Free The Pesthouse by Jim Crace Page B

back into the town once he had left her safely in the Pesthouse. And without the benefit of barbering and pigeons to protect them, every beating heart in the village had been stilled. Yes,
every
beating heart. She guessed exactly what she and Franklin would discover if they dared to go beyond the stockade and the palisades. Not a single fly. No living creatures, other than the few travelers and the birds that had arrived since death had done its work. No welcome from her family.
     
7
     
    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 normally 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 that 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