October skies

CHAPTER 28

17 October, 1856

Preston’s wounds seem to be healing well, with only small indications of infection. There is some inflammation around one of the wounds, and a little weeping, but one would have expected far worse from the unclean claws of a wild animal. There are some signs of a mild fever — the man’s skin is hot to touch — but his greatest discomfort seems to be pain from the wound. Inside which, regarding the lacerations, the bruising must be quite considerable. I have given him more laudanum, to which he responds well. It is a potent solution, which I prefer to prescribe sparingly.

Too much can lead to a reliance upon it.

Dorothy Dreyton is with me now. As a matter of fact, she lies asleep on the floor. Her vigil is almost constant. She must be at the point of exhaustion to allow herself the luxury of an hour or two to sleep. I wonder if she has the slightest notion that her children have spent more time during the last few days at our end of the camp than they have in theirs.

Preston stirred restlessly in his sleep and muttered, his deep voice thick with cloying mucus. Ben guessed that the recently administered opiate was doing its work and had entirely banished the pain for now. But it was also weaving a darker magic. On an unconscious mind it conjured the most lurid nightmares. He had seen first-hand the poor wretches that had found themselves admitted to Banner House Asylum by way of over-using laudanum and other such soothing tonics, tormented by visions and delusions that hounded them in their sleeping and — for the less fortunate — waking hours.

Ben leaned over and stroked his forehead, feeling the warmth and dampness of his pale skin. Lying on a cot in this sorry condition, there was still something very impressive about William Preston, Ben decided; he exuded an air of authority even as he slept. A man like that, in the right place with the right message, could lead a people to do anything.

Preston’s murmuring continued. Beneath the thin parchment skin of his closed lids, his eyes jerked from one side to the other rapidly. Then with a gasp, they snapped open.

‘Mr Preston?’

He licked his lips dryly — thirsty.

Ben put away his inkpot, pen and journal and reached for a cup of water. He placed a hand behind Preston’s head, the man’s long grey-blond hair lank with sweat, and lifted him to take a drink.

‘Here, some water,’ he said quietly.

Preston’s glassy eyes focused away from the low canvas ceiling, bulging with the weight of snow, and onto Ben’s face. By the flickering light of the oil lamp, it looked like the elder’s irises were fully dilated.

The laudanum.

‘M-my G-God… they… they… they know!’ gasped Preston.

‘Shhhh,’ Ben comforted him. ‘Drink some water.’

Preston refused. ‘Th-they know!’ he rasped again, grabbing Ben’s hand tightly with one of his own, squeezing desperately.

Ben leaned down closer to him. ‘Mr Preston… William, it’s okay.’

‘W-what if… they know! They s-see… they can see… see what I am!’ His voice was dry and soft, a keening whisper that sounded like the wheezing rattle of an old man. Preston stared wildly at him, intently, but Ben wondered what exactly his eyes were seeing — whom he thought he was talking to.

‘I… I… hear nothing from it! N-nothing!’

Preston’s head jerked round to look at the dark space behind his cot, towards the metal chest nestling amongst sacks of oatmeal. ‘Nothing!’ he cried, his voice cracked pitifully.

He turned back to face Ben. ‘Eric! What if they know? What if they know we took it… that we stole it!’

Ben could have replied that he wasn’t Eric. But he decided not to.

‘Eric, what if they know the angel sh-shuns me? What… what’ll I do?’

Preston slumped back in the cot, his head resting once more against the pillow.

‘Just words…’ he wheezed quietly, his voice softening, spent. ‘They’re just words… just my words.’

His eyes closed again. ‘My words,’ he muttered, slipping back into a restless and troubled sleep, ‘not God’s…’

Ben sat and watched over him for a while, fidgeting in his sleep, several times murmuring, but nothing Ben could understand.

He knew the stronger tonics could do that — take the small whispering voices at the back of a person’s mind and turn them into a deafening scream. He was wondering what was troubling Preston in his sleep and had a mind that the answer might lie inside the metal chest just beyond him, when he heard Dorothy Dreyton stirring on the floor and begin to rise.

‘Did he wake you, Mrs Dreyton?’

She said nothing, sitting up and staring wide-eyed at Preston. There was something about her manner that troubled Ben.

‘Mrs Dreyton?’

Her eyes were distant. Without a word, she got to her feet and, stooping low, she pushed the flap aside, letting in a gust of freezing wind that set the flame on the oil lamp dancing, and stepped out into the cold day.

Above the rumpling wind, he thought he could hear distant raised voices; a commotion from across the clearing, and a ripple of disturbance and questioning from the Mormons standing nearby. Something was going on.

Ben stood up, and stooped as he swept the flap aside, squinting at the brilliant all-white glare of the day.

‘What is it?’

A man standing dutifully beside the entrance, Mr Hollander, with a dark beard almost down to his belt, pointed across the clearing. Ben could see Keats and several others moving quickly down-slope and emerging from the tree line onto the open ground of the camp, their guns unslung and held ready, anxiously looking back over their shoulders.

‘Thought I heard someone shout something about Indians,’ said Mr Hollander.