The Quilter's Legacy (31 page)

“Eleanor,” said Lucinda. “I don't think I can.”

Something in her voice made Eleanor turn sharply. Lucinda was pale and shaking, her teeth chattering. She clutched the counter as if it alone kept her upright.

Eleanor pressed a palm to Lucinda's forehead; her skin radiated heat. “We must go after Dr. Granger.”

Lucinda nodded in reply. Eleanor helped Lucinda to a chair, then raced through the school searching the sickrooms for Dr. Granger, Dr. Cullen, anyone who might help. A white-faced girl too young to be a nurse interrupted her duties long enough to say that they had no more beds left and that Eleanor would be better off taking Lucinda directly to Dr. Cullen's clinic rather than waiting for a doctor to return. Eleanor hurried back to the kitchen, pulled Lucinda to her feet, and helped her outside, past classrooms hung with blackboards and cheery pictures that now looked down on the dead and dying.

When they reached the clinic, they could not approach the front door for the crowds of afflicted men and women trying to enter. A man stood in the doorway at the top of the stairs shouting that they were too full to accept new patients, and that anyone who could make it that far should go to the Waterford College gymnasium, where Dolores Tibbs was arranging another hospital. “I can make it,” Lucinda murmured. So Eleanor turned and half-carried her back down the hill toward the campus, trying not to think of what would become of those who could not walk so far or had no one to take them.

Inside the gymnasium, volunteers were arranging cots in rows, and where they had run out of cots, they had placed mattresses on the floor. Patients filled the makeshift beds as soon as they were available. At the back of the room, dozens of sufferers waited to be examined. Some sat slumped against the wall, others lay upon the floor alone, as if fearful relatives had abandoned them there and fled. One young mother cradled a baby and a young boy in her lap. She called desperately for a doctor, but her children were motionless in her arms, and the scurrying volunteers could not stop to comfort her.

Eleanor stared at the scene in shock before swallowing hard and scanning the room for Dolores. She spotted her among the crowd at the back, bending over a patient, calling out orders, gesturing and pointing. Eleanor knew Dolores would not hear her over the din, so she made her way to her friend's side, still bearing up Lucinda. “Dolores,” she began. “Dr. Granger—”

Dolores glanced at her and turned to another patient. “You'll need to wait in line by the door.”

“Dolores—” Eleanor stumbled as Lucinda slumped against her. “Dr. Granger sent me to help you.”

Dolores looked over at Lucinda quickly. “Then get your friend into a bed and come back.”

Eleanor nodded and half-carried Lucinda through the rows of mattresses, looking about for an open bed. Just then, two men passed her carrying a body draped in a sheet. Eleanor looked back the way they had come and found an empty mattress on the floor two rows down. Swallowing hard, she hurried to claim it and helped Lucinda onto it.

“I'll be back soon,” Eleanor promised, and raced back to Dolores. Dolores did not seem to recognize her, so Eleanor repeated her offer to help.

Dolores studied her and nodded. “You're new, you're still fresh. You can help with triage. Most of these people would be better off at home, but they won't listen when you tell them that, so save your breath. Send those whom we can still help to a bed. Leave the rest here.”

“Wait,” said Eleanor as Dolores turned to go. “How will I know which is which?”

“Check their feet. If they're blue, the person won't make it.”

Eleanor nodded, but Dolores had already spun away.

Eleanor hurried back to Lucinda. Quickly, before fear could stop her, she removed Lucinda's shoe and stocking, and forced herself to look. The sole of her foot was pink and healthy.

Swiftly she returned stocking and shoe. “Come on,” she said, grunting from the effort as she pulled Lucinda to her feet. “You're going home.”

“Don't be stupid,” said Lucinda faintly. “I can't risk carrying this illness home to the family.”

Eleanor knew that, but she also knew if Lucinda stayed in that makeshift hospital, she would die. “There are too many patients here and not enough nurses. Dolores herself said people like you would be better off at home.” She draped Lucinda's arm over her shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief when Lucinda walked along beside her, supporting much of her own weight. “When we get home—”

“No. You're needed here. The horses know the way home, and Elizabeth can care for me.”

As they left the gymnasium, Eleanor reluctantly agreed, and they made their way back to the wagon. Eleanor warned her always to wear her mask and to allow only Elizabeth to care for her, to limit the risk to the others. She watched Lucinda ride off, slumped with exhaustion but steady in her seat, and hoped it would be enough.

Then she raced back to help Dolores.

She did not know how long she worked before another volunteer helped her, stumbling, to a chair to catch a few minutes of sleep. One day blurred into another. She knew many of the sick at least by sight, while many others were unfamiliar and young, probably students of the college. She could not think about friends and neighbors left by the wall and strangers directed to beds; she could not give special consideration to anyone, except for children and mothers carrying babies. She did not care if they had to be carried to their cots, they were assigned them.

Once she passed Dr. Granger administering his concoction to a middle-aged man. She had to turn her face away when he swallowed the bitter liquid and gazed up at the doctor, his eyes shining with gratitude. Too busy to acknowledge her, the doctor swiftly moved on to the next patient, but something compelled Eleanor to follow. “Dr. Granger,” she said. “Will the Health Officer lift the quarantine and send for help?”

“Professor Johnson was buried this morning. In the trench.” Dr. Granger's voice was hoarse, his gaze haggard. “There is no help to send for, Mrs. Bergstrom. We have only ourselves.”

He hurried away. Eleanor stood there dumbly nodding, her ears ringing. The trench. She had heard whispered rumors about the mass grave, but she had not wanted to believe them true.

“Eleanor.” She felt a hand on her arm. “Eleanor, dear.”

Slowly she turned. Elizabeth stood beside her. “You must come home at once,” she said. “We need you.”

Eleanor felt a fist close around her throat. “Lucinda?”

“She lives yet, but others fell ill even before she returned to us.” Elizabeth put her arm around her daughter-in-law and guided her to the door. “My husband. Maude. Clara. William.”

“Claudia?”

“We must hurry,” said Elizabeth, her anguish like a knife in Eleanor's heart.

E
leanor felt as if she tended her family at a dead run. First to Claudia to try to get her to nurse, then to Lucinda to change her bed linens, soaked through with perspiration, then back to Claudia to coax her to sleep in her cradle, then to the kitchen to prepare a sustaining broth, and then back to Claudia. Always back to Claudia.

Maude was the first to die. Two days after Eleanor's return, her sister-in-law slipped away before the sun rose. Through the frenzy of nursing those who yet lived, Eleanor watched Elizabeth with a sort of detached amazement as she arranged for her daughter-in-law to be buried on the family estate. Maude was her son's widow, and Elizabeth would not see her interred in a mass grave with strangers.

David, Clara, William, and Claudia hung on. Once Clara came out of her delirium enough to beg Eleanor for the Ocean Waves quilt, and she was inconsolable until Eleanor found it, draped it over her, and assured her it was there. Eleanor sat beside her and stroked her sweaty hair until she drifted off to sleep.

That night, Claudia screamed in pain until she was too exhausted to do more than whimper. She lay so limp and silent in her cradle that Eleanor's last bit of control finally shattered. She broke down in sobs and gathered her child in her arms, but Claudia did not even blink at the tears that fell upon her hot skin. Eleanor carried her into her own bed and lay beside her; Claudia took her nipple in her mouth but had no strength to suckle. “You will be all right,” whispered Eleanor, kissing her, knowing that Claudia would probably not survive the night. She murmured soft words of comfort, all the while silently praying: Please, Lord. Please. You took all of my babies but Claudia. Please don't take her from me now. I will never again ask you for more children. I will never again ask you to spare my dear Freddy. Please Lord. Take whomever else you want, take me, but let my child live.

Eleanor fell asleep to the rhythm of her desperate prayer. She woke late the next morning to find Claudia breathing beside her, the Ocean Waves quilt spread over them.

She sat up, startled. Claudia let out a soft cry and rooted for her, so Eleanor lay back down and gave her the breast. Claudia never opened her eyes as she nursed, and fits of coughing forced her to spit out more milk than she swallowed, but she did not cry as she released the nipple and drifted off to sleep. Eleanor pressed a hand to Claudia's forehead; she felt cooler, if only slightly.

Carefully Eleanor gathered up the Ocean Waves quilt and stole from the room, whispering a prayer as she closed the door. She met Elizabeth in the hallway on her way to Clara's room. She looked haggard, but she must have seen something in Eleanor's face to give her hope, for she asked, “How is the baby?”

“She nursed, and I think her fever has broken,” said Eleanor. She saw no point in saying how little Claudia had drank, or how weakly she had suckled. “You should not have let me sleep so late. How are the others?”

“I let you sleep because you needed your rest. David is sleeping. William asked for something to eat. Lucinda drank some broth, but I had to force her. Clara …” Elizabeth shook her head. “Clara is the same.”

“I will tend to them while you rest.”

Elizabeth nodded, but stopped Eleanor before she went two paces. “Where are you going with that?”

“To Clara.” Eleanor indicated the quilt in her arms. “She asked for it yesterday. Thank you for returning it, but I do not need it.”

“I did not bring it for you.” Elizabeth took the quilt, and Eleanor was too surprised to stop her. “Claudia may still need it.”

“Surely you don't believe the quilt will cure her.”

“You yourself said her fever broke,” Elizabeth countered. “What does it matter to you what I do? I've heard you say my superstitions are harmless. The quilt will not harm her, even if you don't believe it will help.”

“I don't believe it, but what if Clara does? She asked for this quilt for a reason. What if you've taken her hope from her?”

“Clara herself insisted I give it to Claudia. She said the baby needs it more than she does.”

Eleanor heard the note of hysteria in her mother-in-law's voice and could not bear to prolong the argument. “If Clara asks, we must give it back to her at once,” she said. Elizabeth nodded distractedly as she hurried off to Claudia, the quilt in her arms.

Clara never asked for the quilt. Within hours she sank into an unceasing, feverish sleep in which she screamed and cried and babbled nonsense. Then, suddenly, she grew still. While Eleanor tried to rouse her, Elizabeth fled from the room and returned with the Ocean Waves quilt. Weeping, she flung the quilt over the bed and threw herself upon her daughter's silent body, moaning her name.

Finally Eleanor had to gently pull Elizabeth away.

William insisted that he be the one to dig his sister's grave. Though his legs wobbled beneath him when he rose from his sickbed, Elizabeth was too heartsick to object. She had not left Clara's side since fleeing to retrieve the quilt. “Too late,” she whispered, rocking back and forth on her chair and staring straight ahead at nothing.

When the time came to bury her, Eleanor gently asked Elizabeth if she felt well enough to join them and say a prayer over the grave. Elizabeth did, but she said not a word until the end, when she fixed Eleanor with an icy stare. “My daughter gave her life for your daughter,” she said. “Never forget that.”

She took Claudia from Eleanor's arms and returned to the manor.

Slowly David, William, and Lucinda recovered, and as they did, the absence of their loved ones became a tangible pain. Elizabeth held Claudia almost constantly, and Eleanor, remembering how Elizabeth had already lost three of her children and might yet lose her eldest son, could not bear to take the baby from her.

No word came from Waterford. In the bleakest hours after Clara's burial, Eleanor sometimes wondered if all there had perished, if they alone had survived the plague.

“Someone needs to go into town,” said David, still in his sickbed.

“I'll go,” said his son. At fifteen, William seemed a shriveled old man with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes.

Elizabeth grew frantic and insisted that none of them must leave the manor, especially William, who was still too weak to sit a horse. They placated her, but they knew that eventually, someone must go.

The thought of news from town reminded Eleanor of a letter she had never opened. Frank Schaeffer's appearance had so unsettled her that she had forgotten all about the slender envelope that had brought him, and the contagion, to Elm Creek Manor. She found it where she had left it weeks ago, a relic from a different age. She hesitated before opening it, gripped by the sudden fear that she would unleash more disease upon her family like Pandora lifting the lid to her box of evils.