by Lorin Grace
The little girl peeked around the doorframe. “Samuel?”
Samuel didn’t need to see more tears or to be asked twice.
In two strides, he entered Lucy’s little room. Frost coated the partially curtained window panes, casting misshapen shadows that reached out like fingers to strangle what little life was left in the room.
Lucy lay in her work dress on the narrow bed with one boot still on. Her unbound hair framed her pale face. Her tangled clothes and quilt told the story of a restless night. She moaned and attempted to move in her sleep.
She lived. Samuel’s heart began to beat once again. He pulled back the curtain to illuminate the room, and the shadows retreated into the corners.
A cloth lay askew on Lucy’s forehead, evidence of the five-year-old’s nursing skills. He was impressed. She must have observed Lucy doing the same with the other members of the household.
“How long has Lucy been ill?”
Sarah wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Lucy t-tucked me in l-last night. I try-tried to w-wake her up, but she won’t w-wake up. She is h-hot just l-like Ben.”
Kneeling next to the bed, Samuel removed the cloth from Lucy’s forehead and replaced it with his hand. Her forehead was hotter than a full warming pan in January. “Did you put this on her head?” he asked, the limp cloth now hanging from his hand.
The little girl nodded.
“What a good nurse you are.” Samuel stood and patted her awkwardly on the head, laying the cloth over his shoulder.
“I helped Lucy.” A smile grew on her face.
“Yes, bright eyes, you helped Lucy. Can you help some more?” Like tell me your name, ride for the doctor, or be years older so I don’t need to worry about leaving you here? While he wished for the impossible, there were things she could do to help. She could fetch water and sit with her older sister while he attended to other matters. Her ability in finding her breakfast and in trying to cool Lucy’s fever testified that this little Miss Marden who stood before him was smart. Just like Lucy.
He shivered. Warming up the house needed to come first, for everyone’s sake. He picked up a quilt from the floor where it lay in a heap. “Help me get Lucy under this quilt, and then I will start the fire.”
“But Lucy is still dressed.”
Samuel laid the quilt at the end of the bed and looked at Lucy’s clothing. Surely the set of stays in her work dress made breathing difficult. He hoped her sister could help remove them. He had helped undress unconscious women once or twice as an apprentice, but this was Lucy. He could feel the slap he would receive if he even touched her bodice. Removing the garment could mean a rolling pin to the head. But this was necessary. This was professional, not personal.
“She can’t go to bed in her dress,” the child protested again and gave him a look, letting him know she thought him daft for thinking of tucking Lucy into bed in such a manner. Definitely Lucy’s sister—the raised chin and crossed arms a shared trait.
“She will be warmer this way until I get the fire going.” Samuel pulled the quilt over Lucy despite the child’s protests. Then he took in the half-dressed state of the little girl in front of him. “Don’t you need more clothes on?”
“Will you button me?”
Samuel nodded. “Get some dry stockings.”
He wasn’t sure the little girl heard him as she scampered up the stairs. Samuel rubbed the back of his neck. He was doomed to help all the Marden maidens with their clothing this day.
Leaving the door open, Samuel went to tend the fire. He surveyed the clean room for other clues as to what might have occurred the past two weeks. A chair blocked the front door. The girl must have stood on it to try to remove the latch. James had never replaced the old-fashioned bar for a lock and key like on the lean-to’s entrance. A writing desk, inkwell, quill pen, and family Bible lay at one end of the kitchen table. The Bible belonged on its shelf. The writing desk and ink should be someplace a child could not reach. The other end of the table held a crock of apple preserves and a quarter loaf of bread, and the crumbs scattered about matched those on the little girl’s face. He began to get a good idea of what had happened here. Maybe the Bible would contain the information he sought for confirmation, but right now he needed to start a fire more than quench his curiosity.
The wood box sat empty, but he found a pile of wood left to dry in the lean-to. The fuel might be an adequate supply for a day’s fire.
How long since James had passed?
Sarah! The little girl who’d taken ill before Mark had a fortnight ago—Ma had called her Sarah. Had the Marden’s and Mark experienced the same illness? Both he and Sarah had survived; the others had not. The rest of Samuel’s family remained well. He rubbed the back of his neck. If only he had completed his apprenticeships, he would have recognized the diseases from the books he’d studied and the lectures he’d attended.
How long had Lucy cared for everything alone? Shame at his reluctance to talk to her flooded over him. He’d once promised Lucy he would always be there for her—a promise he was destined to break, just as with the other promises he had broken.
Carrying an armful of wood from the lean-to, he knelt by the large fireplace and lifted the copper curfew to discover a handful of hot embers. Samuel breathed a deep sigh of relief. Starting a fire from flint and steel would have taken much longer, provided he could even find James’s set or a match.
Despite the distress of the morning, Sarah had not touched the fireplace. At least she had not become desperate enough to break one of the first rules every child learned from the cradle.
In moments, a small fire burned.
Sarah tiptoed down the narrow stairs. In her arms were her leather stays and a yellow overdress. She held them out to Samuel.
Bewildered, he turned the stays one way, then another. Sarah blew out an exasperated sigh. She stilled his hands and threaded her arms through what were most obviously armholes. She turned her back to him and lifted her hair, and he buttoned the three carved wooden buttons.
Sarah then slipped on her pinafore. As she raised her arms, he noticed she’d changed her stockings. “Don’t forget to bring your wet stockings down to dry by the fire.”
He needed no prompting on what to do with the sash. Hundreds of times when Lucy was this age, she’d asked him to tie her sash. The confounded length of cloth was forever getting caught on a branch or winding around a bush as she’d traipsed after him in the woods. Once, after he’d rescued her three times in only an hour as the sash caught on brambles, he had become so frustrated he’d threatened to tie her to a tree and leave her there. He hadn’t been serious, of course, but Lucy had begged him not to, promising never to ask him to tie her dangling sash again. For the next several months, the sash was tied in any number of creative ways, and Lucy had never troubled him about it again.
Sarah held out her cap, which he settled over her head, then tied the strings under her chin. Her hair sprung out in all directions from under the edges. A good brushing could wait until later.
Once the fire started to roar and crackle, Samuel found a clean pot in which to boil water. He stepped out of the lean-to door and filled the pot with snow, then he hung the pot on the crane and swung the arm over flames. Inside the lean-to, he found a half-full bucket of water, a thin sheet of broken ice floating on its surface. Sarah must have used this water to cool Lucy’s brow.
He took the cloth from his shoulder and dipped it into the bucket, then moved back to Lucy’s side. Her breathing had become labored. There was no putting the task off. The stays needed to be removed.
Laying the cloth at the head of the bed, he turned to Sarah. “Can you help me? We need to get Lucy out of her… dress.” The heat rose in his face as he thought of all the clothing he’d need to remove.
He started to recite the Lord’s Prayer as
a way of distancing himself from the task before him.
Please let her be wearing a thick winter shift so I don’t—Samuel added and stopped. Somehow his words were more than the regular “Lead me not into temptation” he’d quoted all his life. In Lucy’s condition, seeing her shift would not exactly be a temptation, but not proper, either. Studying for the past three years to become a doctor, even if he would never be one, should cover any objections his mother might voice at his undressing Lucy.
Nevertheless, he failed to vanquish the blush that stole across his face. This was the one woman he’d dreamed of having the right to undress someday. In those dreams, they were married. But after the stupid letter he’d sent, he doubted he would ever get the chance. Undressing her was not going to help one bit.
I saw you in your shift. Please marry me. It would undoubtedly elicit a slap.
To his relief, under her homespun skirt and bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoats and leather stays, Lucy wore a heavy winter shift. One prayer answered. The tightly woven linen shift rose to her neck and fell well past her knees. He gently lifted Lucy and instructed Sarah to unbutton the skirt and untie the petticoats and pockets. A corner of Samuel’s brain registered disappointment as Sarah untied the stays outlining Lucy’s curves, leaving Lucy’s beautiful, feminine shape hidden beneath the heavy shift.
Muttering under his breath, he began repeating the Lord’s Prayer again.
Freed of her confines, Lucy took a deep breath that ended in a coarse, barking cough. For a moment, her eyes fluttered, her fever-glazed eyes meeting his, her lips parting. Samuel thought she would speak, but another cough cut off anything she might have said. Her eyes closed again, but her parched lips remained open as she drew in several ragged breaths.
He did his best to avert his eyes while Sarah struggled with the long woolen stockings and garters. He could offer to help. Lucy would never know. How many times would he need to repeat the Lord’s Prayer before he received an answer today? He tried to not stare at her exposed knees.
He may have failed at his apprenticeship, but he felt like he’d learned to see his female patients as people rather than objects. Dr. Warren, one of the lecturers, was adamant about treating people with dignity. “Think of the patient as a member of your family,” echoed through his mind as he covered her now-bare legs with the quilt. Sister was not one of the ways he caught his mind referring to Lucy. Wife, friend, darling, his—but never could he call her sister.
Lead me not into temptation! She is burning up, and here I am wondering what the curve of her calf feels like.
“Sarah, fetch me a cup of water, please.” Or some snow to dump over my head.
She ran and grabbed a tin cup from the cupboard and dipped it in the bucket. The water sloshed about as she hurried across the room, leaving a trail of droplets.
Samuel cradled Lucy’s head in his hand and attempted to force a few drops of water between her parched lips. He hoped more had slipped inside than the amount that now dribbled down her chin.
A distant memory of another time he’d tried to help Lucy with a drink filled his mind.
“No, Swamuel. Lucy do by self. No help!” three-year-old Lucy had yelled moments before she’d managed to drench both of them with fresh milk from the tin cup she’d succeeded in wrenching from his hands. As a seven-year-old boy, he’d learned the fastest way to cross Lucy was to do something for her when she didn’t want help. Heaven help him if she woke up while he tried to aid her now.
He knelt by the bed and placed the cool cloth over Lucy’s forehead. He had not felt so inept at helping a patient since fainting during Dr. Warren’s surgery. What to do? He owned no leeches, and he would not bleed Lucy without them. If he passed out after using a knife, he could bleed Lucy too long. It could be a fatal mistake. He shook his head in self-loathing. A small but growing group of doctors had begun to argue against bloodletting as a cure. He hoped they were right.
He could do little for Lucy but try to cool the fever and get some tea or broth in her. Though water, often the source of illness, could be dangerous, but until he could prepare something better, it would have to do. Better to get some liquids in her to help quench the fire burning inside. Samuel could not think of Lucy joining the bodies on the roof.
He rubbed his knees. He needed a chair, but his choices were limited. The strait-backed chair Sarah had climbed on in her attempt to open the door looked uninviting. He returned the chair to its place at the end of the table. He settled on the rocking chair. It was comfortable enough to sit in for a period of time and small enough to maneuver around Lucy’s room. He set the rocker near the head of the bed, then looked at Sarah.
“I need to feed the animals. Can you sit with Lucy?”
Sarah scrambled into the rocking chair and nodded earnestly. She clutched a rag doll to her chest, her eyes wide. He could think of naught to say to calm her. It was too soon to tell her that all would be well.
Samuel shrugged on his coat and lifted the latch bar from the door. “Stand on the porch and yell for me if anything changes.” Stepping onto the porch, he tripped over the basket he’d brought with him. Grateful for his mother’s foresight in packing so much food, he brought the basket into the house and set it on the table.
“When I return, we will see what my ma packed. I think I smell gingerbread.”
Sarah nodded, the curls escaping her cap bouncing around her face.
Old Brown snorted his approval when Samuel untied him from the rail and led him to the shelter of the barn. This visit would last too long to leave his mount saddled in the cold. James had never filled all the stalls in the barn Mr. Simms had built, which guaranteed Samuel would find an empty one to settle Old Brown in for the day.
The sun, now directly overhead, made a valiant effort to melt the snow. The sounds of a small riot carried from beyond the barn doors, the goat’s angry bleating egging the others on. The noise grew as he entered. The cow and one of the horses still had water, but the pig trough stood empty. The stench of the barn made him wonder how long it had been since James had cared for things. The stalls needed a good mucking. He didn’t dare take the time to do a thorough job now, though. He wouldn’t leave Sarah alone longer than necessary. It would take more than a day to set things to rights. Perhaps one of his brothers could help. Help would come. Ma was bound to send someone when he didn’t come home in time for supper.
Samuel unsaddled his horse and settled him in an empty stall, then he found a milk pail and sat down to take care of the nanny goat. As he milked, another thought entered his mind. Would he ruin Lucy’s reputation by being here? Little Sarah could not be considered an adequate chaperone. Not that there was anything to chaperone. He was a doctor caring for a patient.
But Samuel would never be the doctor he’d studied to be.
The gossips in town loved to make more of the story than they should. A recently spurned Elizabeth would delight in such tales—anything to hurt him for refusing her affections.
Samuel exited the barn less than an hour later. The sun glinted off the iron ring next to the barn door. Where was the guide rope? Surely James had tied one up before the blizzard was in full force. There wasn’t a man in the area who would neglect to string up the lifesaving rope. The knee-deep path through the snow showed that the same route had been followed to the barn since the storm had commenced. The path was in line with the angle the rope should follow.
Where was it? Samuel searched the barnyard and the path to the cabin, assuming the rope must have been secured poorly and come loose in the storm. He found his answer tied to the porch column. The three ropes. Lucy had run out of rope and used the guide rope to secure the last body to the roof to keep it away from wild animals. She’d had to trust the worn path to guide her.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. How did she find the strength to do it? Why didn’t she ask for h
elp?
Getting the rope over the roof was difficult even with the lean-to to aid in roof access. His admiration for her grew. Unlike some of the women he met in Boston, she was not some simpering flower hoping for a good match. Again, he regretted his choice to consider Elizabeth, even for a day. He should have followed his mother’s hints to go see Lucy at her cousins in Gloucester when he’d first returned from Boston. Justifying not taking the five-hour ride had been easy, but deep down he feared Lucy’s reaction to his last letter more than he feared the sight of blood.
Five
Samuel shut the cabin door, careful to not make a sound. He removed his muddied boots. No point in making a mess to clean up later. The house was much warmer, but the floor was still cold. He wished for his regular shoes. He wondered if he could find a pair of Mr. Marden’s later. He crossed the room to Lucy’s door.
Lucy slept peacefully, her quilts still smoothed over her prone body. Curled up in the rocker, Sarah clutched her doll, her tiny snores making a lilting, whistling sound. As Samuel leaned on the doorjamb and stared at the two Marden girls, a heavy weight settled around his heart. So much loss and so much sadness for one home in so short a time. It was not uncommon for entire villages to be depopulated by one form of illness or another. But these were not nameless faces in a newspaper article.
He had known this family as long as he could remember. He even had memories of Grandfather Stickney, who’d died before Lucy was born. His emotions swirled about like a dense coastal fog. Responsibility, sorrow, and love mingled with every breath he took.
What would Lucy do when she recovered? If the barn was any indication, the farm was too much for her to run alone. She could rent out the land. She might sell. Did she even legally own it? Would the farm go to some relative he’d never heard of? She couldn’t leave. Not until he’d courted her properly.