“Louisa,” he said, his eyes opening.
“She’s fine.” Anson gave him some more whisky. “You’ll see her soon.”
The eyes flickered shut again.
Dare suddenly stopped mid-stroke and began to cough violently. The muscles in his neck tightened and his eyes seemed to loosen in their sockets. Even the white edge of his scar appeared to expand toward his shaken look. After ten seconds he wiped a forearm over his brow, muttered something to himself, then picked up the stroke rate. He rowed so quickly now that Anson tensed, expecting another harsh fit of coughing to cut off the rhythm. But it remained steady as the Chilukthan wharf came into view and the clattering and hissing of the cannery echoed in the darkness. Anson noted the light blazing in Louisa’s room. Her mother and aunt, no doubt, had been vigilant in their attendance.
As Dare moored the skiff to the wharf, the gravity of the situation settled over Anson’s mood. Someone, perhaps Thomas Lansdowne, had murdered an Indian. And while it was likely the Englishman would never be charged with the crime, it might very well unhinge him; that is, if he didn’t succumb to his own wound or at the very least lose his arm. Meanwhile, his daughter was very ill and might die, and there was no guarantee that her mother, pregnant, grieving, and already on the verge of hysteria, could survive further losses.
Matters were no better for Dare. If Thomas Lansdowne died, Dare, guilty or not, would be a murderer and a fugitive. Even if the Englishman survived, Dare’s fate on the river was sealed. Nor was it likely that any of his competitors would feel the need to pay full value for a nigger’s property, especially not a nigger who’d shot Tom Lansdowne and been forced to flee.
Heavily, Anson positioned himself to lift the wounded man to the wharf.
Dare stopped him. “I’ll carry him to the house. All seems quiet enough.”
It was true. Other than the cannery’s relentless noises, there were no sounds along the riverbank; most of the fleet must not have returned yet. Anson hesitated. He knew so little of Dare’s life, where he’d been, what he’d endured; mostly their correspondence had been of business, and even that had been infrequent. Until this moment, it had always seemed enough, the bond they had forged at Antietam. It had pulsed behind everything, like the sun, even long after it had gone down, pulsed with the promise of more light. And now it seemed that that promise surrounding his friendship with Dare might never be fulfilled. In any case, there was no time to ask everything that might be asked. Wearily, Anson helped position the wounded man in Dare’s arms and struggled not to see the old images but to hold on to the present, for the Englishman’s sake, and even more for the sake of his gifted daughter.
A few moments later the men crossed the wharf, Dare breathing heavily with the effort of bearing Thomas Lansdowne’s bulk, Anson holding the oil lamp just ahead of them. As they came down to the yard, Anson looked up at the bright window of Louisa’s room and saw two shadows cross the pane. For some reason, the sight alarmed him. The women, after all, rarely moved from their chairs. He quickened his pace, knowing that Dare would manage to keep up, despite his burden.
At last they reached the veranda. The first floor of the house was in darkness. With the women upstairs and Henry Lansdowne likely at the cannery, it would be quite safe for Dare to carry the wounded man inside. At Anson’s suggestion, he did so, laying Thomas Lansdowne gently on the ottoman in the parlour. Then he stood and faced Anson in the shimmering oil light.
“I’m grateful to you, doctor,” he said and extended his hand. “I always have been.”
Anson gripped the hand firmly in return. “I know it, John. I just wish I could be more help to you now. It isn’t right. I wish…” Anson stopped. What did it matter what he wished? His wishes wouldn’t help Dare or anyone. “I’ll do what I can for him,” he said and nodded at the prone figure on the ottoman. “And I’ll do my best to see that your property receives fair value.”
“My Chinese will help. I’ll leave instructions with him.”
“How soon will you leave?”
Dare looked over his shoulder toward the front entrance. When he turned back, his eyes blazed with a strange light. He was almost smiling.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On others. There’s no moving in life doesn’t speed up or slow down except for others getting in the way. Or out.”
He didn’t sound bitter or frightened, only resigned. Anson had a sudden impulse to lay a hand gently on his shoulder.
But just then, a flurry of footsteps crossed the ceiling. Raised voices could be heard. Anson’s chest tightened as he glanced upwards and then down again. His mouth was bone-dry.
Dare began to back away.
“John?”
Anson took a step after him, but this felt like he was leaving the sick girl behind. He stepped back.
“My bag’s upstairs,” he said. “I’d better go up.”
Dare stopped. A rush of river smell poured off his sweat-slickened face. He might have been standing in the bow of a skiff, the sun fading along his arms.
There was too much to say, too much to go over. Anson faltered, then pushed ahead. “They’ve been saying slanderous things about you.”
Dare was unmoving, his eyes vivid with will.
Anson had an awful foreboding that this might be their last meeting, that Dare would disappear and never contact him again. He thought a few seconds, then said, “Fighting a war’s no use if it takes your belief away. I can’t afford to doubt you, John.”
The voices upstairs grew louder. Something hit the floor with a loud bang and made Anson start. But Dare remained motionless. His eyes, fixed on the staircase, filled with a strange longing. He touched something at his throat, under the collar, and spoke with a curious, almost questioning tenderness as he stepped back.
“A man can doubt everything. Even a good man.”
This time, as Dare withdrew, Anson did not call his name. In a matter of seconds, he had slipped silently from the house.
Immediately Anson raced up the stairs, the practical demands of living and dying a spur to his purpose. But even so, Dare’s last words echoed on the air. What did they mean? That a man could learn to doubt goodness? Or that even a good man could learn to doubt? Anson had done the latter and he’d come dangerously close to doing the former. But seeing Dare again, even under these tense circumstances, or perhaps because of them, had saved him from that most fatal wound.
He reached the second floor just as the voices in Louisa’s room rose to a crescendo.
II
At first Anson couldn’t believe what he saw. The room appeared full of people; their shadows stained the walls in grotesque patterns. One lamp spilled a crackling yellow against the mildewed wallpaper of faint roses and over the planks of the floor. His eyes remained fixed there, on the bodies clustered almost in a circle, as if in worship. But what faith could explain the prone young woman with the frozen gaze and Thomas Lansdowne’s wife, on her knees, propped up under the arms like a limp puppet?
“What is this? What’s happened?”
He didn’t even wait for a response from the startled faces. The girl groaned and he hurried to her bedside, stepping over the young woman who had not turned at his rapid approach. As he passed, he recognized the Southerner, Richardson, his white-framed features flushed and wavering in the dimness, his mouth open as if he was about to speak. But Anson’s immediate thought was for the child.
She burned as hot as ever, the spots along her collarbone and chest like circles of flame. A linen cloth, slightly damp, lay like an infected scab on one shoulder; much of her body, including her feet, was exposed. Anson could hardly register the meaning of what he’d come upon; it was like some sort of dark ritual. And yet the girl’s mother and aunt were present. Confused and outraged at once, Anson quickly checked the girl’s pulse. It was rapid. He found a clean cloth on the bedside table and doused it in a basin of lukewarm water. Then he pressed it lightly to the child’s brow.