by John Smolens
Seventeen
AT SUNRISE, GILES AND EMANUEL LUNT HELPED EACH OTHER navigate State Street. Exhausted from the long night’s work in the pest-house, they had with them a bottle of rum procured from Dr. Bradshaw’s supply. As they entered Market Square, Giles veered toward the door to his rooms, but Emanuel grabbed him by the arm.
“Come back to the ship, and we’ll see what’s cooking in the galley.”
Giles did not resist and they walked through the square, which was quiet save for some seagulls that were squabbling over a pile of oyster shells left outside one of the vendors’ shambles. When they arrived at the waterfront, the two men boarded Lunt’s schooner The Golden Hand, which was tied up to a small dock downriver from Sumner’s Wharf. Lunt and his family made their living coasting, delivering goods as far north as Halifax and as far south as the Caribbean. Two mulatto children—thirteen-year-old twins—were on the quarterdeck.
“We spotted you coming from the square,” the girl, Dominique, announced, wielding her father’s spyglass. “And Mother says you are not to set foot on this ship until you have washed thoroughly.” She pointed at the water bucket and towels that had been placed on the dock.
“We washed before leaving the pest-house,” Emanuel said.
“Mother says she will not have you smelling of rum on board.”
“I married a woman with a keen nose.” Emanuel leaned over the pail and splashed water on his face with his left hand. “Do I smell bacon?”
“And ouvres,” his son Francois said.
“Eggs—yes, lots of eggs.” Emanuel unfurled a towel and dried his face. “Then go down and help your mother set another place at the table for the doctor. After all, he saved your father’s life, and he brought the two of you into this world. You were a real bargain, two babes delivered for the price of one.”
Francois disappeared down the companionway, while his sister came and leaned her elbows on the rail. “Bonjour, Doctor Wiggins.”
Giles smiled up at the girl. “Bonjour, Dominique.”
He removed his coat and shirt, and with cupped hands scooped water from the pail. As he washed, he said, “Look at this, Emanuel—look at these mosquitoes, how they hover about the pail. They’re attracted to the water. Maybe this is why we need to clean up the stagnant pools and cisterns around this soggy port?”
Emanuel offered him the other towel, and Giles paused as he reached out: they both watched as a mosquito landed on his forearm, just above the inside of the wrist. Curious, Giles allowed the mosquito to probe his skin for a moment before he slapped his wrist with his other hand. He missed the mosquito.
“See, blood?” Giles said. “He draws my blood.”
“The little creature must eat, too.”
Giles studied his wrist as though he were trying to decipher some lost ancient language. “He hangs about water and sucks the blood from anything—man or animal—that comes along. And then.…”
“And then your skin turns red and itchy, and you scratch it until it’s raw.” Emanuel draped the towel over Giles’s outstretched arm and climbed the plank to his ship. “This is the benefit of having a stump for a hand, with a metal hook for fingers—less flesh to attract mosquitoes. Less to nibble on!” He leaned down and kissed his daughter on the neck, causing her to squeal.
“Yes,” Giles said vaguely as he wiped his hands and arms with the towel. He pulled the clean shirt over his head, and then boarded the ship. “But what becomes of the mosquito?”
“If you don’t squash him,” Dominique said, “he flies off, to eat again.” Her face was fine and delicate, and she was tall for her age and lithe, as was her mother. She had her father’s pale green eyes, which seemed to shine from within, and her hair, which fell in loose curls down to her waist, was a bronze color that glistened in the early morning sunlight.
“You’re exactly right, Dominique,” Giles said. “The mosquito drinks my blood, and then goes and drinks from another, and then another, and another.”
“And your conclusion, Doctor?” Emanuel asked.
“Conclusion?” Giles said.
“Eventually,” Dominique said, taking her father by his hook and leading him toward the companionway, “the mosquito gets full.”
“Precisely,” Giles said. “He eats, and he fills up with … blood.”
“This is a great scientific discovery?” Emanuel said as he followed his daughter below to the galley. “It makes me hungry just to think about it.”
Again, Giles studied the spot where the mosquito had bitten him. A small red welt was already beginning to form, causing the skin to swell slightly. He scratched it with a fingernail, and watched the smallest bead of blood emerge from the tiny hole in the center of the welt. With two fingers he squeezed the bite, causing more blood to surface. He looked down at the pail again, where a haze of mosquitoes hovered above the water. Some thought, some connection seemed to tug at the corners of his mind, but it eluded him, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of the eggs frying in bacon grease. “The doctor’s conclusion?” he said as he climbed down the companionway. “The doctor is tired. He is inebriated. And he is extremely hungry, drawn to the smell of eggs cooking in bacon fat as the mosquito is attracted to blood.”
At midday, Miranda sat in her bedroom doing needlepoint. But for minutes she would lay the embroidery hoop in her lap and just listen; then she would resume work on a spray of lilacs on a field of green leaves. From the library downstairs she could hear the low murmur of voices, a delegation of men who had been arriving by carriage for the past hour.
Finally, there was a tap at the door, and before she could answer, Samuel let himself into the room.
“Well?” she said without looking up from her work. The tedium of such projects was, ironically, a source of tranquility, and Miranda found she often did her best thinking when her hands were busy with needle and thread.
“Most of Newburyport’s shipbuilders and captains are down there,” Samuel said, his voice low, conspiratorial. He went to his mother’s canopy bed and lay down, propping his head on several pillows.
“Shoes.”
Using his toe he nudged off each of his dainty shoes and let them fall to the floor. “And there are the doctors,” he said crossing his legs on the counterpane,” Bradshaw and Uncle Giles.”
“So, you’ve had your ear married to the door. What’s this confab about?”
“It seems they’re talking about money.”
“They’re always talking about money.”
“The doctors are trying to extract contributions.” Samuel folded his hands behind his head as he gazed up at the canopy above the bed. “They require funds to buy medical supplies for the pest-house.”
“The old High Street pikers are as tight as bark on a tree and they won’t contribute to the commonweal unless ultimately there’s a handsome return in it.”
“The epidemic’s getting worse,” Samuel said, “and it seems that necessary medical supplies have gone stolen.”
“Stolen?” Miranda raised her head.
Samuel continued to stare at the canopy. “You’re surprised?”
“No, not surprised.” She looked down at her work. “So someone’s going to make a profit off this fever. Just as they did during the war. Wars, disasters, pestilence—they’re all viewed as opportunities. How much do the doctors need?”
“About five thousand pounds.”
“My.” She considered this for a long moment. “Is Wilberforce Strong down there?”
“No.”
“Then this campaign doesn’t have God’s blessing and is destined to fail.”
Neither of them spoke until Samuel turned his head on the pillow and looked toward his grandmother. Miranda kept her head down, working the needle and thread through the cloth.
Samuel got up off the bed, stepped into his shoes, and went to the door, where he paused with his hand on the door latch. “You know where Father slept last night?”
“Haven’t the faintest idea.�
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“In the apple orchard.”
“He could use the fresh air, I’m sure.”
“Well after midnight he was walking around asking people to drink from different bottles of wine.”
“Nothing unusual about that.”
“No, but he’s also taken to bearing arms at all times.”
“Bearing arms?”
“Early in the evening, he had strapped on a sword and scabbard, but it got heavy and after a while he only had a pistol tucked inside his waistcoat.”
“Which tells you what, Samuel?”
“He’s afraid. He asks people to taste the wine, to taste the food because he’s starting to think it might be poisoned.”
Miranda put the needlepoint on the side table next to her chair. “Well, have you?”
“No, not yet.”
Her grandson opened the door and let himself out of her bedroom, but before he could close the door, she said, “This keeps up, we’ll have to devise another method.”
After an hour of Madeira, thick slices of cheese, and bread, the haggling in Enoch’s library was too much for Giles. The wealthiest men in Newburyport were so miserly that they had offered contributions which added up to a sum just shy of four thousand pounds—and they did so begrudgingly, not out of concern for the victims of the epidemic, but only because their ships would remain idle in the harbor until the quarantine was lifted. Disgusted, Giles excused himself, and he was shown to the front door by Fields.
“You have a carriage waiting, sir?” Fields knew very well that Giles had walked.
“No, I prefer the exercise and fresh air.”
“Of course, Doctor.” Fields opened the door. “Pity but it does look like rain.”
Giles stepped out on to the granite stoop. “The new boy. How’s he doing?”
“I couldn’t say, sir, though I believe he’s been assigned to duties in the stable.”
“That should suit him. I think I’ll have a walk around and see if I can find him.”
“As you wish, sir.” Fields closed the heavy paneled door.
Giles gazed up at the sky a moment, which was overcast with lowering clouds. He walked around the side of the house, past the garden, and as he approached the courtyard he saw Marie strolling in the apple orchard. She was wearing a green dress and carried a yellow parasol. He went down a small set of stone steps and entered the orchard, catching up to her on the far side of the pond.
“I am told you call them ‘bullfrogs’?” she said, gazing at the lily pads on the pond. “There is one beeg one that comes up on the rocks every day. We play a little game of the hide the seek.”
“Hide and seek, yes.” Giles clasped his hands behind his back as they began walking slowly around the pond. “It’s good that you’re out of doors. I trust you are feeling better?”
“Oh, much.” They walked a moment in silence, and he couldn’t help but notice that she allowed her arm to brush against his. “Your remedee worked wonders.” Closer still, and the rustle of her skirts, speaking an ancient tongue.
“Scientific discovery, it is a vast theater,” he said, and her laughter was lighter than air. “The human anatomy is such a mystery.”
“But that is what attracts you to this profession, no, the mysteries of the body?”
“This is true.”
“I must admit I am intrigued by—how do you say—the instinctuals of my body.”
“Yes, instinct is a marvelous thing, in a man, a woman—even in a bullfrog.”
Again, she laughed, and then turned to gaze at him. Soft curls framed her face, and her full mouth seemed swollen as though ready to burst; it was a serious, determined mouth, but the look in her eyes was impish, conspiratorial. “Would you hold this, s’il vous plaît?” She handed him the parasol, which he held above her head as she opened the small purse that hung from her wrist and took out a small silver flask. “I find the days here in your brother’s houz must to be boring in extremely. Like the food.” She opened the flask, took a sip, and offered it to him.
He raised the flask, thinking about how it had just touched her lips, and it contained rum, which sent a warm flush through him. He returned the flask to her, and they began walking again, slowly, the first drops of rain tapping on the taut fabric of her parasol.
“I suppose I must not get this dress wet,” she said. “It belongs to your mother, from the years ago when she had perhaps the first husband, Monsieur Sumner, no?”
“I believe so. She would have been very young when she fit into that dress.”
“And then there was the second husband, Monsieur Wiggins, who was your father.”
“That’s right.”
“This happens often to the French madame. The one husband he dies, and then she finds another, and he dies.” She took a sip from the flask, and then returned it to him. “And the children they have these different names, and it becomes so very much with the complications, no?”
“Yes, complicated.”
“Your mother lives with your brother.”
“Well, he is older.”
“You do not want her in your houz?”
“I don’t have a house. I don’t have that kind of wealth.”
“I see. Merci, Doctor.”
“Giles, please.” He drank some of the rum and gave her the flask.
She capped the flask and returned it to her purse. “Now I feel most cured, Giles.” Her smile was playful, and looking at the sky she said, “The rain it is about to pour, no?”
“It is.”
Giggling, she took hold of her skirts and broke into a run; he followed her, and just as the rain began they entered a door in the back of the stable, where the air smelled pleasantly of hay, horses, and leather.
Leander was working in the hayloft. The sudden downpour sounded like rocks rattling on the slate roof above his head. Below, horses paced in their stalls, and then, despite the rain, he heard a noise from the back of the stable. He thrust his pitch fork into the mound of hay and went toward the ladder—but he paused when he heard whispering, a female voice, accented and sweet. There was the sound of footsteps below until a door closed.
Slowly, he leaned out over the loft railing. He could not see them, not entirely, but the carriage directly beneath him, the diligence, was rocking ever so slightly. A yellow parasol leaned against one of the wheels. From inside the carriage there came more whispering. There were two voices, barely audible because of the rain on the roof, a man’s and a woman’s. There was laughter. A woman’s hand, graceful and slender, gripped the window ledge, a small purse dangling from the wrist until it was suddenly pulled inside, and soon a man’s frock coat was draped over the ledge of one window, while a pair of white silk stockings—woman’s stockings—was hung over another. The vehicle began to sway, squeaking and groaning on its metal springs. Leander kept perfectly still. Soon the nature of the carriage’s motion became more repetitive, more urgent. Leander understood what was happening now because he had seen animals in the act. Pigs, cows, and horses, they all mounted in some awkward way, joined desperately, it seemed, and then fell into this same rhythm. There was gasping. There was moaning, anguished moaning. Again, the woman’s hand appeared on the window ledge, this time gripping the silk stockings so hard that the knuckles turned white. Her cries now became utterly desperate.
So desperate that Leander wondered if he should climb down from the hayloft and come to her assistance. He swung one leg over the ladder, stepped down on the top rung, and began to descend, but stopped when he saw a shadow cast from the open door at the back of the stable. Leaning down until a rough-hewn beam no longer obstructed his view, he saw the maid Cedella, standing in the open doorway. Her uniform was soaked, causing the dark fabric to cling to her. In her hand she held a wicker basket filled with eggs. She was staring at the carriage, and then she gazed up at Leander.
He didn’t move.
She didn’t move.
The carriage rocked and swayed even more violently, until the cr
ies of its occupants exploded with desperate finality.
Cedella continued to stare at Leander, her eyes large with wonder.
Eighteen
MIRANDA STOOD AT HER BEDROOM WINDOW, LOOKING DOWN into the courtyard. She couldn’t remember a harder rain. Suddenly, she saw Cedella emerge from the open stable door and run toward the house. She cradled a basket of eggs in her arms, and when she stumbled two fell out and broke. The yokes were quickly diluted by the rain, thin strands of bright yellow filling the crevices between the cobblestones. The girl caught her balance and rushed on toward the kitchen door.
Miranda had a good mind to put the girl out of the house. She had dismissed staff for lesser offenses. Such would be a useful example to the rest of the household.
She was about to leave her window, when she saw something in the darkness of the stable: something yellow, a paler yellow than the eggs—a parasol. And then Marie came out into the courtyard, not running, but holding her skirt (one of Miranda’s old dresses, the green satin turning black with the rain) as she hurried toward the house. She seemed alarmed—perhaps because such a fine dress might be ruined?—but there was something about Marie’s expression that baffled Miranda. For one moment the girl actually raised her head and, tilting the parasol out of the way, allowed the rain to soak her face. And then she, too, disappeared into the house.
Again, Miranda was about to turn from the window when she saw something else: beneath the roof peak, the new boy appeared in the open hayloft door, staring down into the courtyard. He raised his head until he saw Miranda in the second-floor window of the house. He looked startled, as though he’d been caught in some act of indecency, and he retreated into the darkness of the loft.
As she turned from the window, something else caught her eye—a man running out of the stable door, his frock coat draped over his head as a means of protection from the rain. It was Giles. He crossed the courtyard and disappeared up the drive toward the front gate.
Miranda took a long deep breath and exhaled slowly. She could feel her heartbeat, rapid, faintly painful, as though she had just eaten a heavy meal.