All Fall Down

by Christine Pope

“It’s all right,” I said gently. “There may be no need for such a thing, if he can fight off the fever. The plague is not always fatal.”

  At that Wilys raised an eyebrow. It was true, although one could never predict who would live and who would die. Some people seemed to be immune, while others would come down sick and yet somehow recover. This applied only to the bubonic form, of course—if the disease entered the lungs or the bloodstream, then the victims invariably died within the day. That is what I feared happened to Lord Arnad’s household, as almost all of the victims there seemed to have perished from acute pneumonia.

  “I’ll watch over him,” I told the stable master. “You need your rest as well, and this is my task, my charge. If anything happens, I will call for you.”

  It seemed as if he would protest, but then he nodded. “You know best, mistress.” He hauled himself to his feet and went through the doorway to the stables. I could hear him say a few words to the boys who still seemed to be loitering near the entrance, and they appeared to disperse back to their respective beds.

  As for me, well, this would certainly not be my first sleepless night, and I guessed it would not be my last. There was a little stool tucked into the corner near the head of the bunk, and I fetched it and sat down. The sick boy did not stir, not even as I touched two fingers against his throat to gauge his pulse. It was weak and fast, but the sweat on his brow had dissipated a bit, and his skin did not feel quite so hot as it had previously. I had to be content with that.

  Usually when I sat up with patients through the night I had a book or a piece of handiwork to keep me occupied. I had no books with me, save the notebook where I recorded the various medicinal mixtures I concocted, and I had forgotten to ask for one of my half-finished needlework projects when I gave my list of required items to Ourrel. Just as well, I supposed, as I would have had to burn it once I left this place—if I left this place.

  I chided myself for that. So far I felt fine, if more than a little weary, but I was used enough to that. Lacking anything else, I catalogued my list of supplies once again, and made mental notes to myself to ask for more alcohol and turmeric, which I had used in the past to treat a variety of illnesses. I had never read anything about turmeric being useful in treating the plague, but it had aided me in the past and could possibly be of some help now. And so I rattled on, trying to keep my mind active, as the minutes and then hours ticked by and the boy slept quietly before me.

  It came on so quietly that I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep until I lifted my head with a jerk from where it fallen on the rough blanket of the stableboy’s bed. Careless, even if I had been weary. I should have asked Ourrel for some tea; the stimulant would have helped to keep me awake.

  I could do nothing about it now, however. I leaned forward and laid my hand against the boy’s cheek.

  Only to find it cold against my touch, cold and still as the bitter morning outside. As I slept, he had passed from this world.

  For a long moment I only sat there, staring at his still features. He looked peaceful enough. Perhaps his heart had stopped, or some other organ had failed. It happened that way sometimes, according to the accounts I had read. Better that, I supposed, than to die in convulsions and writhing pain, or drowning in his own mucus. Still…

  I reached out and lifted the blanket to cover his pale, quiet face. And then I wept, for I realized I had never even asked his name.

  Chapter 13

  We could not bury the body, of course; the ground was frozen solid and would remain that way for some months. Ourrel’s men left a pile of firewood near the rear entrance of the stables. Everyone in the household was under strict orders to stay away, and so we sent the boy—whose name was Drym, as it turned out—from this world on a pyre that rivaled those of the barbarian kings of old. And then we could do little but wait and worry, and wonder who would be next.

  A day passed in such quiet misery. The stableboys sent furtive looks at one another, as if trying to see who might be displaying any symptoms of the plague. None of them did, so far—they were a thin but healthy lot, as far as I could tell. Perhaps Drym had been the exception, and perhaps the disease would pass the rest of us by. That was foolishness, I knew, but the heart will often hope for what the mind knows cannot come to pass.

  Ourrel brought by more supplies, and Lord Shaine came to me in the late morning. I had no words of reassurance for him, save my continuing health, but that seemed to be enough for the moment. He spoke quietly of his sorrow at Drym’s passing, and I could only say in response that at least the boy’s death seemed to have come to him peacefully enough. I did not bother to mention that it was a far better fate than that which had met those in Lord Arnad’s household. There was no use in painting pictures of future horrors. And after a murmured wish that our quarantine would not continue for much longer, he left. He had his own frightened household to keep watch over. After he left, I tried to hold the sound of his voice within my mind, the warm tones that always made me think of a finely tuned woodwind. It was all I could have of him, it seemed.

  And on the third day of our quarantine, Wilys came to me with a face somehow pale and flushed at the same time. His steps, which usually seemed so steady, now wavered, and he watched me with frightened, bloodshot eyes.

  No, I thought. Not him. Of all of them, he should have been safe.

  “I have it, don’t I?” he asked. And though the expression in his eyes reminded me of a wild animal caught in a trap, his voice sounded calm enough.

  “Perhaps,” I replied. One touch on his forehead told me he burned with fever. “Any aches?”

  “My head pounds, and I hurt here.” He reached up and touched his left armpit, but gingerly, as if even the slightest pressure pained him.

  I knew what that meant, of course, but I still had to see for myself. “May I?” I inquired.

  A careful nod, and he watched with white-circled eyes as I removed his leather jerkin and then undid the laces on the heavy linen shirt he wore underneath. Sure enough, as I lifted the billows of fabric away, I could see a reddish patch under his arm, vaguely circular in shape. The lump had not yet begun to rise, but I knew it lurked under the skin, a vile eruption waiting to come forth. Carefully I replaced his shirt and said, “Let me help you back to your bed.”

  “So,” he said, his tone heavy. Then he nodded, and straightened his shoulders, even though I could tell the movement pained him. “Should I not come to you here?”

  “No,” I said at once. “Your bed is already separate from the others, and you will be more comfortable in familiar surroundings. I can move my pallet in there, as well as the brazier and my other supplies.”

  He watched me for a moment, his face pinched but resigned somehow, as if at least now that he knew the worst he would do his best to face it. “No need to help me, Mistress Merys. I can still walk under my own power.”

  Slowly he turned from me and made his way back to his own room, while I bent to gather up my pallet and all the other items I would need to nurse him. My hands shook as I tucked my little notebook into the satchel, and I paused a moment to regain my composure. I would be of no use to Wilys or anyone else if I could not keep calm. He was just another in a long line of patients I had cared for through the years. I could not let the fact that I knew and liked him stand in the way of his treatment. Nor could I allow myself to be shaken by the severity of the disease we all faced. My masters at the Order would be most displeased to see me rattled like a young student confronted by her first case of the pox.

  Thus having mentally scolded myself, I trudged through the stables with my burden as the stableboys watched me with frightened, pale faces. At least the scent of horses and straw was familiar and almost comforting, bringing to mind happier times and memories of freedom. Of course, I was free now—technically. But the bonds which tied me to this place now were just as strong as the chains of slavery had been.

  In an odd way, it was almost a good thing that the stableboys were slaves. Th
e habits of obedience had been so ingrained in them that I guessed none of them even thought of trying to escape, to break quarantine by fleeing this place and seeking to run somewhere away from the plague. They certainly had the means, were they so inclined, as they had access to mounts and tack and a good supply of food and water. If I had been in their place, I would have at least entertained thoughts of escape, but although the fear on them was so palpable I could almost see it rising like some sort of miasma in the pale sun that poured in through the high windows of the stable, none of them did anything beyond mutter to their fellows as I passed them by.

  Wilys’ room was small but neat, much like the lean-to the stableboys had shared until disease drove them out into the main stables. He had a rope-slung bed with a good mattress that proved to be filled with feathers, not straw, and likewise he had a hearty pile of thick woolen blankets. Besides the bed there was a small table and a chair, and on the table was a lantern. No need for it yet, as his room was also blessed with a window covered with the thin transparent membranes poorer folk used when they could not get glass. But at least it was light.

  Not that the light revealed anything besides a very sick man.

  The stable master had followed my advice and taken to his bed. The leather jerkin he had been wearing was now draped carefully over the back of the room’s single chair, and he had the blankets pulled up to his chin.

  “I’m going to make some willowbark tea,” I told him, and I saw him shut his eyes and shake his head.

  “And that did so well for Drym.”

  “He was farther along in the disease than you,” I said, my tone firm. That was true enough; I still had no idea how many hours the stableboy had sweated with fever in his bunk before someone thought to call me in to look at him. Whereas with Wilys the lump in his armpit had not yet begun to rise, which signaled to me that the disease had not been working for nearly as long.

  “Hmph,” replied Wilys, but that was all the protest he made.

  I busied myself with setting up the brazier and the trivet, and then I placed my satchel and the supplies I thought I would need on the tabletop. It was very neat as well, with a wooden plate, bowl, and cup stacked to one side, along with a small knife with a handle of carved horn. It was true that Wilys seldom came to the hall to dine with the other members of the household, but I hadn’t realized that he ate here alone in his room.

  It came to me then how isolated so many of the people here on the estate were, even those who counted themselves free. Apparently Wilys had no family, and neither did Ourrel nor Breen, as far as I could tell. They had given their lives over in service to their lord, and the household had become their family.

  As it had for me.

  No, that was foolish. I had become fond of these people—more than fond, in the case of Lord Shaine—but I had my own family, my parents and siblings and the extended complex network of cousins and aunts and uncles that touched most of the merchant families in Lystare, not to mention family friends and those in the Order with whom I had become close. How could I possibly think of Lord Shaine and his household as more important to me than those who were my own flesh and blood? True, I had spent more hours in company with the folk of Donnishold than I had with my own family of late. The life of an itinerant healer did not allow for much in the way of familial visits, although I did try to see them several times a year, depending on where my travels took me. They were dear to me, so very dear, even if months and months passed without my seeing their faces or hearing their voices. And yet, these people here, from Merime to Auren to the stately Ourrel, had somehow become just as dear, and I knew I would mourn their loss as greatly as if I had lost someone of my own kin.

  Reckless of me, and yet I knew it was something I could not have avoided. I had not been blessed with a cool and distant nature, the way some of my fellow physicians in the Order had been. For them it was easy enough to look at a patient as a series of problems to be solved. I had trained my mind to work that way because I knew I must, but my spirit fought against it always. As I knew I must fight against it now as I treated Wilys and all the others who were sure to follow.

  In silence I poured some of the willowbark tea into a cup I had brought with me, as the one which sat on his table must surely be infected with the plague as well. He drank the tea without protest, although I saw the slightest flare of his nostrils at its bitter taste. Once he was done, I took the cup from him and set it down on the table; I would wash all the utensils down with alcohol before I used them again.

  “And my boys?” he asked.

  “All still well, as far as I can tell,” I replied. It was possible that one or more of them could be hiding their symptoms from me, but I didn’t think that very likely. Already they had become accustomed to my being there in case of any illness, and there was no reason for them to conceal the signs of the disease.

  “That…is something.”

  His speech sounded slurred, and I sent him a sharp glance. He had settled down against his pillows, and his eyes were shut. Yet the sheen of sweat on his brow did not seem quite so pronounced, his color not quite so hectic. It appeared the willowbark had done him some good. Most likely he was only slipping into sleep, which was the best thing for him.

  I tried not to think of what had happened to Drym when he had fallen asleep.

  There being very little else I could do, I sat and watched the stable master as he slept. However that sleep had come upon him, it was a restless one—he seemed unable to stay in one spot for more than a minute or so at a time, and would twitch and toss as he vainly sought a more comfortable position. I considered waking him, but I knew even a restless sleep was better than none at all. Besides, those disordered movements at least signaled to me that he was still alive.

  I wondered how they fared in the castle but supposed all should still be well, as of course either Ourrel or Lord Shaine himself would have come to inform me if anything was amiss. Still, I chafed at my isolation here, even though I knew we had still been very lucky to have the outbreak in the relative isolation of the stables rather than in the keep itself. And I wondered again how the disease had come here at all, when I had taken every precaution I could think of to keep it outside the walls of Donnishold.

  Then one of the stableboys came to the door, eyes wide and dark with fear. “Mistress—”

  Even though I knew the answer, I had to ask the question. “Is someone ill?”

  “Grahm, Mistress—he’s took bad!”

  Well, I was a fool if I thought the disease wouldn’t continue to spread like a fire in a summer-dry forest, but even so my limbs felt heavy with a terrible weight of dread as I stood and cast one more look at the still-sleeping Wilys before I gathered up my satchel, then turned and followed the frightened boy out to the stable.

  It was easy enough to see where the afflicted Grahm lay—all the other stablehands had retreated to the farthest position in the stable, while he writhed on the straw in an empty stall. And when I knelt down next to him, at once I saw that he was in far worse shape than Wilys.

  His face, too, was flushed, but sweat dripped off it in a river, and splashed in all directions as he thrashed away in the dirty straw, which stuck to his neck and face and the exposed flesh of his forearms below his too-short sleeves. On that exposed skin I could see small dark-colored circles, and my heart sank. He moved, and he breathed, but when the plague spots came, lore stated that death soon followed.

  How it could have come on him so quickly, when no one had told me he was ill, I had no idea, but that mattered little now. If one of the horses in the stables had been taken so ill, it would have had its throat slit, and quickly, so it could suffer no further pain. I could not do that to Grahm, of course, but I could help him out of this world in the same way I had aided Lord Arnad.

  Grimly I opened my satchel and pulled out the little vial of poppy. For one long, agonizing moment I stared at it, unsure as to whether I could really do this thing. Arnad had been far gone, almost comat
ose, but the boy before me still moved and breathed, even though every breath was more labored, and his movements had a stiff, jerky quality that showed they were the result of convulsions and not any truly conscious effort on his part. And then he coughed, and coughed again, and a gout of blood spattered against the pale straw beneath him.

  Without thinking, I pulled a clean cloth from the satchel and wiped the blood off his chin and mouth. He should at least leave this world with some dignity. His form trembled beneath my hands, seeming as frail as a butterfly’s wing. Before I could lose my resolve, I set aside the bloodied cloth and retrieved the vial of poppy, and tipped three or four drops into his mouth.

  He did not choke against it, as Drym had with the willowbark tea. No, he swallowed it in one convulsive spasm, and almost at once went limp and quiescent, his lashes long and dark against his livid cheeks.

  “Goddess grant you grace,” I murmured, although I did not truly believe the words. My mind refused to understand how any deity could send such suffering to her subjects.

  I rose to my feet then, and automatically brushed the straw from my knees. With one hand I retrieved my satchel; the other, borne by some unconscious reflex, reached up to push a stray hand of hair off my brow. I did not want to think of what I had just done. My work was to heal, not kill, but the plague had no respect for such niceties. Terrible as my decision had been, I knew it was the right one.

  “He is gone,” I said clearly. “We must take the body outside and burn it, as we did with Drym.”

  From a darkened corner of the stable came a shaky voice. “No, mistress, even though you command it.”

  While I understood their fear, I also knew it to be pointless. All of us were doomed, even though we as yet walked and breathed as normal folk. “Don’t be ridiculous!” I snapped, my own desperate fear giving my words an unaccustomed sharpness. “We’ve already been exposed—all of us. Touching him now will change nothing. I would do it myself, only I am not sure I could carry him so far, and I must go back to check on Master Wilys.”