While Beauty Slept (49 page)

“Others have survived the pox, just as I did,” I told her. “We are not the only ones spared.”

“Spared,” Rose whispered. “To what purpose?”

I watched her blank eyes stare upward. Those were the last words she uttered that night, and the following day and night. I was afraid to leave her side as she lay in a daze, ignoring my questions, refusing more than a few sips of water. I told myself that such grief was to be expected in one of her emotional nature. In time she would come around.

Then the spots appeared.

Nineteen

THE FINAL BATTLE

I
saw them first on her hands, lying flat atop the blanket. Four pink eruptions, each no wider than a mole. Hardly cause for alarm to one who did not know what they portended.

Had Rose noticed? Given her lethargy, I did not think so. But her stupor and disinterest in food took on an ominous weight. I had thought her distressed more in mind than body. I had missed the signs of the illness overtaking her, draining her strength in preparation for its onslaught.

For a moment I sank against the bed and grieved her fate. All the king’s precautions, all my care, had been for nothing. Helpless and overcome, I could barely keep myself from sobbing in anguish that the person I loved most in the world was to be taken from me. Then, suddenly, my mind recoiled from the thought. With the same stubborn determination that had led me away from the farm, I vowed that Rose would not die. I would cling to her and cling to life. The pox had taken my mother and my brothers. Mrs. Tewkes. Queen Lenore. I would not relinquish Rose.

I reached into the bag of supplies I had brought from my room and pulled out a small wooden box from the bottom. Opening it, I surveyed Flora’s arsenal of herbs and tonics. There was no cure for the pox, but I refused to fall back in helpless surrender. I would weaken my deadly foe by attacking the disease on all fronts. Already Rose’s skin was heating up from fever, so I must start by cooling her down. I grabbed a clean cloth from a table and soaked it in water, then laid the wet fabric over Rose’s brow.

“You’re flushed,” I said. “This will make you more comfortable.”

Taking one action, no matter how inconsequential, was enough to raise my spirits. I scooped up a bowlful of oats and boiled them in a pot over the fire; when they had softened into mush, I insisted Rose have a few spoonfuls for nourishment. I brought her a clean shift and told her it was time to wash the one she was wearing. Watching her strip off her gown would allow me a glimpse of how far the pox had progressed.

Rising slowly from the bed, Rose loosened the ties in front, and the garment slid down off her shoulders. I wanted to weep at what I saw: an army of pink pustules invading her tender, helpless skin, migrating from her shoulders and forearms down the small of her back and stomach. Even in her dazed state, Rose must know what such a sight signified.

“Are these the signs?” she asked, her voice devoid of curiosity.

“It’s early to say. . . .” I fumbled.

“It is the pox,” Rose said simply. Was she so dulled by grief that she did not care whether she lived or died?

I knelt before her and clutched her wrists, twisting them slightly to draw her attention toward me. My hands pressed against her skin, as if my strength could pass into her very bones. “It began this way with me, and I lived. As will you.”

Rose wrenched herself from my clutches and reached for the clean shift I had laid out on the bed. She pulled it over her head, turning from me, avoiding my eyes, and climbed back into the bed.

“Go, Elise,” she said softly. “Save yourself.”

“I am not the one who needs saving.” I felt unreasonably furious, so much so that I had to walk to the other side of the room and busy myself with cleaning out the soup pot. Did my feelings mean so little to her that she would disregard them completely? How could a young, beautiful girl go so easily to her death? No. I would not allow the thought to linger in my mind. If it could not be imagined, it would not happen.

Through the rest of that endless day and the one that followed, I tried to summon Flora’s voice in my mind, guiding me toward the ways I could ease Rose’s suffering. When the spots turned an angry red and bulged up from Rose’s arms and chest, I soaked strips of cloth in boiling water and pressed them against the pustules until they burst. I rubbed a salve over the resulting sores to lessen their sting and dabbed essence of mint across her chest to ease her breathing. When Rose’s cheeks burned with fever, I brought a bucket of cold water sprinkled with dried lilac to her bedside and bathed her from brow to feet. As soon as I had finished, I pulled off her sweat-dampened sheet and covered her gently with my own.

“Elise.” Rose’s fingers reached out to clutch my hand.

“Yes, my darling?” Her voice was little more than a croak, but I rejoiced to hear it. She had not spoken for close to two days.

“Do you remember my dreams? The witch?”

I remembered them well, those nightmares that had shaken Rose from sleep with desperate screams. On those nights so long ago, I had cradled her in my arms until she stopped crying, feeling her body slowly go limp as she drifted off. If only it were as simple to console her now. If only the pox would release her from its clutches long enough to grant her an evening—an hour!—of sleep.

Rose’s lips parted slightly in a weak attempt at a smile. “You were the only one who could calm me. You made me feel safe.”

“You are safe with me, Rose. Always.”

“Mother. Father.”

What heartbreak can be conveyed with two simple words! I ached for her loss as if it were my own.

“If they are dead, I am queen.”

I told her to shush, that such matters could wait, but the thought had troubled me as well. Rose was now the ruler of this ruined land, the person St. Elsip’s survivors would look to as they struggled to remake their lives and their town. How could Rose take on such a burden, even in the best of health? Who was left to help her? Would our enfeebled kingdom fall to invaders who knew we could not fend them off?

“I never told you . . .” Rose’s voice trailed off, and I urged her not to tire herself, but she gathered her strength and continued. “I used to imagine you were my older sister, watching over me.”

I remembered leaning down to grab her tiny body by the waist, swinging her around in a flurry of skirts and giggles. Rubbing my nose against her pudgy cheeks as Queen Lenore’s other attendants looked on with narrowed, disapproving eyes.

“I have always loved you as if you were my own flesh and blood,” I said.

I knelt by the bed and gently ran my fingers over her forehead. The heat from her fever brought a flush to my own skin.

“There is something I must tell you.”

I had never intended to confess the truth of my parentage to Rose, and perhaps it was wrong to trouble her mind with such revelations in her weakened state. The only defense for my actions is the truth. In that moment I told Rose what I thought she needed to hear: that her parents might be dead but her family was not destroyed. There was still one person at the castle who would be forever bound to her by blood.

“The man who raised me was not my father,” I said. “My mother was seduced before she was married. By Prince Bowen.”

Rose had strength for only a slight gasp. “Why did you not tell me?”

“I did not wish to dishonor my mother’s memory. The only reason I speak of it now is to tell you we are truly family. I will not leave you.”

Rose slipped her hand over mine; her palms were sticky with sweat.

“We are cousins, then,” she whispered.

I nodded. “Yes, my darling. And sisters in spirit.”

“I am so glad.” Rose’s voice was barely louder than a breath. Her hand fell away from mine, but her eyes remained open, staring upward, burning with exhaustion. My own memories of the pox were faint and jumbled, but I could recall all too well the torment of wakefulness. Without sleep Rose would have no escape from her anguish. She would suffer through a never-ending twilight of pain.

With relentless determination the illness advanced through Rose’s body. By the following day, her breathing was ragged, her skin inflamed. The only sound she made was an occasional moan, and I winced with every cry, feeling her suffering as my own. When her tongue began to swell and she choked, panicked, on the food I offered, I poured water drop by drop into the corner of her mouth. Like the mother birds I had seen feed their young, I chewed tiny morsels of bread to soften them before gently nudging the pieces past her lips.

That afternoon, when the fading sunlight reflected my inner foreboding, I wondered how much longer Rose could endure such suffering. My own experience of the pox was no guide: I did not know how many days I had been sick or how my symptoms varied from hers. Rose’s face had been spared the worst of the swelling, and I considered her resilient beauty a beacon of hope until I remembered her mother’s similarly smooth face, unaltered yet dead nonetheless. If my ministrations were prolonging Rose’s pain, all my efforts amounted to nothing more than cruelty.

If she could but rest.
The thought haunted me, for I knew it was in my power to grant her the relief, if I would but dare. Among the many formulas listed in Flora’s ledgers was one for a sleeping potion, one I had never made and that she herself had cautioned me against. I remembered Flora’s voice, warning me that every body accepted its properties in different measure; the same amount that lulled one person into slumber might kill another. Rose’s debilitated condition would put her at even greater risk. If I had sensed any improvement, any slight lessening of her agony, I would not have taken such a terrible risk. But she had grown worse by the day, by the hour, until she was clinging to life solely by chains of pain. If she were to die—and I could barely acknowledge the thought—would it not be the ultimate act of love to grant her peace in her final moments?

I knelt beside her and whispered her name. “If it has become too much to bear . . .”

I could not finish. In any case Rose showed no sign that she had heard me. Her eyes stared into mine blankly, unseeing, so inflamed that it hurt to look upon them. I hunched by her bedside, fearing that each shuddering breath might be her last. Time slowed. My knees grew numb against the stone floor, and my back ached; still I kept vigil over her. Rose had not slept for days, and I had dozed no more than a few hours in all that time. My thoughts had become frantic, feverish. I got up from the floor and peered out the window. Night was approaching, a time when only the wicked are about.

My mind whirled with tangled thoughts, each memory leading to another. The sunlight in Marcus’s garden, cleaning my skin of death’s stench. The same bright light in my face many years before, as I sat with Marcus along the riverbank, watching ships sail into the harbor. Marcus and Rose in the castle courtyard, their faces pink with cold, reaching up to catch snowflakes in their hands. Rose as a swaddled baby, clutched in her mother’s arms while Millicent vowed to see her dead. Flora’s voice telling us that no harm would come to Rose under her care. Was the potion I feared most the one that might save her?

I grabbed Flora’s ledger from the wooden box where I kept the collection of herbs and powders. Frantically, my fingers flipped the pages, until I found the list of ingredients. I had all but one: lavender blossoms. A memory pulled at me, elusive yet insistent. I closed my eyes and pictured myself following Flora through the castle garden. I could see her gauzy skirt graze the pathway as we passed the lavender bush. I could remember its sweet, fragrant scent. My smile of pleasure. Flora’s girlish voice:
You feel it, don’t you? Lavender’s power to soothe the soul.

In that moment the decision was made. If I sat in this room any longer, waiting for Rose to die, I would go mad. I pulled a shawl from my trunk, then paused, staring at the gleam of red and green that beckoned from the bottom. I had saved Dorian’s dagger as a remembrance of my husband, never expecting to have a use for such a lethal object. But now, with bandits about, such a companion might strengthen my courage for what lay ahead. I strapped on a leather belt and slid the dagger in along my waist, gripping the handle to harden my resolve.

I picked up a candle and opened the door. The weak flicker of candlelight was hardly enough to see by, but I could have found my way in utter darkness, so familiar was the route. My footsteps clattered through the vast, silent space as I navigated the twists and turns of the fortress-turned-tomb, the place where I had lived through unimaginable happiness and crushing sorrow. I moved swiftly past the Great Hall, the scene of so many grand banquets, and into the Receiving Room, once my beloved queen’s domain, now simply another desolate, empty shell. No voice called out at the sound of my approach, yet I could not escape a pervasive feeling of watchfulness. As if the shadows of all those lost were watching me pass, waiting to see what I might do.

I pushed open the small door on the far side of the room and stepped out into the garden. The last rays of sunlight bathed the plants in an amber glow. Weeds had overtaken the beds, and the gardeners—had any remained—would have been harshly reprimanded for the unruliness before my eyes. But I rejoiced to see it, overgrown and untended as it was. An echo of past happiness still lingered there, along the paths I had wandered with the queen and Flora and Rose. Death might surround me, yet here I witnessed rebirth. The rosebushes were sprouting buds, and the herbs were bursting with new growth. If any hope remained, it was here.

I brushed my hands against the tender petals and breathed in the mingled scents, restocking my heart with happy memories. Though thoughts of Queen Lenore brought a pang of loss, I allowed myself to picture her sun-flushed and smiling, following Rose through the vine-covered archways. For all the kindnesses she had done me, I owed her the honor of remembrance. Not as she’d died, but as she had lived.

Finding myself in the heart of the rose garden, a place as holy to me as any church, I sank to my knees. Clutching my hands together, I closed my eyes and prayed for guidance, whether to Flora or to God I could not tell, for they became intermingled in my mind. I prayed for Rose’s salvation and my own, for the strength to carry on living if she did not. Slowly, the fear that had weighted my body began to lift and my breathing eased. Whatever happened next, I would know I had done all I could.