by Claudy Conn
“Maurice, I will go down and brew her some sage tea. Papa often used it in the school whenever we had a child down with a fever.”
“Thank you, Heather,” Maurice said, and pulled up a chair to sit beside his sister.
She eyed him before she left the room and was filled with worry. Louise had to get well. She simply had to. How much could one man bear?
* * * * *
The kitchen was a huge rectangular room lined with pantry shelves and open shelving. One wall was totally dominated by a huge fireplace used as a stove. Within its crevices were niches holding copper kettles. Across its middle was an ingenious wrought-iron rotisserie, whose turning spit operated on the principle of heat and air. The heat would rise up the chimney and the rush of hot air would cause a blade within the height of the chimney to rotate, which in turn would cause a chain to revolve on its course, and voilà, an excellent rotisserie.
Heather had already met the cook, a large, round black woman with a floppy cap that always seemed to sit askew on her short dark curls. As Heather entered, the cook stood over an enormous pot of slowly simmering cherries, which she was preparing for jam.
The cook stopped her ministrations, left the wood ladle in the pot, and opened her eyes wide when she saw Heather.
“Ah, child, what is it?”
“Belle…her ladyship is ill, so ill,” Heather cried, and went into Belle’s waiting arms. They had become very close almost at once.
“Bless ya child, it is in the Lord’s hands.”
“Do we have sage?” Heather sniffed. “My father says sage tea does wonders.”
“Yessum, I’ll get on that right now. Her ladyship has been all kindness, and we’ll make her right, that we will.” Belle hurried about pulling out what she needed from the cupboard as she set the water to boil.
“Honey and lemon…yessum, we’ll add that,” Belle said as much to herself as she did to Heather. “It’s the swamp fever, it is. I’ve seen it afore, I have.”
“And did you…do you know of anything that was used that actually helped?”
“Yessum, but if I tells you, and then somethin’ goes wrong…?” Belle said uncertainly.
“Belle, do you trust the comte?”
“Yessum…we all does, but…the other white men?” She shook her head.
“Then I shall say I knew of this remedy from my books and asked you to prepare it. You have naught to fear. Only, what is it?”
“It grows right here at Brabant, it does,” Belle said.
Heather took her hands. “What is it?”
“Tamarind pulp,” Belle said tentatively.
Heather took up the tray Belle had prepared with the sage tea and said softly, “Belle, if her ladyship doesn’t improve…we’ll have to get a hold of this Tamarind pulp, so you think about that, yes?”
“Yessum,” Belle said, but looked worried all the same.
* * * * *
Abovestairs, Louise tossed violently. Now and then whimpering, calling for her dead husband, cursing Robespierre, and then sinking back against her pillow in a wretched sweat.
Maurice’s heart was wrenched and twisted as he wiped down his sister’s face with the cool rosewater, and spoke softly to her in his attempt to soothe her fitfulness.
“Non, ma petite soeur. Non…it is over, it is done. You are here with me. You must get well, be calm and rest. I need you, Louise. Please, for me, be calm,” he said quietly.
He settled back in his chair, feeling strangely exhausted. He put a hand to his face, as he was experiencing a great deal of discomfort. The breeze from the open windows did nothing to alleviate the fact that he felt hotter than usual. What was he going to do? Louise was fitful, and he couldn’t bear it if he lost her.
He stood from his chair in an attempt to walk to the balcony and get some air, but a dizziness took control of his limbs and he fell back onto his chair with a thump.
“Ah, no…” he said out loud as he realized he was dangerously ill. Not now.
Heather opened the door and started inside. The tisane with some crackers on a plate rested on the tray she carried towards Louise’s nightstand.
What met her gaze made her gasp and stop in place. She saw Maurice collapsed and unconscious in the chair beside Louise’s bed.
She called, “Maurice!” and hurried towards him, putting the tray down on the nightstand so she could reach and pull the bellrope. She yanked hard several times before she hurried back and knelt beside the comte. She touched his wrist and noted his pulse was slow, very slow. “Oh, no…Maurice.”
Bunky, who had been talking with one of the household servants, was the first to appear. “Miss Heather. What is it, what has happened?”
“He has the fever. Bunky…we need to get him to his bed,” Heather cried, and then watched the big black man, Roan, and Bunky manage the comte between them.
“Aye, we’ll see to him, get him into bed, and then what do you want us to do?” Bunky asked worriedly.
“I will be there in a moment. Take off his shirt and boots…make him comfortable, and I will be there as soon as I can get this into Louise.”
As she sat beside Louise, she felt a fear clutch her heart, but pushed it aside as she helped Louise lift her head so she could pour some of the lukewarm tisane into her.
Louise choked and cried out, “No…you are killing me. NO.”
“It will do you good,” Heather said. “Now…just a little more, darling, just a little more.”
Louise did manage to get some of the brew down before she fell back against her pillows.
Heather jumped to her feet and ran towards Maurice’s bedroom. Her beloved Louise and Maurice were in trouble, serious trouble, and she had to do something to make them well. She simply had to!
~ Sixteen ~
TWO DAYS DRAGGED BY AND neither Maurice nor Louise showed any signs of improvement. Heather was near exhaustion as she worked between them.
Bunky, ever ready to help, had relieved her so she could get some sleep, but she felt this overwhelming need not to be far from their side, and sleep did not come easy or enough.
It broke her to hear Maurice call her name. She whispered calming words as she wiped his burning forehead with the cool wet rag. She reassured him as best she could. “I am here, Maurice…dear Maurice, I am here.”
“Don’t go,” he said in his delirium. “Heather—stay…s’il te plais.”
Bunky had arrived and heard this. He touched Heather’s shoulder. “Miss…ye know he purchased two suites, one for each of us, on the passenger ship back to Cornwall. He told me and bade me keep the tickets safe when he got back from town. It leaves in three more days.”
“You take your ticket and return home, Bunky, but I cannot leave them like this. I simply cannot,” Heather said.
“No, I go where ye go. That is the long and the short of it,” Bunky said. “And if ye gave me my druthers, I love it here at Brabant. I do.”
She squeezed his hand and returned to wiping Maurice’s face, neck, and chest.
Belle appeared with a tray of crackers and sage tea, which Heather had been forcing down both her patients’ throats to no avail. The cook eyed Bunky, who was forever in her kitchen, always hungry and stealing something to eat. He had quickly become a favorite. “Eh, no change?” Belle asked.
“None, the sage tea is not helping at all, and I am at my wits’ end.” Heather was near to sobbing.
“Mistress…m’instincts tell me to trust ya, so I will. This tisane won’t help. It jest won’t, cuz it be the swamp fever, that is the truth of it. M’master and his sister have to get better. I knows I said there was something that might help the swamp fever…but, I’m well…there are those that will hold me to it if it goes wrong.”
“No, that isn’t so, Belle. I have made you a promise and I keep my promises. Anything we do will be completely on me,” Heather said on a hushed note. “Will you make the potion? Will you make it now?”
“Yessum, as I told ya, we grows it right here a
t Brabant and I have already mashed and brewed it. If ya want…mistress, I can have it ready in jest a few minutes.”
“Of course, oh, Belle, thank you for trusting me. You will never regret it,” Heather said.
Belle smiled broadly as she threw her hands excitedly about and started out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “Jest a minute, mistress, and I’ll be back.”
Heather and Bunky watched the cook as she left and turned to one another. “Do ye think this potion thing will work, Miss Heather?” Bunky asked.
“What I think, Bunky, is that thus far nothing else has worked and so we must give it a try,” Heather answered.
It seemed a very short while and Belle was back with a plate of the dark pulp. Heather watched as Belle put a pot of boiling water on the nearby table and dropped the pulp into it. “We got to let it sit, then we’ll strain it. After it cools, we can make ‘em swallow it every two or three hours. That will break the fever, Lord help us, let it break the fever.”
“Oh, Belle, you are a miracle worker. I know that this will work. I feel it,” Heather cried hopefully.
Some hours later, neither one of Heather’s patients seemed any better. Heather sank into her chair and began to weep. Both Louise and Maurice were so pale and rarely opened their eyes, and then only when they were fitful and tossing.
What was she going to do? If this continued, they could die. They could die. Louise, who she adored as the sister she had never had. Maurice, who was friend…more than friend, not Godwin, but a man she did love.
She left Maurice’s side and went to Louise’s room, where she dismissed the maid to go for something to eat.
Heather sat beside the bed where Louise seemed to be sleeping more peacefully than usual. Heather reapplied the wet rag and whispered, “Oh, darling, my dearest friend in all the world, please, please, Louise, do get well.”
Heather was joyfully startled when at that very moment Louise’s eyes suddenly opened wide and a faint smile flickered over the woman’s face.
Heather cried out, “Louise, oh, Louise…no, no, don’t try to speak.” She picked up the bowl with the Tamarind soup and urged her, “Please, sip some more of this soup…do.” She held Louise up slightly and in position, and saw how weak the woman was as she helped her get down some of the dark potion.
Louise smiled and drifted off to sleep again, but Heather, feeling her friend’s head, was sure the fever had broken. She nearly ran to Maurice’s room and met Bunky in the hall. “Dear Bunky, I sent her ladyship’s maid to go and get something to eat. Call her back. I must attend Maurice. Louise’s fever has broken…she is better.”
“Aw, right glad I am of it. Aye…I’ll go fetch her maid to stay with her and meet ye in his lordship’s bedchamber in a few moments.”
“Yes, Bunky, yes. We need one more miracle now.”
Heather ran to Maurice’s room, but her heart sank to find his head still burning. He seemed no better, no better at all. Why was that? She and Bunky had gotten the Tamarind soup down his throat, he too should be better.
“Please God,” she prayed out loud. “Just one more miracle, please. If you spare him, I will stay, I will marry him…I will put my love for Godwin aside. Please, just don’t let Maurice die.”
Maurice was good and kind. He was a wonderful man, and he would be a superb father to her unborn child. She had been wicked to fall in love and bed a married man. What could have possessed her? This was her punishment. She was being shown very clearly how awful she had been, and how good she could be if only Maurice would not die.
“Maurice, this is my fault,” she told him as she held his hand. “You don’t want to get better. You were in a terrible state of mind and that is all my fault. I did this to you. Please, my darling, hear me. If you get well, if you try harder and you get well, I will stay. I will marry you. I promise. Maurice, hear me, get well and make me your wife. Please, Maurice, hear me.”
His body was ravaged with the swamp fever. He tossed fitfully in his bed as Heather continued to tend to him and whisper her promise.
Bunky had stopped at the doorway and sighed as he approached. “I’m sorry for it, Miss Heather, I overheard ye as I came in. I’m sorry for it. I know better than anyone else what ye have been through and how much ye want to get home, and I know ye think ye are doing the right thing, but I don’t know for certain that it is. I know that I wish we could stay on. I wanted ye to want to stay, but ye are doing it for all the wrong reasons, and that is because ye are a good woman, not because ye are wicked. I am sorry for it all and I make ye a promise that I will stand by ye always. If ye go, so do I…and if ye stay, though I don’t think it is right for ye to do so, I stay. That is the way of it.”
“Thank you, Bunky,” Heather said after a long moment. “Now help me hold his head up so I can get more of the potion down his throat.”
Heather spent the night tending to Maurice and repeating her promise to him, whispering in his ear, even telling him that she loved him.
Bunky stayed with him whenever she left the room to look in on Louise, who slept peacefully.
Bunky refused to leave Heather to catch some sleep and helped her tend to the comte as she forced the Tamarind down his throat.
During the small hours, Heather fell asleep in her chair, Bunky in his, until the morning sun’s rays filtered through the palms and into the room.
Heather woke with a start and sighed to see Bunky rubbing his eyes in the chair by the window. “Dear Bunky. Go on, get washed up and have a bite to eat below.”
“Aye, but what of ye, miss? I haven’t seen ye eat proper in days,” he answered worriedly.
“Yes, yes, if you like, you may bring me some tea and a pasty. I am hungry,” she said absently, and watched him depart.
Heather’s face went into her hands and then she drew a long breath before she approached Maurice and applied rosewater to his forehead and said, “Maurice, hear me, please, come back to me, be my husband…Maurice? I will marry you. I will marry you.”
He stirred and she cried out, “Maurice, darling…Maurice.” She realized then that his forehead was no longer burning and whispered, “You heard me, darling…you heard me.”
He choked as he tried to speak, his eyelids fluttered open and he finally got the words out, “Will…you?”
Heather dropped to his chest and sobbed. “Oh, thank God, thank God. Yes, yes, I will marry you, sweet man. All you need to do is get well. Concentrate on getting well.”
He smiled and fell asleep.
Bunky returned with a tray and suddenly Heather turned to him joyfully. “Bunky, his fever has broken. He heard me. We are staying.”
“Aye then, Miss Heather,” Bunky said, but Heather saw the doubt in his eyes.
She took the tray from him and set it down to give him a hug. “My dear friend, Bunky, don’t look so glum. I shall do very nicely.”
“I think ye are sacrificing one life for another, and I’m not certain ye will ever get over it,” he said, and shook his head. “I’m sorry for it, miss…bless ye, I am sorry for it.”
* * * * *
Some hours later, washed, refreshed, and fed, Heather returned to Maurice’s suite and found him comfortably resting, but awake.
Bunky had brought him some gruel, but he had not yet touched it.
She pulled a chair close and nodded to Bunky. “Go and get some much deserved rest, Bunky dear.”
He grinned. “Aye…but first I think I’ll get some of Belle’s delicious bread and ham.”
Heather watched him go and returned her attention to Maurice, who had reached for and taken her hand. His grip was weak, and she knew he had quite a few more days to full recovery.
“Will you eat the gruel now, sir?” She dimpled at him.
“Oui…I will eat the gruel,” he answered, and allowed her to place a small spoonful in his mouth.
“Is it most horrid?” she asked on a tease.
“Non, not so very. Belle has laced it with honey,” he said, and gav
e her a weak smile.
She gave him another spoonful and he allowed it, but said before she could raise the spoon to his mouth again, “My Heather…I was trapped in a dream, an awful dream.”
“It is over,” she said.
“It will be over…but let me tell you of it. We were at the French court. You were there—naked with only jewels around your neck and jeweled slippers on your feet. I wanted to shield you from the dirty glances you were getting. You would not look at me. You would not allow me to approach, and then all at once, I heard your voice calling and I was able to cover you with my coat and hold you close. I heard you, Heather. Through it all, I heard you say you will marry me. I heard you say you love me. Is it true?”
Heather took his hands to her face and silently cried. She was so thankful that he had heard her and come through the fever. She was so thankful he was well. It was all she could think about in that moment. “Yes, Maurice. When I thought I could lose you to the swamp fever, I realized…I love you, and my place is here with you.” It was, she told herself, a half-truth.
She would marry Maurice de Brabant and give him all she had to give. She wanted him, she needed him, and she even loved him. Passionate love? No, but…perhaps one day Godwin would be a youthful memory and Maurice would be her passion. She could only hope.
Cornwall was an uncertain future and certainly with Sara lurking to do her worst, not the place to expose her child. Sara had finally won. Sara, who would be there in the wings, a threat to her child and even to Godwin, had won the battle.
Heather sighed, but she was not unhappy. She would stay and make Maurice’s life full, and she would make a life here on this beautiful island. He would be husband to her and father to her unborn child. Louise was right, this was the only way—the decent way to go forward.
Thus, it was that Heather made her fateful decision that day and kept her promise to God. In so doing, a portion of Heather Martin was put to rest, perhaps never to be recalled.