The Speckled Monster (35 page)

“Sit,” said Jack. Zabdiel dropped into the chair by the bed and took hold of the tankard filled with a cool draft of small beer, which Jack had set on the nightstand.

“Yesterday,” said Jack, wringing out a towel, “Lieutenant Hamilton of the
Seahorse
bought himself a new servant and named him Cotton Mather: in honor, he said, of Dr. Mather's fine trust in men with black skins, black hearts, and blacker magic.”

“Christ Almighty,” said Zabdiel into his tankard.

“They're scared,” said Jack, turning back to Tommy.

“Everyone with an ounce of sense in this whole damned town is scared,” said Zabdiel. “Strange excuse for a killing spree.”

“Oldest excuse in the world,” shrugged Jack. “Oldest and strongest. What do you reckon we do now?”

Zabdiel shook his head, and looked up at Jack. “Now we wait,” he said blankly. After a while, Jack tiptoed back out of the room.

The pages of Dr. Mather's treatise lay, already dog eared, on the table by the bed; Zabdiel had long since committed it to memory, the writing burned into his brains with letters of fire. There was no hidden word of comfort to be unearthed there. He picked up the Bible that lay next to the treatise. The cadences of this book were as deeply rooted in his soul as the voice of his mother singing, or the gaits of the horses he had ridden with his father long before he could walk. His fingers drew the book open to a chapter in Genesis.

Take thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest,
God had once tempted Abraham,
and offer him for a burnt offering
. So his son and two servants went up to the mountain with him. At its feet, the two servants halted, while Abraham and Isaac toiled into the heights. Side by side, father and son built an altar and collected wood. Then, without warning, Abraham bound Isaac and laid him on the altar as the sacrifice.

Zabdiel did not need to read on to know what came next, but he ran his eyes over the words anyway.
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And the angel said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad
.

No voice, thought Zabdiel wearily, had called out to him. Mather sensed angels everywhere, incessantly. Zabdiel had scoffed at him for it, in his heart. Perhaps he should have been listening instead. Perhaps he should have shouted at the heavens,
Here I am
.

But he had said nothing, had heard nothing. His knife had come down.

Another sentence, about another father and son, drifted up from far later pages, twisting slowly through his mind:
Father, if thou be willing, take this cup away from me
.

He slid onto his knees by the bed.

Please, Lord, be willing
.

PART THREE

Hell Upon Earth

1

SALUTATION ALLEY

ZABDIEL startled awake. In the dull gray heat of dawn he lay curled on the edge of his bed, one arm flung over his son. Tommy was shivering and muttering incoherently in his sleep, still dangerously hot.

Zabdiel leapt from the bed; in two bounds he landed in the stair passage and called to Jack, who was there in half an instant.

“Jackey?” he said hoarsely.

“Fever broke in the night,” said Jack. “He's fine.”

“Good,” nodded Zabdiel, though his heart squeezed into an even smaller ball and plummeted toward the center of the earth. “Watch Tommy,” he said, and ran barefoot down the stairs, skidding through into the shop. At the shelves holding his drugs, he paused a little wild eyed, scanning the long ranks of jars and canisters.
What was good for the boy?
He needed something to drive out the poison, to send it flowing out into his skin, where it might escape; as it was, it was festering within, feeding on his vital spirits.

A vomit. He needed a vomit. There wasn't anything worth worrying about left in his stomach: but the emetic action would work on the boy's pores too. Nothing too strong—not now. Usually Zabdiel preferred antimonial vomits, but after three days of broiling in his own juices Tommy was far too weak. He'd have to make do with a gentler vegetable concoction.
Ipecacuanha
. He pulled down the jar and mixed up a light dose in some oil. He also concocted a cooling draft to fight the fever: two ounces of sweet almond oil and two ounces of the syrup of marsh mallows, shaken together.

With a vial in each hand, he raced back up the stairs. Jack offered to dose the boy, but Zabdiel shook his head and Jack tiptoed away again. Zabdiel sat down on the side of the bed and with infinite gentleness began spooning the vomit into his son's mouth. Then he held Tommy over a bowl as he retched. When he stopped, Zabdiel wiped the spittle away and fed him a few spoonfuls of the cooling oil, but Tommy shuddered, puckering his face and turning away. Surely that was a good sign that he had not drifted too far away from consciousness or life?

Zabdiel sat on the edge of the bed, holding his son's small hand. Twenty minutes later, he thought Tommy might be shivering less. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't as hot. He would not believe it yet, though, not until he was sure. He sat rigid, counting his own heartbeats, wishing them to go by faster. An hour later, he called softly to Jack.

Jack laid a big calloused hand on Tommy's forehead, and then he broke into a wide grin. “Fever's passing,” he said. “He's going to pull through.” He turned his eyes on Zabdiel. “But I ain't so sure about you, Doctor. You go on and get some sleep now. Let me watch the boys.”

“Jackey?” asked Zabdiel once again. His tongue felt thick.

“Jackey'll be right as rain, soon as those spots come out, and so will Mr. Tommy here. Cot's right over there.” He nodded.

Zabdiel stood up unsteadily and crossed to the window, laying his cheek against its coolness. In the paddock below, two foals frisked about, watched by their dams.
Thank you,
he whispered. Jack collared him where he stood, propelling him to the cot, or he might have fallen asleep standing up.
Fallen right out the window, if it'd been open,
thought Jack.

 

Later—much later, to judge by the light and the heat that had filled the room—Zabdiel woke to a shout of triumph; he blinked and sat up with a start. “Spots!” shouted Tommy, waving one arm about. “Papa, I have spots!”

Zabdiel strode to the bed. Tommy did indeed have small red speckles, about five that he could see and ten or fifteen more he could not. Zabdiel plucked his son out of the bed, whirling and stamping, whooping and hollering, with glee.

Tossing Tommy on his shoulder, he ducked across the hall. Jackey, too, was sprouting bumps, only on Jackey they were not bright red, they were an even deeper black than his dark skin. Zabdiel and Tommy whooped and whirled away again. After a split second, Jack caught up to Jackey and joined in the dance.

 

A few minutes later, the Reverend Benjamin Colman walked out of his house with a heavy heart, ready to keep vigil at a child's deathbed; the news had slithered into his study at first light, in the whispering of servants. Not that it was anything like a secret. As he emerged from his own door, he saw a knot of people gathered around Boylston's house, gesticulating and pointing. He quickened his step, and the crowd parted silently to let him through.

It sounded as if Indians were celebrating a massacre upstairs. He was obliged, in the end, to loose the clarion call of his pulpit voice to rouse a servant through the commotion. Neither the wild-Indian dancing nor the laughter faltered as he mounted the stairs behind Jack. Of course, it was proper to coax even the smallest child into calm prayer just before the end. But in Reverend Colman's experience, if a dying child asked for it, the most sober man in the world would turn somersaults and quack like a duck. So it was not the father who made the minister's brows float upward in surprise. It was the boy himself.

Perched on his father's shoulders and hollering, Tommy looked tired, a little washed out and peaky, but not remotely in danger of dying. “I've got spots,” he shrieked as he caught sight of the minister's head rising through the gloom that pooled in the hollows of the still-shuttered ground floor.

“So you do,” said his father, glancing back to see whom his son was shouting at. Seeing the minister, Zabdiel stilled his feet a little sheepishly, but he made no move to put Tommy down. “So you do. But you must also have some manners. Give Reverend Colman a proper greeting now.” He tried to look stern, but the twinkle in his eyes refused to cooperate.

“How d'ye do, Reverend,” said Tommy, slightly lowering his voice. “If you please, sir, I have spots.” He thrust out an arm for inspection. “So does Jackey.” Jackey's arm shot out too.

The Reverend Mr. Colman duly peered at the proffered arms. “Hurray!” he cried. “Hurray for a fine crop of spots!”

Tommy's laughter rose to gale force, and the dance took hold of them all—this time including the minister—once more.

Hurray for a little boy's life,
thought the Reverend Mr. Colman in mid-spin. Tall and fine boned, with fair hair and blue eyes, he was something of a renegade among Puritan ministers: the very soul of moderation, a champion of tolerance, he was so elegant as to be swooningly popular with the ladies. He was also endowed with almost unnatural powers of sympathy. Swept up in the unseemly dance, he was still aware of the crowd gathered in silence outside, aware that Tommy's survival had repercussions far beyond the scope of his doting family. Furthermore, he was aware of Dr. Boylston keeping the same knowledge at bay; right now, the man wanted to think only of his son.

Let him,
thought Mr. Colman.
There's time enough for the troubles ahead
.

Almost as one, they slowed and stopped, for they were all exhausted. The two boys were deposited on the big bed, the men standing before them with bowed heads, still breathing hard as Mr. Colman led them all in a psalm:
O Give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever
.

Zabdiel tried to focus; Jerusha would want this prayer said well, from the heart, but he wasn't ready for the certainty that thanksgiving implied. With his body at rest, his mind wandered. They had reached an oasis where they would be granted a three-day rest, that was all. They were not yet out of danger, much less home. If Tommy's rash grew as thick as his fever had been high, he would die, and the dying would be terrible.
The Lord is my shepherd
. . . he whispered, clinging to hope.

 

That evening, after Tommy, still blessedly cool, dropped into a profound, healing sleep, Zabdiel took himself off to the Salutation Inn for a pint. It was a squally evening, splattered with fat drops of rain that many a night would have convinced him to stay home, epidemic or not. But tonight he needed quiet celebration in the company of friends. So he set off north toward the tavern, hoping that his friend Joshua Cheever would be there.

His gelding's hooves clopped over the drawbridge across the creek that sheered the North End from the rest of Boston. From there, Ship Street wound northeast in tight little curves, clinging to the wharves bristling along the eastern shore. Across the street from the sea clustered the taverns that balanced the city's Puritan zeal with more worldly cheer. At Cross Street he passed under the dripping sign of the Red Cross, and then past the Three Crowns, the Turkey-Cock, and the Red Lion. The steeple of the Old North Church loomed into sight a little off to the left and lumbered on by. To the right, Clark's wharf, the grandest of Boston's private wharves, jutted out of sight into the sea. The Mitre, the King's Arms, the Castle, and then the Ship, better known as Noah's Ark, lumbered by in the dark, and then just beyond Scarlett's Wharf, up on the left, the long, low two-story expanse of the Salutation Inn slid into view, its thirty-five windows gleaming in welcome. The familiar sign creaked and swayed in the wind: two men bowing low to each other in ostentatious greeting, sweeping their cocked hats before them. The Two Palaverers, its patrons affectionately called the place.

Zabdiel handed his horse to the stable boy and stomped up onto the porch, shaking off some of the rain, hoping Cheever was there to palaver with.

He was. Tall and fair as a Viking, Mr. Cheever was stretching his long legs before a summer-bare grate and chatting with John Langdon, the butcher and victualler who'd bought the inn fifteen years before as an outlet for his cooking and had since made it famous for solid, homely fare— New England boiled dinners, juicy roasts served with bright peas and nicely brown Yorkshire pudding to sop up the drippings, chicken pot pies. Langdon was almost as tall as Cheever, and almost as wide as he was tall. The jolly giant, they called him.

As Zabdiel walked in, Cheever looked up, and the question flashed wordlessly in his eyes.
Is he alive?
Zabdiel's whole body must have answered for him, for Cheever leapt to his feet and gave him a slap on the back that nearly knocked Zabdiel's lungs back into the street.

Langdon called for beer all around, and soon a knot of Salutation regulars had gathered to hear the news: Langdon sons and sons-in-law, their neighbors Bill Larrabee and John Helyer from down the street, various Thorntons and Greenwoods, and several Webbs, the clan of brewers and distillers who filled the inn's barrels and kegs. Even Joseph Dodge, the sour little publican who'd recently bought the inn's liquor license, lingered to listen after handing out the last tankard.

Zabdiel had married into the Minot clan of Dock Square, fast rising into the mincing ways of the gentry; for Jerusha's sake, and for the sake of his business, he kept his shop and his home at the center of town. But it was here, at the far northern end of the North End, where he made his friends. These were men who built ships and houses, who manhandled hundredweight bags of flour into bread, or hops into beer. Men who beat iron into anchors, crafted hides into shoes and slats into barrels, men who fired sand into glass windows and wax into candles. They were close knit, proud, and deeply devout, but they were also, at times, deeply devoted to downing their fair share of pints among friends.
Hard work and hard praying merits hard playing,
they joked among themselves. Zabdiel didn't pray as hard as most of them, but he figured he made up for it in working. Especially lately.