But the warmth she felt for Cameron was quickly eclipsed by her dismay for Mary's sorry state. When she headed up the stairs to her room, her heart sank at how dark and dank it was in the room. Cameron and his mother had clearly done their best to cheer the place up — the place was tidy, at least, and there was a bunch of flowers on the bedside table. But the misery surrounding Mary was almost palpable.
"Mary? I've brought some salve for your lesions," Karen said timidly, creeping a little closer and reaching out to pull the blanket away from the huddled lump on the bed. She heard a muffled cry, and the blanket was snatched back with an incoherent instruction not to touch her. "Woah, woah," she said soothingly, taking a few steps back and exchanging worried glances with Cameron, who was standing stoic in the doorway. "Sorry, Mary. I won't touch, okay? I'm just going to put this little pot of salve by the bed for you. It will help them stop hurting and heal faster, and stop them from itching too much, too, okay?"
A muffled grunt from the bedclothes. Mary seemed even more uncommunicative and miserable than she had a few days prior — which was strange, given that her fellow maids had been chatty enough. Was she really feeling this bad? Or was something else entirely going on?
"You'll start to feel better soon, I promise," she said softly, wanting to reach out to touch her shoulder through the blanket but mindful of how sharply she had resisted being touched earlier. "Just make sure you're keeping your sores clean and covered… Cameron here has offered to help you with that, hasn't he?"
"I have, I have," Cameron said urgently, all but vibrating with his desire to help. But there was no response from Mary.
"We'll leave you to rest, okay, Mary?" Karen said softly, knowing a lost cause when she saw one. And with that, she and Cameron left the room, gently closing the door behind them.
Cameron was quiet as they headed down the stairs. As she lingered at the doorway, he bit his lip, clearly conflicted about something. "Mary's been sad for ages," he said softly, looking up at her. "She got sick… then she got sad."
"She got sad because she got sick?" Karen asked, tilting her head. But the little boy shook his head, his face worried.
"N-o, I don't think so," he mumbled. "She got those sores on her hands and started getting sick… but it wasn't until a bit later that she got sad like that. I was scared she was angry with me, but she's like that with everyone. Do you know what could be wrong with her?"
"Sorry, Cameron. I don't," Karen said heavily. "But if I think of anything, I'll let you know, okay? And if you think of anything, you tell me."
The little boy seemed cheered — at least a little — that she was on his side, that the two of them were working on helping his big sister feel better. But Karen gnawed on her lip as she walked down the cottage's little path toward where she'd tethered her horse. There was definitely something wrong here… some information she was missing, something that had happened. Something to do with the girl's fall, perhaps? But as she walked, she was distracted from her reflections by the sight of a familiar face peering through some bushes in the front yard. It took her a moment to recognize the young man, and a pang of dread ran through her. It was Danny — the lad from the bar the other night, the one who'd threatened her in such an ugly tone of voice.
"Hey," she said, surprised more than anything to see him. What was he doing here? Could he be a friend of Mary's, perhaps? Unlikely… they seemed several years apart in age. But as she looked at him, she saw the lesions on his hands and was reminded that he, like Mary, had come down with the disease. "Oh! I wanted to talk to you about —"
But as she took a step toward him, he turned on his heel and disappeared. She shouted after him as he sprinted down the path toward town, but it wasn't long before he was gone from sight. Karen rolled her eyes, debating whether it would be worth it to chase after him. Probably not.
"Just wanted to tell you how to avoid getting all your creepy friends sick," she muttered to herself as she swung up onto her horse's back. But Danny's appearance bothered her all the way home. Just what had he been doing there, camped out outside Mary's cottage like that? Could he have followed Karen there?
But why?
Chapter 19
A few days passed. Karen found herself fairly busy — Connor kept coming by, offering to bring her with him on various errands that didn't really feel like they needed her to complete them… but she was hardly going to point that out if it risked the opportunity to spend more time with him. The crush she was nursing on him was getting worse and worse… and it was made all the more acute by Kay's casual observation that he liked her, too. Was it possible? She read into everything he said, every sidelong glance, the way he smiled at her when he saw her first thing in the morning, the lingering way he said goodnight… but it was impossible to tell, she told herself firmly. She wasn't exactly au fait with social norms of this time and place… what if he was just being polite?
At any rate, there was an epidemic to worry about before she started fussing over her love life. Word had spread among the villagers that the pox was afoot, and Connor and Karen found themselves besieged with questions from the village folk every time they rode out. Rumors, too, were flying about the disease — most of them patently false and downright ridiculous. When Connor caught an enterprising young man selling small jars of what looked like mud with weeds mixed into it, claiming to his customers that the slop (when applied liberally to the hands) would protect them from pox, it seemed he'd had enough.
"This is nonsense, right?" he asked Karen, raising an eyebrow at her as he gestured to the jars of mud. The guilty look on the young man's face told her all she needed to know, and she nodded.
"We need a town meeting," Connor said with a roll of his eyes once the young man had been clipped around the ears and sent off to make repayments and apologies to every single one of his hapless customers. "It's clear we need to get the right information to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, in one hit."
And so, a special meeting was arranged — to be held in the church up on the hill, which seemed to be the only room in the village that was large enough to hold everyone at once. Karen helped Connor spread the word about the meeting, inviting as many villagers as possible to come along, and by the time the evening of the meeting came, she was feeling oddly nervous about addressing everyone. Though she'd met plenty of the villagers in the week she'd spent there, she still felt a little apprehensive about addressing them all en masse. There had been — varying responses to her claims of being a medical professional that was for sure. Some villagers had scoffed at the very idea — others had been delighted. What would the crowd at large think?
They headed up the hill as the sun was setting. Karen was interested, despite her nervousness, to see what the little church was like on the inside. It had been a long time since she'd been inside a church… and to her amusement, the medieval church wasn't so different to the ones she'd been to in her childhood. Rows of pews, an altar up at the front with a great crucifix, even the stained glass windows seemed oddly familiar… but this church, unlike the ones from her childhood, was lit by torchlight, not electricity. She headed up to the front of the room with Connor, who introduced her to a few other members of the Watch, including Brendan, the Captain.
"Brendan's wife Elena came from your time," Connor explained with a smile.
"She sends her apologies for not being here," Brendan said. "I'm sure she'll be thrilled to meet you."
To Karen's surprise, the village priest was there, too — and was much younger than she'd expected him to be. He was barely in his early twenties, with a pale, peaky look to him, though he seemed on friendly enough terms with all the guards and he greeted her politely, too. Connor had explained that Father Caleb was something of a hard-won ally of the people of the Keep — though the talk of faeries and magic were antithetical to his religion, he managed to broker a peace between the faith of the villagers and the supernatural work done by the Sept. A difficult line to walk, Karen could imagin
e, looking with new respect at this young priest.
The villagers all filed in and sat obediently in the pews, and the meeting began. It was warm in the church, and rather pleasant to look out over the sea of faces, to hear the announcements and discussions that went on. It wasn't long before she was called up to speak about the pox. Feeling her stomach flutter nervously, she headed for the pulpit, where Father Caleb smiled and gestured for her to begin.
"Uh — good evening," she said, trying to calm her nerves. "I've met some of you already, but for those of you who don't know, my name is Karen. I've been helping control the spread of cowpox, and … well, I have a lot of experience in handling diseases like this, so I thought I'd share what I know with you all so that we've got a good shot at keeping as many people as possible from getting sick."
The villagers were glancing at each other, and even from her position at the pulpit she could tell she didn't have their trust. Then Father Caleb was at her side, raising his voice effortlessly to call over the murmuring crowd.
"I have every confidence in Karen's wisdom," he said firmly. "She is a skilled healer with much to teach us all, and I'd invite you to open your ears and minds to what she has to say." He gave her a little nod, and she smiled her appreciation. The villagers didn't look especially impressed, now — but at least they stayed quiet as she continued to speak.
"The disease is cowpox. It's capable of spreading from cows to humans — that's how this outbreak started, unfortunately, with some young women milking sick cows and the disease spreading to their hands. We've been able to separate the sick cows, and they should recover soon."
"What about the milkmaids?" someone called, an old woman with a voice full of worry. "Will they die?"
A murmur of fear went up, and Karen raised her hands for quiet, grateful for the opportunity to put this particular misconception down. "Not at all," she said firmly. "Cowpox is an unpleasant disease, but very rarely fatal. They'll feel fairly unwell for about eight weeks, but they'll make a full recovery soon. And they won't ever get the disease again," she added. "Once you catch it, you'll be immune." She was tempted to tell them that they'd also be immune to smallpox… but that might have been a bit too much for one meeting.
"How do we avoid getting it?" the same woman called.
"Well, the disease is passed on by touching. So long as you avoid touching anyone who's sick, you should be fine. That includes touching things they've touched with their lesions — like clothing and bandages — or sleeping next to them. It's called quarantine," she said firmly. "If you notice symptoms — feeling sick or feverish, or seeing little round sores on your body — you should shut yourself away until you get well. We'll help keep you fed and safe until you're better. You definitely shouldn't go to work," she added.
There was a kerfuffle up the back at that. Half a dozen men were standing, and she could see angry expressions on their face even from here — and with a jolt, she recognized them as the cowherders from the bar the other night. Giving her ugly looks, the six of them turned and stormed out of the church, slamming the great doors hard behind them as they stormed into the night.
Well, she thought faintly, as the villagers tittered and murmured amongst themselves. She supposed her little speech could have gone worse.
Chapter 20
“They're just annoyed about having to do their own washing," Connor consoled her. It was an hour or so after the town meeting — she was still irritated that the herdsmen had stormed out of her talk about keeping each other safe during the epidemic. "That's all it is."
"They're not going to do what they have to do to keep themselves safe," she grumbled. "And that means they're going to infect other people. This thing has an incubation period, Connor. You know what that means, right?"
"Not precisely."
"It means that if you catch it, it takes a week to show up. That means we won't be seeing how quickly it's spread until… well, a few days from now." She rubbed her face, exasperated and tired. They were sitting outside the church, the dark, cloudy sky above them — the villagers had all gone home, and they were alone here. If she hadn't been so annoyed about the reaction from the villagers to her talk about controlling infection she'd have been overthinking how close Connor had chosen to sit to her, the heat of his body warming her arm… but even Connor's distracting presence wasn't enough to take her mind off how annoyed she was with those herdsmen.
"They want to work," he said with a shrug. "They don't like being told what to do… least of all by a woman, I'm afraid." She glared daggers at him, and he raised his hands. "Not me! I love being ordered around by women."
Karen couldn't help but laugh at that — at the worry on his face, at the reassurance in his voice. She got to her feet, rubbing her face, and thinking fondly of her cozy little bed back at the inn. A gust of wind distracted her, and she blinked, staggering a little in the force of the breeze. The evening was cooler than the day had been, but that wind was strange. It came from the west, and it was hot and fierce, leaving her feeling oddly clammy. Connor had noticed it, too — she saw him frowning as he stared up into the sky.
"Odd weather," he said softly, his eyes on the dark clouds above them. "That west wind…"
"Is it a storm?"
"Air's dry," he said, shrugging as he held out a hand. "Doesn't look like it to me. Looks like… I don't know what it looks like." Another gust of wind came, stronger this time, blowing gritty dust into their faces and making Karen wince and scrub at her eyes.
"Looks like time to go home," she said firmly.
Connor nodded.
The two of them headed down the street toward the inn — the church was within walking distance, so neither of them had bothered to ride. Probably a good thing, too, she thought with a frown as the wind picked up, howling through the streets and causing the two of them to stumble a little as the force of it threw their balance around. She could feel it dragging at her clothing, flapping at the cloak she was wearing around her shoulders, and she could hear Connor swearing softly under his breath as he, too, struggled with the windstorm.
By the time they'd reached the inn, the storm had hit with a vengeance. Karen had never seen weather like this in her life, and she cringed a little in shock at the howling and screaming of the wind through the trees, through the village, flapping at open windows. She could hear cries of alarm from the townsfolk, many of whom were out in the street, staring with matching looks of horror into the sky. Connor was looking around with his jaw tight and his eyes clouded.
"I think I might be on duty tonight," he told her in a low voice. "You get inside and make sure your window's shut tight, alright?"
She nodded — and he was gone, jogging off across the street and calling to a woman who'd just emerge from her cottage, shouting in dismay as some laundry that had been hanging from her window went flying off into the night, gripped by the wind. Karen followed the garment with her eyes, watching it get whipped up into the sky and flung out of sight… then her eyes widened. The wind was still screeching and moaning through the trees, but there was something else in the sky… something past the clouds, something obscured by shifting shadows. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out the shapes she could see flapping and shifting in the wind… it looked for all the world like great leathery wings, but she couldn't get a proper look at them in the gloom. As she listened, the shrieking of the wind came again… but this time, perhaps because of the wing-like shapes she'd seen, she couldn't help but imagine it as the shriek of some great, horrible bird…
Her mind was playing tricks on her, she told herself firmly, pulling her cloak around her shoulders and turning on her heel to head inside the inn. Thomas was downstairs, a look of acute worry on his face as he struggled with the shutters on the windows — Karen set about helping him get them shut and he shot her a grateful look. They worked together to get the place closed up and locked down, and she helped him check the windows on the upper stories too, ensuring that even the empty rooms' windows were s
hut and barred.
Then there was nothing to do but go to her bedroom and lie down in the dark. She was itching to stare out through the window, but it was shut and locked… she dwelled on the images she'd seen, trying to work out what they could have been. Bats, perhaps? They'd been broad and leathery, from what she could make out… but why would bats be flying in such terrible weather? And that screeching… now that the thought had occurred to her, she couldn't shake the impression that the high-pitched sounds were the screams of some kind of wild creature.
Despite the noise and her residual fear, she found herself dozing off eventually — it had been a long, exhausting day, and even the storm couldn't keep her from her sleep for long. She tucked herself deep into bed, though, some primitive part of her sure that she'd be safe as long as the blanket was tucked around her. As she drifted in and out of a shallow sleep, she almost fancied she could hear other sounds, mingling with the shrieking of the wind… calls and cries that were much more human than that, for all the world like the high-pitched shrieking of men in mortal danger. Once or twice, she sat up in bed, not sure whether the scream had been part of her dream… or the thing that had brought her out of it.
By the time dawn came, she wasn't well rested… but at least the wind had died down out there. She got up just after dawn, well aware that she wasn't going to get much more sleep… and besides, she wanted to find Connor, to check how he'd gone in the storm out there. Part of her was worried about him… worried about the cries she couldn't quite convince herself had been part of her dreams. But when she headed out onto the main street, she breathed a sigh of relief. There was Connor, working with another couple of guards to clear the street that led out of town of a huge tree that seemed to have fallen then been dragged some distance by the wind.
Troubled By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander Forever Book 6) Page 8
