Winsor, Kathleen (79 page)

The
room stank, for all the windows were closed. She was not afraid of the night
air herself but she shared the common belief that it was fatal to a sick man.
And she clung superstitiously to the country belief that if there was serious
illness in the house death would not come if all doors and windows were kept
tight shut and bolted. The smells were thick and heavy. She did not realize how
overpowering they had become until she opened the door into the parlour and took
a breath of clean air. Then she lighted the fire in the bed-chamber and flung
on a handful of dried herbs.

She
made up the trundle and shoved it back out of sight and then, while he seemed
to be somewhat quieter than usual, she took the slop-pans and went down to
empty them into the courtyard privy and rinse them out. She made two more trips
to bring up
pails of fresh water. It had been a long while since she had remembered how
tedious and how inconvenient were the simplest tasks of keeping house.

His
intense thirst persisted, but though she gave him one glass of water after
another the thirst was not allayed and he soon threw it up. Again and again he
vomited, retching with a violence it seemed would tear out his bowels; each
time it left him pouring sweat, exhausted and all but unconscious. Amber, who
ran to hold the pan and to support him, watched him with horror and pity, and a
growing rage.

He's
going to die! she thought, holding the pan beneath his chin, pushing herself
against his back to help him sit upright. He's going to die, I know he is! Oh!
this filthy rotten plague!
Why
did it come! Why did
he
get it?
Why should
he
be the one—and not somebody else!

He
dropped down once more, flat on his back, and suddenly she flung herself across
him, her fingers clutching at his arms— the muscles, though useless now, still
looked hard and powerful beneath the brown skin. She began to cry, holding onto
him defiantly and with all her strength, as though determined she would not
give him up to Death. She murmured his name, mingled with curses and
endearments, and her sobs grew wilder and more frantic until she was almost
hysterical.

She
was jerked out of her orgy of self-pity, back to reality by Bruce, whose
fingers took hold of her hair and pulled her head slowly upward. She looked at
him, her face smeared with tears, her eyes oddly slanted as his grip on her
hair dragged at her scalp. Sick with shame and remorse she stared at him,
wondering desperately what she had been saying—and if he had heard her.

"Amber—"

His
tongue had swollen now until it almost filled his mouth, and it was covered
with a thick white fur, though the edges were red and shiny. His eyes were
dull, but he looked at her with recognition for the first time in many hours,
scowling with the agonized effort to seize hold of his thoughts and express
them.

"Amber—
Why—why aren't you gone—"

She
looked at him warily, like a trapped animal. "I am, Bruce. I am going. I'm
just going now." Her fingers, spread out on the quilt before her, moved
backward a little, but she could not stir.

He
let go of her hair, gave another deep sigh, and his head rolled over sideways.
"God go with you. Go on—while—" The words slurred off and he was
almost quiet again, though still softly mumbling.

Slowly
and carefully she moved away from him, genuinely afraid, for she had heard many
awful tales of plague-victims gone mad. She was sweating with relief when at
last she stood on her feet again and out of his reach. But the tears were gone
and she realized that if she was to be of any use to him she
must hold
herself in control, do what she could to make him comfortable and pray that God
would not let him die.

With
quick resolution she went to work again.

She
bathed his face and arms and combed his hair—he had not been wearing a periwig
when she had met him at the wharf—smoothed the bed and laid another cold
compress on his forehead. His lips were parched and beginning to split from the
fever, and she covered them with pomade. She brought fresh towels from the
nursery, and gathered all the soiled articles into a great bag, though of
course no laundress would take it if it became known that there was plague in
the house. And all the while she kept one eye on him, tried to understand him
when he muttered something and to anticipate what he wanted so that he would
not have to make the effort of reaching or moving himself.

About
six the streets began to take on life. Across the way an apprentice let down
the shutters of a small haberdashery shop, a coach rattled by, and she heard
the familiar cry: "Milkmaid below!"

Amber
threw open the window. "Wait there! I want some!" She glanced at
Bruce and then ran out, scooping a few coins from the dressing-table as she
went past, rushed into the kitchen for a pail and down the stairs. "I want
a gallon, please."

The
girl, pink-cheeked and healthy, was one of those who came in every day from
Finsbury or Clerkenwell. She grinned at Amber and slid the yoke off her
shoulders to pour the fresh warm milk. "Going to be another mighty hot
day, I doubt not," she said conversationally.

Amber
was listening for some sound from Bruce—she had left the window open just a
crack—and she answered with an absent-minded nod. At that moment a deep boom
filled the air. It was the passing-bell and it tolled three times—somewhere in
the parish a man lay dying, and those who heard it were to pray for his soul.
Amber and the milk-maid exchanged quick apprehensive glances, then both of them
closed their eyes and murmured a prayer.

"Three
pence, mam," said the girl, and Amber saw her eyes going over her black
gown with a sharp glint of suspicion.

She
gave her the three pennies, picked up the heavy pail and started to go back
into the house. At the door she turned. "Will you be here tomorrow?"

The
woman had shouldered her yoke and was already several feet away. "Not
tomorrow, mam. I'll not be comin' into town for a while. There's no tellin'
these days which one might have the sickness." Her eyes went down over
Amber again.

Amber
turned away and went inside. She found Bruce lying just as she had left him,
but even as she came to the doorway he suddenly began to retch and tried to sit
up. She put down the pail and ran toward him. His eyeballs were no longer
bloodshot but had turned yellow and sunk into his skull. He had obviously lost
all contact with things outside himself and seemed
neither to hear
nor to see; he moved and acted only by instinct.

Later
she made several more purchases. She got cheese, butter, eggs, a cabbage,
onions and turnips and lettuce, a loaf of sugar, a pound of bacon, and some
fruit.

She
drank some milk and ate part of the cold duck left from supper the night
before, but when she suggested food to Bruce he did not answer and when she put
a glass of milk to his lips he pushed it away. She did not know whether to insist
that he eat or not, and decided that it would be best to wait for a doctor—she
hoped to see one going past the house, for they carried gold-headed canes to
distinguish them. Surely, with so many people sending for them at every hour of
the day and night, she would see one soon. She was afraid to leave him alone,
long enough to go for one herself.

And
then at last she found that his vomit was streaked with uncoagulated blood.
That scared her violently and she decided that she could wait no longer.

She
took her keys, left the building and ran along the street toward where she
remembered having seen a doctor's sign, pushing her way through the crowds of
porters and vendors and housewives. A passing coach left such a cloud of dust
that she could taste the grit in her mouth; an apprentice bawled out some
impertinent compliment which reminded her that her gown was undone; and a
filthy old beggar, his hands and face covered with running sores, reached out
to catch at her skirts. She passed three houses which were marked with the red
cross and had a guard before each.

She
arrived at the doctor's house out of breath and with hard dry pains in her
chest, gave the knocker an impatient clatter and then, when no one answered,
banged it furiously for at least a minute and was just picking up her skirts to
leave when a woman answered. She held a pomander-ball to her nose and stared at
Amber suspiciously.

"Where's
the doctor? I've got to see 'im this instant!"

The
woman answered her coldly, as though resentful that she had come at all.
"Dr. Barton is making his calls."

"Send
him the moment he gets back. The Sign of the Plume in St. Martin's Lane, up the
street and around the corner—"

She
raised her arm and pointed, and then she whirled and ran off, pressing her hand
against the sharp pain that stabbed her in her left side. But to her immense
relief she found that Bruce, though he had vomited again—bringing up more blood
—and had flung off the blankets, was otherwise as she had left him.

She
waited nervously for the doctor. A hundred times she looked out the window,
swearing beneath her breath at his slowness. But it was mid-afternoon before he
arrived and she flew down the stairs to let him in.

"Thank
God you've come! Hurry!" Already she was on her way back up again.

He
was a tired old man, smoking a pipeful of tobacco, and
he started
wearily after her. "Hurrying won't do any good, madame."

She
turned and looked at him sharply, angry that he apparently did not consider
this patient to be of unusual importance. But nevertheless she was relieved to
have him there. He could tell her how Bruce was, and what she should do for
him. Ordinarily she shared the popular skepticism regarding doctors, but now
she would have believed implicitly the idlest words of any quack or charlatan.

She
arrived at the bedside before he did and stood there, watching him walk slowly
into the room, her eyes big and apprehensive. Bruce lay now in a coma, though
he was still mumbling and moving restlessly about. Dr. Barton stopped short of
the bed by several feet and he held a handkerchief to his nose. For a moment he
looked at him without speaking.

"Well?"
demanded Amber. "How is he?"

The
doctor gave a faint shrug. "Madame, you ask me to answer the impossible. I
do not know. Is there a bubo?"

"Yes.
It started to rise last night."

She
turned back the quilts so that he could see the lump in Bruce's groin, enlarged
now to the size of a half-submerged tennis-ball; the skin over it looked
stretched and red and shining.

"Does
it seem to cause him much pain?"

"I
touched it once, by accident, and he gave a terrible yell."

"The
rising of the plague-boil is the most painful stage of the disease. But unless
there is one they seldom live."

"Then
he will live, Doctor? He'll get well?" Her eyes glistened eagerly.

"Madame,
I can promise you nothing. I don't know. No one knows. We must simply admit
that we don't understand it— we're helpless. Sometimes they die in an
hour—sometimes it takes days. Sometimes it's easy, without a convulsion, other
times they go in a screaming agony. The strong and healthy are as vulnerable as
the frail and weak. What have you been giving him to eat?"

"Nothing.
He refuses everything I try to feed him. And he vomits so often it wouldn't do
any good."

"Nevertheless,
he must eat. Force it down him someway, and feed him often—every three or four
hours. Give him eggs and meat-broth and wine-caudles. And you must keep him as
hot as possible. Wrap him in all the warm blankets you have and don't let him
throw them off. Heat some bricks and pack them at his feet. If you have some
stone water-bottles use those. Start a good fire and don't let it go out. He
must be induced to sweat as profusely as possible. And make a poultice for the
boil—you can use vinegar and honey and figs if you have them and some brown bread-crumbs
and plenty of mustard. If he throws it off tie it on someway, and keep it
there. Unless the boil can be brought to break and run he'll have but little
chance of recovery. Give him a strong emetic—
antimony, in white wine will do,
or whatever you may have on hand, and a clyster. That's all I can tell you. And
you, madame —how are you?"

"I
feel well enough, except that I'm tired. I had to stay up most of the
night."

"I'll
report the case to the parish and a nurse will be sent to help you. To protect
yourself I'd advise you to steep some bay-leaves or juniper in vinegar and
breathe the fumes several times a day." He turned and started to go and
Amber, though keeping an eye on Bruce, walked along with him. "And by the
way, madame, you'd better hide whatever valuables you may have in the house
before the nurse arrives."

"Good
Lord! What kind of a nurse are you sending?"

"The
parish has to take whoever volunteers—we have too few already—and though some
of them are honest enough, the truth of it is that most of them are not."
He had reached the anteroom now and just before he started down the steps he
said: "If the plague-spots appear—you may as well send for the sexton to
ring the bell. No one can help them after that. I'll stop again tomorrow."
Even as he spoke they heard the bells begin to toll, somewhere in the distance,
two tenor notes struck for a woman. "It's the vengeance of God upon us for
our sins. Well—good-day, madame."