The Fiery Cross (102 page)

Claire took a sheet of Jocasta’s heavy notepaper from the secretary, rolled it into a tube, and used it to listen intently to Jemmy’s back and chest as he made more of the choking-seal noises. Roger noticed dimly that her hair had fallen down somehow; she had to brush it out of the way to listen.

“Yes, of course it’s croup,” she said absently, in answer to a half-questioning diagnosis offered diffidently by one of the bystanders. “But that’s only the cough and the difficult breathing. You can have croup by itself, so to speak, or as an early symptom of various other things.”

“Such as?” Bree had a death grip on Jemmy, and her face was nearly as white as her knuckles.

“Oh. . . .” Claire seemed to be listening intently, but not to Bree. More to whatever was happening inside Jemmy, who had quit coughing and was lying exhausted against his mother’s shoulder, breathing thickly in steam-engine gasps. “Um . . . coryza—that’s only a common cold. Influenza. Asthma. Diphtheria. But it isn’t that,” she added hurriedly, looking up and catching a glimpse of Brianna’s face.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Claire replied firmly, straightening up and putting aside her makeshift stethoscope. “It doesn’t feel at all like diphtheria to me. Besides, there isn’t any of that about, or I’d have heard. And he’s still being breast-fed; he’ll have immunity—” She stopped speaking abruptly, suddenly aware of the women looking on. She cleared her own throat, bending down again, as though to encourage Jemmy by example. He made a small whimper and coughed again. Roger felt it, like a rock in his chest.

“It isn’t serious,” Claire announced firmly, straightening. “We must put him in a croup tent, though. Bring him down to the kitchen. Phaedre, will you find me a couple of old quilts, please?”

She moved toward the door, shooing the women before her like a flock of hens.

Obeying an impulse that he didn’t stop to question, Roger reached for the baby, and after a instant’s hesitation, Brianna let him take him. Jemmy didn’t fuss, but hung listless and heavy, the limp slackness a terrible change from his normal India-rubber bounce. The baby’s cheek burned through the cloth of Roger’s shirt as he carried the little boy downstairs, Bree at his elbow.

The kitchen was in the brick-walled basement of the house, and Roger had a brief vision of Orpheus descending into the underworld, Eurydice close behind him, as they made their way down the dark back stair into the shadowy depths of the kitchen. Instead of a magic lyre, though, he bore a child who burned like coal and coughed as though his lungs would burst. If he didn’t look back, he thought, the boy would be all right.

“Perhaps a little cold water wouldn’t come amiss.” Claire put her hand on Jemmy’s forehead, judging his temperature. “Have you got an ear infection, sweetheart?” She blew gently into one of the baby’s ears, then the other; he blinked, coughed hoarsely, and swiped a chubby hand across his face, but didn’t flinch. The slaves were bustling round in a corner of the kitchen, bringing boiling water, pinning the quilts to a rafter to make the tent at her direction.

Claire took the baby out of Roger’s arms to bathe him, and he stood bereft, wanting urgently to do something, anything, until Brianna took his hand and clutched it hard, her nails digging into his palm.

“He’ll be all right,” she whispered. “He will.” He squeezed hard back, wordless.

Then the tent was ready, and Brianna ducked under the hanging quilt, turning to reach back for Jemmy, who was alternately coughing and crying, having not liked the cold water at all. Claire had sent a slave to fetch her medicine box, and now rummaged through it, coming up with a vial filled with a pale yellow oil, and a jar of dirty white crystals.

Before she could do anything with them, though, Joshua, one of the grooms, came thumping down the stairs, half-breathless with his hurry.

“Mrs. Claire, Mrs. Claire!”

Some of the gentlemen had been firing off their pistols in celebration of the happy event, it seemed, and one of them had suffered some kind of mishap, though Josh seemed uncertain as to exactly what had happened.

“He isna bad hurt,” the groom assured Claire, in the Aberdonian Scots that came so peculiarly from his black face, “but he is bleedin’ quite free, and Dr. Fentiman—well, he’s maybe no quite sae steady as he might be the noo. Will ye come, Ma’am?”

“Yes, of course.” In the blink of an eye, she had thrust vial and jar into Roger’s hands. “I’ll have to go. Here. Put some in the hot water; keep him breathing the steam until he stops coughing.” Quick and neat, she’d closed up her box and handed it to Josh to carry, heading for the stair before Roger could ask her anything. Then she was gone.

Wisps of steam were escaping through the opening in the tent; seeing that, he paused long enough to shed coat and waistcoat, leaving them in a careless heap on the floor as he bent and ducked into the darkness, vial and jar in hand.

Bree was crouched on a stool, Jemmy on her lap, a big white pudding-basin full of steaming water at her feet. A swath of light from the hearth fell momentarily across her face, and Roger smiled at her, trying to look reassuring, before the quilt dropped back into place.

“Where’s Mama? Did she leave?”

“Aye, there was some sort of emergency. It’ll be fine, though,” he said firmly. “She gave me the stuff to put in the water; said just to keep him in the steam until the coughing stops.”

He sat down on the floor beside the basin of water. It was very dim in the tent, but not totally dark. As his eyes adjusted, he could see well enough. Bree still looked worried, but not nearly so frightened as she’d been upstairs. He felt better, too; at least he knew what to be doing, and Claire hadn’t seemed too bothered about leaving her grandson; obviously she thought he wasn’t going to choke on the spot.

The vial contained pine oil, sharp and reeking of resin. He wasn’t sure how much to use, but poured a generous dollop into the water. Then he pried the cork out of the jar, and the pungent scent of camphor rose up like a genie from the bottle. Not really crystals, he saw; lumps of some sort of dried resin, grainy and slightly sticky. He poured some into the palm of his hand, then rubbed them hard between his hands before dropping them into the water, wondering even as he did so at the instinctive familiarity of the gesture.

“Oh, that’s it,” he said, realizing.

“What’s it?”

“This.” He waved a hand round the snug sanctuary, rapidly filling with pungent steam. “I remember being in my cot, with a blanket over my head. My mother put this stuff in hot water—smelled just like this. That’s why it seemed familiar.”

“Oh.” The thought seemed to reassure her. “Did you have croup when you were little?”

“I suppose so, though I don’t remember it. Just the smell.” Steam had quite filled the little tent by now, moist and pungent. He drew a deep breath, pulling in a penetrating lungful, then patted Brianna’s leg.

“Don’t worry; this’ll do the trick,” he said.

Jemmy promptly started coughing his guts out with more seal noises, but they seemed less alarming now. Whether it was the darkness, the smell, or simply the homely racket of the renewed kitchen noises outside the tent, things seemed calmer. He heard Bree take in a deep breath, too, and let it out, and felt rather than saw the subtle shift of her body as she relaxed a little, patting Jemmy’s back.

They sat quietly for a bit, listening to Jemmy cough, wheeze, gasp, cough, and finally catch his breath, hiccupping slightly. He’d stopped whimpering, seeming soothed by the proximity of his parents.

Roger had dropped the cork to the camphor jar; he patted round on the floor until he found it, then pushed it firmly back in.

“I wonder what your mother’s done with her rings?” he said, looking for some easy subject of conversation to break the steam-filled silence.

“Why should she have done anything with them?” Brianna brushed back a lock of hair; she’d had it put up for the evening, but it was slipping out of its pins, clinging damply to her face.

“She wasn’t wearing them when she gave me the stuff.” He nodded at the camphor jar, set out of harm’s way near the wall. He had a clear memory of her hands, the fingers long, white, and bare; they’d struck him, since he’d never seen her hands without the gold and silver rings.

“Are you sure? She never takes them off, except to do something really nasty.” She giggled, a nervous, unexpected sound. “The last time I remember was when Jem dropped his bawbee in the chamber pot.”

Roger gave a brief snort of amusement. A bawbee was any sort of small object, but that’s what they’d taken to calling the iron ring—originally meant for leading cattle by the nose—that Jem liked to chew on. It was his favorite toy, and he didn’t like to go to bed without it.

“Ba-ba?” Jem raised his head, eyes half-closed. He was still breathing thickly, but beginning to display an interest in something besides his own discomfort. “Ba-ba!”

“Oops, shouldn’t have mentioned it.” Bree joggled him gently on her knee, and began to sing softly, half under her breath, to distract him.

“In a can-yon, in a cav-ern, exca-va-ting for a mine . . . Dwelt a min-er, forty-nin-er, and his daugh-ter, Clementine . . .”

The dark privacy of the tent reminded Roger of something; he realized that it had something of the same feeling of peaceful enclosure that the bench beneath the willows had had, though the tent was a lot hotter. The linen of his shirt was already limp on his shoulders, and he could feel sweat trickling down his back from under the hair tied at his neck.

“Hey.” He nudged Bree’s leg. “D’ye maybe want to go up and take off your new dress? It’ll be spoilt if ye stay in here for long.”

“Oh. Well . . .” She hesitated, biting her lip. “No, I’ll stay, it’s okay.”

He got up, stooping under the quilts, and gathered Jem up off her lap, hacking and gurgling.

“Go,” he said firmly. “You can fetch his b—his you-know-what. And don’t worry. Ye can tell it’s helping, the steam. He’ll be right in no time.”

It took a bit more argument, but at last she consented, and Roger sat down on the vacated stool, Jemmy cuddled in the crook of his arm. The pressure of the wooden seat reminded him of a certain amount of residual congestion from the encounter under the willows, and he shifted slightly to ease the discomfort.

“Well, it doesn’t do ye any lasting harm,” he muttered to Jemmy. “Ask any girl; they’ll tell ye.”

Jemmy snorted, snuffled, said something unintelligible beginning with “Ba—?” and coughed again, but only briefly. Roger put the back of his hand against the soft round cheek. He
thought
it was cooler. Hard to tell, warm as it was in here. The sweat was running freely down his face, and he wiped it with a sleeve.

“Ba-ba?” asked a froggy little voice against his chest.

“Aye, in a bit. Hush, now.”

“Ba-ba. Ba-ba!”

“Shhhh.”

“Ba—”

“Light she was, and like a fairy—”
He groped for the words to the song.

“BA—”

“AND HER SHOES WERE NUMBER NINE!”
Roger abruptly raised the volume, causing startled silence both inside the tent and outside, in the kitchen. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice back to lullaby level.

“
Erm . . .
Herring boxes without topses . . . Sandals were for Clementine. Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, oh, my darling Clementine . . . Thou art lost, and gone for-ev-er, oh, my dar-ling . . . Clementine.”

The singing seemed to be having an effect. Jemmy’s eyelids had dropped to half-mast. He put a thumb in his mouth and began to suck, but plainly couldn’t breathe through his clogged nose. Roger gently pulled the thumb away, and held the little fist enclosed in his own. It was wet and sticky, and very small, but felt reassuringly sturdy.

“Fed she duck-lings, by the water, every mor-ning just at nine . . . Hit her foot a-gainst a splin-ter, fell into the foaming brine.”

The eyelids fluttered briefly, then gave up the struggle and closed. Jemmy sighed and went completely limp, the heat coming off his skin in waves. Tiny beads of moisture trembled on each lash—tears, sweat, steam, or all three.

“Ruby lips a-bove the wa-ter, blowing bub-bles soft and fine . . . Alas for me, I was no swim-mer, so I lost my Clementine. Oh, my darling, oh, my darling . . .”

He wiped his face again, bent and kissed the soft thatch of damp, silky hair.
Thank you
, he thought with heartfelt sincerity, addressing everyone from God on down the line.

“. . . Oh, my darling . . . Clementine.”

I
T WAS VERY LATE by the time I made my way to bed after a last check on the welfare of all my patients. DeWayne Buchanan had suffered a slight flesh wound in the upper arm when Ronnie Campbell neglected to raise his pistol high enough while carousing on the riverbank, but was in good spirits after having the wound cleaned and dressed. Having been liberally plied with further spirits by a remorseful Ronnie, he was quite literally feeling no pain at present.

One of Farquard Campbell’s slaves, a man named Rastus, had been badly burned on the hand when taking grilled fowl off a skewer; all I could do there was to wrap the hand in clean cloth, set it in a bowl of cold water, and prescribe gin, to be taken internally. I had also treated several young men who were considerably the worse for drink, and sporting miscellaneous contusions, abrasions, and missing teeth as the result of a disagreement over dice. Six cases of indigestion, all treated with peppermint tea, and reporting improvement. Betty was in what looked like a deep but natural sleep, snoring loudly in bed. Jemmy was doing likewise, his fever abated.