Darkness

Gregor

“Is it yellow fever?” I ask Wolk as we walk up the hill. It is what I suspected as soon as he told me that Baker was coming to ask me about getting a doctor. I hope we don’t have much of an outbreak this year.

“It appears likely,” he says.

Nobody really understands much about how yellow fever spreads. It seems like with some illnesses, it is obviously passed between family members, and all the people in a household can get sick. But yellow fever bounces around randomly during the summer months, sometimes hitting more than one person in a home, but sometimes not. There have been very bad summers where half the population seems to get it. In other years it is only a handful. It is aggravatingly unpredictable. I’m sure Samuel won’t be very happy to hear that this has come to visit Natchez.

When I enter Samuel’s office, he is in the back with a patient, so I sit in the waiting room. Tiger curls up quietly at my feet, seeming to try not to take up too much space. There are two other people in the waiting room with me, who I do not know well, but they apparently know me, for they spend our time glancing at me surreptitiously and suspiciously. Sigh.

Samuel finishes up with his patient and comes to summon the next to the back, and when he sees me he says with surprise, “Gregor! What can I do for you?”

“He realizes there is little chance of your requiring medical care for yourself.”

“I am wondering if you have any free time to come Under-the-Hill and examine a couple members of the steamboat crew who have fallen ill?”

He glances at the two patients waiting. “Is it urgent, or do I have time to keep these appointments?”

“Well?” I think to Wolk.

“He has time. They are ill but not critically so.”

“They can wait a little while,” I tell him.

“Good, then I will be there in an hour. Are they actually on the boat?”

“Yes,” I reply, then realize that trying to examine patients in the crowded crew quarters could be difficult. “I have an idea, though,” I go on. “I’ll go down and check on them, and if it seems like they could tolerate being moved, how about I have them transferred to the new boarding house extension? It isn’t ready for customers yet, but the basic construction is complete and it would suffice as a sick ward.”

His eyes widen. “Oh! Yes, that would be more convenient than the boat, if you can manage it. I’ll see you in an hour.”

When I get back to the New Orleans, I don’t see Baker up on deck so I go below. I hear a couple of people in the galley, and poke my head in there. “Hello? I’m here to check on the men who are sick?”

A maid glances up from where she is cleaning a bowl. “Hello,” she says shyly, “I can show you where they are.”

“Thank you.” As she leads me into the crew quarters, which I could obviously have found without her help, I ask her, “Where is everyone else?”

“They are below, pumping out the bilge.”

Ah. Better them than me, I think somewhat snidely, and Wolk snickers at me. That’s a job that I know nobody enjoys, and I used to hate it during my long ago stint as a sailor. “Is the captain down there too?” I ask.

“Yes, sir,” she says.

I enter the crew quarters, and pause in the doorway to ask her, “Can you please have someone let him know that I am here?”

“Yes, sir.”

I turn my attention to the men lying in their bunks. They are both asleep, but when I lay my hand on the forehead of the closest fellow, he jerks awake. “Sorry to disturb you,” I say quietly. “I’m just here to check on you.” His fever is very high, his forehead burning under my palm. I leave my hand there for a moment, and try to concentrate and send him some healing energy, Wolk assisting with my effort.

“Hey, Gregor,” he mumbles. They all know me, of course. I’m glad the steamboat wasn’t in town during the whipping incident, because its crew doesn’t seem to treat me any differently than normal. I’m sure they’ve heard all sorts of gossip, but that’s not the same as having been there.

“Your touch is helping. His headache has diminished slightly,” Wolk tells me.

“Caleb,” I say, adjusting his covers while trying to unobtrusively keep a hand on him, “I’ve asked the doctor to come and take a look at you, see if there’s anything he can do to help.”

The other fellow hasn’t stirred, and I move over to touch his forehead. He’s even hotter than Caleb, if that’s possible. I keep my hand on him.

Baker comes in. I look up at him and grin. “I thought you could use a reprieve from bilge duty,” I tell him.

Caleb makes an amused little snorting noise. “Caleb believes he would rather be sick than taking care of the bilge,” Wolk says. So would I!

Baker chuckles. “As much as I hate to abandon my crew to their fate, I confess it’s a relief to be out of there.” He gestures to the men. “Can the doctor come to see them?”

“Yes, he said he’ll be here in an hour after he takes care of some other patients.” I look at him squeezed in here, his big form barely able to fit between the bunks. “I have an idea. We’ve been building an expansion to the boarding house, as you know, for the steamboat passengers. It isn’t ready to open for business yet, but it’s mostly done. The rooms are complete, and some of them even have beds. We just have to finish hanging the doors and putting in some fixtures, finish off the kitchen cabinets, that kind of thing. But it’d be suitable for the doctor to examine patients. It would be easier for him to do it there than crammed in here.”

His eyebrows lift. “Oh! That’s a good idea.” He looks down at Caleb, who is hearing our conversation, but obviously very listlessly. “What do you say Caleb, you up to move into the new boarding house?” Caleb nods and closes his eyes again.

Baker

I head back down to the bilge to fetch a few men to help move Caleb and Albert over to the boarding house. Most of the crew is in the hold, just a few unfortunates below inside the bottom few feet of the ship with the slopping bilge water, handling the pumps. As I poke my head into one of the access panels in the floor of the cargo hold, a swarm of gnats or something accosts me and I wave them away. “How’s it going down there?” I ask.

“It’s gross and full of bugs,” somebody says, and I hear laughter and then spitting. “Ew! One got in my mouth!” someone else yelps.

“Let’s get a few blankets down here after the water’s gone, try to flap them around and get the bugs to fly out,” I say. “In the meantime, I need three or four men to help me. Albert and Caleb are sick and we’re going to move them over to Gregor’s new boarding house so the doctor can tend them easier than he could in their bunks.”

Everyone volunteers, obviously hoping to be pardoned from bilge duty, so I just pick the random men closest to me and lead them back up.

Gregor is waiting in the crew quarters, and Albert and Caleb are both awake now. Caleb is able to more or less get up to the deck on his own, but a couple of men help support Albert in climbing the stairs. We lead them slowly over to the boarding house, various people Under-the-Hill stopping what they are doing to watch, no doubt wondering what is going on.

I haven’t been in the new construction for a few weeks, and the amount of progress that has been made is really remarkable. We keep Gregor’s crew busy half the time with managing steamboat cargo and passengers, but they seem to be extremely proficient with building as well. The boarding house is nearly done, as Gregor described, just the detail work remains. It looks like he has hired more specialized carpenters for some of this, as I see men working in the building who are not wearing the blue vest.

He takes us to a room on the bottom floor, where a corridor leads off from the parlor into a row of doorways. There are several rooms down here, equipped with narrow beds but little else, and we take Albert and Caleb into one of them and lay them down on the mattresses. “I’ll fetch some pillows and sheets,” Gregor says, and heads out.

Albert closes his eyes right away, but Caleb looks around himself with interest. He clearly is not as ill.

The men who came with us start kidding him. “Oh, look at this fine home you’ve managed to wrangle for yourself!” one says, and another moans, “I wish I didn’t have to cram myself into the crew bunks after seeing this!” Caleb laughs at them but then winces, holding his hand to his forehead.

Gregor comes in with the bedding, and we soon have the men arranged comfortably, just as Doctor Duncan arrives.

“Perfect timing!” Gregor greets him.