A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (17 page)

She
sat on the boards at the side of the bed, loosed the tie from his hair and
ruffled it loose on his shoulders and then, for the sake of comfort, kissed his
poor forehead. “Poor Apple,” she said, and she meant it, for he looked weary
and cold. “Let me -”

“Don’t.”
He gave a shiver, and twisted to bury his face in her shoulder, “Don’t let me
go, tibber. Don’t ever let me go “

Cold
and unhappy, then, and she ran her hand up and down the back of his neck, under
his hair. Where it was already hot and wet with sweat. “Long enough to bring
you something hot, perhaps? For you must be hungry, after so long at your work.
And you need to eat something, husband. “

She
thought he meant to shake his head, and to be no trouble. And then he sighed,
and rubbed his face against her arm, and she could feel him shivering. “I love
you,” he said, and he sounded desperate about it. “Thomazine,
I love you
.
Always."

32

The widow looked up from her
never-ending mending, as Thomazine pushed open the kitchen door. “My husband is
sick,” she said, and the older woman nodded.

“I
thought he might be, so. It recurs.”

“He
has often been so?”

“And
did not tell you?” She laughed, without much humour. “Why should he? He is a
man like any other -” and folded her sewing, and stood up. “He is not wholly
your fool, Mistress Thomazine, for all you might think he is at the crook of
your little finger. He has his pride. Sometimes, it is all he has. Well, then.
I have sat up a-nights for the Major before, and I see I must again. Will you
see to the child?”

“I -
no.” He had his pride, and sometimes it had been all he had. No longer. “Will
you tell me what to do?”

And
the widow looked at her thoughtfully, and nodded. “Jane. My name is Jane. God
grant him a quick return to health, this time, for the Lord knows he is much
needed.”

“Upright
wi’ breeches on,” Thomazine quoted one if her father’s precepts, and Jane
Bartholomew’s lips quivered.

“I
have never seen him else, mistress. On my honour, I have not. Now.”

“Frumenty,”
Thomazine said firmly. “And I will see to it, my own self. For of all things he
liked – he
likes
– frumenty the way
I
do it.”

“Eggs,”
Jane Bartholomew said, equally firmly. “Buttered, mistress. He needs rest, and
care, and nourishing.”

“I
am more than capable of caring for my own husband, madam!”

To
which the widow said nothing, but her eyebrows moved in a manner that was both
sceptical and unflattering. “Indeed,” she said. “Indeed. Perhaps, then,
mistress, you should like to make frumenty. Your way.”

Thomazine
inclined her head equally frostily. “Have you wheat, madam?”

“No,”
the widow said. “We are in the city, Mistress Russell. If I would have wheat,
then I must go and buy so much as I required.” She was not, quite, smirking as
she said it, but she had an air of definite smugness that made Thomazine itch
to slap her.

“I
see. Milk?”

“I
have milk, though I trust it is still good, though not today’s –“

“And
no doubt your butter is of the same dubious quality,” Thomazine snapped.

“Since
I rely on your husband’s rent for my housekeeping, my lady,
yes
, I
imagine it is!”
        

The
widow’s head was up, and her eyes were level and defiant, but for the first
time Thomazine wondered if Jane Bartholomew might be thus well-ordered because
she was
afraid
. Because a strict order was all that stood between her
and the darkness of chaos. “Does he – do
we
- do we owe, Mistress
Bartholomew?”

The
widow shook her head. “The major would never allow such a thing to happen.
Unless.”

She
did not finish that sentence. She did not need to. Thomazine finished it for
her.

“But
that will not be. So. Now either you or I must go to market, and get the makings
of frumenty –
for tomorrow
– and today it seems that the major must make
do with his buttered eggs, and be, ah.” It was a clumsy joke, but she had heard
him make it often enough. “He must be, um, thankful.”

And
it was not a truce, precisely, but more in the way of an armed neutrality, and
the widow lent Thomazine an apron and between the two of them they managed as
pretty a dish of buttered eggs as Robert May and his accomplished cookery could
have managed.

And
then the three of them sat to table, there in the kitchen, Thomazine and the
widow and the Bartholomew-baby, and they ate a good half of that pretty dish
between them, taking it in turns to spoon the creamy eggs into the child’s
peeping mouth.

They
talked of medicines, warily, and of the nature of Russell’s illness, and how he
might best be mended. Of what good nourishing things they might give him to
eat, until he was well, and where Thomazine might find some good plain
whole-cloth stockings at a sensible price. It was simple housewifely conversation,
and she had missed it, for much though Thomazine enjoyed listening to the
high-flown poetry and politics around Charles Fairmantle’s supper table, she
had not known how much she missed real talk, of things that mattered.

This
was the world she knew: this, feeding buttered eggs into a little boy’s mouth,
and talking of whether sage oil was a better plaster for a man with phlegm in
his lungs than mustard. Of being competent, and a woman in your own right, a
person of significance, and not merely of value for a daring turn of wit or
beauty.

“You
are smiling, madam?” Jane Bartholomew said, leaning forward to turn the bread
on the fork where it toasted fragrantly.

She
was. “I was thinking on the nature of power,” she said mildly, and dropped her
eyes, because she did not think the widow would approve of what Thomazine was
truly thinking, not at all.

But
it crossed Thomazine’s mind that the diplomacy with which she and the widow
Bartholomew were setting out their rules of engagement, and beginning their peace
negotiations, was every bit as sensitive and fraught as those her husband was
engaged in.

A
little commonwealth, indeed.

33

He had not played the
obedient patient, and he was not in bed. Through the attic window the sun had
moved almost all the way round the street and the room was lit with a soft
amber light, and her husband was still half-dressed, shaking hard enough to
rattle plaster-dust from the walls, and determined that he must go out and
finish his business.

“Apple,
you’re ill, and you should be abed,” she said, and gave him a stern look.

“I
know! You come bearing medicine -”

“I
come bearing buttered eggs, sweeting.” He was neither that daft nor that
feverish, and he grinned at her, and she acknowledged defeat. “Well. A
little
medicine, then. Jane tells me you take these fits, when you are - “
Strained. Worried. Tired. And she had not known, because - 

“Did
Jane
tell you I was like to die, the last time?”

“She
did not, husband, and you are certainly not going to die this time. Now hush, and
get in bed.”

He
took three strides about the attic, stopped in front of her. (She was glad it
was a small lodging. He could not exhaust himself pacing its perimeter.) “Did
she tell you it was a tertian ague? Had it since Scotland. It’s not important
-”

“She
said very little, save that you can be a pig-headed patient and the only
reasonable course of action is to have you knocked on the head and restrained.
Now.”

“It's
a tertian ague, tibber. Three days out of commission, and I haven’t
got
three days. I -”

“Am
going to finish undressing, put on the flannel nightshirt that your loving, but
impatient, wife has so conscientiously put against the chimney breast to warm,
take my medicine, and sleep.”

“You
don’t understand,” he said, sounding so marvellously like an outraged small boy
that had she not been afraid of what the widow - what
Jane
- had told
her the next three days would bring, she might have laughed.

“Dear,
nothing is more important than you getting well.”

“I-”

“Am
sick, and weary, and in need of rest and good feeding. Now hush.”

And
because he was sick, and weary, he sat down limply on the bed and let her help
him out of the rest of his clothes. He said he was cold, and she wrapped the
blankets tight about him and got her cloak and her furs from the press and
piled them over him, agreeing that it was cold, and insisting that he finished
his tea. (He muttered darkly that she was trying to poison him, and she assured
him that a pillow over the face would be much quicker. And quieter.)

And
then she slid under the blankets, and put her arms about him, and he put his
head on her breast with a little sob of what sounded like relief.

“I
am here,” she said, and he felt for her hand under the covers and held it hard
enough to hurt.

“I
know,” he said, and his teeth chattered together just once before he set his
jaw. “But tibber - may God have mercy on me, lass, I am afraid “

“No
need,” she said, and kissed the top of his head, her eyes squeezed shut. “No
need at all, my darling. Rest. I will see to all in the morning.”

“You
promise?”

“As
God is my witness, Apple. Sleep now.”

And
she felt all the tension leave him, on one long shaky sigh. And wondered what she
had just let herself in for.

34

Well, she had always wanted
to look after him, and now she was doing, and it was nowhere near as romantic
as she had imagined. He was fractious, restless, ungrateful - distressed and
irritable by turns, and she could not comfort him, which annoyed the hell out
of her. And she knew of course that it shouldn't, and that if she were at home
in Essex her mother would have made him comfortable in no time at all. Even the
widow Bartholomew would have eased him better than Thomazine, for the unhappy
bottom line of it was that Russell was not a particularly placid invalid, and she
not a particularly competent nurse. When he was lucid enough to know that he
was ill, he hated it, and when he wasn't, he scared her witless, although Jane
Bartholomew assured her that this bout of his illness was not a particularly
severe one.

(And
she said it with a degree of smugness that raised Thomazine's hackles no end,
because
she
of course she had nursed him through much worse.)

About
the only consolation was that he was not contagious.

It
was the uselessness that riled her the most: and that wasn't fair, because it
wasn't his fault that nothing she did could make him comfortable. There was no
gentle smoothing of his fevered brow. There was precious little rest, never
mind spooning nourishing broth between his pale lips - he swore, a lot, and knocked
the bowl out of her hand, and was determined that he would get up. (And
Thomazine, oh, Thomazine the gentle ministering angel, yelled at him that if he
did not stay where she bid him she would tie him to the goddamned bed. And he
was quite himself at that point and his hackles had raised as much as hers and
he had yelled right back at her that she was her father's bloody daughter, and
a little termagant - and, well, that was when Jane Bartholomew had come up the
stairs and told both of them to hold their tongues. Had told Thomazine to go
downstairs -
right
downstairs, mistress, if you cannot be woman grown
enough to mind your tongue in a sickroom - and then he'd yelled at the widow,
too, because he didn't want Thomazine to leave him.)

She
was tired, and irritable, and she had gone, just to spite him. And all the way
down the stairs, she could hear him shouting her name, and Jane Bartholomew
trying to settle him, and her husband's voice growing scratchier and more
afraid as the door closed, and she went down to the widow's quarters and sat
with the Bartholomew-baby and played with him, his fat little hands patting her
wet cheeks in wonder.

And
she sat him on her knee, and played shoe the little colt with the boy's chubby
bare feet, and tried not to hear Russell promising wildly to be good, please,
he
would be a good boy
, he would be quiet,
please
, if she would only
not leave him -

It
seemed like a long time later when the widow came back down the creaking
stairs, very slowly.

"He
is asleep," she said, and Thomazine said nothing, but only nodded.
"At last." She wiped her hands on her apron, and the little boy gave
a happy gurgle and put his hands up to his mother, who hefted him absently to
her hip, like a bundle of laundry.

Thomazine
looked at her own, useless, hands. She had thought herself competent, and she
was increasingly sure she was not. A sturdy wench, and fit to lift and carry
and heft, but she had not the widow's sense of - well, peace, almost. Thomazine
had not been a restful child, and she was not a restful woman. (He knew that.
She had thought he didn't mind. She still thought he didn't, but she wondered
if perhaps her own cheerful chaos was not the best thing for his comfort.) She
took a deep breath.