Page 17 of Malady

“I’m not asking you to lie down,” I tell her, keeping my hands low as I move closer. “I’m asking you to let us examine the swelling before you crack your skull against the wall and give me another problem to deal with.”

“What difference will it make?” Her voice wavers. “Everyone in this house is dead except me, and now it’s come for me too.”

Her knees give before I can answer. I catch her around the waist, but my other hand lands under her arm. The scream she lets out is enough to confirm what Iscairn saw before dawn. The swelling is hard beneath my palm, hot enough that I can feel it even through her wet shift, and already larger than I would like.

Much larger.

As I ease her onto the stool, she doubles over, face buried in her palms.

“I can’t lie in that bed listening to my own breath turn wet,” she gasps between hitching breaths. “What am I supposed to do?”

There’s nothing I can say that will make any of this less terrible. I can’t promise the swelling will go down, or that the fever will break, or pretend that Iscairn and I possess some miraculous remedy we simply neglected to give David yesterday. And after watching her husband leave this house under a canvas less than an hour ago, telling her she must be brave and fight for her life feels particularly cruel.

So I prise her hands away from her face and gather them between mine.

“You do not have to survive the rest of your life today,” I tell her, rubbing my thumbs over her clammy knuckles. “You only have to sit here and let us get you through this hour. When this one is finished, we shall worry about the next.”

Her face crumples. “I want my husband.”

“I know.” I draw her against my shoulder as a sob ripples through her. “I know you do.”

Iscairn comes over and folds himself into the narrow space beside Alice’s stool, close enough to the hearth that his knees nearly touch the bricks. She looks up, and he reaches over to brush a damp strand of hair from her cheek with the back of one gloved finger.

“Will you make it like it was for David?” she whispers. “Will you make it peaceful for me, too?”

Iscairn says nothing; he simply slips one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees, lifting her from the stool.

And she lets him.

Mere minutes ago, she was throwing herself against the wall and swearing she would sooner die on the floor than lie where her husband had taken his last breath. Now, she slumps against Iscairn, her tear-streaked face pressed into his chest, and allows him to carry her to the bed.

What on earth was that supposed to mean? Peaceful? David’s death would have been agonising, his lungs filling with fluid. What kind of peace could he possibly have offered?

“Ophelia Harrow. The supplies, please,” he says, lowering her onto the pillows.

Right. Questions later.

I fetch them as Iscairn peels back her shift, exposing the furious flesh. The moment the narrow silver blade appears, Alice’s whole body tightens again, and her eyes squeeze shut, but Iscairn lays one broad hand across her shoulder and bends closer, speaking to her in a low murmur that disappears beneath the crackle of the hearth. I catch only fragments, but whatever he says works. Little by little, the tension leaves her shoulders. Her fingers loosen from the blankets. When I reach for her wrist, she finally allows me to lift her arm.

I hold her steady as Iscairn makes the incision, catching the blood and yellow-grey foulness in folded linen as she twists and cries for David until his name breaks apart into something scarcely recognisable. Iscairn never hurries her. Each time she begins to panic, he stops and waits for her breathing to settle before continuing, and only when the wound is clean does he move aside and leave the packing and binding to me.

By the time we’re done, she lies exhausted against the pillows, eyes swollen from crying.

“Will you pray with me, Ophelia?” she whispers.

“I can fetch Gideon,” I say. “He will stand at the window and pray with you, as he does for the other houses.”

“No. You, Ophelia. Please.”

Though the thought of praying leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, I sit on the edge of the mattress, take her damp hands between mine, and bow my head.

The first words scrape against my throat. But those that follow spill out unbidden, dragged up from wherever they’ve lain buried amongst the echo of my mother’s voice and the memory of Gideon’s hand closed around mine in the dark. I knew these prayers long before the water stole my muscle—long before every frightened adult around my sickbed mistook my survival for a sin, teaching me to beg God’s forgiveness for a body that had been broken against its will.

Speaking those same words now makes me nauseous, as if I’m betraying my own bones. But if she needs a God I abandoned long ago to make the next few hours less frightening, then for her sake, I can pretend He is listening.

By the time the final amen leaves me, Alice’s grip has gone slack, and her breathing has calmed into something shallow but steady. I ease my hand from hers, draw the blanket higher over her shoulder and gather the bloodied rags into the basin as Iscairn quietly puts the rest of his instruments away.

Neither of us speaks as we leave the cottage behind and make our way down the lane, woodsmoke drifting from the braziers while the bottles in my basket knock softly together with every step. I let the sound follow us for perhaps thirty yards before the question Alice planted in my head becomes too irritating to ignore.