Bride of the Wilderness

by Charles McCarry

  “We must leave at once,” he said. “P.G. will mind the house, won’t you, P.G.?”

  “Yes, of course,” Praise God said. “But what about the Pamela’s cargo?”

  Oliver, staggering on one leg as he tried to put on his trousers, fell to the floor with a crash.

  “I’ve decided to take it to America with me and sell it there,” he said.

  Sitting on the floor, Oliver held out his hand for assistance. Ash grasped it with surprising strength—Oliver looked up at him with a flicker of admiration when he felt his wiry grip—and pulled him to his feet.

  “America?” Praise God said. “What do you mean, sell the cargo in America?”

  Rose was fully awake now. She thought Oliver must be delirious. She tried to get Ash’s attention in order to ask him to explain what was making Oliver think that he was going to America, but Ash’s full attention was focused on Oliver.

  “I made up my mind while you were in Portsmouth, P.G.,” Oliver said. “It’s America for me. Henry always said I should go there, and now I’m sure he was right. Henry’s gone, London’s done. I want to get right away.”

  Rose turned away and looked at herself in the broken mirror to make certain that what was happening was real. All three men appeared in the glass, Oliver too. In her fright, Rose had forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to have a reflection. America! Sea monsters, painted savages, wild beasts, homespun cloth—the wilderness.

  “Not America,” Rose said.

  Oliver lurched toward her, nearly losing his balance again. His face was the same foolish moonstruck mask. He must think that she would love him if he carried her across the ocean.

  “We have ten thousand acres there and a whole town full of people that belong to us,” Oliver said. “Henry always said I’d be the Earl of Massachusetts. You’ll be a countess, Rose.”

  “The earl of what?” Rose said. “Of what? You’re mad. I’ve married a madman. Marriage can be annulled if the husband is mad—isn’t that so, Mr. Ash?”

  Ash paid no attention to her question.

  “When would you sail?” he asked Oliver.

  “As soon as Fanny’s well. How long will that take you—to cure her?”

  “That is impossible to say, but she can be treated at sea as well as in port,” Ash said. “There need be no delay.”

  “No delay? You mean you would sail with us?” “Perhaps. What made you decide to go to America?” “It just came over me after Henry died that it was the only thing to do.”

  “You are describing the voice of God.”

  “Is that so?”

  Ash gave him a radiant smile. “Yes, it is so. Clearly it is God’s will that you should go, and it is His will that I should go with you or he would not have arranged our meeting in so unmistakable a fashion.”

  “God arranged our meeting?”

  “Of course He did—and all that came before it,” Ash said. “All my trials, all my losses, were a prelude to this moment. It is quite clear to me now. I see His purpose. There is work for me in America. Yes—I will go with you!”

  Oliver’s face, ravaged by grief and the pain of his wound, broke into a grin of delight. “Splendid,” he said. “Mr. Ash will come with us. Do you hear that, Rose?”

  Rose looked straight ahead, her expression unchanged. Her slow brain had not had time to absorb this new information and signal new instructions to the muscles of her face. Ash go to America? Perhaps this was a joke—Robert and his friends had often played jokes on her, telling her that the house was on fire, leading a stallion into her bedroom while she was asleep. They had thought that she was funny because she could never see a joke. Now Oliver and Ash were calmly discussing arrangements for a voyage from which none of them could ever hope to return; Rose had never heard of anyone except Captain John Pennock who had ever come back from America, and she did not know whether Pennock was a real person or just another joke.

  “My wife can travel down to Portsmouth with Missis Barebones,” Ash said. “I’ll have her fetched from the country.”

  “Of course,” Oliver said. “They can bring Fanny’s instruments and music—she’ll want those as soon as she’s well—and the few things my wife and I will wish to take with us to America.”

  America? Rose realized that this was no joke. Ash would never joke about God’s will. She must escape from this lunacy.

  “Annulment,” she said, barely able to get the words out because she was so short of breath. “Mr. Ash, can my annulment be arranged?”

  “Too late, ma’am,” Ash said absently. “You are married in the sight of God.”

  “God knows it is not too late,” Rose said.

  “Then, you must learn to obey your husband,” Ash thundered. “Pack up, woman, and accept the fate that God has prepared for you!”

  All during this conversation, Oliver had been struggling to put on his clothes. Praise God, kneeling with difficulty, helped him into his boots.

  “Put Rose on a horse and Ash’s wife in a carriage,” Oliver said. “Don’t forget Fanny’s instruments—especially the spinet that came from Italy. It folds up very neatly.”

  “What about the house?”

  “Pull it down after you empty it out, or let Montagu die in it and be the ghost of Catherine Street.”

  “You won’t mind if I just keep it for you in case you want to come home?”

  “I’ll never come home, P.G. My life is in America.”

  Praise God seemed to accept Oliver’s ravings without question. So did Ash, for all his genius. Rose could not believe these things were happening. How could it be that they all took leave of their senses at once? Witchcraft was the only explanation. They were all under a spell.

  Rose sank to the floor, hugging her fur-trimmed cape as if there were a beloved body inside it. She wore her ruby ring on her index finger.

  Her movements attracted Ash’s attention. He held out his hand. “Let me have that stone,” he said. “It won’t be safe on your finger on the road to Portsmouth.”

  Without hesitation, as if she were under a spell herself, Rose handed it over. Reaching behind himself, Ash handed the ring to Oliver.

  “Obedience,” Ash said. “As the Apostle Paul wrote in his epistle to Titus, ‘To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.’ There is joy in obedience, I promise you, madam.”

  II

  AMERICA

  1

  Always afterward, the smell of vinegar reminded Ash of the circumstances in which his passion for Fanny began, and of all the torment that his desire for her brought into his life. But at the first moment, in the cabin of the Pamela, he only saw a young girl shuddering under a load of covers with the chills of a fever. He examined her. The face, with its golden complexion, was without active color; even the lips were drained. The eyes were as expressionless as coins behind fluttering lids. The hands were too weak to grip the physician’s forefingers with sufficient strength to keep him from easily pulling them free. Fanny coughed constantly, a spitty little bark. Ash knew at once that she had an advanced case of pneumonia, and that her chances of survival were no greater than one in three.

  Ash pulled down the covers. Fanny’s nightdress was dry. There was no smell of sweat.

  “Have you sweated?” he asked.

  “No.” Fanny’s teeth were chattering; she spoke even this one word with difficulty.

  “How long have you been chilling in this way?” “I’m not sure. I sleep and wake up.”

  Her speech was slow and slurred. Ash touched her face again and then reached inside the back of her nightdress and felt her armpit. It was dry and very hot. He felt the glands in her neck.

  “Tell me how your chest feels,” he said in the loudest voice Fanny had ever heard.

  The cabin was dark. Fanny had no idea who this man was who was running his hands over her body. She knew that she wasn’t dreaming, but he behaved like a figure in a dream. She wanted to go back to sleep
.

  “My chest hurts,” she said.

  “Describe the pain.”

  Fanny touched her ribs, then her breastbone. “It feels like glass, moving from here to here.”

  “Have your bowels moved since you’ve been sick?” “I don’t think so. No.”

  Ash gripped Fanny’s wrist and held it for a full minute, forefinger pressed against her pulse. Fanny was looking straight up at his face. Everything about him was gray. His chin was covered with gray stubble. His nostrils, set in a big arched Norman nose, were clean and pink, but the hairs in them were gray. Most men wore gray wigs and had eyebrows and whiskers of another color. Ash wore no wig. A lick of coarse gray hair, escaping from the club into which it had been pulled, fell over his forehead. Yet he was not old. Fanny had the strange thought that his hair had always been gray, that it had never been black or brown or blond even when he was a child. What made her think such a thing? She stopped wondering about it as another fit of coughing doubled her up.

  While she coughed, Ash held a clean handkerchief to her lips. The sputum was the color of rust. He pushed back his hair, closed his eyes, and laid his ear against Fanny’s chest.

  “Sit up, please.”

  Ash tapped her back and listened. The congestion in her lungs was clearly audible. He laid Fanny down and covered her up.

  “We must do something to bring the fever down,” he said. “I can give you nothing for the pain in your chest. Opium would immobilize the mechanism of the lungs, and you must cough up the phlegm. We will apply compresses.”

  Fanny heard Ash’s voice distinctly, but from a long way off, as if she were a swimmer and it was coming over the water. How could this be, when he had such a loud voice? What was wrong? Ash was sitting on the bunk beside her. Bright sun came through the windows behind him and threw his face into shadow. The Pamela’s deck was motionless and the ship was silent. Fanny heard her own breathing, growing quicker. She was not getting enough air. She really was underwater. Gasping, she strained upward like a swimmer trying to reach the surface.

  Ash saw her difficulty. Moving swiftly, he opened the door onto the gallery, pulled down the covers, and picked her up in his arms. He carried her into the open air.

  “Lie back,” he said. “Let your head fall back. It’s all right—I’m holding you.”

  Fanny felt the bone of his forearm behind her neck. She could hear her own breath, thin and squeaky, and the double beat of her heart. She heard nothing else; again, she had the illusion that she was underwater. Hanging in Ash’s arms, she saw everything upside down—her black hair hanging downward in a plait, the masts and spars of other ships reflected in smooth water in which trash and drowned vermin were floating, a row of houses on a shore. Portsmouth harbor, Fanny thought. We’re in England again.

  Boats were coming in with heaps of fish gleaming on their decks. It must be afternoon. One boat passed quite close and the truculent red country faces aboard her stared curiously at the man with the girl in his arms. Fanny thought of Honfleur—the cod, the Pamela at anchor where Henry had said she would be, the hushed young soldier buttoned up inside his blue tunic. Why was he so quiet?

  “Pourquoi si silencieux?” she whispered.

  “What?” Ash said.

  But Fanny was coughing again. Ash turned her over with her face to the water. Sputum fell lazily into the oily water. After that, Fanny breathed easier. Ash was speaking to her but she hadn’t the energy or the breath to respond. She saw her hand dangling, and below it, something large moving in the water. It was a shark, following the fishing boat as it sailed into the harbor, dripping blood. Fanny knew it was a shark—the broad snout, the diamond fins, the slim supple tail—from Henry’s stories and from pictures she had seen. It was fifteen feet long, moving at precisely the same speed as the fishing boat, with only the smallest movement of its sinuous tail.

  Ash did not see the fish. He was looking at Fanny with blazing eyes. “Breathe through your mouth,” he said. “Try to breathe more slowly and deeply. Do not breathe naturally. Think about each breath. Command your body to obey your mind.”

  The man, whoever he was, was shouting; he appeared to be angry. This puzzled Fanny; she had never before seen anger in a male face. She tried to ask Ash what the matter was, but she hadn’t the voice to do it. She tried to slow her breathing. The air going into her lungs did feel like shards of glass shredding the membranes. She remembered the window exploding when the oxen pulled the first chunk out of her father’s house.

  Joshua and Oliver were in the cabin when Ash carried Fanny back inside. Oliver closed the door behind them. “No!” Ash cried. “She must have air!”

  “What is it?”

  “Inflammation of the lungs. Pneumonia is the Greek word for it. Her fever is dangerously high. I fear convulsions. She is coughing blood.”

  Fanny heard every word, but not the meaning of what Ash said. Oliver’s arm was in a sling. He wore no wig either, and in all the years that she had known him, Fanny had never seen him in his own hair except when he played football.

  Oliver said, “But you can cure her.” His voice was weak. He and Ash had ridden the seventy miles from London to Portsmouth in a night and a day, stopping only to change horses and eat some meat and bread in a tavern at Guildford, and to change Oliver’s bandage.

  “We shall see,” Ash said. “The fever must be broken. The girl must be bathed in a tepid solution. We must have a woman.”

  “A woman?” Joshua said. “There is no woman aboard this ship.”

  “We’ll take her ashore,” Oliver said.

  “No!” Ash cried. “It must be done at once. Have you vinegar?”

  “Barrels of it.”

  Ash was stripping off his coat. He threw it into a corner and kneeled beside Fanny’s bunk. There was a tin hip tub underneath the bunk. He dragged it into sight. It was shallow and just large enough to accommodate the buttocks of an average-size man. Joshua kept his crucifix in the tub when he was in a Protestant harbor. So that he would not have to touch this object, Ash picked up the whole tub and held it out to Joshua, who picked up the crucifix and automatically dusted it on the sleeve of his coat.

  “Bring me clean cloths, a pint of vinegar, and fresh water—three buckets of cool and one of boiling water,” Ash said.

  Joshua nodded and started to go.

  “Wait,” Ash said. “If there are any more idolatrous objects in this room, they must be removed.”

  Joshua opened the lid of his desk and removed some beads and medals. He opened his hand to show them to Ash, who turned his head away.

  Ash had given orders as soon as he came aboard the Pamela that water must be boiled, and in moments Joshua was back with two Italian sailors carrying buckets. They found Ash praying over Fanny with tremendous strength. He stopped when they came in.

  “Dump the cool water into the tub,” he said. “Leave the boiling water in the bucket. She must have nourishing food that she can swallow. Kill a chicken. Have your cook boil it with all the fat into a soup.”

  As he spoke, Ash herded Joshua and the sailors toward the door and pushed them outside. “I’ll call from the gallery if you’re needed,” he said. “Do not come back otherwise.”

  Ash mixed the water in the tub to make a tepid solution, and added a cup of vinegar.

  “Fanny,” he said, “wake up.”

  Fanny had not been fully asleep. She was surprised that Ash called her by name. She felt very cold.

  “You must have a cool bath now, to break your fever,” Ash said. He pulled the covers off Fanny and sat her up. “You must take off your clothes and get into the tub.”

  Fanny nodded but stayed as she was. She had stopped shuddering, but her eyes were duller. Ash saw that she did not understand his words. He picked up her feet and put them on the floor. He could feel her heated skin through her thick woolen stockings. He gripped the stockings by the toes and pulled them off.

  “Stand up, Fanny.”

  Fanny began to shudder again, te
eth chattering, limbs jerking. “Peux pas, peux pas, j’ai froid,” she said.

  “French?” Ash said. He began to speak to Fanny in this language.

  “Who taught you to speak French?” he asked. “Antoinette.”

  “A servant?” Ash said. “You speak it like a servant.”

  She spoke French like a servant? That was why the young soldier in Honfleur had looked at her so strangely.

  Suddenly she began to shudder again. Every muscle of her body seemed to be involved. She gagged. Waves of darkness engulfed her. She tried to resist fear, and as she lost consciousness, she tried to identify what it was that she was afraid of. What was Ash doing to her? She couldn’t hear his voice any longer. In the very last instant she tasted blood as she bit her tongue.

  Ash saw the convulsion coming on, and knew what the paroxysms of the muscles meant. Fanny’s fever had risen so high that it had attacked her brain. He forced open her clenched jaws and wedged a knotted handkerchief between her teeth. The tongue was lacerated and bleeding but he did not pause to deal with that. He stood Fanny on her feet, seized her nightdress by the hem, and pulled it over her head. Then he carried her twitching body to the tub and plunged it into the tepid water.

  The involuntary movements of Fanny’s body were so violent that Ash feared that she would injure herself. She lay with her buttocks in the tub, one leg to either side, arms flung out. All four limbs were thrashing. Ash brought her legs together and pinned them between his own. Cradling her head in his left arm, he was able to grasp both her wrists, which were very fine, in his left hand. With his right hand he dipped a cloth into the water and bathed her head, neck, and chest, dipping the rag and squeezing it over and over. After a moment or two, Fanny’s body quieted enough so that he was able to stop touching it and release her legs and wrists. By then his clothes were soaked with the vinegary water and he was shivering himself. He crouched by the tub and went on sponging Fanny’s face and body.

  On the road from London, Oliver had spoken about Fanny as if she were an angel instead of a girl, describing her music, her intelligence, her kindness, her calm heart, her loyalty, her love for her father. He told Ash how she had saved Rose’s life and carried her father’s corpse out of his ruined house. Listening to Oliver, Ash had got the idea that Fanny was still a child. Lying under the blankets, so slight and quiet, with her feverish face peeping out, she had looked like a child.