The Speckled Monster

by Jennifer Lee Carrell

  “Ah! Then may I count on you, sir, to join me and the other practitioners in this town in—shall we just say quarantining?—this bit of foolery to the oblivion it deserves?” His rumble of mirth at his clever choice of words faded as he registered the gravity on Boylston’s face.

  “No,” said Zabdiel, shaking his head. “No, I am afraid you may not.”

  “Surely, sir,” said Dr. Douglass, quite aghast, “you cannot be considering undertaking the practice?”

  “No,” answered Zabdiel. “I have already performed it.”

  An odd noise escaped Dr. Douglass’s throat as mirth, triumph, and relief were all knocked to the ground in a hard little rain of surprise. “Already —” he croaked. “When—?”

  “This morning,” said Zabdiel. “On my youngest son and two slaves.”

  Dr. Douglass swept the pieces of his dignity into a glowering mass of disapproval. “You are aware, sir,” he said darkly, “that as a medical doctor I cannot recommend or support this practice?”

  “I am now,” said Zabdiel. “Luckily, I was not counting on either.” He did not want to hear doubt, not now, not even from such a predictably sourpuss source as Dr. Douglass.

  But Dr. Douglass was beyond voicing doubt, or anything else. His mouth was opening and closing in silence. Curious, thought Zabdiel, how periwigs make some men’s faces expand toward greatness, while others seem to shrivel until they resemble nothing so much as a South Sea Islander’s shrunken fetish. Beneath his borrowed mane, Dr. Douglass began to shake with what was presumably rage. If he were an Islander, wondered Zabdiel, would he feel obliged to dance about in some kind of savage idolatry, to appease him?

  Zabdiel pulled himself out of his reverie. He must get away, he realized, before either of them said something they would both regret. “You are sure, sir, I may not give you a lift?”

  Douglass was still too shocked to provide any answer beyond a vigorously negative shake of the head.

  “Then I must bid you good day and good luck, sir, and head off to my own patients.” Zabdiel set his horse into motion, threading through the tangle of carriages and carts. The dray, he saw, had not moved an inch. As they reached the ditch, Exeter took it in stride, leaping it with ease. After winding through the equally dense thicket of vehicles on the opposite side, they were soon trotting away through streets that were clear, save for a thick shimmer of heat.

  By nightfall, the entire town knew that Dr. Boylston had given smallpox to his own flesh and blood—on purpose—and as if that weren’t enough, to two black slaves as well. The boy whose pock Zabdiel had pressed talked to his mother; she talked to everyone she could find. Dr. Douglass also let the news slip once or twice, in well chosen houses. No better than murder, sniffed one of his more excitable old gossips; she had ample opportunity that day to practice her tone of outrage and offended motherliness, tweaking it to perfection.

  The next day, Zabdiel began to sense whispers, silences, averted eyes, but he told himself he was imagining things. He managed to believe it, too, until the first door shut in his face. At the next house, though, he got a hearty slap on the back, and a request to try it on a child or two there. If it should succeed on Tommy, that is.

  The word went on sputtering, flickering, flaring through town, sometimes burrowing to hushed bass depths, sometimes accompanied by gale-force gasps and shrieks that would do banshees proud. Nervous giggles. Blanched horror. For four days, the glares thickened around him as he rode about his business; Jack, who felt entirely well, still rode out with Zabdiel, but he began drawing his mule as close as possible behind. At home, Zabdiel changed all their dressings, two each, morning and evening: they had flamed red by the end of the first day; after that they looked as if they might go on holding that same angry shape until the Day of Judgment.

  On the fifth day, another wave of eruptions began to appear around town; this time the sick numbered in the hundreds. Castle William, too, was infected. Men had been deserting in hordes, it seemed, for a week. In the streets, the glares following Zabdiel thickened to hatred. The whispers hardened to muttering, exploding here and there into jeers, as if he might be to blame for the spread of the disease.

  G.D., wrote Cotton Mather in his diary, the Affair of preventing the Small-Pox, in the way of Inoculation, is begun, and has raised an horrid Clamour, which Occasions new Cares upon me.

  On the sixth day from inoculation, the first of July, Tommy, Jack, and Jackey all grew feverish, their skin a little warm to the touch. Zabdiel insisted that Jack stay home with the boys. That evening, a jeer broke loose from a huddle of men, and then another, and then a stone skimmed across the street, not quite at him, but too close for comfort. Zabdiel’s horse shied. He said nothing, however, just rode on as if nothing more untoward than the sudden flap of a bird had startled his mount.

  All three of his patients at home were a little restive and feverish that night, on into the next morning. That day, more doors shut in his face. Early on, one or two women begged him, quietly, to return later, after their husbands were out. In broad daylight, one or two more whispered for him to come back after dark, when the neighbors would not see. As he rode home that evening, someone spat, hitting him square on the cheek. Zabdiel shook out a handkerchief and wiped the spittle away, looking straight ahead.

  At home, he found that Jack’s fever had dissolved, and the sores on his neck and arm were drying up. “Are you sure you haven’t had the small-pox?” asked Zabdiel.

  “Don’t remember,” said Jack.

  “You’ve had it,” said Zabdiel.

  Jackey and Tommy, though, remained feverish; their incisions had blossomed, so that each showed a red halo burning around a single large pock.

  The next morning—the eighth day, July 3—Jackey’s fever limped on as before. Tommy, however, began twitching and tossing in his sleep, his skin papery and burning to the touch, the fever creeping ever higher. With a heavy heart, Zabdiel left the house on his rounds. The air, too, was feverish, hot and moist, pressing like a headache against his temples.

  Jack rode out with him again; this time, Zabdiel did not complain. When Jack drew up alongside on his mule, unbidden, neither man remarked upon it, but they both felt safer that way. That afternoon, crowds began to jostle around their mounts; Prince reared and flailed out with his hooves, scattering the crowd. Zabdiel stared the crowd down, and then said one word under his breath to Jack: “Home.”

  It was just as well. No, it was a godsend. For Tommy lay in a wet heap on the kitchen floor, his fever so high Zabdiel thought he could fairly see steam rise from his son’s skin. Jackey was sitting next to him, petting him and singing a wandering little lullaby.

  “What happened?” Jack asked his son.

  “He was hot,” whispered Jackey. “He went out and stood under the pump. Then he came back in and went to sleep.”

  Jack built up the fire, while Zabdiel stripped his son and toweled him dry. Tommy muttered and twitched, but did not wake, even when Zabdiel lifted him in his arms and carried him upstairs. He was already soaked with sweat by the time Zabdiel could lay him on the big bed. His and Jerusha’s bed. He tried not to think of Jerusha. Of the face she would turn to him if she were to walk in this instant. Jack brought up a bucket of cool water and some cloths.

  Zabdiel sat up late into the night, laying cool cloths on Tommy’s head and feet, while the boy shivered and mumbled, struggling against the darkness. On his arm, the large pock in the middle of the incision had exploded into an open sore two and a half inches across. Green and yellow rottenness dripped at its heart, while the red ring had stretched huge, its perimeter thick with tiny pocks.

  Faint and far away, he thought he heard a commotion. “Doctor,” said Jack from the passage, “I think you had better come into the parlor.”

  He had made up a cot there for Jackey, within calling distance from Zabdiel. Jackey was fitful and hot, too, but not dangerously so. His arm looked just like Tommy’s.

  It was not Jackey or his arm that Jac
k had called him to see, however. The light in the parlor was a strange glowering orange, and the noise seemed louder here. Was louder—was a roar of voices shouting. A bang rattled the window glass, and Zabdiel instinctively stepped back. A splatter of filth dripped down the glass. Then came another and another, until the front walls and windows reverberated as if under siege.

  In the back room, Tommy moaned; just behind them, Jackey cried out.

  Zabdiel strode across the room in three steps and threw open the window. A shriek rose, hung before him, and died away. Zabdiel stood gazing at the mob below. A crowd of men unsteady on their feet. Others still solid in their rage, but flickering like ghouls beneath their torches. A few women; one of them screamed, “Murderer.” “House of filth,” shouted a lower voice. And in the front, in the middle, stood a large man he did not recognize, silent, square on bowed sailor’s legs, swinging a rope. “Negro lover,” he said in a voice that needed no shout to carry.

  Zabdiel let his eyes roam the entire crowd, till he held every last ounce of attention. “There are sick children up here,” he said in the voice that could seize women out of hysterics, pull men back from the brink of panic, send children and animals hurtling safely out of harm’s way.

  “Murderer!” the woman screamed again.

  He found her face, her jaw still hanging open from the cry, and pinned her beneath his gaze until she closed her mouth. “Sleeping,” he said firmly. “Not dead.” If they die, he thought, you can have me. But not until then. “They need quiet.”

  The mob shifted sullenly, muttering. Under his stare, they went silent, though they did not go away, standing like sentries of wrath in the street. “Thank you,” he said. “And good night to you all.” He shut the window and turned back into the room.

  To be two and a half thought Zabdiel glancing at Jackey, and sleep through a riot.

  Jack, for his part, was watching the doctor. “Come on,” he said, heading back into the bedroom and stepping up to the bed, taking Zabdiel’s place wetting cloths and laying them across Tommy. The boy was sweating, shivering, and muttering on the bed, stripped save for the bottom sheet.

  “Sit,” said Jack. Zabdiel dropped into the chair by the bed and took hold of the tankard filled with a cool draft of small beer, which Jack had set on the nightstand.

  “Yesterday,” said Jack, wringing out a towel, “Lieutenant Hamilton of the Seahorse bought himself a new servant and named him Cotton Mather: in honor, he said, of Dr. Mather’s fine trust in men with black skins, black hearts, and blacker magic.”

  “Christ Almighty,” said Zabdiel into his tankard.

  “They’re scared,” said Jack, turning back to Tommy.

  “Everyone with an ounce of sense in this whole damned town is scared,” said Zabdiel. “Strange excuse for a killing spree.”

  “Oldest excuse in the world,” shrugged Jack. “Oldest and strongest. What do you reckon we do now?”

  Zabdiel shook his head, and looked up at Jack. “Now we wait,” he said blankly. After a while, Jack tiptoed back out of the room.

  The pages of Dr. Mather’s treatise lay, already dog eared, on the table by the bed; Zabdiel had long since committed it to memory, the writing burned into his brains with letters of fire. There was no hidden word of comfort to be unearthed there. He picked up the Bible that lay next to the treatise. The cadences of this book were as deeply rooted in his soul as the voice of his mother singing, or the gaits of the horses he had ridden with his father long before he could walk. His fingers drew the book open to a chapter in Genesis.

  Take thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, God had once tempted Abraham, and offer him for a burnt offering. So his son and two servants went up to the mountain with him. At its feet, the two servants halted, while Abraham and Isaac toiled into the heights. Side by side, father and son built an altar and collected wood. Then, without warning, Abraham bound Isaac and laid him on the altar as the sacrifice.

  Zabdiel did not need to read on to know what came next, but he ran his eyes over the words anyway. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And the angel said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad.

  No voice, thought Zabdiel wearily, had called out to him. Mather sensed angels everywhere, incessantly. Zabdiel had scoffed at him for it, in his heart. Perhaps he should have been listening instead. Perhaps he should have shouted at the heavens, Here I am.

  But he had said nothing, had heard nothing. His knife had come down.

  Another sentence, about another father and son, drifted up from far later pages, twisting slowly through his mind: Father, if thou be willing, take this cup away from me.

  He slid onto his knees by the bed.

  Please, Lord, be willing.

  PART THREE

  Hell Upon Earth

  1

  SALUTATION ALLEY

  ZABDIEL startled awake. In the dull gray heat of dawn he lay curled on the edge of his bed, one arm flung over his son. Tommy was shivering and muttering incoherently in his sleep, still dangerously hot.

  Zabdiel leapt from the bed; in two bounds he landed in the stair passage and called to Jack, who was there in half an instant.

  “Jackey?” he said hoarsely.

  “Fever broke in the night,” said Jack. “He’s fine.”

  “Good,” nodded Zabdiel, though his heart squeezed into an even smaller ball and plummeted toward the center of the earth. “Watch Tommy,” he said, and ran barefoot down the stairs, skidding through into the shop. At the shelves holding his drugs, he paused a little wild eyed, scanning the long ranks of jars and canisters. What was good for the boy? He needed something to drive out the poison, to send it flowing out into his skin, where it might escape; as it was, it was festering within, feeding on his vital spirits.

  A vomit. He needed a vomit. There wasn’t anything worth worrying about left in his stomach: but the emetic action would work on the boy’s pores too. Nothing too strong—not now. Usually Zabdiel preferred antimonial vomits, but after three days of broiling in his own juices Tommy was far too weak. He’d have to make do with a gentler vegetable concoction. Ipecacuanha. He pulled down the jar and mixed up a light dose in some oil. He also concocted a cooling draft to fight the fever: two ounces of sweet almond oil and two ounces of the syrup of marsh mallows, shaken together.

  With a vial in each hand, he raced back up the stairs. Jack offered to dose the boy, but Zabdiel shook his head and Jack tiptoed away again. Zabdiel sat down on the side of the bed and with infinite gentleness began spooning the vomit into his son’s mouth. Then he held Tommy over a bowl as he retched. When he stopped, Zabdiel wiped the spittle away and fed him a few spoonfuls of the cooling oil, but Tommy shuddered, puckering his face and turning away. Surely that was a good sign that he had not drifted too far away from consciousness or life?

  Zabdiel sat on the edge of the bed, holding his son’s small hand. Twenty minutes later, he thought Tommy might be shivering less. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t as hot. He would not believe it yet, though, not until he was sure. He sat rigid, counting his own heartbeats, wishing them to go by faster. An hour later, he called softly to Jack.

  Jack laid a big calloused hand on Tommy’s forehead, and then he broke into a wide grin. “Fever’s passing,” he said. “He’s going to pull through.” He turned his eyes on Zabdiel. “But I ain’t so sure about you, Doctor. You go on and get some sleep now. Let me watch the boys.”

  “Jackey?” asked Zabdiel once again. His tongue felt thick.

  “Jackey’ll be right as rain, soon as those spots come out, and so will Mr. Tommy here. Cot’s right over there.” He nodded.

  Zabdiel stood up unsteadily and crossed to the window, laying his cheek against its coolness. In the paddock below, two foals frisked about, watched by their dams. Thank you, he whispered. Jack collared him where he stood, propelling him to the cot, or he might have fallen asl
eep standing up. Fallen right out the window, if it’d been open, thought Jack.

  Later—much later, to judge by the light and the heat that had filled the room—Zabdiel woke to a shout of triumph; he blinked and sat up with a start. “Spots!” shouted Tommy, waving one arm about. “Papa, I have spots!”

  Zabdiel strode to the bed. Tommy did indeed have small red speckles, about five that he could see and ten or fifteen more he could not. Zabdiel plucked his son out of the bed, whirling and stamping, whooping and hollering, with glee.

  Tossing Tommy on his shoulder, he ducked across the hall. Jackey, too, was sprouting bumps, only on Jackey they were not bright red, they were an even deeper black than his dark skin. Zabdiel and Tommy whooped and whirled away again. After a split second, Jack caught up to Jackey and joined in the dance.

  A few minutes later, the Reverend Benjamin Colman walked out of his house with a heavy heart, ready to keep vigil at a child’s deathbed; the news had slithered into his study at first light, in the whispering of servants. Not that it was anything like a secret. As he emerged from his own door, he saw a knot of people gathered around Boylston’s house, gesticulating and pointing. He quickened his step, and the crowd parted silently to let him through.

  It sounded as if Indians were celebrating a massacre upstairs. He was obliged, in the end, to loose the clarion call of his pulpit voice to rouse a servant through the commotion. Neither the wild-Indian dancing nor the laughter faltered as he mounted the stairs behind Jack. Of course, it was proper to coax even the smallest child into calm prayer just before the end. But in Reverend Colman’s experience, if a dying child asked for it, the most sober man in the world would turn somersaults and quack like a duck. So it was not the father who made the minister’s brows float upward in surprise. It was the boy himself.

  Perched on his father’s shoulders and hollering, Tommy looked tired, a little washed out and peaky, but not remotely in danger of dying. “I’ve got spots,” he shrieked as he caught sight of the minister’s head rising through the gloom that pooled in the hollows of the still-shuttered ground floor.