The Hourglass (23 page)

Ardeth noticed the other woman and set Genie aside so he could bow. “Lady Cormack.”

Instead of offering her hand, she grabbed his. Without preamble, she said, “My little boy is sick. No one seems to be able to help him. You can, I know it.”

Ardeth took his hand back. “Nay, my lady. I cannot help. I am no medical practitioner.”

“But I have heard that you know more than those who call themselves doctors, surgeons, or physicians. I have tried herbal women and midwives, priests and apothecaries. Nothing helps clear his lungs, no infusions, no chest poultices, no tisanes. My baby is weaker and less able to recover from the bouts of wheezing. He cannot breathe, I say! Surely you can do something. Lady Vinross swears you have a healing touch. Other women whose sons and brothers were in the war support her. It was your medical skill that opened doors in London to you and Genie.”

He shook his head. “My wife already asked about the boy. I am sorry, but I cannot offer any assistance.”

“Is it because I was cruel to her?” Lorraine twisted her handkerchief between shaking fingers. “I have begged her forgiveness. I have groveled to Mama on her behalf. I have defended her against gossip and society’s disapproval. What more can I do to make up for the past?”

“No, that is not why I—”

Lorraine was crying again. “Would you make my son pay for my mistakes?”

“I swear, your previous behavior has nothing to do with my decision. Without the events of the past I would not have my wife, you would not have your son. We cannot change what occurred anyway. We can only forget and go on.”

“Then you have no reason to refuse to help a little child who needs you. I cannot go on without my boy.”

Genie was twisting her own handkerchief in her hands. She looked at Ardeth through glistening green eyes. “Please?”

He turned to face the hearth, not his good-hearted, trusting wife. “But I do not know what to do for asthmatics or congestions. I told you, sewing up wounds, cleaning dirt away, digging out pistol balls, those were easy.”

“You did more,” she softly said. “I saw you.”

Lorraine stared between them, pleading written on her face.

“I—” he began.

Genie stepped closer and put a hand on his arm until he turned to face her again. “You gave the men ease, if nothing else. You spoke to them and they rested, so their bodies could recover. I did not understand how, but your touch, your voice, your eyes, all worked as well as any medication or opiate.”

“It is gone,” Ardeth said on a whisper. He knew Genie meant his skill. He meant his power.

She contradicted him, touching his hand. “No. I feel it in your arms. I feel safe and protected, cared for and unafraid. I do not doubt you helped me sleep at night.”

“That is in your imagination. I do nothing.”

He did nothing, all right, but Genie was not going to discuss her empty bed in front of her sister, who now appeared confused—interested, but confused.

“James swears it is so,” Genie insisted. “Whatever you did, he no longer has nightmares.”

“That was over a month ago. Even if I am still able to give the boy some rest, that will not cure him. Sleep will not clear his chest or strengthen his lungs or open his airways. Next time will be worse, and the time after that. Ecod, he cannot sleep forever, and I cannot cure him! Don’t you think I would if I could?”

“You can try, dash it! You spend your time and money aiding the poor and unfortunate. You build hospitals and schools. Can’t you try to help one little boy? For me?”

Ardeth could not say no. “Very well, I will go, but do not get your hopes raised.”

Genie kissed his cheek.

Lorraine said, “I have no hopes.”

Chapter Seventeen

“I’ll just get my bonnet and pelisse,” Genie said.

“No, you stay here.”

“But I was a help at the field hospital, remember?”

“That was then. This is now. The soldiers had grievous wounds; the boy is sick. There is a vast difference. Besides, you will be too much of a distraction.”

She would? So her plan was working, not that this was the time to celebrate. “I’ll stay out of the way.”

He looked at her as if he wanted to turn her into a tree, rooted to the parlor floor. She did not know if he could. She did know he would not. Ardeth was trying to protect her, as always.

“I promise not to bother you,” she said. “Peter is my nephew, too, and I will fret myself to flinders here
, not knowing how he goes on.”

He jerked his head, but turned for the door without waiting to see if she followed. He called for his horse, leaving her and Lorraine to take the Cormack coach.

Lorraine called after him, “Don’t you need your instruments?”

“What, do you think that my flute will cure your son? That weak lungs can be tamed like a cobra is charmed by the pipes?”

He played the flute? Genie never knew. Or that he could tame snakes.

Lorraine had meant medical instruments, of course, the paraphernalia all the experts carried. “Doctoring equipment, that is.”

“Why would I have any sawbones’ tools when I am not a surgeon?” Ardeth asked. “Do you see what thin fabric you have pinned your hopes on? As thin as air.”

“Try,” Genie called after him as he mounted the black stallion. “That is all we are asking.”

They had no idea what they were asking. Ardeth did, after one look at the boy.

After thanking him profusely for coming, and listening to Ardeth’s denials of any skill or knowledge of medicine, Roger, Lord Cormack, took him up to the child’s room.

“Here is your uncle, come to help you feel better if he can,” the baron said.

“Uncle Elgin is in Heaven,” the boy said in a faint whisper, every breath an effort. “You showed me his sword.”

“That’s right, but this is Aunt Genie’s new husband, Uncle Ardeth.”

“Uncle Coryn,” Ardeth corrected, not liking anything sounding of death to pass through the child’s lips, his blue-tinged lips. The boy was as pale as his sheets, thin as the post on his huge canopied bed. He lay as still as one of the wooden soldiers surrounding him. He stirred and struggled to sit up against the mounds of pillows behind him and offered a shy smile. The nursemaid rushed to prop more pillows at his back.

Yes, he had an angel’s smile, and Ardeth’s own angel’s green eyes, but without the dancing flecks of gold and blue. The boy’s eyes were dull, droopy. They showed more animation when Olive flapped his wings. The crow flew off Ardeth’s shoulder and landed on the boy’s, rubbing his head against the lad’s cheek.

“Hallo, Olive,” Peter said, making a visible effort to raise his hand to stroke the shiny feathers. “I am glad you—”

Then he started to cough, and to choke, and then to wheeze. Lord Cormack was helpless. The nursemaid was helpless. Ardeth was…without hope.

He looked at the tiny boy gasping for air in his feather bed, almost lost in his mounds of down pillows, with the blasted bird hopping up and down on his chest, as if that would force the air to go through. It would not, Ardeth knew. The steam from the kettle the nursemaid fanned with damp towels was not helping, nor was Cormack’s rubbing his son’s back.

Ardeth did not know who was panicked worse, the maid, the baron, or the boy, whose eyes were huge and glassy now, tears streaming down his cheeks. Ardeth pushed the man aside and lifted the frail child to his own chest, stroking Peter’s neck and temples with his free hand, whispering words in whatever language came first to his tongue. The gasping subsided as Peter relaxed into drowsiness.

The nursemaid crossed herself. The baron started to mop his damp brow and grin.

Ardeth told him, “Do not celebrate, Cormack. He simply rests between episodes. Nothing has changed. Nothing.”

Then, the boy still in his arms, he started to issue orders. “Find another room, one without a feather bed. And no down pillows, either. We need a room with a fireplace for the steam kettle, scores of blankets to lay him on, sheets for his pillows.”

“My dressing room will do. My valet sometimes sleeps there on a cot. And there is a small brazier for heating bathwater.” Lord Cormack went into the hall to send waiting servants to fetch the sheets and covers, another to bring the kettle and towels.

“And you, get outside,” Ardeth told the crow.

“’Awk!” Olive screamed.

“Very well, go to the kitchen.”

“Cat!”

“Damn it, I do not have time for your fears and foibles. Be a gremlin, dash it, not a bird with a hollow backbone.”

Feathers started to shake and greenish talons started to form from the tip of one wing.

“No, not that!” Ardeth shouted.

Cormack hurried back into the room. “Is he…gone?”

Ardeth looked at the bird. “He better be.”

The gnarly fingers disappeared. Olive flew to the canopy and smoothed his wing tips. Cormack groaned.

“My apologies,” Ardeth said. “The boy is the same. But the feathers are doing him no good.”

The baron shook his head. “You mean all these weeks, we only had to get rid of the feathers and eiderdown?”

“No, but doing so might help a little now.”

A cot had been drawn up next to the charcoal brazier in the baron’s dressing room, its mattress stripped away and soft blankets laid out instead. A stack of folded sheets was at the head, as Ardeth wanted. The copper tub had been shoved into a corner.

Ardeth laid the quiet boy down, covering him lightly, watching.

“What more do you want?” Lord Cormack asked.

“Brandy.”

“Will that help him? They sometimes give him laudanum to rest, but he is already asleep.”

“The brandy is for me, to settle my nerves.”

“You? They say you have ice water running through your veins.”

Ardeth shivered, despite the warmth of the new coals. “No. I have fears, like every man.” For once he wished he did not have all the emotions mortals endured. He feared he could not save the boy.

The baron went into his bedroom for a decanter and glass. When he came back, Ardeth was sitting on a low stool beside the bed, staring at the boy as if he were trying to read his future.

“What now?”

Ardeth had a drink, then placed a hand on the child’s forehead. Next he laid his own head on the small bony chest, listening for a heartbeat, listening to his lungs.

“Your wife will have returned. Now you should go comfort her, and pray if you can. I will stay.”

“I will stay with you.”

“No, she needs you more. And the boy does not need her laments. He sleeps, but he can hear, I think.”

“Will he…that is, will he awake?”

“His life is in other hands now.”

“But without the fluff and feathers?” Cormack was desperate for something to hold on to, something reassuring to tell his wife.

“Perhaps.” Ardeth was not hopeful, not after hearing the crackling, sloshing sounds in Peter’s lungs.

“Shall I…shall I send for a vicar?”

Ardeth had never been one for empty efforts. “Only if he knows how to cure congestion.”

“What will you do?”

“I will wait. I will make sure he sleeps, and I will wait some more. Go to your wife. And mine. Give the crow a bit of brandy, too.”

The baron left and Ardeth adjusted the kettle, placing a damp flannel on the boy’s chest. None of it was going to make a bit of difference, but at least he was doing something. He smoothed damp curls back from the boy’s forehead and wondered what kind of child he would have been. Arrogant as the firstborn, the heir? Spoiled as an only child? Or raised by nannies and tutors like so many children of the upper classes?

The nursemaid came in and saw Ardeth in what she took for prayer. She would have joined him, kneeling on the floor, but he waved her away. She saw the boy’s chest rising and falling, and nodded. An earl’s prayers must be better than a mere maid’s.

Another servant came with a tray of bread and cheese and wine.

Ardeth left them, just waiting.

“Shall I bring more candles, my lord?” the butler inquired still later.

“No. I need the dark.” Ardeth shut the door behind the butler and went back to waiting. And waiting.

Finally it came, the light he had been waiting for. He thanked whoever was in charge that he could still see the telltale gleam of an hourglass at its end. A shadow followed the glow, hovering at the boy’s side.

“Don’t,” Ardeth said.

The shadow raised an arm to cast sleep and silence. No
one who lived ever recalled seeing the Alphabet of Eternity.

Ardeth cleared his throat and said, “Don’t” again, to show he was wide-awake and aware of Death’s presence.

“Who…?”

“I am.”

“You are?”

“That is right. It is I, Ar.”

The cowled figure tilted his head. “Don’t you mean ‘I am’?”

“I am Ar, once a fellow gatherer.”

“The one who wagered with the Devil and won?”

“I only won a chance. So far.”

“Everyone was talking about you, Ar. Some were not happy with what you did. Not good for morale,
comprenez-vous?