“Is that shoulder still bothering you?” I said, my chest constricting.
“It troubles me only at certain angles.” She offered me a don’t-worry-about-it smile, but her eyes had that same sunken look that I’d seen in my own. The lack of news about Nick and Francis…Alice’s shoulder injury that was my fault…the relentless snow…it’d become harder to get out of bed in the morning.
I was stitching the corner of a tablecloth for the poor when the doors swung open, inviting in a gust of wind and a pewter platter that smelled like a bakery at first light. Bridget and Lucinda had gone to the kitchens for some sweet snacks, which had become our mid-morning ritual.
“Heavens, at last!” said Alice. She rushed up to help them unpack the load. I reminded her of her bad shoulder and took over the task.
“Fresh macarons for our devoted queen,” said Lucinda, biting into one. Her nose scrunched with exaggerated joy as she chewed.
I retorted with a playful scoff and appraised the spread of sweetened almonds, custard tarts, stewed cherries sprinkled with sugar, cookies with warmed dates, and my favorite: fluffy macarons. I reached for one, but Alice’s hand snatched my arm to hold me back.
“Ouch,” I said and then realized Lucinda was coughing. Her skin had paled in seconds, and her nails clawed at her neck. She hacked up a glob of chewed macaron, spitting it onto the rush matting. Strings of saliva dripped from her mouth as she hunched forward.
“Are you okay?” I said, the breath sucked out of me.
Bridget screamed as Lucinda slumped to the floor. I dropped to catch her at the same time as Alice. Our heads knocked together, but I felt no pain, my heart beating out of my throat.
“Touch no more food!” Alice ordered, as Lucinda rolled onto her back and vomited violently, almost choking. “I have seen this before now,” said Alice, rolling Lucinda onto her side. “This is poison.”
I couldn’t speak, my eyes shifting between Lucinda’s pallid cheeks and the clump of spewed-up dessert on the floor. Someone had poisoned the macarons, which were famous throughout the palace for being my favorite snack.
Alice was delivering instructions to Bridget, but I couldn’t make out the words. Bridget nodded, hitched up her skirts, and ran outside to the courtyard.
Sweat poured from Lucinda’s brow, and she kicked with agitation. Alice slipped two fingers into Lucinda’s mouth in an attempt to induce more vomiting.
I leaped forward. “Don’t do that!” I cried. “That could make her worse.” A girl from my school in Hatfield had overdosed at prom, and it’s what the paramedic had said to the guy trying to make her barf.
I crouched to feel Lucinda’s pulse, asking her to look at me. Her eyes rolled backward, and both hands clutched her stomach. Her pulse felt weak.
Alice squeezed my shoulder, and I realized I was sobbing.
“It was supposed to be me.” My voice slipped on the words. “It should’ve been me. They poisoned the macarons, and now Lucinda will—”
“Stop that,” Alice snapped. “You are our blessed queen; we pray to God, day by day, for your health. Better any one of us takes our last breath than you, my lady. The king would never forgive us should any ill befall you.”
“I’m no better than her; I’m just Emmie!” I said, shocking Alice. I scrambled to my feet, hunting for something, but I didn’t know what. “I don’t want this…I didn’t want any of this,” I stammered. “First you…Blackburn…now Lucy. I–I can’t hurt anyone else…I don’t know what else to do.” Tears poured down my cheeks, and Alice rose to comfort me, but I shook her away. “We have to help Lucy,” I said. “She can’t die. None of this was supposed to happen.”
Alice’s face was grave as she crouched back down beside Lucinda.
Two hard knocks shook the doors, and I darted to open them. Doctor Norris was on the front step with Bridget, kicking snow off his slippers. He bowed to me from beneath his black hood.
“We think it’s poison…please help her,” was all I could get out.
Norris strode over to Lucinda and crouched. He dropped his nose to her mouth and cupped his hands around her lips, smelling her breath and then her puddle of vomit. Lucinda was beginning to shiver.
“Can we move her to the bed?” I said. Norris nodded and climbed off his knees with a groan. “She can have mine,” I added in a don’t-argue-with-me tone, opening the doors to my bedchamber.
Norris and Alice hoisted Lucinda up by the shoulders, and Bridget and I caught the weight of her hips and legs. Lucinda gasped painful breaths as we lugged her through the doorway and settled her onto the mattress. I dragged a stool to her side and pasted wet strips of linen over her forehead to cool her while Norris fussed over her. Not only did I want to help Lucy in any way I could, but what awaited me outside the safety of my chambers frightened me to my bones. I hadn’t forgotten the sickening Tudor torture devices that I’d read about in history class. How much did the people here despise me that they would be driven to poison me? Were they so unafraid of Nick’s wrath? Was it a member of Henry Howard’s rebellion or just another rich courtier who detested me? How much further were they willing to go to get rid of me? Boiling people alive came to mind.
Bridget had began hyperventilating and needed to lie down on her mattress. While Alice came and went from our chambers, monitoring the investigation that’d already begun, I stayed with Lucinda. I changed the sheets when she puked on them and offered her water, but she shivered so much that it was hard for her to ingest. Norris tried to catch her urine in a tin vessel, but few drops came. I had to bite away my frustration when he laid rows of leeches across her arms to “balance her humors”. That had about as much effect as the weird gallstone-looking thing he kept dipping into water before making her take sips of it.
Shortly after dawn, a barber-surgeon arrived with a strong lisp and fierce eyebrows. He pulled a knife from his cloak that looked like a nail file and sank it into Lucinda’s forearm, holding up a brass cup to catch the draining blood. I had to leave the room, furious at the archaic treatments that surely had little benefit.
Bridget was trying to write a letter to Lucinda’s mom, who was looking after little Ellie, but her dripping tears kept smudging the ink.
Soon after the barber-surgeon left, Lucinda stopped responding, and her breathing was shallow. Doctor Norris asked if we could have a word outside. I spooned a little water over Lucinda’s lips before following him into the drawing-room. Alice and Bridget gathered behind me.
“Your Highness, I pray you forgive me,” Norris said with his head bowed. “There is no more that can be done. Mistress Parker is likely in her last hours. May I send for a minister?”
“I’m sorry…what?” I mumbled. “She threw up this morning. Isn’t that a sign that her body’s still working through it?”
My words drew no relief to his face. “I regret that I am quite certain she is dying, my lady.”
A cry spurted from Bridget’s lips, tears brimming over her heavily made-up eyelashes. Alice’s breathing was heavy with grief.
Miraculously, I didn’t fall apart. In fact, I’d never felt so strong or sure of anything.
I knew what I had to do to try to save Lucinda Parker’s life.
19
I swung my riding cloak over my shoulders while Alice chased me outside onto the front step.
“I’m going to go home and try to find some medicine to help Lucy,” I said without looking at her. “My father, Doctor Grace, always had good remedies.”
She returned a sympathetic frown. “Your father is with God, my lady.”
“But he never threw anything out. The remedies will still be there.”
Alice’s lips parted. “Will there be time? It shall take days to reach Worthing.” She grimaced at the silvery sky. “The streets will not be safe…there may be wicked men about. My lady, I cannot in good conscience let you do this.”
“Let me? I’m going,” I said, stronger than I intended. “There’s no talking me out of it. I’ll organiz
e some guards to come with me. Please stay with Lucy while I’m gone. Can you do that? I don’t want that barber-surgeon stabbing her with his scalpel again.”
Alice dropped her head, her cheeks reddening. “Most certainly, Your Highness. God be with you—always. I will bid the grooms to make ready your horse.”
I thanked her and hung there for a second, hating myself for using my position to intimidate Alice into submission. “I’ll keep safe and be back as soon as I can,” I said gently. “Please tell the grooms that I’ll be at the stables soon.”
The look on her face made clear that she didn’t approve of my impromptu excursion, but I knew she’d obey.
Drawing my hood over my hair, I legged it toward Nick’s chambers, bursting into the fire-warmed bedchamber where I’d left the blue-diamond ring inside his magnificent jewelry cabinet that was hand-carved from bone. I’d hardly slept all night as I sat beside Lucinda, so it was easy to fall asleep in the king’s luxurious bed with the enchanted ring on my thumb. I didn’t have time to panic about what the witch said about the ring being drained of power. Whether the time portal worked or not, I had to try. I couldn’t let Lucinda take a bullet for me without doing everything I could to save her life.
I slept and roused at least three times, my drowsy eyelids letting in enough firelight each time to confirm I was still at Hampton Court Palace. I smacked a lump out of the pillow with the sort of irritation that only panic can inspire. Begging for sleep, I slowed and deepened my breaths.
Without warning, my butt plunged to the floor and slammed into cold linoleum. It took a minute for the contemporary room to materialize through my foggy brain…I was on the floor beside a vacant hospital-style bed. A familiar vinyl armchair sat empty in the corner. The number ‘23’ hung lopsidedly on the peach door, and the toxic smell of disinfectant overcame my nose.
OMG, I’m at the Cedar Lake Rest Home! I left from here last time with Susanna Grey.
That meant I was in freaking Boston—not Hatfield, where my mom was a nurse and might have some medicine that could help Lucinda. A rush of nerves sent my stomach into free-fall as I flung the cupboard door open, stretching from my toes to reach for my cell phone. Polished metal met my fingers, and I exhaled with relief, sliding the phone down my bodice until it chilled my bare skin.
Bleary, starving, and looking like a period movie character in a sixteenth-century kirtle, I made it past a few stares from elderly residents to the front exit, mercifully escaping any sign of Ajay, the care worker who’d helped me last time, or any other staff in the home. Outside on the Boston streets, I paced down the road, dialing my mom’s number from my cell phone and ignoring the eye rolls from people who saw my period outfit.
Thank the stars, she answered, but her voice was hoarse. I must’ve woken her up after one of her night shifts.
“Emmie!” she said and cleared her throat. “Where are you?”
“In Boston. Sorry to wake you. How are you doing?”
She sighed deeply enough to inflate a hot air balloon. “I don’t know. Surviving. I’m glad to hear your voice.” She sounded exhausted.
“Yours, too. Mom, I need to ask you a medical question. If someone has been poisoned, what kind of medicine should I give them?”
“Who was poisoned?”
“No one you know…a friend. She can’t get to a hospital, but I think she could be dying. Well, she is dying, apparently.” The truth of that gripped my throat.
Mom sucked in a sharp breath. “What did she take?”
“I don’t even know; it was something put into her food.” I described Lucinda’s symptoms from the ingestion of the macaron until now.
Another heavy sigh. “We’d have to know what toxin she ingested because the treatments vary. She’d need a toxicology report, possibly a ventilator if her respiratory system is depressed. Her liver or kidneys could be in trouble…I’m not a doctor, Emmie. Why can’t she get to a hospital?”
“What about that black stuff—I forget what it’s called. One of the girls at school had it when she OD’d at the prom.”
“You mean activated charcoal? It can help for certain things, but it’s usually given within hours of the poisoning. It sounds like your friend has been sick for a while.”
“Less than two days. And I’m happy to try anything that might work.”
Mom didn’t reply. I heard her climb out of bed and a talk show playing in the background. She always slept with the television on.
“Well, do you think the activated charcoal’s worth a try at least?” I pressed.
She sighed. “It’s really unlikely to do anything. I’ve never seen it given after two days.”
“Less than two days. Please, Mom, I have to try something.”
Her television cut to silence. “You’d need hospital grade. Don’t bother with the pharmacy. I should have some stored away at the rest home.”
“Really?” I was already calculating. If I hopped on a bus to downtown and caught a connecting bus to Amherst, I could be in Hatfield before the day was out.
“I don’t have any money on me,” I realized out loud. It’d been so long since I’d had to think about my wallet.
Mom made a frustrated huff before swapping the phone to her other ear. “I’ll get some of the charcoal and drive in to see you. Where in Boston are you?”
“Oh my gosh, Mom; are you even serious?”
“Emmie, one day, you’ll learn what it’s like to be a mother. Then everything I do might not surprise—or annoy—you so much.”
Her words tore at my heart. In choosing a life with Nick in Tudor England, I’d all but abandoned my devoted mom. I wished that I’d never had to choose between them.
After she assured me that her car hadn’t acted up in ages, I said I’d meet her at the library up the street. While reminding her of the time urgency, I asked her to chuck anything edible into her bag and to give our dog Ruby a massive cuddle from me.
It was a relief to enter the library, its warm atmosphere wrapping around me like a hug. I settled into a comfy armchair, flicking through a fashion magazine. Holy smokes, I’ve missed fashion magazines. When their garish colors and stories about celebrity spats became overwhelming, though, I dropped the dog-eared booklet back into the rack and scanned the nearest bookshelf.
It was the boring language section, and I went to move on until the thick spine of a lime-green tome caught my eye. It was a dictionary of Latin words and phrases, and I flicked through to the ‘L’ chapter, scanning for the phrase Lex talionis.
There it was, in black and white.
* * *
Lex talionis: the law of retaliation, e.g. ‘an eye for an eye’.
* * *
An uncomfortable feeling slithered into my gut, settling there. An eye for an eye—why would the witch say that to me?
I tried to distract myself with an old crime novel that someone had left on the table, but three chapters in, I felt like I hadn’t absorbed a word. I was eighteen and married with a husband at war, my friend was dying, and I was trying to read about a celebrity murderer who took out predatory men with her stilettos.
A middle-aged woman with scraggy blonde hair pushed through the library doors. It took me a second to recognize my mom. Her cheeks were sunken, and she’d lost weight. She hugged me without saying anything.
“I missed you,” I said into her shoulder. She squeezed harder.
She shook her head at my billowy kirtle with bell sleeves but said nothing about it. I dragged two armchairs closer together, and Mom uncoiled a knitted scarf from her neck.
“I gather you don’t have long,” she said, handing me a crumpled shopping bag. Inside was a white plastic bottle labeled ‘Activated Charcoal: Poison Antidote’ alongside the directions for use and a bunch of medical jargon.
“Thanks so much for this,” I said, the stiff plastic bottle unlike anything I’d seen in the sixteenth century. I should’ve brought an apothecary jar to transfer the contents into. “Unfortunately, I can’t st
ay long,” I added, my voice cracking. “My friend’s really sick.”
Mom had also brought me a packet of trail mix and two yogurt-coated granola bars. I downed the lot in a few bites, gulping water from her bottle. She tried to give me money, but I insisted that I didn’t need it. US dollars didn’t buy much in Tudor England.
“Is the charcoal for your friend Nick?” Mom said carefully. Her eyes were roaming all over me, searching for signs of injury or perhaps unhappiness.
“No, it’s for a friend of ours...her name’s Lucy.” I left out the part about Lucinda having a baby daughter who’d just survived a form of tuberculosis.
Mom’s hands twisted together, fidgeting. “If you take me to her, I can administer the medicine properly. It should really be given through a nasogastric tube, but I assume you don’t have one of those.”
“Yeah, we don’t have one of those.”
We do have leeches, though, and bloodletting. Oh, and that gallstone thing.
“It’ll stain her teeth black if she drinks it,” Mom warned. “Possibly permanently.”
“It’s okay. A lot of people where she lives have black teeth. It’s actually kind of trendy there.”
Mom frowned. “It’s also critical that your friend doesn’t aspirate this. That would make everything a heck of a lot worse. I also told you the charcoal will probably have absolutely no effect after this much time, right?”
“Yeah. But you never know…I have to try.”
She paused, her fingers still fidgeting. “Can I come with you?”
My face fell. “You know you can’t.”
Mom wound her scarf back around her neck. “I know. Time travel and all that.” Her posture stiffened.
My voice cracked with exhaustion, but—as usual—I had no time to lose. I stood up and gave Mom another hug that signaled it was already time for me to head off.
“Your dad wants to see you,” she said as we pulled away, my hands sliding down to her bony wrists. “He asked me to call him as soon as you got back in touch.”
Emmie and the Tudor Queen Page 24
