The Corn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  There was already a rich misty twilight as I crept out into the warm evening shadows. Skirting the village and keeping to the overhang of the birches, I ran all the way across the hills up to the grand Lydiard Hall.

  My shoe buckles came undone, my gauze collar flopped askew, I was hot and pink and hopelessly out of breath, and my skirt hems trailed in the mud in spite of my mother’s brooch, but at almost fifteen years old and thinking only of Jak, none of this mattered to me at all. I arrived at the manor house in its stern stretch of grounds overlooking the village beyond and below, and at once scurried around to the servants’ dominion. I managed to reclaim my breath, tidy my escaping hair and brush down my skirts. Then I rebuckled my shoes, stuffed my cleavage back inside the neck of my gown, and silently prayed to the church’s numerous gods and the entire hierarchy of pompous and meddling angels. Finally, I entrusted my mission to my own determination. But first and foremost, I trusted my mother’s medicine.

  Only a pale glow of candlelight showed at the back of the big house where the kitchens met the brewery, buttery, bakery and pantries. A young maidservant was on her knees, sleeves rolled up, scrubbing the steps leading to the kitchen doors. She looked up, frightened as I came to the lower step. I knew her for this was Lizzie’s daughter, but at first, she didn’t recognise me in my fine clothes. The flaring of the one tallow candle beside her distorted her face as she stared, eyes wide and mouth open. I didn’t blame her. They were frightening times, with the pestilence on the move. For a moment even I, increasingly intimidated, wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t speak.

  “Get out,” she whispered. “This house is cursed. The young lord is sick to dying.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said, making my voice steady. “I’ve brought medicine.”

  “I wasn’t told to expect anyone,” stuttered the girl. Then I bent towards her, and suddenly she recognised me. “Lord be praised, it’s you, Freia. Did your Mamma send you? Most everyone has run away, but I’ve been ordered to scrub every entrance and leave vervain and lavender on the steps. I’ve been scrubbing for hours, and I’m so tired. But they say it will help. Do you think it will?”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “Though it’s late and you should be in bed. Or maybe you should run away like everyone else. But I’ve brought my mother’s medicine for the young lord, so I have to see him.”

  The girl whispered, “Leave it with me, Fray. I’ll make sure her ladyship gets it in the morning.”

  I glared. “The medicine can’t wait. I’ll take it to him myself.” She stood, knees shaking, so I pushed past her. I was lucky she was alone. Any kitchen this size would employ an army of workers, and at this time of night, the scullions and apprentices should be asleep under the benches. I’d never seen a kitchen like it, all gleaming white enamel with a hundred copper pots and skillets on long shelves. The fireplace was so vast it covered one wall, though the fire was out and lay in a heap of black ashes like a portent of death. There were several doors leading off, and I had no idea where to go. “The young lord’s bedchamber?” I demanded. “Show me where it is.”

  “I don’t have permission to let anyone in,” trembled the girl. “I daren’t do anything without permission. Her ladyship would have me whipped.”

  “For curing her stepson?” It made me wonder again why Lord Lydiard had not at least sent for my mother once his heir fell ill. “Come on. You’re wasting time,” I said.

  “But if I take you up to him,” whispered the girl, “you mustn’t tell anyone I showed you. Anyway I suppose if you go in there, you’ll catch it too, and then you’ll die, so it won’t matter.”

  I’d always known she was a fool like her bully of a dead father. “Hurry then,” I said, more loudly. She was used to taking orders and started to obey me. Then I realised she wasn’t alone after all. Someone else had heard, and one of the kitchen doors was flung open. Just a scullion, scared but wielding a carving knife and ready for battle all the same. The boy was white-faced, but at least he’d had the courage to stay at his post when most of them had fled. Brave – or too dull to understand. I recognised him too and marched over to glare at him. “Stupid boy. You think there’ll be robbers breaking into a house already cursed by the Sickness? Or is it the disease itself you hope to stick that knife into?”

  “Wot d’you want here?” demanded the child, his blade flashing in the meagre candlelight. “Ain’t no one allowed in after dark, lest they’s the sheriff or the mayor, and you ain’t them.” It was the local butcher’s boy, youngest son of a nasty old sot who had been known to blow between the mutton membranes to make the joints seem larger, and sometimes stuffed wet rags between the beef ribs. He’d passed more than a few days in the village stocks for it, and more than once too, for a dishonest man rarely learns from his punishments. The son, I decided, was as dense as the father.

  But I was getting desperate. Other servants could still be working in the outer chambers, and any moment someone with considerably more authority might burst in upon us. So I swooped on the little urchin. “Out of the way,” I commanded. “I bring medicine, and if you delay me, there’ll be trouble.” I turned back to little Lizzie. “Quickly, show me the way and tell this horrid boy to let me past and not call out for anyone else.”

  The house was huge and unlit. The shadowed passages seemed endless. A hundred corners turned left, a hundred more turned right, and at each turn, I feared the sudden grasp of a diseased and tremulous hand, the sour breath of sickness down my neck, the appearance of the steward or someone else determined to stop me, or even the dying gasp of a crawling corpse. No other sconced candles flared but Lizzy’s daughter carried the one small stub from the kitchen to light our way, her other palm shielding it from the draught. It flickered pale sepia puddles on our scurrying toes and spat smoke. We hurried up great staircases and along narrow corridors where oak doors soared massive and tight-closed in the gloom. I knew I would never again discover the way out. Then finally Lizzie, daughter to Lizzie, stopped. She pointed to a doorway, turned at once and left me. I stood alone in the sudden blackness and took a deep breath. I clutched my mother’s little earthenware jar, and I opened the door.

  Lord Lydiard had never taken wards so Jak, an only child, slept in the large bedchamber by himself. Now no servant kept watch on the straw pallet at the end of the bed for in sickness, Jak was isolated. The canopied bed took up half the floor space, and within it, the sleeping figure seemed tiny. No one had been around to raise the shutters, so the long uncovered windows welcomed the moonlight which striped the floor and the wall tapestries in pale witch silver. Jak’s breathing was hoarse and ragged, and he did not know I was there.

  The bed curtains were already pulled back. The old velvet was threadbare and torn as if it had hung there for too many years, witness to the clutching hands of dying generations. Dust gathered in all the folds, and I could smell it. I could smell the Sickness too. I sat carefully on the edge of the mattress, sinking into the billowed feathers and the heavy covers. I leaned over and put my palm on Jak’s forehead.

  The evening’s warmth had turned cold. Past midnight, it was a drear morrow and a long way from dawn. My hand was cool, and Jak’s brow was fire. I thought he opened his eyes and saw me, but when I leaned closer, I saw he was still in sleep and only the nightmare of delirium moved his lashes. All his skin was slick with sweat which glowed in the moonlight, but his face was flushed, and his jaw tight as though clenched in pain. His nostrils were caked in dry blood, and where the quilt was pulled right up to his chin, its edging was wet, all dark sour stained with sweat and vomit. I pulled it back a little. Jak moved, fretful as if disturbed by my touch, but he did not open his eyes, and neither did he speak, though his forced breathing gurgled shallow in his throat. I looked around for something to clean his face and soothe his fever. There were pillows on the floorboards around the bed as if he had thrown them off in tremor or convulsion. I piled them back and pushed some behind Jak’s shoulders and over the bolster, supporting hi
m so he would not gag on his own vomit. There was a jug of water and a basin on a chest by the window, and besides this, I found a tangle of prepared bandages. I used them to bathe him, cooling his face and head and then his neck and upper chest, but soon the little water was all gone. I dried him with my own skirt and kissed his cheek. Clearly, it was days since he had been shaved and the youthful stubble was thick, but the perspiration made his skin seem smooth. He did not wake.

  I sat for a while calming my own fears, knowing I could not give him my mother’s precious medicine to drink until I could wake him, or I risked him choking, or spilling and wasting it. The little white moonlight pooled around the bed as the moon slowly sank, readying for the day. Jak’s breathing continued to rattle as if it clung only reluctantly to him and would burst out soon and leave him empty. His tongue was swollen, his mouth smelled rank, his gums oozed pus, and his nose had started to bleed again. The sweat streamed in tiny rivulets down his face and into the valleys of his neck. He was naked beneath the covers, and all the proud muscles of his wide shoulders now glistened as if oiled. I put my cheek against his and called him. “You must wake Jak,” I whispered. “You must wake, for me to cure you and make you well. I promise to take all the pain away, but first you must come to my call.”

  He went hard, quite rigid, and began to shake in uncontrollable spasms. Convulsion gripped every part of him so that the quilt was flung away and I was thrown off, having to hurl myself across his body to keep him on the bed. For some moments I held him as tightly as I could, my face in his hair, repeating over and over my promise to make him well, my prayer to whatever god would condescend to listen, and mumbling a little magic charm I had heard my mother sing many times. Gradually the terrible shaking eased, and Jak went limp in my arms. I continued to hold him tightly and smoothed back his hair, cooled his forehead and his eyes and wiped his mouth with the train of my gown. His saliva was brown, like slime in the midden heaps.

  When I sat up a little, I saw he was finally awake, and staring at me. There were streaks of blood in the pupils of his eyes, and where they should have been clear and white, there was a checkered crossing of bright, fresh scarlet.

  I thought he said something, but although my ear was so close to his mouth, I could not hear or understand him. Thick fur-tongued and half caught in the tremor of delirium, he could only grasp at words; wild sounds, guttural and slurred. I leaned closer. “I don’t hear you,” I whispered. I had my mother’s medicine bottle ready in one hand, fingers grasping the chipped wooden stopper.

  Jak strained desperately to make his words clear. I was smoothing the sweat from his forehead with my fingertips. He flung my hand off, spitting the words he struggled so hard to say. “You must – go – away,” he croaked.

  I shook my head. “Listen,” crooning as I did to wounded forest creatures, “I’ve brought medicine. You’re going to get better Jak. Not just better but cured. Can you drink, if I hold it for you?”

  He stared at me through a crimson mist, as vivid, I suppose, as the aura of colours through which he had told me he viewed all the world. He had never told me what colour the word death was. “No,” he managed to say, his voice split and croaking. But he forced himself to keep talking. “I’ll make you sick Freia. Leave me. Get safe away. I’m dying. I won’t be – your death too.” It took some time for him to get all the words out and most of them were so disguised, I only guessed them. His poor croaking voice must have pained him, but I sat patiently and held his hand as he ordered me gone, his hand clutching mine like a vice, a bird’s claw clamped around my fingers.

  “Tell me,” I insisted, “can you keep the medicine down if I help you drink it? Just a few drops at a time?”

  At last he said, “I – don’t – don’t know.”

  “Then we’ll try,” I said. I pushed another pillow behind his back. He had thrown the covers off in his last convulsion and now lay naked to the waist. Around his chest, a swollen black and purple rash clustered, bathed in a sheen of perspiration. The misshapen bruises joined in places, turning all his body livid as the last of the faint peeping moonlight cringed and slipped away. I wanted to put my arm around him for comfort and support, but when I touched him, he groaned, a guttural wheeze deep down in his throat. Instead, I held the medicine bottle to his lips and tipped it gently.

  It was a bottle that had once held poison, one of my mother’s favourites. “But there is really little difference between poison and cure,” she had told me more than once. “Too little poison may cure a sick man. Too much medicine will kill another.” I hoped desperately that the medicine I now held, keeping my hand steady through desperate determination, would be the cure she had promised.

  Jak sipped, taking just a few drops before he coughed and I took the bottle away, but the liquid showed no stain around his mouth, and I knew he had swallowed a little. I watched as he slowly regained his breath, the coughing lapsed into spittle and again he opened his eyes. “Fray,” he whispered, “it’s too late. I’m dying. You mustn’t be here. I’ll give you the sickness.”

  “Then we’ll die together,” I said simply.

  “When I go, I have to know I’ve left you safe.” He managed to shake his head. “And I stink. The stench of my own body makes me heave. Leave me the medicine if you want but get out while you can.”

  “You’re too weak to drink it yourself,” I told him. “And I have to nurse you as well. I know what my mother does, and I can do the same. This potion is very strong, but I’m only allowed to give you half, and without any nursing, it might not be enough. Just lie back, my beloved, I know what I’m doing.”

  I didn’t really. My mother had never let me accompany her, so I hadn’t watched exactly what she did, but she had spoken of it and told me what signs to look for should sickness come to either of us. “The pestilence is an evil thing, and more foul than any other disease I have seen,” she had explained. “The body dies, although the sick man still lives within it. All the inner organs leak and bleed, even the brain and the heart. The flesh breaks away beneath the skin and starts to rot. The bladder and bowels no longer hold onto their waste, and even the tongue oozes shit. When finally the huge black pustules swell up and grow, then it is the promise of the end. Look for them on the neck by the ears, under the arms, and in the sweaty folds of the groin. The patient may linger in agony while the lumps heave and bleed and grow big as an apple in autumn, but the pain of them is so terrible the sufferer wishes only to die.”

  Her words echoed in my head because what I now saw was just as she had described and Jak’s misery echoed the agony she had spoken of, but there were no dark apple sized swellings on his neck or under his arms, and that was a relief. My mother had also told me how I should nurse her if she became ill, and so I thought I could manage. First, I wanted clean water and didn’t know if I could retrace my way to the kitchens or find a pump or a well. Jak was still clutching my hand.

  “If you save me, and then you die, I’ll kill myself,” he whispered.

  His words were clearer, his voice faint but steady, and I wondered if the medicine was already helping. “We’ll both be safe,” I said very firmly. “Can you direct me to clean water? I need a bucket and towels.”

  He was a little calmer when I staggered back with the pail of water. I had gathered cloths from the kitchen, and the water had once been boiled over the cooking fire, remaining still faintly warm. There had been no maidservant nor scullion to interrupt me, and I had quickly found what I wanted. Now I poured some water into the jug and began, very gently, to clean Jak’s face. He lay, fever-bright, and watched me in silence. His eyes were still bloodshot, but his breathing grew almost quiet.

  Eventually, Jak said, “Does your mother know you’re here?”

  I considered lying. “Not actually,” I said. “But the medicine is from her.”

  After a moment he continued, “Does my father know you’re here?”

  I smiled. “No. It’s the middle of the night. I sneaked in through the kitch
ens.”

  He leaned forward slightly to rinse his hands in the bowl I held for him, then collapsed back against the pillows. I gave him cooled water to drink, and then two more sips of the medicine. He was able to take it without gagging, and I watched his face relax a little. He thanked me, no more than a hoarse whisper.

  Slowly I washed Jak’s arms and chest, very gently across the wide festering expanse where the internal bruising distorted his skin down to the hard flat plain of his belly. I had never seen him naked before. Unclothed, he was all slim sinew and muscle, he would have been so beautiful if the skin had glistened with health instead of sweat pouring over discoloured pits and hollows where the rash ate his poor body. It seemed strange to see him so vulnerable, with all that strength subsided into pain, and without even the force to hold up one of those muscled arms by himself. I liked feeling the curves of his body beneath my fingers, but he was as weak as one of the little animals I often saved from the farmers’ traps. I held him against me as I washed his back, dried where I had washed, then leaned him once more against his pillows.

  Not even a village lout was immodest enough to bare his chest under the sun, not even while ploughing, and there had never been a male friend come to my mother’s house. So at first, I had been startled. “I didn’t know men had nipples,” I said. Jak looked at me as if he thought I might be mad. “It seems rather unnecessary,” I explained.