by Anita Valle
“He’s all yours.”
Heidel took the candle and stepped inside. Noticing the open shutters, she left the door ajar to beckon a breeze. A man lay on a straw-stuffed mat on the floor. Heidel slowly set the candle on a nearby table, knowing even tiny bits of heat could be unbearable.
“His name’s Dargo,” said Irch, hanging in the doorway. “One of our regulars, nice fellow. It’s a durn shame, it really is.”
“He isn’t gone yet.” Heidel watched the sick man’s chest rise and fall. “What have you done for him?”
“Nothin’ m’lady. Nothin’ can be done.”
Heidel knew that. But it never stopped her from trying. She rolled up her sleeves. “Bring up a basin of water – cold water. Not from your jugs downstairs, I want it straight from the well.” Her voice had taken a tone of command. “At the very least, I can make him more comfortable. Bring some rags too.”
As Irch lumbered down the stairs, Heidel knelt beside the mat, leaving space so her body would not warm the mattress. “Dargo, can you hear me?” she asked with a gentleness that would have surprised her sisters.
Dargo bore the look of most victims of Red Fever. Lying with arms and legs splayed, face dark as a ripe turnip, eyes squished shut. A low moan leaked from his lips.
“I want to help. Please try to bear with my touching you for a minute.” Without waiting for a reply, Heidel peeled away the man’s shoes and rolled his pants above his knees. He gave another groan, louder, when she removed his tunic, easing it over his head. His bare chest and shoulders were glossy with sweat, but the smell was clean. He looked to be about forty, fair-haired, with a cleft in his chin.
Irch returned with a bucket of water and Heidel was pleased with the chill of it. She soaked a rag and draped it over Dargo’s forehead. With another rag she washed his body, letting the water rush down in cool trickles. Dargo twitched several times, but the tension of his limbs began to soften.
“Wastin’ your time. Won’t do him no good,” said Irch.
“That isn’t the point!” Heidel hissed over her shoulder. Irch took that as his cue to leave, wishing her luck.
Heidel had not forgotten the contents of her coin purse. She untied the drawstring and withdrew the vial of medicine - the foreign woman’s ‘cure’. Bringing her lips to Dargo’s ear, she whispered, “I’m going to feed you some medicine. I honestly don’t know what it will do. It might help, it might not.”
Dargo moaned, dry lips parting. He understood.
Pinching his mouth open, Heidel poured the medicine, a swallow at a time. Then she waited. She changed the cloth on Dargo’s forehead and drenched his body again. When the bucket was empty she carried it to the top of the stairs and yelled for Irch to fill it.
Standing there on the landing, in the dark, Heidel suddenly felt eyes on her back. She turned. A door at the back the hall snapped shut. Heidel shrugged and supposed her yelling had disturbed another lodger.
When she returned to the room with the second bucket of water, Dargo’s eyes were open. He held the same splayed position, but his face had lost its ruddiness. When Heidel crouched by the mat, his eyes turned to meet her. His lashes were long and pale.
“Who....” the word barely escaped him.
“My name is Heidel.” She offered no other explanation for her presence. Chances were he didn’t recognize her.
“Drink,” he rasped.
Heidel grabbed a cup off the bedside table and dunked it in the bucket of water. She propped his shoulders while he drank, grimacing with each swallow. His sank to his pillow again, sighing. “Where did you... come from?”
Heidel was surprised. They usually didn’t talk, not at this stage of the fever. Could it be...? “I’m just passing through,” she said. “Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”
He gave the answer she’d heard many times. “My head is on fire.”
Heidel nodded. She also knew that his eyes were burning, that his head felt squeezed as if by a giant fist. She would learn nothing new from Dargo.
“But... it’s a little better now.”
“Good.”
Dargo managed a weak smile. “Funny, though. Hexwickers usually don’t get it.”
“What?”
“Red Fever. Yes... I know, though Irch wouldn’t tell me. I’ve accepted.”
“Hexwickers don’t get Red Fever?” Heidel repeated. This was spanking new. She had never heard this.
“Almost never. I’m probably the first this year. None last year. Yet Creaklee had fourteen deaths.”
Heidel’s skin tingled. How did Hexwickers escape the fever? Was it something in their blood, their diet, their habits? She wanted to ask a thousand questions.
Dargo touched the rag on his forehead. “Could I get another...?”
“Of course.”
His face had lightened from red to pink. Heidel felt him watching her as she changed the cloth, inspecting the gown that marked her as a noblewoman. He seemed too weary to work out the puzzle that was Heidel.
“You’re a good girl,” he murmured, reaching out to clasp her hand. His hot fingers revived the memory of her last touch with Ardith, her poor friend of long ago. “Good girl. Like my daughter. She’d like you.”
“You have a daughter?” said Heidel.
“Middie. She’s your age, maybe older. Keeps house for me since her ma died. She’s a good girl.”
Now Heidel was back on her feet, at the top of the stairs, shouting for Irch to take a horse and fetch Middie. For better or for worse, the girl should come.
Middie arrived with the hour, a robust girl with a cleft chin like her father. When she bustled into the chamber, Dargo was sitting up in bed to receive her. Heidel watched from the doorway, shaking her head.
Maybe, just maybe, the cure was real. She should be glad. She was glad. But it was honey and salt. She had to admit that she’d wanted to find the cure herself.
But as she watched Dargo crush his daughter in his arms, Heidel could only smile and say, “Holy Teeth.”
Chapter 25
Heidel woke with stiff limbs and a sore back. She had fallen asleep in the common room, slumped over a table. She lifted her head and rubbed her face with one hand, mussing her fringe of hair.
Dargo had been dead for hours.
Just as Heidel had accepted the cure, swallowing it like a lump of hard bread, Dargo’s fever returned with ferocity. And though Heidel drenched his body with water, he died within minutes. Heidel left Middie to mourn her father in private.
The common room was empty now, gray with early morning light. The tables looked like forsaken islands without the men. Heidel didn’t know what had become of Coralina. She must have taken a chamber – hopefully alone.
Squire fidgeted before the door, whimpering and squeaking, and Heidel realized it was he that woke her. “Need to go out?” she mumbled, still holding her head. The late hours had taken their toll.
“Want me to take him?” Irch asked. Heidel hadn’t even noticed him, wiping out tankards behind the counter. Didn’t he ever sleep?
“I’ll go.” Heidel groaned as she forced her legs to stand. Irch cleared his throat. “Just thought you should know this: I caught a man watching you.”
Heidel was trying to smooth her hair but her braid looked more like a trampled centipede, fraying in all directions. “Hmm?”
“A man. He was watching you sleep, just a minute ago. Right there.” Irch pointed to a spot a few feet from Heidel’s table. “Stood there a long time, smiling at you. Not a young fellow, neither. I almost said something, but then he left. Just now.”
“Who was he?” Heidel asked, too tired to be much concerned.
“A lodger. Came last night, from Grunwold, he said. Turned in early, long before you came. I didn’t recognize him but I’m fairly new here. Took over when my brother-in-law died.”
Heidel yawned and nodded. When she pulled open the door, Squire shot out like a cannon ball.
She followed him out and stood on the door
step. The morning light made the forest restful, softening the colors. Tucked among the trees she spotted a few huts with pointed roofs, sticking up from the ground like broken teeth.
Squire whimpered as he sniffed the ground, as if frantically searching for a lost object. “What’s wrong?” Heidel asked. He wasn’t acting like himself. Then Squire barked, sharply, and shot across the yard, curling around the tavern toward the back.
“Squire!” Heidel trotted after him. She didn’t want him getting lost in the forest. She hurried around the side of the tavern where the weeds had grown close to the wall. “Squire!” His barks snapped through the woods behind the cabin. Joyous barks, not hostile.
Nothing behind the tavern but a few rotting barrels and a thin trail leading into the forest. Probably a shortcut used by villagers. Heidel stared down the path ahead of her.
In the distance, a man was walking. A stocky man with a firm, familiar stride. Squire was bouncing circles around him, barking rapturously. Heidel could see the man only from the back.
It was enough.
Heidel sucked in a sharp gasp. And then she was running at the man, running hard, afraid that if she even blinked, he would disappear.
“JOC!” she screeched, her voice scratching the walls of her throat. “JOC! JOC!”
Chapter 26
The man turned around, looked at her. And there was his face, his wonderful, beautiful Joc-face. He recognized her – she saw it in his eyes.
She didn’t stop running until she crashed against him, throwing him back a step. Her face mashed into his chest and she felt his arms enfold her. Her heart throbbed with pain so fierce, her teeth were bared and clenched.
“Joc!” She growled the word savagely. Her hands, clutching the back of his tunic, trembled. “Joc, you rotten old MUDSUCKER!” She pushed him off and began beating her fists against him, cursing, calling him every nasty name she could think of. Joc didn’t protest. His blue eyes watched her, painfully sad. “I know, Love,” he said. “I know.”
“I hate you!” Heidel sobbed, hugging him harder. He looked exactly the same. The round face, the heavy cheeks, the untidy eyebrows, the thinning hair, sandy brown, the smile creases around his eyes. Joc. Her Joc.
“You go ahead. You hate me all you want.” Joc held her so tightly Heidel couldn’t breathe and didn’t want to. His voice, the feel of him, the smell, made her feel as if he’d never gone, yet brought the pain of his absence roaring to the surface. She squished her eyes tight while his course thumb stroked her cheek.
“Joc.” She couldn’t stop saying his name. “Joc... why did you leave us?”
His chest rose and fell beneath her, a heavy sigh. “We need to get off the trail.”
“What?” said Heidel.
“Off the trail.” He unwrapped Heidel from his arms but kept a hand on her shoulder. They stepped off the path, pushing through tall ferns, deeper into the forest. Joc kept walking until the tavern was lost behind them.
There was no place to sit. No large rock or convenient fallen log. They stood among the oaks and pines and lumens, while weeds and saplings tickled their elbows. Joc took hold of Heidel’s shoulders. His face crinkled with a tender smile as he studied her face, like reading a favorite book over again.
“My Heidel.” His smile deepened. “My hot little peppercorn. I’m sorry.”
“Why did you go?” Heidel let him hear the bitterness, the anguish she had carried for over a year. “Why did you – you – leave us? I don’t give a rat’s tail about the other servants. But you....”
Joc shut his eyes. “I’m sorry. I knew it would hurt you.”
“Of course you knew!” Heidel stepped closer, aggressively. “You knew all of us! Like a friend – more so, like a father! You played with us, you sat by our sick beds, you held us when we cried. You talked to us, and you listened to us, even more than our parents! We looked up to you and we loved you and you knew that. And then you left us.”
Joc nodded, eyes closed.
“I wish you could see what it’s done to Maelyn,” Heidel went on. “It broke her. She tries to hide it but we can see. How can she reign over a kingdom when even her own servants don’t want her? That’s how she sees it.”
“It wasn’t of our choosing,” Joc said quietly. “None of us wanted to leave. But something happened....” His face tightened and his eyes checked the forest. When he spoke again his voice hardened. “Heidel, listen to me. You must tell no one that you saw me today.”
“What?” said Heidel.
“No one!” Joc watched her intensely. “I can’t tell you everything because I don’t know it all myself. But you – and your sisters – have an enemy. You must all be very careful, very watchful. Especially Maelyn.”
“Is this about Uncle Jarrod?” Heidel asked flatly. “We already know he’s mad at Maelyn. She tricked him into thinking he had Red Fever.”
“That’s not what Jarrod thinks.”
“Oh no?”
“He thinks Maelyn tried to kill him.”
Heidel stared at Joc as her hands went cold.
“I’ve been living in Grunwold since I left,” said Joc. “Now and then I see the cook who serves your uncle. He told me. King Jarrod thinks Maelyn laced his wine with Red Fever, hoping to kill him. But he miraculously survived. He is dangerously livid about it.”
“But that’s... that’s...” Heidel held out her hands in wordless befuddlement. “That’s stupid! How could she put Red Fever into his wine? It’s not an herb that you pick off the ground! We don’t know where it comes from.”
“I know that,” said Joc. “But he doesn’t. Or at least, it’s the explanation he’s decided on. Make no mistake, Heidel, he will strike back. He’s waiting for his moment.”
Heidel breathed slowly, in and out. “Well then. I have to tell Maelyn.”
“Without mentioning me,” Joc said sternly. “That is supremely important. Tell none of your sisters that you saw me.”
“But that’ll kill me!” Heidel cried. “They miss you, Joc! If they knew you were here, they would come and drag you home by force!”
Joc’s face softened. “How... how are they, Heidel? What has Maelyn been up to? Is Coco-” he laughed as he said her name- “Is Coco behaving herself? And my poor Ivy blossom. Let me hear about them, my girls.”
Heidel told him. Her bitterness thawed as she realized that he had been suffering too. She told him about Coralina’s disastrous play, Ivy’s newfound fear of fire, Maelyn and the messenger, Briette’s theories regarding the castle thief, and finally ended with herself and the cake contest. She didn’t mention Eravis.
“It has to be made with Lumen fruit. Hence my reason for coming to Hexwick.” Heidel shook her head. “Though I’m crazy to enter this contest at all. My cakes are awful.”
“You were always too heavy-handed with the flour,” said Joc. “That’s why your cakes tend to crack.”
“Is that why?” Heidel cried. “Thank you! Can you remember anything else I did wrong?”
“Mmm... I think you made the oven too hot. And you have a tendency to peek while baking. Don’t do that - the cake will sink.”
“All right. I’ll try to remember. Thank you, I’m so glad I found you!” Heidel cried, squeezing his hand. Joc chuckled. “Well! I didn’t expect to see you either! Couldn’t believe my ears last night. I was in my bed, some ruckus in the hall had woken me. I lay there, trying to sleep again, when someone began shouting for a bucket of water. My eyes popped open and I said ‘That’s Heidel.’ I cracked the door open and saw you on the landing. Your sturdy little stance....” He grinned. “What were you doing?”
“Ohhh.... There was a man with Red Fever.” Heidel told him about Dargo and the cure that almost worked. Joc listened carefully. Red Fever was a subject they had hashed to death in the old days, but never tired of hashing some more.
“So the cure was a fraud,” said Joc.
“I’m... not certain,” said Heidel. “I’ve been thinking about it. Red Fever today is
n’t the same as Red Fever when I was a baby. Then, it swept across the world like a wave of death, killing everyone and his neighbor. Fifteen years ago, I would’ve caught the fever and died just by being close to Dargo.”
“I’ve noticed that.” Joc nodded. “It doesn’t spread as easily as it once did.”
“So, that led me to think the Fever may have different... flavors. Maybe the cure the foreign woman concocted worked for the flavor in Angtok. Or maybe it cured a disease that resembles Red Fever but isn’t. I don’t know. But I’m grateful it bought a little more time for Dargo to spend with his daughter.”
Joc smiled and pinched her cheek. “That’s my girl. Always generous.” He lowered his head, sighing. “Heidel, I must go now. Back to Grunwold. I came here to collect some herbs, but I can’t stay in Runa. Please remember what I told you.”
“Yes, yes. Uncle Jarrod is the enemy,” Heidel grumbled.
Joc frowned. “No, Heidel. Only one of them. And Jarrod is not the reason you lost your servants.”
“He’s not?” Heidel had long supposed her uncle had something to do with it. She seized the frayed collar of Joc’s tunic. “Tell me!”
“When it’s safe, I will.” Joc took hold of her chin, meeting her eyes. “Can you trust me?”
Heidel nodded. Though her heart saddened, seeing Joc had stitched a tear in her soul back together. She hugged him again, long and greedy. And because none of her sisters would ever know, she whispered, “Can you sing ‘The Mouse in the Muffin’?”
Joc chuckled. He dipped his head and softly sang the happy, childish tune in her ear. Heidel nestled against his chest, shutting her eyes so she could live inside her memories.
Chapter 27
Maelyn, brown eyes wide with shock, stood a mere two inches from Heidel’s face.
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” said Heidel. “That’s why I brought you down here.” She stood with Maelyn in the larder below the kitchen, a cold room smelling of dank earth and fish. Except for the candle Heidel held between them, the cellar was black as a tomb. “How could I keep a secret like that? I had to tell someone. And I thought you should know.”