Exile's Return (12 page)

‘I'll be fine in a moment. Just need a rest.' Daniel murmured without opening his eyes. She lifted his head on to her lap and stroked his forehead.

‘You're not fine. How long have you been unwell?'

‘It's been threatening for the last day. I hoped to be … ' A shudder convulsed his body.

A rustle of skirts announced the arrival of help; two women, one the lady of the house, to judge from her gown of fine blue wool and lace-edged collar and cuffs, and an older woman in plain russet.

Agnes's mind ran through all the possible ailments that matched Daniel's symptoms.

The steward said it for her, in a tone heavy with certainty. ‘Plague, m'lady.'

Everyone around her recoiled and Agnes looked up into the anxious faces of the strangers on whose doorstep Daniel had just collapsed. ‘We've just come from London but there's no plague there. At least I don't think so.'

Daniel opened one eye and another shudder shook him.

‘Don't be ridiculous,' he managed. ‘It's marsh fever. I've had it before.'

Everyone visibly relaxed. Able-bodied servants were summoned, and with an almost practiced efficiency Daniel was carried into the house and up two flights of stairs. The servants deposited him on a large feather bed in what was clearly a guest bedchamber. The two women followed the strange procession, with Agnes bringing up the rear and another servant carrying their bags.

The older woman went straight to the bed and leaned over Daniel, untying his cloak strings.

‘What's yer name, lad?' She spoke with a strong northern accent.

‘Daniel Lovell,' he murmured in response.

‘Aye well, ye've quite a fever on you. Marsh fever, you say.'

He gave a quick inclination of his head, grimacing.

‘Ellen, I've some feverfew in the still room,' her mistress said. ‘And sorrel … '

The older woman looked up at her mistress. ‘We can try, Mistress, but if it's marsh fever the only remedy is Jesuit Bark and we've nought any of that. A king's ransom won't buy us enough.'

Daniel clutched at the arm of the older woman. ‘I have Jesuit Bark. Agnes … ' He raised his head, looking around the room as if searching for something. ‘It's in my bag.'

Standing at the end of the bed, feeling utterly useless, Agnes jumped at her name. Daniel's back arched as a spasm of fever went through him, and the two women turned to look at her.

‘What does Jesuit Bark look like?' she asked.

The older woman gave her a withering glare. ‘It looks like what it is, bark of a tree. Hurry, lass.'

Agnes went through Daniel's leather satchel, scattering his few possessions around her until she found a parcel wrapped in oiled cloth at the bottom of the pack The other women gathered around her as she unwrapped it.

‘I'm sorry, I have not introduced myself. I am Lady Katherine Thornton,' the woman in the blue dress said. ‘And this is Ellen Howell.'

‘Lady Thornton?' Agnes looked up and the woman nodded. ‘I'm sorry we had to arrive in so dramatic a manner. It would not be how Daniel planned it.'

‘And you are?' Lady Thornton prompted. Like the older woman, her voice bore traces of a northern origin.

Agnes felt the heat rise to her cheeks. ‘Agnes Fletcher – Daniel's … ' she was going to say “sister”, as she had said at every inn for the past days. She shook her head. ‘Daniel's friend … travelling companion … '

Lady Thornton smiled. ‘There will be time enough for explanations later.' She held up what looked to Agnes to be sticks of dried bark. ‘So this is Jesuit Bark.' She turned back to the bed. ‘You are fortunate to be carrying it, young man.'

‘Always have it … never know when the fever will hit … ' He squeezed his eyes tight shut as another tremor ran though his long body.

Lady Thornton handed the sticks to Ellen. ‘You know what needs to be done?'

The woman nodded. ‘I'll go and prepare an infusion,' she said.

‘And we will make our patient more comfortable. Mistress Fletcher, will you help me strip him?'

Daniel's eyes shot open and he clutched at his jacket fastenings with shaking hands. ‘Not Agnes.'

Agnes regarded him, with her hands on her hips. ‘I've seen a naked man before.'

‘But not me … ' Daniel protested, with a clarity that belied his fevered state.

Lady Thornton looked across at Agnes, her lips tight with compressed laughter. ‘If you're going to be coy, Master Lovell,' she said, ‘Perhaps Mistress Fletcher had better leave the room.'

The man beneath her hands stilled. ‘Please. I can see to myself … '

‘With these tremors?' Kate picked up one of his hands. ‘We'll make do and mend. Mistress Fletcher, perhaps you can find Ellen and bring up water and cloths. She will be in the still room. Go down the stairs to the ground floor, and the still room is just before the kitchen.'

Agnes hurried down the stairs. As she reached the next level a door flew open, and a tall man in his late thirties stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and a smudge of ink ran across the bridge of his long nose, as if he had been scratching it with the wrong end of a pen.

‘What is all this commotion?' he demanded and, seeing Agnes, he frowned. ‘Who are you?'

Agnes dropped a curtsey. ‘Agnes Fletcher – and you are Sir Jonathan Thornton?'

‘Yes, but … ' He ran a hand through his dark hair, the light catching silver strands. ‘My apologies, Mistress Fletcher, I am working on the accounts and it makes me forget my manners.' He rolled the cuffs of his shirt down. ‘I wasn't aware we were expecting guests. What brings you to Seven Ways?'

Agnes glanced at the stairs. ‘My friend, Daniel Lovell … '

He started at the name. ‘Lovell? Daniel Lovell, did you say? Good God. Where is he?'

‘Unfortunately, he has been taken ill – I was just going to find Ellen.'

Thornton waved a hand in the direction of the lower floor while looking up in the direction from which Agnes had come.

‘She'll be in the still room. Is Kate with him?'

Kate? Katherine …

‘Yes, she is,' Agnes replied.

Thornton relaxed, and for the first time a smile lifted his lean face. ‘Then he is in good hands. A poor welcome I am afraid, Mistress Fletcher. You continue on your errand, I'll not detain you.'

Despite the vague directions, Agnes found the still room. Dried hanks of herbs hung from nails in the ceiling and the walls were lined with shelves of jars and bottles. The room smelled of herbs and honey. It reminded her of her own mother's still room from which had issued unguents and potions for all ailments and ills.

Ellen looked up from stirring a pot over a small fire. ‘Come for the brew, have ye?' she said.

Agnes hovered uncertainly in the doorway while Ellen stirred the kettle. Anyone more like a witch it would have been hard to imagine.

‘I've come for water and cloths,' she said.

Ellen's sharp eyes appraised Agnes. ‘Don't ye fret,' she said. ‘I've seen worse.'

‘I'm not fretting,' Agnes said, but her voice lacked conviction.

She couldn't imagine herself being cast adrift from Daniel Lovell, not that he had given her the slightest encouragement to form any sort of attachment. She had clung to him because he had shown her kindness when she needed a friend, and he was her means of getting to Charvaley. Nothing more. He was all she had.

‘I've plenty of lasses come to me seeking the means to turn a young man's head,' Ellen said.

Agnes stared at her, aghast. ‘I've no need of love potions and no wish to use one,' she said archly.

Ellen nodded and turned back to her work. ‘As ye wish. We need to bring the fever down. There's cold water in that jug.' She indicated a large clay jug sitting beside a metal basin. ‘Take those up, and ye'll find some clean cloths in that cupboard. Tell Mistress I'll be a while yet. It needs time to steep.'

The sound of voices drifted out of the half-open door as Agnes, balancing jug and basin and cloths, reached the guest bedchamber.

‘Have you seen his back?' The voice was Jonathan Thornton's.

Agnes paused, her hand on the door, as Kate's soft voice responded, ‘Dear God, who would do that to another human being?'

‘Ah, Kate. These are cruel times we live in. Have you forgotten how ill they treated me?'

‘No,' Kate's voice held a tremor. ‘I'll never forget … or forgive.'

Agnes knocked on the door and opened it slowly. She had thought to allow the couple sufficient time to collect themselves but found them in an embrace, Kate's head resting on her husband's chest, his arms around her.

The tenderness of the gesture touched her. James had never been outwardly demonstrative with her, or indeed his wife, in public or private. Whatever rumours may have been rife in Charvaley, their public behaviour had never been anything less than entirely proper.

The man on the bed moaned and flung himself on to his side, the sheets tangling around his hips, exposing his back to her. Agnes recoiled, the metal bowl slipping from her grasp. It hit the floor with a deafening clang. Jonathan retrieved it and set it on a table. Recovering her composure, Agnes set the jug down.

She understood now what Daniel had not wanted her to see. James had once had a miscreant whipped for stealing fruit from the orchard and had made the entire household watch as a deterrent. The man had twisted and screamed under the lash but the result had been nothing like this.

The interlaced pattern of wheals and heavy scars across the hard muscles of Daniel's back had been laid on with a vicious ferocity that should have killed him.

‘They used a whip with a metal end,' Jonathan Thornton said, ‘It would have torn the flesh from his bones.'

Agnes tore her gaze away from Daniel and looked up at him. ‘How does anyone survive such a thing?'

Kate Thornton straightened. ‘Luck and a strong will. Where did this happen?'

‘It must have been Barbados,' Agnes said.

Jonathan raised an eyebrow and gave a low whistle. ‘They sent him to Barbados? Good God, they may as well have given him a death sentence.'

As if aware of the audience gathered around him, Daniel rolled back on to his back and opened his eyes. He squinted up into Agnes's face.

‘I thought I told you to go away,' he mumbled.

‘You did, but I'm not going anywhere. It would be extremely inconvenient if you were to die on me,' Agnes responded.

He tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough.

Ellen entered the room with a flask and a beaker in her hands. With the practice of two people long used to working together, Kate raised Daniel's head and Ellen administered a decent dose of the tincture of Jesuit Bark.

Daniel swore and coughed, screwing up his face in disgust. ‘Filthy stuff.'

‘Aye, it may well be, but nothing that's good for you was ever made to taste pleasant. You know that, lad,' Ellen said, laying him back on the bolsters.

‘He needs to rest,' Kate said. ‘Mistress Fletcher, you must be exhausted from your travels. Let me show you to a room and I can arrange for a bath … '

Agnes shook her head, her eyes only for the man on the bed.

‘I will sit with him a while,' she said, and looked up at Kate with an apologetic smile. ‘This is not what Daniel would have wanted and I … we … would not wish to inconvenience you any more than we have. I can see to him.'

Kate Thornton's calm, grey eyes rested on her for a long moment.

‘Very well. He is your friend; of course you may sit with him. I advocate that you bathe his face and wrists to try and cool the fever. Ellen will come and relieve you later.'

Agnes waited until the others had left the room, although Ellen seemed somewhat reluctant to leave her patient in Agnes's clearly inexperienced hands.

Taking a deep breath, she poured the cool water into the basin. Soaking one of the cloths, she perched on the side of the bed and sat there, holding the damp cloth in her hands, suddenly afraid to touch him with a degree of intimacy that their relationship had not permitted up until now.

In his austere dark clothes he gave an impression of being of slight build, but naked, at least from the waist up, his hard muscles confirmed the evidence of a life lived in physical labour.

He opened one eye. ‘Still here?' he enquired.

‘Yes, and I'm not going anywhere. You're stuck with me.'

He sighed and closed his eyes as a feverish tremor shook his body.

Agnes knew nothing of marsh fever, except that once a person contracted it, it returned again and again – and it could kill. After everything this man had endured, he could not die here, so close to home, and she would do whatever lay within in her power to keep him alive. Even if that one thing was prayer.

His left hand lay outside the covers and she picked it up, turning it over. There were scars on his palm and calluses on the long fingers that curled with a curious vulnerability. She touched the cool cloth to the inside of his wrist, where the blood flowed closest to the skin. He turned his head away from her.

Using the cloth she began to stroke the long muscles of his arm, feeling their hardness beneath the fabric of the cloth. He gave a sharp indrawn breath and she looked up.

‘Do you want me to stop?'

He shook his head. ‘No, it feels … ' His eyelids flickered. ‘ … Nice.'

She ran the cloth across his chest, dampening the dark hair into soft whorls.

‘Why didn't you tell me you were ill? We could have stopped … '

‘I hoped it would pass. I didn't want to give into it … not in an inn. You wouldn't have known what to do,' he murmured, closing his eyes again.

‘You must think very poorly of me,' she bridled.

He didn't reply and appeared to be asleep. She brushed a lock of hair away from his eyes. ‘I can't let you die,' she whispered. ‘You are my only hope of seeing my son … ' She broke off, her heart pounding at the disastrous slip, but if Daniel had heard her, he gave no sign.