Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

“Count yourself lucky,” one of the women had commented that evening. “A man can itch in many places.”

There was no escaping the evening sermons, mostly delivered by a Baptist aspirant while all the families were eating. Metals were the cause of weaponry and avarice: “Think on iron, think on gold.” Metals were invaders in a world otherwise designed from fire, air, water, earth, and stone, all of which were more or less compressed versions of each other and indestructible; “Metal has brought death into the world. Rust and fire are God’s reply.” Sometimes the emigrants, their mouths oily with food and scarcely able to restrain their laughter, were required to repeat some favorite Baptist lines out loud. The diners were always happy to join in, though hardly any of them truly felt that tins and sins were quite the twins that the Baptist songs made them out to be.

Otherwise, Margaret’s life in the Ark was without problems and without external incident. The trickle of new arrivals — which, luckily, did not include any Boses — stopped as the snow thickened and the cold intensified. The world beyond the palisades became a memory of hardship and sore feet. She did her best not to dwell on Franklin or her family in Ferrytown. The devotees, pilgrims, and disciples who had arrived during the fall kept to themselves in the evenings, preferring to concentrate on their rites and religious ambitions rather than consort with people who were less hostile to the old ways of America than piety and reason demanded. Once in a while a group of devotees, expressionless as usual and wearing their sorters’ gloves, disturbed the domestic calm of the sleeping huts by enforcing an unexpected search for hidden jewelry or any other trace of metal. A nonobservant mason brought in from Tidewater during the summer because his carving skills were unrivaled was rumored to have hidden shards of metal between the tower walls to undermine its sanctity. The devotees had not found any evidence of that, but their confidence had been undermined. So they took no chances with the integrity of their new building. If anyone was caught with as much as a half nail or a splinter of tin, his or her whole family was expelled at once, no matter whether it was the day or night or in the middle of a storm. The Ark would not abide so much as a fleck of metal.

Margaret had nothing to fear from these occasional disruptions. She had no possessions that might harbor contraband. She did not care about the tower. She was without blemish and, in their eyes at least, lived a blameless life, hoping only to pass unnoticed or, at most, to be regarded as an attentive mother. She exchanged her token for food each day and earned it back by her attendance at the well. She slept and ate and grew more confident.

At mealtimes, when they could be stared at, the Finger Baptists were a source of great amusement among the younger emigrants, including Margaret. Afterward, gathered around the candles in the privacy of the sleeping shed, their faces animated by the warmth and light, the women of Margaret’s hut could laugh and joke at will and then exchange their hopes and ambitions for the coming spring.

In some respects, Margaret had never been happier. Of course, her happiness was always haunted by the all-too-recent and all-too-memorable loss of her family, her hometown, and her only man. The very thought of them was crippling. Nevertheless, Franklin had become the perfect husband and father in her imagination and in the stories that she told to her companions. He was her lover and her friend. He was the father of Jackie. She would never look at another man until she was certain he was dead. She could not shake off entirely the receding but nagging shame and guilt she felt for her abduction of the child. But for once she was part of a community that had not known her as a girl, that did not count her coloring as unfortunate, and that could not control the way she lived her life or how she raised her daughter. She was a woman with status, a mother, a wife with a lost husband, a good friend whose wit was appreciated in the hut. Here was a warmth and neighborliness that she had never encountered in Ferrytown, where the only common interests at times seemed to be avarice, jealousy, and competition. In the Ark, among her shed companions, there was the common interest of strangers sharing their directions and their hopes.

Over the months both Jackie and the half-completed tower grew higher and more ornate. The Finger Baptists hoped to move into the lower levels when the spring and a fresh intake of both pilgrims and travelers arrived. Everybody among the emigrants dreamed of walking out through the double gates to see a sail ship in the estuary. Another month would see them free again. A month was nothing to endure. Then America could be a nightmare left behind. Even Margaret began to believe that her best future — their best future — would be beyond the ocean, that taking to the ships would not be cowardly. That dream she’d had, up in the forest on the night when she had lost her way, that dream of being once again a safe and ancient girl in her soddy at the top of Butter Hill, had been a delusion. Yes, happiness was in the east. Wasn’t that what everyone believed?

As the final days of winter passed and the moon, losing its hold, retreated back toward midnight, Margaret settled to the thought of finding passage in a ship along with her new friends. It was a comfort, in a way, to have a shared plan. She was distressed less and less by thoughts of Andrew and Melody and Acton, their son, or by recollections of her life and family in Ferrytown. Even Franklin, her Pigeon, became more remote to her, despite the many occasions when her version of him as a father and a husband was offered to the women in the Ark or the many times she dreamed of their reunion. In fact, one morning when she was still exhausted from a restless night of Jackie’s teething, she realized she could not remember many details of his face, and she could scarcely recall his family name. It wasn’t Lombard, and it wasn’t Lopate. She was relieved when, finally, the name was retrieved. Lopez, that was it! Franklin Lopez from the plains. How could she be so ready to forget that part of him, to let him slip away? That was troubling. It was as if the winter in the Ark had enriched her and robbed her at the same time.

The first truly warm day came when snow was still on the ground and the earth was hard. Spring’s breath was in the air, crying green. Margaret had checked her pot of mint for signs of life, but there were none as yet. She was enjoying the sunshine at her duty spot beside the well and dozing, despite the usual hammering of carpenters and masons at the tower and the not-so-usual cries and hammering at the outer gates of the Ark.

Jackie, now into her second year, was playing push-and-pull with another toddler. It was she who first spotted the man dismounting from a horse and running across the courtyard from the entry gate toward the tower works, followed twenty paces behind by a gang of thirty or so, all armed with swords and pikes. Metal swords and pikes, some already wet with Baptist blood. But it was not their shining blades or brass-encrusted shields or the clanking of their buckles and their armor that most alerted Jackie. It was the first man’s clothes. A pinto coat like his, in such a striking pattern, was bound to catch a child’s eye. She called out, not a word exactly, and pointed at the man, clearly amused by something. For an instant Margaret, with her poor eyesight, mistook him for Franklin. She half got up. She half cried out. But then she saw how short he was, his bandy legs, his many layers, the colored ribbons tying back his beard. She recognized his face.

Franklin Lopez and his forty or so fellows in the labor gang had arrived outside the Ark soon after dawn and set to work at once. They were almost eager for the exertion. Work was their one protection against the cold, the hunger, and the boredom of captivity. The masters had kept their vassals lightly clothed and underfed, but the laborers had been told that this day’s work, if it was as richly productive as was hoped, might be rewarded with an evening meal and — possibly — brief access to a fire.