by Jane Feather
Sarah's fingers were once again deft and efficient as they finished unbuttoning Ariel's robe. Jenny removed the camphor-soaked cloths and Sarah unscrewed the lid of an alabaster pot and began to anoint Ariel's chest with an ointment that filled the chamber with fumes so strong that Simon's eyes began to water.
Recognizing that he'd only be in the way if he hovered by the bed, he sat down by the still-blazing fire. The dogs came to him immediately and sat at his feet, their heads resting on his knees. Simon watched the proceedings around the bed, struck by the sure-handed efficiency of the two women as they tended to Ariel. Once, Sarah glanced at him over her shoulder, and again he was shivered by that strange sense of knowledge. It was as if she knew him in ways that he didn't know himself. Perhaps she was a witch woman, he thought uneasily. One who had the "sight."
Doris came in with a jug of steaming hot water and a flat skillet. She placed the copper jug on the bedside table and then set the skillet on a trivet over the fire. Simon shifted his knees sideways so that he wouldn't hinder her work, and the girl blushed and pushed the dogs aside with rather more bustle than was strictly necessary.
She straightened and smoothed out her apron. "Will that be all, Mistress Sarah?"
"For the moment," Jenny responded, reaching into the basket again, taking out a handful of coltsfoot. "If you'll excuse me, my lord…" She reached across Simon's lap to throw the leaves into the skillet.
Simon grabbed his cane and stood up. He limped over to the window, out of harm's way, and perched on the cushioned seat beneath. He was unaware of Sarah's covert glance as he moved awkwardly to his new site, and by the time he was seated again, she had returned her attention to the cough medicine she was mixing with the hot water in the copper jug.
As the leaves heated in the skillet, the room filled with powerful fumes that smelled like incense, that pierced Simon's lungs with a clear coldness as he breathed it in. "It'll help Ariel to breathe cleanly," Jenny explained, hearing his slight gasp of surprise. "Perhaps you would prefer to go downstairs, sir."
Simon shook his head before he remembered that the woman couldn't see the gesture, but Sarah was looking directly at him with a thin eyebrow lifted, a question in her steady gaze.
"I am no nurse," he said, "but if you give me clear instructions, I'm certain I can manage."
Sarah nodded and turned back to Ariel, who was now propped high on pillows, the hectic flush still startling against her pale cheeks, her eyelids heavy and swollen, but to Simon's ear it seemed that already she was breathing more freely.
Ariel swallowed the hot tea of slippery elm and coltsfoot that Sarah poured from the jug, and then lay back, closing her eyes. "There's no need for you to stay longer, Sarah. You should never have come in the first place."
"You know quite well you can't prevent Mother from doing what she wants," Jenny said with a slight laugh. She came back to the bed and laid a hand on Ariel's forehead. "If you can sleep, Ariel, I think we might be out of the woods."
Ariel smiled somewhat feebly. "Let's hope so. It's the last time I'll be taking a swim in the Ouse in the middle of winter." —
"You never spoke a truer word," Simon declared, rising from the window seat and joining the others at the bed. Ariel still looked very ill to him, but her voice was less croaky and she hadn't been racked with one of those violent coughing spasms for five minutes or so.
"Sarah, there's no need for you stay longer," Ariel repeated with a mixture of pleading and urgency. "I can look after myself now, and I know you want to get home."
"If you explain what I need to do, I can manage to care for Ariel now." Simon hoped his hesitation didn't sound in his voice. It clearly mattered to Ariel that her friends shouldn't remain in the castle any longer than necessary, and it seemed to him that it was equally important she didn't get agitated. "And I'm sure Doris will help."
Sarah gave him another of her unnerving glances, then she touched Jenny's arm, drawing her away from the bed, her eyes bidding Simon to follow.
"Ariel needs to sleep," Jenny said in an undertone, taking the smoked-glass vial from her mother's hand as Sarah held it out. "But I doubt she'll take the laudanum. She's not the best patient," she added with a smile.
"Is the laudanum necessary?" Simon directed his question to Sarah, who responded with a decisive nod.
"Then Ariel will take it," he said evenly, glancing down at the small bottle he now held in his hand.
The older woman's eyes rested on his face for a minute, again with that intense and questing gaze. Slowly she raised a hand to Simon's face. As slowly, she touched the scar, tracing its jagged length with a fingertip.
Simon stood very still; he couldn't have moved away had he wished to. There was something so delicate yet so searching about a touch that was almost a caress. And the deep blue eyes looked into his and seemed to know him right through to his innermost core. But there was nothing sinister, nothing witchlike about the woman, only gentleness, and now he found there was something oddly comforting about that strange knowledge behind her eyes.
Jenny was standing very still. She looked puzzled. She couldn't see what her mother was doing, but she sensed the tension in the small space that enclosed the three of them, sensed the strangeness of her mother's taut vibrancy. Then Ariel coughed, a dry rasping sound behind them, and Sarah's hand fell from Simon's cheek. She moved away from him, gathering up her cloak, swinging it around her shoulders as she went back to the bed.
Jenny bent to replenish the leaves in the skillet on the trivet. "If you can keep these fresh, Lord Hawkesmoor, it will help, and you should rub the ointment onto Ariel's chest every three hours. And give her the tea for the cough whenever she wants it. There are also some lozenges she can suck to help soothe her throat and calm the cough. But if you can persuade her to drink the laudanum, she should sleep for six hours or so."
"Rest assured, I will persuade her," he said. His face and most particularly the scar still seemed to tingle with the lingering memory of Sarah's touch.
Jenny gave him a quick smile and returned to the bed, picking up her own cloak as she did so. She moved unerringly around the chamber, Simon noticed. Presumably she had been there before and had committed its contours and furniture to memory.
"We'll leave you now, Ariel." She bent to kiss the patient. "Be good and take your medicine and I'll ask Edgar to bring me back in the morning to see how you are."
Ariel's smile was rather feeble but it was definitely a smile. "I feel better already. Thank you both for coming, but I wish Sarah hadn't come."
"Your husband insisted," Jenny whispered against her ear. "According to Edgar."
Ariel flushed. "He had no right to do that."
Jenny shrugged. "Maybe not. But you know that no one could make Mother do something she really didn't wish to."
That, Ariel reflected, was certainly true. She glanced up into the older woman's thin face and read, as always, the hardness of purpose beneath the lines of suffering. "Thank you, Sarah," she murmured, returning the woman's kiss.
After the two women left, Simon came over to the bed, carrying the vial of laudanum and a glass.
"If that's what I think it is, you may save yourself the trouble," Ariel rasped, pulling the covers up to her chin and regarding him a touch belligerently. "I don't take laudanum, ever."
"There's a first time for everything," Simon responded, sitting on the bed beside her, holding flask and glass loosely between his hands. "Sarah said it was necessary for you to sleep, so sleep you will, my sweet."
"I wish to sleep and I will do so in my own good time," Ariel declared. "When my body's ready of its own accord."
"I don't think you should talk anymore." Simon continued to maintain his casual air. "Your voice is becoming fainter with every word." Carefully he unscrewed the top of the vial and poured a measure of laudanum into the glass.
"No! I won't take it," Ariel protested, ignoring the truth of his last comment.
"Why not?"
"Because
it'll make me go to sleep!"
"I believe that's the idea," he said dryly.
"Yes, but it's a horrible, heavy sleep that I can't control. It's not like the belladonna draught I made for you. It's much much stronger and lasts for hours and I can't let myself sleep like that. I need to-" The rest was lost in a violent spasm of coughing so bad that it seemed as if all the women's ministrations had been for nothing.
Simon set the glass on the bedside table and lifted her up from the pillows, holding her against him, rubbing her back, until the convulsions finally ceased. "Here." He poured elm tea into the cup. She took it eagerly, then fell back on the pillows again.
"If Sarah had believed the belladonna to be sufficient, she would have prescribed it," he said. "But she prescribed the laudanum and it's as clear as day how much you need it." He proffered the glass.
Ariel pushed his hand away with a petulant gesture. "I won't," she said crossly. "I won't take it."
"I would never have believed such a child lurked behind that controlled exterior," Simon remarked. "And what a disagreeable child it is." He caught her chin, turning her averted face back toward him. "And if the disagreeable child doesn't wish to be treated like one, she'll know what's good for her and take the sleeping draught without any more silly fuss."
"You don't understand…"
"Maybe not, and you may help me to understand once you've taken your medicine." He slipped an arm beneath her neck and raised her head. "This could become ugly, my love. But one way or another, you will drink the sleeping draught."
Ariel looked into his eyes and read the truth therein. "Promise you won't leave me, then," she said. "While I'm asleep. While I can't look after myself, you'll stay."
He was profoundly moved by this plea. No wonder she slept so lightly, if she was always afraid of what might happen around her if she wasn't constantly alert.
"I will not leave this chamber," he promised. "Except, perhaps, to fetch something from my own chamber across the hall. Now, drink it down."
Ariel shuddered but gave up the fight. She would trust him to watch her back as she had watched his. She opened her mouth as he held the glass to her lips, and drained it with a grimace of distaste.
"That's my girl," he said softly, bending to kiss her. "Snuggle down and sleep. I'll be here."
"The dogs will need to go out," she murmured, slipping down the pillows. "Edgar will take them. They mustn't be left to roam."
"They won't be." He tucked the covers under the mattress. "Are you warm enough, or should the hot bricks be replaced?"
Ariel shook her head. "No, I'm too warm now." She closed her eyes.
Simon stood watching her for a minute, a soft smile curving his lips, then he returned to the seat beside the fire, inhaling the strong herbal fumes from the skillet. The dogs settled at his feet with a heavy sigh, and he leaned back in the rocker, closing his own eyes, listening to Ariel's regular breathing. He raised a hand and touched his scar, tracing the path of Sarah's fingers. It had been an extraordinary thing for the woman to do, and yet it had felt curiously natural, strangely right. As if in some way she had the right to touch him with an intimacy that not even Helene had ventured.
Not Geoffrey's son. Owen's son. Oh, he had all the familiar Hawkesmoor features, but he had those others too. Owen's quirky smile and the long earlobes and the large, prominent knuckles. And even if he hadn't had those features, she would have known. She would have known the minute she laid eyes on him.
Sarah touched her breasts, wizened and shriveled beneath her cloak and gown. When her babies had suckled, her breasts had been round and full and the babes' little milky mouths had sucked and nuzzled, their little faces pressed against the pillowy flesh. She could remember even now the astonishingly strong tugs on her nipples, the tiny curled fists pushing against her body, kneading the rich, rounded breast as the gush of milk spurted into their busy mouths. She had always had plenty of milk, more than enough for the child at her breast. She remembered the sudden painful rush of milk into her breasts at the infant's first hungry cry on waking. It would leak from her nipples, dripping into the opened mouth even before the baby had begun to suck.
And the boy, her son, her firstborn, had been such a greedy infant and so serious about his feeding. His little brow furrowed as he suckled, his little mouth pursed, his fat little fists pushed into the nurturing globes of her flesh.
How she had loved him. How she had kissed every crease of his chubby body, every little pink toe and finger. She remembered the delicious smell of his neck, the warm, milky vanilla scent that had filled her with a liquid joy.
Sarah closed her eyes as the gig rattled over the frozen mud-ridged lane. The child had slept beside her, curled against her, and she had opened her shift and suckled him in the night when he awoke and nuzzled with his little peeping cries. He would fall asleep at her breast, the tiny milky mouth slipping from her nipple, the blue-veined lids closing over his bright blue eyes.
She had carried him with her everywhere, fashioning a sling in which he lay against her breast, soothed to sleep with her movements. And later, when he slept less, he would lie looking up, his finger pointing to what he saw, his burbling chatter filled with excitement. Such a happy child he'd been. Cooing and smiling, still as connected to her body in infancy as he had been in the womb.
Perhaps, if Owen had lived to share the joy of their child, she would have rationed her attention and her love, parceled it out between them, but in the absence of the father, the child had absorbed everything she had to give with each suckling pull at her breast.
The bracelet had fascinated him, and when he grew strong enough to sit up alone and crawl across the floor with a rapidity that had astonished his mother, he would demand it with imperious babble and pointing finger. When she gave it to him, he would sit for hours playing with it, putting the charm into his mouth, cutting his teeth on the hard shiny emerald of the little swan.
When the lords of Ravenspeare came for her, he had been toddling, crowing with delight as he tottered on his chubby little legs, running unsteadily, arms flailing like windmills, into his mother's welcoming embrace.
It had been high summer when they'd come. She'd heard the hooves on the gravel sweep before the house. She had looked out of the nursery window and seen the four of them below, hard-faced beneath the plumed hats of the Cavalier. She'd known they would come, known from the moment her husband's death had left her unprotected in the house just ten miles across the fens from Ravenspeare Castle. But as the months had passed and they had not come, she had begun to lose her fear, to think that perhaps she was safe. But of course she should have known that the Ravenspeares never let an insult go unavenged.
She'd gone down to them, and even now, sitting in the gig beside Edgar and Jenny, Sarah could remember the weakness in her legs as they had carried her down the staircase to the hall where the men stood in their leather riding coats and britches, tapping their shiny boots with their whips, their gray eyes cold and deadly beneath the curling fall of their wigs.
They had said her presence was required in Ely at the magistrates' court to bear witness to a land dispute arising from the havoc of the past civil war. It was a common enough summons in the years following Charles II's restoration with the consequent storm of claims and counterclaims between dispossessed parliamentarians and the newly restored royalists. Her household staff thought nothing of the summons, and since the penalty of refusal was automatic loss by default of the disputed land, it didn't occur to them that she would not cooperate.
And indeed she had had no choice. In soft voices they had threatened her son, even as the earl of Ravenspeare's small dagger pressed against her ribs as he stood so close to her in the hall, a neighborly smile twisting his thin mouth, his voice dripping honeyed concern and vows of friendship for all to hear.
They took her to an inn, a secluded lodging frequented only by bargemen who came up the narrow drainage cut from the river to drink and carouse. Bargemen who, like most Fen
men, showed no interest in the affairs of others and, even if they did, knew how to keep a still tongue in their heads.
For four days the men of Ravenspeare had forced their prisoner to bear witness in their own particular fashion. They took turns with her and only when she was a mute, bleeding, befouled wreck had they left her. Even now she could still hear their laughter on the stairs while she huddled in the corner of the attic chamber, bruised, filthy, her own blood seeping from her, mingling with the vileness that they had spilled inside her…
" 'Ere we are, then, Mistress Sarah… Mistress Sarah…" Edgar touched her arm.
"Mother?"
The worry in Jenny's voice pierced Sarah's waking nightmare. She jerked on the bench as if she'd been kicked into awareness, just as they had kicked her into consciousness when they had wanted her again… wanted to hear her weep and plead as they plowed into her battered body…
"Mother, we're home. What is it? Are you ill?"
Sarah stumbled down from the gig. Edgar, waiting with upraised hand to help her, caught her as she half fell from the step.
"Eh, Miss Jenny, I think yer mam's taken bad," he said with concern. "I'll 'elp 'er inside."
Jenny followed them into the cottage. She touched her mother, who stood shivering beside the banked fire. She touched Sarah's face, eyes, with the tips of her fingers. "Oh, what is it? What's happened?" she whispered.
Abruptly, Sarah shook her head, reached up her hands to clasp Jenny's wrists in a reassuringly firm grip. She forced a smile at Edgar, who stood in the doorway with a worried frown on his normally phlegmatic countenance.
"I'll be off, then?" he said, a hesitant question in his voice. Sarah nodded and loosed Jenny's hold. She came over to Edgar and took his hands in a warm clasp that spoke as loudly as any words could have done. Then she kissed him lightly on the cheek. The man blushed and backed out of the cottage. "I'll be back to fetch Miss Jenny in the mornin', then."