All Fall Down (28 page)

It might have been easier if I did believe in the gods. At least then I could have railed at them, or offered sacrifices, or done something to invoke their guidance and support. As I regarded Lord Marten’s sad face and knew he was already saying his goodbyes to his wife, I felt only emptiness, and the sudden gnawing of fear. For I was alone in this, with no one to guide me, and I did not know what to do.
   

Chapter 15

In the end, Lord Marten did fall asleep, head nodding over his empty goblet. I took it gently from him and set it down on the table. By some miracle his wife also continued to sleep. Her breath came in a harsh rattle, and seemed shallower with every passing moment, but at least she hadn’t begun to cough yet. I wondered then if I should try to sleep as well. Over the years I had learned how to take short naps where I could grab them, and I had seen what looked like a relatively comfortable chair out in the receiving chamber, but somehow I couldn’t force myself to go in there and lie down. Despite my lack of sleep, my nerves thrummed with anxious energy, and I could not seem to rest. I knew the seeming peace of the castle around me was but a mockery, and that death moved amongst us, even if none of us had the eyes to see it.

So I was not overly surprised when a furtive knock came at the door to the suite in the dead hours of the night, and a young female slave whose name I could not recall peered up at me with dark, frightened eyes. “It’s Master Ourrel,” she said simply.

I would be lying if I didn’t say my heart sank, or that I felt a stir of irrational anger. First Merime, and now the steward? Perhaps Lord Marten was right, and the gods did have a hand in everything. It would be one of their caprices to remove all those who were best able to manage the castle and the people who lived within, and to leave behind only the terrified underlings who would have no concept of what to do.

But I knew I mustn’t think that way. For Lord Shaine was still well, and I seemed to have escaped contagion for the nonce. And perhaps Master Ourrel had caught the less invasive form of the disease, and there was still hope…

Hope could be a treacherous thing, however.

I retrieved my satchel, then bent over Lord Marten and said quietly, “My lord.”

His eyes snapped open, and his gaze immediately went to the bed where his wife lay.

At once I said, “She still sleeps, Lord Marten. But I have been summoned to see to the steward, who has also been stricken. Can you manage here for a time? You can send one of the slaves to fetch me if there is any change in Lady Yvaine’s condition.”

For a second or two he hesitated, and then he nodded once, very slightly. “Of course, mistress. She does seem to be doing well. Perhaps even a little better?”

I wished I could tell him yes, or even tilt my head to indicate my agreement. Instead, I touched his arm, gently, and then turned and went to follow the slave girl to Ourrel’s quarters.

His rooms—for he had a small suite consisting of a study and adjoining bedchamber—were located in the east tower, and were in perfect order, of course. I caught a quick glimpse of a shelf of what were obviously much-loved books and a desk with papers neatly stacked to either side before I went on into his bedchamber, which I guessed would normally have been just as neat. Now, however, the clothes he had been wearing earlier in the day were thrown over the back of a chair, and I tripped over one of his boots as I entered the room. That mattered little, though, for immediately I heard him coughing, and knew that once again I was powerless to do anything.

Even from a foot away I could feel the heat coming off him, and indeed, he had pushed back the covers so that he was exposed to the chill air in the bedchamber. The fire in the other room had not been lit. What with the household in its current disarray, no slave would have come to tend it, and of course he was far too ill to do any such a thing. As I stood at his bedside, staring down at him in dismay, I heard the swift patter of light feet and knew that the slave girl who had brought me here had decamped, wishing to put as much distance between her and the sick man as she could.

Not that it would do any good.

“I’m here, Master Ourrel,” I said, and pulled the covers up over his chest. The linen sleep shirt he wore had ties to hold it closed, but he had either never fastened them, or torn them open while in the throes of his fever. I caught a glimpse of dark hair before I brought the blankets to his chin, and experienced an odd stab of shame on his behalf. The steward was always so fastidious, so proper in his dress and manner, that I knew if he had been in his right mind he would have been quite discomfited to be seen in such a state. As it was, such things mattered little now.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Ourrel gasped, and then began to cough, horrible wracking spasms that seemed as if they must shatter his very bones.

“No one’s dead,” I soothed, pulling fresh linen from my satchel to hold against his mouth. That was one good thing—we might run out of everything else, but we would have enough linen on hand to supply handkerchiefs for every plague-stricken man, woman, and child in Donnishold. As for this rest, it was only a small lie. True, two of the stableboys were dead, but I somehow doubted their fate was what concerned Ourrel so. The mind does odd things when caught in the throes of a terrible fever.
 

“Yes!” Another round of coughs, and this time I thought I saw blood mixed in with the bile he left behind on the handkerchief. How hideous a disease it was, and all the more pernicious in its frightening speed. I had seen the steward less than twelve hours earlier, and he had seemed in the prime of health as he left the kitchen in the company of his lord.

Icy fear seemed to squeeze my heart then at the memory of the two men standing next to one another. True, they had both worn masks covering their mouths and noses, but that didn’t seem to have done Master Ourrel much good. Why, even now Lord Shaine could be lying in his bed, coughing his way to a slow death…

I gave myself a little shake, and a warning to set my imagination aside. If the lord of the castle were ill, I would have been brought to his rooms posthaste, but I had received no such summons. I must focus on the matter at hand, and not let foolish fancies distract my attention.

As luck would have it, I still had willowbark tea left over from the batch I had brewed for Lady Yvaine, and so I poured some into the steward’s mouth, even as I fought against an overwhelming sense of futility. What good did it do to bring down the fever, when the rising tide of mucus in his lungs would slowly drown him, fever or no?

But it was all I could do, even as Master Ourrel choked and gasped and muttered more incomprehensibilities about someone being dead, and how he was needed, and couldn’t tarry here. For he attempted to rise from the bed, and even in his febrile state he was strong, so strong that I had to push back against him with every ounce of strength I possessed, my hands locked around his upper arms as I attempted to force him back down against his pillows.
 

Somehow I got him back down onto the bed, and this time I did spare the barest drop of the poppy to ease his ravings. He went limp almost at once, his breathing still coming in terrible rasps and gasps. I backed away from the bed, and noticed that my hands shook as I put the stopper back in the vial of poppy and returned it to my satchel. What would I have done if I hadn’t managed to wrestle the steward back into his bed?

You would have called someone to help you
, the practical part of my mind told me, but still I couldn’t seem to rid my mind of the image of Master Ourrel sprawled on the ground, possibly with me trapped beneath him. And though he was tall and well-built enough, he was not an overly large man. What on earth would I do when confronted by a burly man-at-arms who could not be persuaded to take his rest?

All evils in their times. Perhaps I would have to face that contingency; perhaps not. For now, at least, the steward was quiescent, and I was more or less unharmed, although my apron would have to go the way of Lady Yvaine’s handkerchiefs. I reached up to untie it from about my neck as I went into the study. At least there was a goodly pile of wood in the basket near the hearth, and a tinder box on the small marble mantelpiece. Kneeling down and concentrating on getting the fire started gave me something else to think about besides the sick man in the next room and the others in the castle who no doubt were beginning to display symptoms as well. Once the plague had begun to spread, it was as quick and merciless and all-devouring as a forest fire.

From behind me I heard the door open and slam against the wall. I jumped at the sound and turned at once to see who had entered so precipitately. To my surprise, I saw Elissa standing there, a dark shawl wrapped around her nightdress.
 

“Oh, mistress!” she gasped. “They said I could find you here.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. I did not want to hear what she had to say. I did not think I could bear it.

“Yes, Mistress. It’s Lady Auren. She needs you.”

I could not get anyone to watch over Master Ourrel, for the simple fact that all around the castle, more and more people were falling ill. I would have to tend to all of them somehow, but no one could fault me for going to see Auren first. She was Lord Shaine’s daughter; of course she would have to be seen to before anyone else.

The stairs up to her room seemed interminable. My muscles ached, but I knew it was not from fever, nor the deep aches that came sometimes with the bubonic form of the disease. No, my current pain had everything to do with weariness and that little tussle with the steward, and nothing at all to do with the plague. And all the way there I could only hear the litany running through my mind:
Not the lungs. Anything but that. Let there be a bubo. I can lance that. I can do what I can, as long as it is not in the lungs.

But then Elissa opened the door to Auren’s chamber, and I heard the familiar thick coughing from within. A wave of despair washed over me, so deep and so dark that some part of me wanted to turn and run, run far away where I would never have to hear that sound, nor see the imploring stares from people who couldn’t understand how someone who had cured their other coughs and chills could not give them the succor they so desperately needed now.
 

Of course I did not run. I clutched my satchel, and though I did not truly believe there were any gods to hear it, still I murmured a little prayer that somehow her cough was from something else entirely, that Auren did not have the plague after all.

A dark shape moved to one side, and I looked up into Lord Shaine’s haggard face. Worry seemed to have more deeply imprinted every line and shadow in his visage, even with half of it concealed beneath that strip of linen, and I longed to go to him—although whether to comfort him, or to seek my own reassurance, I could not say. I recalled Elissa’s presence, though, and also somehow knew that going to him in such a way would only cause him more worry. If we lived, perhaps…

It was easier than I thought to slip into the cool tones of the physician. “How long has she been coughing?”

“Not long,” he replied. “I sent Elissa out at once. I do not know why it took so long for you to come.” And with that he frowned at me, and his face might have been almost a stranger’s.
 

I reminded myself that whatever his feelings for me—if any—Auren was his daughter, and so of course she must be first in his heart, and in his worry. Still, an edge entered my voice as I said, “I was on the other side of the castle, tending to Master Ourrel. Perhaps you do not know he is ill as well.”

At once Shaine’s expression altered, but if anything, he appeared even more troubled. “No, I had not heard that. A bitter blow, if he is to follow Merime.”

“I fear he is.” Somehow I could not find the strength to say anything more, but instead moved away from him and went to Auren where she lay in her bed. At once I was forcibly reminded of the first time I had been brought to tend her in this very room, but the circumstances were far different. Then she had lain quiet, seeming far closer to death than the girl who coughed and gasped before me now, but appearances meant for very little in such things. True, her face was not quite as flushed as Master Ourrel’s had been, and her cough did not yet have the same horrifying rattle as Merime’s or Lady Yvaine’s, but that was most likely because I had come to see Auren before the disease was as far progressed.
 

“Stir up the fire, Elissa,” I said, and the girl ran to do as I said, even though I could tell she was shaking and afraid. At least, I hoped it was fear that made her hands tremble as she knelt to grasp the poker and encourage a bit more heat from the flames. She and Auren spent a great deal of time together in close company. If the daughter of the house was so ill, I did not think Elissa—frail, delicate Elissa, who never seemed to have enough meat on her bones—could be very far behind.
 

I busied myself with heating some water and pulling out both the willowbark and the ingredients for the mustard poultice. Perhaps if the congestion were caught early enough, it could be broken up before it truly caught hold.

“What is it you are doing?” inquired Lord Shaine.

As I worked, I explained how the tea made from the willow’s bark would bring down her fever, and how the mustard served as a powerful relaxant for mucus built up within the chest. Together, I hoped they would give her the fighting chance she needed to bring her own body’s defenses to bear, and that because she was young and strong, she might have a better chance than Merime.

Or Lady Yvaine, or Master Ourrel
, I thought then, and wondered if either of them had died in my absence. Again I was struck by the thought of so many people contained within the castle, all needing my help, and all so difficult to reach.

Shaine said nothing but seemed to absorb my words, and watched quietly as I tipped some of the tea down Auren’s throat. It was true that she did not fight me as Merime or Master Ourrel had, and although she made a face, for once she did not complain about the taste or comment on how I must have become a physician because I certainly had no knack for cookery. And when I said I needed her to lie quietly as I applied the mustard poultice to her chest, she did as I bade her. From time to time she would cough, and then clench the blankets with her hand as if to show she had tried her best to keep the cough from disturbing me at my work.