Page 67 of Malady

"A miraculous recovery," Iscairn says softly.

Gideon goes ashen.

“Iscairn,” I warn, my fingers curling around the counter’s edge.

“But what about your sister?” he continues, paying me no mind. “What of her recovery? Hm?”

Gideon frowns. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Of course you are not.” Iscairn’s head tips slightly. “You shame her before the parish and scream at her, then come scurrying back with barley and salt pork as though a warm meal might somehow balance the scales.”

“I—I came here to apologise.”

“And so you have.” Iscairn pauses, those amber lenses fixed on him. “But tell me, Brother Gideon, how many times do you intend to wound her before an apology stops being enough? Your Lord is rather fond of turning the other cheek, is he not? I have always wondered how many blows one is expected to endure before forgiveness becomes merely another excuse for the hand that struck them.”

Angry colour climbs Gideon’s throat, spreading beneath the collar of his cassock as his hands curl at his sides. “Do not speak to me of the Lord’s forgiveness. You enter this parish knowing nothing of what we have endured and presume to lecture me on grace?”

“Then perhaps you should ask your God why so much of the enduring appears to fall upon your sister.”

“We are all enduring!” Gideon’s voice rises with every word, that familiar fervour kindling behind his eyes until I can almost see the sermon forming inside him. “This parish is fighting for its very soul. The Lord demands repentance, and we shall give it to Him. People are confessing. They are fasting. Half the village is sworn to rooting out whatever wickedness has brought this judgement upon us, and I will not have some stranger ride into Beswick and sneer at their faith simply because he does not understand it.”

“I understand it perfectly well.”

“No, you do not.” Gideon points at him. “You treat sickness as though flesh is all that matters, as though there can be no corruption beyond what you can cut open or pour into a bottle. There are things at work here greater than medicine, Doctor, whether you care to believe it or not.”

“You mistake disbelief for ignorance,” Iscairn retorts, his beak tilting down an inch. “I have seen what leaves a man when his heart stops. I have watched it leave the flesh and stood at the edges of places your sermons could not begin to describe. So believe me, Brother Gideon, when I tell you there are things in this world far greater than your scripture. And far greater than your God.”

Gideon has barely drawn breath when a blood-curdling scream rips through the lane outside.

The shop door flies open, sending the bundles of herbs above it trembling.

Mary Vance stumbles over the threshold, wild-haired and barefoot. The babe is crushed against her chest beneath one arm, wrapped so tightly in a blanket it hides all but the flushed curve of his face.

“Ophelia—Doctor—please.” A guttural sob rips through her. “He won’t wake. He’s burning. I can’t wake him!”

I snatch my linen mask from its peg, knotting it behind my head as I hurry towards Mary and catch her before her legs give way.

“Give him here.”

She practically drops the bundle into my arms, and I turn towards Gideon, who’s still standing there looking utterly useless.

“Gideon, out!” I snap. “Now!”

The baby is frighteningly hot even through the blanket, his fever burning against my forearms as I carry him to the counter. I lay him down beside the forgotten crock of pottage and pull back the damp wool, the smell of salt pork and barley quickly giving way to the sour stink of sickness.

Plague is a miserable rot in an adult. In an infant, it’s an obscenity.

Two fat fleas disappear into the folds of the blanket as I open it, and I catch one beneath my thumb before it can vanish into the child’s clothing, crushing it against the counter without taking my eyes from him.

His skin is blotched grey and fever-red, his little chest jerking beneath the shift with each shallow breath. He tries to cry, but barely any sound comes out, only a thin, breathless whimper and the dreadful scrunch of his face as though even that small effort hurts.

Iscairn pulls the blanket farther away while I slip two fingers beneath the baby’s collar and ease the damp linen aside.

My stomach drops.

The swelling sits deep beneath the soft folds of his neck, distorting the little rolls of baby fat into something grotesque. The skin has turned a dreadful purple-black at the centre, stretched so tightly over the lump that it looks ready to split, and the whole of his neck has swollen beneath the pressure of it.

A bubo.