Читать книгу Constance - Patricia Clapp - Страница 12

January 1621

They have actually started building a Common House! We can hear the cold ring of the axes—carried clearly in the winter air—and the thick solid sound of a tree as it hits the earth. Even though the women still have little to do save their usual tasks, there is a feeling of progress that infects us all. The men come back on board at night, so weary they nigh stagger, yet once they have bolted their food they sit for hours talking of their plans.

Father works like a man possessed, as perhaps he is. He lifts great logs the others cannot move, heaving them into place across the sawpit where they are cut into thick planks for building. Elizabeth says all the men will catch most fearful chills do they not take better care of themselves. First heavy work that puts them a-sweating, and then a rest period when they stand in the bitter cold, or gather round a fire—burning their faces and freezing their backs. In truth, Christopher Martin confessed tonight that he felt quite unwell, but there are those who think he may be malingering. Since he was deposed from governorship at the start of the journey by William Brewster’s followers he has been at times vexatious, finding great fault with what the others decide to do. Malingering or not, he has a fearful cough!

January 1621 continued

The sailors call it scurvy, and say that they have seen men step from their hammocks announcing that they are in good health, walk a few feet, and fall dead from the disease. Dr. Fuller gives it no name, but does what he can with bloodletting and such remedies as the juice of thyme, which he claims to be excellent for irritations of the chest, and lovage, which is supposed to cure any sort of fever. And yet we are dying! My stomach churns with fear; I flinch at the moaning and gasping, and gag at the dreadful stench.

Those who are taken ill, and there are more each day, are carried from the ship to the Common House, which has at last been built. A few other houses are almost finished, but there is hardly a soul strong enough to work on them. Ours is at least a roof over our heads, although the cruel cold seeps in between the many cracks, and I huddle in it most of the day, staying as far as I can from the loathsome Sickness. Elizabeth, who must give of herself past all understanding, insists on nursing those poor wretches who lie in the Common House, rotting their lives out.

“Someone must do it, Constance,” she says, “and it is woman’s work.”

“Not mine! I will not go near them!”

“Then mind Damaris and Oceanus for me, and feed your father and Giles. I will come back whenever I can.”

“And bring that foulness with you that we may all die of it? I will go back on the ship and stay there!”

“There are those with the Sickness on the ship now too, Constance.”

“But I thought . . . I thought they were being brought ashore!”

“There is no more room in the Common House. The floor is already filled with pallets, without a spare inch to lay another, save when someone dies. Rose Standish died this morning.”

“Rose? But . . . but I saw her just a day or two ago! She was talking to Mistress Mullins!”

“Mistress Mullins is dead too. And her husband lies ill—” Elizabeth bit her lip hard. “I cannot stand here idle, Constance. Look out for the babes for me.” And with that she left the house and walked down the hard-packed dirt path, disappearing into the Common House. I saw the door close behind her.

Father helped Captain Standish bury Rose that night. They dare dig no graves in daylight lest the Indians see, and realize how few we have become. Should they attack us now . . . and yet, if they did, it might be best. It would be an end to all this suffering and filth and cold and fear, for certainly we could not resist them. I said as much to Father when he returned to the house, standing his spade against the wall, where the crumbs of earth from Rose Standish’s grave fell softly to the dirt floor.

“What sort of puling, weak-mouthed woman are you?” Father roared at me. “As long as there is one creature alive amongst us to fight, we will fight! We will fight sickness or Indians, it makes no matter which! Now let me hear no more whimpering from you!”

I set my mouth tight and went to the hearth where I filled his trencher with hot boiled fish, silently handing it to him.

“No, Con. I want nothing to eat,” he said, and lay down on the bed without even taking off his boots.

I stood watching him in amazement. For Father to refuse his food was unbelievable!

“Are you well, Father? Is there aught wrong?” But already he lay drowned in sleep and did not answer.

Sometime deep in the night I heard the thick, choking sound of his breathing, and forced myself to get up from the pallet and go to him. In the firelight I could see his face flushed and red, and his head turning restlessly on the pillow. Ted Dotey heard it too, and came creeping down the ladder from the loft where he and Ted Leister sleep. He stood beside me, squat and gnomelike among the half-shadows, and I was grateful for his nearness.

“He’s got it, Constance,” Ted whispered. “The Sickness. This is the way it starts.”

“What shall I do?”

“Rouse Giles, while I wake t’other Ted. We’ll carry him to the Common House.”

“But there is no room there! Elizabeth said so.”

“There must be a place. With so many dying—”

“No! Don’t take him there! If you do, he’ll die too! I know he will! Leave him be. I’ll care for him.”

“It’s a filthy task, Con. ’Twill turn your stomach! Let us take him.”

I whirled on him and knew that my eyes were blazing. Sounding to myself just like Father, I shouted, “You will do as I say! Leave him be! Now help me get his boots and clothes off. He must be made more comfortable. And get more wood for the fire! I will not have him chilled!”

“Aye, miss,” Ted mumbled, and did as he was bid.

My voice had wakened Giles, although Father had not opened his eyes at all, and he came shuffling sleepily to the bedside.

“What is it?” he asked, yawning. “Is something wrong with Father?”

“He has the Sickness,” I said crisply.

“What are you going to do, Con?” My brother’s eyes were wide with fear.

“Make him well! Fetch me some cool water and a cloth and then go back to sleep!”

“Water? What shall I bring it in?” Giles asked, gaping at me.

“Bring it in your open mouth, you booby,” I snapped, tugging at Father’s boot, “or in your shoe, for all I care! But bring it!”

A moment later the water was there beside me in one of Elizabeth’s wooden tankards, but Giles did not go back to sleep. Instead we sat the night there, one on each side of the great bed. I knew little of what to do for Father, save to bathe him with cool water when his fever rose, and cover him with an extra rug when the shivering took him. When he retched and then spewed, we cleansed his face again and emptied the vile slops. Once he opened his eyes, fixing them hard on me, as though trying to see through thick mists.

“Leave me be, Con, leave me be,” he said. His voice was so weak I could hardly believe it to be Father’s. “Let someone help me to the Common House—away from you and the babies.”

“You will stay here,” I told him.

“Thunder, Con, you will do as I say!”

“No, Father. You will do as I say! Hush now. You are only wasting strength.”

The faintest sort of smile touched the corners of his mouth. “’Tis a sad thing when a man cannot command his own daughter,” he murmured, and then, closing his eyes, he lapsed back into the Sickness.

Giles wanted to take him to the Common House. “Dr. Fuller is there, Con. He may have medicines—he knows better what to do.”

“Giles, if he goes there, he will die. I know it! I will not have him moved!”

“What will Mother say?”

“Elizabeth has enough to take care of without Father,” I told him, and then noticed Father’s body start its retching and straining again. “Oh, Heaven help us, Giles, get the basin and hold it and stop yammering, or else get out!”

My brother looked at me as he shoved the basin under Father’s chin, giving me one of his long straight glances with mischief dancing way deep in his eyes.

“I pity the man ye marry, Con,” he said. “You’re as stubborn as Father, and ye fight just as hard. But I’m not leaving.”

And that was how the night passed.

In the morning I fed ’Maris and Oceanus, spooning gruel into the baby whilst Damaris fed herself and Giles fed Father. Elizabeth has had to stop nursing the boy, but he seems to take the pap with no trouble. Sometime late in the morning Elizabeth came back from the Common House, her eyes dull and shadowed with weariness. When she saw Father she gave a little moan, and knelt beside the bed.

“You should have called for me, Constance,” she said, her hands smoothing his forehead, feeling how hot it might be.

“I knew you were busy. We have done all right. Giles has helped me.”

“But ’tis such an unclean thing for you to tend—you wanted no part of it, I know. Nor do I blame you.”

“Stop fretting, ma’am. There is gruel still hot. Best you have some, and then sleep a while.”

“Have you slept, Constance?”

“I am not tired.” I filled a bowl and handed it to her with a wooden spoon. “Here. ’Twill do you good.”

Elizabeth ate, her eyes on Father. “He does not seem as ill as some of them,” she said.

“He is better this morning. The little food we gave him has stayed in his belly.”

She took a few more spoonfuls and then gave the bowl back to me. “I can eat no more, child.” She bowed her head into her hands, and when she spoke again her voice was muffled and thick with tears.

“In spite of all we can do for them, they die. Christopher Martin was the first, and since him—Rose Standish, and both Priscilla’s parents; her little brother, Joseph, lies there now, with no more strength in him than a kitten. Elizabeth Winslow is dead too, and Will White—”

“Baby Peregrine’s father?”

“Yes. And both Anne and Edward Tilley sicken more each hour; they lie side by side, their hands clasped . . .”

I wanted to comfort Elizabeth, to touch her, to soothe her somehow, but I could not. Elizabeth and I—well, I know she is most fond of me, and she is always kind and patient and good to me. But somehow I seem to hold her off. I do not want her to be my mother! I seem not to be able to let her love me, or to let myself love her. I do not understand this, I only know that I scorn myself for acting so, and yet I cannot change. I knew at that moment I could have eased her grief with a touch, or a word of sympathy—and I could not give them. I could only pull my pallet out from under the big bed, and lay a rug beside it.

“Rest now,” I told her. “You must rest. Father sleeps, and I will watch him.”

Poor Elizabeth. She was so tired she could not protest, but fell onto the pallet like a child, and slept.