The Winter Sisters Page 10

  Rebecca smiled. “Well, you made it back to Lawrenceville, so there’s that.”

  “Yes, there’s that.”

  “How is your leg?”

  “Oh, it was feeling much better the same evening.”

  “So Effie cured you.”

  “She… she didn’t do anything, Miss Rebecca. And, in my particular case, doing nothing was a fine treatment, and certainly the least troublesome. Time heals all wounds, they say.”

  “All but the fatal ones.” Rebecca sighed. “We’d best see to the crowd, Aubrey. I don’t want to disappoint them.”

  “But, Miss Rebecca,” I ventured. “I wish that you wouldn’t.”

  “What, see to the crowd?”

  “Don’t you suppose that I should treat them instead? I do have the credentials and the training. They should be in my office for their cures, not loitering in front of the candy shop. You’re only here for a shopping trip, not a medical mission.”

  Rebecca frowned. “If someone needs my help, I wouldn’t refuse it.”

  “It will take time for them to trust the Hippocratic cures,” I continued, “but they are the correct ones. It prolongs the pain if the townsfolk see you working here.”

  Rebecca took my arm and turned me toward the picture windows. The thrill of her hand on my arm consumed a goodly portion of my anger and my sense. “Do you suppose, Dr. Waycross, that there would be so many patients here if our cures were only pretend?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. To utter those words caused me gastralgia and shame. I wished for a little dram of ether so that I might quiet my internal turmoil and answer Rebecca Winter with reason and decorum.

  “I don’t know,” I said again. “Perhaps… perhaps I could be permitted to observe—”

  “Aw, hell,” said Sarah. “Boatwright’s here.”

  The other faction of the townsfolk was coming. I did not think they would stay away from the scene. The crowd shuffled as the pastor insinuated himself among them. The glass muffled his words, but his tone was clear. Sarah let out a series of uncomplimentary expressions underneath her breath. Rebecca sighed again, more wearied than worried.

  “Is there a back door?” I said. “You could slip away without entangling yourselves in his sermonizing.”

  “I’m not chickenshit,” said Sarah. “I’ll go out the front door.”

  Rebecca nodded. “Our patients have been waiting to see us. I won’t abandon them.”

  “Pastor Boatwright isn’t going to let you do your… works… here today,” I resolved. “The sick will just have to go to Hope Hollow, panther or no panther. The pastor never follows you up there?”

  “He’s afraid of the place,” said Rebecca, “like he’s afraid of the gates of hell.”

  Sarah spat onto the floor and smeared the globule with her foot until it vanished into the wood. “He thinks we don’t forgive those who trespass against us.”

  “Nevertheless,” I said, “you’ll accomplish nothing while the pastor’s haranguing you. I’ll talk to him, and you’ll be able to get away safely.”

  Sarah shrugged. “Talk’s cheap enough.”

  I went out the front door alone, leaving the sisters to escape from Boatwright’s moralizing another way.

  “And is it not said that, in the end of times, demons will hunt your children for prey and that witches will walk among you?” The pastor searched among the indifferent faces. “Ah, here comes our doctor! Tell them, Waycross! Tell them the horrors of the hydrophobia. How it will spread from the panther to the animals and then on to the weakest and then to the strongest. Tell them how your sister died, a gnashing demon trying to kill her beloved brother.”

  How dare he turn my sister, who had been all softness and kindness, into a caricature for his show?

  “Pastor, not another word,” I growled.

  “See, the memory is too painful, even for our stalwart man of science. You were inside with the sisters, were you not? Have you excoriated those witches for their deceptions? For bringing their iniquities into our midst?”

  I said nothing, for the sight of the pastor had suddenly caught my professional eye. Rivulets of sweat fell from his ears, soaking his collar. His forehead was as crimson as his cheeks, and his fingers were alarmingly pale. Even the anger I’d felt toward him was held in check for a moment. This man was sick.

  “Pastor, are you quite well?” I asked.

  I put my hands onto his neck. The lymph nodes were like walnuts beneath my fingers. His blood pounded in his jugular.

  “Truthfully, I am not,” said the pastor.

  “Choler has flooded your face, sir. A consequence of your displeasure. I fear apoplexy if you don’t let out some of your poisoned humors.”

  The crowd murmured its interest in this turn of events.

  “I haven’t time for it, Waycross.” Boatwright stepped out of my hands and set his eyes toward the confectionary. The Winter sisters hadn’t left yet. They were watching the proceedings from the windows.

  “You haven’t time to save your life?” I countered. “Pastor, please. Come to my office. You need ten ounces of blood taken out posthaste.”

  Boatwright looked from me to the Winters, who were still watching us. Why wouldn’t they leave? He put his own hand to his forehead.

  I put my mouth close to his ear to whisper, “Show your flock that you trust me.”

  Boatwright put his arm around my shoulders, and I reciprocated. The crowd offered mild applause, and the pastor raised his free hand, palm extended. “Here’s real medicine,” he said. “Not spells and incantations.”

  We stumbled toward my office, locked in step, supporting each other. I threw a glance back toward the confectionary. The Winter sisters hadn’t fled. The townsfolk were lining up for their attentions.

  I held Boatwright’s arm fast, leading him to my offices. He dragged and scraped at every step. Whether he felt compelled to meddle in the proceedings down at the confectionary or whether he was afraid of the medicine, I wasn’t sure.

  When we passed through the barn door and he saw the alembics and retorts, the bottles and tinctures, his resolve seemed to break, and he became more pliant. Nausea passed across his face. I guided him to the surgery chair.

  “But what about the sisters?” he said. “Have they gone?”

  “It would do you no service to drop dead of an apoplexy,” I replied. “Never mind them for the moment. We’ll balance out your humors, and then you may return to your usual pursuits.”

  Boatwright nodded. I pulled a wooden crate up to the front of the chair. In the Savannah Poor House and Hospital’s surgery had been a bed that adjusted to raise and lower the feet. No such luxury was here.

  “Take off your shoes, Pastor, and put your feet up here.”

  “Why, sir, am I taking off my shoes?”

  “Because I am going to bleed you from your feet.” The scientific principle was simple: bleeding from the furthest extremity would pull the blood from the whole body, giving the best chance for restoration of balance to the humors. An amateur physician would more likely bleed from a source closer to the point of excess, perhaps taking blood from behind the pastor’s ears. That would effect an immediate relief but not a lasting one.

  The pastor had not yet removed his shoes.

  “I cannot bleed you through your boots,” I scolded.

  “Must you bleed me?”

  “What are your alternatives, pastor?”

  I clamped down hard on his leg so that he would not jerk away and ruin the good of the lancet cut. I’d put the blade between the big toes and the next largest, in the soft skin there, but that was, alas for the pastor’s comfort, only a preliminary incision, just to waken the veins in the pad of the foot.

  “It hurts, Pastor Boatwright, but it is a hurt that heals. You must be strong, not only for yourself but for your flock.”

  “Then go on, Doctor. But a little warning next time!”

  Warning, we are taught, is not the physician’s friend. A doctor
works best on definitive, quick action and on surprise. The patient’s fear can tense muscles and close veins, prolonging the operation or ruining it altogether, and the longer the work, the longer the pain and the greater the chance for mistakes: blood poisoning, a slip, or an infection. That is why we are taught to amputate swiftly when we must amputate: speed is the most humane way to take off a limb.

  The pastor continued, nattering to distract himself from the pain. “There might yet be time for me to interrupt their workings down at the confectionary.”

  “Leave them alone today, for the sake of your health. There will be other days.”

  “Understand, Doctor,” said the pastor, “that when I was given this pulpit, I made it my mission to see those witches abandon their practice in this town. There was a fire, a very nasty piece of business. There were romantic entanglements, jealousies. Nasty, nasty business. I shouldn’t wonder that one of the witches set the fire herself. A promising life was lost, but I think it was a blessing. Because of that fire, the town burned with a revival spirit. But now, that spirit has faded in Lawrenceville, and I hear their names more and more. Winter this, Winter that. The hydrophobia, the mad dogs—perhaps it is another blessing.”

  I traced the vein that runs from the ankle down to the very base and center of the left foot, and there I opened the blood flow. The pastor bucked, but I still held his leg fast.

  “What happened with the fire?” I said, keeping up the distraction while trying to work as quickly as possible. “Tell me, won’t you?”

  The blood was sluggish, and I used the lancet to open the vein a little wider. This, I knew, multiplied the pain of the first cut, but it was necessary. An audible grinding came from the pastor’s teeth. I did not like causing this pain, even to one such as Boatwright, but it was necessary pain. Boatwright only had to receive the pain and play the victim. The doctor, who causes the pain, bears the heavier burden.

  “Doctor!”

  “Why don’t you tell me about the fire?” I said again, for it was all I could think to distract his mind.

  “It was at the corn mill. Spontaneous combustion. I’ve understood from the locals that the wheels can grind the corn so fine that it hangs in the air, like a fog that will not dissipate. And when the air is dry and the weather is hot, that fine dusting of corn in the air is like tinder. It readies the very air to burn. One spark, and it went up like a tinder box!”

  “And there’s no way to prevent such an accident?” I tilted the pastor’s foot to try to draw off more blood, but the flow was still sluggish. The blood was dark and thick, a result of poor diet and a lack of post-dinner constitutionals.

  “I think it was no accident,” continued the pastor. “I think it was providence. Had it been anyone else but Everett caught in the inferno, I suppose that I should not have been able to incite the town to the action that followed. But Everett was entangled with the Winter sisters. Sweet mercies, Waycross! Must you keep digging with that thrice-cursed blade! This is all gossip—among the sins of my parishioners, gossip is a prominent one, but by turns, it brings useful information. After the fire, they took the burned and bleeding Everett to the Winters’ house and then to the graveyard. The Winter sisters could not save him. If they had, again perhaps I would not have been able to draw up the crowd that pushed the sisters out of town. As I said, providence.”

  So Rebecca had had a suitor. She was not consigned by choice to solitude or to a maidenly life with her sisters. If she loved this Everett fellow, perhaps she would again… but that was an idle dream.

  “Waycross! What are you doing?”

  My attention had slipped. The end of the lancet was twisting in the pastor’s foot. I snapped back from my mental wanderings at his words.

  “So,” I said, “in the wake of tragedy, in which poor Rebecca’s suitor was killed, you blamed the Winter sisters for the fire. And you used that blame and fear to bring together a mob of the townsfolk and hung effigies of the sisters in their yard, and with torches and pitchforks caused them to flee their home here and hide away at Hope Hollow?”

  The pastor nodded. “See? It was all providence, the visible hand of providence.”

  More than a lancet would be needed to purge the pastor of all the corruption he held inside.

  Sarah watched with pleasure as Waycross led Boatwright away from the crowd. She imagined the cures the doctor would apply to the pastor—a purging emetic, a clyster to rinse out his bowels, and other painful and ineffectual attempts at medicine. Too bad the enemas didn’t really work. Boatwright could sure stand a thorough scrubbing from the inside out.

  Coming to town together, without disguise, as themselves, for the first time since the fire—it was a risk. Rebecca had insisted that they try and that Sarah not bring her rifle, and Sarah was surprised to see that so many patients were waiting for them. They were mobbed not out of evil, but out of need. The pastor’s latest sermon hadn’t scared anyone away. Waycross had taken him away before he could work his wiles.

  “It’s quite a crowd for us, isn’t it?” said Rebecca. She sounded smug. “We’d best get started.”

  “There’s no cure for what they’ve got,” muttered Sarah. “A pandemic of goddamn hypocrisy. Ready to burn us one night and pleading for our help the next.”

  “They were wrong. They’ve learned they were wrong. Now, are we going to help them?”

  “Why should I?” Helping Ouida Bell had been all right—Ouida Bell had sought her out—but those lazy hypocrites were another matter. “Why in the hell should I?”

  “Because I will. Because Effie would.”

  Sarah would not break that bond. “It’s not so far to Hope Hollow,” she said. “They’re all too lazy to come see us.”

  “Or too sick,” admonished Rebecca. “Or scared.”

  “More lazy folk than sick folk.”

  “Which one are you, Sarah? If you don’t start helping, we’ll be here until sunrise.”

  When Rebecca opened the door of the confectionary, the crowds cooed and pressed in closer.

  “A line, please, an orderly line,” said Rebecca, turning to a father and child and taking them into her confidence.

  5

  IT’S A HELL OF FUN, GENTLEMEN!

  One large glass held ethanol, the other sulfuric acid. I increased the heat of the reaction by adjusting the screws, which lowered the bottoms of the vessels nearer to the flames of the brazier. Bubbles rose in a steady stream to the top of the glass. I watched the rainbow shimmer on the surface of each bubble. When they popped, they released whiffs of ether’s heady, pungent aroma. It smelled of happiness and honest chemistry. I slowed the reaction by a fraction with a tiny move of a screw. To keep everything in balance required perfect attention. To let one’s mind wander might mean catastrophe, an explosion, a fire. When Snell tapped me on the shoulder, I was so startled that I nearly upset all my instruments.

  “Man, you nearly gave me an apoplexy!”

  Snell snorted. “I’ve been trying to get your attention, but you’ve got your nose stuck so deep in that stuff that you weren’t paying me any mind.”

  I reassembled my composure. “What can I do for you, Mr. Snell?”

  “It’s not me, it’s the wife.” Snell smirked. “She’s screaming and wailing. Thinks she’s been poi-soned.” He stretched out the word in derision. “Think maybe you could give her a doctoring? She didn’t get to see the Winter sisters when they were in town last week.”

  I tried to hide my delight. I made sure the ether reactions were out cold, with no pockets of heat left in the glasses, and poured the coals from the brazier back into the hearth before I collected my traveling kit.

  Snell and I walked north on Patterson Street. “Hope Hollow’s a long way to go for a fool sickness like this one,” he said, “especially if I have to go with her and take the gun. She’s on about the panther, of course. I can’t shut down the store every time the wife gets poisoned. And it takes five bottles of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic to get her to
simmer down, which is five dollars cash. You work for less than that, I’m sure. I convinced her she ought to see you since that’s what the pastor’s on about.”

  Coming to the pastor’s aid in front of the crowd had redounded to my credit. Curing Mrs. Snell would be even better than curing the pastor. A shopkeeper’s wife makes it her business to know and be known. Gossip flows faster from her than from any other fountain.

  Snell took me to his fine house on Oak Street, on the ridge north of town. Their porch had a pleasant overlook. I left Snell sitting there, enjoying the breeze, and went through the front door. The drawing room was well-appointed with pine furniture and long white curtains—fine luxuries for a frontier shopkeeper.

  Mrs. Snell sat beneath a black lace veil. Tears and other fluids oozed down her chin. When she heard me enter, she began coughing.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” I said. “And how are we feeling today?”

  “Horrible! Plagued!” she croaked. Drops of phlegm splattered from her mouth. “Poisoned! Cursed!” She clutched at her throat with both hands and made retching noises.

  “May I be so bold as to examine you?” I knelt beside her chair and put the back of one hand to her forehead.

  She swatted it away. “You don’t need to,” she said. “I know what’s going on. I got poisoned by that”—she paused to cough—“Ouida Bell. Yesterday, I was walking toward the spring with my bucket, and Ouida Bell was coming the other way, laughing. Laughing about me. And so, I gave her the stink eye, you see, and what did she do?”

  I thought the pause was rhetorical, but Mrs. Snell expected a response.

  I ventured, “Ouida Bell poisoned you?”

  “Mr. Snell thinks I’m mad, but I’m not, I tell you, I’m not.”

  “Did she put something into your water pail?”

  Mrs. Snell’s voice dropped, and she leaned in close. Her breath was bilious. “A frog.”

  “A frog?” I said.

  “Yes, a frog. I didn’t know I swallowed it.” A spasm of coughing sent bits of spittle onto my cheek. “Maybe she ground it up real fine and it put itself together in my stomach. But now, I’ve got a frog down there, and it’s going to be my mortal blow.”