Page 7 of Malady

By order of the Mayor and Aldermen, he is to be granted free passage through all parishes, and afforded such shelter, provisions, and assistance as may reasonably be required in the continuation of those duties.

The document is dated twelve months earlier and signed by three men whose names mean nothing to me. Neither does Fellmarsh. It might sit beyond the northern border or three miles from the coast, and the paper offers no clue as to which.

“Doctor Iscairn,” I say, handing it back over. “This tells me very little.”

He folds it along its weary creases, returns it to his satchel, and draws the buckle closed. “Yes.”

The indifference in his voice makes my teeth grind, but I’m in no position to be picky.

“Well, I’m Ophelia Harrow,” I tell him, offering him a hand. “Apothecary of Beswick. Since we are apparently negotiating the fate of my parish, we may as well be acquainted.”

His mask drops to my outstretched hand, but he makes no move to take it.

Fine. Handshakes are likely an obsolete courtesy in a plague year anyway. Beswick doesn’t need a polite physician; it merely requires a breathing one.

I drop my hand and shift my weight off my bad leg. “If you come back with me, your shelter is already provided for. There’s a cottage standing empty with a sound roof, a good hearth, and a shelf of medical texts that belonged to our last physician.”

“What will you do if I decline?” he asks.

“Walk to the city.”

The pale beak tilts, the dark amber lenses moving over my mud-soaked skirt. “In this condition? You will not make it half the distance.”

“Then I will freeze to death in a ditch,” I snap through chattering teeth. “But I can’t go back to Beswick empty-handed. Either you are walking east with me, or I’m walking south beside you and complaining every step of the way. We are wasting daylight, Doctor. Make up your mind.”

A long silence stretches between us, broken only by the wind snapping at his cloak and the distant clucking from the chickens. Then, he turns his head slowly towards the mass grave beyond the chapel wall.

“Two hundred and eighty living souls,” he muses. “Yes, Ophelia Harrow. I will come.”

3

OPHELIA

“Ihope she chokes,” I mutter, hauling my skirt clear of another patch of frozen mud. “I hope she finds a bramble she cannot manage, gets the reins caught around her own legs and spends the next several hours regretting every decision that led her to this point.”

“You are very loud,” Doctor Iscairn observes from several paces ahead.

My cloak catches on the hedgerow and nearly yanks me backwards. I wrench it free with a scowl. “I’m thinking aloud. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to if you occasionally answered me.”

I’ve managed to drag perhaps twenty words from him since we left Merewick, and whilst I can appreciate a man who doesn’t feel compelled to fill every scrap of silence with his own voice, there are limits. We have maybe nine miles of road ahead of us. At this rate, I shall know his favourite colour by midsummer.

The road steepens beyond the bend, and my thigh cramps. I catch myself against the hedge, digging my knuckles into the muscle until it unlocks.

“What do you enjoy, if not conversation?” I ask.

“Walking.”

“Something with a little more substance, perhaps? A pastime. A vice. Tell me you play cards badly or hold some deeply unpopular opinion about ale.”

“I do not drink ale.”

I bite back a groan as he starts up the hill and wonder how thick a branch I’d need to buckle his knees.

“There must be something.” I grit my teeth and limp after him. “Everyone has a vice. Widow Pike collects thimbles. Samuel Carter can recite the lineage of every grouse within Lancashire, and even Gideon—who would have the parish believe he survives entirely on pottage and cold water—keeps marchpane hidden in the vestry. But you did not hear that from me.”

He ignores me. Yet halfway up the incline his pace drops, his steps shortening just enough that I can actually walk beside him.

“You might take the mask off, at least,” I say. “It would be pleasant to have a face to scowl at.”