Page 71 of Malady

“Doctor?” William’s voice drifts weakly from the well, followed by another damp sniff. “Please... I’m fair parched.”

With a sigh, I retrieve the stale heel of bread from my satchel. Water lies in the ditch beside the wall, filthy enough that I would ordinarily hesitate to give it to a dog, though considering what William has spent the past week or so lying in, I doubt his constitution will object. I fill a cup from the ditch, wedge it into the little tin pail beside the bread, and lower it on the fraying rope, the metal scraping softly against the stone as it disappears into the dark.

As soon as he spots the tin glimmering in the moonlight, he bursts into a fresh set of bone-wracking sobs.

“For pity’s sake,” I mutter, watching him fumble with the cup in both bloated, shaking hands. “Eat the bread and drink the water before you manage to die of thirst through sheer incompetence.”

“Ta,” he chokes out, clutching the pail against himself. “Ta, Doctor. By God, I swear on me mother’s grave, I’ll never⁠—”

“Yes, yes. You have become a changed man. I heard you.”

He sniffs hard and tears at the bread with his teeth. “So, will tha let us out, then?”

“Not yet, William.” I wind the rope around my hand and draw the empty pail back up. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

19

OPHELIA

“The Lord is my strength and my song, and He is become my salvation! Though the pestilence has entered our homes and carried our loved ones into the earth, we shall not despair, for the Lord tests those He loves, and through repentance and faith, Beswick shall yet be delivered!”

Gideon’s voice carries across the burial field, rising above the scrape of shovels as snow and ash drift over the gathered parish. The wind does little to clear the smoke from the iron braziers surrounding the graves, leaving those of us gathered at the edge of the field shivering in a greasy black haze of burning pitch and damp juniper while he preaches from the narrow strip of churned earth between the two pits.

The Vance babe was the first. Then Robert, followed before nightfall by two more from the eastern lane whose names I’d written into my notes only the day before. Arthur went yesterday, feverish and barely sensible by the time we reached him, and Mary followed this morning, less than three days after standing in my shop with her son clutched against her chest and begging me not to let him die. Now they’re lying in the same frozen earth, wrapped in linen and separated by little more than a few shovelfuls of dirt.

It’s taking them too quickly. There’s no time anymore for the long, miserable decline I’ve grown used to, no week spent boiling sheets and measuring fever while families sit beside the bed and pretend not to count the hours. People are walking one morning and dead by the next, the pestilence tearing through them so quickly that I scarcely have time to hear who’s fallen sick before Gideon’s standing over another shroud, asking God to receive them.

Another shovel scrapes through the frozen soil as Gideon continues his sermon. I pull my cloak tighter against the cold, rubbing absently at a sharp little itch near my collarbone before turning my attention towards the far edge of the grave, where Iscairn is helping Brother Leon and Brother Matthias dig through the frozen ground.

He and Gideon have barely exchanged a word since the argument in my shop, though after Iscairn stood beneath my roof and calmly informed a priest that there were things in this world far greater than his God, I cannot imagine either of them is particularly eager to mend the silence. Even now, every fresh swell of Gideon’s sermon seems to put another inch of stiffness through Iscairn’s shoulders.

Still, not once has he refused the work. When he isn’t digging graves, he’s tending to the sick, and when there’s nothing more he can do for them, he sits with the dying until the time comes to take what he needs.

I’m still not permitted to stay beside the bed when the very end comes. He hasn’t bent on that. So I do what I can instead, sitting with the dying while their breathing grows shallow, keeping them comfortable and talking softly about whatever might ease their passing, whether I believe a word of it or not.

Then, when Iscairn tells me it is time, I leave. Most nights I only make it as far as the lane before that brilliant blue bursts free from the cracks in the shutters. Eventually he emerges, closes the door gently behind him and is as quiet as a mouse.

By morning, another body is waiting for the cart.

Oh, and there goes Mrs Higgins now, bundled beneath a woollen blanket and lowered awkwardly between Leon and Matthias. Her body slips from their hands, landing with a dull thump against the frozen earth. A shovel of lime follows, dumped over the blanket in a chalky heap that clings to the damp wool and cakes into the creases around her body.

Christ, I cannot watch many more of these.

“Go in peace,” Gideon finally croaks. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Amen.”

A few muffled sniffles follow as villagers drift back towards the lanes, collars pulled high, and heads bowed from snow and sadness. I turn with them, already longing for the shop’s warmth, but I’ve barely taken three steps when mud squelches behind me.

“Ophi.”

A hand catches the back of my sleeve and pulls me back around, bringing me face to face with Gideon’s wind-chapped cheeks.

“Did you see?” His eyes flick back towards the pit, red-rimmed and streaming in the wind. “All of them. Gone before they could even receive the final blessings.”

“I saw, Gideon.”

His fingers close around my forearm beneath the cuff of my sleeve, digging painfully into the skin. “The wheat and the chaff, Ophi. That is what this is. The Lord is separating one from the other, scouring the valley clean, and if we are to endure it, we must pray harder. Whatever wickedness remains among us must be rooted out before He⁠—”

“Gideon, shut up.”