Seven

What should Franklin and Margaret do, other than flee the valley as quickly as their bodies would allow? They dare not squander any time on shock or lamentation. Any thought that Franklin might have had of settling or tarrying in Ferrytown could come to nothing now. This was the habitation of the dead. The living had to turn their backs on it and speed away.

They’d entered through the western gate, the usual threshold for emigrants, and walked a good distance from Nash’s body before discovering another human form, or indeed any greater signs of widespread disaster. At the outer palisade, they’d passed within a few paces of where Jackson had gone out, barefooted, in the middle of the night to urinate for the last time and where his mighty body was still lying, coatless, doubled up, and finally incapable of defending itself against even the beak of a crow. But Jackson was not discovered. In fact, Franklin never found his brother’s body. He found only the coat and later, possibly, his shoes. So one slim hope was allowed to take root and cling to life during the months ahead, the not uncomplicated hope that somehow Jackson had survived and might return, as big as ever, to reoccupy his piebald skins.

There could be no such hope for Margaret’s family, however. The second human corpse they found was in her compound. Her younger brother, less than Franklin’s age, was still in bed, his eyes wide open, staring at infinity from his wood cot on the screened veranda.

They persevered. Franklin held her legs. Margaret wrapped herself more tightly round his back. They went into the house. Her grandpa was in bed as well. So was her elder sister. So was her ma, her hair spread out across the pillows that all too recently she’d shared with Margaret’s pa but now shared with the little serving niece called Carmena. The second brother, with Jefferson, the family rat-catcher, curled up at his side, the dog’s ears still perked as if his hearing had outlasted death, was in the parlor, by the grate. Only Margaret’s room and bed were empty. No corpses there. Her luck was inconceivable.

Across the courtyard, in the annex house, Margaret’s younger, married sister, Tessie, her husband, Glendon Fields, and their boy, Matt, were almost hidden by their quilts but unmistakable — a balding man and the tops of two brown heads with just the slightest hint of red. All the hens were dead, their feathers still as beautiful and soft as the day Margaret had gone up Butter Hill. The other dog, the little terrier Becky, had deserted from her usual guard duties at the rear door, but there was no yapping from anywhere else. The compound seemed so quiet and ordered that it was easy to imagine that at any moment this merely inert, suspended world could spring alive again, that this was only sleep and that the compound’s residents were simply resting late, untroubled by the light or by the summons of their usual daily duties. Death usually expressed itself more forcibly. But here it seemed that everyone had merely tumbled into a longer, deeper dormancy than usual. The one truly ugly sight was a neighbor’s dove, which must have ventured out at night and died in flight, only to tumble into Margaret’s yard and strike its head against a water pot. Its neck was broken, and there was blood, dried almost black, around its beak and underneath a wing.

It was Franklin who broke the silence. “We mustn’t stay. You see how dangerous it is? Just smell the air.” But first, before she could even consider her departure, Margaret wanted at least to feel and suffer the family earth beneath her feet, so Franklin released her from her mobile chair on his back, equipped her with a walking stick, and let her lean on him while she went around and paid her brief attention to the members of her family. “Try not to touch,” he said, but did nothing to stop her folding their arms, closing their mouths, covering their faces with their blankets, pressing a fingertip kiss onto her mother’s cheek. It was a numb experience. No weeping. Margaret’s body, drained already by her illness, had shut down many of its functions, concentrating on the most urgent, which was the impulse to be dutiful quickly and then escape. Weeping was not urgent. There would be time for that. Besides, Margaret was too overwhelmed to feel much more than guilt. This slaughter surely was her fault.

There did not seem to be much evidence of flux on her family or on any of the many nonhuman bodies they had passed — no traces of vomiting or diarrhea, no rashes or blood. But what explanation could there be other than that her illness of a few days, perhaps released by her to go about its mischief the moment that she had broken its murderous grip, had passed through her feet, through Franklin’s hands, and started its own descent down Butter Hill, had somehow strengthened while it had dined off her and ended up so strong that it had been able to sweep away these many lives with hardly more than a bruise and a single bloody beak to signify its cruelty?

There could be no funerals. Margaret, on her knees at the porch, between the herb pots and the little chair that her father had made for his children but that now was the resting place for their dead cat, merely said the simple words of the burial lament to herself, too dry-mouthed and appalled to sing them. All of the rhyme words—done, alone, fade, gone, bone, shade—seemed to fall like dead weights from her mouth, whereas whenever she’d sung or recited them before, at neighborhood funerals, the lament had always been comforting and measured and perfectly sufficient.

Franklin and Margaret did their best to avoid encountering any more bodies too closely as he carried her through the Ferrytown lanes toward the river. That wasn’t hard. There were hardly any bodies in the public spaces. So far as they could tell from what could be seen when they dared to peer through open gates into the compounds and through windows into rooms, nearly everyone — not just her own family — had died while sleeping. That was an oddity, surely, because a pestilence will always take the weakest first and the strongest last, so that normally the deaths would be spread throughout the day or even spread throughout a month.

The only bodies that they did discover, dressed but fallen at the steps of their oven house, were those of the baker and his daughter, both on their backs and looking more startled though no more ashen than usual. Franklin was praying not to find the body of his brother, even though he was expecting to. Margaret was fearful of discovering the body of Becky, the missing family terrier. If only Becky had survived, she thought, there’d be something left to love. The thought of Becky still alive was enough to make Margaret call out her name and for Franklin to join in, except that once he understood that Becky was a dog, he called out, “Anyone?” “Someone?” “Is there anybody there?” And once or twice he called out Jackson’s name. It must be possible that someone had survived, they reasoned, that at least one breathing body was still sick in bed and might be strong enough to tell them what had come to pass in Ferrytown.

They fell quiet again, both exhausted, as they reached the last few houses in the town and started on the flood-smoothed slopes above the river. Here, eighty paces away, there was finally some welcome evidence of life: people, horses, mules, livestock tied to the backs of carts, some ducks and chickens in baskets, even one or two dogs, on leashes to stop them running off to tuck into the corpses.

A group of lucky latecomers to Ferrytown, fewer than forty adults, had gathered at the river’s edge, uncertain what to do. They knew exactly what they wanted. They wanted some kind of godly hand to bring the raft ashore from the midstream shingle where it had irretrievably grounded itself and ferry them to safety. The adults had gathered around to exchange ideas on how they could rescue the lost raft, how they could manage it if they succeeded. Was it possible to cross with carts, or were the rapids too strong and the channel too deep for wheels and horses? There was a smaller barge, strong enough only for human passengers, in one of the lofthouses just fifty paces away, as Margaret well knew. She would have told them, certainly. She would have told them, too, about another route, a dry one, that would allow them all, though not their carts, to reach the eastern side safely and quickly. But she was not allowed to help. Once her shaven head had been remarked and it was seen — further evidence of her sickness — that she was being carried, the travelers shouted out at her to keep her distance; and then, when she and Franklin continued to approach, hoping to explain themselves and join the group, the men began to pelt the pair with stones and even draw their bows and exercise their staves. A man ran forward and a slingshot of shingle struck Margaret’s back and the side of Franklin’s head as they turned to make their escape. His ear was cut.