by John Buchan
“Katrine, Katrine,” David exclaimed in agony. “What madness brought you here? Have you not heard that half the parish is sick or dead? There is poison in the very air. Oh, my dear, come not near me. Wrap a fold of your cloak over your mouth and never slacken rein till you are back in Calidon.”
The girl drew off her gloves. Her eyes were on Isobel.
“I am his promised wife,” she said. “Where should I be if not by his side?”
The news left Isobel staring. “His promised wife,” she stammered. “Heard ye ever the like — the manse o’ Woodilee to seek a mistress from Calidon! . . . But the mair reason why ye suld tak’ tent. There’s nae place for a bonny doo like yersel’ in this stricken parish — ye canna help ithers and ye may get your ain death. Awa’ hame, my braw leddy, for the minister has eneuch to trouble him without concern for his joe.”
The girl walked to David’s side and put her hand in his arm.
“You will not forbid me,” she said, and her face was still smiling. “I do not fear the plague, and I do not think it will harm me, for it smites those who live in foul hovels, and I am always about the hills. But I do fear this loneliness. I have not seen you for two weeks, David, and I have been imagining terrible things. I have come to help you, for I have known the pest before — many times in France, and in Oxford too. I know what precautions to take, for I have heard wise men discuss them, but you in Woodilee, from all I hear, are no better than frightened bairns.”
“But your aunt — Mistress Saintserf—”
“Aunt Grizel knows of my coming. She has given me this pomander of spices.” She touched a trinket which hung from her neck by a gold chain.
David struggled to salve his conscience by energy in dissuasion, and though his heart cried for her presence, it was torn, too, by fear for her safety. He commanded, pled, expostulated, but she only turned a smiling face. She sat down before the peat fire and stretched out her feet to the hot ashes.
“You will not drive me away, David,” she said. “Would you forbid me from a work of necessity and mercy — and you a minister?”
In the end he gave up the task, for here was a resolution stiffer than his own, and his strongest arguments faltered when he saw her smile, which was like sunlight in a world of darkness and grim faces. He found himself telling her how the plague had begun, and of the nature of its course — the lack of leeches and medicines, the dearth of helpers, the households perishing silently indoors. She listened calmly, and did not blanch even at the tale of the shuttered cottages and the unburied dead.
“A pretty mess your folk have made of it,” she said. “You have turned Woodilee into a lazar-house, and given the pest a rare breeding-ground. Never mind your spiritual consolations, David. Let the miserable bodies come before the souls. You say you have no leech to cure the sick, and that maybe is as well, for I never yet heard of leech that could master the plague. But if you cannot cure, you may prevent its spread. Our first task is to safeguard those who are not yet smitten. If you shut up a cottage where there is one sick man, you condemn every member to death. That must be stopped without delay — and for God’s sake let us bury the dead — bury or burn.”
“Burn?” he cried out aghast.
“Burn,” she nodded. “Fire is the best purifier.”
“But we shall rouse the place to madness.”
“Better that than death. But we want helpers — bold men who fear neither the pest nor an angry people.”
He shook his head. “There are none such in Woodilee. The bones of all are turned to water.”
“Then we must stiffen them. . . . There is the one whom we now call Mark Riddel. It was he who told me of your trouble, for he was at Calidon yesterday on his way back from Annandale. There is the black-avised man, too, at Reiverslaw. . . . Are there none more?”
The girl’s briskness was rousing David’s mind from its torpor.
“Amos Ritchie, maybe.”
“That gives us three — four with yourself — and four resolved men can do wonders. Others will fall in once the drum is beaten. Rouse yourself, David, and be as eager to save bodies as you ever were to save souls. And do not forget to pray for a change in this lamentable weather. A ringing frost would do more to stay the pest than all the leeches in Scotland. . . .”
She departed as suddenly as she had come. “I dare not come by day,” she told him, “for if Woodilee heard of a stranger its panic would be worse. We have to do with terrified bairns. But I will be here at the same hour to-morrow night, and by that time you must have gathered your helpers.”
David did not return from his visitations till the small hours, but he brought back the first piece of good news. One of the hinds at the Mains, after lying for two days in delirium, was now quit of the fever and in a wholesome sweat — sleeping, too, a natural sleep. It was the first case of a possible recovery, and he was aware how much a single life saved would do to quiet the broken nerves of the parish. Also Katrine’s advent had lifted him out of the slough of despond in which he had been sunk for weeks. She had spurred him to action, and shown him a duty which he had been too blind to see. He fiercely repressed the anxiety with which the mere thought of her presence in that tainted place filled him. He dare not forbid the exercise of courage in another — even in one who was dearer to him than life.
Next morning he went to Reiverslaw, but got no comfort. Andrew Shillinglaw met him out of doors, and made it very clear that he had no desire to come too near him. The conversation was conducted at a distance of a dozen yards.
“Na, na,” he cried. “I’m off this verra day to Moffat, and I’ll no set foot in Woodilee till the pest has gane. Ye ask ower muckle, Mr. Sempill. It’s maybe your duty to gang among them — though ye ken as weel as me that the haill parochine is no worth the life o’ a tinkler’s messan — but it’s no duty o’ Andra Shillinglaw’s. I never could abide the reek o’ the folk, and they have doubtless gotten what they deserved.”
“Ay, I’m feared,” he admitted in answer to David’s appeals. “Ilka body has something that puts the grue on him, and with me it’s aye been the pest. I’ll face steel and pouther, angry men and angry beasts, but I’ll no face what gars a man dee like a ratton in a hole. And what for should I face it for folk that are no a drap bluid’s kin to me?”
The man spoke loudly and violently, as if a little ashamed of himself, and went into the house, where David could hear the bar falling.
From Amos Ritchie he had a different answer. Amos, since his wife’s death, had gone about with bent shoulders and a grey face, and had sat for long hours in his smithy beside a dead fire. There David found him, and propounded his request.
“I’ll do your will, sir,” was the answer. “I’ve sae little left to live for that I’ve the less to fear. But there’ll be need o’ mair than you and me, for the parish is dementit, and daft folk are ill to guide. The first thing is to get the deid buried. For God’s sake dinna speak of burnin’, for though the body is but our earthly tenement, burnin’ is ower like the Deil’s wark.”
That night Katrine came again, and with her Mark Riddel. The soldier had lost something of his bluff composure, and a troubled eye met David’s.
“I have been listening to a sermon on courage,” he said ruefully.
Katrine pointed a mocking finger at him.
“He would run away,” she said, “he, the old soldier of a hundred battles.”
“‘Deed and I would. A hundred battles, nor a thousand battles, wouldna reconcile me to the pest. I could name you many a bold captain who at the rumour of pestilence shifted his leaguer, though he would have held his ground before all the Emperor’s armies. But it seems I must take my orders from this child, when I hoped to slip off cannily to a cleaner countryside. . . . Ugh, Katrine, my dear, I wish you had set me an easier task than to sweep the midden of Woodilee and turn sexton.”
“It’s an armed and mailed sexton you must be,” she said. “You may have to put reason into the folk with the flat of your swo
rd. Comfort yourself, Mr. Mark, this task is not so much unlike that you were bred to.”
The soldier grew visibly more cheerful when he heard that there were only three volunteers for the business. “There’s trouble brewing, then,” he said, “and it’s God’s mercy that I’ve won a certain respect in the parish, for it looks as if more persuasion would be needed than a good word and a clap on the back. When do we start our dowie job, for I confess I would sooner be at it than thinking of it?”
“A lean man like you, all bone and whipcord, need not fear,” said David.
“Tut, man,” said Mark impatiently, “fear is not in the question. My trouble is that I’ve a nice stomach and a fastidious nose. Death, whether it comes by pest or steel, is the same to me, and that’s a thing worth less than a strae. . . . God’s curse on this weather! . . . To work, Mr. David, or I’ll be rueing my bargain.”
For three days and nights the three men wrought at their repulsive task with niggardly intervals for food and sleep. They made a list of the stricken houses and forced their way into them, even when the doors were bolted. The dead were buried — some in the kirkyard, some in near-by fields, and this duty fell especially on Amos Ritchie, who performed it with dogged fidelity. Now and then there was trouble — a crazed wife or mother would refuse to part with the body of a husband or child, and in some cases the minister had to intervene with stern appeals. More difficult was the business of keeping houses, where the sick lay, open to the air and light. David and Mark had to drive cowering sons out of doors with threats of violence, and in some cases with violence itself. One obstinate household had their door smashed by Amos’s axe; another was turned neck and crop into the byre that a sick woman might have peace and air. The three men constituted themselves a relieving force, and had often to do the fetching of food and water. Terrible were the sights revealed behind many of those bolted doors and windows, and though Amos seemed unaffected, the other two had often to rush to the air to check their nausea. Thanks they got none, rarely even curses; the miserable folk were too sunk in despair for either. Yet it is likely they would have failed, had not the news of recoveries got about. Besides the hind at the Mains, two children had now weathered the storm and were reported to be mending fast. The communal mind of Woodilee, which up to then had been blank fatalism and lethargy, was now shot with gleams of hope. The pest might have worked itself out and be on the decline: the corridor was still long and black, but there was a pinprick of light at the end of it. . . . Also Mark Riddel in himself was a cogent persuasion. The dark keen face and the reputation of mystery and command which he had won at the witch-pricking were arguments sufficiently potent, apart from the long sword which he wore at his side. For in this work the douce tacksman of Crossbasket had disappeared: it was the captain of Mackay’s who gave orders and saw that they were obeyed.
By Candlemas it was clear that the tide had turned, for there were more on the way to recovery than dying. Well it was that the change had come, for the weather now broke — not, as David had prayed, in wholesome frost, but in perpetual drenching rains. The downpour had come in an instant; within half an hour during the night the wind had shifted, the sky had clouded, and the fall had begun. It was the night, the eve of Candlemas, which the three men had chosen for their work of burning. Now that people were beginning to move about the streets again, it was essential to get rid of centres of infection, and two of the worst were cottages in the clachan where all the inmates had died. Such houses could only be purified by burning, and about ten that night fire was put to them. Dry as tinder, they blazed furiously to heaven, and there were those in the parish, dabblers in witchcraft, who must have turned scared eyes to the glow which was fiercer than any that the altar in the Wood had known. . . . But in an hour came the rain, and the murky smoke-wreaths were turned to steaming embers.
It was a proof of the returning strength of the parish that the burning of the cots startled it out of apathy. Woodilee feebly and confusedly began to take stock of things, and tongues started to wag again. The numbness of loss, the languor of fear, gave place to recrimination. Who was responsible for the calamity of the pest? It must be a mark of the Lord’s displeasure, but against whom? They remembered that their minister lay under the ban of the Kirk — had been forbidden to conduct ordinances — was convicted of malignancy and suspected of worse. In their search for a scapegoat many fastened upon David. Practical folk said that he had been in Edinburgh in the time of plague, and had maybe brought back the seeds of it. The devout averred that the uncanny weather had followed upon his public sins, and that the pest had come close on the heels of the Presbytery’s condemnation. Was there not the hand of God in this, a manifest judgment? The ways of the Almighty were mysterious, and He might ordain that the people should die for the sins of one man. Even those who had been on David’s side were shaken in their confidence.
To crown all, came the events of the past week. To his critics there was no reason in his doings: they believed the pestilence to be a visitation of Heaven, to be stayed not by the arm of flesh, but by fasting and prayer. He had been assiduous in his futile visiting, it was true, and he had buried the dead; but he had broken in on their suffering with violent hands, and had herded men and women like brute beasts. Doors and windows, open to the February rains, attested his methods; by his act two cottages, once snug and canty, were now grey ashes. . . . Amos Ritchie in such matters was but a tool; Mark Riddel was too much feared to be the mark of censorious tongues; but David, still their titular minister, was a predestined target.
And as the village crept back to life, and those who had escaped took heart to do a little work again, and the convalescent staggered to their doors and looked on the world, there arose stranger rumours. The minister was all day out and about — praying on occasion, but more often engaged in homely tasks like cleaning up a kitchen and boiling water for those who were too frail to help themselves. Dark looks and ugly mutterings often followed him, but he was too intent upon his work to take heed of them. The general sullenness he set down to the dregs of grief and terror. That was for the daylight hours, but — it was whispered — after nightfall he had a companion. There were stories of a woman, a creature beautiful and young, who sang in a honeyed voice, and appeared especially at the bedsides of the children. At first few credited the tale, but presently came ample confirmation. She had been seen at three houses in the clachan, at the Mirehope herd’s, at the Mains; with her had been the minister; and the bairns to whom she had spoken cried for her return. . . . The old and wise shook their heads. There was no such woman in the parish or in all the countryside. And some remembered that the minister in the back-end had been observed to meet with a woman in the Wood, and that she had seemed to those who saw her to be no mortal, but the Queen of Elfhame.
The truth was that no commands of Mark, no protestations of David, could keep Katrine out of the village. She saw the reason for not appearing in the daylight, for a stranger in Woodilee — above all such a stranger as she — would have been too much for the brittle nerves of the parish. But after nightfall the case was different, and when with David she had once stood by the bed of a sick child, nothing could prevent her making a nightly duty of it. Into those sodden, woeful households she entered like a spring wind; the people may have marvelled, but they were still too apathetic to ask questions, and they felt dumbly her curative power. Among unkempt pallid men and frowsy wild-eyed women the face bright with the weather, the curls dabbled with rain, the cool firm arm, the alert figure, worked a miracle, as if an angel had troubled the stagnant waters of their life. Her hand on a child’s hot brow sent it into a peaceful sleep; her presence gave to the sick the will to live and to the fearful a gleam of courage. What they thought and said when she had gone will never be known, but for certain they longed for her coming again.
On the 18th day of February the pestilence took its last victim — an old woman, the mother of the Windyways herd, and the earth was still fresh on her grave when the rain ceased
. The wind swung to the north, and the black frost for which David had longed settled on the land. It put an end to the pest, but it bore hard on the convalescent, and the older and feebler died under its rigour. In the pure cold air the taint seemed to pass from the land, and the problem of David and his helpers was now a straightforward fight with normal ailments and the normal winter poverty. Stock during the visitation had been scarcely tended, and the byres and infields were full of dead beasts; while in the general terror the customary frugality of the parish had been forgotten and many a meal-ark was empty. There was need of clothing and food, of fuel and cordials, and it did not appear where they were to come from.
There was no help to be looked for from outside, for to the neighbourhood Woodilee was like a leper settlement; none would have dared to enter the place, and had a Woodilee man shown his face in another parish he would have been driven back with stones. Mr. Fordyce managed to send to David more than one distressful letter, lamenting that for the sake of his own people he could not lend his brother a helping hand; but save for that, from the 8th day of January to the 15th day of March there was no communication with the outer world. In this crisis Mark Riddel wrought mightily. He had ways and means of getting supplies from distant places, and his pack-horses, guided by himself or Amos Ritchie, brought meal and homespun blankets from quarters which no man knew of. David exhausted the manse stores, and Isobel kilted her coats and, with a charity seasoned by maledictions, kept her pot or girdle continually on the fire. But it was the house of Calidon that provided the main necessaries. Its brew-house and its girnel, its stillroom and its cellars, not to speak of Mistress Grizel’s private cordials, were plundered for the sake of a parish which Mistress Grizel could not refer to without a sour grimace. When Katrine rode to the manse of a night she would bring with her usually a laden shelty.
