spine, was something else new that could be blamed on her flux. Or was it something that she owed to Franklin’s thumbs and knuckles? She drifted in and out of it. She even dreamed that he brought shame on her by venturing beyond her feet along her hairless leg to press his thumbs and knuckles where only she had pressed before.

The first thing Margaret noticed when she woke was how quiet it was. She had to remind herself that she was no longer at home, waking in the family house, with just moments left before the call to work. She could lie back and let the shapes absorb the light. But she knew at once that something had changed, both within her and beyond. Her body ached. Her mouth was still so dry and bitter that she could barely swallow. But she was feeling partially restored, not sinking now and fearful, but strengthening. Her feet and lower legs felt supple and alive. Her head was clear. Her scalp was bristling. She did not have to struggle to remember what had happened in the night. She could recall every movement of the young man’s hands. He was responsible.

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 short-lived, 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 ferryman’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 guesthouse.

“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 confined 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’s worth 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 were lying down in bed, unable to lift a finger for himself, 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 that of 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 – her few clothes, his travel kit – and combined them 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. Giddyup, 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 breastbone, 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 that was 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 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 passerby 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.

What first disquieted them, when they emerged below the hill from the thicket of junipers, laurels, and scrub oaks that flourished on the lower slopes, was the smell – sour milk and mushrooms, earthy, reasty, and metallic. It was an unfamiliar smell that they recognized but could not name. It was as if this new experience were one that life itself had stored for them. The next thing that they spotted from the access path – alarming and unambiguous – was the mules and horses in the tetherings, not resting and expecting rain as Margaret had imagined, or at least hoped, but spread out and gaping, dead as stones and seemingly untouched, no wounds except the fresh ones inflicted by the crows and jays and turkey vultures that had already abandoned the hills to gather on their bodies. Dead animals, still picketed.

But their alarm was manageable until Franklin spotted what he did not mistake for long as dead piebald goats. Jackson’s coat was spread out in the middle of the tetherings beside a dead mule. There was no confusing its color and its length and who its owner was. No two mothers in the world could stitch together such a piece. The body underneath seemed small, but Franklin was sure, as he stumbled forward with Margaret bouncing on his back, that he’d discover no one else but his brother, dead drunk, he hoped, and not just dead. But the body rolled too readily as he pulled at the coat. Too light, too small. A boy. He tumbled out of the goatskins as easily and weightlessly as a dog might be rolled out of its blanket. Franklin was relieved and horrified, all at once. “Who’s this?”

Margaret had not seen, at first, what had induced such panic in her porter. She could barely see over his shoulder and had to stretch her neck to discover what had caused his sudden stumbling and his cry of alarm. She saw the puzzling coat in Franklin’s hand. She was puzzled even more when he began to shake its creases out and smell the fabric. “It’s Jackson’s coat,” he said. The brother’s name. Then Margaret spotted the body at Franklin’s feet and was in shock herself. This bundle was a neighbor’s son, the nightwatch boy called Nash, a boy she’d known very well since he’d been a baby and she, barely out of her teens, had been his little nurse. “What’s happened? Let me see him.”

She was too firmly trapped at Franklin’s back to release quickly, so he kneeled down by the side of the body, twisting so that she could see it clearly. Already it was smelling a little, like cured bacon. There wasn’t any blood on the earth or on the coat. No wounds. No sign of blows or bruises.

“There’s not a mark on him,” Franklin said. “Just look at those.” He lifted his chin to indicate the carcasses of mules, horses, and donkeys. There was as well a single dog. Franklin closed the boy’s eyes, then cleaned his fingers in the soil. “There’s not a mark on him,” he said again.

“There’s something else,” said Margaret. She had to concentrate to hit upon the oddity. She was not familiar with human corpses. But still it came to her, a chilling absence. “No flies. These tetherings are always full of flies. They love the horses. But there’s not a single one. Can you see one?” Both she and Franklin put their hands across their mouths and stepped away. They held their breath. No flies.

So Margaret’s premonition had been correct: here was pestilence, or flux of some new sort, that did not care if you were man or fly or horse or mule or (now that they were hurrying into Ferrytown and discovering more beastly cadavers at every step) chicken, hog or dog or rabbit. The ground outside the stockade was scattered with animals. Even before they found the second human victim, Margaret had begun to blame herself. Who else? She’d been the first to host this current flux, so maybe she had passed it on to her grandpa and he’d brought it back into the town once he had left her safely in the Pesthouse. And without the benefit of barbering and pigeons to protect them, every beating heart in the village had been stilled. Yes, everybeating heart. She guessed exactly what she and Franklin would discover if they dared to go beyond the stockade and the palisades. Not a single fly. No living creatures, other than the few travelers and the birds that had arrived since death had done its work. No welcome from her family.