SQUID OF THE EVENING, BEAUTIFUL SQUID
Charleston, Royal Colony of South Carolina
LORD JOHN AND HIS niece, Dorothea, ate that night at a small ordinary near the shore, whose air was redolent with the luscious scents of baked fish, eels in wine sauce, and small whole squid, fried crisply in cornmeal. John inhaled deeply with pleasure, handed Dottie to a stool, and sat down himself, enjoying the moment of gustatory indecision.
“It’s that moment when you can convincingly imagine the delightful prospect of eating everything the establishment has to offer,” he told Dottie. “Momentarily untroubled by the knowledge that one’s stomach has a limited capacity and thus one must, alas, choose in the end.”
Dottie looked a little dubious, but, thus urged, she took a deep sniff of the atmosphere, to which the scent of fresh-baked bread had just been added as the serving maid came in with a great loaf and a dish of butter with a four-leafed clover—this being the name of the establishment—stamped into its oleaginous surface.
“Oh, that smells wonderful!” she said, her face lighting. “Might I have some, please? And a glass of cider?”
He was pleased to see her nibble hungrily at the bread and take a deep breath of the cider—which was aromatic enough to challenge even the squid, his own reluctantly final choice, though this was accompanied by a dozen fresh-shucked oysters to fill whatever crevices might remain. Dottie had chosen the baked hake, though she had only picked at it so far.
“I came down to the harbor this afternoon while you were resting,” he said, tearing off a wodge of bread to counteract the grated horseradish mixed with the oysters’ brine. “I asked about and found two or three small boats whose owners are not averse to a quick journey to Savannah.”
“How quick?” she asked warily.
“It’s little more than a hundred miles by water,” he said, shrugging in what he hoped was a casual manner. “Perhaps two days, with a good wind and fair weather.”
“Mmm.” Dottie cast a skeptical glance at the ordinary’s shuttered window. The shutters trembled to a blast of rain and wind. “It’s October, Uncle John. The weather is seldom predictable.”
“How do you know? Madam—might I have some vinegar for the squid?” The proprietor’s wife nodded, bustling off, and he repeated, “How do you know?”
“Our landlady’s son is a fisherman. So was her husband. He died in a gale—last October,” she finished sweetly, and popped the last bite of bread into her mouth.
“Such squeamish prudence is unlike you, Dottie,” he remarked, accepting the vinegar bottle from the proprietress and sousing his crisp squidlings. “Oh, God,” he said, chewing. “Ambrosia. Here—have one.” He speared one with his fork and passed it across to her.
“Yes. Well . . .” She regarded the squid-laden fork with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “How long would it take to travel overland?”
“Perhaps four or five days. Again, with good weather.”
She sighed, lifted the squid to her mouth, hesitated, and then, with the air of a Roman gladiator facing an oncoming crocodile in the arena, put it into her mouth and chewed. She went white.
“Dottie!” He leapt up, knocking his stool over, and managed to catch her as she wilted toward the floor.
“Gah,” she said faintly, and, lunging out of his arms, bolted for the door, retching. He followed and was in time to hold her head as she lost the bread, cider, and the half-chewed squid.
“I’m so sorry,” she said a few moments later, as he emerged from the ordinary with a mug and a damp cloth. She was leaning against the most sheltered wall of the building, wrapped in his cloak, and was the color of spoiled suet pudding. “How disgusting of me.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said amiably. “I’ve done just the same for all three of your brothers, on occasion—though I somehow doubt from the same cause. How long have you known you were with child?”
“I became certain of it about five minutes ago,” she said, swallowing audibly and shuddering. “Dear Lord, I will never eat squid again.”
“Had you ever eaten squid before?”
“No. I never want to see another squid. Bother, my mouth tastes of sick.”
John, who was indeed experienced in such matters, handed her the mug of beer.
“Rinse your mouth with that,” he said. “Then drink the rest. It will settle your stomach.”
She looked dubious at this but did as he said, and emerged from the cup still pale but much improved.
“Better? Good. I don’t suppose you want to go back inside? No, of course not. Let me pay, and I’ll take you home.” Inside, he asked the landlady to make up a parcel of their abandoned supper—he didn’t mind eating cold fried squid, but he did want to eat; he was starving—and held this carefully to windward as they walked back to their lodgings.
“You didn’t know?” he asked curiously. “I’ve often wondered about that. Some women have told me they knew at once, and yet I’ve heard of others who somehow remained oblivious to their condition until the moment of birth was upon them, incredible as that seems.”
Dottie laughed; the cold wind had brought some of the color back to her cheeks, and he was relieved to see her spirits recovered.
“Do lots of women discuss their intimacies with you, Uncle John? That seems somewhat unusual.”
“I seem to attract unusual women,” he said, rather ruefully. “I also seem to have the sort of face that people feel compelled to tell things to. In another age, perhaps I should have been a confessor, if that’s the word. But returning to the point”—he took her elbow to guide her round a large pile of horse droppings—“now that you do know . . . what shall we do about it?”
“I don’t think anything actually needs to be done for about eight months,” she said, and he gave her a look.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “I doubt you wish to establish residence in Charleston until after your child arrives. Do you wish to return to Philadelphia—or New Jersey, or whatever godforsaken place Denzell happens to be at the moment—or shall I make arrangements to proceed to Savannah and remain there for some time? Or—” Another thought struck him, and he altered the look to one of seriousness.
“Do you want to go home, Dottie? To England, I mean. To your mother?”
Her face went blank with surprise, which gave way to a look of longing that broke his heart. She looked away, blinking back tears, but her voice was steady when she turned back to him.
“No,” she said, and swallowed. “I want to be with Denzell. All other considerations aside,” she added, managing a smile, “he knows how to deliver a baby. His cousin William is accoucheur to the Queen, and Denny studied with him for a time.”
“Well, that will be helpful,” Grey agreed, rather dryly. He had himself delivered a child once—completely against his will—and still had nightmares about it.
It was just as well that Dottie didn’t want to return to England, though. He’d suggested the notion on impulse but now realized that it might be more dangerous than any of the other alternatives. Since France had entered the war, all English shipping would be at risk.
“I’m thinking that we ought to go to Savannah, though,” Dottie was saying. “We’re so close, I mean—and if Ben’s wife is there . . . she might need our help, mightn’t she?”
“Yes,” he agreed reluctantly. There was a familial obligation. And, after all, unless he did take up residence in Charleston for the next eight months, there seemed no alternative to Dottie’s traveling, in whichever direction. Still . . . the thought of her giving birth here, him responsible for finding midwives and nurses . . . and then she and the child would need to be transported . . .
“No,” he said, more definitely. “Amaranthus—assuming she does exist—will have to muddle on by herself a little longer. I’m taking you back to New York.”
THE OGLETHORPE PLAN
Late November
SAVANNAH, UNLIKE MOST American cities, had been carefully planned by its founder, a man named Oglethorpe. I knew this because Mrs. Landrum, the woman from whom we rented our room, had explained to me that the city was laid out according to “the Oglethorpe plan”—this spoken in portentous tones, for Mrs. Landrum was a relative of the aforesaid Oglethorpe and intensely proud of the city and its civic perfection.
The plan called for six wards—a ward being composed of four civic blocks—for business, and four “tything” blocks for houses, these arrayed around an open square. There were ten houses to a block, and the men of a tything trained together for militia duty.
“Though that’s not so important now as it used to be,” Mrs. Landrum explained to me. “The Indians are still a bother in the backcountry, but it’s years since they troubled to come into the city.”
I rather thought Indians were the least of it, but as Mrs. Landrum didn’t seem concerned about the war with the British, I didn’t bring it up. It was apparent from her references that as not only her family but everyone she knew were Loyalists, plainly this was the proper state of things, and pesky nuisances like this “rebellion, as they’re pleased to call it!” would soon be put down and we could get tea at a decent price again.
From my point of view, the most interesting thing about Mr. Oglethorpe’s plan—in the course of conversation, it was revealed to me that he’d founded not only Savannah but the whole Province of Georgia—was that each house of a tything was provided with a one-mile tract of farmland outside the city and a five-acre kitchen garden closer in.
“Really,” I said, my fingers beginning to itch at the thought of dirt. “Er . . . what do you plant?”
The upshot of this conversation—and many like it—was that I made an arrangement to help with the keeping of the kitchen garden in return for a share of “sass” (as Mrs. Landrum puzzlingly referred to green stuff like kale and turnips), beans, and dried corn, as well as a small plot where I could cultivate medicinal herbs. A secondary consequence of this amiable acquaintance was that Rachel and Ian, whose room was below ours, began referring to their unborn child as Oglethorpe, though this was politely shortened to “Oggy” whenever Mrs. Landrum was in hearing.
And the third and most important effect of Mrs. Landrum’s friendship was that I found myself once more a doctor.
We had been in Savannah for a few weeks when Mrs. Landrum came up to our room one afternoon and inquired as to whether I might know anything regarding cures for the toothache, she knowing that I had a way with herbs?
“Oh, I might,” I replied, with a surreptitious glance at my medical bag, which had been gathering dust under the bed since our arrival. “Whose tooth is it?”
The tooth had belonged to a gentleman named Murphy from Ellis Ward, the one we lived in. I say “had belonged” because I had the badly broken and infected bicuspid out of Mr. Murphy’s head before he could have said Jack Robinson, though he was in such pain that he could barely recall his own name, let alone Jack’s.
Mr. Murphy was extremely grateful for his deliverance. Mr. Murphy was also the owner of a very small vacant shop on the other side of Ellis Square. It was the work of a few moments to acquire a small shingle with TEETH EXTRACTED on it. And within twenty-four hours of hanging out my shingle, I was proudly depositing my earnings on the kitchen table—which was also my herbal-preparations counter and Jamie’s desk, as it occupied the center of our single room.
“Well done, Sassenach!” Jamie picked up a small jar of honey, taken in payment for a nastily impacted wisdom tooth. He loved honey. I’d also acquired two large speckled turkey eggs (one of them filled the entire palm of my hand), a loaf of reasonably fresh sourdough bread, six pennies, and a small silver Spanish coin.
“I think ye could support the family all on your own, a nighean,” he said, dipping a finger in the honey and licking it before I could stop him. “Ian and Fergus and I can all retire and become gentlemen of leisure.”
“Good. You can start by making supper,” I said, stretching my back. Stays did keep you upright through a long day’s work, but I was looking forward to taking them off, eating supper, and lying down, in quick succession.
“Of course, Sassenach.” With a small flourish, he drew the knife from his belt, cut a slice off the loaf, drizzled honey on it, and gave it to me. “There ye are.”
I raised an eyebrow at him but bit into it. Sweetness flooded my mouth and my bloodstream simultaneously, and I tasted sunlight and flowers. I moaned.
“What did ye say, Sassenach?” He was busily buttering another slice.
“I said, ‘Well done,’” I said, and picked up the pot of honey. “We’ll make a cook of you yet.”
THE BASIC ISSUES of housing and food taken care of, plainly the next order of business was to retrieve Bonnie. Jamie had located the Bell family, and three weeks after our arrival in Savannah, he and Fergus had scraped together enough money to hire a cart and an extra mule from the livery stable where Clarence boarded. We met Richard Bell in the morning, and he came with us to the farm of one Zachary Simpson, the farmer with whom Bonnie boarded.
Mr. Simpson cleared away the last of the hay and pulled away the canvas with the air of a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. From the reaction of three-quarters of his spectators, you’d think he had: Jamie and Fergus both gasped audibly, and Richard Bell emitted a hum of satisfaction. I bit my lip and tried not to laugh, but I doubted they’d have noticed if I’d rolled on the floor in paroxysms of mirth.
“Nom de Dieu,” Fergus said, stretching out a reverent hand. “She’s beautiful.”
“Best I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Bell agreed, clearly torn between regard and regret.
“Aye.” Jamie was pink with pleasure, trying visibly to retain a modest constraint. “Aye. She’s bonnie, no?”
I supposed “she” was—if one was a connoisseur of printing presses, which I wasn’t. Still, I confessed some fondness for Bonnie; we’d met before, in Edinburgh. Jamie had been oiling some part of her mechanism when I’d returned to find him after twenty years, and she had been witness to our reunion.
And she had withstood the rigors of disassembly, sea travel, reassembly, and months of being immured in a barn with commendable fortitude. A pale winter sun shone through a crack in the barn’s wall, making her wood glow with somber pride, and her metal was—so far as I could see—quite free from rust.
“Well done,” I said, giving her a small pat. Mr. Simpson was modestly accepting the applause of the crowd for his feat of preserving Bonnie from harm, and I could see that they’d be some time in getting her onto the cart we’d brought, so I made my way back to the farmhouse. I’d noticed a number of chickens scratching in the yard and had some hopes of acquiring fresh eggs.
Marsali’s hoard—and Jenny’s novena to St. Bride, Queen of the Sea, plus a modest assist from my acupuncture needles (Clarence luckily proved a good sailor)—had got us safely to Savannah, but the requirements of housing ten people and renting premises suitable for a small printing business had exhausted both the Caslon English Roman gold and the insurance money paid to Fergus for the fire’s destruction.
With the need for income somewhat acute, Ian and Jamie had found employment at one of the warehouses on the river. A wise choice, as it turned out: in addition to their pay and the odd damaged cask of salt fish or biscuit, being on the docks all day allowed them first—and cheapest—choice from the fishermen coming in with their catch. We therefore hadn’t been starving nor yet threatened with scurvy—the climate was mild enough that plenty of green things grew, even in late November—but I was getting tired of rice and fish and winter kale. A nice dish of scrambled eggs, now . . . possibly with fresh butter . . .
I’d come equipped for trading, with several packets of pins and a bag of salt, and Mrs. Simpson and I amicably concluded a bargain for a basket of eggs and a small tub of butter before the men had got Bonnie out of the barn and were sat on the back stoop, comfortably drinking beer.
“What remarkable chickens those are,” I said, stifling a small belch. The beer, of Mrs. Simpson’s own production, was tasty but strong. The chickens in question were more than remarkable: they appeared to have no legs but to be trundling round the yard on their bottom sides, pecking at their corn with cheerful imperturbability.
“Oh, aye,” said Mrs. Simpson, nodding with pride. “My mother brought those—well, their great-great-grandmothers—with her from Scotland, thirty years a-gone. ‘Creepies,’ she always called them—but they’ve got a true name. Scots Dumpy, it is, or so a gentleman from Glasgow told me.”
“How very appropriate,” I said, taking another sip of beer and peering at the chickens. They did after all have legs; just very short ones.
“I breed them for sale,” Mrs. Simpson added helpfully. “If might should be ye should find yourself in want of a good hen or two.”
“I can’t think of anything I’d like better,” I said wistfully. The rice paddies and palmettos of Savannah seemed infinitely far away from the clean sharp air of Fraser’s Ridge . . . but we were in the South, at least. And come March and good traveling weather, Marsali and Fergus should be safely established, and we could turn our faces toward North Carolina. “Perhaps in a few months . . .” I added Scots Dumpy chickens to the mental list I was accumulating and returned to the beer.
The men had got the printing press onto the cart, suitably swathed in canvas and repacked with straw for the journey into town, and now came into the house to resume their own well-earned refreshment.
We sat companionably round Mrs. Simpson’s scrubbed kitchen table, drinking beer and eating salted radishes. Jamie and Fergus were glowing with excitement and satisfaction; the looks on their faces warmed me more than the beer. Poor Richard Bell was trying his best to be generous and share their delight, but it was plain that he was low in both body and spirit.
I had met him only a few days before, and that briefly, so had not yet cultivated an acquaintance sufficient as to allow me to make him undress and let me palpate his liver, but I was morally certain that the “relapsing ague” Mrs. Bell had written of was malaria. I couldn’t say so with complete certainty without looking at his blood cells under a microscope—and God knew when I might ever have one again—but I’d seen enough people suffering from “the quartan ague” or “the tertian fever” as to have little doubt.
Luckily, I had a small supply of Jesuit bark among the selection of herbs and medicines I’d brought with me. It wouldn’t cure him, but I could, with luck, limit the more-severe attacks and relieve some of the symptoms. Thinking of this reminded me suddenly of Lizzie Wemyss. Coming to America as Brianna’s bond servant, she also had contracted malaria from the coastal mosquitoes. I’d managed to control the disease in her fairly well, but how had she fared in my absence?
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” My attention was jerked back to the conversation, but I added LOTS of Jesuit bark to my mental list before replying.