Shards and Ashes

  It was late afternoon headed toward dusk by the time Frankie finally made it home that day. Her mouth felt dry, and the blisters on her hands were cracked and weeping. Cathy had already drawn the bath for the evening, and she urged Frankie to go first. Usually Frankie would protest, but tonight her limbs felt weak from the strain of the morning, and she let her sister pull her free of the Oglethorpe uniform and settle her in the tub.

  Even though the night was overwhelmingly hot and still, they set a small fire burning in the hope that the smoke would drive away the bad air. Periodically they’d hear their neighbors discharging rifles or setting off crudely made fireworks, the tart brightness of gunpowder a poor substitute for the power of the cannon’s roar farther from the swamps.

  The knock on the door that night came earlier than it ever had in the past, and Frankie cursed as she splashed her way from the tub. Cathy’s fingers fumbled with her skirt as she tried to quickly undress so they could switch places. It was always more difficult for the plague eaters to sense the fever on someone immersed in water, and it’s what had kept the creatures at bay for the past several nights as Frankie tried to pull together more money to pay the beaked doctors off.

  “Go,” Frankie hissed at her sister, and finally she just shoved Cathy, fully clothed, into the water, not caring as waves sloshed over the edges of the tub and sent rivulets toward the fire that set the embers to hissing.

  There was another knock, and Frankie didn’t have time to dress, so she grabbed a dingy sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her body twice before opening the door.

  “Oh.” It was the only word she could say.

  She’d been expecting the towering black-draped doctors, their masks gleaming in the darkness as sweet-smelling smoke drifted from the tips of their beaks. Instead she found Charles Oglethorpe standing on the threshold.

  It took a moment of her staring before her brain kicked in. “You shouldn’t be here.” She pressed her hand against his chest and pushed. He deftly sidestepped her and twisted so that he came behind her and entered the tiny shack.

  Cathy sat in the tub, shoulders hunched and knees tucked up under her chin. The edges of her clothes drifted along the surface of the water in swirling patterns.

  Frankie recovered herself and followed him inside, closing the door behind her. The man living next door—too close—set off a series of shots, but Charles didn’t even wince or seem to notice, he was so intently examining their little hovel before ultimately turning his eyes on Frankie.

  The sheet draped around Frankie was thin, and already the dampness of her body had seeped through, making it almost transparent. She began to blush, every inch of her skin heating.

  She suddenly saw her life through Charles’ eyes, then, and this made it all worse. He was used to heavy silver cutlery, thickly piled rugs, and painted plaster walls bordered by heavy trim. Here there was a dirt floor going to mud where the bathwater sloshed out and a hole in the roof to let smoke filter into the sky. Embarrassed tears pricked Frankie’s eyes, which made her mad. Making her even angrier was the sight of her sister huddled in the water, her only clean set of clothes now drenched and unwearable.

  Frankie raised her chin—something she’d never be allowed to do anywhere on Oglethorpe property—but this was her house and her domain. “Why are you here?”

  Charles’ eyes skimmed around the room again, and he walked toward the bed shoved into the far corner; not even a scrap of cloth hung from the ceiling to afford any privacy. This made Frankie stiffen because it was such an intimate part of her life. This was where she lay down at night, where she dreamed (often of him), and where she was most vulnerable.

  For a fleeting moment she remembered him this morning and how he’d come home so late and his mother had asked if he’d washed. She wondered if this was something he did every evening—follow a girl home, stare at her bed, and maybe spend the night with her before returning to his proper life.

  Bile churned in her stomach. This wasn’t what she wanted to think of him. He’d been kind to her, once, and maybe even twice if he’d known she was hiding in his mother’s room this morning.

  Maybe he thought it was time for her to repay that kindness. Her eyes flicked toward Cathy. She would do anything to keep her sister safe and alive. Anything to keep the plague eaters from crawling over her skin and braying that the illness nestled inside her.

  Cathy had been sick for two weeks now, almost three. No one had ever survived the plague that long, and this alone gave Frankie hope. If she could keep piling fresh flowers around her and keep the miasma from the swamps from creeping into the house, Cathy stood a chance.

  “What do you want?” Frankie asked Charles again, trying to keep her voice icy sharp.

  Charles leaned over and rested his hand on the blanket draped across the bed. Frankie swallowed, wondering where she could send Cathy to be safe while whatever Charles wanted to happen here tonight took place.

  And then Charles was on one knee reaching toward the floor. When he straightened, he held a wilted rose petal between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger.

  “From the Oglethorpe garden?” he asked.

  Frankie’s stomach tensed. She’d been surreptitiously taking more flowers from the property, always making sure she wasn’t seen. She wanted to explain, to say that she had no choice when her sister’s health was at stake, but she bit the insides of her cheeks instead.

  He walked around the room toward Frankie, whose skin was pricked with goose bumps as the bathwater dried along her arms. Cathy shifted in her tub, sending little ripples to shush over the rim, but other than that she made no noise. Even though Cathy was her older sister, Frankie had been the one to step into her mother’s shoes after she was carried off. It didn’t take much for Cathy to defer to her.

  As Charles drew closer, Frankie saw, now, that he’d collected an entire handful of shriveled flowers from the floor. He didn’t stop at a respectable distance but instead came nearer than necessary before letting the petals drift from his fingers. Several of them clung to the damp patches of Frankie’s sheet, one pressing against the edge of her right breast. She inhaled sharply as her eyes were drawn to the bright splotch of color, and then she spun around abruptly once she realized that Charles’ gaze was focused there as well.

  Cathy started to stand from the tub, but Frankie cut her eyes to her, telling her to stay put. The beaked doctors could still come at any minute.

  “What do you want?” It was the only thing Frankie could bring herself to say.

  But Charles said nothing, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she saw him staring at her sister. Cathy’s eyes grew wide, and Frankie rushed to stand between them.

  “She’s sick,” Charles stated.

  Frankie made no move to confirm it but she knew she couldn’t deny it. Why else would her sister be sitting fully clothed in the bath? “It’s none of your business,” she ultimately answered.

  “My mother would disagree,” he replied.

  “I’m not sick, and I’m the one who works there.” Frankie crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hide the rose petal and the thinness of the sheet covering her. “That’s all that matters. The health of my sister is irrelevant.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and Frankie chewed harder on the inside of her cheek.

  “It’s why you needed the roses.” Charles’ words came out as a statement rather than a question. His eyes flicked past Frankie’s shoulder to where a chipped cup contained a struggling gardenia cutting, and another sprouted one bud from a tea olive. Barely enough to sweeten the air.

  “Why are you here?” This time Frankie’s voice finally cracked. All she could see in her future was getting fired from the Oglethorpe house and losing her wages, which meant that when beaked doctors knocked on her door she couldn’t pay them off, and they’d let their plague eaters scurry across the floor with sharp muddy paws that would pierce her sister’s skin as they climbed up her flesh and howled about her sickness.
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  Charles reached out and took Frankie’s elbow and tugged her toward him. Now all she could picture was what would happen next. How he would use this knowledge about her—this weakness—to have his way with her. She hated that she’d once believed the best of him when he so clearly only deserved the worst.

  “Don’t make her watch,” she begged him in a whisper. “Please.” Her voice was desperate.

  He hesitated, his eyes searching her. She couldn’t help it when she glanced at the bed and then back at him.

  Realization dawned on him, and he dropped her arm as though it were on fire. He took a large step away from her and then another. “What do you think of me?”

  Frankie could come up with no answer that wouldn’t offend him and get her fired, so she kept her mouth pressed tightly shut. Charles glanced again at Cathy, whose chin trembled against the surface of the water, sending out patterns of tiny ripples.

  He reached for Frankie again and pulled her to the door and out onto the street. Already she could smell the hint of incense that led the procession of the beaked doctors. She heard the howl of a plague eater and then wailing as a family was wrenched apart.

  How long until they took Cathy?

  “I’ll do anything to keep this job . . . Charles.” She forced herself to say his name, to make this personal, but it felt wrong the way it fell from her mouth. If she were on his property, he would be Master Oglethorpe, but never Charles. Just as his mother was Mistress and never Camellia.

  “If she’s sick, they’re going to take her eventually,” he said when the door closed shut behind them.

  “I know.” It was all Frankie could muster.

  “How you’ve kept her hidden this long I don’t know.”

  He already had so many of her secrets to lord over her, another didn’t matter. “Most of them accept bribes. Even small ones.”

  His head shook. “They won’t for much longer. Their sweeps are becoming more aggressive, taking more people. Things have gotten worse; even the families from the hills are looking for a way out.”

  This revelation shocked Frankie. It had never occurred to her that the wealthy families with their gardens and filtered water and soft breezes would be so worried about the plague that they’d abandon their property. It would take only hours for those left along the edges of the swamp to fight their way in and take the estates over in the families’ absence.

  “But I haven’t seen anything . . . packing or preparations,” Frankie said. “There hasn’t even been a rumor.”

  “They’re afraid that if the servants know, then their plans will go wrong. If the help sees us leaving, what’s to stop full-bore panic? And if there’s panic, the enforcers will lock down the harbor even tighter than it is now, and then no one will escape. As it is, they think only one more ship will be able to rush the blockade to freedom.”

  Frankie leaned her head back against the side of her shack, trying to find the stars through the hazy mist drifting from the swamp. “Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?” she finally asked.

  Next door her neighbor set off another round of fireworks, and the air filled with spent gunpowder. How this type of smell didn’t cause sickness while the one from the swamp did, Frankie never understood.

  Charles took a long time to answer. “I was there that morning when you came to Oglethorpe with your mom and you sneaked into the garden.”

  Frankie twisted her head toward him. She didn’t remember him at all.

  “My tutor sent me out to draw something in nature, but I couldn’t find anything interesting. I’d spent hours staring around, looking for something exciting, but nothing caught my attention. And then you came sneaking down the path, and you had this look on your face like you’d suddenly found a kind of heaven. I could tell, everything was a wonder to you. You took none of it for granted, even the flowers that had wilted and aged.”

  Frankie sank back into her memories, trying to remember him, but she could recall nothing.

  “I drew you,” Charles said simply. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper folded several times over. With careful movements, he began to unfold it. “I couldn’t bear to show it to my tutor. It felt too personal.”

  He handed the page to Frankie, and she swallowed twice before taking it. She noticed how her hand trembled as she shifted for better light. Sketched in pencil across the page was her, hands on her knees as she bent so close to a daffodil bud that the fringy edges of it caused her nose to crinkle.

  This moment she remembered. The brightness of the yellow, the crispness of the scent. She’d even picked that flower, and the sap from the stem had pulled into long saliva-like strands that draped over her fingers.

  Charles kept talking. “I’d never thought to find something so simple as a flower quite as mesmerizing as you seemed to. You took delight in things I’d always dismissed.”

  Her cheeks were hot under his scrutiny, and she remembered again about the thinness of the sheet draped across her body and how she wore nothing underneath.

  “I never knew who you were,” he continued. “I waited in the garden for you to come back so I could talk to you. I thought you had to be a daughter of one of my mother’s friends, but I never saw you again. I was so young, but I think . . .” He hesitated. “I think I fancied myself in love with you.”

  Frankie’s heart soared until Charles let out a kind of laugh as if the very notion of him caring for her was ridiculous. The blood that only a heartbeat before had sung through her veins froze, and she struggled to keep her shoulders from sagging.

  She pushed the sketch back toward him. The creases crossing it were frayed, the pencil faded along the well-worn lines. “I’m sorry.” Frankie had no idea why she said those words. She’d done nothing wrong, and yet still she felt somehow inadequate.

  She despised being embarrassed about where she lived and the life she’d been born into—one she had no control over. She wanted to shout at him that she was a hard worker and a smart girl and none of her surroundings were her fault. She was trying—damn it—as hard as she could to hold her life together, and she didn’t need his scorn.

  “You know who I am now.” She kept her voice stiff. “Not the wealthy heiress to some fortune with a house on the hill and a cottage out along a stretch of sand somewhere down the coast.” She hated how her lip trembled. “I’m a servant in your mother’s house, as my mother was before me and her mother before her. And the only garden I own can be contained in two broken teacups.”

  Charles said nothing. A cannon roared in the distance as she stared at him and let him stare back. The scent of incense had grown stronger. Soon doctors would knock on her door, and she only had two days’ wages to offer them to pass without stepping inside.

  She waited for Charles to say something, to tell her it didn’t matter where she came from, but those were words reserved for dreams, not reality. She could see the beaked doctors down the street, and she was sure, now, that they never traversed the neighborhoods on the hill but rather spent their time in the communities along the swamp.

  First in the procession came a thin boy shuffling slowly with a silver censer that he waved back and forth in intricate patterns, filling the air around them with smoky blue incense to ward off the miasma.

  Behind him came the doctors in their sweeping black cloaks, their long white masks piercing the night in front of them. Their goggles made them appear as though they had no eyes and therefore no souls. In their gloved hands they wound leather leashes that barely restrained plague eaters scrabbling toward the hovels they passed.

  The creatures were hideous, a perversion of nature, with their long mangy bodies and their forked tongues licking the air, tasting for fever. They grunted as they walked, the talons of their many toes digging into the cracked dirt of the road.

  Frankie needed to be inside preparing Cathy. By this time the water in the tub would be cold, and Frankie had to dump rose powder over her head and dunk her under to mask the scent of ill
ness.

  This was her life, here with the swamp and the bad air and the sickness. Charles belonged on the hill with its freshly scented breezes. She was stupid to have ever dreamed about them. She’d given him enough time to respond to what she’d said to him—to deny the truth of it—and still he was silent, and it hurt because she hated to lose the idea of him to reality.

  He was just a boy in a big house with a lovely winding garden. Nothing more.

  “Go.” The word she spoke was simple and effective. He paused, only a moment, and then nodded before striding off. She was surprised, at first, to see him heading toward the procession of beaked doctors, but then she remembered that he had nothing to fear from them.

  Frankie turned back to the door and took a deep breath before plastering a smile on her face for her sister. She would not fail her family again.

  Once Cathy had been dunked under several times and coated liberally with sweet-smelling powder, the two sisters sat and waited for the doctors to knock on the door as Cathy’s bathwater grew cold. Frankie perched on a stool by the tub, holding her sister’s damp hand in her own. Neither of them spoke as they heard and smelled the procession grow closer.

  But the knock didn’t come that night, and Frankie let out a long breath of relief. Tomorrow when they came, she’d have three days’ worth of wages for them. She hoped it would be enough.

  The next day Frankie paid more attention to the goings-on around her as she performed her duties at the Oglethorpe house. Now that Charles had told her of the family’s plan to escape Portlay, she could sense the nervous thread of energy vibrating through the rooms, the harshness of the Mistress’ voice as she made demands for certain linens to be folded more carefully or her favorite dresses to be pressed.

  There was a quietness to the servants as well; the maids moved about with tense lines of worry around their mouths, and Frankie couldn’t determine whether they were caused by fear of the fever or fear of when they would all be forced to find employment elsewhere.