Quarantine: A Novel (15 page)

took her not an hour ago. I tried what I could to ease the pain. I’m 112

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sorry you could not be there, but that is not allowed.” He swayed backwards, and for a moment it appeared he was going to lose his balance and fall off the stoop into the street.

“That pit,” Leander’s father said.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “They must be buried immediately.”

“Under the circumstances, funerals must be discouraged. We

must set an example.” Leander’s father hiked the blanket up about his shoulders. “Come in, Doctor.” His voice was odd. He didn’t

sound like himself. There wasn’t the usual curtness to his words.

When he spoke, which was seldom, he usually sounded disap-

pointed, if not angry and offended. “Come in,” he repeated. “I

can brew tea.”

Dr. Wiggins appeared reluctant, but he seemed to come to

some decision and stepped through the doorway. They sat at the

table before the fire and drank tea from mugs. Their faces glistened with sweat, and for minutes no one spoke.

When Leander’s father refilled their mugs, the doctor said,

“The town reeks of smoke and vinegar, and many of the houses

have been boarded up.”

“It’s to ward off the fever,” Leander’s father said.

“I don’t think it does anything.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t, not for certain.”

“You don’t know anything, really, about this fever.”

“That is true.”

“That Reverend Cary, he stands there on his box outside the

pest-house gate and preaches about the people inside being sin-

ners—he don’t know nothing either. Doctors, clergymen—you’re

supposed to be educated men, but none of you know a damned

thing.”

“I’d be lying if I said otherwise.” The doctor turned to

Leander. “I heard about your grandfather drowning in the river

and I am sorry.” The doctor sipped his tea then, staring straight ahead. He seemed deeply preoccupied, and Leander noticed that

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his eyes, reflecting the fire, were becoming increasingly fierce, almost as though he were possessed. Finally, the doctor said, “I believe it has to do with water—water and filth. I have talked

with Dr. Bradshaw and Mr. Poole. We are organizing an effort to

find places where there is standing water and refuse. That’s what needs to be done. We must clean up the standing water. Somehow

it breeds the disease. How, I don’t know. Why it doesn’t afflict everyone, I don’t know. Some may be immune because they have

survived it earlier, but why—here, for example—within one

household will it strike some and not others?”

Leander’s father ran a hand over his chin, the whiskers crack-

ling beneath his fingers. “I must help. As former constable and

high sheriff, it’s my duty. I can’t sit here in this house all day. I must do something.”

“I’ll help, too,” Leander said.

His father turned to him—his eyes were moist, and Leander

didn’t think it was just from the smoke. “No, Leander, you’re to stay here.”

“But I want to help.”

His father looked away.

“It’s best you remain here,” Dr. Wiggins said. “Tend to the

fire. There were two houses burned to the ground overnight, I

understand. People, smoking their houses like you are, they fall asleep and then their house catches fire. The entire Rutherford

family over on Milk Street, they were brought to the pit this

morning. We don’t even know for certain if they had the fever.

Their bodies were so charred—they were just interred in the pit.

So you tend to this fire and protect the house, Leander.”

Leander’s father pushed his tea mug away and stood up. “I told

my son no, Doctor. No explanation is required.”

“Of course,” Dr. Wiggins said, getting to his feet. “My

apologies.”

The two men left the house and Leander followed them out

to the front stoop, watching them walk together down the road

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toward Market Square. His grandfather, his sister, and now his

mother were dead, and he thought he should feel different, but

he felt only resentment that he had to remain behind in the house that was empty except for smoke.

R

In Market Square, Giles helped the high sheriff Thomas Poole as

he organized the dozens of men who had volunteered to address

the issue of standing water. There was much discussion about

where to begin. Poole was of a mind that certain sections of Newburyport were beyond rehabilitation, the waterfront, in particular, and it would be a waste of time and effort to work there. His

inclination was to concentrate on the North End, implying that it was populated with truly God-fearing Christians who led clean,

moral lives. He bridled at the doctor’s suggestion that it was the wealthier section of town where there were more land-owning

men who were qualified to vote. Ultimately, a compromise was

struck, whereby the men were divided into two groups, one to

work their way north from the square, and the other to move

south, their shovels and picks shouldered as though they were

marching off to battle.

The doctor then walked down Water Street, which meandered

along the riverbank. The road was crammed with ordinaries,

grog shops, boarding houses, and brothels which catered to the

constant ebb and flow of sailors whose ships passed through the

harbor. The neighborhood was remarkably quiet. There was little

of the music and banter that usually issued from tavern doors.

Occasionally, a cart or wagon would rattle by, conveying more

fever victims—some alive, though prostrate, and others already

wrapped in canvas or linen or, in one case, a crudely built coffin made of whitewashed clapboards.

He stopped in front of Madame Juniper’s Hotel, a two-story

house with a balcony where women usually sat (when the weather

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was agreeable) and enticed men who passed by in the street. This balcony, commonly referred to as the Widows’ Walk, was empty,

despite the fact that it was proving to be a warm day. Giles entered the lobby, where an old Indian named Joseph sat behind the desk, playing a harmonium. He was a member of the Pentucket tribe,

and his eyes were shelled in a weary triangulation of creases.

When he stopped playing, Giles could hear sounds from upstairs—

moans, not an uncommon sound to be heard in this house, but

these seemed not to be of an erotic nature.

“The Madame has more sick?” he asked Joseph.

“She cares for them all,” Joseph said. “They’s most all sick, and girls from other houses have been sent over. Madame Juniper has

turned the place into a hospital.”

“You feel all right?”

“I had the fever long ago. Miss Juniper say she has never been

sick a day in her life.”

The doctor climbed the stairs to the second floor. The hallway

was narrow, lined with doors that ordinarily would be closed;

however, now all the doors were open and the sounds of suffering coming from the rooms were all too familiar. He found Madame

Juniper in the second room on the right, where there were three

girls lying ill. Two occupied the bed, and the third lay on a ticking mattress on the floor. The smell was overpowering, worse than at the pest-house, where tent flaps could be thrown open to allow

some passage of air.

Madame Juniper had a leather fire bucket full of black vomit. She carried it out of the room and led Giles to the back end of the hall.

She was a small woman, and now in middle age had turned stout

and dowdy. She herself was part Indian and she had glossy black

hair, streaked with gray, which fell to the small of her back. When she reached the open window at the end of the hall, she threw the contents of the bucket out into the alley behind the house.

Turning, she looked at him with moist, tired eyes. “I told

myself that when the second girl came down sick I’d start sending 116

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them up to your pest-house, but they were so afraid to go—

believing it was the place that would assure their deaths. So I let them stay. And then more and more got sick, and the competition

started sending their girls over, so now I’m charging a dollar a day to house sick whores.”

“How many have you lost?”

“Three. If this fever keeps up, all my girls will be killed

off. Same too for the competition. Newburyport will at last

be rid of sins of the f lesh.” One girl began screaming, but

Madame Juniper didn’t seem to hear her. “You know about

the apothecaries?”

“No.”

Thankfully, the screaming ceased, descending into whim-

pering. Madame Juniper led Giles back down the hall. “They were

robbed, I hear, during the night. All three of them.”

“I was just with Mr. Poole and some of the constabulary, and

there was no mention—”

Madame Juniper looked over her shoulder, her brown face

almost gleeful. “That only confirms my suspicions, my dear

doctor. It’s the constables that are often behind theft and robbery in this town, and now I fear they will be emboldened by this

fever. There’s talk of gangs of men roaming the streets last night.

I ask you, who truly benefits from the services I offer? The high sheriff and the constables. They are sent around on a regular basis to collect payment—tithing they likes to call it, as though my girls were the congregation and the high sheriff was the reverend.” She smiled warmly. “Crime and the law go hand in hand. I have said

so for years, but nobody listens to this old whore.”

“Medicine was stolen?”

“Of course, Doctor. Laudanum. Quinine. Emetics. Whatever

else you might use to assist these miserable souls. My guess is that if this fever does get worse, you’ll have to apply to the high sheriff himself for medicine—at prices many times higher than . . . well, you understand.”

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“What you say may be true of some constables,” Giles said,

“but Thomas Poole, he’s an honest man. I don’t believe he’d be

a part of such a scheme.”

Madame Jupiter only shrugged. “Don’t talk to me of honest

men in this house.”

The girl began wailing again. From another room there came

the guttural sounds of someone throwing up. Madame Juniper

paused in the doorway and watched as one of her girls laid more

blankets over a girl lying in bed; then after a moment, she led the doctor downstairs.

“Joseph,” she said when they reached the lobby, “please con-

tinue to play. It drowns out the sounds of their misery, and more than one of the girls has said they appreciate the music.”

Joseph began pushing the harmonium back and forth between

his hands, wheezing out an approximation of “Yankee Doodle

Dandy.”

Madame Juniper took the doctor by the arm and they went into

the saloon, which was empty. “I conducted a little experiment,” she said, as she went behind the bar, took a bottle of rum and two glasses down off the shelf, and poured drinks. “Tell me, do you prefer to sweat someone with the fever, or do you chill them?”

Giles stood across the bar from her and gazed into the glass she had placed before him. “At the pest-house we’ve been sweating

them. In part, it’s a matter of practicality. We have no means of cooling them down in such weather. On the other hand, blankets

are growing scarce.”

“Just as I thought.” Madame Juniper drank off her rum and

leaned her elbows on the bar. “Well, I have had a little ice from Mulgrew’s icehouse—though I’m out now. So I chilled several

girls and sweated the rest.” She poured herself another dram.

“This is not exactly the ideal place to conduct experiments of a scientific nature.”

Giles drank his rum, and she refilled his glass. “What were

the results?”

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“Hard to say. All three girls died—the two hot ones and the

cold one—so you tell me what conclusion you would draw.”

“My conclusion?” Giles raised his glass. He loved the color

of rum. He drank the gold liquid off. “We are all at the mercy

of God.”

Madame Juniper laughed. “You’re starting to sound like the

Reverend Cary.”

“Hardly. The reverend sees this as divine retribution, and he

would question why any of your girls would be spared. He would

condemn any intervention—yours and mine, Madame. He’d say

we were doing Satan’s work, trying to save the lives of sinners

who are eternally damned.”

Madame Juniper raised her glass in a toast and whispered, “To

Reverend Cary.”

“Amen.”

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Twelve

Leander remained in the house for most of the day,

stoking the fire, but the smoke became too much, and by late

afternoon he was sitting on the back stoop where the air was clear.

His eyes watered terribly. He expected his father to return home soon, hungry and tired, so when he heard the call of the fishmonger pushing his cart down Orange Street, he got some coins

from the jar on the mantel, went out into the road, and purchased a haddock. He cleaned the fish, laying the fillets out in the iron skillet, and after preparing the potatoes and carrots for boiling he returned to the back stoop and waited. If his mother were here,

she would insist that he pray—not for his losses, but for what he had: the house over his head, the meal waiting to be cooked,

the cooling air of an early evening in June.

But he could not pray.

Last night, while rowing Colin Thurlow’s skiff back down-