Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

“I’ll love you, though,” she said to Bella, and pressed her own wet face against the child’s.

The narrow country path preferred by Margaret soon joined a wider and more regular track, with way markers and mounting blocks for riders. Her route became a little busier and then much busier, and not only with emigrants heading eastward and impatient for the first hint of a salty wind. There were farmworkers with baskets of produce and barrowmen with sacks of late-season silage for sale and trappers going into town to trade in hides and tallow, hogs and fur. There were unhurried horsemen with panniers of goods and children riding backsaddle, and hurried horsemen riding in and out with documents and messages, taking little care to avoid pedestrians and the droves of sheep and goats destined for the slitter’s knife. There were journeymen — weavers, skinners, coopers, carpenters, wagon makers, shoemakers, hatters — with tools, and bands of hired hands, all competing for a day’s labor, as well as beggars, hucksters, and salesmen waylaying anyone who was unlucky enough to catch their eye. Please help. Please buy. Please give.

The only travelers who were not pursued by the pesterers were a pair of what appeared to be, according to the loop of white tape tied across their shoulders, Baptist pilgrims, looking as beyond reproach as they could. Baptists never helped or bought or gave, so they were rarely bothered. They’d freely pray for anyone and express their pity. But prayer makes the weakest soup. And pity doesn’t settle any bills.

Everyone on that wide road was going to or coming from Tidewater, a town that had to be passed by anyone hoping to escape America from those flat quarters of the coast. It was the sort of busy and attentive place where you would find it hard to travel faster than the news of your coming. Beyond Tidewater’s buildings and beyond its double set of defensive walls, the ground sloped gently to the scrub-covered shores of the estuary, so much slower and broader than the river at Ferrytown, browner too, and turbid with silt. For once the groups of emigrants were outnumbered by people who had not yet decided to depart from their birth country but who, like the residents of Margaret’s town had been, were more attracted by the prospects of local wealth and consequence than by the distant promises of life across the ocean.

The first stranger to hold Margaret’s eye, despite her best efforts to hide her face, was a nut-brown man carrying two geese in a basket. He put on a show of admiring Bella, though he didn’t try to hold her fingers or touch her cheek as true admirers would. Margaret had to lean close to hear what he was saying. He had what was known as a Carolina twang, that is, a way of speaking that suggested words were rubbery and could be bent and stretched, though only once he’d softened them with chewing.

“Your boy’s very sweet,” he said, cooing theatrically but mistaking both the child’s gender and her parentage. “What’s the little fella’s name?”

“His name is Jackson,” Margaret said. Why not, indeed? Better not to give the child’s actual name in case the Boses were inquiring thereabouts.

“Now that’s a good old Yankee name.”

“His father was a good old Yankee man.”

“You don’t want to buy a good old Yankee goose, by any chance? A fine and meaty bird.” He pointed at the smaller of the two.

She laughed. “Is it fine and meaty enough to take us on its back and fly us east, across the sea, and put us down in some safe place?”

“She would have been, if I hadn’t clipped her wings. She lays five eggs a day.”

“And if I buy your obliging goose, where should I go with her? Where can we spend the night, within a day’s walking from here? Can you suggest a winter lodging place if we don’t make it for a sailing?”

She was not sure, but Margaret understood the goose man to say, “The Ark’s ahead, on the far side of the town. You could be there by this afternoon. There’s always work to be had in there and food for free, if you can settle for the rules and do your bit. Though there’re no eggs or geese in there, as far as I’ve been told. Best get one now.”

“Did you say ark ?” she asked. She didn’t recognize the word.

“The Blessed Ark. It’s where the Finger Baptists live. It’s safe, at least. You’ll not be touched.” The man laughed, as if he’d made an unusually clever joke. “No, that’s for sure. You’ll not be touched in there.”

“Do you advise me, then.”

“I’d say you’re best off going to the Ark and seeing winter out on this side of the water rather than risking a passage now, especially with the kid. The weather’s up and running, and it can only get worse. They say a ship departed yesterday at sunup but came back in again at sundown, full of green faces. Couldn’t keep their stomachs down in waves like that. The ship had just been tossed about. Too overloaded, see? Couldn’t even ride the tide. And far too small. They’d send a sieve to sea if they thought there was a profit in it. The bigger ships start to come again at first blossom. That’s four months yet. A goose — two geese! — is what you need to see you through.”

Margaret took the man’s advice but not his goose. She would make her way to the Ark. He’d said that it was safe, and after the horrors and abductions of the past few days, that was what she wanted most. She was relieved, in fact, to be advised that her departure from America would have to wait at least until the spring. She did not follow the obvious and quickest route through the middle of the town, though. She was certain that the Boses would be there, and they might have parked themselves at the town gate to see if their granddaughter showed up. Surely they would do that, at least. Margaret tried not to give them too much thought. She’d not abandoned them, after all. They were the deserters. The honor debt was theirs, not hers. She’d follow her instincts, even if they were selfish and undutiful, and try not to burden herself with doubt or guilt. She’d just spend a little extra time walking around the outer walls rather than passing through them, into the clutter of people and buildings.

At least the longer route was free of beggars and salesmen, and it took her past Tidewater’s wells and middens, where she found rotting scraps to wash and eat. A woman who leaves her home and family must end up as either a prostitute or a destitute. That’s what the Ferrytown widow who narrated doom-laden stories each evening had told the diners in the guesthouse on several occasions. Well, what was eating rotting scraps of food if not the habit of a destitute?

It took Margaret until the middle of the afternoon to reach Tidewater’s eastern gate and the road that led along the riverbank toward the sea. The birds were mostly dressed in white and either screamed like ghouls or scampered in the mud in synchronized groups, as if they had only one brain to share between them. The smell of water was overpowering, both energizing and nauseating. The wind was sharper than any wind she’d known before. It cut into her face and made her eyes water. It chapped her skin. It tugged at her scarf. It deafened her.

Margaret could sense the sea beyond the distant dunes, although now that it was close she could not imagine it. The largest stretch of water she had encountered so far had been the lake above Ferrytown. She could stand on its shore and easily see banks in all directions. But an undulating, salty lake without banks? That was not within her dreams. She could press ahead, of course, a half day’s walk, and see the ocean for herself. But her legs would not oblige. She knew that she had reached the point of ultimate tiredness. All she wanted now was rest. The ocean could wait. Every step she took was painful. Bella had not gotten any fatter — how could she? — but it felt as if she had. The baby, well breakfasted, for once, on eggs and milk and sleeping happily, felt as heavy as a stone. Margaret’s walk had become semiconscious and mechanical. It was as if just the smell of the ocean, or perhaps the crust of salt on her lips, were a sleep-inducing drug.