Jim Crace - The Pesthouse

The second impulse held her by the ankles for the moment. That coat was Franklin in a way, or at least it might be a route to him. Just that glimpse of goatskin brought Margaret’s decent, blushing friend alive for her after the months of forgetting. She had lightning images of him, his shoulders working between the shafts of the barrow, his big frame at the Pesthouse door, drenching her in shadow, his fingers between her toes. Franklin Lopez, tall and tender, taking care of her. Franklin Lopez reaching over with his outsized hand to tear the blue scarf from her head. She ought to follow the coat. Her heart demanded it. She was in debt to him. She ought at least to beg the small man for word of Franklin’s whereabouts, if he was still alive enough for whereabouts. She ought to drag the coat off that impostor’s back and press the goatskin to her nose for any trace of her lost and never lover. The word was lover , yes, the lover she had never even kissed, and never would unless she called out to the coat. This might be her only opportunity for getting close to him again.

But this was just a passing impulse. Margaret was wise enough to shake it off. Her first duty was to Jackie. She did what any mother would. She put the child before the man and ran, with Jackie struggling under her arm, toward the raiders’ loose horses and the exit from the Ark.

As soon as they were among the animals, they were hidden from sight and safe for a moment. Margaret was a town girl, and although her family had always owned a burden mare, she was still a little nervous of horses in a group, their nipping teeth, their kicks. The last time she had ridden had been that day when she’d been taken up to the Pesthouse, almost unconscious with fever, by her grandfather. But now she recognized her opportunity. As anybody knows, making an escape by horse is nearly always preferable to making an escape on foot. The horse provides the speed and the distance and is also saddled with the tiredness. Only a sailboat is faster than a horse and then only when the wind is in a helpful mood.

Margaret shielded Jackie from the horses’ teeth and hoofs and pushed her way through the animals to one of the smaller mounts at the back of the group. It was equipped for travel, with a heavy striped blanket for a saddle and leather panniers. She tugged it by its reins. It came readily. She wouldn’t mount it yet. She wanted first to get outside, beyond the Ark’s outer gate. Then she would shelter under the high palisade and consider her options.

The next few moments would be difficult. If anyone was in the small outer courtyard between the two gates, she could not escape unnoticed. Perhaps she could use the horse as a shield, or as an excuse. “I was told to take this horse outside,” she could say. “The small man with the patterned coat said I should.” But no one was there to challenge her. She reached the Ark’s great timber gate. And it was unattended, with just a heavy block of sunshine wedging it open.

They went outside, the three of them, the horse, the woman, and the girl, into the thin warmth of the morning. There was a breeze, a shell-blue sky, the earthy smell of winter melting, and a sound that she hadn’t heard for months, the clatter of metal tools. Had she closed her eyes, she could have imagined she was back in Ferrytown, with everything and everyone well. But still she did not dare to mount the horse. To sit on it was to declare that she had stolen it, and stealing a horse was an act that would earn no mercy. While she was leading it, she could at least maintain the lie that she was being helpful, doing what she was told, making a mistake, that she was muddled, that she had found the horse roaming free — yes, that was best — and was only looking for its master in the hope of getting a reward. She even smiled to herself, relieved to have found a story that might save her, or at least win her time.

There was still no one around to challenge her. She walked between the horse and the timbers of the palisade, with Jackie now growing heavy and starting to snivel in the crook of her arm. The girl reached out and touched the horse’s flank, more baffled by its size than scared. “Horse, horse, horse,” her ma said, a new word for the child, but it was too strange a word and too unmuscular for Jackie to attempt the sound.

The wind intensified as they came out into the open ground beyond the western corner of the Ark, with its high views along the estuary toward the roofs and curling smoke of Tidewater. Now Margaret could hear the metal tools distinctly, but at first her eyesight was too poor and her face was too beset by the wind to comprehend the scene before her in any detail. She could see three mounted horsemen, turned away from her and looking out across the flat approaches to the Ark. Beyond the horsemen, if she screwed up her eyes, she could make out the trenches that she had noticed on her way in the previous fall. The invalid chair that was used to transport the Helpless Gentlemen was lying on its side. She could make out the flash of white tape and what had to be the bodies of disciples. Just as she’d expected when, earlier, she’d seen the bloody swords and pikes.

She moved to the far side of the horse, out of sight and out of the wind, and hurried on, counting away the moments beneath her breath. Fifty to be past the rustlers. One hundred to be relatively safe. Two hundred to be out of sight and out of harm’s way. But something, some half-digested shape, had lodged itself inside her head. She ducked beneath her horse’s reins, still keeping her body and Jackie out of sight, and peered again at what was going on among the trenches. Again she saw the horsemen, still with their backs turned to her. Again she saw the upturned chair and the dark outline of fallen bodies. But now, for the first time, she spotted the gang of men on their hands and knees in the earth, some almost buried, or so it seemed, in the diggings. There was nothing there to give her pause, at least not until one of the horsemen blew for attention on an elk horn and half a dozen of the men stood up and looked in his direction. A tall man was among them, thinner than the one Margaret remembered but otherwise just his shape. She could not see his face in any detail, but the beard was right, a little longer possibly, but its jut was reminiscent of Franklin’s beard. “No, surely not,” she said out loud. Surely it couldn’t be him. She understood her hopes were playing tricks on her. They would make her recognize her Franklin in any man of any height above the average. She should not fool herself. That one sight of the piebald coat had robbed her of her reason, and would rob her of her life and liberty if she stayed too long. She had to get away before one of the horsemen turned around on his mount, saw her there, and recognized his comrade’s horse from its color and its tack.

She pulled the distinctive blanket from underneath the horse’s saddle strap and bunched it up to hide it from the riders, some of whom had matching cloths. She started trotting the animal like a trainer in a corral, with her head close to its and their legs moving in unison. Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven…In moments they would be relatively safe. Then she heard a sound she half recognized and could not ignore. A laugh. A sudden donkey laugh, but from a man. She looked toward it. No tricks of hope. This time she truly found the laughter’s shape familiar. It seemed to buckle his whole body. His hands were shaking and his head was down. Franklin’s signature.

Margaret knew at once that she’d been blessed. It was a wonder that their paths had crossed again in such a vast and wayward land. It was as well a miracle that Franklin should have laughed at all, for what was there for anyone to laugh at on such a day of slaughter? Without his laugh she would have hurried on with Jackie to Tidewater and been none the wiser. She stepped out of the shadow of her horse and raised her hand to show herself to Franklin.