The salt has crystallised, frosting the scabs and grizzling the hair on his chest. His hands float on the surface of the water as if he is resting them on the arms of a chair. His knees and feet almost break the surface. It is as the doctor described. The salt has made the water so thick it supports his body as if he were a weightless sprite, floating in the air, the pressure on his scabs and pocks relieved.
She climbs down and goes into the vestibule where she pours herself a large glass of water and drains it before rinsing her hands in the ewer. She loosens her bodice and runs a dampened cloth over her skin, leaving the air to dry and cool her. Finally she makes her way over to the chaise longue. Before she lies down she does one other thing the doctor has asked her to do. She kneels and prays.
But she cannot rest. It is impossible to ignore the helpless presence of Mordiford on the other side of the room, floating in the waters of his own personal River Styx, his helplessness as strong as a rock. She finds herself listening to his silences as one would a new-born baby whose rhythmic tides of sleeping and waking measure the night.
Sometimes she imagines she is about to slumber, then a tiny sound propels her back to the surface, sending her wearily to check her sleeping charge. Every time she mounts the bench, she expects to find Mordiford cold and stiff with death. Barely breathing herself, she watches until she sees the water level on his chest ebb as he inhales, inch back up as he exhales.
The heat becomes more and more oppressive, even the water in the pitcher, which she drinks frequently to slake her thirst, is now an unpleasant tepid. When the candles burn low she thinks that dawn cannot be far away. The notion increases her restlessness. She crosses to the window by the bed and peers out. All she can see is blackness, no moon, no stars, no dawn. She wants to go to the storeroom. The windows there look out towards the mountains.
The hammock hangs like a demonic fruit, huge and glistening in the pool of light from the fire, vapour rising up with the smoke from the candles. It emanates a strange, supernatural power, pulling her back, forcing her to look even as she slips behind the tapestry and makes her way to the door of the storeroom.
The long, low room is deliciously cool. She navigates between the ghostly shapes of furniture, her skin tingling as if one of the shapes may at any moment move as she passes. She reaches the window, struggles with the latch, finally freeing it and throwing the casement open.
A light frost pricks out the geometric patterns of the lawns and parterres below. She draws in a deep breath of cold air, and scans the horizon. There is no sign of dawn. Wearily she turns away from the window. Her eyes are well adapted to the low levels of light and she recognises the shape of a deep sofa beneath the dustsheets. She peels back the covering and feels the bounce of the springs with her hands. Overwhelmed with fatigue, she thinks it cannot hurt to sit for a minute in the cool air flowing down from the window and rest her eyes to rejuvenate her spirits for the last few hours of her vigil.
Chapter 19
Elen wakes with a start. She feels chilled and damp, her neck stiff where her head has been bent at an odd angle on the upholstered arm of the sofa. How long has she been asleep? She rises unsteadily to her feet, pulling the laces of her corset tight again, feeling her chemise cold against her skin. As she closes the window she realises the dove-grey light of dawn has reached the gardens below. She runs across to the door, struggles down the narrow passageway between the back of the hanging and the wall and bursts into the vestibule.
She stops. Someone is in the room beyond. The ropes of the hammock are creaking and straining. It is the doctor, she is sure of it, and he is battling to release Mordiford on his own. He has returned early in the morning, as he promised, and yet again he has found her missing.
Suppose Mordiford has died while she slept in the storeroom? Suppose he has woken and slipped under the brine, too weak to care if he drowned? She screws her face up, momentarily wondering if there is any way she can flee and avoid the doctor’s wrath, but she knows she cannot. She has to face him.
She steps into the room. The doctor is not there. Instead, she sees the hammock swinging and tossing, the ropes groaning under the strain. A great wave of brine sloshes onto the floor as it tips to one side. Another flops out on the other side as it swings, sousing the fire, which spits and roars in protest, sending huge clouds of steam into the room. She dashes over to still the crazy pendulum motion of the canvas, trying to catch it as it comes towards her. It strikes her with its full weight, winding her and pushing her backwards until her heel catches and down she goes. As it swings over her head and away again, the shape of a hand appears, pressed on the oilcloth, and further down, a foot bracing against the fabric. The hammock shudders and jolts. A pair of white legs appear, twisting and kicking to break free of the taut lip of cloth.
She clambers to her feet and, terrified that Mordiford is drowning, pulls down the edge of the canvas, soaking her clothes with another flood of brine. She reaches in and tries to grasp Mordiford’s shoulders, but his skin is slippery and she cannot get a purchase. He splashes and struggles in a deadly silence. She presses on the side of the hammock with all her might, desperately trying to empty it, not caring if the water cascades between the floorboards to the rooms below.
But she cannot do it. Every time she presses the edge, the hammock swings away. Her fingernails, softened by the water, bend back on the rough oilcloth. With a cry she nearly snatches her hands away, but Mordiford’s struggles are weakening. With a strength born of desperation, she pulls her body up over the lip of the hammock. Her feet leave the ground as the canvas swings towards the fireplace.
Elen grasps Mordiford by the head and, grunting with the effort, pulls and pulls. The swinging giddies her. With fumbling hands, she turns his face to the surface and he coughs and chokes, inhaling a mouthful of brine. He clutches at her hands as if he thinks she means to throttle him but she clings to his neck with all her might.
On the next back-swing of the hammock she grips his head to her breast and holds tight. When her toes touch the ground, she throws herself backwards, plummeting to the floor, bringing him, slithering and twisting, after her. They land in a great tidal wave of water. Her head hits the boards, the crack loud and jarring in her skull. She lies flat on her back, stunned, her arms flung out from the force of the fall. Mordiford lies across her, his head motionless in her sodden lap. The lake of brine flows away from them and across the room, blackening the floor, slinking down between the gaps in the wooden boards.
Elen pushes Mordiford’s head up, stares into his face. Does he breathe? She slaps the flat of her hand across his cheek. He gives a great snort and pulls his head free, his eyes still closed and blind, his lashes rimed with salt.
Above the hissing from the drenched embers of the fire she hears voices, a shout from far away, down in the minstrels’ gallery. Footsteps pound up the spiral stairs, the door latch releases with a clunk, and the door is flung open with a smash.
* * *
Cold air washes over her, chilling her wet clothes. The doctor’s voice says, ‘God’s blood, what in the name of all Creation?’
Then Ned’s voice and the doctor saying, ‘Get back down the stairs, man. You are not safe up here. I will deal with this. Sort it out below as best you can before the earl gets wind of it.’
The doctor’s feet pass her, heading for the bed. She pushes herself up onto her elbows as he snatches at the bedding.
‘Get up, Miss Griffiths,’ he shouts over his shoulder. ‘Take this sheeting and catch some of the flood. It pours through the ceiling below.’
The doctor flings the bedding down beside her. He continues to tug a blanket free and tosses it over Mordiford, grasping him by the shoulders and easing him up.
She manages to pull her legs free and get to her feet, lifting her waterlogged dress with her hands. The doctor has Mordiford on all fours, his head hanging down, his coarse hair, spangled white with salt crystals, falling like a curtain over his face. He looks for all the
world like Nebuchadnezzar, mad and prowling the wilderness. The doctor wraps the blanket underneath him and sits him back on his heels where he sways, threatening to tumble down again.
‘I told you to wait,’ the doctor says to her, his mouth tight with fury. ‘What on earth put it into your head to do this without me?’
‘He woke and was struggling, sir. He was trapped, drowning.’
The doctor surveys the wreckage of the room, shaking his head. She gathers up the sheeting he has thrown down and begins to push it across the wet floor.
‘No, leave that,’ the doctor says, his voice heavy with resignation. ‘The water has drained away through to the gallery below. The damage is done. Help me here. We must get him over to the bed and dried before he chills.’
Elen does as she is asked. Floppy as a rag doll, Mordiford lays his arm across her shoulders. She feels her body compress under his weight. They navigate him across the damp floorboards to the bed.
‘There, my lord,’ the doctor says. ‘A little stronger, I would say.’
‘Am I?’ he says weakly. ‘I was afraid you had drowned me.’
‘We did not – but now we must dry you,’ the doctor says. ‘And see how your pocks have fared.’ The doctor patiently slides the blanket off Mordiford’s shoulders and presses him back onto the pillows, pulling the cover up to his waist as he does so.
‘My legs are all wet,’ Mordiford groans.
‘Miss Griffiths, I brought a quantity of towels from the private side with me.’ The doctor nods over his shoulder towards the door. ‘I dropped them in my haste. Be kind enough to fetch them for me, would you?’
Elen gathers up the towels. They are made of the softest linen, thick and the colour of cream, a fabric far too beautiful to use to dry oneself. She holds them to her cheek as she walks over to the bed, smelling lavender on the cloth.
The doctor has his back to her as he works. She feels a sense of abandonment, as if, despite everything she has done for Mordiford, she has been returned to her former station and is no more important than Joan or the pot boy.
‘Thank you, Miss Griffiths,’ the doctor says, shaking one of the towels out with a flourish. ‘Here, take a towel. Dry his hands and arms – but carefully.’
Mordiford tries to shy away from her, giving her a petulant flash of his eyes. She stares back at him and grasps him firmly by the wrist. He pushes his bottom lip out, glaring back at her but she holds her ground until he sniffs and turns away.
In the morning light coming from the little window, she can see that the water has bleached and puckered his skin but as she presses the linen onto him, she notices that the redness around the pocks has gone.
‘Well, my lord,’ the doctor says as he works. ‘Your skin is looking a deal better. How do you feel?’
‘Everything feels gritty. I am abominably uncomfortable.’
‘That is merely the salt crystallising. Once you are dry, Miss Griffiths can fetch you a fresh bed shirt and change the sheeting. You will be comfortable again.’
‘And I am fiendishly thirsty. My throat aches from it.’
‘Miss Griffiths, a draught of small beer if you would be so kind.’
Elen goes into the vestibule, returns with the jug. She fills a cup and holds it to Mordiford’s lips but he reaches out and takes if from her, gulping at the liquid. He pushes it back at her, saying, ‘Give me more.’ He drinks again, holds the cup out again. ‘More,’ he says. ‘That hardly touched my thirst.’ He goes on gulping until she pours the dregs from the jug.
‘That is the last of the beer, sir,’ she says.
‘Last of the beer?’ Mordiford says. ‘You mean to madden me.’
‘Hurry down to the gallery, Miss Griffiths,’ the doctor says. ‘Ned and Joan were clearing up the mess. Send one of them quickly to fetch more beer. Viscount Mordiford is parched.’
She finds Joan on her hands and knees in the minstrels’ gallery, blotting the floor with a dish clout. Ned is nowhere to be seen.
‘Joan,’ she says, ‘please could you go down to the undercroft and ask the steward to send up some flagons of small beer?’ Joan continues blotting the floor. ‘Joan, did you hear me?’
Joan throws the clout down with a wet slap and climbs to her feet. The early morning sun falls on her face, throwing her scars into relief. Many have silvered over time, but the skin across her cheeks ripples with pits and troughs, thickening up one side of her nose, pulling her eyebrow down onto the lid below.
Had the maid’s smallpox been more severe than Mordiford’s? Or had the illness damaged her face so savagely because it struck when her skin was new born? Elen feels a flash of sympathy towards the poor girl and is about to give her a word of kindness when the maid’s eye slides up, taking in Elen’s soaked and filthy clothes and a contemptuous smile spreads across her face.
‘Joan, did you hear me?’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘I think the doctor needs the beer now, if you would be so kind.’
‘Right away, miss,’ she says and saunters off, her feet dragging on each step like an insolent child.
When she opens the door at the far end, Elen sees her halt, drop her head bashfully and swing her body back and forth. Ned comes out carrying a bucket and mop. He says something to Joan, which Elen cannot hear, and the maid snorts and laughs, rolling herself round the door and disappearing. Ned looks up and sees Elen.
‘Hello there,’ he calls, hurrying along the gallery, the bucket clanking in his hand. He cocks his head back towards the service stairs and says, ‘That Joan. She’s a bit shook on me, poor old thing. Keeps her useful.’
‘Useful?’
‘You know, fetching and carrying and the like.’ He smiles jauntily at her then pops his eyes and says, ‘Tell me you don’t think I’ve put those four quarters on the spit, do you?’
‘No, Ned. I do not,’ she says although she wants to laugh at his cruel metaphor. He drops his bucket and leans the mop against the railings, staring up at the ceiling. ‘So, the doctor’s scheme was not the sure card he’d been hoping for?’
‘We cannot know yet.’
‘Is that so? I thought flooding the gallery was a fairly good indication that the dart was a poor one.’
‘The scheme with the hammock worked very well but this morning the viscount became so agitated that he brought the whole thing down.’
‘I imagine you’ve had quite a night of it.’
‘I have.’
‘And your dress.’ He reaches out and takes a pinch of fabric. ‘You’re soaked. Have you nothing to change into?’
‘I have a clean chemise but in my haste, this is the only dress I brought.’
‘Then I shall send a message to the dairy and ask one of your sisters to bring across another.’
‘Thank you, Ned.’ She smiles at him. It is so good to see his face after her interminable night. Reluctantly she says, ‘I had better get back to the patient or I’ll be in a bad loaf with the doctor again.’
‘And I had better clear up this mess before the earl thunders up here.’
* * *
The doctor is busy with Mordiford and does not turn when Elen enters the sickroom. She has a strange feeling of anticlimax, similar to the way she felt at the end of harvest when the trampers and hop pickers moved on and there was little to look forward to until Christmas.
She wonders how long this flatness of spirit will last, if it will lift after she has slept. She presses her hands on the damp fabric of her dress. She will have to make do with it for the present.
With a sigh she kneels down in the grate and begins raking out the soaked ash. She rebuilds the fire and relights it, the crackle and flash of the flames cheering her, warming the damp air.
‘Miss Griffiths,’ the doctor says, ‘I wonder if I could trouble you to fetch that fresh bed shirt?’
She takes one from the linen press and begins the task of taking down the oilcloth. As she works, she smiles to herself. She can hear Mordiford squabbling with th
e doctor as he tries to get him into the shirt. Eventually the doctor calls out, ‘Miss Griffiths, a hand, please. If you could help me move the viscount over to the chaise longue, you can turn the palliasse and put fresh linen on the bed.’
‘Leave me where I am,’ Mordiford says.
‘No, my lord. The bedding is damp and you were complaining earlier that the salt had made the linen gritty.’
‘Why have you got to haul me across the room again? Am I not suffering enough?’
‘How about the chair, my lord?’ Elen says. She feels a strong urge to laugh even though she knows that would appal the doctor and enrage the viscount. She thinks it may be relief that makes her feel so light-hearted. She welcomes Mordiford’s return to petulance. It is so much better to have him behaving badly than lifeless and close to death. ‘I can bring it over to the bed, then you won’t have to walk too far.’
‘And have these pocks pressing into the hard wood. Are you quite off your hooks?’ She has to turn away for she almost laughs out loud.
‘Choose one or the other,’ the doctor says irritably. ‘Either way, I need you out of that bed. The sooner you do it, the sooner you will be back and able to rest again.’
‘Rest? You think I can rest after the torment you have put me through? I fear if I sleep you will souse me in brine again.’
‘Viscount Mordiford, I beg you. Find a modicum of pluck,’ the doctor says.
‘Or perhaps you plan to pickle me in vinegar tonight.’
Elen grips the inside of her cheek between her teeth. She finally gets herself under control for long enough to look at the doctor who catches her eye and raises an eyebrow.
‘I am sure you will have a more comfortable sleep tonight,’ he says, ‘if you allow Miss Griffiths to change your bedding.’
‘I need more beer.’
‘Not until you have left that bed and allowed Miss Griffiths to do her work.’
Mordiford grudgingly permits Elen to help him over to the chaise longue from where he continues to harangue them while she strips the bed, turns the mattress and covers it with fresh linen.
The Summer Fields Page 11