by Nina Mason
Cradling the baby to her bosom, she made her way toward the master bedchamber. The smell grew more potent with every step. Finding the door just as she’d left it—slightly ajar—she moved her nose near the gap and took a whiff. Her throat convulsed in repugnance. The foul stink was definitely coming from inside.
Chest tight with dread, she pushed the door open with her foot. So shocked was she by the scene before her, she came close to dropping the baby.
Her naked husband lay face down across the mattress with his head dropped over the edge. What could only be the secretions of his bowels covered him and the tangled bedsheets. The carpet beneath his face, hidden by a sweat-damp veil of dark hair, was splattered with vomit.
As fear and revulsion battled within her, she took a step toward him. Then, remembering the child in her arms, she froze in her tracks. As much as she wanted to help her husband, she could not risk exposing wee Jamie to whatever had reduced the poor man to such a pitiable state.
Heart racing, thoughts scrambled, she cast around the room, hoping an answer might present itself. One did. The pull for the servant’s bell, which hung beside the fireplace. Hurrying to it, she yanked the needlework strap several times before turning back to her spouse.
“Robert? Can you hear me?” He groaned, filling her heart with hope. “Had I known you were stricken, I would not have tarried—or brought the baby back with me.”
He lifted his head and looked her way with glassy eyes. “Take wee Jamie away at once—and fetch a physician. Dr. Wakeman, if possible.”
The name was unfamiliar to her. “Who is Dr. Wakeman?”
“The man who treated my amnesia. Now go. This instant. Before you or the baby catch the smallpox.”
Her knees nearly buckled beneath her. “Is that what you have?”
“I suspect as much.” His voice was almost too weak to be heard. “But only the doctor can tell us for certain.”
Maggie swallowed her rising hysteria. She needed to keep her wits about her, as hard as it was. The smallpox killed people. Strong, healthy people. Thousands upon thousands of them every year. There was no cure, no reliable treatment, and no way of knowing who would survive and who would succumb.
Naught could be done beyond waiting, hoping, and praying.
With hot tears rolling down her cheeks, she clutched wee Jamie to her bosom and removed to the front parlor. Too anxious to sit, she paced the floor, fretting about her husband’s prognosis and what might be keeping the servant. When at last the much-anticipated knock sounded upon the door, she hastened toward the door and, after shifting the baby to free one hand, pulled it open.
The young, dark-haired maid on the other side dipped into a curtsy. “How may I be of service, m’lady?”
Maggie pushed wee Jamie into the girl’s arms. “Take my son to the nursery and fetch a physician. Dr. Wakeman, if possible, but I will settle for whoever can get here the quickest. Tell them my husband—the Duke of Dunwoody—may have the smallpox.”
The maid’s complexion turned a whiter shade of pale. Without waiting for her verbal response, Maggie shut the door, turned on her heel, and, with a determined set to her jaw, marched toward the bedroom. With God’s help and the sheer force of her will, she would keep Robert alive—or die trying.
Chapter Three
Robert was still down the well, only water had blessedly replaced the vomit and shit in which his pain-racked body was submerged. Warm water, which, though cleansing, made his fever burn all the hotter. Two people he knew to be Dr. Wakeman and Maggie stood at the top of the well, talking.
“Is it the smallpox?” Maggie asked somberly.
“I cannot be sure until the vesicles appear,” the doctor returned. “His other symptoms are, however, consistent with that most regrettable diagnosis.”
The doctor had given him two spoonfuls of Laudanum, which had taken the edge off his body aches and nausea, but left him feeling dreamy and detached from what was happening around him. In his mind, he was back at school, eavesdropping as the doctor and nurse discussed one of their patients. An outbreak of some unidentified contagion had already claimed several of his classmates, including one of his closer friends, who’d suffered unspeakable agonies for more than a fortnight before finally succumbing.
“If it is the smallpox, will he die?” the nurse asked in a trembling voice.
“With proper physicking and constant nursing, there is a chance he will recover.” The doctor released a sigh before adding, “Though I would not get my hopes up too high if I were you. Nor linger any longer. The affliction is highly contagious. None who’ve not already battled the disease should attend the duke—or even enter these rooms until the disease has run its course.”
Following a short pause, the nurse said, “I am safe, God be thanked, and will see to him. What course of treatment do you recommend?”
“When he is clean and restored to his bed, I will bleed him and administer a clyster,” said the doctor. “After which, he should be kept as cool and comfortable as possible. Cover him with no more than a sheet or light coverlet, apply cold compresses to his forehead and nape, and open the windows as often as possible to let in fresh air. With regard to diet, the food should be similarly cooling. The goal in the beginning is to keep the body open and promote urine. Boil preserved fruits—figs, damascene plums, tamarinds, and the like—and mix them with oatmeal, barley, or gruel. For drink, give him small beer acidulated with orange or lemon juice; whey turned with apples boiled in milk or with wine; emulsions made with barley water and almonds; Moselle or Rhenish wine plentifully diluted with water; or other things of this nature. Oh—and give him ass’s milk, which is exceedingly fortifying, providing he can keep it down.”
“What about the baby?”
Baby? What baby does she mean?
“I brought him to see his father earlier—before I realized…”
“If the child has been exposed, we shan’t know for at least a fortnight,” the doctor told the nurse. “To err on the side of caution, I shall instruct his nursemaid to separate him from the other children. You should avoid all contact with the child as well, as you may still carry contagious matter upon your clothing or person.”
“But—how will I nurse my son?”
“I am afraid smallpox has put an end to that enterprise.” The doctor’s voice and expression were grave. “Consider yourself fortunate indeed if that is the most the disease takes from you.”
Robert’s opiated mind wrestled with the meaning of their exchange. Digging deep for his reserves, he pried his eyes open, forced them to focus, and shifted his gaze from the doctor to the nurse who—to his great astonishment—turned out to be his wife. The tears in her eyes snapped him back to lucidity. God, how he wanted to kiss away those tears, to enfold her in his arms, to tell her how sorry he was to put her through this, how much he loved her, how badly he wanted to live so he could grow old with her and see wee Jamie become a man with a family of his own.
“Pray, tell me how it is you are safe from that which ails me.” He strained to form the words.
“I suffered the smallpox whilst still at the convent—after being engrafted,” she said. “One of the sisters, who’d been a missionary for a time in Turkey, learned the method from the peasant women there. When one of the nuns who’d accused her of attempting to usurp God’s will came down with the disease, Sister Mary-Elizabeth used one of her sewing needles to extract a small amount of pus from one of the blisters, which she then poked into the veins of all those at risk.”
He winced at her description. “To what possible benefit?”
“I profess not to have a full understanding of the method, but, apparently, those who’ve had the smallpox once will not get it again,” she explained. “And inserting a small amount of infected matter into a healthy person protects them in a similar way.”
“Why did you never tell me this? Why did you not insist that I and wee Jamie have this protective procedure done?”
“Because, alas,
no English doctors will perform the engrafting,” she said with a sigh.
“And for good reason,” the doctor put in. “For the procedure is no more than a devil’s trick meant to interfere with God’s will.”
Robert, determined to save his son by any means possible, met the physician’s skeptical gaze. “Be that as it may, ’tis still my wish that you should perform the procedure.”
The bearded and bespectacled doctor shook his head. “Having no idea how much of the pus to give him, I could as easily kill the babe as save him. Besides which, he might very well have been exposed already. And, if that should prove to be the case, giving him more of the contagion will almost certainly result in his demise.”
Robert’s thoughts jumped to the doctor’s daughter, Gemma Wakeman—or so she was called five years before when she’d nursed him back to health after he’d lost his memory after being beaten nearly to death by Protestant thugs. She’d also performed a radical procedure she called “seminal extraction.” Though he’d been shocked at the time, he now wondered if her eccentric approach to physicking might extend to “engrafting.”
As much as Robert wanted to ask after the girl, he kept silent. He’d never told Maggie of the intimacies that had passed between patient and nurse, believing naught aside from trouble could be gained by doing so. Knowing would only distress his wife and invite further trouble to himself. And, God knew, he’d had trouble enough after her father made him a member of the Scottish Privy Council.
After he and Maggie relocated to Holyroodhouse Palace, the Presbyterian problem in Scotland had become untenable. Toward the close of the year just past, some of the more desperate Covenanters had drawn up what they called the “Apologetic Declaration,” which, contrary to its title, conveyed sentiments not in the least remorseful. Rather, the proclamation declared their adherence not only to the Covenants, but also to all the violent steps which the rashest of their ranks had taken.
The Privy Council’s response to their hubris was swift, sure, and severe.
What the agitators nicknamed the “Bloody Act” gave Viscount Dundee, the captain charged with squelching the rebellion, the authority to put to death on the spot any person in possession of the treasonous document, as well as any who refused to disown the contents thereof when requested to do so. The government troops had even taken to killing in the open fields all refusing to answer their questions.
Hefty fines were extorted from any whose lives were spared, and the spoils divided amongst the councilors—money that significantly increased Robert’s wealth. He might have felt guilty taking his share had the Covenanters not so eagerly sided with his brother to deprive him of his life as well as his duchy.
Though Robert regarded himself as far from lenient, he could not condone the torture employed to extract confessions. Men were dragged screaming and struggling into the Council Chamber, where they were questioned whilst the hangman and his brawny assistants stood by, ready to stretch their necks.
When Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlston was brought in, the sight of the instruments of torture, and the merciless faces of his judges, drove him mad with fear. A prominent Covenanter, he’d fled to Holland following the confrontation at Bothwell Bridge, only to be captured whilst sailing back to Scotland.
Another time, a poor artisan only escaped the cruelty of the boot, a device designed to crush the foot, because the surgeon, who was ever present at these sessions, told the Lord Advocate, the crown’s chief prosecutor in Scotland, the man’s legs were so weak they’d snap at the first blow of the hammer.
On yet another occasion, the Lord Advocate threatened to pluck out the tongue of a hostile witness with a pair of pliers.
Robert shuddered at the grisly memories. ’Twas enough to induce him to give up le vice Anglais—had his domestic circumstances not already forced him to do as much.
Maggie began to wash is body, recalling Gemma Wakeman to his thoughts. A sharp pan of guilt accompanied the memory of the seductive sponge bath that had nearly broken down the walls of his resistance.
Though he’d forgotten he was married, he had not forgotten his love for Maggie. Even so, as far as he was aware, he was free to pursue any paramour he chose—so why had he refused to bed Miss Wakeman? Over the ensuing years, he’d been able to come up with only one feasible explanation: his Guardian Angel must have guided him to safety with her unseen hand.
His mind evicted her ghost when two pairs of hands helped him to sit up, after which one set held him whilst the other lathered his hair.
“He’d be cooler and easier to treat if we cut it off,” said the doctor.
“No,” Maggie replied in a tone that brooked no argument. “I love his hair long, and it’s only just grown out from the last time ’twas cut off. I will take pains to prevent the length from becoming a liability.”
A hand he knew to be his wife’s gently tilted back his head. Warm water flooded his scalp. When the shampoo was sufficiently rinsed, she braided the length and secured the end.
“There,” she said. “You see? No need for the shears.”
Two sets of hands, both male, pulled him to his feet and held him upright whilst a third set—Maggie’s, he presumed—mopped the moisture from his skin with a linen towel. When he was dry, she helped him into a nightshirt, whereupon all three helped him to the bed and laid him out in the manner of a corpse. A sheet came over him, his left arm was pulled free, and the sleeve rolled up past his elbow. Pain registered as the doctor made the incision. Warm blood flowed into the notched bowl upon which his arm had been set to expunge the bad humors.
Had he the strength, he would have complained throughout the unpleasant procedure. Truth be told, he vastly preferred Miss Wakeman’s method of extracting bad humors. Though, if he must be bled, he’d much rather the doctor cut him than apply leeches. For the feel of the slimy wee creatures tapping his veins made his skin crawl.
When the purging was done, the doctor bandaged his arm and administered another dose of laudanum before taking his leave with the promise of returning within a few hours. For a long while, neither Maggie nor Duncan said a word, but Robert could feel them watching over him in the manner of a pair of mother hens.
“I lost my mother and all my brothers and sisters to smallpox,” the valet said at last.
“Did you?”
“Oh, aye,” he said. “And their looks were every bit as bad at the onset as My Lord does lying there now.”
Had Robert been himself, he’d have jumped up and punched Duncan in the nose. The valet should seek to console his beleaguered wife, not feed her worst fears with tactless tales.
“You need not linger.” Maggie’s voice was soft and tremulous. “I shall see to the duke until the doctor returns.”
After the valet left them, Maggie came onto the bed. To Robert’s mild surprise, she sidled up beside him, turned his head, and pressed her bare breast against his lips. As he latched on and began to suckle, she stroked his drying hair. “The doctor advised me to give you milk, and so I shall. But my own, not that of an ass. And, when you are better—and, with my nursing and God’s help, you will get better—I shall still have an ample store with which to nourish our son.”
* * * *
For the next week, Maggie left Robert’s bedside only long enough to beg the Lord to heal her husband as Jesus had healed the leper of Biblical renown.
The Chapel Royal, located a few steps from their door, retained the paneling, pew boxes, and carved pulpit of its Tudor origins. Though the chapel was Anglican and reserved for the exclusive use of Princess Anne, Maggie did not think her half-sister would object overmuch in light of the circumstances. Although Anglicans and Catholics followed different dogmas, they worshipped the same God and followed similar codes of Christian charity.
Besides, the Catholic chapel her father had commissioned would not be completed for months to come. And visiting the provisional sanctuary, which lay on the other side of the palace complex, would keep her from Robert for too long a ti
me.
Alone in the Anglican chapel now, she knelt upon the steps before the elevated main altar, bowed and pressed her palms together. Despite her ardent appeals over the past two weeks, Robert’s condition had steadily worsened. Within days of the onset of symptoms, the contagion’s tell-tale spots broke out upon his face, hands, and forearms. A day or two later, they covered most of his body. Many had now become pus-filled blisters. He also suffered the disease’s other common symptoms: spitting blood, difficulty breathing, and bouts of delirium. Maggie just thanked God he had not contracted the “black” strain, which almost always claimed the lives of its victims.
Just as she concluded her prayer, a solitary set of footsteps sounded behind her. Turning, she saw a gentleman she did not know coming toward her. He had dark hair, was of middle stature, and was the shade of brown common to sailors. She might have thought him well-favored if not for the sour, lordly expression despoiling his countenance.
The brashness of his stride gave her pause. Surely, he did not mean to evict her from the chapel.
“Madam, you are trespassing,” he said, negating her assumption. “This place of worship is reserved for the exclusive use of Princess Anne of Denmark. By direct order of His Majesty the King.”
“I am aware of the order,” she said, determined to stand her ground. “But did not think Her Royal Highness would take exception under the circumstances. My husband suffers from the smallpox, you see. And I have only been praying for his recovery.”
The stranger stopped at the base of the stairs and looked her over. “If the husband you speak of is the Duke of Dunwoody, I fear your prayers are in vain.”
His words were a knife to Maggie’s heart. “Are you always so blunt in your addresses?”
“Forgive me, Duchess. I meant no offense. And urge you to consider that his death might prove a blessing for you both. For, as you must know, even those few souls fortunate enough to survive the disease, are forever disfigured by their hard-won battles. Thus, even if he should make a full recovery, he will be monstrous to look upon—and very likely blind. Were I in his shoes, I’d much rather depart this world. And he need not hang on for your welfare. For, I daresay, a widow with your beauty and connections should have no trouble finding herself a new husband.”