I suppressed an involuntary smile at the image of the Beardsleys, bent side by side over a grindstone, their lean, dark faces set in identical scowls of vengeance, but the momentary flash of humor faded.
“Oh, God. We’ll have to tell the McGillivrays.”
Jamie nodded, looking pale at the thought, but pushed back his bench.
“I’d best go straightaway.”
“Not ’til ye’ve had a bite.” Mrs. Bug put a plate of food firmly in front of him. “Ye dinna want to be dealing wi’ Ute McGillivray on an empty stomach.”
Jamie hesitated, but evidently found her argument to have merit, for he picked up his fork and addressed himself to the ragoo’d pork with grim determination.
“Jamie . . .”
“Aye?”
“Perhaps you should let the Beardsleys track Manfred down. Not to hurt him, I don’t mean—but we need to find him. He will die of it, if he isn’t treated.”
He paused, a forkful of ragoo halfway to his mouth, and regarded me under lowered brows.
“Aye, and if they find him, he’ll die of that, Sassenach.” He shook his head, and the fork completed its journey. He chewed and swallowed, evidently completing his plan as he did so.
“Joseph’s in Bethabara, courting. He’ll have to be told, and by rights, I should fetch him to go with me to the McGillivrays’. But . . .” He hesitated, clearly envisioning Mr. Wemyss, that mildest and shyest of men, and no one’s notion of a useful ally. “No. I’ll go and tell Robin. May be as he’ll start searching for the lad himself—or Manfred may have thought better of it and run for home already.”
That was a cheering thought, and I saw him off with hope in mind. But he returned near midnight, grim-faced and silent, and I knew that Manfred had not come home.
“You told them both?” I asked, turning back the coverlet for him to crawl in beside me. He smelled of horse and night, cool and pungent.
“I asked Robin to walk outside wi’ me, and told him. I hadna the nerve to tell Ute to her face,” he admitted. He smiled at me, snuggling under the quilt. “Ye dinna think me too much a coward, I hope, Sassenach.”
“No, indeed,” I assured him, and leaned to blow out the candle. “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
WE WERE ROUSED just before dawn by a thunderous pounding on the door. Rollo, who had been sleeping on the landing, shot down the stair, roaring threats. He was closely followed by Ian, who had been sitting up by Lizzie’s bed, keeping watch while I slept. Jamie leapt out of bed and, seizing a loaded pistol from the top of the wardrobe, rushed to join the fray.
Shocked and dazed—I had been asleep for less than an hour—I sat up, heart pounding. Rollo stopped barking for a moment, and I heard Jamie shout, “Who is it?” through the door.
This query was answered by a renewed pounding that echoed up the stairwell and seemed to shake the house, accompanied by an upraised feminine voice that would have done credit to Wagner in one of his more robust moods. Ute McGillivray.
I began to struggle out of the bedclothes. Meanwhile, a confusion of voices, renewed barking, the grate of the bolt being lifted—and then more confused voices, all much louder. I ran to the window and looked out; Robin McGillivray was standing in the dooryard, having evidently just dismounted from one of a pair of mules.
He looked much older, and somehow deflated, as though the spirit had gone out of him, taking all his strength and leaving him flabby. He turned his head away from whatever riot was taking place on the stoop, closing his eyes. The sun was just up now, and the pure clear light showed up all the lines and hollows of exhaustion and a desperate unhappiness.
As though he sensed me looking at him, he opened his eyes and raised his face toward the window. He was red-eyed, disheveled. He saw me, but didn’t respond to my tentative wave of greeting. Instead, he turned away, closing his eyes again, and stood, waiting.
The riot below had moved inside, and appeared to be progressing up the stairs, borne on a wave of Scottish expostulations and Germanic shrieks, punctuated by enthusiastic barking from Rollo, always willing to lend his efforts to further the festivities.
I seized my wrapper from its peg, but had barely got one arm into it before the door of the bedchamber was flung open, crashing into the wall so hard that it rebounded and hit her in the chest. Nothing daunted, she slammed it open again and advanced on me like a juggernaut, cap awry and eyes blazing.
“You! Weibchen! How you dare, such insult, such lies to say my son about! You I kill, I tear off your hair, nighean na galladh! You—”
She lunged at me and I flung myself sideways, narrowly avoiding her grab at my arm.
“Ute! Frau McGillivray! Listen to—”
The second grab was more successful; she got hold of the sleeve of my night rail and wrenched, dragging the garment off my shoulder with a rending noise of torn cloth, even as she clawed at my face with her free hand.
I jerked back, and screamed with all my strength, my nerves recalling for one dreadful instant a hand striking at my face, hands pulling at me. . . .
I struck at her, the strength of terror flooding through my limbs, screaming, screaming, some tiny remnant of rationality in my brain watching this, bemused, appalled—but completely unable to stop the animal panic, the unreasoning rage that geysered up from some deep and unsuspected well.
I hit out, hammering blindly, screaming—wondering even as I did so, why, why was I doing this?
An arm grabbed me round the waist and I was lifted off the ground. A fresh spurt of panic ripped through me, and then I found myself suddenly alone, untouched. I was standing in the corner by the wardrobe, swaying drunkenly, panting. Jamie stood in front of me, shoulders braced and elbows raised, shielding me.
He was talking, very calmly, but I had lost the capacity to make sense of words. I pressed my hands back against the wall, and felt some sense of comfort from its solid bulk.
My heart was still hammering in my ears, the sound of my own breathing scaring me, it was so like the gasping sound when Harley Boble had broken my nose. I shut my mouth hard, trying to stop. Holding my breath seemed to work, allowing only small inhalations through my now-functioning nose.
The movement of Ute’s mouth caught my eye and I stared at it, trying to fix myself once more in time and space. I was hearing words, but couldn’t quite make the jump of comprehension. I breathed, letting the words flow over me like water, taking emotion from them—anger, reason, protest, placation, shrillness, growling—but no explicit meaning.
Then I took a deep breath, wiped my face—I was surprised to find it wet—and suddenly everything snapped back to normal. I could hear, and understand.
Ute was staring at me, anger and dislike clear on her face, but muted by a lurking horror.
“You are mad,” she said, nodding. “I see.” She sounded almost calm at this point. “Well, then.”
She turned to Jamie, automatically twisting up untidy handsful of grizzled blond hair, stuffing them under her enormous cap. The ribbon had been torn; a loop of it dangled absurdly over one eye.
“So, she is mad. I will say so, but still, my son—my son!—is gone. So.” She stood heaving, surveying me, and shook her head, then turned again to Jamie.
“Salem is closed to you,” she said curtly. “My family, those who know us—they will not trade with you. Nor anyone else I speak to, to tell them the wicked thing she has done.” Her eye drifted back to me, a cold, gelid blue, and her lip curled in a heavy sneer under the loop of torn ribbon.
“You are shunned,” she said. “You do not exist, you.” She turned on her heel and walked out, forcing Ian and Rollo to sidestep hastily out of her way. Her footfalls echoed heavily on the stair, a ponderous, measured tread, like the tolling of a passing bell.
I saw the tension in Jamie’s shoulders relax, little by little. He was still wearing his nightshirt—there was a damp patch between his shoulder blades—and had the pistol still in his hand.
The front door boomed shut bel
ow. Everyone stood still, struck silent.
“You wouldn’t really have shot her, would you?” I asked, clearing my throat.
“What?” He turned, staring at me. Then he caught the direction of my glance, and looked at the pistol in his hand as though wondering where that had come from.
“Oh,” he said, “no,” and shook his head, reaching up to put it back on top of the wardrobe. “I forgot I had it. Though God kens well enough that I should like to shoot the besotted auld besom,” he added. “Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
He stooped to look at me, his eyes soft with worry.
“I’m all right. I don’t know what—but it’s all right. It’s gone now.”
“Ah,” he said softly, and looked away, lashes coming down to hide his eyes. Had he felt it, too, then? Found himself suddenly . . . back? I knew he had sometimes. Remembered waking from sleep in Paris to see him braced in an open window, pressing so hard against the frame that the muscles stood out in his arms, visible by moonlight.
“It’s all right,” I repeated, touching him, and he gave me a brief, shy smile.
“Ye should have bitten her,” Ian was saying earnestly to Rollo. “She’s got an arse the size of a hogshead of tobacco—how could ye miss?”
“Probably afraid of being poisoned,” I said, coming out of my corner. “Do you suppose she meant it—or no, she meant it, certainly. But do you suppose she can do it? Stop anyone trading with us, I mean.”
“She can stop Robin,” Jamie said, a certain grimness returning to his expression. “For the rest . . . we’ll see.”
Ian shook his head, frowning, and rubbed his knuckled fist gingerly against his thigh.
“I kent I should have broken Manfred’s neck,” he said with real regret. “We could ha’ told Frau Ute he fell off a rock, and saved a deal of trouble.”
“Manfred?” The small voice made everyone turn as one, to see who had spoken.
Lizzie stood in the doorway, thin and pale as a starveling ghost, her eyes huge and glassy with recent fever.
“What about Manfred?” she said. She swayed dangerously, and put out a hand to the jamb, to save herself falling. “What’s happened to him?”
“Poxed and gone,” Ian said curtly, drawing himself up. “Ye didna give him your maidenheid, I hope.”
IN THE EVENT, Ute McGillivray was not quite able to fulfill her threat—but she did enough damage. Manfred’s dramatic disappearance, the breaking of his engagement to Lizzie, and the reason for it was a fearful scandal, and word of it spread from Hillsboro and Salisbury, where he had worked now and then as an itinerant gunsmith, to Salem and High Point.
But thanks to Ute’s efforts, the story was even more confused than would be normal for such gossip; some said that he was poxed, others that I had maliciously and falsely accused him of being poxed, because of some fancied disagreement with his parents. Others, more kindly, did not believe Manfred was poxed, but said that doubtless I had been mistaken.
Those who believed him to be poxed were divided as to how he had achieved that condition, half of them convinced that he had got it from some whore, and a good many of the rest speculating that he had got it from poor Lizzie, whose reputation suffered terribly—until Ian, Jamie, the Beardsley twins, and even Roger took to defending her honor with their fists, at which point people did not, of course, stop talking—but stopped talking where any of her champions might hear directly.
All of Ute’s numerous relatives in and around Wachovia, Salem, Bethabara, and Bethania of course believed her version of the story, and tongues wagged busily. All of Salem did not cease trading with us—but many people did. And more than once, I had the unnerving experience of greeting Moravians I knew well, only to have them stare past me in stony silence, or turn their backs upon me. Often enough that I no longer went to Salem.
Lizzie, beyond a certain initial mortification, seemed not terribly upset at the rupture of her engagement. Bewildered, confused, and sorry—she said—for Manfred, but not desolated by his loss. And since she seldom left the Ridge anymore, she didn’t hear what people said about her. What did trouble her was the loss of the McGillivrays—particularly Ute.
“D’ye see, ma’am,” she told me wistfully, “I’d never had a mother, for my own died when I was born. And then Mutti—she asked me to call her so when I said I’d marry Manfred—she said I was her daughter, just like Hilda and Inga and Senga. She’d fuss over me, and bully me and laugh at me, just as she did them. And it was . . . just so nice, to have all that family. And now I’ve lost them.”
Robin, who had been sincerely attached to her, had sent her a short, regretful note, sneaked out through the good offices of Ronnie Sinclair. But since Manfred’s disappearance, neither Ute nor the girls had come to see her, nor sent a single word.
It was Joseph Wemyss, though, who was most visibly affected by the affair. He said nothing, plainly not wishing to make matters worse for Lizzie—but he drooped, like a flower deprived of rain. Beyond his pain for Lizzie, and his distress at the blackening of her reputation, he, too, missed the McGillivrays, missed the joy and comfort of suddenly being part of a large, exuberant family, after so many years of loneliness.
Worse, though, was that while Ute had not been able to carry out her threat entirely, she had been able to influence her near relatives—including Pastor Berrisch, and his sister, Monika, who, Jamie told me privately, had been forbidden to see or speak to Joseph again.
“The Pastor’s sent her away to his wife’s relatives in Halifax,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “To forget.”
“Oh, dear.”
And of Manfred, there was no slightest trace. Jamie had sent word through all his usual avenues, but no one had seen him since his flight from the Ridge. I thought of him—and prayed for him—daily, haunted by pictures of him skulking in the woods alone, the deadly spirochetes multiplying in his blood day by day. Or, much worse, working his way to the Indies on some ship, pausing in every port to drown his sorrows in the arms of unsuspecting whores, to whom he would pass on the silent, fatal infection—and they, in turn . . .
Or sometimes, the nightmare image of a bundle of rotting clothes hanging from a tree limb, deep in the forest, with no mourners save the crows who came to pick the flesh from his bones. And despite everything, I could not find it in my heart to hate Ute McGillivray, who must be thinking the same thoughts.
The sole bright spot in this ruddy quagmire was that Thomas Christie, quite contrary to my expectations, had allowed Malva to continue to come to the surgery, his sole stipulation being that if I proposed to involve his daughter in any further use of the ether, he was to be told ahead of time.
“There.” I stood back, gesturing to her to look through the eyepiece of the microscope. “Do you see them?”
Her lips pursed in silent fascination. It had taken no little effort to find a combination of staining and reflected sunlight that would reveal the spirochetes, but I had succeeded at last. They weren’t strongly visible, but you could see them, if you knew what you were looking for—and despite my complete conviction in my original diagnosis, I was relieved to see them.
“Oh, yes! Wee spirals. I see them plain!” She looked up at me, blinking. “D’ye mean seriously to tell me that these bittie things are what’s poxed Manfred?” She was too polite to express open skepticism, but I could see it in her eyes.
“I do indeed.” I had explained the germ theory of disease a number of times, to a variety of disbelieving eighteenth-century listeners, and in the light of this experience had little expectation of finding a favorable reception. The normal response was either a blank stare, indulgent laughter, or a sniff of dismissal, and I was more or less expecting a polite version of one of these reactions from Malva.
To my surprise, though, she seemed to grasp the notion at once—or at least pretended to.
“Well, so.” She put both hands on the counter and peered again at the spirochetes. “These wee beasties cause the syphilis, then. However do they
do that? And why is it that the bittie things ye showed me from my teeth don’t make me ill?”
I explained, as best I could, the notion of “good bugs” or “indifferent bugs” versus “bad bugs,” which she seemed to grasp easily—but my explanation of cells, and the concept of the body being composed of these, left her frowning at the palm of her hand in confusion, trying to make out the individual cells. She shook off her doubt, though, and folding up her hand in her apron, returned to her questions.
Did the bugs cause all disease? The penicillin—why did it work on some of the germs, but not all? And how did the bugs get from one person to another?
“Some travel by air—that’s why you must try to avoid people coughing or sneezing on you—and some by water—which is why you mustn’t drink from a stream that someone’s been using as a privy—and some . . . well, by other means.” I didn’t know how much she might know about sex in humans—she lived on a farm, clearly she knew how pigs, chickens, and horses behaved—and I was wary of enlightening her, lest her father hear about it. I rather thought he’d prefer her to be dealing with ether.
Naturally, she pounced on my evasion.
“Other means? What other means are there?” With an internal sigh, I told her.
“They do what?” she said, incredulous. “Men, I mean. Like an animal! Whyever would a woman let a man do that to her?”
“Well, they are animals, you know,” I said, suppressing an urge to laugh. “So are women. As to why one would let them . . .” I rubbed my nose, looking for a tasteful way of putting it. She was moving rapidly ahead of me, though, putting two and two together.
“For money,” she said, looking thunderstruck. “That’s what a whore does! She lets them do such things to her for money.”
“Well, yes—but women who aren’t whores—”
“The bairns, aye, ye said.” She nodded, but was plainly thinking of other things; her small, smooth forehead was wrinkled in concentration.
“How much money do they get?” she asked. “I should want a lot, I think, to let a man—”
“I don’t know,” I said, somewhat taken aback. “Different amounts, I expect. Depending.”
“Depending . . . oh, if he was maybe ugly, ye mean, ye could make him pay more? Or if she were ugly . . .” She gave me a quick, interested look. “Bobby Higgins told me of a whore he kent in London, that her looks was spoilt by vitriol.” She looked up at the cupboard where I kept the sulfuric acid under lock and key, and shivered, her delicate shoulders quivering with revulsion at the thought.
“Yes, he told me about her, too. Vitriol is what we call a caustic—a liquid that burns. That’s why—”
But her mind had already returned to the subject of fascination.
“To think of Manfred McGillivray doing such a thing!” She turned round gray eyes on me. “Well, and Bobby. He must have been, mustn’t he?”
“I do believe soldiers are inclined—”
“But the Bible,” she said, squinting thoughtfully. “It says ye mustna be whoring after idols. Does that mean men went about sticking their pricks into—did the idols look like women, d’ye think?”
“I’m sure that’s not what it means, no,” I said hastily. “More a metaphor, you know. Er . . . lusting after something, I think it means, not, er . . .”
“Lust,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s to want something sinful bad, is it not?”
“Yes, rather.” Heat was wavering over my skin, dancing in tiny veils. I needed cool air, quickly, or I’d be flushed as a tomato and drenched with sweat. I rose to go out, but felt I really mustn’t leave her with the impression that sex had to do only with money or babies—even though it well might, for some women.
“There is another reason for intercourse, you know,” I said, speaking over my shoulder as I headed for the door. “When you love someone, you want to give them pleasure. And they want to do the same for you.”
“Pleasure?” Her voice rose behind me, incredulous. “Ye mean some women like it?”
47
BEES AND SWITCHES
I WAS BY NO MEANS SPYING. One of my hives had swarmed, and I was looking for the fugitive bees.
New swarms usually didn’t travel far, and stopped frequently, often resting for hours in a tree fork or open log, where they formed a ball of humming conference. If they could be located before making up their collective mind about where to settle, they could often be persuaded into a temptingly empty basket hive, and thus hauled back into captivity.
The trouble with bees is that they don’t leave footprints. Now I was casting to and fro on the mountainside, nearly a mile from the house, an empty basket hive slung on a rope over my shoulder, trying to follow Jamie’s instructions regarding hunting, and think like a bee.
There were huge blooming patches of galax, fire-weed, and other wildflowers on the hillside far above me, but there was a very attractive dead snag—if one was a bee—poking out of the heavy growth some way below.
The basket hive was heavy, and the slope was steep. It was easier to go down than up. I hitched up the rope, which was beginning to rub the skin off my shoulder, and began sidling downward through sumac and hobble-bush, bracing my feet against rocks and grabbing at branches to keep from slipping.
Concentrating on my feet, I didn’t take particular notice of where I was. I emerged into a gap in the bushes from which the roof of a cabin was visible, some distance below me. Whose was that? The Christies’, I thought. I wiped a sleeve across the sweat dripping from the point of my chin; the day was warm, and I hadn’t brought a canteen. Perhaps I would stop and ask for water on the way home.
A Breath of Snow and Ashes Page 55