The Winds of Fate (17 page)

The plague. Smallpox. Rich, poor, young, old, it did not discriminate. The priest used his bully-pulpit, calling everyone forth to give aid where possible. The church evolved into a hospital, flowing with the sick. Since Claire, Cookie and Lily experienced the pox when they were young, they offered their services, working to mend those in need. Some of the healthier islanders retreated inland, isolating themselves while others chose to leave the island. The first to sail out was Sir Teakle.

To Claire’s joy, Sir Teakle’s departure came sweet as the rain at noon. She met him at the door of the great-house, wiping her hands on her apron. She gazed innocently at him. He grew stressed to see her dressed like a common woman.

“I have just come back from doing my Christian duty at the church,” she informed him.

“Good God. You have been working in the house of plague? Are you mad?”

Claire touched his sleeve, congratulating herself on her cunning. His eyes had grown round with horror. It was all she could do to keep
from laughing. “It is a terrible contagion, is it not?” She coughed twice to add emphasis.

He backed away from her. “I am departing for England. I had planned to take you with me. I-I’ll return for you as soon as possible.”

“Do not tarry. This illness is bad business. Dreadful, I assure you, one never knows where the pox will strike next.” She looked pointedly at him. “What’s more, the lasting effects stay in the air for an indefinite time. Years some say.”

Her ploy turned him on his heel, fleeing in his carriage in direction of the harbor. The satin coat she touched, torn off and tossed onto the road. That was the last she hoped to see of him.

Claire, Lily and Cookie expended ungodly hours fighting the plague. There were times, Claire thought, as she scanned the ocean of bodies, the hospital would close in on them, eating them all up. A welcomed sight brought relief. A small group of slaves from different plantations, supplied to aid assistance, filed into the hospital, blinking at the virulent devastation before them.

In strode Devon.

Her heart skipped a beat.

He gave her a scorching look.

She refused to let him bother her. But he did. The dreadful things he must think of her. Would he suffer from the pox? Without Jarvis, or any other authority about, he took over the hospital operations.

He did not attempt to address her. Never a, “Good Morning” or “Good Evening” as he was inclined to do with everyone else, disregarding Claire’s inquiries with off-hand nods or short, terse directions. What would it be like to hear him say, “Claire”? He remained determined to disregard her. Why wouldn’t he? She had insulted him, intimating he was not fit for her. Sir Teakle created a monster of an impression. An impression, a man like Devon could never forgive.

Claire shrugged. The damage was done. Besides she could not allow herself to get close to Devon. The unfortunate path would lead to her ruin.

She looked at his broad back, his short heavy wisps of hair, dark as a ravens. Stripped of his coat, the sleeves of his coarse shirt rolled to the elbow, and holding a bloody rag in his hand, he barked out an array of orders.

He fit here in the hospital with his work, tending the sick. Yet in Claire’s mind, he didn’t fit. As she had speculated earlier, she again considered him in the same mysterious light. He seemed alert, aware, with a restrained wildness about him, ready to fire a reaction at a moment’s notice. The assured poise he demonstrated in dictating where patients were to be set in order of their weakness and severity disproved the nature of an ordinary physician. His pleasant yet authoritative voice ringing out those commands with innate confidence belied a man of a different mien that she couldn’t quite identify. He remained a puzzle to her, a man of contradictions.

“Malaria, smallpox, usual remedy is quinine or “the bark”. Opium pills−I’ve cut it down so they can rest,” he snapped to his stewards. “Smoke and lime to kill the contagion. Lay sails over the courtyard and set more beds beneath. Get to the apothecary.” His commands ripped through the air like a cannon down the coast.

“What are you doing here?” His sour tone matched his mood.

Claire didn’t turn around. She squared her shoulders. She remained impressed for out of devastating chaos; he had restored order of epic proportions with improvisation and invention. It surprised and galled her how the islanders deferred to him, despite his status as a slave. Her hands dropped slowly with the cloth she held to a fresh basin of water.

“I will thank you to address me properly−” Claire did not desire a fight. She pressed the cloth to her patient’s fevered brow.

“The man’s a slave−” he said.

She squeezed the cloth, twisting and twisting until every last drop wrung out.

“The tone of your discrimination is noted. It stands an ignorant and false assumption on your part, Doctor,” she rebuked him. “Nonetheless, the man is a human being.”

“Your uncle would be of a different sentiment. He regards such chattel as vermin, better left to die of their miseries.”

“As you can see, I am not my uncle.” She turned, frowned and stared at him a moment with increasing haughtiness. “What is it that makes you think that my uncle and I share the same opinion?”

“It is a kindness, your efforts, but if your uncle were to learn of it−” he shrugged.

“I shall deal with my uncle when the time comes. The concern is mine, not yours, Dr. Blackmon.” She turned her back to him.

“You are at risk.”

“How wonderful of you to voice concern. But never worry. I am immune. I survived the pestilence my eighth summer as did my cousin and Cookie in her youth.” There stood too much work to do to bicker further. With so many people crying out in fever and pain, Claire decided to let him wallow in his contempt of her.

By Devon’s orders the islanders and slaves were divided into pairs to maximize resources. Cookie worked with an older giant of a slave, and Lily with a slender golden-haired slave. Claire chose to work alone.

She grimaced at the hideous corpuscles, oozing with blood, inflicted on a poor woman. Claire had been spared the scarring from her battle with the horrid pestilence. For this woman, the scarring would be nothing if she survived. Mrs. Bennett. Claire did not recognize her. She had met her twice at the governor’s mansion and regretted never being able to learn more of her father. Claire procured a pillow to make her more comfortable. The woman’s eyes fluttered.

“Claire. You are a dear girl.” Her breaths came labored. “I know you own the plantation. I feel it in my bones. I found a hint in my old journals that were not destroyed by fire.”

Claire listened. What did you discover?”

“You do not have to be forced to marry anyone. Find the deed.”

Claire sponged her forehead. She needed Mrs. Bennett to talk more. The woman lay limp. Claire was at a loss for she did not know what else to do. She looked up, regarding the yawning beams of the belfry. The bell hung, despairingly solitary. She needed help. She hated to ask
him
.

“Dr. Blackmon?” she said, as she moved beside him.

He didn’t seem surprised to see her. Did he know she was coming?

“Is there a problem, Madame?” he asked without turning to her. A barely controlled hostility simmered beneath his formality, if released, would roll her over with the force of a tidal wave. What lay between them could never be openly discussed.

“The patient by the column, Mrs. Bennett, I-I do not know what else to do.”

“Johnnie. Move that woman out−the west side.” He jerked his head to where Mrs. Bennett lay.

Claire closed her eyes and said a prayer, the west side−a silent assignation for the patients that would soon die. “Is there not something you can do?”

“A friend of yours?”

Claire nodded.

He crossed the room and examined the patient. “The pox has done its job. She has passed onto the next world.” He covered Mrs. Bennett with a sheet and checked the man beside her. Johnnie appeared. “Take this man as well.”

Claire stared down at her hands as the men carried the dead out to be buried. She liked the older woman. Her life ended in tragedy. The man next to Mrs. Bennett was a pewter merchant with four children, his wife now a widow. Claire swiped at a tear.

“What else?” Devon snapped, breaking her out of her reverie.

“I-I was going to offer you an explanation about Sir Teakle, but there isn’t enough room for me and your pride.”

He ordered the blond-haired slave working with Lily to his side and whispered. “Ames, send a message to the governor and order a crew to dig more plague pits for the ones who are not so fortunate. We need to move them out with haste. Their air multiplies the contagion.”

“Surely now, there is no explanation needed.” He threw a bloody rag into a basin. “You can attend to yonder patient. He needs water. Perhaps you can offer him something else.”

Claire froze as if she had been turned to marble, the subtlety of his suggestion obvious. She turned her back to him, refusing to let him see the tears gather in her eyes. What did she expect? A ringing endorsement of what he had seen in the carriage with Sir Teakle.

Claire weaved, whether from exhaustion or emotion, she couldn’t tell. Everything blurred. A miasma rent the air, spread from infected bodies. She could not breathe. Claire doubled over, her stomach nauseous. Bile rose to her throat.

“Dammit! Open the shutters,” Devon ordered. “Whose idea was it to entomb us?”

An islander protested. “The way to cure this disease is to suffocate the evil.”

“It’s madness. Let the fresh breezes in and carry out the plague to Poseidon. Next you’ll be telling me to eat toads and bathe in milk. Johnnie, take Madame Hamilton outside.”

Devon watched her through the window. He looked for any signs that might convince him she contracted the disease despite the fact she had told him she had already survived the pestilence. The fresh air revived her, and soon, she entered the hospital again. Devon breathed a sigh of relief. Why did he care?

She was Sir Teakle’s whore or soon to be wife. He remembered her embrace with that corpulent mass of human flesh, remarkable how she played the innocent with him and threw herself at nobility. Did she moan in pleasure when he touched her?

Annoyed where his thoughts veered, he turned to his next patient, noting, Claire did not work alone as she did earlier, but chose to work with Johnnie. He glanced at her slim hands as they gently lifted a woman’s head, coaxing her to drink. You would not find the governor’s wife working in this pestilence, nor did he see any other fine ladies from the island.

As the hours passed, Devon listened to young Johnnie’s humorous anecdotes of his family and ironic villagers back home while Claire gently laughed, returning witticisms of her own. Her puckish wit lightened his mood.

Lily appeared beside him. “Listening to Claire is like drinking a fine wine. Pretty soon you feel giddy too,” Lily said, following where his eyes rested. “Claire lives her life in sunny optimism, and always believes in the innate goodness of people. Her laughter is
contagious and generous, her take on life and how it should be lived−you’re envious of it and want to emulate it. There is no one like her.” Lily gave him the medicines he had ordered and returned to Ames.

For a moment, Devon imagined himself in another time and place, wishing he was nothing more than a country gentleman come to flirt a few hours away at a dance, inhaling the sweet scent of apple blossoms and listening to the soft strains of a quintet. The need to live a free and carefree life flung so far from his grasp.

A hand touched his and pulled him from his dreams. Devon looked down, the grim reality evident. The wretch did not know he was dying. He offered some words of consolation. In a few hours he would be untroubled.

Bloodsmythe arrived, surprising Devon with a package from Anne Jensen. He tore open the wrapping and stood amazed, a fine coat, a cast-off, no doubt, from a former customer of the prostitute. He had cured two of her girls, and this was her way of thanking him. He tried it on and reveled in its exact fit.

Every once in a while he saw Claire glance in his direction, her eyes disdained to look anywhere the sight of him was possible. Still he preened in his coat, delighting in a small kindness that made him happy for the moment. She lifted her chin in the air and resumed her activities. That stayed fine with him. The strain of maintaining schooled disinterest waxed a heavy toll on his patience.

Devon plunged his hands into his pockets. He stood stock-still, fingered deeper, feeling round heavy bits of metal sewn into a thick padded lining. The exact size of a gold sovereign. Too afraid to assume his good fortune, and unable to conceal his joy, he strode to the sacristy. Behind locked doors, he used a scalpel to slice through the stitching. One gold coin emerged and another. Anyone else would have overlooked the bounty but his skills as a physician in fingering tumors and veins assisted him uncovering the coins through the dense layers of wool padding. “Sixty pieces of gold!”

A flapping of feathers drew his attention. Abu Ajir perched on the window sill. “My good friend, enough to buy a skiff to get off this
hellhole.” Devon sewed the coins back into place. Anne Jensen never would have parted with the coat if she knew the fortune it contained.

Released from hard labor into this catastrophe had given Devon hope to renew his escape efforts, but now the eventuality of that escape became real. He grew anxious for a meeting with that rascal, Tom Dooley, the single man who could procure a boat. Devon rounded the baptismal font and stepped back into his makeshift hospital. Whistling a happy tune from his boyhood days, he observed Claire rising from her labors.

“I have hardly eaten in two days,” she said to Johnnie. She yawned then stretched her back, the outline of her soft breasts taut against the fabric.

Devon’s whistle broke off.

“You must fortify yourself, madam if you are to keep up this pace,” said Johnnie.

Offer in sympathy was the easiest way to a woman’s heart
. A vein in Devon’s neck pulsed and swelled dangerously.