(2007) The Pesthouse

by Jim Crace

  'That's the call that we've been waiting for. Deliverance,' he said, embarrassed more by their embrace than by his dance. 'Tomorrow morning, Mags, I'm going for that ship. It must be putting ashore close by. I'll see if we can get aboard.' She shook her head. He took her hand. 'I'll come back with some food for Jackie. It'll be okay. I'll be wary for myself. You just keep low and out of sight.'

  'You'll not go anywhere,' she said. 'I'll go. It's better if I go. No one's hunting for me. I don't stand out like you, not since my hair grew out a bit.'

  'It'll be okay—'

  'No, Franklin. You're to let me have my way. I couldn't bear it if you went, and we never saw a hair of you again. Anyway, I'm used to begging for a bit of food. And women make a better hand of getting information out of sailors. That's well known.' They laughed at that, then argued briefly, but Franklin saw the sense of what she proposed. He was relieved, in fact, and a bit ashamed to be so uncourageous yet again. 'Take this, Mags.' He gave her the spy pipes. 'You can trade it for some bacon and our passage fees. I'm sure it's worth a lot, especially to sailors.' Margaret took the pipes. 'Good meal ticket,' she agreed, but knew at once that she could part with them only if they were prized from her fingers. She needed them to see the distant world. They were of more value to her than to any sailor.

  That night they slept with Jackie at their feet and not between them. When he could, when her breathing said that she was dozing, Franklin found that he had taken hold of Margaret's hand. He fell asleep with one of her fingers wrapped inside his palm. He felt her tug it free at sunrise and heard her washing at the water trough. But he kept quiet and still when she slipped outside into the cold and started on her explorations. It wasn't prudent to tempt fate by exchanging goodbyes, not when the task ahead was dangerous. He tried to sleep.

  FRANKLIN COULD NOT expect a restful day. He was not used to children, so having sole care of Jackie would be a test, not all of it welcome. Over winter he had learned to be less of an optimist. Whereas the old Franklin might have happily envisaged Margaret's journey to the ship as being safe and easy and bound to succeed, the new one needed no encouragement to imagine her in trouble. Margaret robbed or raped, kidnapped or lost at sea, Margaret deciding to abandon him and the girl, Margaret attacked by gulls or tumbling down a cliff into the waves, Margaret losing her way back to the cabins and having to spend the night outside. A landscape full of Margarets undone.

  Once he was up and washed, though, and had seen the egg-blue, cloudless sky, Franklin determined to be high-spirited. He would keep his hands and his imagination busy with domestic matters. He'd be a useful, rather than a moping, husband for the day. He muttered a list to himself, counting off his tasks. He'd take good care of Jackie, but when she allowed it he would see what improvements he could make to their quarters, which for some reason and despite his hunger he already felt reluctant to abandon. He'd make a more comfortable family bed with some fresh cut grasses. Even though it might be difficult, he'd start a fire in the afternoon, as soon as it was safe to make a little smoke. He'd started fires without a spark stone when he was a boy. Why not now? He'd gather shoots and roots and find a way of sieving clean the drinking water in the trough. He'd find some way of preparing a meal as well. A feast, with meat. Surely he could trap a rabbit or a bird. Surely these salt marshes should boast some prairie chickens or quail. There was no shortage of netting to drape between bushes. He had all day. Even Margaret had caught a quail, that first frosty morning out of Ferrytown.

  What Franklin did not have was bait. Although he visited his bush nets every so often during the morning, they remained empty, apart from a few hollow plant stems brought in by the breeze and some sticky yellow spume sent up from the ocean. He tried laying out some of the smoked fish, but not even the spring flies or the gulls seemed tempted by this leathery treat. Why would they be tempted when only a short flight away the sea and the shore were tumbling with food?

  He walked with Jackie down to the beach and, once he had washed her, kicked about in the shallow water, much to her amusement, but there was nothing there that he could trust as edible. It all smelled bad: the weed, the water and the sand, the shells, the battered lengths of drift, the pink-gray armored parts of animals that were not spiders exactly. He did not like the shore. It seemed ungenerous. Its music was funereal. It was a mystery.

  He was glad to turn his back on it and return to the dune top and its fringe of slanting thickets, wedged by the wind. As a farmer, he could judge what kind of living such land could provide if — just if — he and Margaret and the girl were forced to make their futures there. He knew it was a foolish fantasy. But somehow he was more comforted by it, by this ill-sited version of the life he knew and understood, than by the growing prospect of the new world overseas and, more immediately, by the thought of swapping solid ground for a tossing deck.

  He had heard too many tales about the treacheries of ocean travel for all of them to be as false as his hope that it would only take 'all day' to cross: ships becalmed on windless plains of water with great birds circling, waiting for the passengers to die; ships swept forward by such determined winds that water slammed and crashed against the hulls until their timbers split and the ocean's tongues had reached across the decks and snacked on all the voyagers; ships where captains, maddened by the noise and stench of life aboard, relinquished their command to rats the size of mules; ships where travelers who didn't want to starve would have to dine on weeviled bread, share meat with maggots and drink bilge wine. Then there were pirates, mutinies and lightning storms to survive.

  Franklin — even if he could persuade himself that there was Paradise at the far end of the sea — was no longer convinced that it was worth the journey. He looked more fondly on the land than he had done for months. Yes, land was something he could deal with. Even this brackish neighborhood. Remove the skin of sand and he'd find fertile earth. He was certain that he could coax a little corn from it, despite the salt and wind. He had the horses. He could make a plow. In time, he'd have some chickens and a cow, a pair of goats. Milk, eggs and meat to feed the family. He'd build a kitchen garden, protected from the wind by logs and fences, for pumpkins, turnips, sugar peas, perhaps, some salad greens. And what they couldn't eat, they'd sell or trade or butcher and smoke for winter. There was the little matter of the rustlers, but in this version of his life Franklin was like Jackson. Victorious and strong. His captors came to take him and their horses back to their encampment. Franklin sent them packing with nothing but his fists, though not before he'd pulled Captain Chief from his saddle and stripped him of his clothes. Now Franklin stood among his fields and animals, his goatskin coat restored — his brother's and his mother's goatskin coat.

  Something in this version of his future nagged at Franklin. Some words, some action. He went through it all again, the clearing of the land, his planting, the harvest, his confrontation with the riders. Now he had it. He'd been a fool not to think of it before! Butcher and smoke! That was the simple way — an all too obvious way, in fact; what had he been thinking of? — to provision some food both for the next few days and for their ocean journey if they had to make one. He almost laughed out loud. Margaret had promised that whatever happened she would be back by nightfall; well, then, now Franklin could almost guarantee that she would come home to a proper welcome and a warm household, lit by flames from a grate and with fresh meat in the skillet. He could not start at once. He had to spend an age rocking Jackie on his shoulder, but, just when his patience was almost at an end, she settled down, despite her hunger and her fear that Ma had disappeared for good.

  Franklin went out to the horses and renewed their water and their hay. Margaret's mare was a spare horse and not young. The fetlocks and the pasterns on her front legs were worn. Her haunches were angular and unpromising. The bigger horse was younger, though. A three- or four-year-old and almost plump around the girth. Its eyes and teeth were clear. And it seemed docile. It'd not prove difficult. Franklin led it to the lee end of
the smokeshop and reined it to a high, protruding joist, so that its head was raised. It tried to drag away. It didn't like the awkward and unnatural angle of its head, but tugging on the rein was even more uncomfortable, so it compensated by scuffing the ground with its hind legs.

  Franklin left the horse to its devices for a while, not wanting to rush the animal and not wanting to rush himself either. He stood at the smokeshop door, looking up the coast in the direction in which the sailboat and Margaret had disappeared. He had to plan his work carefully. He felt immensely happy, suddenly, certain that Margaret would return safely, certain that he would delight her with his welcome. This was something he was good at — tending a homestead, using tools, providing food for the table. It was the life that he'd been born to and, surely, one that could not be bettered anywhere. The ocean did not seem truly promising to him, despite its grandeur and its relentless noise that in many ways was more wearying for him than Jackie's crying. He recognized it now for what it was, an obstacle and not a route to liberty. That was a shock to realize that he did not truly want to leave America. His dream was not the future but the past. Some land, a cabin and a family. A mother waiting on the stoop.

  The horse had entirely settled now. It had turned sideways against the stone wall of the smokeshop, by the time Franklin arrived with the fisherman's tool box, some rope and a handful of spring-beauty roots. The horse took the roots from his palm almost before they were offered.

  Franklin did not need to hobble the horse too tightly, just close enough to stop it kicking or moving away. The animal had been badly treated for most of its life and so had learned to be long suffering. It did not struggle against the ropes, not even when its hind fetlocks were secured to the building so that it could not move away from the wall. It only nudged Franklin — successfully — for more roots.

  Franklin removed the gutting knife from the tool box and tested its sharpness on some reed grass. The knife was blunt and rusty, but it would have to do. He'd butchered animals before with blunter implements, though nothing quite as large and heavy as this poor creature. Jackson had always taken care of the family cattle. Franklin had been put in charge of goats and pigs and chickens. It was not a job he had relished, but he had enjoyed the meat that it produced and so had never made a fuss. He presumed there was some intimate procedure that was best for felling horses, but he had never been taught it. He would simply have to use the same method that he had employed for pigs — one determined cut to the jugular and then patience. At least it was easier to comfort and to quiet a horse. Pigs and goats were beyond comfort. They always recognized the smell of butchery. They always ran away from blades.

  Franklin took off his shirt and, bare-chested, held the horse's head in his arms and whispered to it, blowing in its ears, 'There's a boy. There's a good, good boy. It's not long now.' But he was hardly thinking of the horse. There was another animal that bothered him. Captain Chief would have a fit if he could see what was happening. One of his precious horses had been stolen and then slaughtered by a slave. Franklin could abandon any hope of mercy if he were ever caught and returned to the rustlers' encampment. He could imagine Captain Chief swirling around him in Jackson's overlong coat, ludicrous and dangerous. 'You cooked our horse? You cut its throat and cooked our horse?' Franklin could not imagine what his punishment might be, though cooking seemed a possibility.

  The horse's skin was even tougher than he'd expected. The knife went in easily enough, but it was hard to drag the blade across the throat and find the busy vein. But luckily the horse threw back its head in shock and helped the progress of the knife. A stream of blood welled up and then a gush. Franklin stepped back at once, leaving the gutting knife protruding from the wound. His hands and forearms and the top of his chest were sticky with blood, but otherwise he had done his job quite cleanly. Now he only had to wait. And not for long, he hoped. The horse was suffering.

  Franklin did not stay to watch the animal pumping its own blood onto the wall of the smokeshop until, shocked and weakened, it fell against the stonework and slipped heavily to the ground. Instead, he busied himself indoors, first making Jackie comfortable and then assembling whatever he could find to help with the cutting and the preparation of the meat. He had to leave no trace of any horse. Once he had stored the best meat, the carcass would need to be removed, no easy task.

  The horse was just a little warm when Franklin cut into its flanks and upper thighs for the leanest meat. It was a laborious and messy task, and he returned often to the water trough to wash his face and clean the blood from his hands and arms. The horse's smell was overpowering, but the rewards were plentiful. Soon he'd filled one fish basket with steaks and chops and cuts and a second with thin strips of rib meat and red sinew, suitable for making jerky. With some help, more time and better tools, he could strip the whole horse down, bones and all. Back home, on the family stead, a butchered horse could provide everything from glue to a cudgel, but Franklin was in too great a hurry. There was much to do before Margaret's return.

  He tried to pull the carcass away from the smokeshop himself. Within a day or two it would smell and fill with maggots, flies and rats. It would attract the foxes, wolves and bears, and draw attention to the cabins. But the horse's carcass was too heavy still, despite the butchery. So, although it seemed in Franklin's mind to offend the rules of good husbandry, he harnessed up the little mare and led her over to help drag her mate away with ropes passed through the exposed rib cage.

  Together they labored over rising ground until they found a path into the thickest salt scrub in a shallow dip. Franklin did his best to hide the carcass, kicking sand over it, and pulling dead leaves and wood onto it, but by the time he and the mare had returned to the row of cabins and Jackie's cries the gulls had arrived in their hundreds. They could be seen and heard from afar.

  15

  MARGARET SPOTTED the frenzy of the gulls as soon as she reached the dunes above the cabins on her late-afternoon return to Franklin and Jackie. She studied the birds for a few moments through the spy pipes, still in her possession, but their quarrelsome frolics did not disturb her. Gulls were a mystery, anyway, she had decided after just two days of their constant, nagging company. They were like the crows of Ferrytown in everything but color, always busy and complaining, always in a mob. White crows. Her day had been disastrous and depressing, but she was in no hurry to be back at the cabins. She was the bearer of shocking news, and she was fearful.

  IT HAD BEEN easy walking out that morning, exciting even. Leaving Franklin and Jackie asleep in their shared bed had made her parting from them especially tender. And somehow her hunger and the early start had made her feel vigorous and purposeful. Certainly, the route along the marsh tops and the high dunes was eye-catching, though somewhat baffling for a woman who was not yet used to the ocean. She could not make any sense of how the shore retracted and advanced, and how the sea could express itself in such variety, now blushing blue, now gray as ash, now green. Its moodiness made no sense. What could be the purpose of so much restlessness and indecision? But Margaret was in high spirits nevertheless. The sun was on her side, and what little wind there was was at her back, lending its hand.

  By mid morning she had reached a cluster of seven or eight cottages gathered around a cobbled slipway that led through flattened sand ridges onto a beach. Fishing boats were pulled up and full of water, their wooden hulls silvered by the winter and the salt. Plumes of heavy smoke, always a pleasing sight, curled from the buildings and hung across the clearing. Margaret hid her spy pipes under her clothes and walked as quietly as she could. It was not possible to tip-toe through, however. There were too many dutiful dogs for anyone to pass without alerting the inhabitants. But only women and a few younger children came to greet and question her, women with faces as weathered and as brown as bark, a couple of them clothed in gaudy dresses more suitable for a town. They wanted to know where she was staying, where she was coming from. They did not touch, but still she felt that they were pic
king at her, like hens, inquisitive and hungry. Visitors arriving from that side of the coast were rare, they said. 'There's nothing up there, girl, excepting wind.' But Margaret managed to avoid their questions, saying only that she was lost — a subtle plea for help, she'd found — and that her family were waiting for her. 'I hope to find out everything I can about the ships,' she said.

  'You're hardly dressed for it,' they told her, pointing at her yard sandals and tattered patch-skirt. 'Show your knees to our fire for a little while. There's something spare for you to eat, if you can manage it.'

  Indeed, she could manage it, even though the it was fish and bread. At first, the low, smoky room, the greasy food, the fug of burning driftwood and animal chips, and the press of bodies all around her made her tired and a little nauseous. The bread sat in her stomach like a weight, but still she was glad of it and the sociable warmth provided by the fire. Very soon, though, she was wide awake and shivering. These women were not the wives of busy fishermen as she'd supposed, left alone for the day while their sons and husbands went out among the furrows of the sea to plow the water for its crops. They were, instead, abandoned wives.

  'You'd best be warned, sweetheart,' one of the older women — Joanie — explained. 'Or you'll be sorely disappointed when you reach the anchorage. Best turn around right now and go back to your husband and your kid. Save yourself the misery.'

  Like Margaret herself, Joanie explained, these women had been emigrants. Two seasons before they all had made the journey eastwards — 'full of hope' — to the coast and the ocean passage. Several had been through Ferrytown and had mixed memories of their short and costly stay there. They shook their heads at Margaret's news of Ferrytown's destruction but did not seem surprised. Misfortune was universal, and therefore sympathy was hard to rouse.