by John Smolens
Looking back toward the beach, they saw others—Joppa clam diggers, their wives, and children—coming down to the beach now, pointing and calling to each other, some still in nightshirts and gowns, wading out into the shallows.
“This be a kind of baptism,” Cedella said.
“Yes,” Leander said, “here on Joppa Flats.”
Epilogue
October 1796
WHEN FIELDS OPENED THE FRONT DOOR OF THE SUMNER HOUSE, Leander noted that his blue satin vest was soiled and missing a button. This would not have been possible only a few weeks earlier. The manservant appeared frailer, too, his gaze distracted and uncertain. Some of his relatives had been taken late in the epidemic. After several weeks of cool weather in September, the first frost seemed final confirmation that the epidemic had passed, and within days the pest-house was dismantled. When the quarantine was finally lifted, Newburyport slowly returned to its customary routine—the wharves were active, shipbuilding resumed in the yards, and there was again a reasonable commerce in Market Square—but there was something changed in the way people conducted their daily business. They were more deliberate, more earnest. On the street people were less likely to greet one another, let alone pause to exchange pleasantries. What conversation was necessary tended to be somber and respectful. It took time to accept that one was a survivor. It took time—and contemplation—to realize that one must live on after so many had died.
Leander was admitted to the vestibule, where he removed his wide-brimmed leather hat. Fields led him up the stairs. Framed paintings were missing from the wall, leaving oblong ghosts in the grimy white paint. In the second floor hall dust balls drifted along the baseboards. When they reached Mrs. Sumner’s bedroom door, Fields paused to consider Leander. His stare was direct, and it seemed to indicate that Leander should prepare himself. The manservant then knocked, raised the latch, and opened the door. Leander entered the room, and the door was immediately pulled shut behind him.
Mrs. Sumner lay on her back in the canopy bed, her eyes closed. She was greatly bloated since he’d last seen her. Her skin was white with a blue pallor around the slack mouth. He put his medicine bag and hat on the nightstand. Leaning over her, he took in a sour, unwashed odor, which he had become familiar with since he’d begun to apprentice for Dr. Bradshaw. It was a scent that came off of bodies that had ceased—or nearly ceased—to function. Dr. Bradshaw called it the Last Reek.
She opened one eye—the left eye remaining closed, the lid encrusted with what looked like grains of sugar. As her right eye looked toward the nightstand, she said, “Giles’s medicine bag.” She spoke slowly, the left side of her mouth barely moving.
“It is, Ma’am.”
“I heard Marie gave it to you when you joined Eli Bradshaw’s practice. He lacks imagination, but you can learn much from him. Eventually, when you go out on your own, you will have to reject a great deal of what he taught you. But that’s a long ways off. At least your apprenticeship isn’t with Wilberforce Strong, who would teach you to trust in the Lord, but little about medicine. Now help me sit up.”
She began to struggle under the weight of the bed sheets and counterpane. It appeared that her entire left side was enfeebled, if not completely paralyzed. Leander arranged several pillows which helped elevate her head. The activity made her cough vigorously.
“There’s fluid in your lungs,” he said. “You should sit up more often.”
“I know, but I think I’m destined to drown in the river of my own making. Consider it a last form of baptism.” She looked toward the medicine bag again. “The doctor had something he gave me—I can’t remember the name now. My memory, it’s going, I fear. When you get to a certain age, the only part of you that remains is your memory, and when that begins to fail, you have come to the end of you. And then among the bits and pieces that remain, you wonder who you were, and whether it ever mattered.” She attempted a smile. “My memory, my house, my staff—all going. Most have left. We can’t pay anyone anymore, you understand, and those who have remained—Fields, Benjamin, his father, and his very pregnant wife—they remain out of a modicum of loyalty, but primarily for the roof over their heads and what little food we manage to put on the table. Last week, Enoch had to sell Mr. Jefferson’s horses to a farmer down to Ipswich. Yet he still maintains that when his ships—the ones he hasn’t sold, that is—return from Europe next spring, our financial fortunes will begin to reverse, but I don’t share such inebriated optimism. This coming winter will kill me and ruin him. By spring he will have sold this house, and I’m thankful that I won’t be here to see that.” She looked up at Leander, suddenly alert. “What was I saying? Oh, there was a concoction the doctor gave me, in a brown bottle. I mixed it with water.”
“Yes, I have that,” Leander said.
“That’s why I specifically asked for you. Bradshaw actually believes he might occasionally save a life! Physicians and ministers, what fools, thinking they can save lives and souls. Whatever for? That’s what I say. No, we are well beyond such nonsense here. It is the descent that concerns us now, the nature of the descent, and my son the doctor understood what was necessary to ease the way. This you must also learn. Do so, and you will be in great demand and never go wanting for patients.” She gazed at the medicine bag eagerly. “Laudanum, that’s what it’s called, no?”
“Yes, Ma’am. But first I must examine you.”
“Really? I’m already half dead.”
“I will be expected to report on your condition to Dr. Bradshaw.”
“Well, perhaps you could just give me a half dose?”
“I need to listen to your heart, Ma’am, if you’ll permit me.”
“Why waste your time? The old thing’s beating, if only just.”
“Please, Mrs. Sumner. It is necessary.”
She sighed, and turned her head away submissively.
Carefully, he untied the top of her nightgown. Her skin was mottled, blotched, and as he placed his ear to her breastbone he held his breath. He could hear a double-thud, faint and slow. Dr. Bradshaw said to listen for noise around the heart beat, a rumble sometimes, or what he called a murmur. Leander heard fluid, and he thought of tides, water flooding the clam flats in the Merrimack, though this certainly was blood—blood tides, rising and falling in the chambers of the heart. Whenever the doctor took a lancet to a patient, it was a surprise to Leander how swiftly the blood flowed from the open vein. The heart pushes the blood, allowing it to circulate throughout the body; a simple engine, really, given a remarkable task—once it begins beating, the heart never quits, until one day it just stops.
He was about to lift his head when her right arm moved and she laid her hand on his scalp, pressing him to her.
“When they were young,” she whispered, her voice rising up through her chest as much as out of her contorted mouth, “the boys would come to me, tired and in need of a nap. I would encourage them to lay their heads on my chest. This went on long after they no longer suckled. I’d never known a more peaceful sleep than with both boys lying here like this.” Her fingers stroked his cheek a moment until she lifted her hand.
Leander was suddenly reluctant to take his head away from the warmth of her flesh. “With my mother, as well,” he said.
As he straightened up, her eye inspected him closely and he felt somewhat embarrassed. “You’ve suffered your losses well,” she said. “But then you are young. Your heart is strong. And I hear that you have Cedella with you.”
“Yes, she is,” he said. He opened the medicine bag, took out a small brown bottle, and placed it on the nightstand. “Much has changed in such a short period of time.”
It had been a week since the morning when Cedella returned from the outhouse, looking confused and, he thought, troubled. He asked if something was the matter, but she went about her business, preparing tea and rolling dough to bake bread. In such a short time she had made his grandfather’s small house clean and tidy, a place he longed to return to each night. Finally, o
nce the dough was in the oven, she sat in the rocking chair, tears rolling down her cheeks. And when he knelt beside her she told him that for several weeks now her blood had not flowed.
“We plan to marry next month,” he said.
“Do you now?” Mrs. Sumner asked.
“And in the spring I hope to begin to rebuild our house on Orange Street. Only the chimney remains from the old house, but it can be repaired, and it will provide a strong foundation for the timbers.” Suddenly, he was overcome with the desire to tell her, to say what he had been thinking. “We will need the room.”
“Cedella, yes. I’m not surprised that she proved durable.”
“We have not told anyone yet.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” She turned her head away on the pillow. “But you must tell me something else. Marie, you see her?”
“Yes, of course. She resides there in Market Square, and she gave me Dr. Wiggins’s medicine bag and instruments. At his instructions, evidentially.”
“I have sent Fields, but she refuses to come and see me. One cannot blame her, under the circumstances.”
“Well, she herself is much occupied.”
Mrs. Sumner now turned her head to look at him, and her stare had such force that he sat down on the side of the bed. Highly inappropriate, Dr. Bradshaw would say, but she didn’t seem to mind. And then her hand, her right hand, reached out and took hold of his wrist. “She is with child, is she?”
Leander nodded.
“Fields wasn’t certain but suggested as much.” Her hand moved down until her fingers entwined with his, dry and surprisingly firm. “Now, you must understand some things about this family. When I learned that Giles had died and been buried at sea, it was a shock, but after seeing him, feverish, with his leg amputated, I was somewhat prepared. But a week later word came that a ship bound for London had gone down in a storm a day out from Halifax, and that’s when I collapsed. Samuel was aboard that ship. Stupid, abject Samuel. But it hit me with such force. At first I didn’t understand why. But lying here these weeks, I came to realize that with Giles and Samuel gone, it would soon mean the end of this family. And I had such hopes for it. You may think me a devious, conniving old woman, but this desire was always behind my every thought and action. But now we may have a future, and it’s up to Marie, whom I pushed out of this house.” She held his hand tightly. “So you must watch over them, see that these children grow strong and well.” He was perplexed, but she only stared at him. “You must promise me this.”
“I will, of course.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” She let go of his hand and closed her eyes.
He got to his feet, picking up his hat and medicine bag, looked down at her once more, and left the room. Fields was waiting out in the hall, and he gave Leander the slightest bow before entering the bedroom and shutting the door behind him.
Leander descended the front stairs and found Benjamin standing in the vestibule, his hands clasped behind his back. “Must I address my former assistant as Doctor now?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“It’s that damned leather bag and such a fine leather hat—they’re the only thing that separates you from the stable boy who’s up to his knees in manure.”
“True,” Leander said, “though the hat belonged to my grandfather.”
“I see, an heirloom to keep you warm through the coming long winter.” Benjamin gestured toward the library down the hall. “He wants a word.”
“Really?” Leander started down the hall, pausing to look back at Benjamin. “Rachel, how is she doing?”
Benjamin extended his hands in front of his stomach. “She thinks twins. Runs in the family, apparently. If I had only known—”
“What would you have done?”
“Given half measure?”
“You, sir, are incapable of doing so, in anything.”
Benjamin gave a slight, mocking bow.
Leander continued on down the hall and knocked on the library door, and from within Mr. Sumner said, “Come in.” The door creaked as it opened. The curtains were drawn and it was quite dark; Leander stepped inside and shut the door. He could barely see his former master, lying on the daybed. What little light was in the room seemed to be concentrated in the reflection off the wine bottle that stood on the floor by Mr. Sumner’s hand. The room was stuffy, but the air was sweetened by the smell of Madeira.
“How is she?”
“Resting comfortably, sir.”
“I wish I were.” He pointed toward a chair by the desk. “Come, sit down. No formalities, understand? Besides, I’m too poor now.”
Leander sat in the chair and placed his hat and bag on the floor by his feet.
“Wine?”
“No, no thank you.”
“She’s had an awful turn, you know. First Giles, and then Samuel. I suppose I’ve always been motivated by jealousy, first toward my younger brother—she always favored him, you know—so I thought—” he swept his arm above his head, as though presenting the room, lined with hundreds of volumes—“I thought this, a fine house, with gardens and stables and all, this might impress her. And then my own son, Samuel. She took to that overfed, worthless child as if he were her own. Out of sympathy, I would tell myself. But, still, it hurts. Sad, really. So much of what we do, what we become is the result of the first thing we desire in life: mother’s love.” He picked up the bottle of wine, raised it to his mouth, and drank. When he lowered the bottle, he held it out toward Leander. “You sure? I believe we once shared a bottle, didn’t we?”
“Yes, one night out in the orchard.”
“Right. Poisoned—I was convinced it was poisoned. Well, you survived that.”
“Thank you, no.”
Mr. Sumner held the bottle in his lap. “So, you’re a professional man now, though it never much got in Giles’s way. This is why I want to speak with you. The night he died aboard that ship, The Golden Hand. He told me something I know he wanted me to pass on to you. It’s why you inherited that medicine bag of his, which was the only thing he really had to give to his son.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me.”
Mrs. Sumner had said them—you must watch over them. Leander scratched his cheek, repeatedly. “His son? I’m his son?”
“Your mother never let on?”
“No.”
“You had no idea.”
Leander took his hand away from his face and looked at it as though it might reveal something. “No, not exactly. But—but I suppose there were moments when I felt that there was something between them. I recall once he said something about my eyes resembling hers.” He folded his hands in his lap and looked toward the window. A thin shaft of sunlight passed between the curtains, and a constellation of dust motes drifted in the air. “And the morning after Dr. Wiggins inspected your ship Miranda, I recall that when I told my mother about it, she seemed, I don’t know, different, keenly aware in a way I didn’t understand. I thought it had to do with the quarantine.”
“Yes, well, they did the proper thing, those two, and kept their love in quarantine for all those years. A weaker man and woman … but no matter now.” Mr. Sumner raised the bottle to his mouth again and finished it off. “So, that makes you—it makes us related. You’re my nephew, I believe.”
“I suppose that is so.”
“Which is why I must tell you that I cannot—you see, all these years Giles looked after Mother, and she insisted that I compensate him fairly, but now I’m afraid I won’t be able to do this—”
“It’s not necessary, sir.”
“—but you see—” again he gestured with his arm, “most everything is taken, sold off. This furniture, my library, most of my ships, everything. And I still have creditors a-knocking, demanding their due. I don’t have enough to square things with everyone, and eventually this house will go on the block.” He lowered his arm. “Then where will I be?”
“Your mother said you have ships that will return in
the spring.”
“She believes that, does she? Good.” Mr. Sumner turned on the daybed and placed his feet on the floor. He put the bottle down and rested his elbows on his thighs. “I must ask you, nephew, if you’ll still continue to care for her—I can’t deny her that.”
“Of course I will, sir. I’ll look in on her regularly.”
“Good. Your compensation will be somewhat unusual, but I hope it will suffice.”
Mr. Sumner got to his feet, rather unsteadily, and offered his hand. This was, Leander realized, intended as a compliment. They shook hands, and immediately Mr. Sumner sat down on the daybed, stretched out, and turned his head away. Leander picked up his hat and medicine bag and went to the door. Before going out, he looked back toward the daybed, but it was so dark he could barely see Mr. Sumner.
Benjamin was waiting out in the hall.
“He mentioned the matter of your compensation?”
Leander nodded.
“This way, then.”
Benjamin led him down the hall and into the kitchen, which was empty except for the heavy old woman who had once given Leander a bowl of stew, and Rachel, who was large with child, tending to a pot hanging in the fireplace. She looked up uncertainly, and she offered Leander the faintest smile.
Benjamin led him out into the courtyard. “Delivered any babies yet?”
“Assisted.”
“No trick to it, I understand. Though making them’s more to my liking. It’s the one thing I’m good at. My father says making sons is as easy as blowing a feather off your knee. Daughters, easier.”
“I will be visiting Mrs. Sumner again soon, so perhaps I could have a look at Rachel?”
“We’d appreciate it, Doctor. And I have yet another favor to ask when you return.”
They crossed the courtyard and entered the stable. It was cold inside, and the stalls were empty. Oddly, there was no noise, no activity; there had always been the sound of work being done—hammers, saws, the sigh of the bellows in the blacksmith’s shop. Now there was only silence. At the back of the stable they came to the groom’s office. The door was open, and Mr. Penrose was asleep in a chair, wrapped in a blanket before the small stove. His breathing was labored.