The Pesthouse (25 page)

Franklin knew these men more intimately than she did. The loss of slaves might not matter to them, but the loss of face and the loss of horses would be intolerable. At the very least, the two rustlers on guard duty who had been dragged off their mounts and dishonored in the labor gang's sudden rebellion and the third guard who had ridden for help would want, and would be expected, to put right their blunder. He could almost hear Captain Chief mocking and haranguing them in that deranged voice of his. How could three strong men, mounted on good horses, armed, fail to keep control over that rabble of low-life refugees and farmers, he would want to know? Perhaps these 'flimsies' would prefer it if he found them some less complicated duties in the future. Could he trust them to guard a herd of goats, perhaps, without a couple of the goats pulling them from their saddles? No? Too hard for them to manage on their own? Well, then, did they have the brains between them to take charge of a trussed duck without the duck chewing through its ties and disappearing into thin air with a horse tucked under each wing? He doubted it. He doubted that these three men deserved to have anything for supper except a beating, unless they succeeded in getting back each lost man and both lost horses. At once. Today. 'Go bring them in!'

'They're coming for us, never doubt it,' Franklin said. His only hope was that the three blameworthy guards would check out the obvious hiding places first: the forest just beyond the Ark, and then the shacks and beds-for-hire of Tidewater. A second, less likely hope was that if Franklin's labor-gang comrades were recaptured in any numbers, all of them perhaps, then the rustlers and Captain Chief might decide to settle for the loss of one tall man. But two good mounts? Franklin could not convince himself of that.

'They'll come to get their horses back, I promise you,' he said after a while, wanting to break their silence. 'Good mounts are valuable. A man like that without a horse is not much use to anyone.'

'Let go the horses, then,' Margaret suggested.

'And walk?'

'We've walked before.' The word
before
seemed sensuous.

Franklin thought about her suggestion for a moment, before rejecting it. 'Can't do that,' he said. 'A horse will find its masters if you let it go and then lead them back to us. They'll have our scent.'

'They're horses, not dogs!'

Franklin laughed. 'Only a woman from the town could think that,' he said, and blushed.

Nevertheless, Franklin and Margaret dismounted from their horses as soon as they dared. It would be best to keep their mounts fresh and rested just in case they were discovered by any of the rustlers and needed to take flight again. They led them by the reins and took it in turns to carry Jackie on their backs in the blanket sling. Franklin liked her fingers tugging at his neck, the smell of her, the weight of her. He'd worn jackets that were heavier. At least the girl — whoever she might be — was warm in her blanket, but it wasn't long into the afternoon before the sun was too low and too obscured by cloud and treetops to offer much comfort. Franklin was in his shirtsleeves and his work pants. He had nothing else. The morning of laboring had kept away the cold, but now he was shivering. He did, though, have a pair of stout work boots that made the walking easy. All Margaret had were some yard sandals, a pair of knee-length socks that she had knitted herself over the winter, a long patch skirt and a smock tied at her waist. No hat. And nothing personal. Everything had been left behind at the side of her bed in the Ark, including her comb and hairbrush, her spark stone, the fishing net with which she had trapped a bird for breakfast months before and her beloved blue scarf — that remnant of her youth in Ferrytown.

She had lost her home-grown pot of mint as well, just when it could be expected to show signs of springing into life again. She had a haunting image of it bleached into her memory: their barrow being raided on that dreadful night on the Dreaming Highway when the rustlers had kidnapped Franklin, their mint being dashed onto the ground, as if the plant was worthless, and then the sudden spinning of her head as her blue scarf was dragged away. 'Not her,' the short man had said. 'We don't want her.' And she was saved.

Franklin seemed to hear her thoughts. He smiled at her and raised an eyebrow. 'Go ahead, ask.'

'What happened to you afterward?' she asked.
Before
and
afterward
. 'What happened to you when I wasn't there?'

'You mean, the horsemen? All of that?'

'Everything.' Had he missed her? Had he thought of her? Was she in his dreams?

He understood what she hoped to hear — he hoped to hear the same from her — but, no, he could not find the words just yet. He spread his hands and blew out air. Overwhelmed and at a loss. Such sudden freedom winded him. There was a lot to tell. There'd been so many hazards to survive over the winter, and there was so much distress to put to rest, now that it all — touch wood — was history. 'Bad months,' he said. 'And you?'

'Bad months as well,' she said.

Neither wanted to be the first to give an account. So they came to an agreement: the one carrying Jackie would do the listening and the other would talk. But they would take it in turns with the girl and the storytelling, exchanging both of the burdens whenever they grew weary of either.

Margaret was first. It was important to explain the child to him. She told Franklin about her travels with the Boses and the two murderous men in the woods, how she'd come to be Bella's adopted ma, the Helpless Gentlemen, the hilarious — and temporary — safety of the Ark, why Bella had been renamed Jackie, how that morning she'd recognized the short man in Jackson's long coat, and last, Franklin laughing with his great loose arms.

Franklin explained the boredom of slavery. 'My story can't compare with yours,' he said. 'We worked, we slept, we nursed our bruises. And I was starving all the time. I could have eaten rope. I did eat rope. And cockroaches.' It felt too personal to mention the punishments he'd witnessed, the deaths or the provocations of the man he'd nicknamed Captain Chief.

Margaret listened with her stomach tightening at the prospect of any news of Acton Bose, Jackie's — Bella's — father. She was afraid that she would hear that he had been one of the labor gang in the trenches outside the Ark and that somehow she would be required, for duty's sake, to seek him out and reunite the father and the daughter. She was relieved and ashamed of herself to hear that Acton had been sold to work in mines and could be anywhere. 'I haven't seen him since that day. Not heard a word of him,' said Franklin.

'Poor man,' she said, but could not truly mean it. She wished Acton well, but also she wished him far. 'Poor man,' she said again, and felt that the second time she had sounded more convincing.

Franklin checked the mare's panniers, hoping to find some better protection against the cold for himself and Margaret, but there was nothing suitable, just an empty water bag, some damp nuts and a few twists of meat that were almost too stiff and rancid to be edible. They had to find some shelter very soon, shelter for themselves and shelter for the horses. At that time of year, the land could not store the day to warm the night. The early-spring heat was too thin a sheet. It melted almost as quickly as the last light of the afternoon. They also had to find some food. The adults might be resigned to sleeping with nothing in their stomachs except a knot, but Jackie would not understand. The child — already unnerved and overexcited by that day's events — was bored and fretful, and tired of being sung to. She wanted her friends, she wanted to play, and she wanted something sweet to suck.

'What happened to those taffies, Mags?' asked Franklin, and Margaret rewarded his familiarity with her broadest smile. 'Those Boses stole them from me,' she said, and, once she'd swallowed hard, added, 'Pigeon', not quite loud enough for him to hear.

It was almost dark when they discovered the outline of a long, uneven roof with a tall chimney on slightly higher ground above the track that they were following. They could smell smoke and supper, but no lights were coming from the building. Franklin found a stick and went alone to see if there was any danger. After a few moments he called out that it was safe to bring the horses up, 'if they'll bear the smell'.

The building was a row of connected wood cabins with a square, stone smokeshop at one end. And it was mostly empty. No fires were burning, and the only signs that it was still a working place were the sheets of scraped leather that were curing and the hands of stiff, smoked fish hanging from the rafters of the house, discarded and forgotten remnants of last season's netting. There was no other food there or in the cabins, so far as they could tell in the fading light. A side of bacon would have been welcome or a butt of apples. But there was water in a deep trough at the far end of the buildings, and some forage drying for tinder that would make do for the horses' evening meal. They were out of the wind, if not the drafts. At least they could stay relatively warm, although they could find nothing with which to strike a fire. Tomorrow when the sun was up they might discover greater comforts.

But, for the time being, once they had picked at the smoke-toughened skin and flesh of a fish that they had never tasted before and would pray never to taste again, Margaret and Franklin — Mags and Pigeon — stretched out together as a family on a wooden pallet as far from the stench of the smokeshop as they could, separated only by the girl, and sharing the saddle blanket for their bedding. It had been a busy day. They were exhausted and they slept 'mid sentence' as the saying goes, with things that mattered left unsaid and drying on their lips.

Margaret woke in the middle of the night and took a moment to remember where she was and who was at her side. She panicked for a bit, but the sounds that she could hear were only breathing and the wind, and the restlessness of horses, and something deeper, far and near, a sort of restful quake. That was a sound she'd never heard before, but still she recognized it from the stories she'd heard. The snoring sea. The grieving sea. The Waters of the Whispering. The river with one bank. The Deep. She checked that Jackie was well covered and kissed her on her forehead. Then she leaned toward Franklin, a large dark shape. She put her hands into his hair and kissed him on each cheek, beneath his eyes. A tiny sin. Then nothing else. He was asleep and could not know how motherly, how sisterly, how
lover
ly she'd been, or how her fingers and her mouth still smelled of last night's fish. He could not know how full of sudden hope she was, and warm. They'd reached the ocean, then. She was embraced and heartened by the thick of love.

By the time she fell asleep again, Margaret had decided that she would wake at first light, at the very moment that the owl became the cock, and lead her family outside to stare into the ocean's salty promises. She had little doubt now that her problems — their problems — were largely behind her. Why else would fortune have delivered such a rendezvous? They'd reached the coast. And they had reached it together. And it was almost spring. All they had to do was find an early boat and set sail for that better place, a place she could not even name but where there would be... no, she could not say what there would be. But she was clear, in her imagination, about what they
wouldn't
find across the sea. They wouldn't live in fear of Captain Chief. They wouldn't have to battle for their meals. They wouldn't have to travel every day. They wouldn't have to sleep with fish and smoke. They wouldn't have to hide their height or hair. They wouldn't be afraid to kiss. Tomorrow she would break down all the barriers.

There was a heavy mist when Margaret woke and tiptoed to the cabin door. All she could see through the cracks was a steeply falling slope covered in reed grass and a heavy gray haze backlit by a dawn still too distant to provide any shadows. She could not hear the ocean at first. All she could hear was the sound of Jackie and Franklin sleeping, their breathing synchronized, and the horses fretting on the wooden floor. But when she slipped outside, into the cold, in her socked feet, the sea returned. It sounded more placid and less promising than it had done in the night. The mist was out of reach but, at the same time, touchable. She walked toward it, her hands held out in front. It backed away, without moving. It parted for her hands.

Margaret would not call out for Franklin yet. This was a moment to enjoy, a moment on her own. She could not remember the last time that she hadn't had Jackie at her side, wanting something, needing to be cared for. Margaret would not trade a moment of that care, but still she was relieved to have some steps of freedom. The reed grass was damp and uneven. Her socks and the hem of her skirt were soaked. But none of that counted for anything. She felt only the joy. The joy of those two sleeping.

Margaret might have ventured no more than twenty steps, but already the cabins and the smokeshop, including the smell, had been removed from her back by the mist. The light ahead of her seemed brighter, and so she persevered, comforted by the certainty that no one would catch sight of her in such secretive weather. Another twenty steps, and she could make out tones among the grays, where true light and reflected light met to make a flat and almost black horizon. More steps and she was clear of the grass and walking on more solid ground, flat rocks and puddles of star-gathered dew. The new smell was slight but overpowering. No longer fish and smoke and timber, but something brackish and inedible, something faintly menstrual. She heard a cry that seized her heart and squeezed it. She turned around toward the cabins, fearful for her Jackie. But it was something other than a child. There was another cry, then the curtain of the mist seemed to draw apart, and there they were: the gulls, stocky, busy, laboring, their bony wings weighted at the tips with black.

The ocean itself was a surprise. Margaret could not have guessed how leaden it would be and lacking in expression. It seemed too hard-surfaced to take a boat or for fish to pass through it, more metallic than watery. It was not until she reached the edge of a crumbling overhang and could look down through the thinning mist onto the tuggings of the water at the shore that she had any sense of the ocean's unremitting, unproductive strength and its patience. Now the leaden surface was alive. What had been flat a little way offshore seemed to resent the unresponding land. It had raised itself up in folds and furrows of water that broke against the beach, flashing their white underskirts, unloading and delivering themselves, time after time, never seeming to progress. The sea was like a great lung, but exhaling and inhaling water rather than air. The gulls breakfasted and squabbled among the underskirts, crying at the waves.