The Rogue's Return

by Jo Beverley

  His eyes moved beneath his lids. “Superstitious . . .” he whispered. “Anyone . . . think . . . Gypsy.”

  She was glad he wasn’t looking at her. “Don’t be silly, and save your strength.”

  After a while, he said, “If cards say . . . no need to cut off arm.”

  “Precisely.”

  She knew, however, that the nine of diamonds didn’t rule out an amputation. And that she wouldn’t let Simon die. If he wasn’t better by morning, she’d send for Playter.

  She caressed a cheek that was rough with bristles and gently kissed his cracked lips. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

  Remembering how soothing Mrs. Gunn’s ramble had been, she tried to talk about practical matters. She refused to leave his side, clinging to an irrational faith that while she was present, Simon, at the very least, could not die. But in the deep hours of the night she remembered feeling the same way about Jane and waking up on board ship next to her corpse.

  They kept cleaning the wound with brandy, but she knew rot was eating into him.

  He came to himself once. “Glad you’re back,” he said, faintly but clearly.

  She’d not left his side for hours, but she said, “I’m glad you missed me.”

  “Missed your smell. Let me smell your hand. Something here stinks.”

  She had put on hand cream after last washing her hands. She stroked around his face. “Soon you’ll smell a real English garden.”

  “Take you to Brideswell. But it’ll be winter, not spring. . . .”

  She put her fingers over his lips. “Don’t talk anymore, love. You need your strength.”

  “Come up on the bed with me and I’ll be good.”

  Despite Hal and Treadwell in the room, Jancy climbed up and snuggled close—he was so dreadfully hot!

  He smiled. “Best medicine.”

  “I’m glad then. Try to sleep.”

  Perhaps he did, and perhaps she did, too, for she dreamed, of fire. She woke and saw Hal rising from a chair. Treadwell was already leaving.

  “Smoke?” she asked, slipping off the bed.

  The smell was stronger. It was smoke.

  “Wake Oglethorpe,” Hal said and ran out.

  She dashed into the adjoining room and shook the man awake. She didn’t ask the pointless question, but inside she was screaming it. What do we do about Simon? He can’t be moved yet.

  In this wooden town, every house had a fire bell and buckets of water ready. She heard the bell ring and sent shirtsleeved Oglethorpe to find out what was happening.

  She looked into the corridor and saw only wisps of smoke downstairs but she was frantic with indecision. “Come back quickly!” she screamed after the man. “With Treadwell.”

  If necessary, they’d carry Simon out.

  She heard a sound and whirled back to the bed. He was trying to sit up. She ran over to hold him down. “Don’t. It’s all right. Lie back.”

  “So hot. Fire.”

  She quickly bathed him again. “Don’t worry. You’re not on fire. We’re not on fire. Just a little problem.” She kept babbling nonsense, wanting to scream for someone to come and tell her what was going on.

  She could hear other fire bells and clamoring voices outside. Then it grew quieter. She couldn’t bear it and ran out into the corridor. Her nose wrinkled at the stink, but was it the acrid smell of an extinguished fire?

  Was it out?

  “Is anyone there?” she yelled. “What’s happening?”

  Hal appeared at the bottom of the stairs, soot-streaked, his hair on end. “It’s out. It’s all right.”

  She clung to the newel post in relief. “Thank heavens. Where was it? What damage?”

  “In the parlor. I’ll talk to you in a moment.”

  He turned away and she realized there were people in the house, probably concerned neighbors, but it could be anyone. She fled back to Simon’s side.

  All was well.

  In a laughably terrible way.

  Simon still raged with the fever that might kill him. In hours she was going to have to allow Playter to cut off his arm. But at least no one had burned them in their beds.

  She was sure that had been the intent.

  It seemed an age before Hal came. He’d taken the time to wash and change his clothes and she resented that.

  “Someone started the fire. Broke the parlor window and threw in papers and oily rags and then set fire to them. A clumsy attempt, but I suppose if we’d all been asleep it might have gained a better hold.”

  “Simon’s bedridden. We’d have carried him out, but then his rib could have killed him.” She couldn’t bring herself to say that he was dying anyway. Then Jancy realized something else. “Hal, only consider what lies above the office.”

  He inhaled. “Simon’s room.”

  “A fire that consumed at least the back of the house would destroy any papers there. Thus, once Simon died of this infection, everyone would be in the clear.” She put a hand to her throat. “We have to get away from here! Even with risk, we have to get away. Tomorrow.”

  “Jane, he might not be alive tomorrow.”

  She looked at Simon and asked very quietly, “How soon after an amputation could he travel?”

  “If he survives the operation, immediately.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When dawn’s light crept into the room, Jancy was gritty-eyed and exhausted, but Simon still lived. He was burning up with fever, but he lived. Praying she hadn’t left it too late, she sent for Playter.

  She went to her room with some notion of tidying herself, but when she looked in her mirror, she shrank from the image of the wild, disheveled creature there. She saw Jancy Haskett, as might have been, and after today she might as well tell Simon. He’d hate her anyway.

  She washed and pinned up her hair, but as she did so, her mind insisted on swirling around her Haskett life. Wild Haskett hellions. Fire. A baby had fallen into a fire and been badly burned. The wounds had crusted. Eschar, though no one had called it that. Granny Haskett had said to leave it and it had healed well.

  Granny Haskett. Treating a nasty knife wound in Uncle Malachy’s arm, a wound that had gone bad . . .

  A rap at the door heralded Playter. Mouth dry, Jancy ran down to meet him in the hall. “Maggots.”

  “What?” He was obviously primed to do his grisly duty.

  “People use maggots to treat infection.”

  The doctor turned red. “I’ll have you know, madam, that I am an Edinburgh-trained physician, not an old woman casting spells. Maggots,” he growled. “Beaumont. Take Mrs. St. Bride away. She’s becoming deranged.”

  “No!” She dodged away from Hal’s hand. “I want to try maggots first.”

  She was almost crazed with fear of her decision, of having to defy these men, but she had to. She’d remembered it all—watching Granny Haskett, fascinated by the squirmy treatment, seeing it work.

  “Maggots work. I’ve seen them work. They eat the infection.”

  Playter glared at her. “Are you or are you not going to let me amputate that arm?”

  She stared at him, sickness churning, but then said, “Not.”

  He turned and marched out. She sobbed and looked to Hal for reassurance.

  “Maggots?” he said, pale.

  She’d been only nine when she’d seen it done, and if it worked, wouldn’t a doctor know that? Perhaps it had worked from sheer luck. Perhaps there were dangers she knew nothing of. She was committed now, however. “I need to try. We can amputate later.”

  “Later might be too late.”

  “Hal, I have to try! Maggots,” she said to herself. “Where?” Then she knew. “Saul Prithy. Send one of the men for him. Quickly!”

  He jerked with astonishment at her command but then bellowed, “Oglethorpe!”

  Jancy told Oglethorpe what she needed. He looked as worried as Hal, but he didn’t question her.

  She went back to Simon’s side, wishing she could talk to him, explain,
ask his wishes. Instead she unbandaged the festering wound and cleaned it again.

  Red marks were spreading from it. The red spiders, Granny Haskett had called them. Hal was right. If this didn’t work, she might have left it too late. She teetered in indecision again, but the red spiders had started around Uncle Malachy’s wound, too.

  It seemed an age, but was only half an hour by the clock before Oglethorpe returned with a wooden box. He was handling it squeamishly, but Jancy grabbed it, opened it, and saw white maggots crawling upon a bed of bran.

  “Thank you, Saul,” she breathed.

  Saul still mostly lived by hunting, so she’d known he’d have hanging game, which was a good source of healthy maggots. He’d use them for fishing bait, too, keeping them in a bran box as the Hasketts had.

  “Now what?” Hal asked.

  She wanted to say, “I was a child. I don’t remember,” but if she did, Hal might stop her.

  Trying to appear confident, she picked maggots from the top of the bran and put them on the swollen skin around the wound. She feared they’d wriggle away from the heat, but they didn’t. Instead the first one crawled in. She heard someone mutter in disgust and she felt the same way, as she hadn’t at nine. Then she’d simply been fascinated.

  Moment by moment her memory was clearing, however, so her confidence grew. Granny Haskett was an unlikely guardian angel, but Jancy did feel as if someone was guiding her. She even remembered why people kept maggots in bran. Crawling up through it and eating it cleaned them inside and out. She put more and more in the wound.

  They’re doing good, she told herself. They’re eating the rot that’s killing Simon.

  When the wound was as full as could be, she put a loose bandage on top. “Now we wait.”

  “Are you sure?” Hal asked, sounding appalled.

  Of course I’m not sure! “I have to try.”

  “We wait, then.”

  Treadwell took up the job of bathing Simon’s hot body while Jancy picked out more maggots as they wriggled to the top of the bran, collecting them in a covered dish.

  She drank some sweet tea when it was brought to her, but she could stomach nothing more.

  Treadwell tried to get water into Simon, but not much made it past his cracked lips. At every moment, Jancy fought the terror that she was killing him. That the maggots wouldn’t work. That it really was an old wives’ tale, and that Edinburgh-educated Dr. Playter was right.

  That when she admitted it, it would be too late and Simon would die.

  She even began to worry that the maggots were eating Simon’s good flesh—burrowing deeper and deeper into his arm, down to the bones. She kept looking beneath the bandage, but she couldn’t tell anything from the squirming mass.

  Then maggots began crawling away from the wound, fatter, darker, gorged, disgusting—marvelous.

  “They’re full!” she exclaimed, scooping them back into the bran box and adding new ones.

  She heard Hal say, “Dear God,” more in disgust than wonder, but she ignored him. This was exactly as it had been when Granny Haskett had done it. She sent Oglethorpe for more maggots and prayed.

  Was Simon a little cooler? There was no way to tell.

  Were the spiders shrinking? She wasn’t sure, so she marked the end of the red lines and then cleared away more gorged maggots and added fresh. How long did she do this for? How long should it take?

  She lost all sense of time.

  Then Simon swallowed a few mouthfuls of water and muttered something about his arm crawling.

  “It’s all right, love,” she said, daring to hope. “It’s all right.”

  She kept watching her marks, wanting to believe, but not wanting to fool herself that the lines were shrinking when they weren’t.

  A gentle hand and voice stirred her. “The lines have shrunk.”

  She blinked, finding herself fallen forward so her head was on the mattress. She pushed painfully up and focused bleary eyes.

  She laughed for joy and murmured prayers of thanks as she inspected the wound. It was still red and swollen and it crawled with maggots, but the red spiders had shrunk away. She placed a hand on his forehead. Cooler. Not cool, but not an inferno.

  Surely now his body could, as Playter said, heal itself.

  “Praise be to God, and to you, you lovely little creatures!” She scooped off some that had fallen on the sheet. “Hal, try to get Playter to return.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  She looked around, surprised. “Oh, very well. We’ll let him sleep. We’ve done it, though, haven’t we?”

  “Perhaps” was all he would say.

  Hal probably wrote a long explanation to Playter, for he did come the next day, albeit suspiciously. But as soon as he saw Simon, he said, “By the holy hounds of Hades!”

  He quickly examined the wound, scowling ferociously. Jancy waited for some blessing, but he said nothing until he straightened. “Coincidence, of course, but perhaps you were right to wait. A healthy constitution can work miracles, despite those who meddle. And it was only a minor wound.”

  Jancy stared at him but could see there was no point in arguing. “So, now he will live?”

  “He has a chance, especially if you remove those disgusting creatures. Anyone would think you were a Gypsy, ma’am!”

  Jancy realized that her knowledge of maggots could betray her, but even so, she’d not have done anything different. Simon would live, and he would be whole.

  “We intend to leave immediately,” she told the doctor. “How do we manage it?”

  To her surprise, he didn’t argue. “Those ribs are still a danger. A stumble could harm him. But if you get him to a boat on a stretcher and then are lucky enough to avoid storms, perhaps no great harm will be done.”

  His agreement surprised her, but he might simply want to be rid of someone who challenged his medical beliefs. Or did he, too, think Simon in danger here?

  When he’d left, Hal said, “When do you want to leave?”

  “Do you think it foolish?”

  “No. In fact, if we can, we should leave tomorrow. We’ll hire a boat for ourselves alone, so if the water turns rough we can put in to shore.”

  “Won’t that be terribly expensive?”

  His blank look reminded her of the different world these men inhabited.

  “I wasn’t sure,” she confessed. “About the maggots.”

  “You’re a remarkable woman, Jane.”

  “But what if I’d been wrong?”

  “What-ifs are pointless.”

  A grim set to his mouth made her realize he was thinking about his own arm. Might maggots have saved it? Why would doctors reject a treatment that might help simply because it didn’t fit with their beliefs?

  “Simon is whole and recovering,” he said. “We’ll get him safely to Montreal, and if the journey goes well, we might even get there before the Eweretta sails and be home for Christmas.”

  Jancy left to organize a flurry of packing.

  She’d left out Jane’s self-portrait until now, but as she put it away in the portfolio with the others, she felt guilty.

  If Jane had lived, none of the recent events would have happened. But if a similar disaster had struck, Isaiah would have forced Simon to marry Jane, not herself. The idea was intolerable. Simon St. Bride, husband, hero, and lover, was hers, and if Jane were alive, she’d fight her for him. She slid the drawing inside the stiff portfolio, ashamed but unrepentant.

  Simon awoke from terrifying dreams and immediately looked to where his arm should be. Was!

  He raised it to be sure. Oh, thank God. In his dream it had been hacked off and he’d been searching through piles of discarded limbs, many crawling with maggots, sure that if he found the right one it could be stuck back on.

  He wriggled his fingers. Though he felt a fierce burning beneath the bandage, everything seemed to work.

  “Awake, sir? How do you feel?”

  Simon looked at the lanky man by the be
d, for a moment unable to recognize him. But then his tangled brain sorted itself out.

  “Treadwell.” He cleared his throat, but his voice still rasped when he said, “Chewed up and spit out. What happened to me?”

  “Bit of bother, sir. All sorted out now. Here, try some water.”

  Simon drank from the spouted invalid cup and never had water tasted so good. “What sort of bother?”

  Treadwell adjusted his bolsters. “Well, sir, you ran a bit of a temperature.”

  Simon frowned. “Don’t I remember smoke?”

  “And there was a bit of a fire.”

  “I want my wife.” Simon heard himself sound like a child wanting its mother, but he wanted Jane. Like a storm-tossed ship seeking a harbor, he wanted Jane.

  “Good idea, sir. I’ll fetch her for you. And some light food, I’m sure.”

  Simon lay there, trying to sort out dreams from fevered memories. Had his dream been a premonition? Did the throbbing of his arm mean it was infected and Playter was coming to cut it off?

  Then Jane entered in one of her sober gowns, her hair pinned up, but smiling, eyes bright. She wouldn’t look like that if anything was wrong.

  He spoke his thought. “Beautiful angel. Perhaps Sebastian Rossiter isn’t so far out in his poems.”

  She laughed and, still radiant, came to kiss his cheek, to cradle his face.

  “I prefer your hair loose.”

  “That’s hardly practical.” But, blushing, she pulled out pins and shook her hair free. Then she ran her fingers through it, raising it, letting it fall.

  “I see you’re recovering,” she teased.

  He looked down, but he wasn’t tenting the bed. Of course not. She was too innocent for a comment like that, despite one remarkable night.

  “Recovering from what? What happened, Jancy? Treadwell said a bit of a temperature and a bit of a fire.” He hadn’t meant to tell her, tell anyone, but he added, “I dreamed that Playter amputated my arm.”

  She took his right hand in both of hers. “He almost did. That minor wound became infected.”

  “It’s all right now?” He looked at his arm again, to check that he hadn’t imagined its presence. “I remember . . . I forbade it, but how?”