Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

The Boses were persuaded by those last two words.

They dragged their remaining possessions and the few things left by the Joeys out into full view from the darkness of the rubble cave and made their choices. Any food they had to keep. And water bags. But otherwise the hard decisions were their own. Margaret kept her fishing net, one of Franklin’s knives, his spark stone, a thin blanket, one tarp, the comb, the hairbrush, the green-and-orange woven top that had been rescued from her room in Ferrytown, a spare undershirt, and her blue scarf. She forced them into Franklin’s back sack, leaving enough space on top for what was left of their salted meat, the honey, and her remaining taffies, as well as some damp tack from the potman’s stores. The cattle skins would have to be abandoned. They were too bulky, as were her father’s wading boots, which Franklin had for some reason rescued from the house, and — she hesitated — the coil of thick rope, which might prove useful but was heavy. She hesitated, too, about the bow and arrows. Franklin would want to keep them, she knew. But she could not use them herself. Women were never trained to hunt, so taking them would be an empty gesture — as, possibly, would be the inclusion of Franklin’s change of clothes. She did not want to challenge fate by adding them to her load. If she and Franklin ever met again — which, candidly and with bitter resignation, she doubted that they would — then a change of clothes would not matter one way or the other. But if she took his clothes with her, it was guaranteed — they were so capacious — that they would weigh her down and use up space and energy. Throwing them out was shamefully distressing. A murder of a sort. Again she had to swallow tears.

The fruit-juice flagons were also too heavy to carry, even the empty one, but she filled a water bag with juice and hung it on its lanyard around her waist, together with the larger bag still nearly full of now stale water from the river at Ferrytown. Then she filled her stomach with the remaining juice. She offered it across the clearing to the Boses, but they shook their heads and wiped their lips defensively, as if the mere mention of sharing a spout with her were enough to smear them with contagion.

The little clay pot over which she’d cooked their breakfast birds while she and Franklin had been resting in the forest was not worth keeping, she thought, and then she thought again and remembered a chilling moment from the night before. Those metal scavengers, those people rustlers, whatever they were, had thrown out her mint plant, the one intimate thing that she had shared with her family remaining in her possession. Margaret stepped into the cave with the clay pot and felt around with her foot until she located the earth and the plant. The mint was damaged, both by the assault of the previous evening and by the season. Few leaves were left. Soon there would be none. The mint would draw back to its roots until the spring. But still she scooped the earth and the plant into the pot and nestled it among her clothes at the top of her bag. This was not sensible, she knew. Why bother with a plant that grew wild anyway? But Margaret was determined to defy the scavengers, in some small way at least. The mint would live.

It did not take her long to find the traces of the horsemen and the mule train. Pack animals are not discreet. Their bowels leave steaming messages. Their hoofs leave runes. And mules can never pass a scrap of bush without tearing at it with their gravestone teeth. The men — this much was clear — had gone back to the highway with their pillage and their hostages and, lit by the moon and the night vision of criminals, had headed east like everybody else.

Margaret led the way and the Boses, grumpily — and with good cause, Margaret had to allow — followed twenty paces behind, stopping whenever she paused to examine the track, looking away when she glanced back to see if they were managing. They did not wish to catch her eye. She had become a dangerous mystery to them. Why was she so angry and unreasonable? Why was she impolite? Why didn’t she pull that scarf back on to hide herself? They did not understand her lack of respect, and she could not be bothered to shout out her explanations: that she was angry because anger was purposeful, that she was impolite because courtesy was an impediment, that her scarfless head — and this surely must be welcome — would keep strangers at a distance.

The Boses followed on, taking it in turns to carry their granddaughter in a sling across their chests and taking it in turns to complain about the burden. They were glad at least that they didn’t have to gaze at Margaret’s unnerving bald scalp. Their view of it was obscured by the few mint leaves that protruded from the top of Margaret’s back sack and tickled the nape of her neck when she walked, a touch of green against the red of her new hair, a combination that anybody not as beset by troubles as the Boses were might recognize as beautiful.

So they followed the highway from sunup until sundown, hardly exchanging a word all day, not sharing food and not daring to rest in case they fell too far behind their abducted men. There were no other travelers ahead of them for Margaret to frighten off with her bare head, although in the afternoon, behind them to the west, they could see and hear from a rise in the road that a convoy of farm carts, a large number of travelers on foot, and some cattle were moving slowly in their wake. Apart from hoofprints and dung, the only, chilling evidence they found that other emigrants had passed recently ahead of them was an abandoned cart with the bodies of a half-dressed woman and a dog draped across its deck and its load of household furniture and effects scattered around. The boxes had been kicked open, the bags turned inside out. And possibly any man fit enough to work or sell had been added to the line of captives that already included Franklin, Acton Bose, and the Joeys.

The woman’s body was warm. She’d died that morning. The blood on the crown of her head was sticky, and her limbs were not yet stiff. Margaret covered her face and legs. The dog was alive but injured badly, though still vigilant enough to growl and show its teeth when Margaret went to it with a piece of tarry stone to finish what the rustlers must have started. She knew that what she’d have to do was ugly, and probably unwomanly in the Boses’ eyes. But she would not regret it. She thought of her own dogs, Becky and Jefferson. Better to be ugly and unwomanly than to leave a loyal dog to suffer. She guessed it had done its best to protect its human family. This was its recompense. It took three blows.

They spent the night away from the road, crouching in the undergrowth under a makeshift tent of tarps and branches and taking it in turns to stand guard. They knew from the pillaged cart and the dead woman that the rustlers were still in the neighborhood. That was both reassuring and alarming. But they dared not light a fire, although the temperature was wintry and there was a wind. Margaret was allowed to occupy the shelter with the Boses, though not to sit too close or to share their food. She chewed on dried meat with a slab of the potman’s tack and drank a little juice, which had already grown bitter from the journey.

Andrew and Melody whispered to each other as they did their best to make their granddaughter accept her meal of cold water porridge with mashed fish. Margaret presumed from what little she could hear that the Boses were discussing her, what their attitude should be. They must have recognized how well and fit she’d been that day. Hardly a flux-ridden invalid. And what a leader she had proved to be, taking the decisions, selecting the route, quietly valiant. Even her unbecoming killing of the dog was oddly reassuring to the Boses, she gathered. It showed she was a woman who would not turn away from problems or challenges, and that if pressed, she might defend herself and anybody in her company. What was clear to Margaret was that the Boses had come to fear her slightly less. On the whole, they could now allow that they were better off in her company than out of it.