The Widow's War

by Mary Mackey

  “So you’re awake at last,” the nun says.

  Carrie manages to nod.

  “What is your name, my child?”

  “Carolyn Vinton.” Carrie’s tongue has finally been unlocked and the words slide out easily.

  “You have been very ill, Dona Carolyn. We did not think you would live. You were given the últimos ritos.”

  “The last rites? But I am not . . .”

  “Not Catholic. We knew that. But in times of plague, rules can be broken. Father Gilberto baptized you and then anointed you with holy oil and prayed over you. And you see, it worked. Many died, but thanks to the grace of God, you survived. And now you are a good Catholic girl, and if you relapse and die, you’ll go straight to heaven.”

  Carrie struggles to find the nun’s words comforting, but the idea that she might fall back into fever and die is terrifying. She wants to tell the nun that the priest didn’t need to baptize her. She’d been baptized at the age of three when Grandfather Hampton dunked her in a freezing cold creek in mid-March over her mother’s strenuous objections. Mama had yelled that Carrie would get pneumonia and die like her baby brothers, which had been a real possibility. There’d been no reason for that cold spring baptism except for Grandfather’s own, famous bullheadedness . . .

  She realizes with a start that her mind has wandered back to early childhood. Her memory seems to be returning in pieces. She looks up and finds the nun still standing over her, waiting patiently. There are things Carrie wants to ask her, but first she needs to put her own thoughts in order.

  She’s been ill, the sister said. Sometimes people wake from tropical diseases with their minds permanently scrambled, or worse yet, they return from the edge of death like little children, unable to read or write or remember their own pasts. Will her brain work normally once she recovers? Will she ever be herself again? Maybe if she could see . . .

  “Could you please take this bandage off my eyes?” she asks. There’s a brief silence while the nun considers her request. Carrie’s mouth goes dry with fear. Something’s terribly wrong.

  “Do you think you can stand the light, Dona Carolyn? The last time we removed the bandage, you began screaming and begged us to put it back on.”

  “Am I going blind?”

  The nun laughs softly. “No, quite the contrary. All your senses seem to have been sharpened to the point of agony. When the cat came into the room a few nights ago, you knew it was there, not because you could see it—that was impossible—but because you smelled it. You asked for us to put it up next to you, and we did. You slept with it for an hour or so, and then, as cats do, it wandered off, perhaps to hunt mice, which is why we allow it to live here.” The nun bends over in a sudden black-and-white blur and plucks the bandage from Carrie’s eyes. “There,” she says, “how’s that? No screaming? Ah, good.”

  Carrie blinks and finds herself staring up into a pock-marked face with coarse features. The nun has dark eyebrows, a large nose, and small, watery eyes. She’s well into middle age and not at all pretty, but her smile is kind, and Carrie is grateful for it. She turns her head and discovers that her neck still aches, but the pain is minor compared to what it was before.

  She is in a large room. The whitewashed walls are adorned with wooden crucifixes. Tall windows let in pink-tinted light—either sunrise or sunset; she’s in no state to determine which. To her left, a row of cots covered with mosquito netting stretches toward an arched doorway through which she can see a courtyard, a bougainvillea vine in full bloom, and a fountain made of those blue-and-white Portuguese tiles that go by the name of azulejos. She notices that only a few of the cots are occupied. Most are not only empty but missing sheets and mattresses.

  “Where am I, Sister?”

  “You lie in the hospital of the Irmandade da Santa Casa de Misericórdia. We found you unconscious on the street and brought you here in a cart along with a dozen others, all of whom had the pox.”

  At the word pox another shiver moves through Carrie’s body. She can feel horrible, inchoate shapes lurking at the back of her mind like caged animals impatient to be let out, but she doesn’t know what they are. Memories? Nightmares? She knows her own name and her distant memories are clear, but she seems to have no recent past. Whatever’s waiting for her has something to do with the word pox. Instinctively, she reaches up and touches her cheek, feels the warmth of her flesh, the curved plain of her forehead, the bridge of her nose. When she moves her hand up to her head, she discovers they’ve cut her hair.

  She remembers it had been waist-length, blond; that it curled in impossible tangles. She remembers fighting it with a hairbrush every morning and winding it into a crown of braids. Most of all, she remembers being pretty, not beautiful perhaps, but pretty: dark brown eyes with flecks of amber in them, an oval face, a complexion that tanned in the tropical sun rather than burned, leaving a line of freckles across her nose. She remembers not minding that her skin darkened even though ladies were supposed to be as pale as milk.

  Shutting her eyes again, she conjures up herself in an imaginary mirror: small, round breasts; long legs. Too tall by a good three inches for current fashions, but slender and high-waisted with curved hips, delicate, long-fingered hands, and lips so red that someone, whose name she cannot remember, once accused her angrily of using paint. She lists her flaws: a crooked toe on her right foot that never healed properly after she broke it, an overbite, a turned up Irish nose—

  Her hand returns to her cheek and freezes. She lies still fighting a terrible suspicion. Slowly she lowers her hand and opens her eyes. She has a question she wants to ask, but she isn’t sure she wants to hear the answer.

  “I’ve had the pox, haven’t I? Tell me the truth, Sister: Am I horribly scarred?”

  “No, not at all, Dona Carolyn. There isn’t a mark on you. You never caught the pox. You had some disease that we have no name for. Your fever was so great, we were sure you were going to die. You had a rash all over your body that we first assumed was the pox, but you never developed the blisters. Even so, your pain was beyond description. You suffered greatly. We prayed for you as we prayed for all who came to us during those terrible weeks, but in your case, by the grace of God, our prayers were answered.”

  The nun looks down the row of mostly empty beds. “I don’t think you need to be afraid of catching the pox now. The plague has burned itself out. Some of the sick have recovered and gone home, but many died. Most of those empty beds were theirs. We’ve burned the sheets and mattresses and buried their bodies in our garden because there was no room left in our cemetery. We would have burned their bodies, too, but the poor souls could not go to God if we did that. For more than a week, they died nearly as fast as they came in. On the worst day we buried fourteen, two of whom were sisters in our order who nursed the sick until they fell down beside them and had to be nursed in turn. I don’t know why I was spared.”

  She turns back to Carrie who is staring at her with a look of great agitation. “What is it? Are you feeling ill again? Is the fever back?”

  “No, but your words have made me remember something.”

  “Remember what, my child?”

  “That my father died. I buried him in a garden, our garden. Someone . . . someone I love . . . William . . . yes, William helped me dig his grave.” William’s name suddenly comes back to her, releasing a torrent of memories so painful she begins to weep. She knows now why she hasn’t been able to remember the recent past. It’s unbearable.

  “Where is he, Sister? Did he live or die? Tell me now, please. I can’t bear not knowing.” Sick with fear, she waits for the nun to answer.

  “Did who live or die, my child?” There is a hint of weariness in the nun’s voice as if a display of grief were out of place in this room full of ghosts and empty beds.

  “William,” Carrie says. “William Saylor. He’d come back to Rio, and we were going to be married, but as soon as his ship sailed into the bay, he saw the black flags. He’s a doctor, so he knew at
once what they meant. Once he realized there was plague in the city, he became desperate to get to me, but the captain forbade anyone to go ashore and announced that he was going to set sail for São Paulo as soon as the tide turned because only a madman would enter Rio in the middle of an epidemic. William said all he could think of was the danger I was in, so he waited until dark, lowered himself down the side of the ship, swam to the docks, and came to me as quickly as he could. He found me at home tending my father. William tried to help me save Papa, but all his medical knowledge proved useless. Papa suffered so, dear God . . .”

  Carrie begins crying again.

  “Lentamente,” the nun says softly. “Calm down, go more slowly, and try to stop crying. You say this William Saylor who came to you when your father was dying was your fiancé?”

  Carrie attempts to control her tears and only succeeds in sending herself into a choking fit. The nun jerks her upright and whacks her smartly on the back with the palm of her hand. “Breathe!” she commands.

  Carrie takes a long, shuddering breath and finds her voice. “I’ve loved William since I was nine years old. We were to be married. He intended to come back to Rio sooner, but his—”

  The nun interrupts her. “’Veelhum’” is an English name, is it not?”

  “No, American. William and I were both born in the United States less than a hundred miles from each other. I was born in Bloomington, Indiana; he was born in Mitchellville, Kentucky.” The nun stares at her blankly, and Carrie realizes she has switched into English.

  “William and I are both Americans,” she repeats in Portuguese. “Do you know where he is? Did he come here with me? When I fell ill, he was already running a high fever, and I’m afraid he may have caught the pox—although perhaps he only had what I’ve had, and like me he’s recovered. Still, I’m afraid he came down with the pox. We spent two weeks nursing the sick together . . . ”

  “For which God will reward you,” the nun says. She pauses and fixes her eyes on Carrie in a way that Carrie can’t interpret. It’s not an unfriendly look, but there’s something speculative about it. “I’m sorry to say that there’s been no one named William Saylor here, or at least no man who lived long enough to tell us that was his name. If you like, I can check the book that holds our records of births and deaths, but I’ve read it so many times over the past month that I know it by heart, and I can tell you without looking that you won’t find your fiancé listed there.”

  “Of course his name won’t be on your death list! William can’t be dead. God wouldn’t be that cruel.”

  “God works in mysterious ways, my child. It’s not for us to question Him.”

  Under other circumstances, Carrie might have argued this point with her since her own grandfather had spent his entire life questioning God at every opportunity, but she’s too busy struggling to sit up. “Where are my shoes and clothes? Please bring them to me, Sister. I need to go out and search for William. He may be lying sick and untended. He may need food, water . . .”

  The nun puts her hand on Carrie’s chest and pushes her back down. “What you need, Dona Carolyn, is to lie still and rest. You’re in no condition to go out on the streets, and if you insist on trying, you may not live long enough to marry anyone. Rio is still in turmoil. The Emperor and his court have moved to the Summer Palace in Petrópolis. Anyone else rich enough to leave the city fled at the first sign of the plague and only a few have returned. Thieves and looters have taken over the streets. Be sensible. Think of your own safety. If you leave the protection of the Irmandade, you may be ravished and murdered if you don’t relapse and fall down dead first.”

  “Please let me get up,” Carrie pleads. “Please, Sister. I don’t care what happens to me. I have to find William. If I die looking for him, then I die. If he’s alive and sick with the pox, I want to take care of him, and if he’s dead, I don’t want to live.”

  “Calm yourself, Dona Carolyn. This is your illness speaking. Your life is precious. God gives each of us only one. The passion with which you speak of this man is not appropriate for a senhorita. It’s hardly appropriate for a married woman. I think this Veelhum Saylor has been more than your fiancé, that you were with him for many days unchaperoned, and that you and he did more than simply tend the sick together.”

  “I could never be ashamed of anything I’ve done with William!”

  “My dear child, I am not asking you to be ashamed. I am asking you if you are carrying his child.”

  Carrie is struck speechless. The thought has not occurred to her. She remembers lying in William’s arms, the look in his eyes that told her better than words could that he loved her, a joy so intense she felt as if she might shatter under the force of it. And then she remembers how afraid they were, how people were dying all around them, how they only had each other for comfort.

  “It’s possible,” she admits. “William and I . . .” She looks at the nun and thinks that there’s no use trying to explain this to her.

  A smile curls at the corner of the nun’s mouth. “Do you think that because I’ve never been with a man, I don’t know what love is? For twelve years I directed our shelter for fallen women. No doubt you don’t think of yourself as ‘fallen’. The girls never do until the babies come. I always encourage them to trust in the love of Christ. True, they’ve sinned, but I believe of all mortal sins, the sin of love is the most easily forgiven. After all, Veelhum was your fiancé. You were about to marry him.”

  “William and I searched everywhere for someone to marry us, but the epidemic kept getting worse, and in the churches they were having funerals, not weddings. The day before William fell ill, they even closed the . . .” A frightening thought suddenly occurs to her. “Sister, I’ve been very sick. If I’m carrying William’s child, will it be normal?”

  The nun seizes both of Carrie’s hands and holds them in hers. “There is no way to tell. You must trust in God, my child.”

  “God can wait.” Carrie jerks her hands back. “I have to find William.”

  “I am sorry, Dona Carolyn, but I can’t let you leave.”

  Carrie says nothing. She’s not afraid of going out on the streets of Rio. She just spent two weeks on them in the middle of an epidemic, not to mention that she’s the granddaughter of Decimus Hampton, the most stubborn man who ever lived.

  “We have guards at the gate,” the nun says. “If you try to leave, they’ll catch you and bring you back to me, and I’ll have to tie you to your bed. You were tied when you were sick so you wouldn’t fall out and harm yourself or claw at your face, and the cords are still in place. So lie still, Dona Carolyn, and rest until your strength returns. Later I’ll bring you some hot broth.”

  The nun drops the mosquito net, turns, and walks out of the room, through the door, and into the courtyard, disappearing behind the orange blossoms of the bougainvillea vine. As soon as she is gone, Carrie again tries to sit up, but she’s so exhausted she can hardly push her body off the mattress. When at last she manages to swing her legs over the edge, she’s wracked by nausea and dizziness. For a few seconds she clings to the cot, trying to steady herself, but the sensation, which is a great deal like seasickness only worse, doesn’t pass. At last she gives up and falls back.

  Perhaps she passes out or perhaps she simply falls asleep, because the next time she opens her eyes, it’s dark and raining furiously. An oil lamp sways above her, casting strangely shaped shadows on the walls. On the ceiling, in an ever-shifting circle of lamplight, a gecko is hunting mosquitoes. For a long time she lies awake watching the gecko, listening to the rain drum against the roof tiles, and praying William is somewhere warm and dry.

  Chapter Three

  Early November 1853

  Mae Seja sits in the shade fanning herself with a palm frond. Her name, roughly translated from the Portuguese, means “Mother of Possibilities.” Thin to the point of gauntness, she is so old hardly a hair remains on her head, but her eyes are small, bright, dark, and deeply intelligent. On her back,
she bears scars from the lashes an overseer gave her many years ago when she was a slave in the cane fields. Now at eighty-three, she is the most respected woman in the quilombo, a spiritual leader who speaks with the orixás, those gods her people brought with them from Africa and have hidden from their Brazilian masters for hundreds of years.

  Everyone in the quilombo believes Mae Seja is a visionary who can see into the future and the past and beyond both into the realms of the dead, which is why Carrie has come to consult her today. They have just drunk bowls of coconut milk and eaten slices of mango to celebrate Carrie’s arrival. Now they are resting against the roots of a tree as tall as the mast of a ship. Its roots are bleached whitish gray, spread out like wings, curved, and large enough to serve as backrests. Through the leaves of this giant, which is only one of thousands that grow in the jungles surrounding Rio, sunlight filters down in small golden pools, and far overhead a flock of parrots takes flight, screeching like window hinges in need of oil.

  “Mae Seja,” Carrie says, “I have a favor to ask. I need to find a man who calls himself William Saylor.”

  She waits patiently for Mae Seja to speak. She has come to her in desperation after searching in vain for William. Brazilians are famous for keeping accurate records. Since the sixteenth century they have recorded the name of everyone who enters or leaves the country, not to mention every coil of rope and sack of coffee. Brazil has over two thousand miles of coastline, so some people have undoubtedly slipped past, most notably the thousands of slaves who are still being smuggled in from Africa to work on the coffee plantations even though importing slaves into Brazil has been illegal for nearly three years.

  William would not have been one of those overlooked by the authorities, yet his name is not on the custom lists. This in itself is not surprising since when he arrived, he swam to shore, but his name is nowhere else to be found either. For a while Carrie kept expecting him to show up at her father’s house, but there’s been no sign of him. She has examined lists of the dead and ill and the passenger lists of every ship that left Rio for another port within the past two months. She’s talked to anyone who might have seen William and even looked at lists of prisoners, although she can’t imagine him committing a crime. On the off chance that he might have gone home, she recently wrote a letter to him in care of his mother, but it takes two months for letters to reach the States from Brazil and another two to receive a reply, and she doesn’t think she can wait four months.