by John Smolens
“Come now, Wilberforce,” Bradshaw said.
“—and,” Strong continued, “there’s word that some of these harlots have fallen ill.”
“Not to mention the harbormaster’s daughter, Sarah, a blind child—what is her sin?” Giles asked, and before Dr. Strong could muster his rebuttal, he continued, “Listen, gentlemen, please, a pest-house is to be constructed on the Mall. Our first duty is to manage its operation. We’re going to have to determine who should be admitted and who should not. We’re going to have to separate the sick from the healthy, and try to do so without causing outright panic.” He looked at Dr. Bradshaw. “If you’ve read the newspaper accounts, Eli, you know that’s been one of the greatest dangers in places like Philadelphia and New York—when people fear for their lives, panic ensues. Lawlessness prevails.”
Reluctantly, Dr. Bradshaw nodded his head.
But Dr. Strong said, “Nonsense. You cannot arrest God’s hand—no man stays His will.” And again he began to walk back up the wharf.
Giles started after him, but Bradshaw caught him by the arm. “Leave him be.”
“He’s the most respected physician in Newburyport—we’re going to need him.”
“True,” Eli said. He let go of Giles’s arm and slapped at a mosquito on his neck. “But right now he’s just a frightened old man, and perhaps the most sensible of us all. We should all pray for God’s mercy.”
Seven
LEANDER WATCHED AS HIS FATHER CARRIED SARAH OUT THE kitchen door and placed her in the wheelbarrow, which he had lined with a blanket. His mother removed her shawl from the wall peg and pulled it about her shoulders.
“I want to go too,” he said.
His mother went out the door but paused on the stoop. In the morning sunlight she was very pale. “You are to stay down in Joppa with your grandfather, understand?” she said. “Don’t look at me like that.” Her eyes were enormous and she was on the verge of tears. “You do not come home. You do not go near the Mall. We will send for you.” She reached out and touched his cheek, then slammed the door behind her.
After they left, Leander walked back through the South End toward Joppa Flats. There were many carts and wagons rattling along the streets—it had been this way throughout the night as Newburyporters headed up the Merrimack valley toward Haverhill and Lowell or took the Carr’s Island ferry across the river and into New Hampshire, three miles to the north. He passed the Hammonds, a family with six children and a tethered cow, and Manasseh Cowles with his old mother lying on her bed in a wagon. Houses on every street were shuttered as though awaiting a nor’easter.
When he reached his grandfather’s house, Leander knocked on the kitchen door, which was freshly painted a deep green. As he waited, he gazed out at the river. The tide was high and the flats were still covered with water. Seagulls were everywhere, cawing. They wheeled above the river in search of fish. Nearer to shore they found crabs, which they took into the sky and dropped repeatedly on rocks until the shells broke open, and then the birds would alight on the rock and pick away at the exposed meat. There was much flourishing of wings as they protected their quarry.
After knocking on the door a second time, Leander considered walking down to his grandfather’s clam shack on the beach. Though it would be a few hours before the water was low enough for clamming, Papi often spent the high tide hours at the shack, mending his dreeners, honing his shucking knives on the stone. Leander was about to take the path down to the beach, when he heard a sound from inside the house. A thump, as though something heavy had fallen on the floor.
He opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. The house was small, and since his grandmother had died the rooms had lost their sense of tidiness and order. Dirty plates and dishes were stacked in the iron washtub, and there was a foul smell—some meat, perhaps, that had gone to rot.
“Papi?” Leander went to the fireplace, which was cold, the ashes spilled out on to the hearthstones. “Papi? You still sleeping?”
There was a creak of a floorboard from the other room, where his grandfather slept. Leander walked toward the door, but stopped when Papi stepped into the room, stark naked. He held a stick in his right hand and raised it like a club. His eyes were wild, and his beard was encrusted with something black. Blood trailed from both nostrils as well, and the insides of his legs were covered with shit and blood.
He rushed toward Leander, but at the last moment turned and went out the door to the yard. He ran down the path toward the river. Leander chased after him, calling. His grandfather screamed, wielding the stick over his head. At the foot of the small hill, several other clammers, working outside their shacks, looked up at the path. One of them, Myles Pollard, who was one of Leander’s oldest and best friends, got to his feet and raised his arms as though to calm a runaway horse. Papi ran straight at him and swung the club, hitting Myles on the head and knocking him to the sand. The other men seemed frozen by disbelief as they watched Papi beat Myles, using both hands on the stick and swinging down with all he had—causing blood to flow from his friend’s scalp.
By the time he had reached the bottom of the hill, Leander’s legs could barely keep up with his speed. He ran into his grandfather, and they both sprawled in the sand. They got to their knees and lunged for the stick that lay between them—which Leander picked up and heaved up into the brambles on the hillside. Papi glared at him, then ran down the beach. Leander and one other man, Colin Thurlow, followed, while several others remained behind to tend to Myles.
Papi waded out into the water, sweeping the tall eel grass aside. He shouted incoherently, and he caused a great flock of seagulls to lift up off the basin, rising into the sky in an angry, squawking cloud of white and gray.
Leander waded into the cold water. The eel grass was sharp on his hands, and the muck bottom was covered with shells that broke beneath his boots. His trousers clung to his legs in the water, slowing his progress, yet ahead of him his grandfather, without a stitch of clothing, nor his feet shod, moved swiftly out into the river.
And then Leander was caught from behind by Colin Thurlow. “No farther, boy,” he said. “That current is strong—it’ll sweep you right out into the ocean.”
Leander struggled, but the man’s grip on his shoulders was too firm, and finally the boy stopped as they both watched his grandfather—only his head above the water now—drift out into the basin.
“Papi!” Leander yelled.
His grandfather’s head disappeared in the water, but then a moment later it surfaced again. Leander tried again to free himself from the hands clutching his shoulders.
Papi’s head disappeared under the water once more.
Seagulls wheeled overhead, cawing.
Seconds past and Leander could see nothing but blue water.
And holding him tightly against his chest, Colin Thurlow began to pray.
The pest-house was a series of tents set up in the field south of the Frog Pond in the Mall. By midday twenty-three townspeople had been admitted. No apparent rule or principle determined who might be afflicted, Giles noted, except that most of them on this first day lived on streets in close proximity to the waterfront. There was the constant sound of retching and moaning, and the air was sharp with the smell of vinegar. The high sheriff, Thomas Poole, had overseen the construction of a wooden fence designed to isolate the facility. Relatives were gathered outside the fence; they wailed, they prayed, they sang hymns, and at times they were gripped by a hysteria that moved them to press forward and challenge the guards who manned the gate.
Dr. Bradshaw naturally assumed the role of pest-house manager. Two elderly sisters, Obedience and Submit Cheever, who had for decades acted as nurses and midwives, organized a cadre of volunteers—mostly elderly men and women who with little regard for their own safety willingly, if somberly, performed the necessary unpleasant chores. And there were a number of West Indians who had come to help, claiming that they were immune as they’d had such fevers before, when they lived in the C
aribbean. Giles thought they were nothing short of heroic. At Dr. Bradshaw’s instructions, everyone who worked in the pest-house wore a long coat that had been smeared with wax. Every patient suffered from vomiting, and many had severe diarrhea; some bled terribly, from the gums, even from the eyes. Several volunteer orderlies maintained the fires beneath the large iron pots of water that had been set up for the purpose of boiling soiled clothing and bed linens. A pit had been dug on Old Burying Ground Hill, and that afternoon the first body, Obadiah Honeywell, a cordwainer at one of the shipyards, was interred and covered with quicklime.
Giles found Sarah and Amanda Hatch in one of the tents. The girl was delirious and she hiccupped constantly, another common symptom of the fever. But he did not expect to find her mother lying on the next cot, her fine hair matted to her forehead. The pan on the ground was full of blackish green vomit.
“I have never been this sickly, Giles,” she whispered through cracked lips, “and it came upon me so swift-like. We were bringing Sarah up here, and on Fruit Street I just all of a sudden collapsed. I tried to keep walking, but finally Caleb had to lay me in the wheelbarrow, too.” Giles mopped her face with a cloth, and then, holding the back of her head, he held a cup of water to her mouth. She could barely swallow.
A small cart rattled up to the front of the tent, and Submit Cheever raised the tent flap. “I brung the sheets, sir.”
“Amanda,” Giles said. “We’re going to sweat you and Sarah. Submit will help you undress and wrap you in linens.”
Amanda tried to speak but couldn’t. Her teeth were coated with blood.
“I’ll return shortly.”
Giles left the tent and walked back to the pots, where an old man named George Sewell was using long metal tongs to remove bricks from the boiling water and place them in a small wooden cart. Giles pulled on a heavy pair of leather gloves, then poured vinegar over the steaming bricks, the vapors causing his eyes to water. He and the old man wheeled the cart back to the tent. Giles went inside—both Amanda and Sarah were wrapped in linens now, from their necks to their feet.
He stood over the girl’s cot, and said, “Sarah, it’s Dr. Wiggins. Don’t be alarmed now—you’re going to have to hold still.”
Her eyes did not open, but she nodded her head.
Giles looked toward George, who stood out by the cart, the tongs in his hands. The old man picked up a steaming brick and brought it inside the tent. Giles took the brick—its heat immediately penetrating the gloves—and placed it on Sarah’s chest.
At first the girl lay still, but then her eyes opened—beautiful, unseeing eyes—and she rolled her head from side to side in a panic. “Hot!” she cried. “It’s burning me!”
“Only briefly, Sarah,” Giles said. “It’ll bring the sweat out of you. One more, George, please.” The second brick was brought in and Giles placed it across the girl’s narrow hips. He could hear her bowels turn. “You must be still for a short while, and then we’ll get you cleaned up.”
He went to Amanda’s cot. Her cheeks were streaked with pink tears. Blood ran from her nostrils. “My baby,” she whispered.
Again, he carefully wiped her face with a damp cloth, then covered her with five bricks, one over each breast, one over her abdomen, and two across her pelvis. Her face was beaded with sweat and she inhaled deeply. “What is it that Giles Corey said to his executioners down to Salem?” she asked. “‘More weight.’”
“I don’t dare add more,” Giles said.
“My legs—my legs pain me something fearful.”
“All right. Two more, if you please, George.”
Giles carefully balanced two bricks across Amanda’s thighs, and then he removed the leather gloves.
“Giles,” she whispered. He leaned close to her face, again mopping her skin. “Caleb’s out there, beyond the fence,” she said. “I told him to go back home but I could tell from his eyes he would not leave—you must talk to him.”
“All right. What about Leander?”
“We sent him to his grandfather’s.”
“That is probably best.” Giles got to his feet. “I will be back later.”
He left the tent and walked across the field. There were several hundred people beyond the fence gate, and they called to the doctor, asking about kin. Caleb Hatch stood among them, gazing sullenly toward the pest-house.
“Caleb,” he called, and louder, he repeated, “Caleb.”
The crowd suddenly quieted, and they stared across the fence at him. Caleb pushed his way through them until his hands gripped the top of the wood gate.
“You must go home and take care of Leander,” Giles said. Raising his voice, he addressed the crowd. “Listen to me. All of you should go home and care for yourselves and your families.”
“What can be done?” one woman asked. Her name was Lydia Simms and she lived in the North End, on Olive Street. He had delivered her baby—her eighth child—the previous winter. “What, Doctor, aside from prayer?”
“Yes,” Giles said. “There is that, of course.”
A few of them seemed satisfied and began to wander away. Caleb continued to gaze hard at the doctor, until he suddenly turned and pushed through the crowd. Giles started back toward the tents, while behind him those who remained outside the fence began to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
Eight
LEANDER AWOKE AND SAT UP, BRUSHING SAND FROM HIS CHEEK. He looked down the beach at Colin Thurlow’s skiff. Across the river basin he could see the sun setting behind Newburyport—he must have slept several hours. He remembered screaming and struggling as Colin and several other clam-diggers had tried to stop him from following his grandfather, but he was young and strong, and finally, when he began to push Thurlow’s skiff out into the basin, they let him go.
“You’re stubborn,” Thurlow had shouted. “Just like your grandfather. Go ahead. See for yourself: nothing comes back on this Merrimack current.”
Leander had rowed across the basin to the river mouth, and he spent hours gazing into the water, looking for some sign of his grandfather. Exhausted, he finally pulled the skiff up onto the beach on Plum Island and fell asleep on the side of a dune.
Now the tide was rising, and the skiff was nearly afloat. He shoved off and began drifting back upriver. A hot westerly bore the smells of the waterfront grog shops, cooked fish, and the yeasty scent of ale. The church spire in Market Square was silhouetted against the fierce orange glow of the setting sun. Well off to his right, the quarantined ship lay at anchor.
Leander stopped pulling at the oars. There was something in the water, something long and dark. It was a log. The shipyards culled the forest upriver, and it was not uncommon to find a stray tree trunk floating in the basin. The sun’s reflection off the water burned his eyes, and, squinting, he realized that an arm was draped over the log. When he drew alongside, he saw that the arm was clad in a blue satin sleeve. The head that bobbed on the far side of the log had long dark hair that trailed into the water.
He skulled around to the other side of the log and saw that the body was wearing a dress. He touched her shoulder with the blade of his oar, but she didn’t move. He looked toward the quarantined ship, which was now bathed in a rose light of the sunset, and when he turned back a pale face with brown eyes was staring up at him.
She said something he couldn’t understand.
He leaned over the gunwale. “You come from that ship?”
She spoke again, her voice trembling with cold. Her accent was French. He knew this because there were families in Newburyport who had escaped from France since Napoleon had come to power. They kept to themselves mostly and maintained high manners.
“Take hold,” he said, extending an oar toward her.
With great effort she stretched out one arm and took hold of the oar. He guided her to the stern and tried to help her over the transom. He’d never touched a woman before, so he tried to be careful, only taking hold under her arms. But it was a struggle to get her into the boat and when she be
gan to slip back into the water, he took hold of the leg that was angled over the transom, while she clasped her arms about his neck. As he lifted her, his other hand could feel whalebone stays running up her back. Once in the boat, she collapsed in exhaustion, her blue silk dress clinging to her.
Leander sat on the thwart and looked away, embarrassed. After a moment, he took up the oars and began to pull for the wharves below Market Square. When he ventured to look at her, he thought she might be thirty years old. Despite the fact that her hair was matted to her scalp and her lips were purple from the cold water, she was stunning. Her cheeks were high and smooth, and there was a small black dot below one eye.
“I don’t suppose you saw an old man, out here in the water?”
“Old man?”
“You speak English?”
“A little.” She pronounced it lee-tle. “What old man?”
“My grandfather.”
“No, I see no old man.” She rested her head against the transom and closed her eyes. Her eyelids were large, and made him think of scallop shells.
Enoch Sumner owned a fleet of coaches, chaises, and cabriolets, but when Miranda rode out she always insisted on the diligence, a large, plush-upholstered coach her son had imported from Lyon, France. She and Samuel departed in the early evening to escape the heat of the house. She was curious about this pest-house, so they stopped at the Mall and looked across the Frog Pond toward rows of tents inside a fence. Columns of white smoke billowed into the sky. Outside the fence gate there was a great deal of keening and wailing and the singing of hymns.
“It’s fascinating,” she said, “how disaster creates such industry. But it is too late for these people—they live in filth, so what do you expect.”
Samuel looked at her, surprised. “You know, I had the fever in Paris and nearly died. It is a vile thing that knows no boundary.”
