The Pesthouse

Thirteen

Franklin Lopez and his forty or so fellows in the labor gang had arrived outside the Ark soon after dawn and set to work at once. They were almost eager for the exertion. Work was their one protection against the cold, the hunger, and the boredom of captivity. The masters had kept their vassals lightly clothed and underfed, but the laborers had been told that this day’s work, if it was as richly productive as was hoped, might be rewarded with an evening meal and — possibly — brief access to a fire.

“Make it quick and keep it quiet” was the only instruction for the gang, though that was easier said than done. The winter months had shut the landscape down, hardened it and left it brittle. Even walking through the dead, frost-stiffened vegetation that morning had been far from silent. The ground had snapped and clacked loudly underfoot, protesting at the weight of so much flesh, though so far only telling anyone awake inside the Ark that men and horses were passing by. That was not unusual for these spring mornings, when everyone was impatient to catch first sight of sails. The ships were coming. Any dreaming citizen with any hope was packed and ready for the sea.

Franklin, clumsy and stumbling at the best of times, had made more noise than most as they approached the palisades. He’d been strapped across the neck as punishment and then strapped again when he’d cried out in pain. His masters, he’d discovered, were quick to pick on him and were less eager to punish shorter men. Sometimes, when his anger and his despair became intolerable, he stood and stretched himself and laughed out loud, shaking all his limbs as if his humor knew no bounds. It was a way to shrive himself of all the furies. It was a laugh that did not seem (well, not at first) too impudent. Sometimes his masters laughed along with him, counted him an idiot, called him Donkey. At other times they beat him for his laugh. But usually the beating was good-humored and less painful than not laughing.

Franklin had been relatively fortunate during his captivity. The morning following his separation from Margaret, after a cold, hard night sleeping with the horses and the stolen animals at the fringes of the Dreaming Highway, Franklin, Acton Bose, and the two Joeys had been tugged awake on their leashes at first light and hurried along at the speed of the slowest horse toward Tidewater.

The horsemen did not stop to feed their charges, whose only opportunity to rest and urinate had not been pleasant. The seven rustlers had caught up with a cartload of furniture and farming tools being pulled along the highway by four heavy horses. The three emigrants who owned it, two men — brothers, with identical beards — and one wife, hoped to make themselves invisible by staying absolutely silent and making no eye contact with the newcomers, who had first ridden around them in a circle, whooping like children, and then dismounted to inspect their prey more closely.

The travelers studied their own feet without comment or expression as Franklin and his fellows were forced to sit in a line with their backs toward the cart. The family’s horses were unharnessed and their boxes kicked open and their sacks emptied onto the highway. Only their dog did not understand that nothing could be done to save them or their property. Its barking protests were short-lived. Finally, once all the valuables had been discovered and stolen and anything fragile had been broken, just for the sake of it, the heavy horses were added to the string of mules and the two men were attached to the train of captives with loops of rope around their necks and wrists. But the woman, despite the protests of her husband, who called out her name—“Marie, Marie, Marie”—well beyond hearing distance, was left behind in the attentive care of two of the rustlers. They caught up with their comrades later in the afternoon in high spirits but unaccompanied. When the husband once again called out her name, they shook their fists to silence him and made vulgar gestures. “Make another noise and you’ll be beaten,” they said, and added, “Like the dog. Like sweet Marie. That goes for all of you. We’re in the mood.”

On their fourth day of captivity, exhausted by their pace of travel, by their anger and anxiety, and by the meanness of their rations, the six hostages arrived at an encampment in ancient wasteland to the north of Tidewater. The land was far too widely strewn with rubble and debris for many trees to have survived. Only weeds and a few low scrub bushes made their living among the remains of great stone buildings and the tumbled masonry of a grand, dead city. So deep were the fallen remnants of the now shapeless structures that pools of water, little lakes, were nestling in the marble and concrete piles. The horsemen stopped in a steep-sided canyon of rubble and wreckage where the sunlight hardly penetrated. There the captives were tightly bound and shackled to an antique, purposeless engine of some kind, smelling of decay and rust, and — or so they feared — left for dead, without a jug of water or a scrap of food, any protection against the cold or any word of what their fates might be. Their only freedom, now that their captors were out of earshot, was that they could speak among themselves, exchanging names with the husband and brother-in-law of sweet Marie, who made their oddly formal introductions, observing rules of precedence that could no longer have any value.

“I have to get back to my wife,” Nike, the husband, kept repeating, as if offering an excuse not to join the others in their enforced adventure.

“We all have someone to get back to,” the older Joey said. “I have a wife and other children, too. I don’t know where they are.” He indicated Franklin. “He has a sister, and Acton has his parents and his daughter. That’s how it is for all of us. They’re lost to us, we’re lost to them.”

“You’re older than the rest of us,” replied Nike, as if age devalued Joey’s pessimism.

The younger Joey spent his time either crying or sighing deeply. He was in shock: the beating of the dog had been the cruelest act he’d ever witnessed, and inexplicable to a boy of his age. He’d no idea that anyone could be so heartless as to treat a dog as if it were…well, just an animal. But the men, once they had heard the horsemen depart and tested the silence for a while, saw this unexpected abandonment as their only chance to get away with their lives. If there was anyone to get back to, if the wife, the child, the sister, and the parents had survived, then this was the opportunity to seek them out.

The men were too tightly bound to attempt to untie any knots, but with a little wiggling each could sink his chin onto his chest and get his teeth around one of the thinner ropes. It tasted of sweat and smelled of horses and wood. But it was feasible, though not easy, to snap or chew the thin strands. Given time, it now seemed possible that they could bite through this rope, though whether that would set them free or merely damage their mouths and lips remained to be seen. They worked away, no longer wasting any energy on talk. They sounded like six feeding rats.

The best of them had broken through only a fraction of the rope when three of the rustlers, including their short and overdressed leader, still wearing Jackson’s coat, returned. They were accompanied by an elderly man who rode his horse sidesaddle and his two armed retainers. They helped him to dismount. He walked along the line of captives, nodding, shaking his head, behaving like a trader inspecting barrels of apples or bolts of cloth.

“Very well,” he said. “My offer stands. I’ll take those three.” He pointed at the brothers and at Acton Bose, but shook his head at the middle-aged potman. “And I’ll take the boy. We’ll make good use of him until he grows. What name?”

“I’m Junior Joey, mister.”

“And this one, too.” He placed his finger on the end of Franklin’s chin, buried in the hair and the threads of chewed rope. “We’ll have them digging coal.”

“No, the mountain’s not for sale,” the small man said. “We’re keeping him.”

“Well, keep him, then. The more fool you. I would have paid extra for him.” He shook hands with the rustlers, handed over the price they’d negotiated, remounted his horse, with help, and led his retainers and his four newly roped purchases out of the encampment.

“There’s much to do,” the little rustler said, inspecting the remaining Joey, now trembling with shock and fear. “I own you now, you two. I have you for eternity. Free servitude. Work hard, and then we’ll see what rations I might offer you. If you continue to devour your ropes, you’ll not be fed, except with rope.” He laughed, quite normally and merrily, his beard and ribbons shaking — the very thought of feeding them on rope! Surely they could see the funny side of that. “You call me Master or you call me Captain or you call me Chief. Those are the names I answer to. Let’s hear the sound of that. You first.”

“Master,” Joey said.

“And you, the giant.”

“Yes, Captain Chief.” The three rustlers found Franklin’s answer hilarious. They laughed like teenagers, too easily amused. That name would stick.

“I could have made a shiny profit out of you,” said Captain Chief, indicating with a flapping hand that Franklin should squat. Franklin was used to being flapped down to the ground by senior but shorter men. “I could have sold you with your four friends. Strong men like you are precious to the quarry barons and the gang masters, who pull the reins around here at Tidewater. But I’ve held on to you. Now why is that, do you suppose?” He took a step forward to whisper in his captive’s ear, so close that Franklin could smell the familiar skin of Jackson’s coat as well as the chewed tobacco on the man’s breath. “We’re holding on to you because if you’re wise as well as strong, if you’re sensible, we might decide to let you be a brother in our band. Does that appeal to you, to ride with us when we go out on business? You look as if you could be educated how to snap a man in half if you saw any profit in it.” He raised his voice, so everyone could hear. “But if you’re other wise as well as strong, then…Well, then, you’ll be the one who’s snapped in half. You won’t be mounted on a horse. We’ll have you mounted on a sharpened pole. We’ll skin a shield with you. You have the word of Captain Chief on that.”

Franklin felt oddly hopeful after this whispered conversation. He would cooperate, be wise, be sensible. And then, as soon as he was trusted, he would try to creep away. He could imagine it, a nighttime opportunity. He would retrieve his brother’s coat. Its theft was a constant insult and a provocation and one that, in his head at least, he could revenge. Wearing it again might make him as valiant and purposeful as Jackson had always been. He’d be as light and silent as a moth when he cut loose the rustlers’ biggest horse and stole away with Joey at his back. Then he’d be on board a ship with great white flapping sails and with Margaret at his side (for he could not bear to think that she had already gone ahead of him). And all the Boses would be there, on deck, with wind-pinked cheeks, both Joeys too, the brothers and Marie, the slaughtered dog, the coastline sinking as the waters passed around the hull.

Franklin considered, too, that he might slit some throats before he fled the encampment, or take a chunk of metal to stave in their sleeping heads. Seeing that cruel and pompous Captain Chief dead in his blankets would be a satisfaction. But Franklin could not concentrate on that heavy revenge, because the more he tried to imagine it, the less likely it became. He could never make a convincing murderer. His hand was far too hesitant. He’d never be the sort to “snap a man in half,” or slit a throat, or bludgeon a head, sleeping or not. He could not make that leap. There was too great a gap between his near bank and his far.

It was not long before the rustlers also realized that despite their expectations, Franklin would not proceed to be a member of their band, a menacing comrade. He was large and powerful, for sure. And he proved to be a useful beast of burden, willing and easily tamed. But making him menacing and dangerous would be beyond the ingenuity of the Devil himself. The man might be big, but he was hardly daunting. He laughed inexplicably and too loudly every once in a while. He blushed like a girl. He did what he was told too readily. Even on that first day of captivity, after he’d been separated from the plague girl, he’d flinched at the slightest prospect of being touched, even though none of the horsemen had yet done more than lightly kick or slap him. Their horses were treated worse than that and accepted it with a flick of the ear. It wasn’t long before they gave up any hope that a crueler, tougher side to Franklin would be beaten to the surface. So they beat him idly, expecting nothing in return.

Now, on the morning of their visit to the metal soil heaps outside the Ark, it was hard for the labor gang to stay as silent as the horsemen had demanded. Breaking through the frozen topsoil with metal-headed tools was bound to be noisy, whatever efforts the men might make to dull the sound. But once the surface had been breached, the earth there was less solid than most other open ground in the sea-chilled neighborhoods of Tidewater. It was protected from the worst of the ice and the winds by the Ark’s trunk palisade and kept soft by the washing and cooking slops that were drained through sluices from the Ark every evening and were too oily to freeze. There were the first spring sun and a little melting snow to soften the ground further and to provide these raiders and their slaves with their first opportunity to do what they had planned to do for months: harvest the crop of confiscated metal. Even the captives had been looking forward to this. They might not prosper personally from what they unearthed for their masters, but the work would be less dull than the usual tearing down or grubbing out of timber, stone, and metal salvage in the debris fields beyond the town. They were almost boys again as they embarked upon their work. Every rightly constructed boy has a desire to go somewhere and dig for buried treasure. They set about the task almost cheerfully.

Much of the earth had been turned and loosened during the previous fall’s excavations and burials. The disturbed ground had not yet settled, and so it was easy to spot the trenches where so many tools, valuables, and weapons had been “restituted” by the Baptists. Breaking into these long mounds was not hard work, especially with a strong man such as Franklin wielding the heaviest mattock. Almost at once his efforts were rewarded with the tuneless clang of his blade on earth-deadened metal. One of the masters shouted out that Franklin should be more careful and use his mattock less forcibly. There should be no carelessness, no damage to their booty.

Once the topsoil had been thoroughly raked away, the labor gang gathered around to clear and search the middens with their bare hands, taking care to check for metals in every palm of soil. The slave masters had laid out three waxed blankets behind their workers: one for swords and knives and any arrow-and spearheads that had been snapped off their shafts and could be mounted and used again; a second for useful objects that might be sold, such as buckets, silverware, and platters, and reclaimable parts of saddles and wagons; and a third for trinkets, silver plate, and jewelry, the abundant riches that were understood to be buried there and that, together with the weapons, would make the masters even more powerful.

Much of the confiscated metal that they extracted had already been damaged in its burial by the Baptists and then crushed further by the months of frost and the weight of earth. Buckets that had gone in round and unpunctured came out flattened and split. Clasps and buckles were degraded. Sets of cheap knives and forks had halved their weight but doubled their bulk to rust. Sets of nails and tacks had been welded to each other by the damp. Once polished surfaces had roughened and corroded. Everything had lost its sheen and color. Everything was acned. The soil itself was dark with rust and stains.

Many of the pieces pulled clear by Franklin and his fellows were inspected, found wanting, and just thrown back into the cleared trenches, but nevertheless there was plenty worth keeping, enough to arm the horsemen from toe to teeth and make them rich. Within a short time the three blankets were heavy with pickings. They were dragged away, tied corner to corner, and lifted onto carts. New blankets were provided. Nothing of any worth could be left behind. By now the men were tired and cold and no longer excited. The treasure hunt was proving as tedious as any other work. They filled their blankets three more times before the sun gained much altitude.

It was, then, almost a relief when the work was finally interrupted by the arrival of the Baptists, a group of fifteen or so, mostly the younger devotees and gatekeepers, distinguished as ever by the devotional white tapes tied at their shoulders. But there were four of the older disciples, too, wearing their calmest faces and carrying the very weakest of the Helpless Gentlemen in an invalid chair with long lifting poles. The younger Baptists did their best to seem imposing and imperious without inviting an assault. They were armed only with their pilgrim sticks, good implements for prodding families, perhaps, but no use against metal swords and pikes. They were outnumbered, anyway. Besides the labor gang and the horses, the masters had mustered more than thirty men, all used to conflict, every one of them inclined to be a murderer.

The Baptists would not offer any short-term violence. Instead they threatened hellfire and damnation for all who soiled their hands and souls with metal. For a while, now that excavations had ceased, the only sounds were the high-pitched, fearful voices of believers and the clacking of the few winter birds that had come to see what they could find in the freshly turned soil. The Most Helpless Gentleman himself called out: “This is the Devil’s work. Enough.” A very reedy voice. Then there was the laughter of the mounted men, the sound of horses being spurred and turned, the shithering of blades from sheaths. “The Devil’s got some better work for us, I think,” the shortest of the riders, Captain Chief, said. “Now come on, boys, make meat of them. Prime cuts of Baptist for the crows.” Again his men were laughing, too readily amused.

The Helpless Gentleman would have shaken his fists in anger had he had the strength to raise his arms from his lap. He would have used his hands to save himself, despite his vows. He would at least have pressed his palms together and said his prayers. But horsemen were already at his back, determined to see him tumble from his chair. The devotee who dared to try to push away a horse was struck three times across his face and head with a heavy steel blade. The first blow cut into his cheek and across his mouth. The second, aimed at his white devotional tape, severed his windpipe and finished him. The final blow, delivered as the body fell, was just for show. It took the Baptist’s head clean off. It would have rolled a step or two had not his long nose wedged against a frozen clod of soil.

Franklin and his fellows — men who’d been added to his group in the last days of fall — were not shocked. This had been a winter of punishments and executions. They’d seen more deaths than they could even remember, including other decapitations. Two overspirited young men had tried to escape at their first opportunity, been dragged back to the encampment behind horses, feet first, and then brutally dispatched with an ax. It was a lesson to the others, according to the one comedian among the horsemen: “If you let your legs run, then we’ll make sure your blood runs, too,” and “Use your head or lose your head,” and “The man who quits is cut in bits. His toes are separated from his nose.” He never tired of rhyming threats.

The elder of the two Joeys, the potman, had succumbed during the winter to the cold, the hunger, and the string of beatings he’d received for being too small and weak for heavy work. He was worthless, anyway. The labor gang was not a charity. All its members had to earn their keep tenfold or they would perish.

Only the most obedient, the strongest, and the fittest could survive such a demanding and relentless regime. Franklin and his forty or so companions who had lasted long enough to serve in that day’s metal raiding party were hardened men, mistreated, underfed, but mostly young and muscular. How was it, then, that not one of them so much as raised a hand to save a life that morning? They had only to stretch and help themselves to freshly unearthed weapons from the spoils pile on the waxed blanket. They outnumbered their armed masters and could simply take the horsemen, who were now paying attention only to the group of Baptists, by surprise. Franklin thought of it. He clenched the muscles in his back and neck and thought of it. He thought of pulling free from the pile the heavy ax that he had just taken from the soil. A man could kill with it easily. He would take Captain Chief first, the little fellow who’d stolen and was still wearing his brother Jackson’s piebald coat. He’d add another, brighter color to the black and white and brown. And then he’d settle all the scores of winter, cracking the skulls and bloodying the faces of those hard men who’d made his life so bitter. He imagined rolling all the bodies into the trenches among the useless metal and kicking soil to cover them. He imagined kicking them until every bone in their bodies was splintered. But that was just a story that he told himself. He did not free himself. He did not fight. He did not save a life. He did nothing except stay quiet and calm, biting his tongue, watching the carnage as one by one the remaining Baptists were rounded up. How he wished that his brother might appear with his substantial temper to bring this nightmare to an end.

Franklin and his enslaved comrades had learned enough in the previous few months not to risk for even the highest of rewards the anger of these idle, mounted men, their captors. They’d seen too many beatings over the winter, too many throats cut, too many punishments for crimes no greater than muttering under their breaths and being weary before their work was done, to chance any kind of rebellion. They were not fed well enough to have reserved any courage. They were dispirited and fragile. Who’d be the first to call out for mercy for the Baptists? That one might lose his supper for the night, and be denied the promised fire. Which one would call out to the disciples to run? That man might have his tongue cut out or nailed to a tree. Who’d be the first to dare to reach out for a sword? That one might be the first to die. So all the labor gang did was stand and watch as the devotees who’d come to stop the disinterment of the Devil’s metal were encircled by the horses. Franklin and his comrades heard the final prayers and the cries. Curses, even. But they rubbed their hands against the cold. They stamped their feet and watched the horses’ breath sculpt clouds. A hundred heartbeats and the horsemen pulled away again, to leave the Baptists dead or dying in the snow.

Margaret hesitated. Two opposing instincts fixed her to the spot. The first instinct was to gather up Jackie in her arms and scuttle from the Ark as quickly as she could. She already knew what kind of men these were, even if the only one she recognized was the bandy leader in the stolen and recurring goatskin coat. Their bloody swords and pikes stood for what they had already done that morning and what they would continue doing until the raping and the looting began. After so many quiet and uneventful months, even the sight of these men’s perspiring horses, left to graze the paving in the Ark’s inner courtyard while their masters went about their trade, was alarming in itself. A horse had never come this far before. But that was nothing compared to the menace of the raiders’ cries and the hard set of their faces as they ran across the open space toward the building work and the accommodation sheds, looking first of all for men. These were the Anti-Baptists that she’d heard about all winter, strong-armed and cruel-handed outlaws beyond redemption, intent on forging the blood and metal of the Devil’s work, the subject of so many dinner sermons. She and Jackie should run for the gate as quickly as they could, before their moment passed and they were spotted by any of these sinners.

The second impulse held her by the ankles for the moment. That coat was Franklin in a way, or at least it might be a route to him. Just that glimpse of goatskin brought Margaret’s decent, blushing friend alive for her after the months of forgetting. She had lightning images of him, his shoulders working between the shafts of the barrow, his big frame at the Pesthouse door, drenching her in shadow, his fingers between her toes. Franklin Lopez, tall and tender, taking care of her. Franklin Lopez reaching over with his outsized hand to tear the blue scarf from her head. She ought to follow the coat. Her heart demanded it. She was in debt to him. She ought at least to beg the small man for word of Franklin’s whereabouts, if he was still alive enough for whereabouts. She ought to drag the coat off that impostor’s back and press the goatskin to her nose for any trace of her lost and never lover. The word was lover, yes, the lover she had never even kissed, and never would unless she called out to the coat. This might be her only opportunity for getting close to him again.

But this was just a passing impulse. Margaret was wise enough to shake it off. Her first duty was to Jackie. She did what any mother would. She put the child before the man and ran, with Jackie struggling under her arm, toward the raiders’ loose horses and the exit from the Ark.

As soon as they were among the animals, they were hidden from sight and safe for a moment. Margaret was a town girl, and although her family had always owned a burden mare, she was still a little nervous of horses in a group, their nipping teeth, their kicks. The last time she had ridden had been that day when she’d been taken up to the Pesthouse, almost unconscious with fever, by her grandfather. But now she recognized her opportunity. As anybody knows, making an escape by horse is nearly always preferable to making an escape on foot. The horse provides the speed and the distance and is also saddled with the tiredness. Only a sailboat is faster than a horse and then only when the wind is in a helpful mood.

Margaret shielded Jackie from the horses’ teeth and hoofs and pushed her way through the animals to one of the smaller mounts at the back of the group. It was equipped for travel, with a heavy striped blanket for a saddle and leather panniers. She tugged it by its reins. It came readily. She wouldn’t mount it yet. She wanted first to get outside, beyond the Ark’s outer gate. Then she would shelter under the high palisade and consider her options.

The next few moments would be difficult. If anyone was in the small outer courtyard between the two gates, she could not escape unnoticed. Perhaps she could use the horse as a shield, or as an excuse. “I was told to take this horse outside,” she could say. “The small man with the patterned coat said I should.” But no one was there to challenge her. She reached the Ark’s great timber gate. And it was unattended, with just a heavy block of sunshine wedging it open.

They went outside, the three of them, the horse, the woman, and the girl, into the thin warmth of the morning. There was a breeze, a shell-blue sky, the earthy smell of winter melting, and a sound that she hadn’t heard for months, the clatter of metal tools. Had she closed her eyes, she could have imagined she was back in Ferrytown, with everything and everyone well. But still she did not dare to mount the horse. To sit on it was to declare that she had stolen it, and stealing a horse was an act that would earn no mercy. While she was leading it, she could at least maintain the lie that she was being helpful, doing what she was told, making a mistake, that she was muddled, that she had found the horse roaming free — yes, that was best — and was only looking for its master in the hope of getting a reward. She even smiled to herself, relieved to have found a story that might save her, or at least win her time.

There was still no one around to challenge her. She walked between the horse and the timbers of the palisade, with Jackie now growing heavy and starting to snivel in the crook of her arm. The girl reached out and touched the horse’s flank, more baffled by its size than scared. “Horse, horse, horse,” her ma said, a new word for the child, but it was too strange a word and too unmuscular for Jackie to attempt the sound.

The wind intensified as they came out into the open ground beyond the western corner of the Ark, with its high views along the estuary toward the roofs and curling smoke of Tidewater. Now Margaret could hear the metal tools distinctly, but at first her eyesight was too poor and her face was too beset by the wind to comprehend the scene before her in any detail. She could see three mounted horsemen, turned away from her and looking out across the flat approaches to the Ark. Beyond the horsemen, if she screwed up her eyes, she could make out the trenches that she had noticed on her way in the previous fall. The invalid chair that was used to transport the Helpless Gentlemen was lying on its side. She could make out the flash of white tape and what had to be the bodies of disciples. Just as she’d expected when, earlier, she’d seen the bloody swords and pikes.

She moved to the far side of the horse, out of sight and out of the wind, and hurried on, counting away the moments beneath her breath. Fifty to be past the rustlers. One hundred to be relatively safe. Two hundred to be out of sight and out of harm’s way. But something, some half-digested shape, had lodged itself inside her head. She ducked beneath her horse’s reins, still keeping her body and Jackie out of sight, and peered again at what was going on among the trenches. Again she saw the horsemen, still with their backs turned to her. Again she saw the upturned chair and the dark outline of fallen bodies. But now, for the first time, she spotted the gang of men on their hands and knees in the earth, some almost buried, or so it seemed, in the diggings. There was nothing there to give her pause, at least not until one of the horsemen blew for attention on an elk horn and half a dozen of the men stood up and looked in his direction. A tall man was among them, thinner than the one Margaret remembered but otherwise just his shape. She could not see his face in any detail, but the beard was right, a little longer possibly, but its jut was reminiscent of Franklin’s beard. “No, surely not,” she said out loud. Surely it couldn’t be him. She understood her hopes were playing tricks on her. They would make her recognize her Franklin in any man of any height above the average. She should not fool herself. That one sight of the piebald coat had robbed her of her reason, and would rob her of her life and liberty if she stayed too long. She had to get away before one of the horsemen turned around on his mount, saw her there, and recognized his comrade’s horse from its color and its tack.

She pulled the distinctive blanket from underneath the horse’s saddle strap and bunched it up to hide it from the riders, some of whom had matching cloths. She started trotting the animal like a trainer in a corral, with her head close to its and their legs moving in unison. Eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven…In moments they would be relatively safe. Then she heard a sound she half recognized and could not ignore. A laugh. A sudden donkey laugh, but from a man. She looked toward it. No tricks of hope. This time she truly found the laughter’s shape familiar. It seemed to buckle his whole body. His hands were shaking and his head was down. Franklin’s signature.

Margaret knew at once that she’d been blessed. It was a wonder that their paths had crossed again in such a vast and wayward land. It was as well a miracle that Franklin should have laughed at all, for what was there for anyone to laugh at on such a day of slaughter? Without his laugh she would have hurried on with Jackie to Tidewater and been none the wiser. She stepped out of the shadow of her horse and raised her hand to show herself to Franklin.

What next? Margaret hadn’t time to think. She’d not remember what happened after that, not exactly, not in all its detail or its order. But there were images that stuck, amid the commotion: one of the horsemen had dug his heels into his mount and was moving toward Franklin with his stick raised, meaning to put an end to any laughter; Margaret was calling out with a reckless abandon, too desperate and elated to be limited by any fear or caution, “Fran Klin! Fran Klin!”; Franklin was raising his arms, either to wave at her or to shield himself against a beating; a second horseman had already turned and started riding up the slight incline toward her, calling out for her to show herself and put her hands on her shoulders; she was stepping clear of the horse and holding up Jackie, just to show that she was nobody more dangerous than a young mother with a child.

By the time Margaret had looked again across the corpses and the open trenches, Franklin had already taken three blows to his shoulder and a fourth to his head. The next never made contact. Franklin, too stunned to be cowardly, caught hold of the horseman’s leg and flipped him from his saddle. Such an easy thing to do. The rider fell heavily on his shoulder and was slow to rise, too slow at least to defend himself against the flat back of a spade, wielded by one of Franklin’s comrades in the gang. Now Franklin somehow had a heavy mallet in his hand and was swinging it wildly. The third rider, already off his horse — because he had been dragged out of his saddle or had dismounted — was running for his life toward the Ark.

The second rider, now halfway between Margaret and his dismounted colleagues, was quick to realize that he could not manage on his own with such a large gang armed with heavy tools and waste metal and so clearly ready to be mutinous. He turned his horse and started to ride for assistance. In moments he’d come back with his fiercest friends, and there’d be punishments.

Margaret, too, was moving quickly. This much was clear to her. She had to be valiant. She had to be a horsewoman. Thank goodness that she’d taken such a modest, willing animal. She pulled herself onto its back, tucked Jackie between her thighs, and held her tight with her left arm. She surprised herself by riding efficiently with just one hand on the reins, though more rapidly than she’d intended. The group of men from the labor gang were beginning to look more frightened and confused than exhilarated. These unpracticed heroes were alarmed. What might be the consequences of their hotheadedness? Some, seeing Margaret bearing down on them, were already running toward the cover of the trees. Others headed toward Tidewater, putting their hopes in the distant streets where they might disappear among the crowds. A few had stopped to help themselves to jewelry and valuables. Others seemed too scared to run. They stood and watched the woman on the horse, not knowing what to expect from her.

Franklin had not moved off either, but not because he was rooted to the spot by fear. He was standing with his hands above his head, clapping and still laughing, despite the pain in his shoulder and the bruising across his forehead. Again Margaret called his name. But he’d already seen her. He’d recognized her voice and the redness of her now almost thumb-length curly hair as soon as she had shouted his name the first time. He might have taken that second blow to his head if he had not known that Margaret was watching and would be ashamed if she observed what sort of slave he had become.

The slave master whom Franklin had thrown so easily from his mount was sitting up among the bodies of the slaughtered devotees and was holding his head between blood-red hands. But his horse was loose and for the taking. Franklin had it now. He’d been used to horses on his farm. They trusted him. Before Margaret had reached the trenches on her horse, he was mounted, too. He turned its head and dug his heels into its sides. He was its master now.

Margaret found her way between the open trenches and the spoils heaps, winded and elated. “Let’s go,” she said, and loved herself a little for her poise. He shook his head with disbelief. There were so many questions to be asked. Where had she come from? Whose little child was this? He rode with Margaret at his shoulder — at his aching shoulder — toward the north side of the Ark, scarlet with pleasure, too breathless even to say a word to her. He had overexerted himself that day, but joy was fizzing in his lungs. His mouth, and hers, were stretched too wide with smiles for them to form a single sound.