I remembered when mine had died. I hadn’t cried, all the time she was ill. Not that I was brave or sweetly supportive. I was furious. I was angry with her for being sick, for wasting away before my eyes, for the tubes and the bags and the stink and the pain. I was angry with my father for not being able to stop it happening, and with myself for not being kind or heroic, the way I knew I should have been. I was fifteen and cruel and selfish, and part of me knew it at the time. That made me angry too.
So I was thinking about my mother as I walked home in the rain, and I forgot to think about Hawise or how easily she had overcome my resistance. The rain plastered my hair to my head and ran down my face, and I knuckled it away from my cheeks. I wasn’t crying, I was just wet.
A stone had settled cold and hard in my chest. I let myself into the house. I dropped my bag onto the table in the little dining room, right next to the apple I had known would be there. For once, I barely noticed it. I was too sad to care.
I set the basket wearily on the table in the hall. Ned is there and he looks a question at me. I shake my head in reply, my lips pressed fiercely together to stop them from trembling.
‘Oh, little wife,’ he says and puts his arms around me.
I lean against him. He is strong and solid and safe. ‘I’m frightened,’ I say quietly.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘It is God’s will, Hawise. We must accept it.’
I nod – what else can we do? – and pull myself away from him. Only then do I see Francis Bewley standing in the shadows.
‘What are you doing here?’ I demand, too heartsick for courtesy.
Too late I realize that Agnes is behind him, hanging onto Francis’s arm. ‘I knew she wouldn’t want us here,’ she says in a trembling voice.
‘I asked them to stay,’ says Ned.
‘We agreed that it would be easier if the family were together,’ Francis puts in, and even in this time of trial his hot eyes seem to leave a slimy trail as he looks over my body. ‘Agnes cannot manage on her own. Our servant has gone home to her mother, who is sick. We do not have others, as you do.’
Ned can see my face. ‘It is sensible, Hawise,’ he says. ‘We must look out for each other.’
I am too tired and sad to argue. ‘As you wish, Husband.’
Margery is the first to die. The next morning she is creasing her eyes as if the light is too bright. I send her to bed, my gut churning with anxiety, and ask Agnes to keep Bess well away.
Margery’s eyes glitter with fear. Her body is racked with fever and she retches into the basin that I hold helplessly. I wipe her face with a wet cloth, but she is burning up. It is only now that I realize how much I have come to rely on her to keep the household running.
‘Please get better,’ I beg her. ‘I need you.’
She doesn’t get better. The fever gets worse and she tosses and turns, crying out at the pain in her limbs. And then I see the swellings on her neck and have to bite back my own cry of fear.
Margery turns black and rotten under my eyes. The lumps swell and burst, they ooze pus and blood, and black boils erupt all over her body, no matter how quickly I try to cool her. The blood is everywhere, the pain consumes her. I struggle to change the sheets and clear away the bloody stools, and the stench makes me gag.
In the end I pray only for her to die soon, and when she does, I do not feel guilty. I feel only relief for her.
My face like stone, I wash my hands and press the cold cloth over my face. ‘Call the carter,’ is all I say when I go out, and Isobel gets up silently.
I sit down at the table and press the heels of my hands against my eyes. ‘How is Bess?’
‘She is with your sister.’
I need to see my daughter, but I cannot go to her with the stench of Margery’s death on me still. Stiffly I get up and go to the hall to find Ned. He isn’t there. I find him at last in our bed. He opens his eyes at my approach.
‘I am sorry, Hawise.’
‘Ned!’ I lay a shaking hand on his forehead. He is burning up. ‘No! This cannot be. Not you. I cannot bear it.’
‘Perhaps it is just a chill.’ The words are obviously an effort.
I thought I was afraid when I saw that Margery was ill, but that was nothing to the terror that grips me now. I am paralysed with it.
‘Ned! Please, please . . . ’ I rest my forehead on the bed beside him and weep. He lifts a hand and strokes my hair.
‘Take care, dear heart.’
I scramble up, dashing the tears from my eyes. I will not accept this. I cannot. I will not.
‘I’m going to find the Widow Dent. She has many potions. She can cast me a spell,’ I say wildly. ‘She will help me.’
‘Hawise, no.’ Ned’s voice is weak already. ‘It is too dangerous. You know what they say about her. You mustn’t seek her out. Bess needs you here.’
‘I have to do something.’
Ned tries to dissuade me, but the sickness is eating up his will already. Desperately I run down to the kitchen.
‘Give me some bread,’ I snap to poor, scared Joan. ‘And some of that cheese.’ Frantically I throw it into a basket. ‘The master is ill. I’m going to get him some help. Please, please, don’t leave him alone.’
Their faces are frightened, poor girls. Then Alison gets to her feet. ‘I’ll go to him.’
‘Thank you,’ I say on a sigh. ‘Thank you, Alison.’
My clogs jar on the ruts in the street. The poor folk outside Monk Bar are gone, and there is just one wretch crouched by the barbican, his face turned into the stone. I toss a coin by him, but he doesn’t even try to catch it. What good is money now?
It is only days since life was normal, but already the crofts look overgrown, neglected. There is no one out here bending over the crops, pulling up onions or weeding their patches of vegetables.
I hurry along the path where Francis killed Hap, past my father’s orchard where he tried to rape me, too desperate to remember that now. I cannot think of anything but Ned.
The widow’s hovel is smaller than I remembered. It has shrunk back into the trees, and the moss grows thick over the roof as the wood reclaims it, little by little.
It is a long time since I have been here. I brought Sybil a gift when I conceived, and another after Bess was born, but since then I have been preoccupied, with a house to run and a child to care for. Every now and then I have thought about the widow, with a mixture of gratitude and fear, but I could have come more often, I know.
Sybil is at her door. Mog lies in a patch of sunlight, utterly relaxed on her back, her paws curled. She knows nothing of the sickness rampaging through the city and cares less.
‘I’ve got nowt for the pestilence,’ the widow says when I offer her the basket and beg her breathlessly for a remedy for Ned. ‘Bathe him with lavender and rue, and keep him cool.’
I am dismayed. I had hoped for something stronger, something more certain. I don’t care if it is witchcraft. I only want to save Ned.
Even now he may be sickening. ‘Please,’ I beg. ‘Please – anything. I’ll do anything.’
Her strange eyes pin me. ‘Most young wives would be glad to see off an old husband.’
It doesn’t occur to me to wonder how she knows that Ned is older than I. ‘He is the beat of my heart,’ I say simply, my voice cracking. ‘I cannot bear to lose him.’
‘Aye, well,’ she says indifferently, ‘we must all bear what we must.’
‘Please,’ I say again. ‘I thought . . . I thought you could cast me a spell,’ I finish in a rush.
Sybil’s face empties of all expression. ‘A spell?’
‘To keep my husband safe from the sickness, that is all.’
‘You should be more careful, Mistress,’ she says tonelessly. ‘Folk will think you’re meddling in things you shouldn’t.’
‘I don’t care what they think! I only want to save Ned.’ My voice runs up and down the scale. ‘If a spell will cure him, I will have a spell. I would cast it myself if I knew how
!’ I stop and steady myself. ‘I have money,’ I say, looking the widow straight in the eye. ‘I will tell no one that I had it from you. Please, please, just give me something.’
She looks at me for a moment, judging the desperation in my face, then beckons me closer, with a hand twisted like an old tree root.
‘Help me up,’ she says.
I lift her to her feet and she turns and hobbles back into the cottage. After a few minutes she comes out and hands me a jar. ‘Rub this on his chest,’ she says, then passes over a little bag done up with string. ‘And hang this around his neck.’
‘Thank you, thank you. Yes. I will.’ The words tumble gratefully out of me. I don’t ask what is inside the bag. I don’t care. I just want it to work. I dig in the purse hanging from my girdle and find some coins. Too many, perhaps, for a token, but what price can we put on hope?
‘I’m making no promises, mind,’ she adds fiercely, watching me turn the little bag in my hands. ‘It will do what it will do. No more, no less.’
‘I understand.’ I take a breath. The bag seems to pulse with the widow’s power. Surely, surely, this will save Ned.
‘Is there anything else I can do?’ I ask as I turn to go.
‘Aye,’ says the widow. ‘Hope.’
Picking up my skirts, I run back along the path. With a strange, detached part of my mind I realize that I once ran laughing along here with Elizabeth, but I remember it as if it happened to someone else. Laughter belongs in another world to mine. Panic is scrabbling in my gut, but I force it down. I must stay calm, for Ned.
There is a painful stitch in my side by the time I reach the house, and in spite of my haste to see how Ned does, I rest for a moment in the hall, my hand on the chest, bent over and breathing heavily.
‘Where have you been?’
Francis’s voice slices through the torpor of the afternoon and makes me jerk upright. He is watching me from the shadows by the staircase and, in spite of the heat, I am suddenly cold.
‘What matters it to you?’
‘Your husband is sick, and you are not at his side. Why is that, I wonder?’
I bite my lip. ‘I went to get some remedy for him.’
‘You’ve been out to that witch, haven’t you?’ Francis strolls forward and, before I can sweep it out of his reach, swings up the basket I have dropped on the top of the chest. He picks up the jar, unstopping it and sniffing it. ‘I thought so. Some foul concoction. And as for this . . . ’ He dangles the bag distastefully from his fingers and clicks his tongue. ‘Tsk, tsk, Sister . . . the minister will not approve of this.’
I have no time for his games. Ned may be dying in our bed. I care nothing for what Francis may do now. Nothing he can do will be worse than losing Ned.
‘The minister is not here,’ I point out, my hand under my ribs where it still aches. ‘I will do whatever I can to save Ned.’
‘Even witchcraft?’
‘Anything,’ I say again, snatching the bag from his hand. I make to pass him, but he steps into my way, his eyes blazing.
‘You must make repentance.’
‘Get out of my way, Francis.’
‘You are an evil woman. You put Ned’s soul at risk.’
‘I am trying to save him! Do you think I care for you or your tricks now, Francis? Ned is a good man – far better than you will ever be. Now get out of the way and let me tend to my husband!’
I push past him, picking up my skirts in one hand so that I run up the stairs, the jar and the bag clutched against my breast, the sound of my clogs urgent in the hot silence.
Praying under my breath, I rub the ointment on Ned’s chest. I loop the bag around his neck. I bathe him with lavender and rue. I hope and I hope and I hope. But still the boils come, suppurating all over his body, until he is as black and bloody as Margery was.
‘No, no, no.’ It is all I can say. I whisper it brokenly over and over again. My dearest’s body is racked with pain, twisted and wasted. No longer is he the solid centre of my world. I cannot bury my face in his throat and hold onto him and make everything else go away.
He lies naked on the bed, while the sickness consumes him. It is a loathsome thing, a monster writhing under his skin. I can see it pulsing and swelling, pushing out the dreaded buboes, making them bigger and bigger until they burst agonizingly. I sponge him clean as best I can, but I can do nothing for the torment.
‘I’m here, Ned,’ I tell him, not knowing if he can hear me or not. He is not Ned any longer. He is a creature tortured in the fires of Hell itself, bleeding from every orifice. I used to love the clean smell of Ned’s skin. Now it reeks of death. I know it is coming, but I fight it all the way. I cannot lose Ned, I cannot.
‘Please get better,’ I say to him. ‘Please. I cannot do without you. Don’t let me down, Ned. Don’t die.’
But he does die. I don’t even realize when it happens. I am desperately sponging him, desperately praying, words tumbling incoherently from my lips as if I can keep death from the room with sheer force of will.
My hand slows as I sense the emptiness in the room, the knowledge that I am alone. There is no more laboured breathing, no tortured gasps from Ned. His chest is still.
I freeze. ‘Ned?’ But he is gone.
Despair engulfs me. It has happened too quickly. I am not prepared for this. Last night we lay together in this bed, and now he is dead. It cannot be right.
I want to stamp my foot and wail like a child. Ned is not supposed to leave me alone. He is supposed to be there for me always – solid, quiet, smiling that smile that warms his eyes and only just reaches the edges of his mouth. I think of the nights when his mouth was hot on my skin, when his hands were urgent. It is impossible to think that I will never feel him again.
I think of the way he threw Bess in the air and caught her in his hands, the strength of his body, the quiet authority that made men listen to him. The pleasure that he taught me. The way he made me feel beautiful. He cannot be gone. He cannot have left me.
I rest my forehead against his cold hand and weep, and the sobs rack my body as the plague racked his.
‘Mistress?’ Isobel’s voice trembles behind me. Dully I raise my head. ‘Alison has the fever.’
Alison dies, then Isobel. My world shrinks to blood and pain and despair. Agnes has shut herself away with Bess. With what little thought I have to spare, I am glad that at least Bess is safe. She is away from the sickness. Agnes keeps to the room, and will only accept a tray of food if it is left outside the door. I have to believe that she is keeping my daughter safe.
Francis lurks, prowling the rooms uselessly, standing at the windows and watching the empty street for news. I am too tired and too heartsick to care by now.
When little Joan falls ill in her turn, only the thought of Bess keeps me going. She is very frightened, poor lass, and we both know by now what lies in store for her. When she is dead, I cannot pray any more. I cannot even cry. I am numb with loss. Ned. Margery. All three bonny maids. Now there is only Bess. And Agnes and Francis.
I drag myself to my feet. My limbs feel heavy and stiff with disuse. I try to think about what needs to be done, but every time I make myself contemplate life without Ned my mind swerves away in panic. All I can do now is hold my daughter to me.
The door to the room is firmly closed. ‘Agnes?’ I barely have the strength to rap on the door. ‘Let me in.’
‘I dare not.’
‘You must. I need to see Bess.’
‘She’s sleeping. You should not come in. You may be infected.’
I lean my forehead against the door. ‘If I was going to get sick, don’t you think it would have happened by now? Let me in, Agnes.’
‘Find Francis first.’
I would not have thought it possible for my heart to sink further, but so it does. ‘Francis? Where is he?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice trembles on the edge of hysteria. ‘He was coming to check on us, but I haven’t seen him since yesterday. I am afraid
for him.’
She refuses to unbar the door until I bring Francis to her.
I find him in Ned’s study, slumped in a chair at Ned’s desk, his eyes rolling in his head. ‘Hawise! Help me! I have the sickness too.’ He clutches at me with damp hands, and I cannot prevent a shudder of disgust.
‘You must get to bed, Francis,’ I say wearily, too tired even to think that I may be rid of him at last.
I have to support him up the stairs, and the damp, rank weight of him is revolting. He is whimpering with pain and fear as I help him onto the bed. ‘Don’t leave me!’
‘I’m going to fetch Agnes,’ I say as calmly as I can. ‘She should be with you.’
‘No! You, Hawise.’ He is panting, struggling up on the pillows. ‘I want you. I’ve always wanted you. I love you. You know that.’
‘You’re hallucinating.’ I back out of the room, but his howls follow me along the passage.
‘Hawise! I love you! Don’t leave me.’
Sick to my stomach, I force myself to wait until he subsides into gibbering before I knock on Agnes’s door. I don’t want her to hear him like that.
‘Agnes? Francis needs you. You must come.’
‘Is he sick?’
‘I fear so.’
Agnes breaks into a storm of weeping. ‘What will I do without him?’ she keens and I have to force patience into my voice.
‘Come, Agnes, you should be with him.’
‘I’m afraid. I don’t want to die!’
Ned didn’t want to die. Nor did Joan or Isobel or Alison or Margery.
‘Francis is your husband. It is your place to nurse him.’
‘I can’t. I am too sickly – you know I am. You do it,’ she says. ‘You are strong and the sickness doesn’t touch you, you said that yourself. Please, Hawise.’
‘Agnes, I need to be with Bess. Open the door.’
‘No! Not until you promise to look after Francis.’
I hadn’t thought it possible to be any more afraid, but now I am. Agnes sounds irrational, and she is behind a barred door with Bess. I take a deep breath. I must go very carefully and let her calm down.
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