CHAPTER 28
17 October, 1856
Preston’s wounds seem to be healing well, with
only small indications of infection. There is some inflammation
around one of the wounds, and a little weeping, but one would have
expected far worse from the unclean claws of a wild animal. There
are some signs of a mild fever - the man’s skin is hot to touch -
but his greatest discomfort seems to be pain from the wound. Inside
which, regarding the lacerations, the bruising must be quite
considerable. I have given him more laudanum, to which he responds
well. It is a potent solution, which I prefer to prescribe
sparingly.
Too much can lead to a reliance upon it.
Dorothy Dreyton is with me now. As a matter of
fact, she lies asleep on the floor. Her vigil is almost constant.
She must be at the point of exhaustion to allow herself the luxury
of an hour or two to sleep. I wonder if she has the slightest
notion that her children have spent more time during the last few
days at our end of the camp than they have in theirs.
Preston stirred restlessly in his sleep and
muttered, his deep voice thick with cloying mucus. Ben guessed that
the recently administered opiate was doing its work and had
entirely banished the pain for now. But it was also weaving a
darker magic. On an unconscious mind it conjured the most lurid
nightmares. He had seen first-hand the poor wretches that had found
themselves admitted to Banner House Asylum by way of over-using
laudanum and other such soothing tonics, tormented by visions and
delusions that hounded them in their sleeping and - for the less
fortunate - waking hours.
Ben leaned over and stroked his forehead, feeling
the warmth and dampness of his pale skin. Lying on a cot in this
sorry condition, there was still something very impressive about
William Preston, Ben decided; he exuded an air of authority even as
he slept. A man like that, in the right place with the right
message, could lead a people to do anything.
Preston’s murmuring continued. Beneath the thin
parchment skin of his closed lids, his eyes jerked from one side to
the other rapidly. Then with a gasp, they snapped open.
‘Mr Preston?’
He licked his lips dryly - thirsty.
Ben put away his inkpot, pen and journal and
reached for a cup of water. He placed a hand behind Preston’s head,
the man’s long grey-blond hair lank with sweat, and lifted him to
take a drink.
‘Here, some water,’ he said quietly.
Preston’s glassy eyes focused away from the low
canvas ceiling, bulging with the weight of snow, and onto Ben’s
face. By the flickering light of the oil lamp, it looked like the
elder’s irises were fully dilated.
The laudanum.
‘M-my G-God . . . they . . . they . . . they know!’
gasped Preston.
‘Shhhh,’ Ben comforted him. ‘Drink some
water.’
Preston refused. ‘Th-they know!’ he rasped again,
grabbing Ben’s hand tightly with one of his own, squeezing
desperately.
Ben leaned down closer to him. ‘Mr Preston . . .
William, it’s okay.’
‘W-what if . . . they know! They s-see . . . they
can see . . . see what I am!’ His voice was dry and soft, a keening
whisper that sounded like the wheezing rattle of an old man.
Preston stared wildly at him, intently, but Ben wondered what
exactly his eyes were seeing - whom he thought he was talking
to.
‘I . . . I . . . hear nothing from it!
N-nothing!’
Preston’s head jerked round to look at the dark
space behind his cot, towards the metal chest nestling amongst
sacks of oatmeal. ‘Nothing!’ he cried, his voice cracked
pitifully.
He turned back to face Ben. ‘Eric! What if they
know? What if they know we took it . . . that we stole it!’
Ben could have replied that he wasn’t Eric. But he
decided not to.
‘Eric, what if they know the angel sh-shuns me?
What . . . what’ll I do?’
Preston slumped back in the cot, his head resting
once more against the pillow.
‘Just words . . .’ he wheezed quietly, his voice
softening, spent. ‘They’re just words . . . just my words.’
His eyes closed again. ‘My words,’ he muttered,
slipping back into a restless and troubled sleep, ‘not God’s . .
.’
Ben sat and watched over him for a while, fidgeting
in his sleep, several times murmuring, but nothing Ben could
understand.
He knew the stronger tonics could do that - take
the small whispering voices at the back of a person’s mind and turn
them into a deafening scream. He was wondering what was troubling
Preston in his sleep and had a mind that the answer might lie
inside the metal chest just beyond him, when he heard Dorothy
Dreyton stirring on the floor and begin to rise.
‘Did he wake you, Mrs Dreyton?’
She said nothing, sitting up and staring wide-eyed
at Preston. There was something about her manner that troubled
Ben.
‘Mrs Dreyton?’
Her eyes were distant. Without a word, she got to
her feet and, stooping low, she pushed the flap aside, letting in a
gust of freezing wind that set the flame on the oil lamp dancing,
and stepped out into the cold day.
Above the rumpling wind, he thought he could hear
distant raised voices; a commotion from across the clearing, and a
ripple of disturbance and questioning from the Mormons standing
nearby. Something was going on.
Ben stood up, and stooped as he swept the flap
aside, squinting at the brilliant all-white glare of the day.
‘What is it?’
A man standing dutifully beside the entrance, Mr
Hollander, with a dark beard almost down to his belt, pointed
across the clearing. Ben could see Keats and several others moving
quickly down-slope and emerging from the tree line onto the open
ground of the camp, their guns unslung and held ready, anxiously
looking back over their shoulders.
‘Thought I heard someone shout something about
Indians,’ said Mr Hollander.