Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [58]
The crowd was still now, no longer surging to and fro, and it was not so difficult to make my way between the muttering clusters of seamen, many of whom frowned or looked startled as I ducked past them. The warehouse was disused; no bales or casks filled the echoing shadows of the huge room, but the scents of sawn lumber, smoked meat, and fish lingered, easily distinguishable from the host of other smells.
The sick man had been hastily dumped near the door, on a pile of discarded straw packing. His attendants pushed past me as I entered, eager to get away.
I approached him cautiously, stopping a few feet away. He was flushed with fever, his skin a queer dark red, scabbed thick with white pustules. He moaned and tossed his head restlessly from side to side, cracked mouth working as though in search of water.
“Get me some water,” I said to one of the sailors standing nearby. The man, a short, muscular fellow with his beard tarred into ornamental spikes, merely stared as though he had found himself suddenly addressed by a fish.
Turning my back on him impatiently, I sank to my knees by the sick man and opened his filthy shirt. He stank abominably; probably none too clean to start with, he had been left to lie in his own filth, his fellows afraid to touch him. His arms were relatively clear, but the pustules clustered thickly down his chest and stomach, and his skin was burning to the touch.
Jamie had come in while I made my examination, accompanied by Jared. With them was a small, pear-shaped man in a gold-swagged official’s coat and two other men, one a nobleman or a rich bourgeois by his dress; the other a tall, lean individual, clearly a seafarer from his complexion. Probably the captain of the plague ship, if that’s what it was.
And that’s what it appeared to be. I had seen smallpox many times before, in the uncivilized parts of the world to which my uncle Lamb, an eminent archaeologist, had taken me during my early years. This fellow wasn’t pissing blood, as sometimes happened when the disease attacked the kidneys, but otherwise he had every classic symptom.
“I’m afraid it is smallpox,” I said.
The Patagonia’s captain gave a sudden howl of anguish, and stepped toward me, face contorted, raising his hand as though to strike me.
“No!” he shouted. “Fool of a woman! Salope! Femme sans cervelle! Do you want to ruin me?”
The last word was cut off in a gurgle as Jamie’s hand closed on his throat. The other hand twisted hard in the man’s shirtfront, lifting him onto his toes.
“I should prefer you to address my wife with respect, Monsieur,” Jamie said, rather mildly. The captain, face turning purple, managed a short, jerky nod, and Jamie dropped him. He took a step back, wheezing, and sidled behind his companion as though for refuge, rubbing his throat.
The tubby little official was bending cautiously over the sick man, holding a large silver pomander on a chain close to his nose as he did so. Outside, the level of noise dropped suddenly as the crowd pulled back from the warehouse doors to admit another canvas stretcher.
The man before us sat up suddenly, startling the little official so that he nearly fell over. The man stared wildly around the warehouse, then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell back onto the straw as though he’d been poleaxed. He hadn’t, but the end result was much the same.
“He’s dead,” I said, unnecessarily.
The official, recovering his dignity along with his pomander, stepped in once more, looked closely at the body, straightened up and announced, “Smallpox. The lady is correct. I’m sorry, Monsieur le Comte, but you know the law as well as anyone.”
The man he addressed sighed impatiently. He glanced at me, frowning, then jerked his head at the official.
“I’m sure this can be arranged, Monsieur Pamplemousse. Please, a moment’s private conversation…” He motioned toward the deserted foreman’s hut that stood some distance away, a small derelict structure inside the larger building. A nobleman by dress as