On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (3 page)

With some effort she turned her head on the pillow.
 
Her brother was standing by the window, his figure silhouetted against the light.
 
She blinked quickly to make sure that she was not seeing chimeras still.
 
The figure didn’t disappear.
 
“Gerard?”
 
Her voice came out as a hoarse croak.

He strode over to her side.
 
“Sophie?
 
You are awake?”

She held out her arms to him, but she was too weak to lift them off the coverlet to embrace him.
 
With Gerard home, she felt whole again.
 
“I’m so glad to see you.”

He took her hands in his.
 
“And I you.
 
I feared I had come too late, that your sickness had taken you out of my reach before I could see you once more.
 
I am beyond happy that you are better.”

She smiled into his deep blue eyes that so closely mirrored her own.
 
He would always be first in her heart.
 
“I am better now that you are here with me.”

“You must be hungry.
 
See if you can sit up a little, and I will feed you some soup.”

She was ravenous.
 
Soup sounded heavenly.
 
It seemed an age had passed before Gerard returned with a couple of bowls of warm broth.

She lifted herself up in the bed a little and he placed a large bolster under her head so she could swallow without choking.

He spooned a sup of broth into her mouth.
 
It was thin and weak, but she gulped it down greedily.
 
After a couple of mouthfuls her shrunken stomach felt full and she turned her head away from the spoon.
 
Her weakness shamed her.
 
“I cannot eat any more.
 
Thank you.”

She had lost track of time in her fevered state.
 
When had she been to the marshes and fallen asleep in the sun there?
 
Was it yesterday, or much longer ago.
 
“Have I been ill for long?”

Gerard took a mouthful from his own bowl of broth.
 
“The day I arrived home you were sick and raving with fever, and you fell off your horse into my arms without even knowing I was there.
 
I have been home for three weeks now.
 
My leave is well nigh gone already.”
 

Surely not.
 
She could not have been ill for the entire time he was here.
 
There was so much she wanted to tell him and show him.
 
Her skill with the bow for one.
 
Not to mention the colt captured from one of the herds of wild horses that roamed freely throughout the Camargue that she was taming, and had already trained to eat apples out of her hand.
 
“Must you leave again so soon?”

He gave a slight grimace as he swallowed.
 
“I will stay here with you until you are recovered.”
 

She suddenly felt ashamed of her selfish desires.
 
She was only his sister, and should not stand in the way of his advancement.
 
“Your captain will not mind that you overstay your leave?”

A bitter laugh escaped him as he lay the empty bowl to one side.
 
“I doubt that my captain would thank me for bringing the sickness back to Paris with me.
 
Were I even to get within ten miles of the city walls, I have no doubt but that he would shoot me on the spot and have my body hauled away into the country for burial.”

“The sickness?”
 
He had spoken the word with such a dread certainty and deadly acceptance that a cold shiver of apprehension passed down her spine.
 
“What sickness?”

He made the sign of the cross to ward off evil.
 
“No one can get in or out of the Camargue.
 
We have been shut off by soldiers from Saint-Marie-de-la-Mer, and villagers from outside the boundaries would kill us did we try to escape anyway.
 
They would rather murder innocent strangers than run the risk of being infected by them.
 
For none of us are innocent.
 
God has sent us the plague.”

Chapter 2

The plague.
 
The word itself was enough to strike a deathly fear into her heart.
 
Like the locusts in olden days, the plague was a curse from Heaven sent by a wrathful God to punish the wrongdoing of his creatures.
 
Few escaped the avenging hands of a wrathful God.
 
“The Black Death?” she whispered.

“Even so.”

She felt the horror of it strike her heart.
 
“I have had the plague?”

“You were one of the lucky ones, my dear sister.
 
You were struck down and yet you still live.
 
Before this very hour, I had not even dared to hope that you would be spared.”

No wonder he looked so drawn and pale.
 
“The plague is in this house?”

He nodded.
 
“Most of the servants have been struck with fever.
 
The few that remain have fled to the hills to save their skins if they can.”

She could barely breathe with the fear of it all.
 
“And the village?”

“The village has been struck as well.”
 
He shook his head gravely.
 
“The news from there is not good.”

“Our parents?”
 
She could not frame the question as she wanted to, fearing to hear the answer.

“Father has been well up until now, but yesterday he took to his bed with a slight fever.
 
He has a strong constitution.
 
He may pull through as you have done.”

“And mother?”

He was silent for a moment.
 
“She is…not well.”

Not her mother.
 
She could not lose her mother in this way.
 
“How sick is she?”

A shake of his head with frustration.
 
“I am not a physician.”

She could not let the question rest.
 
“What does the apothecary in the village say?”

“The apothecary was one of the first to die.”

“What of a doctor from town?”
 
Surely a doctor would be able to cure their mother.
 
“Have you not sent for a doctor from town?”

He shrugged his shoulders.
 
“It is no use - there are none to come.
 
Half of them are arrant cowards and have refused to visit their patients for fear of catching the plague.”

She was almost afraid to speak now.
 
“And the other half?”

“The other half are dead or dying.”

“The priest?
 
Has he at least been with her to offer her comfort?”
 
She whispered the words, grasping at the merest straw of hope, not wanting to hear of yet more bad news.
 
The priest had always been devout in his faith and would not abandon a dying soul of his flock.

He put his head in his hands.
 
“I buried him yesterday.”
 
His voice shook with distress.
 
“I loved Father Capin dearly.”

Sophie let her eyes close with a groan.
 
Maybe it would have been better if the plague had taken her too – if she had never awakened to this hellish day, with the world she knew disintegrating around her.

“You have had a rude awakening, sister,” Gerard said, coming out of his grief to lay a cool hand on her forehead.
 
“I am sorry - I did not mean to give you the bad news all at once.
 
Sleep again now, and I shall be with you when you awake again.”
 

She would never sleep again.
 
Her head whirled with images of pain and death – images from her most feverish nightmares: carts stacked with bodies being tipped into common burial pits, smoking funeral pyres spilling ill-smelling smoke that reeked of human corruption and burning flesh, and every stinking, rotten, worm-ridden corpse bore the face of one of her loved ones.

Her body was weak from her long illness and despite the horrors invading her mind, she soon sank into a restless slumber.

She was alone when she woke again, and her belly was rumbling with emptiness.
 
Judging by the patch of darkening sky she could see from her window, it was early evening.

The house was as quiet as a tomb.
 
There were no footsteps, no voices, not even the barking of a dog to indicate that there was any living soul there besides herself.

She called out in a voice weak from illness, but no one answered.
 
Silence reigned supreme.
 
Gerard had promised he would be there when she woke up again and she trusted him with her life.
 
She waited for some minutes to see if her brother would return as he had promised, but he did not come.

The stillness in the air had an eerie quality about it – a sense of tenseness and foreboding.
 
Finally she could bear it no longer.
 
She pushed herself up on the bed until she was sitting upright.
 
A black mist appeared before her eyes as the blood rushed from her head, but she willed herself not to faint.
 
When she began to feel stronger, she swung her legs over the side of the bed until her feet touched the floor.
 
The cold seeped through the bare wood into the soles of her feet, but this minor discomfort only fueled her determination to set herself above it.

Her legs trembled with the exertion of holding her upright, but slowly she shuffled her way to the door, hanging on to the bedposts, the wall, anything to help hold her on her feet.

With shaking steps she made her way to her mother’s apartments.
 
She pushed open the door and took two steps in, and then wished she hadn’t.

The curtains around her mother’s bed were closed and a smell of corruption and death lingered in the air.
 
She made herself shuffle over to the bed and draw back the curtains.
 
Her mother lay among the rumpled sheets, her eyes open wide in a sightless mockery, her face blackened with liver spots and tinged the green-gray color of death.
 
The Black Death had claimed her for his own.

With a shaking hand Sophie brushed her mother’s eyelids shut.
 
She could do no more for her body, but must pray that her soul find peace in death.

Her father’s apartments were as quiet as her mother’s.
 
She knew what she would find when she opened the door, but she forced herself to do it anyway.

Her father had died in his chair, his face twisted with pain and covered with the same spots that marked her mother.

With a quick prayer that God in his mercy grant him grace, she shut the door again.

The door to her brother’s chamber was slightly ajar.
 
As she approached it she heard a voice calling out to her.
 
She quickened her step as much as she was able.
 
If her brother was yet well, they could work together to survive this tragedy that had felled the rest of their family.
 

“Gerard?” she called as she tapped at the door.

He mumbled unintelligibly back at her through the partly-opened door.

She pushed it open and went in.
 
Gerard was lying fully-clothed on his bed, and to her horror she saw that his face was dripping with the sweat of a desperate fever.
 
She rushed to his side, not knowing what else she could do but soothe him with her presence and let him know that she was near him.

He opened his eyes and seemed to focus on her face.
 
“I will get up and make you some more soup soon, Sophie,” he muttered.
 
“I just had to lie down for a bit first.
 
I don’t feel so well.
 
My head hurts.”

His head was burning.
 
Sophie looked around wildly for a rag, but there was nothing she could use.
 
With a strength born of desperation, she tore the ruffle from her cotton nightgown, dipped it in the pitcher of water by her brother's bed and used it to sponge the sweat from her brother's forehead.

He relaxed a trifle under her ministrations.
 
“That feels so good,” he mumbled.
 
“I am so hot.”

“You have made yourself sick with nursing me,” she said.
 
“Lie back and you will soon recover.”

“Mother and father…” he began, his voice trailing off into nothingness.

She knew what he wanted to say and would spare him the pain of giving it voice.
 
“I know,” she said simply.

He shut his eyes in anguish.
 
“I tried my best, but it was not good enough.
 
I could not save them.”

“No man on earth could have saved them.
 
God had marked them for his own.”

“I did my best, but they went so quickly in the end.
 
There was nothing I could do.”

She laid her hand on his burning forehead, sharing his anguish.
 
“Hush now and try to rest.”

He tossed and turned with a feverish agitation.
 
“When I die you will be left all alone.”

“Do not be foolish,” she reproved him.
 
He was her beloved brother – her twin.
 
She could not live without him.
 
He could not be so sick as all that.
 
“You are ill with exhaustion.
 
Nothing else ails you.”

He gave a wan smile as he drew his right arm from under the bedclothes and pushed the sleeve up to his elbow.
 
“You cannot fool me, sister, and you will not be able to fool yourself for much longer.
 
You had best be prepared for the inevitable.”
 

She stared at the black spots on his arms with a horror verging on madness.
 
Not Gerard.
 
Not her brother.
 
God had taken her mother and her father.
 
Could he not spare her brother?

“I have the plague.
 
I have seen many others die of it these last weeks and I do not flatter myself that I will survive where so many others have not.
 
I will be dead before the morn.”

She would not let him go so easily.
 
She would fight Death for the life of her brother.
 
She clutched at him with frantic fingers.
 
“You must not die.
 
I will not let you die.”

He loosened the death-grip of her fingers and took her hand in his.
 
“I have made my peace with the world and I am content to leave it.
 
It is time for me to join God’s kingdom.
 
My one regret is that I will not be here to take care of you.
 
You will have to look out for yourself.
 
Promise me that you will take good care of yourself.”

“I promise.”

“I had thought to see you married this summer.
 
I would have danced at your wedding with a good grace.”

She shook her head with impatience.
 
“I care naught for being wed.”

“Count Lamotte is a good man.
 
He would be a good husband for you, Sophie, or I never would have proposed the match.
 
I loved him like a brother, and knew you would love him as I did.”

She bit her tongue.
 
She would not quarrel with her brother when he was so ill.

“You will need someone to look after you when I am gone.
 
If the King takes any notice of his wealthy new ward, it will only be to marry you off to the highest bidder, or to some new favorite who has more charm than wealth.
  
Promise me that you will consider Lamotte’s suit.”

How could she think of marriage when her parents were both dead and her brother was dying?
 
“You must think only of getting better, not of such foolish things as my marriage.
 
I can look after myself.
 
Besides, you will not die.”

“Promise me.”
 
His voice was urgent.

However unreasonable she considered it, she could not refuse a sick man’s request – not when that man was the brother she loved better than she loved herself.
 
“I promise.”