Lake in the Clouds (80 page)

It turned out that Mrs. Gathercole’s sore throat was much less severe than her husband had given the doctor to believe, Hannah was relieved to see.

From her bed she said, “Mr. Gathercole does worry so, Miss Bonner. Thank you for coming by to check on me; it will put his mind to rest. Perhaps while you are here you could look at his throat. I’ve noticed he has some trouble swallowing these past two days, although he will not admit it unless he is pressed.”

Mrs. Gathercole was from a family with money in Boston and she had never lost her way of talking, swallowed
r
sounds like an Englishwoman. There was a Yankee singsong to her voice, overly mannered and timid at the same time. She was comfortable with very few of the people in the village, but Elizabeth was one of them.

While Elizabeth related the news that Mrs. Gathercole really wanted but would not ask for directly—the little they knew about the trouble at the mill—Hannah examined Mr. Gathercole in the kitchen with the housekeeper looking on. Missy Parker, a woman of uncertain age but exacting opinions, hunched over the churn but never took her eyes off her master, who had given himself over to the care of a red Indian.

Hannah’s relief at finding Mrs. Gathercole on the mend left as soon as she looked into her husband’s throat. The symptoms he admitted to were alarming enough, but the things she could see for herself were even worse. She could hardly keep herself from starting at the sight of his tongue, swollen and bright red.

In response to her gentle questioning he admitted to an aching head, a feverish night, a sore throat. There was only one more question to ask, and Hannah knew what he would answer before she put it to him.

“Sir, I am sorry to have to bother you with a private matter, but is there any rash on your person?”

Mr. Gathercole peeked at her from under a fringe of thinning blond hair, his face rosy with embarrassment. He touched his neck, hidden under a snowy white stock. “Yes. On my throat, and … under my arms.”

“Father brought up his dinner last night,” Mary volunteered, and Mr. Gathercole flushed an even deeper shade. Gentlemen, it seemed, did not suffer from indigestion.

“What is it?” he asked. “Something dangerous?” And he cast a glance at his daughter.

“Canker rash is what most folks call it,” said Missy Parker, looking up from the churn. “Although my mam called it ‘strawberry tongue.’”

To Mr. Gathercole’s confused and dismayed expression Hannah said, “There is no need for alarm. You see that Mrs. Gathercole is already recovering, and so shall you. It is your turn to take on the role of patient. Mrs. Parker, can you stay a while when you’re finished there? He should take a mouthful of the tea I’m leaving every hour.”

Mary Gathercole, blond and sincere as her parents, came forward to sniff at the open jar. “What’s in it?”

“Mostly licorice root and slippery elm,” Hannah said, putting a casual hand on the child’s overwarm forehead. “Some hyssop and sage, and willow bark for the fever.”

“No molasses?” Mary asked.

“I can add molasses,” Hannah said. “But you must promise me that you’ll take the tea too, every hour. And as long as your father is in his bed, you will stay in yours.”

Mr. Gathercole put his hands over his face and let out a low sound.

“Hope you’ve got a lot of fixings for that tea in that bag of yours,” said Missy Parker with grim satisfaction. “When canker rash gets legs under it it’ll run away with half the village.”

By midday Hannah could no longer hope that the Gathercoles would be an isolated case. They visited six patients, two with infected wounds and four with fever and sore throats. At the LeBlancs’ Missy Parker’s prediction had already come true and Hannah sent the oldest boy back to Dr. Todd’s dispensary to ask Daisy for more of the ingredients for the sore throat tea.

He came back with the unsettling news that Daisy wasn’t at the Todds’ at all, she was at home tending to her own children, who were poorly. Margit Hindle sent her apologies but she couldn’t find the slippery elm or the licorice root and neither could Dolly. Elizabeth went off with the boy the second time with exact instructions on where to find the things Hannah needed.

Just as well, because she needed time to study the LeBlanc
boys. There was no time to take notes but she made them in her head, as she had been taught to do.

The two youngest had the rash on their necks and cheeks, under their arms, and on the backs of their knees. Bright-eyed with fever and whimpering with headache, they let her run gentle fingers over the rash. It felt like fine sand, slightly rough to the touch. Both boys had swollen tongues, though Peter’s was more strawberry in color while Simon’s was coated white. From both boys Hannah scraped a little matter from their tongues and rashes in folds of paper, to look at under the microscope later.

The scarlet fever hit children hardest, but there was cause to worry about Molly too. She had climbed out of childbed to tend the boys, wobbling about the cabin on unsteady legs and wrapped in all the quilts and shawls she could find. When Hannah insisted on examining her, she found that Molly’s belly was tender, which was by far the most alarming thing she had seen so far this day. For one brief moment Hannah wished fervently that she would look up and see Curiosity at the door.

“I will send Willy for his grandmother Kaes,” said Elizabeth when Hannah took her aside to confide her fears. “Charlie cannot cope with this alone.”

Before they left Hannah boiled a cup of water over the hearth and added some of her precious store of powdered black cohosh root, bought at considerable expense in the city. To this she added a great deal of maple syrup to disguise the bitter taste.

Charlie saw them out onto the porch, his new daughter tucked into the crook of his arm.

He said, “Once Matilda gets here she’ll set things straight. She’s a hellion, is my mother-in-law and the boys are feared of her but it’ll give Molly some rest.”

There was a question Charlie wanted to ask but did not dare; Hannah saw that clearly on his troubled face. Charlie was afraid to hear what Hannah might say; Elizabeth was biding her time. She was afraid too, but she would come looking for the truth, no matter how it frightened her.

When they were out of Charlie LeBlanc’s hearing Hannah stopped, put down her bag and basket, and placed both hands on her stepmother’s shoulders to look into her eyes. Elizabeth was far away in her thoughts, with Robbie on the summer
evening that he died.
Malignant quinsy,
Richard Todd had written in the record book he kept for the village.
Robert Middleton Bonner, age two years.
And below that:
Falling-Day of the Wolf longhouse at Good Pasture, age sixty-two years.

“It is not quinsy.”

Elizabeth’s complexion, always pale, lightened to the shade of thin milk. She looked away, and back again. “You are sure?”

Hannah said, “You know that quinsy comes with swelling in the neck—” Elizabeth flinched, but Hannah pushed on anyway. “And we saw no such swelling in any of the sick we saw today. The symptoms we have seen are fever, headache, sore throat, a bright red tongue, and rash. You saw the rash yourself; it looked like a sunburn. The doctors at the Almshouse called it scarlet fever. Not quinsy,” she added firmly.

Elizabeth nodded. “Yes, I saw the rash.” There was a tic in the muscles of her jaw, as if her fear of the disease that had killed her youngest child lived just beneath her own skin.

After a moment Hannah took up her things and they began to walk again.

“You have seen this scarlet fever before?” Elizabeth’s voice was slightly hoarse and Hannah understood that she had forced herself to ask the question.

“I saw three cases in the city.”

Little girls,
she might have added.
All dead now, and no doubt their brothers with them.
Dr. Savard had requested her help and she had followed, winding through the narrow lanes to the tumbledown houses near the East River where many immigrants lived. A cellar damp with river water and sweat and urine, so crowded that many slept sitting upright. The sick children had been shunted off to a dark corner, two girls and a boy, grimy faces streaked clean by fever sweats. A mother huddled nearby with the rest of her children pressing into her. Dr. Savard spoke to her in a combination of French and German and English, but there was no way to make her understand what he had to say.

Hannah hadn’t thought of those children for so long, and that bothered her almost as much as the certainty that none of them had survived. What did it mean that she could put those faces out of her mind so completely?

After a long time Elizabeth said, “None of the sick we’ve seen today have been vaccinated against the smallpox, did you note that?”

“Yes,” Hannah said. “I did notice.”

Neither of them said aloud what they were thinking. If any of the villagers got the idea that the vaccinations to prevent smallpox had caused canker rash, there would be panic—and worse—to deal with. Hannah should have been reassured by the fact that thus far scarlet fever had shown itself only in those who were not vaccinated, but instead she felt only a deep unease.

“The two things are completely unrelated to each other,” she said, to comfort Elizabeth and herself too. “But I suppose that won’t be obvious until someone who has been vaccinated comes down with scarlet fever too. It is a very strange thing to hope for.”

They had come to the orchard that surrounded the Wildes’ cabin. As they passed through neat rows of trees, a small herd of sheep shied away, stumbling away to graze at a safe distance. Bees hummed lazily around their heads, and Hannah would have liked to sit down right where she was and sleep.

But she could see Nicholas sitting on the porch waiting for them. As they got closer she catalogued the things that could not be denied: a face flushed with fever, a rash that covered the wide neck where it rose from the collar of his shirt, and sorrow too heavy to bear.

When they stood in front of him, he swallowed and the muscles in his neck spasmed.

“Your sister?” Elizabeth asked softly.

He blinked hard. “The doctor said for you to come right in, Miss Bonner.” His voice was rough with the effort of speaking. “He said he can’t start the autopsy without you.”

Thank God,
Elizabeth repeated to herself again and again.
Thank God Lily stayed on the mountain. Thank God the boys are safe away. I must get word to Many-Doves.

To Nicholas Wilde, newly bereaved and in the first stages of scarlet fever, she said other things; she asked him questions about Eulalia’s last hours, and listened as he wept and talked and wept again. She thought of giving him willow bark for his fever; she knew where it was in Hannah’s bag, and it would allow
him some relief, but she stopped herself because she understood that what he wanted from her at this moment was nothing more than her willingness to listen.

What Elizabeth wanted was Nathaniel. The urge to get up and begin walking until she found him was so strong that her legs trembled, and it took a conscious effort to make herself stay seated on the neat porch, recently swept. Eulalia had planted lavender along the walkway, reported Nicholas; she took such pleasure in the lambs; she had never thought of herself.

When the first furious tears had been shed he wiped his face on his sleeve and looked at her with bloodshot eyes. “How long will it take?”

Out in the orchard his apple trees bent and flexed under a rising wind.

I have children,
Elizabeth wanted to say.
I cannot comfort you as you need to be comforted. I should not even sit here with you.

Instead she said, “An hour, or a little more.” And then: “You should be in bed, you are fevered. There is a tea you should take for your throat. I can get that ready for you while the others are—” She broke off. “Come, we must see to your needs. When did you last eat?”

He looked at her in surprise, raised a hand to his own brow and touched it thoughtfully. “Bump gave me some broth. He told me to go lie down in the barn and wait until he came for me.” He stood, and steadied himself on the post. “But I have to dig her grave. My sister’s grave.”

Elizabeth stood too, ready to support him if he should fall and hoping fervently that he would not. She said, “You have neighbors to help you, Mr. Wilde. What you must do now is to follow Dr. Todd’s orders and take your rest.”

Nicholas Wilde could not be left alone, and Hannah knew without asking that Elizabeth could not be prevailed upon to stay with him. As soon as she was able, she would fly away up the mountain to warn Many-Doves to keep the children at Lake in the Clouds.

Maybe Bump understood too, because he offered to stay behind and nurse Nicholas. Hannah would have hesitated to accept without explaining to him first what it meant to say
that scarlet fever was contagious, but Richard Todd was not concerned.

“I’ll send somebody down to dig the grave,” he told Bump. “And most probably Anna McGarrity will see to the laying-out.” He turned to Elizabeth. “You won’t be any help here, and Hannah and I have work to do. Go home to your family.”