All Fall Down (25 page)

Wilys’ room was small but neat, much like the lean-to the stableboys had shared until disease drove them out into the main stables. He had a rope-slung bed with a good mattress that proved to be filled with feathers, not straw, and likewise he had a hearty pile of thick woolen blankets. Besides the bed there was a small table and a chair, and on the table was a lantern. No need for it yet, as his room was also blessed with a window covered with the thin transparent membranes poorer folk used when they could not get glass. But at least it was light.

Not that the light revealed anything besides a very sick man.
 

The stable master had followed my advice and taken to his bed. The leather jerkin he had been wearing was now draped carefully over the back of the room’s single chair, and he had the blankets pulled up to his chin.

“I’m going to make some willowbark tea,” I told him, and I saw him shut his eyes and shake his head.

“And that did so well for Drym.”

“He was farther along in the disease than you,” I said, my tone firm. That was true enough; I still had no idea how many hours the stableboy had sweated with fever in his bunk before someone thought to call me in to look at him. Whereas with Wilys the lump in his armpit had not yet begun to rise, which signaled to me that the disease had not been working for nearly as long.
 

“Hmph,” replied Wilys, but that was all the protest he made.
 

I busied myself with setting up the brazier and the trivet, and then I placed my satchel and the supplies I thought I would need on the tabletop. It was very neat as well, with a wooden plate, bowl, and cup stacked to one side, along with a small knife with a handle of carved horn. It was true that Wilys seldom came to the hall to dine with the other members of the household, but I hadn’t realized that he ate here alone in his room.
 

It came to me then how isolated so many of the people here on the estate were, even those who counted themselves free. Apparently Wilys had no family, and neither did Ourrel nor Breen, as far as I could tell. They had given their lives over in service to their lord, and the household had become their family.

As it had for me.

No, that was foolish. I had become fond of these people—more than fond, in the case of Lord Shaine—but I had my own family, my parents and siblings and the extended complex network of cousins and aunts and uncles that touched most of the merchant families in Lystare, not to mention family friends and those in the Order with whom I had become close. How could I possibly think of Lord Shaine and his household as more important to me than those who were my own flesh and blood? True, I had spent more hours in company with the folk of Donnishold than I had with my own family of late. The life of an itinerant healer did not allow for much in the way of familial visits, although I did try to see them several times a year, depending on where my travels took me. They were dear to me, so very dear, even if months and months passed without my seeing their faces or hearing their voices. And yet, these people here, from Merime to Auren to the stately Ourrel, had somehow become just as dear, and I knew I would mourn their loss as greatly as if I had lost someone of my own kin.

Reckless of me, and yet I knew it was something I could not have avoided. I had not been blessed with a cool and distant nature, the way some of my fellow physicians in the Order had been. For them it was easy enough to look at a patient as a series of problems to be solved. I had trained my mind to work that way because I knew I must, but my spirit fought against it always. As I knew I must fight against it now as I treated Wilys and all the others who were sure to follow.

In silence I poured some of the willowbark tea into a cup I had brought with me, as the one which sat on his table must surely be infected with the plague as well. He drank the tea without protest, although I saw the slightest flare of his nostrils at its bitter taste. Once he was done, I took the cup from him and set it down on the table; I would wash all the utensils down with alcohol before I used them again.

“And my boys?” he asked.
 

“All still well, as far as I can tell,” I replied. It was possible that one or more of them could be hiding their symptoms from me, but I didn’t think that very likely. Already they had become accustomed to my being there in case of any illness, and there was no reason for them to conceal the signs of the disease.

“That…is something.”
 

His speech sounded slurred, and I sent him a sharp glance. He had settled down against his pillows, and his eyes were shut. Yet the sheen of sweat on his brow did not seem quite so pronounced, his color not quite so hectic. It appeared the willowbark had done him some good. Most likely he was only slipping into sleep, which was the best thing for him.

I tried not to think of what had happened to Drym when he had fallen asleep.

There being very little else I could do, I sat and watched the stable master as he slept. However that sleep had come upon him, it was a restless one—he seemed unable to stay in one spot for more than a minute or so at a time, and would twitch and toss as he vainly sought a more comfortable position. I considered waking him, but I knew even a restless sleep was better than none at all. Besides, those disordered movements at least signaled to me that he was still alive.
 

I wondered how they fared in the castle but supposed all should still be well, as of course either Ourrel or Lord Shaine himself would have come to inform me if anything was amiss. Still, I chafed at my isolation here, even though I knew we had still been very lucky to have the outbreak in the relative isolation of the stables rather than in the keep itself. And I wondered again how the disease had come here at all, when I had taken every precaution I could think of to keep it outside the walls of Donnishold.
 

Then one of the stableboys came to the door, eyes wide and dark with fear. “Mistress—”

Even though I knew the answer, I had to ask the question. “Is someone ill?”

“Grahm, Mistress—he’s took bad!”

Well, I was a fool if I thought the disease wouldn’t continue to spread like a fire in a summer-dry forest, but even so my limbs felt heavy with a terrible weight of dread as I stood and cast one more look at the still-sleeping Wilys before I gathered up my satchel, then turned and followed the frightened boy out to the stable.

It was easy enough to see where the afflicted Grahm lay—all the other stablehands had retreated to the farthest position in the stable, while he writhed on the straw in an empty stall. And when I knelt down next to him, at once I saw that he was in far worse shape than Wilys.
 

His face, too, was flushed, but sweat dripped off it in a river, and splashed in all directions as he thrashed away in the dirty straw, which stuck to his neck and face and the exposed flesh of his forearms below his too-short sleeves. On that exposed skin I could see small dark-colored circles, and my heart sank. He moved, and he breathed, but when the plague spots came, lore stated that death soon followed.

How it could have come on him so quickly, when no one had told me he was ill, I had no idea, but that mattered little now. If one of the horses in the stables had been taken so ill, it would have had its throat slit, and quickly, so it could suffer no further pain. I could not do that to Grahm, of course, but I could help him out of this world in the same way I had aided Lord Arnad.

Grimly I opened my satchel and pulled out the little vial of poppy. For one long, agonizing moment I stared at it, unsure as to whether I could really do this thing. Arnad had been far gone, almost comatose, but the boy before me still moved and breathed, even though every breath was more labored, and his movements had a stiff, jerky quality that showed they were the result of convulsions and not any truly conscious effort on his part. And then he coughed, and coughed again, and a gout of blood spattered against the pale straw beneath him.

Without thinking, I pulled a clean cloth from the satchel and wiped the blood off his chin and mouth. He should at least leave this world with some dignity. His form trembled beneath my hands, seeming as frail as a butterfly’s wing. Before I could lose my resolve, I set aside the bloodied cloth and retrieved the vial of poppy, and tipped three or four drops into his mouth.

He did not choke against it, as Drym had with the willowbark tea. No, he swallowed it in one convulsive spasm, and almost at once went limp and quiescent, his lashes long and dark against his livid cheeks.
 

“Goddess grant you grace,” I murmured, although I did not truly believe the words. My mind refused to understand how any deity could send such suffering to her subjects.

I rose to my feet then, and automatically brushed the straw from my knees. With one hand I retrieved my satchel; the other, borne by some unconscious reflex, reached up to push a stray hand of hair off my brow. I did not want to think of what I had just done. My work was to heal, not kill, but the plague had no respect for such niceties. Terrible as my decision had been, I knew it was the right one.

“He is gone,” I said clearly. “We must take the body outside and burn it, as we did with Drym.”

From a darkened corner of the stable came a shaky voice. “No, mistress, even though you command it.”

While I understood their fear, I also knew it to be pointless. All of us were doomed, even though we as yet walked and breathed as normal folk. “Don’t be ridiculous!” I snapped, my own desperate fear giving my words an unaccustomed sharpness. “We’ve already been exposed—all of us. Touching him now will change nothing. I would do it myself, only I am not sure I could carry him so far, and I must go back to check on Master Wilys.”

A protracted silence then, one broken only by the faint ghosts of what I guessed must be a whispered argument amongst the stableboys who yet lived. They numbered four now, and I was sure all of them were more than a little discomfited by the fact that they had already lost a third of their small crew. I waited, knowing that in the end I was powerless to force them to do anything they did not wish to do. Wilys, perhaps, could have done so, but he was ill-suited for anything at the moment save lying in his own bed and fighting the infection in his own way.

At length two of the boys came forward, one so slight and thin I wasn’t sure whether he would be any great help in removing Grahm’s body, and the tall one with the firm chin who had once, in a time that now seemed centuries ago, confessed to kissing Irinna, who worked in the dye hut.

“Thank you,” I said briefly, and that was all.

They knew what to do; the taller boy took Grahm by the shoulders, while the thin one grasped the dead stablehand’s feet, and together they shuffled him away and out through the large double doors that led to the courtyard. We still had some wood left over, although I did not know whether it would be enough. I would have to ask Ourrel for more when he came to check on us. Luckily the door into the stableboys’ lean-to was on the opposite side of the building from the spot we had chosen for the funeral pyres. I had told Ourrel that everyone should stay as far away as possible from that side of the structure.

I knew the boys would tell me if the wood was insufficient, and so I went on, back into Wilys’ room, where he still seemed to have slept through everything. A quick touch of his forehead told me his fever appeared to be somewhat lessened, and I took some heart from that. His sleep had quieted as well; his hands lay folded against the dark wool of the blankets. Those hands were browned and covered with scars and calluses. Clearly he was not the sort of master who stood back and allowed his underlings to do all the work. No, those hands had seen hard labor, and they told me as much about the man as his actions and words had.

The window blazed with sudden orange and gold. Apparently the stableboys had found enough fuel to feed this last pyre. I stood in the center of the room, watching the false warmth of that fire limn the small modest room in shades of ochre and russet, and wondered where it would end.

By some miracle, Wilys lived through the night. I slept on my pallet on the floor next to his bed, starting at every sound, but in truth he was far less restless than I. And when a pale wintry sun sent its first tentative rays through the blurred panes of the window, I looked up to see the stable master still quietly, gently asleep. His broad, plain face was peaceful, and the breaths he let out sounded quite normal. Moving with care, I pushed my own blankets aside and stood, then placed a wary hand on his brow. I thought he still had a fever, albeit one greatly reduced from the day before.
 

He opened his eyes. They were blue—a bright blue, startling against his tanned skin. He looked from side to side, and his eyebrows lifted in an expression I would have found comical if it were not for the fact that I was so grateful he was alive at all.

“How are you, Master Wilys?” I asked.
 

For a moment he said nothing, but only lay there in his bed and seemed to consider my question. At least, his brow furrowed in quite a formidable way before he replied, his voice sounding quite strong, “I—I am all right, I think.”

I wouldn’t give in to the relief that passed over me. It happened this way sometimes, according to the accounts I had read. Live or die? Who knew? The gods, perhaps, but they never revealed their secrets.
 

If they even existed.

“May I see?” I asked Wilys, who looked confused at first, and then nodded and pushed the blankets away so I could take a closer look at the problematic spot in his armpit, where the infection was centered.

Only it wasn’t there. Oh, I thought I saw the barest reddish stain against his skin (which was far, far paler there than on his hands and face and neck, which were exposed to the sun day in and day out), but when I laid a gentle finger against that spot, he didn’t even flinch, and I could sense no hardening beneath the surface that would indicate the developing shape of a plague boil. Incongruously, I found myself glad that the boil had started to develop there, under his arm, and not in his groin as it had with Drym. Of course I knew all about the male anatomy—one could not preserve maidenly modesty for very long in my profession—but still, awkwardness could sometimes arise when a female physician had to treat a man with whom she’d had social interactions.