The Pesthouse (29 page)

Then Margaret had to negotiate the acreage of tethered animals and stationed carts that would no longer be of any use, everybody hoped. Hoofs and wheels didn't work at sea where — wonders of the world — all you needed was the muscle of the wind. What had been of value was now only an encumbrance. Beyond the carts, a pack of dogs, newly homeless, had achieved what many people only dream of and were masterless. They barked, bared their teeth and snapped at passers-by without much fear of punishment. Margaret's whistling did not placate them. She had to keep her distance and walk through muddy garbage dumps rather than over the drier ground that the dogs had claimed.

Only then did she find her way barred by the herd of would-be emigrants, their backs all turned to her and many straining on their toes to see how far off they were from what Margaret presumed was access to the boats.

She skirted around the crowds, not wanting to pass too closely to their heels, in the same way that she would sensibly — like any town girl — avoid the rears of cattle or horses. Once the throng thinned, she was able to get closer to the river banks, where she might gain a clearer view. Here there was a market of a sort. Women from Tidewater were selling dishes of hash and hunks of corn bread. Small boys were offering hands of fresh fish — alewives, weakfish, croakers, kings — none of which she recognized by appearance or by name. Exasperated emigrants were bartering with hard-faced men, hoping to sell their carts and horses and any heavy goods they still possessed before they put to sea but being only offered pittances — a reed hat for an oak table, a bit of bacon for a wagon, a bag of taffies for a mare. The salt air seemed to have robbed the world of value. Already a corral of newly purchased horses was closely packed with animals. An elderly emigrant who evidently — from his loud complaints — had wanted to buy back his own horse with the sack of flour that he'd been paid for it had been refused, laughed off. The purchase price for such a good mount, he had been told, was five sacks of flour. He was damping his sorrows at a row of clay-lined casks where ladles of beer and shots of shrub or hard liquor were being sold. Still, despite his evident anger, he was being pestered — as was Margaret herself — by hucksters offering good-luck charms, ship supplies, weatherproofs, potions to ward off ocean sickness. A good strong mule was not worth anything, but a finger's length of pizzle hair, they said, could make you rich and keep you well.

Margaret hurried through them all, trying to seem purposeful and located, despite the fingers pulling at her smock and skirt and the feet that tried to trip her, the voices in her face, demanding trade and commerce beyond her means and offering goods outside her experience, new friends only from the teeth outward.

Once she reached the river bank, she jumped down out of the multitude onto the muddy shore with its ballast of wood and metal drift. Now, if she was careful not to sink too deeply and if she kept low enough not to draw attention to herself, she could reach a rusty platform where she could stand and inspect from a distance the faces in the crowd and learn what it was these emigrants were straining for.

All she could see at first was a line of tables, separated from the emigrants by a rope fence, but gradually the procedures became clearer. One by one, each individual or family was being called forward, questioned and searched by a group of men in black uniforms, looking like no one Margaret had ever seen before, unusually light-skinned and old-fashioned somehow, in factory-made jackets and tooled shoes. Their beards and hair were trimmed short, like those of teenage boys. They carried heavy polished sticks that they used freely to organize the crowds as if they were cattle. And, so far as she could tell from such a distance, they were speaking in a tongue that made no sense at all to her no matter how loud the words were shouted or how fiercely they emphasized their spoken commands with the blunt end of their sticks.

Margaret would not join the crowd of supplicants. She kept her distance and she watched, first checking for sign of any rustlers and then, when there was none, scanning the faces of the women for any of her friends from the Ark. Again, no sign. What she witnessed, though, was exactly what the women in the cottages had warned about. The few families that were visibly wealthy — or could prove themselves to be secretly rich — were being tick marked on their forearms with a blue dye and then allowed to take their possessions through the metal wrecks and walk across the colored mud among the hard straight shadows of the hulks down to the shoreline and the cargo skiffs. Young men and men with bags of tools were being offered papers on which to thumb their signatures of agreement: travel for free across one ocean, work for free for one year. That was the deal, no arguments. Show your thumb or show your heels. Pretty girls were being flirted with and told how much richer, cleaner and handsomer the men were on the far side of the ocean. A good-looking woman could have three husbands over there if she wanted to.

Almost everybody else was being marked in red — a large cross on both arms — and turned away. They went back to the body of the crowd, crestfallen, but ready to try again (once they'd scratched away all evidence of red), though next time with a different story or a different hat or more convincing tears.

Margaret did not see the guard approaching. He was almost invisible against the mud in his dark uniform. He had hold of her wrist — checking for a blue tick, perhaps — before she noticed him and for a moment her cry of alarm made her the center of attention for the front rows of the crowd. They saw her being pulled down from her metal perch and heard his gibberish commands that she should move away and put an end to her mopery. They saw her being roughly sent back to the river bank, though she was more prodded than kicked by the guard's boot. When finally, out of reach, she threw a scoop of mud at him, the unsuccessful emigrants cheered for her. It didn't matter that her missile had fallen short by a dozen paces. They were just glad that someone other than themselves had shown a little reckless fortitude. Throwing mud was not the most persuasive application for a berth.

At least now, during this short-lived celebrity, strangers were returning Margaret's greetings with a smile of recognition. 'Good work, sister,' they called out, especially the ones whose failure was already marked in red. And, 'Step a little closer next time.' So she was able to get replies to her questions from those rejected families who were peeling off the back of the crowd, despondent, bewildered and angry. 'They say we have to wait until the summer for the family ships,' one woman told Margaret, rubbing at her arm with spittle but seeming to make no impact on the dye. 'These sailings are for workers only. They'll take my sons at once, but won't touch me.' It was the same old story that Margaret had heard from Joanie: mother and son, wife and husband, divided. Another said that she had heard that there were already family sailings farther down the coast — 'Only a three- or four-day walk, if you can afford the services of a pathfinder to show the best route' — in a much larger port with thirty boats a month for emigrants. 'They'll take everybody there. Women. Kids. Dogs, they say. We're packing up and moving on today, if we can get our horses back.'

Margaret listened to their plans but recognized the bleakness in their voices. They were exhausted by their disappointments. Now they had to split their families or move on to another place or stay here for the season, living on salt and wind. She turned around and walked back toward the woods and the coastal path. She wouldn't waste a moment standing in that line, just to have her hopes and patience crossed out in red. A woman with a child and nothing to her name except a set of spy pipes would never be accepted on those boats. There had to be another dream.

No sooner had Margaret made her mind up to return at once to Jackie and Franklin than she found an even better reason to hasten away from the anchorage. There, among the abandoned carts, just a few paces off, sitting on a crate and wearing the green and orange woven top that Margaret's sister had made, was Melody Bose, looking very cross indeed.

Margaret only just remembered to retrieve the spy pipes as she hurried up the path. She used them when she reached the spot where the two women from the fishing cottages had enhanced themselves for work. She focused the pipes on the carts and then the crowd and then the market area and then the encampments, but she could not see her stolen top or any further sign of Melody. She spotted the two women, though, standing by the horse corral, dwarfed by three mounted men in quarrelsome dress, their beards tied with ribbons. One had what looked like a severed hand dangling from his saddle as a trophy. Behind them, turning his horse impatiently and calling to his comrades to hurry up, was Captain Chief, unmissable and unmistakable — as Melody had been — in his stolen clothes, a flag to the eyes in goatskin.

'BACK ALREADY? Quick work. No tick or cross, I see,' said Joanie, when the dogs barked Margaret's return to the cottages. 'I'll walk with you a little way. I like the company of someone new.' So the two continued up the rise into the higher dunes above the back shore, with four or five of the dogs running ahead of them. 'We understand each other now,' Joanie said. 'You've seen how it is down at the anchorage. There's no way out of here for women like us. Now you know how truthful I've been with you.'

'There are other ships and other ports. Ships for families. Farther down—'

Joanie chuckled. 'Ha, so they claim. That's what they want you to believe. They don't want you hanging around this anchorage, causing trouble, spreading discontent. They'll say, "that's it, my darling jetsams, we'll take care of your husband and your strapping sons. Leave them here in our good hands. Now off you go, down south. Good girls. There're boats with fur-lined cabins waiting for the married women there, and all the old folks and the kids." And when you've arrived at the next port, well, it's all the same old dance. No moms and kids. No grandparents. "Try even farther south for better luck." You swallow that? Well, more fool you. You'll be chasing south until you run out of south and start coming up the other side, until there's no north left and still you won't have found a ship that'll let you board. At this rate, in a season or two, there'll be more turn-me-downs on the shores and beaches of this country than there are gulls, I promise you. There'll be no standing room. They'll all be scrapping over bits of kelp and sleeping on one leg. No, listen to me — Margaret? Margaret, isn't it? — Your husband, is he fit and strong?'

Margaret nodded, smiled, held her hand above her head. 'He's this tall, as strong as a bear. He's big and beautiful.'

'What kind of man is he?'

'He's shy, I think, and not uncaring, and...' Margaret could have made a better list, but Joanie quickly interrupted her: 'Well, then, you are unfortunate,' she said. She took Margaret by the upper arm. Too fierce a grip, tighter even than the black-uniformed guard's. 'Listen to me, sweet. If you're sensible you'll go back to your shy and not uncaring man and you'll lie to him. Tell him that there are no ships, or that the berths are full, or that men have got to have their balls cut off before they're let on board. Say anything, except the truth. Because, as soon as he knows that they're looking for anyone with muscles and hardly anyone with breasts, he won't be shy of leaving you behind. Your man will take the ship and leave you here, leave you with your little girl. Trust me. And you'll encourage him, because you love the man, you want him to be free. Women are such knuckle heads.'

'I do love him,' Margaret said, her voice unexpectedly small.

'Will you love him when he's gone? Will you love him when there is no loving to be had?'

Margaret did not know the answer. She only felt tight-chested, and angry. She tried to shake the woman off, but Joanie pressed her face close to Margaret's and said, 'Let him go, then. Come to us. We'll find a place for you. You're a handsome woman, in your way. Now just suppose, when you get back to him, your husband wants to take the ships. No one wishes that on you, but just suppose that he's gone and you're alone. Then come back here and we can find a place for you, a bed for you, so long as you're prepared to work with us and do your share. We'd have to dye your hair, of course. Some men are fearful of the red. We'd have to find you better clothes. You understand? Come to us. Come to us.'

Finally the woman let her go, although the dogs stayed with Margaret for a little while before returning to their owners and their suppers and their fires. Margaret hurried on, running almost. She was soon breathless from exertion and anxiety. But she slowed her steps when she could see the cabins and the flock of frenzied gulls. She needed time to think. She speeded up again only when she could smell the meat.

In that gap between seeing the cabins and reaching them, Margaret had made her mind up. She could not lie to Franklin, no matter how persuasive Joanie's advice had been. He was not hers to he to. He was not her husband, not her lover, not the father of the child. She had no hold on him. He had set out all those months ago with his brother, Jackson, with little else in mind, like most men of his age, except to reach the coast and sail toward a better life. The fact that for, what? three or four days they had traveled together in the fall and then had escaped together for a couple more in the spring was hardly reason to imagine she had some call on him. No, she would explain the situation to him frankly and openly, and offer no opinion or advice. She would not mention Melody Bose, though, if she could help it. The shame, the sin, the cowardice, the selfishness of not having gone up to the woman with news of Jackie,
Bella —
the girl's birth name seemed hard to use... well, such an offense against nature was too great to disclose to anyone. That surely was a heavy sin, to have been so casual with the heartache of a grandmother. For an uncomfortable moment — and not for the first time — Jackie seemed to Margaret to be not so much a child who had been rescued as a child who had been stolen. Such theft, such wickedness, could not be confirmed to Franklin, not for the time being anyway.