Fever 1793 (19 page)

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I smelled the cloth, but found no trace of Mother. Where was she? Was she alive? I had so much to tell her, so much to talk about. I would have traded anything to hear her swift footsteps across the floor. I laid my head on the kitchen table.

As soon as I fell asleep, Eliza nudged my shoulder. "Wake up," she said.

I sprang to my feet and followed her into the front room. "How are they?" I asked.

Eliza opened Robert's eyelids and then William's. Their eyes were bloodshot and yellow-stained.

"They are full of the pestilence," she said grimly. "Nell seems to be faring better, but there is no question she has it too." She pressed her lips together to hold back the tears.

"It will be fine, Eliza. Think of all the people we've cared for. I survived this, Joseph survived, and so did thousands of others. We can do this. I know exactly what you're going to tell me to do. Stoke the fire and prepare to wash more dirty sheets."

Caring for the children was harder than caring for any other patients we had visited. Just as Robert fell asleep, William would wake crying. As soon as he was made comfortable enough to drift off, Robert would stiffen and jolt awake with a piercing scream. Nell didn't recognize me. She woke from terrible dreams and looked around the room blindly, crying for her mother.

Night melted into day. Day surrendered to night.

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The small bodies gave off heat like an iron stove no matter what we used to bring down the fever. I hauled up bucket after bucket of cold well water until the rope blistered my hands and the blisters burst and bled. The floor beneath the mattress was a pool of water. We used up all the linens in the house, which I rinsed in vinegar and hung outside to dry.

Eliza fashioned a fan that kept the bugs off the children and cooled them a bit, but it was so large and heavy that we could only wave it for a few minutes at a time. But as soon as we lay the fan down, they would whimper and cry.

The food Mother Smith had hastily packed soon ran low, along with the cask of vinegar that Eliza had brought with us. I kept one eye on the window, watching for a Society member carrying bread or dried meat for them. Eliza was more concerned about the dwindling supply of medicines, the mercury and calomel. She dosed the boys regularly and gently to purge the putrid bile from their bodies, but it seemed to have little effect. The twins cried in pain, in confusion, in terror. It was impossible to give Nell any medicine. We tried forcing it down her mouth, but it came right back up at us. It was all we could do to keep water in her stomach.

On the fourth day-no, it must have been the fifthan ominous silence pressed in on the room as the fever penetrated deeper. The boys turned frail, their skin ashen and their cheeks sinking, as their bodies burned up under

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the infection. They didn't have the strength to suck their thumbs. Eliza moved William closer to Robert so they could draw some comfort from each other. Nell lay on her back, her breath coming in shallow pants.

I set the fan on the floor. I had lost track of when I last ate or slept. Eliza picked it up and waved it over the tiny bodies until her arms shook with the effort. She set the fan on the foot of the mattress.

"I think we should find a doctor," Eliza said. "They should be bled."

"No, Eliza, don't bleed them. It will kill them for sure. It won't work."

"I don't like the thought of cutting them either, but it may be our only hope. Dr. Rush recommends it; he was bled himself when he was ill."

"But the French doctors say bleeding kills people. Think of all the patients you've seen who died after the doctors bled them. They didn't bleed me and I'm alive. Don't do it, Eliza."

Eliza stared into the light of the sputtering candle. "They took twenty ounces of blood from Joseph, and he will live for years."

"If Joseph is alive, it is in spite of the bleeding, not because of it." I grabbed Eliza's hands. "Think of it. Dr. Rush has seen two or three epidemics in his life. The French doctors came from the West Indies, where they treat yellow fever every year. Surely their experience is more valuable."

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Eliza pulled a hand away and stroked Williams arm.

"I don't know what else to do," she whispered. "I promised their mother I wouldn't let them die."

"Trust me. Please," I pleaded. "They'll survive, I know they will. But if we bleed them, we'll deliver them to the grave. We can't cut them, Eliza."

She looked up at me, struggling with her doubts.

"Trust me," I said firmly.

Eliza nodded. "All right. No bleeding."

Robert woke with a shriek that ended all discussion. A few minutes later William woke, vomiting blood and crying. Nell startled and cried weakly. We worked frantically drawing water, washing the burning bodies, and trying every herb, tea, and poultice to break the fever and banish the infection.

The candle burned down to a puddle of wax, then a second and a third. In the stillest hour of the night, the children finally slept, their thin chests barely rising and falling. Eliza sat next to their bed, laid her head on the mattress, and fell asleep instantly. I picked up the bucket to fetch more water in preparation for the next crisis.

I hooked the handle of the bucket onto the rope and let it down into the well. I tried to watch its progress, but it was soon swallowed up in the darkness.

My eyes closed. It was never going to stop. We would suffer endlessly, with no time to rest, no time to sleep.

The thick air clouded my head. The coffeehouse was

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silent. The bucket, I thought. I have to bring up the bucket.

I reached for the crank handle. It slipped from my hand as I turned it, and I stumbled backward. I tried again, wrapping both hands around the handle and knitting my fingers together.

The crank stiffened as if it were attached to a mill stone instead of a wooden bucket. I searched for strength somewhere, someplace inside me that had not been starved or fever-burned or beaten or afraid. The crank turned once. Twice. Each turn of the crank took a year of effort, summer, spring, fall and winter, and my tears splashed into the dust as the bucket climbed out of the earth. I pulled it to the side of the well.

Shadows danced into the garden from the candlelight. I followed the jumping light into the garden, where dry stalks pointed to the skies like scrawny fingers, and rotted, wormy vegetables sank into the cracks of the parched soil. We were trapped in a night without end.

I shook my head to clear it of the visions rolling across my mind. Where was the little girl who planted the bean seeds? Where were Mother and Grandfather and the dead mouse that flew out the window a hundred-a thousand-years ago? And Blanchard s yellow silk balloon that tugged against its ropes, hungry to escape the confines of the prison yard. What became of it all?

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My eyes closed. I could see that clear January morning, the moment of release when the balloon floated above the rooftops. Thousands of voices cheered and screamed with delight. Nathaniel grasped my hand and we watched as the gold sphere ferried Monsieur Blanchard and his little black dog away on the wind. I thought all things were possible in heaven and on earth that day.

A whisper of wind passed by from the north. It lifted the hair off my face and rattled the squash vines. I shivered. Only the soles of my feet were warm, heated by dirt that had absorbed the sun all day. So tired. I laid down between the rows and rested my head on the ground.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

October 23th, 1793

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think there is now that kind of weather fermenting which we so much want and has been so often wished for.

-Letter of John Walsh, clerk Philadelphia, 1793

Something rough lapped at my cheek. I turned away with a groan.

It followed and rubbed again, like a damp piece of burlap. I pushed it away and came up with a handful of orange fur.

"Silas, go away. Let me sleep. I haven't slept for years."

Silas jumped on me and kneaded with his front paws. The weight on my empty stomach hurt too much. I sat up, my head spinning. My eyes opened slowly, the lashes sticking together. I blinked.

An early winter quill had etched an icy pattern over the garden. My skirt looked as if it had been dusted with

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fine white flour. I shivered. I was cold. Truly cold, not cold with a fever or grippe. I sneezed and bent to look closely at the white veil that lay over the weeds.

Frost.

"I'm dreaming," I told Silas. The cat ignored me and pounced on a sluggish beetle that lumbered under a leaf. "Starving men dream of food. I dream of frost." I rubbed my eyes and pushed myself to my feet. My back creaked as I rolled my shoulders. I breathed deeply. The cold air chilled my nose and crackled in my lungs.

The fetid stench that had hung over the city for weeks was gone, replaced with brittle, pure air.

I looked around the garden. No insects hovered over the dying plants or the well. The entire yard sparkled with diamonds of frost that quickly melted into millions of drops of water with a gentle kiss of the sun.

Frost.

This was no dream.

"Eliza!! Eliza!!"

Eliza stumbled out onto the porch, alarmed and confused.

"Look, Eliza," I cried. "It's frost! The first frost! The end of the fever!"

She bent down to touch the pale crystals, then rubbed her cold fingertips over her lips.

"Lord have mercy," she whispered. "We made it." She turned to me.

"We made it!"

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We flung our arms around each other and jumped up and down, laughing for joy.

"Wait," Eliza said suddenly as she pulled away. "The children. We should bring them out here-let them breathe in the clean air."

"Do you think that's wise? Won't they be chilled?"

"All the work we've done to cool them down and you're worried they might catch a chill? It's just what they need."

The bone-grinding fatigue and numbing hunger of the past weeks evaporated as we carried Grandfather's mattress down from the bedchamber and set it in the middle of the yard. Nell, Robert, and William fussed when they were brought outside, but they sat up enough to drink warm water sweetened with the last of the molasses, then fell asleep as their skin cooled gentry.

A messenger from Joseph arrived at midday bearing fresh eggs, pumpkins, three kinds of bread, and a joint of beef. Farmers had come back into town following the frost, and their prices dropped as quickly as the temperature. The messenger cautioned us to stay away from the center of town for another week. There were sure to be new fever cases until summer's grip was well and truly broken.

Eliza told me to eat slowly or I would be sick again. For a change, I listened to her. We fed the children small bits of meat and warm cider. Eliza and I shared a loaf of

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bread at the kitchen table. Never had such a plain meal brought such satisfaction.

When the children fell asleep after the meal, I took a nap even though it was the middle of the afternoon. I woke to the sound of heavy furniture being dragged across the floor.

"Eliza, what in the name of heaven?"

Eliza looked up. She had pushed the chest of drawers half the distance to the kitchen.

"I've been watching the signs. The way the birch leaves flip in the breeze, the shape of the clouds, and the color of the sun now that it's setting. I predict another frost tonight. We need to get all the furniture outside and expose it to the cold. It's the only way to destroy the pestilence. Come and help me with this chest."

I thought it was a ridiculous notion, but I helped her carry the furniture we could handle outside. The children watched us as if it were completely normal to set furniture outside. Their fevers were broken and their stomachs full. They slept for hours, woke for food, then went back to sleep.

Joseph himself arrived the next morning with the news that the market had reopened. The twins and Nell were resting on the mattress under the cherry tree when he strode across the yard and took all three in his arms. Eliza and I let our tears fall without shame.

Joseph opened the small sack he carried. He took out tops for the boys and a small doll for Nell, toys he had

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made for them by himself. As the children tried to spin the tops on the lumpy mattress, Joseph joined us on the porch.

He took both Eliza's hands and mine and held them in his. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for giving me back my boys."

"Balderdash," I said. "Nothing could keep those rapscallions down for long."

"Pour yourself some cider and sit with us," said Eliza.

We sat down comfortably and watched the children play. I poured a second mug of cider.

"You'll hear from your mother soon, I wager," Joseph said.

Eliza shot her brother a warning look, but he ignored it.

"If I were you, I'd head down to the market," he continued. "That's where all the best gossips in town have gathered."

I glanced at Eliza. "May I go?"

"You don't need my permission," Eliza said.

She was right. I could choose for myself.

The market seemed like a festival, its stalls overflowing with food and rejoicing. It was noisier than ever before, talk, talk, talk, friends sharing the news, overblown laughter, strong-lunged farmers bellowing their wares. A welcome wave of noise and good cheer.

I drifted from stall to stall, eavesdropping on good

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