by M. M. Kaye
Olivia had done so—fully expecting opposition. But for once Hero had been tractable, since by then she was feeling hot and ill, and in pain. It was a relief to retire to the small room on the top floor that she shared with Olivia and Thérèse and to take off her clothes and stretch out on the bed clad in only a thin shift. The cut on her shoulder was throbbing unpleasantly, while the bruises that disfigured her body ached abominably and reminded her of the days when she had lain similarly bruised in Rory’s cabin on the Virago after her rescue from the sea. Only this time it was worse. Much worse The room seemed to be moving as the cabin had moved, so that for a moment she imagined that she must be back there, with the schooner dipping and lifting to the long blue swell of the Indian Ocean…
Olivia, tiptoeing in an hour later, found her writhing in pain, her face trickling with a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the humidity of the hot little room, and her teeth clenched hard on her knuckles to stop herself from crying out. She looked up with eyes that were dilated with agony and desperation, but did not speak because she was afraid of screaming, and Olivia gave a gasping sob and ran from the room.
She was back again almost immediately, and this time Thérèse was with her, and neither of them said anything. They lifted her up and held a cup to her mouth, and Hero drank from it with chattering teeth, and grimaced at the taste because there were drugs in it and it was not a particularly pleasant brew.
The pain slackened a little and she lay back and breathed deeply again, but the respite was brief, for it returned with renewed savagery, and she bit on her hand while the sweat broke out on her forehead and ran down her face, blinding her eyes. She was aware of Olivia’s trembling hands on her wrists while Thérèse sponged her tormented body with cold water, and presently of their voices whispering urgently above her head.
Olivia seemed to be urging that they send for Dr Kealey at once, and Thérèse that they should wait. And of course Thérèse was right, thought Hero, feeling a brief diminution of the pain and letting her hand fall from her mouth. The doctor was far too busy to be worried by further calls, and there was very little that he could do for her beyond recommending a further dose of the mixture they had just given her. In any case he would be here before dark, because he always came twice a day even though his wife was still sick. And meanwhile the laudanum was taking effect, for when the next bout of pain tore at her it was more bearable.
There was more low-voiced conversation above her head, and presently Hero heard Olivia’s skirts swish on the matting and the door close behind her, and she opened her eyes and looked at Thérèse who was standing beside the bed; and saw none of the panic that had been in Olivia’s face and hands that had inevitably added to her own fear. Thérèse was looking oddly drawn and bitter, but not in the least frightened, and she smiled palely at Hero and said in a hard emotionless voice: “You do not need to alarm yourself. In a little while it will be over.”
For the last hour or so, ever since the pain had started, Hero had not been able to frame the word ‘Cholera’ even to herself. It was as though she dared not admit it for fear that once she did so it would be true, while as long as she refused to consider it, it could not be. But now, looking at Thérèse’s calm, cold face, she found that she could speak of it after all, and that to do so made it less frightening:
She said: “I guess I—I caught it from one of those people in the Black Town. Rory said that…if I did…it would serve me right It is cholera, isn’t it?”
Thérèse shook her head. Inexplicably, there was scorn in her face as well as bitterness; and something else too: something that was very like envy. She said harshly: “It is not so bad as that. Do you really not know what it is? No…no, I see that you do not!”
She turned away angrily and struck her hands together, and Hero reached out and caught her skirt and tugged at it so that she was forced to turn back.
“What is it, Thérèse?”
“It is nothing to be afraid of,” said Thérèse stonily. “I can tell you that, because to me it has happened twice—to my great sorrow. But for you it cannot be a sadness that you lose this child. You will have others.”
She saw the slow, painful colour stain Hero’s white cheeks, and watched it fade again, and presently she said with a palpable effort: “Do you wish that I should send for him?”
“No! He mustn’t know!” There was stark panic in Hero’s voice. “He must never know—never! Promise me, Thérèse?”
“But you are affianced! Surely it is only right that he should—”
“Affianced? Oh—oh, you mean Clay. But it isn’t ” She caught her breath and coloured again, but this time more painfully.
“Mon Dieu!” whispered Thérèse in sudden startled comprehension, “So that is it! Yes. I had heard some wild tale, but I did not believe…I did not think…Ma pauvre petite!”
Hero looked up at her changed face and thought fleetingly: She thought it was Clay. So she does love him! Oh, poor Thérèse! Then the pain caught her again, and she raised herself on the pillows and said in a desperate, gasping voice: “Thérèse, do something! There must be something one can do to stop it. Don’t let me lose it!”
Thérèse stared at her open-mouthed; unable for a moment to believe that she had heard aright or understood what she had heard. “You mean—? But, ma chère, it is a great mercy for you that this has happened. You cannot wish to have this child!”
“Yes, I do! I didn’t think I would: I thought…But I do! I want it I mustn’t lose it. You don’t understand!”
“I think perhaps I do,” said Thérèse slowly.
“You can’t. No one could! I don’t even understand it myself.”
“We are both women,” said Thérèse dryly. “Does he know?”
Hero shook her head. “No…and he must not! This is something that I want for myself. That is why— ” Her face twisted to another spasm of agony, and when she could speak again she said imploringly: “Isn’t there anything you can do? There must be something. Please, Thérèse!”
“It is too late to do anything. But you are young, and you will—”
She pulled herself up sharply, realizing that in the circumstances this was hardly a suitable observation to make.
It was all very strange, thought Thérèse, and very surprising…She wondered if one ever really knew about other people. Or even about oneself…
After a moment she said instead: “It will be over soon. And I think it is best that we do not speak of this to Olivia—or to anyone else. No?”
“No,” agreed Hero. And began to cry: the slow tears forcing themselves under her closed eyelids and running down her face to drip on the pillow.
Thérèse had been right when she said that it would soon be over. It was over little more than an hour later; and Hero had kept to her room for two more days, and then left it because the ever increasing number of children needed every pair of hands that could be mustered to care for them. And though the time came soon enough when she was forced to admit that the house could contain no more, by then several charitably disposed persons in the city had offered their own houses, and close on four hundred children were being sheltered and fed.
There had been no message from her uncle or Clayton, and she knew that neither of them would find it easy to forgive her for walking out of the Consulate with Rory Frost. But they had sent something a great deal better: money and food and clothing. As had Majid, from the rural seclusion to which he had retired in the hope of escaping the plague that was decimating his Island, and from where he sent all the help he could to The Dolphins’ House, together with a message congratulating Rory on his escape, and another to Miss Hollis and her helpers, thanking them for the good work they were doing.
Cholé too had sent gifts of fruit, vegetables and grain; though no messages, since it was not in her nature to forgive an injury, and she would always hold the “foreigners’ responsible for the defeat of Bargash and the ruin of all her hopes. As for news, they relied largely on Dr Kealey
and Thérèse, whose particular skills took them everywhere. It was from the former that Hero learned that two more members of her uncle’s household had died of cholera—Fattûma and her partner in crime, Bofabi, who had both met a richly deserved end, brought down on their own heads by leaving the comparative safety of the Consulate to visit the latter’s smallholding outside the city, where he overworked the slaves he had purchased with Hero’s money, and where they had contracted the disease.
Millicent Kealey had at last recovered from her illness and now spent the greater part of the day working at The Dolphins’ House, and Colonel Edwards not only supplied them with fresh vegetables from his own garden, but also purchased a herd of goats who were milked daily under his own eye, the milk then being personally delivered to Hero. “Good stuff in that girl,” declared Colonel Edwards—which was generally recognized to be praise of a high order.
The Colonel had accepted without comment the fact that Captain Frost was at large again and living openly at The Dolphins’ House. There would, in any event, have been little use in attempting to get him rearrested while the cholera raged in the city, and Colonel Edwards had too much sense to consider it. He had even—and of necessity—spoken to the Captain on several occasions, and had once actually been heard to remark to Olivia Credwell that the fellow couldn’t be quite as black as he was painted, and perhaps there was something to be said for him after all; though damned little.
Time enough, thought Colonel Edwards, to consider what to do about Frost when the epidemic was over: always supposing that they both survived it, for as yet it showed no signs of abating. The cholera still claimed its victims in the city and in every village throughout Zanzibar: from houses, hovels and palaces; on the anchored dhows and the ships of the Sultan’s fleet. And as yet no man could see the end—certainly not the Colonel. There was nothing to do but work and hope. And pray.
There had, inevitably, been deaths among the children in The Dolphins’ House. But these had not totalled anywhere near the numbers that Dr Kealey had feared, and the majority were due to previous neglect and starvation. Five only had died of the cholera; and though the house and the garden, the courtyard, verandahs and outhouses and even the roof were so crammed with children that at times there seemed barely room to move, only nine had contracted it, of whom four had recovered. And the infection had not spread…
“It is a miracle!” declared Olivia.
“It is the mercy of the Mother of God, who has heard our prayers and taken pity on the children,” said Thérèse.
“Surely the hand of Allah and the favour of His Prophet is upon this house!” said Ralub. “Praise be to the Rewarder!”
The warm rain fell and the Trade Wind blew, but always there was the close, humid heat, and when there were clear days and the sun blazed in a cloudless sky the temperature leapt until the very walls of The Dolphins’ House were hot to the touch. But to Hero it was the clear nights that were the worst, for at least the falling rain swallowed up other sounds, and there was a certain soothing rhythm in its steady drumming. But on the white nights when the moon rode high and the wind slept, every sound was sharp in the stillness, and above the continual noise of restless children she could hear the barking of the pariah packs as they fought over the bodies that rotted on Nazimodo—that terrible spit of land where the poor of Zanzibar had, from time immemorial, driven out their dying animals to perish in order to save themselves the trouble of destroying them, and where they now left their dead. That sound was a constant reminder that the enemy was still among them, and that it might yet invade the house and destroy them all.
Thérèse went down with a sharp attack of fever and raved through one whole night in high-pitched rapid French, and Rory had ridden through the downpour to fetch Monsieur Tissot and a covered litter, the mud having made the roads impassable for a carriage, and Thérèse had been removed to her own house for fear of the fever taking hold among the children.
She had been back within a week, looking ten years older but as brisk and efficient as ever, and neither Hero nor Olivia, nor even Milly Kealey, who had suffered a return of boils and prickly-heat but ignored them and continued to work, had even noticed her pallor or her thin cheeks and sunken eyes, for they were all too thin and too pallid these days. And too busy to pay any attention to their personal appearance.
They were harassed and overworked and always tired, but Olivia at least was happy. She looked her age at last—and more than her age. But George Edwards did not seem to mind it, and he had taken to bringing her small nosegays of flowers and worrying about her health.
No one had ever worried about Olivia before. Or, for that matter, given her flowers. As for George, he had always looked upon himself as a confirmed bachelor and thanked God for it That silly widow, Mrs Credwell, with her brassy yellow curls, suspiciously pink cheeks and gushing manner, had frankly terrified him. But Olivia, pale and hollow-eyed, her hair scraped back and hidden under a hastily tied kerchief, her dress covered with an enveloping apron and her arms full of negro babies, earned his unqualified approval and aroused in him a strong desire to cherish and protect her.
“They have a case, those two!” said Thérèse. “And it is most suitable, I think. They will do very well, and I am surprised that no one has arranged it before.”
She looked sideways at Hero under her bristling black lashes: a long, speculative look. But Hero’s face told her nothing. Hero was very quiet these days, and Thérèse had noticed that she never looked directly at Rory even when she was speaking to him, and that he, for his part, seemed to go out of his way to avoid her.
Well, that was as it should be, thought Thérèse with a sigh. No one could possibly consider that connection suitable, and nothing could ever come of it She wondered what would happen when the epidemic had at last burned itself out, and the ships returned to harbour and the Daffodil came back? Would Dan and George Edwards arrest Rory Frost again, and send him off to face trial and imprisonment, if not the gallows? They were both consistent men and held inflexible views. But somehow she did not believe that they would take any further steps in the matter—beyond seeing that Rory left the Island as soon as the cholera epidemic was over. If it were ever over!
There were times when Thérèse could see no end to it, and when she wondered if it would continue to rage until at last all of them were dead, and the Island was swept clean of men and given back to flowers and green jungle—and peace.
Men, thought Thérèse (who liked them), are truly abominable! And she looked at Hero again and saw that she was surreptitiously watching Rory, who was standing in the courtyard below supervising the stretching of a piece of canvas that had come adrift last night.
“Not only abominable, but devoid of understanding!” said Thérèse aloud; and shrugged and went away to see that the pans in which the milk was boiled had been properly scoured, and that the hot liquid was not then cooled by the addition of unboiled water.
But the cholera had reached its peak and was already on the wane; though it was to be a good many days before any of them realized that It had taken the lives of over twenty thousand of the Sultan’s subjects, left whole villages empty and destroyed more than two-thirds of the population of Zanzibar. But now, at last, its grip began to slacken and men began to hope again.
There came an evening, after a day of brooding heat and curious stillness, when a great storm swept down upon the Island. All through the night that followed the wind shrieked like a thousand banshees, driving torrents of rain before it and piling up gigantic waves that rushed upon the beaches and deluged the town in flying spray. It snapped the trunks of palm trees as though they were no more than rotted twigs, laying waste whole acres. Stripped the fruit and flowers and leaves from orange groves and clove plantations, and drove the tide in upon the creek behind the town so that the water rose to within a foot of the Darajani Bridge and flooded the houses on either side of it.
It raged for the best part of two days, and then died as suddenly as it had
arisen. And with the morning the sun rose in a clear sky, the air was cooler than it had been for months past, and the creek and the beaches had been swept clean of the bodies that had defiled them.
The monsoon had ended. And with it the cholera. For the storm that had roared across the Island, cleansing the streets of foulness and carrying the dead out to sea, seemed to have taken the sickness with it, and the long nightmare was over.
In the garden of The Dolphins’ House the ground was littered with torn leaves and broken branches, but the high wall that surrounded it had protected it from the full force of the gale, and most of the tents and shelters that had been erected there still stood, and were soon made habitable again. The courtyard had been flooded to a depth of six inches, a few shutters had been broken and two children had received superficial cuts from splinters of flying glass when one of the windows blew in. But apart from the fact that those who had been under canvas had been hurriedly crammed into the already grossly overcrowded rooms. The Dolphins’ House had suffered very little from the storm, and the cooler weather and bright sunshine that followed it were worth all the anxiety of those two wild days.
The land breeze still carried the smell of the dead from the burial ground beyond the creek, as it would carry it for many weeks to come, and file wild dogs who had feasted on Nazimodo, finding themselves short of food, took to roaming through the streets by night, snatching children from doorsteps and attacking any man who walked alone. But dogs could be beaten off with firearms and cudgels, and were not an invisible enemy like the cholera.