Beloved Enemy (44 page)

"No."
He shook his head, the green-brown eyes filled with a deep sorrow. "And my
father, also, would prefer the son dead than traitorous." Turning, he went
out to the far court where waited his officers.

Ginny
looked after him for a moment, her heart filled with his pain; then she turned
back to Joan. "We each make our choices, lady, and live with their fruits.
The best we can hope is that the reasons for making those choices stand firm.
Alex is a committed man; he would not and could not see any alternatives to the
actions he has taken in this business."

"No,"
Joan said quietly, leading the way inside. "We all know that, but for his
father and brothers, there are no extenuating circumstances."

"I
do not think my father would find any, either," Ginny said. "But he
died at Naseby, so is spared the grief of knowing that his only child has
thrown in her lot with a traitor."

They
passed through the great hall where the ripped paneling hung from the walls
stripped bare of hangings. The stairs had been hacked loose, broken in places
so that they had to tread carefully as they went up. "We live in the
gallery," Joan explained. "We have found sufficient hangings and the
bare necessities of furniture for the one room."

"And
the child?" Ginny asked. "You do not keep him with the others?"

“No. 
We have taken up residence in a small chamber off the gallery." A tear
rolled slowly down the thin, drawn cheek. "I fear that he will not last
the night, and I am so afraid for the other children. For myself, I care not,
but I fear to go near them, and the little ones do not understand.”  She opened
a door at the end of a corridor, and Ginny found herself in the long gallery
where a group of people looked up with eyes as hostile as they were fearful.

A
string of tots hurled themselves at Joan Marshall, and she held them off.
"Patience, I beg you take them."

A
young woman rose swiftly from the window seat and came to her rescue, hushing
the children who began to whimper.

"Are
they come again?" An old voice croaked, and an elderly woman tottered
forward, leaning heavily on a stick.

"It
is Alex, Martha," Joan said. "He brings help."

"Help!
We want nothing from the traitorous whelp," exploded a gray-haired man who
looked able-bodied until Ginny noticed the club foot. "Who's this?"
He waved at Ginny.

"Mistress
Virginia Courtney," Joan said, somewhat helplessly. "I do not quite
understand it, but she is no rebel, and she has some knowledge of the
typhus."

"I
am the daughter of John Redfern, of the Isle of Wight, widow of Giles Courtney,
of the Dorsetshire Courtneys," Ginny said swiftly. "Will you not take
me to the child, Lady Joan?"

Joan,
with transparent relief, moved across the gallery and opened a door at the far
end into a tiny antechamber furnished with a pallet and a stool. "They
would not understand your relationship with Alex," she murmured.

"No,
I am sure they would not. I do not quite understand it myself," Ginny said
evenly, dropping to her knees beside the pallet where lay the almost inert
figure of a small boy. She drew back the thin cover and raised his nightshirt,
examining the red rash that covered his body. The child stirred, cried, and
began to toss violently until he fell back, prostrated by the effort.

"We
must break the fever," Ginny said, almost to herself, feeling the weak,
tremulous pulse. It seems that the heart fails if the fever continues much
beyond the eleventh day.”

The
child's mother moaned, a defeated little sound; then the door opened, and Alex
appeared with Ginny’s basket.  He touched the child's burning forehead.
"My godson," he said quietly. "My brother Joe's oldest child,
after his father, the next earl of Grantham."

"I
need a brazier," Ginny said, disregarding this information as totally
irrelevant to the matter in hand. "With charcoal. Also, vinegar, and some
hanging for the window." She indicated the window slit high up on the wall
where, like the others in the manor, the glass had been broken. "Lady
Joan, if you will bathe in vinegar and burn those clothes you have on, you will
not carry infection to the other children. I will nurse the boy alone. Alex, I
am sure you can do something about making the house more habitable. It is
shameful that they must live in only one room. You must see what supplies they
have, and augment them from those you carry. There is enough flour, corn, and
meat traveling with the division to feed more than one army.”

"I
have already given the necessary orders," Alex said dryly. "You see
to your business, Mistress Courtney, and leave me to mind mine, as you once
told me to do."

"And
monstrous enraged it made you," Ginny reminded him with a slight smile
that she then directed toward Joan Marshall. "Do not despair, lady. I have
seen worse cases, but it will be as well if you were to leave me with him. When
he is on the mend, he will be fractious and demanding, and you will require all
your strength. 'Twould be as well to take what rest you may, now."

"Come,
Joan." Alex cupped his sister-in-law's elbow and propelled her back into
the gallery. "Do as Ginny says and bathe and burn your clothes. I will procure
the charcoal and brazier."

"You
take your black, traitorous soul out of here, Alexander," the old woman
hissed, waving her stick at him. "We've no need of the divil's aid."

"That
is fortunate, Aunt Martha, since I am not sufficiently  acquainted  with  the 
gentleman to beg him  for favors," Alex retorted. "But you may vilify
me as you please; I am not leaving here until I have done something to make the
place habitable." He strode out of the gallery, down the stairs, and out
into the sunshine. "Jed!"

"General?"
Jed appeared instantly. " 'Tis criminal what they've done to the
place."

"Aye,"
Alex agreed, hard-faced. "It bears the mark of Colney's troops. There'll
be a reckoning between him and me." He was silent for a minute, as if
forgetting what he had wanted Jed for. Then, with a soft oath he shook his head
as if to dispel the train of thought. "Little Joe has typhus, Jed.
Mistress Courtney wishes for a brazier, charcoal, and vinegar. Can you procure
them?"

"Aye,
sir." Jed saluted, but then couldn't help the question. "How bad is
the little 'un, sir?"

"Bad
enough," Alex replied shortly. "It's to be hoped the others remain
well. Lady Joan has been tending him herself and has kept apart, so ..."
He shrugged. The progress of the disease was a mystery to them all. They knew
only that once it caught hold, it spread like brushfire, cutting a swath of
death through all who fell in its path.

"Colonel
Bonham?" he called to the erstwhile major whose promotion had followed his
superior's. "Quarter the men in the park; they can do little damage to it,
now. Then I want working parties to shutter the windows, repair the doors, and
clear the debris from the kitchen garden. I want firewood cut and stacked, and
the pantries filled with supplies."

For
two days, the Grantham manor resounded to the sounds of hammer and saw, to the
cheery shouts of troopers who found themselves doing the tasks they had done
all their lives until war had wrenched them from domestic toil and husbandry.
And throughout, Ginny kept vigil by little Joe's pallet, the room darkened by a
hanging over the window, the candle kept shielded to protect the child's aching
eyes. The room was hot as the brazier burned, filling the air with the powerful
aromatic scents of herbs that Ginny cooked in a skillet over the charcoal.
Little Joe moaned and thrashed beneath the  pile  of heavy  blankets  that his 
nurse had requisitioned from the division. Whenever one scrawny little arm
managed to push off the covering, she replaced it instantly, praying for the
sweat that would bring the fever break. Every few hours, she raised the
prostrated little body against her shoulder and forced a little of the herbal
medicine between his lips in spite of the feeble resistance.

The
food that Joan brought her remained mostly untouched; inactivity in the close
atmosphere of the cramped space did little to promote appetite. On the evening
of the third day, Alex and Joan both came into the little room, defying her
interdiction.

Ginny
waved them away impatiently. "You must not be in here. There is nothing
you can do."

"You
must take a walk in the fresh air," Alex said quietly. "I will watch
Joe while you walk with Joan."

"That
is not necessary," Ginny replied shortly. "And you do not know what
to do for him."

"You
will tell me," Alex answered. "It is necessary, or you will become
ill yourself."

"Nonsense."
Ginny brushed aside his hand as he moved to draw her off the stool. "I am
perfectly strong, and this cannot continue for very much longer anyway. There
must be a crisis soon, or . . ." Death was a fact of life they were all
familiar with, and there was little point denying the truth.

"I
will remain with you," Joan said, touching her son's wasted cheek with her
little finger. "It is my place to be with him when the end comes."
Her voice was strong; the last three days had restored her, had brought relief
from the burdens of caring for the little group who looked to her for
leadership, for all decisions. Alex had taken over that responsibility,
sublimely indifferent to the castigations of the elderly until their comments
had ceased. Yet his sister-in-law knew that he was not indifferent, that each
barb lodged deep. It had been hardest for him with the children, who regarded
their uncle from behind adult skirts, fearful as if an ogre had come amongst
them. They had not seen him for four years, and most were too young to have any
very clear memory of the young uncle who had laughed and joked with their
parents, had played with the little ones and tossed them in the air. But they
had heard much talk of the traitor, the man who had betrayed king and family,
who had sent their grandmother into her grave, who was considered no longer of
Grantham kin.

"In
the morning," Alex said, "you will leave this room, Ginny, if I am
obliged to carry you out." It was a small assertion, but he felt compelled
to make it. He could not say to her, not now when his nephew's life hung in the
balance, that he could not remain in Kent for more than one more day. He had
done all he could to make the house habitable and had already delayed overlong
in resuming the march to Scotland. If Ginny exhausted herself with nursing as
she seemed inclined to do, she would have difficulty keeping up on a forced
march, but he would not be able to slow the pace for her.

The
door closed softly behind him, and the two women drew closer together beside
the pallet in the hot, brooding silence, watching for the arrival of death.
"Have you news of your husband?" Ginny asked, thinking of the child's
father unaware of his son's agony.

"Not
for some time," Joan replied. "He and Kit, Alex's second brother,
were with the rising at Colchester. I received news that they still lived, but
no more." She sighed. "Kit's wife has gone to be with her mother who
is ailing, but she left the children here because the journey was too long and
fraught. I cannot blame her, but I've much need of support." There was a
short silence; then she went on with some difficulty. "I very much fear
that they will all blame me for accepting rebel supplies. But what can I do? There
is not enough food and fuel, and the children have been hungry. What are we to
do in the winter with no glass to the windows, the doors hanging on their
hinges, no fuel for the fires?"

"They
cannot blame you in such a case," Ginny said, taking her hand.

"Oh,
Ginny, you do not understand the extent of their hatred. Perhaps they would
understand if the help had been offered by some rebel other than Alex. But they
will not rest until they see their brother dead,  and they would starve rather
than accept food at his hands."

"And
see their children starve?" Ginny demanded.

"I
fear so. It is an unreasoning passion that holds them and their father. If they
should come up with Alex, there will be bloody battle, and they will show no
quarter."

Ginny
shivered as she spoke what she knew to be the truth. "They should not
expect any from Parliament's general, either, Joan, not if his cause is at
stake."

The
child suddenly moaned, his body convulsed beneath the covers, and Ginny reached
for a cloth soaked in lavender water, laying it on his forehead, her face grim
as she faced the knowledge that the convulsion could be the beginning of the
end. The child's mother knew it, too, and held her son's burning clawlike hand,
her face wiped clear of expression in the moment of despairing certainty.
little Joe was now so hot his skin seared Ginny's hands as she stripped away
the covers and began to bathe the twisted, thrashing body with the lavender
water. He cried suddenly and became still.

Joan
laid the little hand back on the bed and stood up, turning away from Ginny as
she yielded the fight and let grief have its way.

"It
is over," Ginny said softly, straightening the covers. "Thank God for
his mercy. I will make a syrup of rose hips directly, for he will be thirsty
when he wakes."