Never Call It Love (43 page)

She
got up and went into the lean-to, where the horses, breath steaming in the
frigid air, stood in their stalls. With a familiar bitterness she reflected
that it was lucky for those animals that the
voyageurs
hadn't offered
Patrick money for field corn. Otherwise the horses might have starved by now.
Then she reflected grimly that one of them might soon be dead anyway. Important
as they were to a family trying to carve a living out of the wilderness, she
would not hesitate, if driven to it, to feed horse-meat broth to her child.

She
took a small handful of corn from the dwindling supply in the barrel. Back in
the house, she dropped the
corn on the table, and then with a string she found
in a drawer of the homemade pine cupboard she fashioned a small noose with a
slip knot. As she approached the window, the dove's shadow lifted with a whir
of wings and disappeared. But the poor thing would be back, she was sure, as
soon as it spied the com.

She
unhooked the deerskin. The air that swept in was only a bit colder than that
already in the house. She scattered corn on the icy layer of snow, laid the
snare. One hand holding the end of the string, she flattened herself against
the wall at one side of the window and waited, heart pounding.

After
several minutes the pretty creature landed on the far corner of the sill. For a
few seconds, with the iridescent feathers on its neck changing from green to
purple and then back again, it turned its head from side to side, looking at
her from round brown eyes. Apparently it decided that she, standing motionless
and with held breath, was no threat. Or perhaps hunger had made the bird
reckless. Anyway, it began to peck at the corn, moving along the icy surface on
coral feet.

Tensely,
Elizabeth waited. The dove was approaching the snare. It skirted the far side
of the string's loop, swallowed two more grains of corn. Then it turned back
and began to search for any grains it had missed____

Now!
She jerked the string, closing the snare around one fragile leg, and drew the
wildly fluttering bird into the room. Except for verminous insects, she had
never killed a living thing. For a moment, as she looked down at the struggling
creature, she thought that she could not go through with it. Then she seized
the bird, first with her left hand and then her right, and wrung the slender
neck.

As
she dropped the bird to the floor, she realized that for an instant she had
wished it was Patrick's neck she held between her hands.

When
the broth was ready, she awoke Caroline, and
then carried a steaming bowl over to
the bed. "Just see what Mama has for you!"

The
child stared dull-eyed at the broth, the very smell of which made Elizabeth's
mouth water. Caroline took a sip from the spoon her mother held for her and
then turned her head away. "No!"

Fear
squeezed Elizabeth's heart. Why should a half-starved child not want to eat?
She spoke coaxingly, but still Caroline, shaking her head, kept her pale mouth
closed. "Then go back to sleep, darling," Elizabeth said cheerfully.
"I'm sure you'll want this later." Too frightened now to feel hungry
herself, she poured the broth back into the kettle.

After
darkness fell, Caroline did take a few teaspoons of broth. Less worried now,
Elizabeth too consumed a little of the precious liquid. In the morning, she
would add more water to the broth and the fragments of dove meat at the bottom
of the pot. Combined with onions and potatoes, it would make a nourishing stew
that might suffice them for at least two more days. She sat beside the small
cooking fire until it died, and then went to bed.

Sometime
in the night, a soft plopping sound awoke her. Rain? No, it was too intermittent
for that. Then, becoming aware that the air in the room was much warmer, she
realized the significance of the sound. Thaw! Icicles that hung from the eaves
were dripping onto the snow.

Caroline,
huddled against her mother's back, gave a dry little cough. So that was it,
Elizabeth thought. She's coming down with a cold. Cautiously, so as not to
waken the child, Elizabeth turned in the bed and lightly touched her daughter's
face. No fever. Her cold must be a slight one. She would be all right, especially
if the warmer weather held. Elizabeth went back to sleep.

In
the morning she awoke to a dripping world. When she incautiously opened the
front door, several inches of slush flooded in. She slammed the door shut, went
to the
window that faced the clearing, and unhooked the deerskin. Bright sunlight,
beating down on the whiteness, dazzled her eyes. The snow in the clearing was
melting. It was no longer a solid sheet of white, but marked by darker little
rivulets of water, all hurrying toward the snowy woods and the river beyond.
Already she could see a dark stain about a quarter of a foot high, marking
where the snow had melted, on the Jessups' door opposite, and on the door of
Colin's little house.

The
deerskin covering on one of the MacPhersons' windows gave way to Duncan
MacPherson's red head. "You all right over there?"

"Yes,
except that I think Caroline has a cold."

"So
have both the twins. But we'll all be fine, now that it's getting toward
spring."

Spring.
Last night spring had seemed centuries away. "I lost track. What is the
date?"

"March
eighth. Hold on, Mrs. Stanford. If this weather keeps up, we'll start shoveling
paths a couple of days from now."

His
head withdrew. As Elizabeth refastened her own window covering, she heard
Caroline cough twice. She pushed back the fear the sound brought her. Caroline
would be all right. Even though Patrick had left them to withstand this
terrible winter alone, they would survive, now that it was March, now that
spring was almost here.

The
warm weather held, weather that seemed almost tropical compared to what had
gone before. By nightfall no icicles dangled from the eaves. The next day
dawned even warmer. Elizabeth knew that soon her long isolation would be ended.
But by then she could take little joy in the warm sunlight beating down,
because Caroline was worse, much worse. The small face was no longer pale, but
unhealthily flushed and hot to the touch. She did not turn aside from the
spoonful of broth held to her lips, but merely stared at it, eyes dull, mouth closed.

That
night, unable to sleep, Elizabeth sat at the bedside, listening with terror to
Caroline's coughs, and to her breathing which had taken on a raspy sound. It
was not until exhaustion overcame her that she undressed and got into bed
beside the fevered child.

The
welcome sound of scraping shovels awoke her in the dim morning light. She
looked at Caroline. The small face was still flushed, and the rasp in her
breathing seemed more pronounced. Elizabeth got out of bed, moved swiftly to
the front window, unhooked the deerskin. Duncan MacPherson was out there,
shoveling aside the few feet of slushy snow that remained between his house and
her own. Beyond him she could see Joe Thompson, clearing a last stretch of path
between his house and the MacPhersons'.

As
soon as she was dressed, she snatched her shawl down from its hook, flung it
over her head, and stepped out into the icy slush. "Caroline is
sick," she said as she hurried past the Scot. "I've got to see Mrs.
Thompson...."

It
was Colin who opened the Thompsons' door to her knock. He stood there smiling,
his face pale after so many weeks indoors, his left hand resting on the crook
of an ancient-looking blackthorn cane. "Elizabeth! I was going to come to
your house the moment the path was clear."

She
managed to return his smile. "It's good to see you standing. Is your
foot...?"

"It's
almost entirely healed. In a couple of weeks I should be able to take to the
fields again."

Mrs.
Thompson came hurrying toward them, drying her hands on her apron. Her gaze
searched Elizabeth's face. "Child! What is it?"

"It's
Caroline." Terror tightened her throat. "She... she..."

"I'll
see her," the older woman said, and reached for her shawl.

Moments
later, seated beside the flushed child, Mrs. Thompson said, "It's a lung
congestion."

"What
will...?" Elizabeth could not finish the sentence.

"I'll
do my best for her. First we must get her back into the crib. We'll put a sheet
over it to form a tent, and then have her breathe in steam from a croup kettle.
And we will get some food down her, if we can. She must be terribly
undernourished."

Undernourished,
Elizabeth thought bitterly. Her child was not just undernourished, but
three-quarters starved. And all because a fanatical man cared more for his
fellow fanatics than for his wife, or even his own child.

A
shrill chorus of tiny voices rose from a pond somewhere in the dark woods, a
nighttime chorus that swelled and faded, swelled and faded, like the beating of
a gigantic pulse. Elizabeth, seated at one side of Caroline's crib, was only
vaguely aware of the spring peepers, those small heralds of a new season's
burgeoning life. It was death that held all her attention, the death hovering
in this silent room.

Mrs.
Thompson, seated on the other side of the crib, had said more than an hour ago,
"I think the crisis is near. If she lives through the night..."

Elizabeth
did not remember whether she or the other woman had spoken since then. During
this past week—a week of little sleep, of days and nights blurring together,
of endless
hours spent hanging over Caroline's crib—her memory had grown vague, so that
she could not recall whether three or four days had passed since Caroline had
not only taken a little beef broth but also, with a spark of recognition in her
glazed brown eyes, had said, "Mommy?"

Now
it seemed hard to believe that the suffering scrap of humanity there in the
crib so recently had been strong enough to speak. Elizabeth's gaze kept moving
from the small reddened face, with the whites of rolled-back eyes showing
between barely opened lids, to the laboring little chest. For about forty-eight
hours—or was it longer than that?—she'd had the feeling that it was only her
own will that kept her child's tiny chest rising and falling.

Someone
knocked. Elizabeth knew it must be one of the women settlers calling to ask
about Caroline, and to hand in a bowl of soup or other food. Feeling stiff,
almost old, she crossed the room and opened the door.

Patrick
stood there, a gaunt-looking Patrick, his face covered with several days'
growth of beard. She stared at him, not sure but what he was a phantom conjured
up by her tormented mind.

After
a moment he smiled and said, "Well, Elizabeth, aren't you going to let me
in?"

At
the sound of his voice, she knew that he was real. And she knew how much she
hated him.

Oh,
before this she had felt what she thought was hatred. The night he left her
violated and bleeding in that lonely house north of London. The morning she had
looked down at her brother's murdered body sprawled on the beach. But this was
really hatred, this blackness boiling up inside her until she could taste it in
her mouth.

She
put her hand against the door frame, barring his way with her arm. She felt her
lips stretch into the parody of a smile.

"Tell
me, Patrick, did you let your friends know where to find all those arms?"

He
said, his eyes puzzled, "It was too late. The English had found the last
of them almost a year ago. In god's name, Elizabeth, why are you—?"

"Well,
Patrick, don't feel too bad about being too late. At least you're not too late
here. You're in time to watch your child die."

He
seemed to turn to stone for a moment, face expressionless except for the
stunned horror in his dark eyes. Then he lunged forward, breaking her grasp on
the door frame, and moved past her into the room. She seized his arm with both
her hands. "Yes, she's dying." Her voice was soft and thick now.
"You killed her. You left us alone, without enough food, enough
firewood..."

He
broke free of her grasp and strode over to the crib. Still seated beside it,
Mrs. Thompson neither moved nor spoke, but just kept her gaze on the tall man's
face. After a moment, Elizabeth went over to stand beside her husband.

The
only sound now was the child's labored breath, oddly mingled with the tiny
frog's pulsating hymn to spring and new life. As the three adults stared down
into the crib, the small chest became motionless for two seconds, three,
four...

My
baby's dead, Elizabeth thought, and felt a silent scream of agony well up
inside her.

The
small chest lifted, drawing air into itself. Patrick made a hoarse, strangled
sound. Then he strode across the room and went out into the night.

Elizabeth
stayed there, hands gripping the crib's railing, gaze fixed on Caroline's face.
Then, unable to bear her torment standing still, she began to pace up and down.
After a while Mrs. Thompson said quietly, "He probably went to his
brother's."

Only
half-comprehending, Elizabeth paused and looked
at the older woman. "He
must have tried to get back, and found the road and all the trails blocked with
snow," Mrs. Thompson went on in that quiet voice. "Anyway, no matter
how thoughtless and selfish he was, he is your man. He will still be, no matter
what happens to..."