Lady of the Butterflies (35 page)

“Edmund!” I shook him, gripped by a blind panic. “Edmund, wake up!”

He looked dazedly at me through his delirium, as if he didn’t even know who I was. His lids slipped shut again as a low moan escaped his parched lips.

I backed away from the bed, the drapes falling closed between us like a final curtain, as one word clanged its death knell inside my head.

Ague. Ague. Ague.

Why now? Why again? It hardly ever struck in winter. I would not let it claim Edmund too. I would save him. I would not let him die. I would not.

I turned and fled from the room and down the corridor, to the room where Richard was sleeping. I burst through the door without seeking permission to enter and ran to his bed, threw back the hangings. He was sprawled on his stomach atop the blankets, still half dressed in shirt and breeches, with his head turned to the side, one arm flung up over his head and one knee crooked. I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him harder than I had shaken Edmund. “Richard, help me! Edmund is sick.”

He sat up, regarded me with sleepy eyes for a moment, as if I was a visiting seraph.

“You have to ride to London right away,” I said frantically. “As fast as you can.” I grabbed his cloak off the trunk and thrust it at him, followed by my pocketbook. “Take this. You will probably need it.”

“What for?”

“It is very expensive.”

“What is?” He looked at me now as if I was a jabbering loon. He took firm hold of my shoulders and held me still, looked into my eyes. “Nell, you are not making any sense at all. What’s wrong with Edmund?”

“A fever,” I said. “He has a fever. I am sure it is ague.”

“Tell me exactly what it is that you want me to do.”

“Find Robert Talbor,” I said more calmly. “The man who cured the King of it.”

“How do I find him?”

“Go to Dr. Sydenham on Pall Mall. He is sure to know.”

He nodded, released me to push his arms through the sleeves of his coat and his feet in his boots. He stood and threw his cloak over his shoulders, handed me back my pocketbook from where it lay on the bed. “I have money, Nell.”

“You may not have enough.”

“I am sure that I do.”

A dusting of snow lay on the ground and still came down in flurries, but I followed him out to the stables in just my shift and with no shoes on my feet, and barely felt the bite of the wind or the coldness between my bare toes. As Ned hurriedly bridled and saddled Richard’s horse, he glanced askance at me, as if to say that even in the direst distress he’d have expected me to make some pretense at respectability.

Richard put his right boot in Ned’s cupped hands and vaulted into the saddle.

“Ride as fast as you can,” I pleaded.

“You can be sure of it,” he said. “Do not worry, Nell.” He dropped his feathered hat onto his head with gravitas, as if a part of him relished the chance to do me this service, had been waiting for a reason to ride to my aid. “I will be back within four days, I promise you.”

I was so grateful to him I could have wept. I clutched at his hand for a last moment. “Godspeed, Richard. Go safely.”

I watched him gallop away through the snow toward the church, with all my hopes and prayers resting on him, and felt quite reassured.

This was not like before. Edmund might have sat in my father’s chair and taken his position as the head of Tickenham Court, but he was not my father. He would not refuse the Jesuits’ Powder, if that was what Robert Talbor used. Richard would fetch the miracle remedy and Edmund would take it and be cured. My father had been past his prime when he’d died, weary and disillusioned from the wars, crushed by grieving. Edmund was different. Edmund was young and strong. He had a small son and another baby expected. He had a wife who loved him. Who did truly love him. He’d said it himself: He had everything he could ever want. He had everything to live for. He had to live.

I WILLED MY HUSBAND TO LIVE. I held on to his palsied hand as if I could stop him slipping away from me, but the feel of it sent my own hand shaking in fear. It was so icily cold it hardly felt like a hand at all, it felt as if he had died already, and his teeth rattled so hard in his head that he could not speak to me.

I slept in a wooden chair by his bed, if I slept at all. I watched over him constantly, trying to understand his incoherent ramblings and mumbles and anticipate his every need, so he would not have to exert himself. When he was shivering with cold I kept him warm, brought rugs and blankets and made sure the fire was kept banked high. As soon as the chill passed and the heat started again, I soaked cloths and sponged his scarlet face. When his parched tongue licked at the moisture, I reached for the cider cup and trickled some into his mouth, glad just for the opportunity to have something to do. His hand, when I held it, was burning now. The sweat poured off him in waves and I brought dry sheets when the ones beneath him became quickly drenched.

“Edmund, I cannot bear to see you suffer,” I said, turning the damp compress over to the cool side and placing it back on his scarlet brow.

Even ravaged and weakened by disease, he had lost none of his placid acceptance. Even in his misery he did his best to smile through it. “I don’t feel so bad now, really I don’t.”

“I know that is not true. I wish you would complain. You are allowed to, you know. I know I would in your place.”

He squeezed my hand as his smile remained. “No, you would not. You would be magnificently strong and brave. Just as you always are. As you are now.”

“But you have to fight this,” I pleaded. “You once told me you would fight for me and for our son. You need to fight for us now. You have to hold on, do you hear me?” I stroked his damp hair, which had turned the color of wet rust. “Just hold on. Richard will be here soon.”

“Oh, aye, so long as he’s not waylaid by some pretty harlot with a fair face and fairer bosom. Or else by a not-so-fair bottle of wine that will make him forget entirely where he is going, or what he is going there for.”

“He won’t,” I said firmly. “You’ll see. He knows how important it is that you have the powder. He promised to be back in four days.”

“I’m sure he did. Well intentioned he may be, diligent he is not.”

Judged against Edmund’s steadfastness, all would be found wanting, me included. “Richard will be diligent if it matters enough,” I said. “He will.”

“So how long has it been now?”

“Nearly five days.”

“So already he has broken his promise.” My husband smiled wanly. “To think, my life now depends on a most undependable person.”

BUT NEXT MORNING, just after daybreak, I heard the blessed sound of hooves clattering on the slushy cobbles and I rushed to the window. “He is here!” I shouted. “Edmund, Richard is back.”

Edmund was dozing fitfully, his face still flushed with fever, and he did not appear to hear me.

I ran down the stairs and outside to see Richard’s black Spanish stallion steaming in the glittering white light of sun reflected on snow. Flecks of froth were dripping from the bit.

“How is he?” Richard asked.

“Weakening,” I said, more harshly than I intended. “What took you so long?”

He slid slowly from the saddle with a wince of pain.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded grimly, as he handed the reins to Ned. “Besides a few saddle sores, I’ve never been better.”

I took in the dark stubble that covered his cheeks and noted the signs of hard riding: his ragged curls, dry lips, the dust that coated his clothes and the shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes. “Forgive me,” I said.

“I’ve ridden without stopping, except to change horses, for two days and two nights,” he said. “I’d have got back in half the time, if you’d not sent me on some damned wild-goose chase.”

“You did find Robert Talbor?”

“I found his shop all right, but he was not there. His butler told me he was called to France to tend the Dauphin and the King. He sent me to Mr. Lords, a barber in St. Swithins Lane, but I didn’t trust the look of him at all. So I went back to Pall Mall, to Dr. Sydenham, had to wait around all day for him until he came back from his visits. He swore that Talbor’s secret cure is Jesuits’ Powder and gave me directions to an apothecary who receives the bark directly from the Jesuit college of Saint Omer in Belgium, guaranteeing the highest quality . . .”

I was barely listening. “You do have it?”

“I said I would get it for you, Nell, and I have.”

Considering what he had told me, it was a wonder he had managed to be back so quickly. With hands that trembled with fatigue, he took the precious little brown-paper package out of his pocket and held it out to me.

“Thank you, Richard.”

“You do not need to thank me.”

I turned to go back to the house, but when he started to walk with me I saw that he was almost bow-legged from so many hours on horseback. He was all but stumbling in his tiredness and looked to be in considerable pain from the saddle sores. He took a flask of brandy out of his pocket and swigged from it.

“I’ll tell Bess to fill you a bath and have the kitchen make you something to eat,” I said gently. “It’s food and rest you need, not brandy.”

“I needed it to keep me awake, and now I shall need it to help me sleep.”

“You’ve done all you can,” I said gratefully, resting my hand on his arm as we came to the bottom of the solar stairs. “Pray this will do the rest.” I looked down at the package. “How much do I give to him?”

Richard tipped back his head as he took another hefty swig of brandy, held it in his mouth, swallowed. “As much as he needs.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as I waited for further instructions. “Two spoonfuls,” he said.

“How often?”

He fastened the top of the flask. “Give it to him morning, noon and night. In between times too, if there’s no improvement.”

The dried, powdered bark was a deep red-brown color, like cinnamon. I tasted a few grains, spat it out in disgust. It was extraordinarily bitter. I spooned a dose into a glass of claret, sat on the bed beside Edmund and put my arm around his shoulders to lift his head and hold the cup to his mouth.

The fever did not break, so I woke him after dinner to give him another dose, and again before supper. He said his stomach and his head were hurting a little, but he seemed restful enough, so that I curled up beside him and went to sleep myself, comforted by the thought that the curative was inside him now, doing its work.

When he woke just after midnight and I asked him how he was, he complained that there was a ringing sound in his ears and he rubbed at his eyes, said everything appeared blurred.

By midday he lay with his legs drawn up to his abdomen and was moaning that his muscles felt as taut as if he was on the rack, that he badly wanted to be sick. It was as if it was some quack remedy I had fed to him. Jesuits’ poison, just as the Protestants had claimed.

When Edmund vomited, I sent for Richard, who had been sleeping since he arrived, over twenty-four hours ago. “Did Dr. Sydenham say it was an emetic?” I asked him.

He stood at the side of the bed in his rumpled shirt and stared down at Edmund’s contorted face. He seemed unable to speak.