Quarantine: A Novel (43 page)

done this, married anyone?”

“No. I have no idea how to proceed.”

“The bible,” Sameeka said, and turning to Dominique, “Go

fetch it.”

The girl went below decks and while they waited, Giles closed

his eyes. He seemed to drift. He felt the warm rain on his face, and Marie was holding his hand. The vessel rocked gently on the

river’s incessant current, and for the first time since the amputation the pain in his leg was gone. He wondered if he might not stand

up now. It was time. The weight and searing heat of the stones

was gone, the sharp scent of vinegar had been washed away, and

it was time to rise up off this cot. He was eager to walk to the prow of the ship, where he could look down at the water. It was

the water: Newburyport was defined by water. It cradled all of

them, the tides, rising and falling every six hours, day after day, creating weeks, months, years, lifetimes, and generations where

the water never ceases to run out to sea, only to return upriver, moving, constantly moving as though blood through his veins.

And then he thought he opened his eyes. They were all

standing around him, their faces illuminated by a f lickering

lantern. Emanuel was reading from a bible. “And the earth was

without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the

deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Marie was holding Giles’s hand tightly now. He tried to squeeze

her fingers but was unable to do so—it was as though his hand

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was also separated from his body. Someone was crying, perhaps

the little girl, perhaps his brother Enoch, who looked away as his shoulders quaked with fear. Or so it seemed. Giles said something to him, something he’d kept to himself for years, but Enoch didn’t seem to hear, or perhaps he couldn’t understand. And then Marie

leaned down, whispering her Catholic prayer in French, her face

wet with rain, and her lips against his, salty and warm. It was that taste of brine that carried him downriver, over the bar at Plum

Island, and out into the ocean, where he drifted effortlessly lower and lower into the cold dark water.

R

Leander opened his eyes and looked out the window at Water

Street. It was just first light and the rain had stopped. He was sitting in his grandfather’s rocking chair, his rifle across his lap.

Turning his head, a blanket that had been draped about his shoulders—vaguely he remembered her hands in the middle of the

night—fell to the floor. In the other room, Cedella was sleeping in his grandfather’s bed. She lay curled on her side, facing the wall, the sheet pulled up over a sculpted hip, her black hair spilled across the pillow. He could hear her breathing.

And outside he could hear the sound of waves, the morning

chatter of seagulls. He stood up, his legs stiff, and leaned the rifle against the rocking chair. He went to the door and opened it to the smell of salt water. He stepped out into the dooryard, loosening his trousers and relieving himself in a bush. Downhill, the tide was in and water lapped the beach just below the row of clam shacks.

Clam digging wouldn’t begin on the flats until late morning.

As he fastened his buttons, he saw something move on the

beach. Something rolling gently in the waves. There was not

enough light to see. He started down the path, as though drawn,

gazing at the water. The tide had brought something in, a log,

or perhaps a large dead fish. Its movement in the waves was

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mesmerizing, beckoning, and as he descended the hill Leander

walked faster, until he broke into a run when he reached the

sand. From behind him he heard Cedella’s voice.
“Leander,

what is it?”
He’d never heard her call out before, and the force and clarity of her voice seemed to chase him down the beach.

“What is it?”

It was a body. Leander waded out into the cold water, his

bare feet sinking into the muck. He could see a shoulder, the

side of the head above the water, and an arm that rose and fell

with each small wave. It was a man, his naked back to Leander,

his hair white.

Papi?

Leander tried to run, lifting his feet up and out of the water,

but he only managed to trip, falling forward and landing on his

hands and knees.

“Who is it?”
Cedella’s voice was closer. He looked ashore and watched her run down the path to the beach.
“Who is it?”

He got to his feet, his clothes heavy now with water, and

waded out farther.

“Papi?” he said as he grabbed the shoulder, the flesh cold, hard, and rolled the body on to its back, bringing the face up out of the water and revealing a gash in the forehead. The deep wound had

been washed clean by water, and the unmoving eyes stared at the

early morning sky in disbelief.

Leander heard Cedella coming up behind him in the water.

Turning, he went back to her and took her in his arms and she

clutched him tightly, her face buried against his chest.

“It’s the Boston man,” he said.

“It is revenge, for this fever.”

“Perhaps.”

“A sacrifice,” she said. “I believe this to be true.”

“My grandfather,” Leander said, “he might think so, too.”

Looking back toward the beach, they saw others—Joppa clam

diggers, their wives, and children—coming down to the beach

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now, pointing and calling to each other, some still in nightshirts and gowns, wading out into the shallows.

“This be a kind of baptism,” Cedella said.

“Yes,” Leander said, “here on Joppa Flats.”

349

When Fields opened the front door of the Sumner house,

Leander noted that his blue satin vest was soiled and missing a

button. This would not have been possible only a few weeks

earlier. The manservant appeared frailer, too, his gaze distracted and uncertain. Some of his relatives had been taken late in the

epidemic. After several weeks of cool weather in September,

the first frost seemed final confirmation that the epidemic had

passed, and within days the pest-house was dismantled. When

the quarantine was finally lifted, Newburyport slowly returned

to its customary routine—the wharves were active, shipbuilding

resumed in the yards, and there was again a reasonable com-

merce in Market Square—but there was something changed in

the way people conducted their daily business. They were more

deliberate, more earnest. On the street people were less likely to greet one another, let alone pause to exchange pleasantries. What conversation was necessary tended to be somber and respectful.

It took time to accept that one was a survivor. It took time—and 351

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contemplation—to realize that one must live on after so many

had died.

Leander was admitted to the vestibule, where he removed his

wide-brimmed leather hat. Fields led him up the stairs. Framed

paintings were missing from the wall, leaving oblong ghosts in

the grimy white paint. In the second floor hall dust balls drifted along the baseboards. When they reached Mrs. Sumner’s bedroom

door, Fields paused to consider Leander. His stare was direct, and it seemed to indicate that Leander should prepare himself. The

manservant then knocked, raised the latch, and opened the door.

Leander entered the room, and the door was immediately pulled

shut behind him.

Mrs. Sumner lay on her back in the canopy bed, her eyes

closed. She was greatly bloated since he’d last seen her. Her skin was white with a blue pallor around the slack mouth. He put his

medicine bag and hat on the nightstand. Leaning over her, he took in a sour, unwashed odor, which he had become familiar with

since he’d begun to apprentice for Dr. Bradshaw. It was a scent

that came off of bodies that had ceased—or nearly ceased—to

function. Dr. Bradshaw called it the Last Reek.

She opened one eye—the left eye remaining closed, the lid

encrusted with what looked like grains of sugar. As her right eye looked toward the nightstand, she said, “Giles’s medicine bag.”

She spoke slowly, the left side of her mouth barely moving.

“It is, Ma’am.”

“I heard Marie gave it to you when you joined Eli Bradshaw’s

practice. He lacks imagination, but you can learn much from him.

Eventually, when you go out on your own, you will have to reject a great deal of what he taught you. But that’s a long ways off.

At least your apprenticeship isn’t with Wilberforce Strong, who

would teach you to trust in the Lord, but little about medicine.

Now help me sit up.”

She began to struggle under the weight of the bed sheets and

counterpane. It appeared that her entire left side was enfeebled, if 352

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not completely paralyzed. Leander arranged several pillows which helped elevate her head. The activity made her cough vigorously.

“There’s fluid in your lungs,” he said. “You should sit up more

often.”

“I know, but I think I’m destined to drown in the river of

my own making. Consider it a last form of baptism.” She looked

toward the medicine bag again. “The doctor had something he

gave me—I can’t remember the name now. My memory, it’s

going, I fear. When you get to a certain age, the only part of you that remains is your memory, and when that begins to fail, you

have come to the end of you. And then among the bits and pieces

that remain, you wonder who you were, and whether it ever

mattered.” She attempted a smile. “My memory, my house, my

staff—all going. Most have left. We can’t pay anyone anymore, you understand, and those who have remained—Fields, Benjamin, his

father, and his very pregnant wife—they remain out of a modicum

of loyalty, but primarily for the roof over their heads and what little food we manage to put on the table. Last week, Enoch had

to sell Mr. Jefferson’s horses to a farmer down to Ipswich. Yet he still maintains that when his ships—the ones he hasn’t sold, that is—return from Europe next spring, our financial fortunes will

begin to reverse, but I don’t share such inebriated optimism. This coming winter will kill me and ruin him. By spring he will have

sold this house, and I’m thankful that I won’t be here to see that.”

She looked up at Leander, suddenly alert. “What was I saying?

Oh, there was a concoction the doctor gave me, in a brown bottle.

I mixed it with water.”

“Yes, I have that,” Leander said.

“That’s why I specifically asked for you. Bradshaw actually

believes he might occasionally save a life! Physicians and ministers, what fools, thinking they can save lives and souls. Whatever for?

That’s what I say. No, we are well beyond such nonsense here. It is the descent that concerns us now, the nature of the descent, and my son the doctor understood what was necessary to ease the way.

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This you must also learn. Do so, and you will be in great demand and never go wanting for patients.” She gazed at the medicine bag eagerly. “Laudanum, that’s what it’s called, no?”

“Yes, Ma’am. But first I must examine you.”

“Really? I’m already half dead.”

“I will be expected to report on your condition to Dr.

Bradshaw.”

“Well, perhaps you could just give me a half dose?”

“I need to listen to your heart, Ma’am, if you’ll permit me.”

“Why waste your time? The old thing’s beating, if only just.”

“Please, Mrs. Sumner. It is necessary.”

She sighed, and turned her head away submissively.

Carefully, he untied the top of her nightgown. Her skin was

mottled, blotched, and as he placed his ear to her breastbone he held his breath. He could hear a double-thud, faint and slow. Dr.

Bradshaw said to listen for noise around the heart beat, a rumble sometimes, or what he called a murmur. Leander heard fluid, and

he thought of tides, water flooding the clam flats in the Merri-

mack, though this certainly was blood—blood tides, rising and

falling in the chambers of the heart. Whenever the doctor took

a lancet to a patient, it was a surprise to Leander how swiftly the blood flowed from the open vein. The heart pushes the blood,

allowing it to circulate throughout the body; a simple engine,

really, given a remarkable task—once it begins beating, the heart never quits, until one day it just stops.

He was about to lift his head when her right arm moved and

she laid her hand on his scalp, pressing him to her.

“When they were young,” she whispered, her voice rising up

through her chest as much as out of her contorted mouth, “the

boys would come to me, tired and in need of a nap. I would

encourage them to lay their heads on my chest. This went on long after they no longer suckled. I’d never known a more peaceful

sleep than with both boys lying here like this.” Her fingers stroked his cheek a moment until she lifted her hand.

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Leander was suddenly reluctant to take his head away from the

warmth of her flesh. “With my mother, as well,” he said.

As he straightened up, her eye inspected him closely and he

felt somewhat embarrassed. “You’ve suffered your losses well,” she said. “But then you are young. Your heart is strong. And I hear

that you have Cedella with you.”

“Yes, she is,” he said. He opened the medicine bag, took out