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.
February 1621
Father recovered, I know not how, but he is one of the few who have. A week after he was taken ill he was able to leave his bed and walk about the room a bit, and then I left him to care for himself and went to the Common House to work with Elizabeth and the others.
Prissy Mullins’ brother has died, and the poor girl is stricken with grief and loneliness, but she has put herself to caring for the small children whose mothers are either dead, or dying. ’Tis strange how few of the children are stricken—I know not why this is. Bess Tilley and Mary Chilton help Prissy, and so, without ’Maris and Oceanus to look after, I have been free to help with the nursing.
Were there time to think about it perhaps I might wonder why, after my horror of the awful Sickness, I was willing to assist. It may be that after tending Father and finding myself still uncontaminated, my fears were eased, or it may be simply that every hand is needed and I could not, in all pride, be the one to shirk. Or—perhaps—this is all a part of growing up. In any case, I went.
When I first walked into the Common House I could not believe what I saw. The floor was covered with mats and pallets, with barely room to step between them, and on each lay some miserable creature, blazing with fever, shaking with chills, or spewing a life out. There was a strange hush in the room, with a constant low sound of weeping, soft moaning, or whispered voices. The great fire, which the men keep blazing, threw a fearsome flickering light over everything, making a weak hand, raised in suffering, become a skeleton shadow on the wall. For a moment I stood in the doorway, doubting whether I could force myself to enter. The nauseous stench, the sounds of agony, the nightmare look of the place, made me want to turn and run. Then I saw Captain Standish, kneeling beside some poor wretch, bathing a face drawn with pain. Looking up, he saw me too, and smiled.
“Another pair of hands, Constance?” he said. “God bless you! Here, empty this basin, girl, and rinse it well. The water is there in the cask beside the door.”
And that was it. As I carried the cleansed basin back to Myles, I saw John Cooke and his father lifting Edward Fuller from the floor in the corner of the room. As they carried him past me I saw that he was dead. Dr. Fuller held the door open for them, and as he watched his brother being taken from the house his face was wiped clean of all expression. I had just handed the basin back to the Captain when I felt a touch on my ankle and looked down. It was Ann Fuller.
“That was my husband?” she whispered. In the wavering light from the pine knots and the fire her face seemed all bones, with great black holes for eyes. “That was Edward?”
I knelt beside her. I could not answer—I just nodded.
“Sam—my little Sam—is he—”
“Samuel is well,” I told her. “He is with the other children. Priscilla is tending them.”
She grasped my hand; her own was scorching hot, the while she shivered. “Watch over him, Constance. Little Sam—see he is taken care of. Please!”
“I will. I promise. Try to sleep now, ma’am.”
She turned her head away from me, and there were slow tears seeping from her closed eyes. The next night she was buried beside her husband.
Somehow, I know not how, I was going from one to another, emptying their terrible slops, sponging their faces, spooning gruel into the mouths of those with enough strength left to swallow. There was no time to bathe the dead, nor prepare them properly for burial; we must needs tend the living. Day and night were much the same, save that we removed the dead by night. Sometimes Elizabeth would be working with me, and Desire Minter—no time now to gaze after John Alden—and Mistress Brewster, the only one who took time to breathe a prayer over each corpse as it was carried out. Several times I saw John Cooke, his face tight with disgust at the chores to be done, helping with a gentle tenderness that did not seem strange to me.
It went on for weeks, and days and time meant nothing. There was little talking—no one had the strength to spare for unnecessary words. There was a certain order to our work; there were those who cooked and those who tended the children, whom we kept away from the sick ones as much as we