by Leda Swann
Running away was impossible.
Refusing to marry the Count would dishonor her father, but marrying him was unthinkable.
She’d reached the outer marshes now. This was her favorite place in the whole world – the spot that was hers and hers alone. She came here whenever she needed time to herself, to think or just to daydream. Never had she needed the consolation this place held for her more than this morning.
As she approached the water, the croaking of the nearby frogs stopped, and she heard the tiny plops as they jumped into the water, disturbed by her nearness. A group of flamingos, their pale pink feathers showing clearly against the green brown marsh, stalked through the water in the distance, their long, thin legs picking delicately through the mud.
Firedancer was soon tied to a tree at the edge, to graze on the lush grass that surrounded him. With blades of green poking out of the sides of his mouth, he snorted and tossed his head, enjoying his reprieve from the early morning exercise.
Sophie sat down on a hillock of dry ground by the edge of the marsh, her bow within easy reach. She could not run away, but at least she could still hunt.
A flock of geese passed overhead, but they were too far away for her to shoot. Jean-Luc would have shot at them anyway, and wasted his arrow like as not.
She wondered if Count Lamotte ever hunted, or if he believed women should spend their lives on dull household chores. God preserve her from a husband like that. She would almost rather have the Marquis de la Renta and his interminable poetry. At least he considered hunting a healthful pursuit, as he was overfond of telling her.
Cicadas chirruped sadly, their rasping song reminding her that summer was nearly done, and the dark, cold days of winter were not far away. The lowing of nearby cattle resonated through the stillness.
Her patience was soon rewarded with the sight of a pair of ducks just come from their nest of grasses at the edge of the water. With the ease and grace of long practice, she fitted an arrow to her bow and let it fly with a soft thwang. The drake was dead before he registered the presence of a predator. The duck flew squawking into the misty morning, only to be brought down a few seconds later with a second arrow.
A brace of ducks already. Usually she would be satisfied with her morning’s work, but today she did not want to return. Her home was no refuge against the dangers that faced her.
She gutted her kill, wrinkling her nose at the stench of the innards. The by now familiar pang that Gerard was not there to laugh at her squeamishness tugged at her heart. She flung the bloody mess into the water and wiped her knife and hands on the grass to clean them.
She had to face up to the reality of her future, she chided herself, as she flung herself down on the ground in the early sun.
She was heartsick that she could not marry Jean-Luc. She had loved him so well, and for so long. Her heart wrenched in two to have to give up all thoughts of wedding him.
Still, her husband-to-be was a Musketeer – a Parisian like Gerard was now. If Gerard liked the Count, he could not be all bad. He would not be violent or a drunkard at any rate - Gerard had no time for such men. She only hoped that she and the Count would achieve at least a small measure of liking for one another. She could not bear to be married to a man she disliked and who would be sure to despise her in return.
Gerard would be bound to visit her once she was married to his closest companion. If she played her cards well maybe Gerard, or even Lamotte himself, would one day take her to Paris with him. She had always longed to go to Paris.
Doubtless Burgundy would have its own charm, too – even though it was far from Paris. At any rate, her marriage would give her a new world, one that she was certain that she could order in some measure to please herself.
Her father had handed her adventure on a plate, she thought wearily, even if she had been too shocked at first to recognize it. Once she was over the suddenness of the proposal, her fate did not seem so bad. She would try not to pine overmuch for Jean-Luc, whom she could never have now. She would do her duty to her parents as she had been brought up to do, acquiesce to this marriage to the Count with a good grace, and prepare herself for adventure. Indeed, she had no other choice.
Her decision once made, and with the sun warming her tired limbs as she lay in the grasses at the edge of the marsh, she fell into a deep, troubled sleep.
The sun was high in the sky when she awoke again. Midges swarmed around her, attacking every scrap of bare skin they could find. She brushed them away with a lazy hand, but there were too many of them.
Her sleep had not refreshed her but had left her with a pounding head and a body that felt tired and aching all over. She felt worse than she had before she went to sleep. Moreover, she was dying of thirst, and she had no water bottle with her.
Chiding herself for her foolishness, she brushed the midges off the brace of ducks she had killed early that morning, picked them up by their webbed feet, and tossed them over the pommel of the saddle. Firedancer snorted at the smell of dried blood, but he allowed her to climb on his back and wearily point his head towards home.
The gelding was in no hurry, and, despite her thirst which had grown almost unbearable by now, she had not the strength to hurry him on his way. He ambled slowly through the fields and down the rutted path, Sophie concentrating all that remained of her energy on keeping herself upright on his back. Mists threatened to engulf her vision while the bright sunlight of the clear autumn day overwhelmed her eyes, which were made doubly sensitive by the pain that throbbed behind her temples. Her arms barely had the strength to hold the reins and her legs hung limply along the gelding’s side, too weak to hold her in her seat as she flopped about with every step he took.
Nightmarish apparitions appeared in the air around her, tormenting her with the empty promise of the water she longed for and filling the air with maniacal laughter before dissolving back into her nothing once more. She didn’t know if she was awake or dreaming.
By the time she reached the courtyard, she was hanging on to the merest thread of remaining sense by the sheer force of her will.
The courtyard was thronged with people rushing hither and thither, and the noise of it assaulted her ears like a blow to the temple.
Her brother – at least she thought it was her brother, but wasn’t he still in Paris? – strode towards her from among the crowds of people, his arms held out wide.
Sophie gazed uncomprehendingly at the apparition in front of her, expecting it, too, to dissolve before her eyes as had all the others. “Water,” she croaked from between her cracked lips, when the form in front of her stayed strangely solid. “Give me water.”
His arms reached out to lift her down from her horse, but she could not make any move towards him. “Water,” she begged once more, as her sight grew black and she felt herself slip and fall.
She could not tell whether it was her body or her mind that was tumbling down. All she knew was that the pit engulfing her was cold and dark, and the bottom was a long, long way away.
The next few weeks were a blur. Now and then she awoke with a raging thirst, calling out for drink until a blessed figure would come and drip some precious drops of life-giving liquid down her throat, and smooth her brow with a cool, wet rag scented with lavender. Sometimes the figure was her mother, sometimes her brother, and sometimes her childhood nurse, dead of a dropsy more than three seasons ago.
At times she was so hot she knew she had died and gone to hell where devils were roasting her over hot coals for all eternity.
Then the cold would ambush her, freezing her limbs until she could feel the ice forming on her toes, on her knees, on her belly, immobilizing her with the caress of its deadly fingers.
Always the pain was there – lurking just out of reach in the recesses of her head or engaged in a full-frontal assault on her entire body. Then she would shake and cry and beg to be released from torment, until the pain receded once more into the mini death of her deep, trance-like sleep.
The
n one morning when she awoke the pain was gone, the curtains around her four-poster bed were drawn back to let in the fresh morning air, the sun shone through a chink in her windowpane, and she knew that she was no longer asleep in a feverish nightmare. Her arms felt strangely heavy when she tried to move them and the light still hurt her eyes, but her mind was clear.
With some effort she turned her head on the pillow. Her brother was standing by the window, his figure silhouetted against the light. She blinked quickly to make sure that she was not seeing chimeras still. The figure didn’t disappear. “Gerard?” Her voice came out as a hoarse croak.
He strode over to her side. “Sophie? You are awake?”
She held out her arms to him, but she was too weak to lift them off the coverlet to embrace him. With Gerard home, she felt whole again. “I’m so glad to see you.”
He took her hands in his. “And I you. I feared I had come too late, that your sickness had taken you out of my reach before I could see you once more. I am beyond happy that you are better.”
She smiled into his deep blue eyes that so closely mirrored her own. He would always be first in her heart. “I am better now that you are here with me.”
“You must be hungry. See if you can sit up a little, and I will feed you some soup.”
She was ravenous. Soup sounded heavenly. It seemed an age had passed before Gerard returned with a couple of bowls of warm broth.
She lifted herself up in the bed a little and he placed a large bolster under her head so she could swallow without choking.
He spooned a sup of broth into her mouth. It was thin and weak, but she gulped it down greedily. After a couple of mouthfuls her shrunken stomach felt full and she turned her head away from the spoon. Her weakness shamed her. “I cannot eat any more. Thank you.”
She had lost track of time in her fevered state. When had she been to the marshes and fallen asleep in the sun there? Was it yesterday, or much longer ago. “Have I been ill for long?”
Gerard took a mouthful from his own bowl of broth. “The day I arrived home you were sick and raving with fever, and you fell off your horse into my arms without even knowing I was there. I have been home for three weeks now. My leave is well nigh gone already.”
Surely not. She could not have been ill for the entire time he was here. There was so much she wanted to tell him and show him. Her skill with the bow for one. Not to mention the colt captured from one of the herds of wild horses that roamed freely throughout the Camargue that she was taming, and had already trained to eat apples out of her hand. “Must you leave again so soon?”
He gave a slight grimace as he swallowed. “I will stay here with you until you are recovered.”
She suddenly felt ashamed of her selfish desires. She was only his sister, and should not stand in the way of his advancement. “Your captain will not mind that you overstay your leave?”
A bitter laugh escaped him as he lay the empty bowl to one side. “I doubt that my captain would thank me for bringing the sickness back to Paris with me. Were I even to get within ten miles of the city walls, I have no doubt but that he would shoot me on the spot and have my body hauled away into the country for burial.”
“The sickness?” He had spoken the word with such a dread certainty and deadly acceptance that a cold shiver of apprehension passed down her spine. “What sickness?”
He made the sign of the cross to ward off evil. “No one can get in or out of the Camargue. We have been shut off by soldiers from Saint-Marie-de-la-Mer, and villagers from outside the boundaries would kill us did we try to escape anyway. They would rather murder innocent strangers than run the risk of being infected by them. For none of us are innocent. God has sent us the plague.”
Chapter 2
The plague. The word itself was enough to strike a deathly fear into her heart. Like the locusts in olden days, the plague was a curse from Heaven sent by a wrathful God to punish the wrongdoing of his creatures. Few escaped the avenging hands of a wrathful God. “The Black Death?” she whispered.
“Even so.”
She felt the horror of it strike her heart. “I have had the plague?”
“You were one of the lucky ones, my dear sister. You were struck down and yet you still live. Before this very hour, I had not even dared to hope that you would be spared.”
No wonder he looked so drawn and pale. “The plague is in this house?”
He nodded. “Most of the servants have been struck with fever. The few that remain have fled to the hills to save their skins if they can.”
She could barely breathe with the fear of it all. “And the village?”
“The village has been struck as well.” He shook his head gravely. “The news from there is not good.”
“Our parents?” She could not frame the question as she wanted to, fearing to hear the answer.
“Father has been well up until now, but yesterday he took to his bed with a slight fever. He has a strong constitution. He may pull through as you have done.”
“And mother?”
He was silent for a moment. “She is…not well.”
Not her mother. She could not lose her mother in this way. “How sick is she?”
A shake of his head with frustration. “I am not a physician.”
She could not let the question rest. “What does the apothecary in the village say?”
“The apothecary was one of the first to die.”
“What of a doctor from town?” Surely a doctor would be able to cure their mother. “Have you not sent for a doctor from town?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It is no use - there are none to come. Half of them are arrant cowards and have refused to visit their patients for fear of catching the plague.”
She was almost afraid to speak now. “And the other half?”
“The other half are dead or dying.”
“The priest? Has he at least been with her to offer her comfort?” She whispered the words, grasping at the merest straw of hope, not wanting to hear of yet more bad news. The priest had always been devout in his faith and would not abandon a dying soul of his flock.
He put his head in his hands. “I buried him yesterday.” His voice shook with distress. “I loved Father Capin dearly.”
Sophie let her eyes close with a groan. Maybe it would have been better if the plague had taken her too – if she had never awakened to this hellish day, with the world she knew disintegrating around her.
“You have had a rude awakening, sister,” Gerard said, coming out of his grief to lay a cool hand on her forehead. “I am sorry - I did not mean to give you the bad news all at once. Sleep again now, and I shall be with you when you awake again.”
She would never sleep again. Her head whirled with images of pain and death – images from her most feverish nightmares: carts stacked with bodies being tipped into common burial pits, smoking funeral pyres spilling ill-smelling smoke that reeked of human corruption and burning flesh, and every stinking, rotten, worm-ridden corpse bore the face of one of her loved ones.
Her body was weak from her long illness and despite the horrors invading her mind, she soon sank into a restless slumber.
She was alone when she woke again, and her belly was rumbling with emptiness. Judging by the patch of darkening sky she could see from her window, it was early evening.
The house was as quiet as a tomb. There were no footsteps, no voices, not even the barking of a dog to indicate that there was any living soul there besides herself.
She called out in a voice weak from illness, but no one answered. Silence reigned supreme. Gerard had promised he would be there when she woke up again and she trusted him with her life. She waited for some minutes to see if her brother would return as he had promised, but he did not come.
The stillness in the air had an eerie quality about it – a sense of tenseness and foreboding. Finally she could bear it no longer. She pushed herself up on the bed until she was sitting upright. A black mist appeared before her eyes as
the blood rushed from her head, but she willed herself not to faint. When she began to feel stronger, she swung her legs over the side of the bed until her feet touched the floor. The cold seeped through the bare wood into the soles of her feet, but this minor discomfort only fueled her determination to set herself above it.
Her legs trembled with the exertion of holding her upright, but slowly she shuffled her way to the door, hanging on to the bedposts, the wall, anything to help hold her on her feet.
With shaking steps she made her way to her mother’s apartments. She pushed open the door and took two steps in, and then wished she hadn’t.
The curtains around her mother’s bed were closed and a smell of corruption and death lingered in the air. She made herself shuffle over to the bed and draw back the curtains. Her mother lay among the rumpled sheets, her eyes open wide in a sightless mockery, her face blackened with liver spots and tinged the green-gray color of death. The Black Death had claimed her for his own.
With a shaking hand Sophie brushed her mother’s eyelids shut. She could do no more for her body, but must pray that her soul find peace in death.
Her father’s apartments were as quiet as her mother’s. She knew what she would find when she opened the door, but she forced herself to do it anyway.
Her father had died in his chair, his face twisted with pain and covered with the same spots that marked her mother.
With a quick prayer that God in his mercy grant him grace, she shut the door again.