The Pesthouse (26 page)

The ocean had changed entirely by the time Margaret returned to the overhang with Jackie and Franklin. The rising light had carted off the lead and left its sheeny residues of blues and greens. The water seemed to have withdrawn, leaving a deeper beach with fringes of green-black weed, and there were yellow banks of sand offshore that she had not noticed previously.

'What do you make of it?' she asked. 'It's frightening, it's beautiful...'

Franklin shook his head and laughed, that laugh again, those hands, those dipping knees. 'It isn't frightening from here,' he said. 'But heaven's glory, see the size of it. Who's to say how long you'd need on board a ship before you reached the other bank. All day, I'd say—'

'All month, and then another month. That's what I heard in Ferrytown.'

'Two months?'

'Can you see anything? I've not the eyesight to be sure. Can you see any specks of land?'

They put their hands up to their brows and peered into the sunrise. No, nothing. There was nothing there.

THESE OFF-TRACK CABINS were the perfect place to camp for a few days, and hide from any search parties, though only the smokeshop — too cluttered and smelly for sleeping — was built to withstand the cold or snub the worst of the wind. The wooden buildings were not intended to be lived in. They were just storage sheds, made from a framework of heavy poles with their stumps embedded in the earth and banked on the windward side with sand. The roof was rushes secured by bags of hardened sand hauled up from the beach.

Franklin guessed correctly from the long-dead embers in the grates, the poor condition of the water in the trough, and the bone-dry state of the nets and fishing gear stored there, that visitors were rare and seasonal. The smokeshop was probably worked only once a year, in the fall, when what could not be eaten or sold in the summer was invested in the smoke for the leaner months.

A daylight search of the buildings resulted in a disappointing haul of casks and creels, boxes and baskets, fish traps and eel pots, all smelling of the sea. There was a chest of salt, rock hard and encrusted with an orange fungus, and some good lengths of rope with which they could loose tether the horses in the lee of the buildings and let them graze unhindered, though out of sight of any passers-by.

The only food that they could find — to their alarm — was a flagon of sugar liquor that smelled too dangerous to drink and some pressed fish oil that might be good for cooking or for burning in a lamp if only they could conjure up some fire. Outside the smokeshop, at its back, was a stand of logs, used for smoking and curing, and a reeking pile of glossy boulders, evidently employed as weights to press oil, brine and blood from casks of salted fish.

It was Margaret who spotted the chest resting on the roof beams of the smokeshop. It was heavy to lift down, but it was only a fisherman's tool kit. Inside were a gutting knife, a fillet blade, fire rakes, a mallet and a skillet that must have been ten ages old, as well as implements they could not recognize. Few of these things could be of any use to them. There was no fire stone or anything that would provide an easy spark.

But there was a leather container, not quite a pouch, not quite a box, and old enough to have been machine-tooled. There was wording on the lid, a looping example of the forgotten text that had survived on so many relics of the old country and that for some reason always begged to be touched. Both Margaret and Franklin ran their forefingers over it as tradition required, feeling its embossment but sensing no new wisdom. Inside, and almost bonded to the damp leather, was a useful spy appliance that the fishermen must have used for generations, watching boats or looking out for shoals. It had two eye holes, protected by circles of degraded rubber, and a pair of glass disks set into each end. Its twin barrels, like two black bottles, were connected by a wheel that would not turn and a stiff hinge fashioned out of some material too unnatural and perfect for anybody to make or find anymore.

Franklin had seen something similar before. His uncle Meredith had owned an appliance like it. He used to claim it was a thousand years old already, older than America. His appliance was longer and had just a single barrel. A spy pipe, it was called. It was meant for only one eye at a time. Hold it properly — if Meredith would let you — and it could rush the world closer, make it bigger but fitfully distorted like an amberwing reflected in a pond. Franklin could remember looking through it at his brother, Jackson, working in the top field of their land and having no idea, when he stopped to piss and shake himself, that he was being seen and snickered at.

Franklin took the apparatus to the water trough and cleaned the windows of the spy pipes with the dampened edge of his shirt. He greased the stiff wheel and the hinge with a little smoky fish oil. It took a bit of forcing, but soon the parts were moving, and Franklin could make the barrels widen to fit his eyes. Now, despite the scratching on one of the glass disks, he could make the reed grass as far as sixty paces from the cabins seem like a forest of thick, tall trees. The chickadees amongst the branches were like turkeys. He could see the intimate detail of the ground more than a stone's throw away, each pebble, each twig, each snail shell. He merged the twin images into one circle and, fixing the wheels so that the far approaches to the cabins were clear to see, he checked for men transformed into giants and horses enlarged into monsters. He tried but could not put Jackson in the circle. Jackson relieving himself. Jackson in his goatskin coat. No Captain Chief. He tried, but could not put his mother there, sitting on the homestead stoop, her old hand raised. He held his own hand up in front of the barrels. His fingers seemed both huge and far away.

'It fools your thinking,' Franklin said, handing over the new toy to Margaret.

At first she could see nothing, but soon she discovered that she could revolve the wheel to its furthest, tightest point and view the distance sharply. The horizon had a bulk she'd never known before and a clarity that she had lost in childhood and had thought was irretrievable. 'It's strange to think how many eyes have looked through this,' she said. 'Imagine everything that's happened at the fat end.' She tapped the glass as if it was the top of a container. 'Dead people would've been in there. And sky-high buildings from the history. All sorts of ships and strangers.' She put the spy pipes to her face again and focused on a single bird, black-winged and rafting on the wind. Her eyesight was as good as new. 'That hawk's seen something on the ground,' she said. 'It might be carrion.'

'I'll go and look,' offered Franklin, but he returned scratched and empty-handed. Not even a morsel of gull-picked rabbit meat for supper.

It was their second day without a proper meal. The novelty of the spy pipes and the pleasures of each other's company could not drive away their constant nagging hunger and their tiredness. As time passed, their fear of horsemen diminished somewhat, but they felt nervous of the open air. The rustlers might still flush them out. Other strangers might bother them. All Franklin and Margaret could do about that was to be watchful and careful, keeping the horses out of sight and the noise down. It was a pity that Jackie chose that day to show her irritation and the power of her lungs. What was the point of their nervous vigilance if the girl was declaring their whereabouts so loudly and with hardly a break? Margaret and Franklin did their best to silence her, but songs and games and fingertips to suck were not enough for her. She was implacable. She seemed to have thinned and darkened, losing volume in body but gaining it in voice. Her lips were sore and dry. She showed little interest in anything but wailing.

After his months at the encampment, Franklin was almost resigned to being underfed and to having what is called a salamander stomach, with folds of loose skin and no fat, but Margaret had gotten used to free meals at the Ark and was soon complaining of hunger pains. Together, the two of them could last for a few more days on their meager provisions, but they could not expect Jackie to survive on smoked fish, stale water, orange salt and pressed oil. They searched the ground around the cabins for edible plants, but there were no wild greens, even at the end of winter. All they found among the worts, the spurges and the sedges were some immature cattails, with shoots almost tender enough to eat raw, and a pink bed of early-flowering spring beauty with sweet, starchy roots. Mashed together with oil and water, the paste was edible enough but hard on the stomach. Jackie would take only a fingerful. But finally she slept, exhausted by herself.

Margaret was exhausted, too, and impatient. What kind of freedom had she found since she had left the Ark? The freedom to be cold, tired, hungry, anxious? She felt more trapped than she had done for months. But even so, much of the euphoria of rediscovering Franklin and seeing the ocean for the first time remained. They spent the afternoon placating Jackie and discussing what their options were. Stay safe and starve? Push on and take the risks? Wait for a sign?

In those brief periods when the girl slept, they looked out through the spy pipes from a half-open cabin door. Keeping watch. They had good views across the ocean as well as clear sight of all the land around them. Anybody coming to their hideaway could not avoid showing himself — then the pipes would allow for close inspection.

It was not through the pipes, though, that Franklin caught sight of his first ocean-going ship, full-rigged and shirty in the wind. It was heading between the outer banks that appeared when, inexplicably and once or twice a day, that great expanse of water drew back on itself, as if it had been inclined as easily as slops are tilted in a bowl. Where earlier there had been nothing but waves, bars and pebble banks appeared and narrow islands of sand. The ship was rising and falling in the sea, uncertain of its own weight, now light enough to hardly break the surface, now so heavy that it sank deeply into the water and all that showed above the ocean were its upper masts and sails. Franklin and Margaret held their pipes to it, picking out the details. There were huts on board, and flags and men among the riggings, and the carving of a huge eagle's head at the prow. Here was their salvation, then, their means of escape. They hugged each other, and when they parted, Franklin danced, despite his unexpected apprehension at this first sight of a sailboat.

'That's the call that we've been waiting for. Deliverance,' he said, embarrassed more by their embrace than by his dance. 'Tomorrow morning, Mags, I'm going for that ship. It must be putting ashore close by. I'll see if we can get aboard.' She shook her head. He took her hand. 'I'll come back with some food for Jackie. It'll be okay. I'll be wary for myself. You just keep low and out of sight.'

'You'll not go anywhere,' she said. 'I'll go. It's better if I go. No one's hunting for me. I don't stand out like you, not since my hair grew out a bit.'

'It'll be okay—'

'No, Franklin. You're to let me have my way. I couldn't bear it if you went, and we never saw a hair of you again. Anyway, I'm used to begging for a bit of food. And women make a better hand of getting information out of sailors. That's well known.' They laughed at that, then argued briefly, but Franklin saw the sense of what she proposed. He was relieved, in fact, and a bit ashamed to be so uncourageous yet again. 'Take this, Mags.' He gave her the spy pipes. 'You can trade it for some bacon and our passage fees. I'm sure it's worth a lot, especially to sailors.' Margaret took the pipes. 'Good meal ticket,' she agreed, but knew at once that she could part with them only if they were prized from her fingers. She needed them to see the distant world. They were of more value to her than to any sailor.

That night they slept with Jackie at their feet and not between them. When he could, when her breathing said that she was dozing, Franklin found that he had taken hold of Margaret's hand. He fell asleep with one of her fingers wrapped inside his palm. He felt her tug it free at sunrise and heard her washing at the water trough. But he kept quiet and still when she slipped outside into the cold and started on her explorations. It wasn't prudent to tempt fate by exchanging goodbyes, not when the task ahead was dangerous. He tried to sleep.

FRANKLIN COULD NOT expect a restful day. He was not used to children, so having sole care of Jackie would be a test, not all of it welcome. Over winter he had learned to be less of an optimist. Whereas the old Franklin might have happily envisaged Margaret's journey to the ship as being safe and easy and bound to succeed, the new one needed no encouragement to imagine her in trouble. Margaret robbed or raped, kidnapped or lost at sea, Margaret deciding to abandon him and the girl, Margaret attacked by gulls or tumbling down a cliff into the waves, Margaret losing her way back to the cabins and having to spend the night outside. A landscape full of Margarets undone.

Once he was up and washed, though, and had seen the egg-blue, cloudless sky, Franklin determined to be high-spirited. He would keep his hands and his imagination busy with domestic matters. He'd be a useful, rather than a moping, husband for the day. He muttered a list to himself, counting off his tasks. He'd take good care of Jackie, but when she allowed it he would see what improvements he could make to their quarters, which for some reason and despite his hunger he already felt reluctant to abandon. He'd make a more comfortable family bed with some fresh cut grasses. Even though it might be difficult, he'd start a fire in the afternoon, as soon as it was safe to make a little smoke. He'd started fires without a spark stone when he was a boy. Why not now? He'd gather shoots and roots and find a way of sieving clean the drinking water in the trough. He'd find some way of preparing a meal as well. A feast, with meat. Surely he could trap a rabbit or a bird. Surely these salt marshes should boast some prairie chickens or quail. There was no shortage of netting to drape between bushes. He had all day. Even Margaret had caught a quail, that first frosty morning out of Ferrytown.

What Franklin did not have was bait. Although he visited his bush nets every so often during the morning, they remained empty, apart from a few hollow plant stems brought in by the breeze and some sticky yellow spume sent up from the ocean. He tried laying out some of the smoked fish, but not even the spring flies or the gulls seemed tempted by this leathery treat. Why would they be tempted when only a short flight away the sea and the shore were tumbling with food?