He paused in the doorway of their quarters, feeling uneasy. Already he could smell wood smoke and heat … and sickness beyond fever. Why did people always seal the sick into dark, sweltering boxes, as if fetid air could cure them? Steeling himself, Bram stepped inside.
“Leave the door open,” he instructed Wilton briskly, “and stop stoking the fire for a while.” The boy’s eyes widened in surprise, but he kicked a block into place to prop open the door. A man’s husky voice howled in the next room; the two young men exchanged alarmed glances. Wilton bounded around Bram and waved him through the small front room and into the smaller one behind it.
Bram could not keep from gasping when he saw the miller. Hoark Sivesten lay on a narrow cot, naked save for a thin sheet draped over his groin. The skin of one leg and two arms was as raw-red as flayed flesh; his torso was still lily white. A large man, he’d obviously enjoyed the bread made from the mill he ground, but his limbs looked swollen beyond their normal size. Hoark was feverishly thrashing and scraping the one leg that was not that hideous vermilion against the bedclothes, his head lolling from side to side as he muttered and moaned.
“Tell me everything that’s happened,” Bram said, reaching out to feel the man’s forehead. The miller was thrashing so furiously that it was impossible to hold a hand to him.
“It started with the fever yesterday,” said Hoark’s wife, Sedrette, wringing work-reddened hands against her apron. The stout woman’s flour-flecked apple cheeks were streaked with tears. “I thought he got better. He was even talking this morning. Then he started rubbing his legs and arms so fast and steady, like a cricket, that I was afraid he might start a fire with the bedding. We ripped his clothes off after he shed the first leg of skin.”
Bram looked up in wonderment at the odd phrase. “Say again?”
For an answer the woman reached down to the floor on her side of the cot and held up a collapsed, crystal-colored membrane as thin as a soap bubble. Her eyes dared Bram to believe. It looked for all the world like the abandoned snake skins Bram had found in fields and meadows since his youth.
“Hoark rubbed and rubbed until this came off his leg,” Sedrette explained hoarsely.
Bram looked quickly away from the sheaf of flesh and to the man on the cot. “Maybe we should tie him down so he can’t rub off any more skin.”
“We tried that,” Sedrette said. “He’s sick, but it seems only to have made him stronger. No one could hold him still long enough to fasten him down.”
Still and all, Bram whispered for Wilton to fetch some twine. Next he told the woman to put some water on to boil, and to bring a kettle of it and a cup. Both scurried off, obviously relieved to have something useful to do elsewhere. Bram stood alone in the sickroom with Hoark Sivesten. Within moments the walls began to close on him, the sound of the man’s frantic scraping and moaning all Bram could hear. Where were those people with the rope and the water? How long could it take to find twine in a mill, anyway?
Bram looked at the man on the cot. Hoark’s thrashing had removed not only the sheet, but it had loosened the skin of his other leg as well. Bram bit his lip until it hurt as he watched a jagged split in the miller’s skin race, like cracking ice, from groin to ankle. The flesh beneath it rushed up like red sausage released from a too-tight casing. The top layers of skin peeled back with the dry, crackling sound of old leaves. Finally, the man stopped thrashing and lay panting in a twisted mess of bedding and sweat and dead skin. Just as suddenly his breathing slowed. The young nobleman had to look closely to see the shallow rise and fall of the miller’s sodden chest.
Bram jumped when the man’s son dashed, breathless, through the doorway, trailing a length of coarse twine. “He’s so still,” Wilton observed almost distantly. “Is he dead?”
Bram shook his head. “No, but I don’t think we’ll be needing the rope anymore.”
“I got that water,” the miller’s wife announced as she scraped her ample hips through the narrow doorway. Sedrette Sivesten gaped slack-jawed, all the stumps of her front teeth exposed when she saw that her husband was quiet. “What did you do to him?” It was not an accusation.
Bram shrugged helplessly. “I guess he got rid of all the skin he needed to.” He looked to the pot and cup she held. “It probably wouldn’t hurt to have him still drink some yarrow tea, what with all the water he’s lost sweating.”
The miller’s wife handed the steaming pot and cup to Bram. “What is this, some kind of skin-shedding influenza?” she asked, moving quickly to reposition the filthy sheet that had slipped from her husband’s torso. “Is Hoark going to be all right now?”
“I … don’t know the answer to either question,” Bram admitted. “It’s like no influenza I’ve ever heard of, but I think he’s through the worst of it, whatever it is.” He pinched three fingersful of Nahamkin’s dried yarrow bloom and dropped it into the mug, filling it only half full with warm water. It would be difficult enough to get the reclining, insensate man to drink without burning his chest.
Bram gave directions for the tea to the miller’s wife. “Get him to drink as much of it as you can, Sedrette. It should help stave off the return of a fever. Keep him warm, but don’t try to roast him again.”
She nodded eagerly, relief evident on her chubby face as she walked Bram out of the sickroom. At the doorway that led outside, she pumped Bram’s hand furiously, thanking him. “You come to the mill any time, day or night, Bram DiThon, and we’ll work your grain without taking multure—not a ring, or even a single bushel—for payment.”
Bram felt decidedly uncomfortable with the gratitude and the generous offer, but before he could point out that he had done little more than make tea, Sedrette Sivesten scampered on lighter feet back into the sickroom.
Bram’s first lungful of fresh, cold night air blistered its way down his throat, making him cough until he was certain he’d expelled every particle of stagnant air inhaled in the sickroom. It was late, by sight of the risen moon, how late Bram couldn’t tell. Snowflakes, dry as potash, swirled about in the wan moonlight. Bram was weary to the bone, and he headed straight home. Passing through the edge of town, where gates should have been but were not, he recalled the reason for his trip to Thonvil this day, his birthday still. With a start he had a memory of seed packets on the dry sink in Nahamkin’s cottage. Bram sighed. It had not been the best of birthdays.
At least, he thought, the end of the miller’s day had taken a turn for the better.
The following morning Bram received his second summons to help someone with the skin-shedding sickness.
He had been searching for panes of clear glass and planed wood to construct one of Nahamkin’s hot boxes. The planks were no problem; he found all that he needed by dismantling several of the stanchions in the castle’s nearly empty stable.
He was, however, having more difficulty with the glass than he’d anticipated. The windows in the abandoned solar were a complicated bit of tracery work, with ornamental ribs and bars breaking up the glass into sections that were too small for his purposes. Some of the decorative sections were missing entirely, which was at least half the reason the family no longer used the solar as a living room. The other reason, of course, was that the family no longer gathered anywhere for conversation or quiet moments by the fire.
Bram crept silently down the second-floor hallway, past the door to the study where his father spent most of his time in an irrational stupor caused by years of drunkenness. Bram was headed for the gallery, which sported windows that faced the afternoon sun across the Strait of Ergoth. The expensive glass had been added to the long, narrow, third-story balcony several generations before, in the time of Bram’s great-grandfather, when the family had been able to afford more than carrots for the table and the village had supported craftsmen of quality.
Gildee the cook (one of the few servants who remained, primarily because she had nowhere else to go), found Bram on the staircase to the third floor. “Someone from the village came running for y
ou, Master Bram.” The matronly woman’s solemn tone and distressed expression told him the disease had struck a second time. Her words stopped his heart. “It’s Nahamkin. He’s got the fever.”
Bram blinked at her in disbelief for just one moment, then sprang down the steps two at a time, stopping neither for herbs nor cloak. He was racing across the worn floor of the foyer when his mother’s voice stopped him.
“Where are you going in such a hurry, Bram?” Rietta’s words were light, but her tone was high, clipped as she strode into the circular foyer. The ragged hem of her cheap brocatelle dress, more gray now than lavender from repeated washings with lye soap, whispered across the stone floor.
In her midforties, Rietta had aged with the grace of the nobly born. Her skin was still remarkably wrinkle-free, though her shape was thinner than ever, thanks to a scarcity of high-quality food, and the worry over it. As always, she wore her dark, thin hair in a tight chignon covered by a strong veil of lace netting, and a long gorget around her neck.
Bram’s mother settled light fingers on his arm.
“Mother,” he breathed turning away, “I-I’ve got to go to the village.” His eyes were on the door that led out. Unconsciously he began to pull away from her.
“I have need of you here,” she said stiffly, too quickly.
He whirled around. “For what? Retrieving winter squash from the root cellar?”
Rietta’s green, feline eyes narrowed, and her thin lips pouted at the sarcasm. “I just don’t see why you have to go to the village again.”
“It’s Nahamkin, Mother,” Bram said with forced patience, feeling the weight of time passing in the strained muscles of his neck. “He’s ill.”
“That old farmer?” she scoffed. “Aren’t there family members who can tend to him? What about Herus?”
“Perhaps they could,” conceded Bram, “but Nahamkin has asked for me. I’ve got to try to help him.” He had no tolerance for her haughty attitude at this moment, which was why he couldn’t help adding slyly, “Just be thankful that the villagers no longer expect the lady of the manor to tend their ills, as in days past.”
Oblivious to his derision, Rietta bit her bottom lip until it was white, her brows furrowed with concern. “Is it that dreadful fever the miller had? I’ve heard Herus has returned and is treating him still.”
“I don’t know,” Bram said, lying outright to give his mother hope as much as to gain his freedom. “I won’t know until I see Nahamkin.” He tugged his arm back gently, then put one hand unceremoniously against the small of her back to propel her along. “I’ve got to go now, Mother. I may not be back for several days.” Uncharacteristically, Rietta resisted only briefly before bowing her head and retreating down the hallway that led to the kitchens.
Bram bolted through the door and began the three-rod sprint to Nahamkin’s tumbledown cottage.
Bram crouched in the cold and drafty loft, next to the cot that held the friend he knew must surely be dying.
The fever had passed two nights before, because of, or despite, Bram’s herbal tea. It seemed to comfort Nahamkin, and that was reason enough for Bram to climb the rickety ladder to the loft four times an hour, round the clock, to bring more heated water from the hearth.
The young nobleman had tried to remain optimistic, to pretend even, that Nahamkin had a simple fever. Superstition—or perhaps premonition—had made him change the herbal mixture he’d given the miller to one designed to encourage and not break fever. But Bram’s hope had faded when the old farmer’s sweats and chills ceased abruptly and unexplainably on the evening of the first day, as Hoark Sivesten’s had. It was a bad sign.
Bram understood how bad it was when, later that same night, the village bells chimed, signaling the miller’s death.
Knowing what was ahead, Bram had sent for Nahamkin’s family the next morning. Delayed by farm chores, or so he said, the son had arrived alone much later. Bram peered briefly over the edge of the loft to see Nahamkin’s son standing in the doorway, obviously reluctant to enter the cottage. His eyes had darted everywhere and nowhere, as if he were afraid of what he’d see if they settled.
Bram had neither the time nor the patience to leave the loft to coax Nahamkin’s own flesh and blood to see him one last time. The old man was halfway through the skin-shedding stage of the disease, and Bram had to call on all his strength just to keep his friend on the cot. When the first skin split on his leg, Nahamkin had brayed, and Bram heard the door slam shut below.
The nobleman paused for a moment, eyes closed, and reflected that blood wasn’t any thicker in families where it wasn’t blue. If Nahamkin knew his son had run away, he didn’t mention it. Bram suspected that, inside, Nahamkin had known at the onset of the fever that his son wouldn’t stand by him, since he’d sent for Bram.
Following the pattern of the illness, Nahamkin was quiet, lucid even, on the evening of the second day after the skin shedding. Bram brought stew up to the loft, though neither of them did much more than push the potatoes around in their bowls. They talked about flowers, and slugs, and summer heat, anything but what was happening now.
For the second night Bram stayed by the old man’s side. Nahamkin dozed fitfully, but sleep came nowhere near Bram. He spent most of the night with his feet dangling from the edge of the loft, swinging them back and forth in a hypnotic, numbing rhythm; they were the only part of the nobleman to fall asleep.
Bram saw the sun rise now through the rotted thatch and closed his eyes tightly to the light, as if he could stop the day.
“You’re still here, lad.” Nahamkin turned to Bram with the slowness of seasons revolving. His eyes held an odd clearness.
“Of course I am.” Bram smiled encouragingly and squeezed Nahamkin’s leathery hand.
Nahamkin laid a weary, raw-red arm to his forehead. “I’m so thirsty, I swear I could drink an entire bucket of water. Be a good lad and bring me some,” the old man said.
“Must be from the fever,” Bram remarked as he slipped down the ladder. He took a wooden bucket outside to the well, blinking in the bright, cold sunshine. Should he tell Nahamkin that Hoark Sivesten had died of the disease? Was it more cruel to tell him or not? Bram slapped his face with frigid water to chase away the tumult in his head.
He had no answers as he carried the filled bucket back into the dimness of the cottage. The young nobleman nearly gagged at the foul stench of sickness that his nose had grown used to before the brief breath of fresh air. His eyes watered, and when they adjusted enough to see, his gaze came first upon the tallow candles they had made just days before. Four days of witnessing unexplainable sickness had nearly erased the memory.
Bram jumped when a knock rang out against the wooden door. He opened it slowly, half-expecting Nahamkin’s son to have sheepishly returned. The face was Herus’s, eyes sunken, face gray. Bram wondered fleetingly if he looked as bad as the physicker.
“I’ve … finished with my other patients,” Herus announced wearily. “Two more have died. I’m sorry to have left Nahamkin to you. Is he—?”
“No.” Bram looked up at the loft over his shoulder and held a finger to his lips. He left the door open and crossed the small room for the stairs, the bucket of water sloshing at his side. Taking the open door as invitation, the physicker stepped inside.
“Bram!” Nahamkin called plaintively from the loft. “Where is that water, son?”
“Coming!” Bram snatched up a mug, Nahamkin’s best pewter one, and put a foot on the first rung.
The physicker’s hand grasped Bram’s calf, stopping him on the ladder. “He has a great thirst?”
Bram nodded. The physicker’s expression worried him more.
“Kill him,” Herus whispered. “It’ll be merciful compared to what I have witnessed with the others.”
Bram was so shocked by the pronouncement that he nearly dropped the bucket of water. “What have you seen? Tell me what you know about this sickness.”
“It is always the same,” sighed Herus.
“First they have the fever, the next day they shed skin, then on the third day—”
Herus was interrupted by Nahamkin howling again for water. Jumping as if burned, Bram readjusted the bucket in his hand and took another anxious step up the ladder.
“You can’t help him,” Herus said softly behind him. “The sickness is caused by magic more powerful than any of your herbs.”
Bram paused but did not turn around, his heart hammering. “How do you know that?”
The physicker visibly paled. “Just take my advice, young man,” he said. “Kill him before he slakes his thirst and the real pain starts, or he will die a hideous death at sunset.”
Fury at Herus’s callousness drove away Bram’s exhaustion. “Get out,” the nobleman hissed. “I’d sooner kill you, you fraud.” Bram gave a humorless laugh before continuing up the ladder, slopping water. “And to think I was worried about not being a real physicker.” Herus muttered something a bit profane before stomping out the door. Bram dimly heard it, but didn’t care.
Nahamkin saw Bram’s head cresting the floor of the loft. “I thought you’d never come with that water,” he panted. “Who was at the door?”
Bram was thankful Nahamkin showed no sign of having heard Herus’s words. “Just someone asking me to give aid at their house,” he said. The lie came out easily enough, though the hand that poured water into a mug shook.
Nahamkin gulped greedily, water spraying from his mouth in his haste. “You should go to them, Bram. You’ve stayed with me long enough.”
Bram’s dark head shook as he refilled the heavy mug. “There is no one I care about as much as you, Nahamkin,” he said honestly, his voice breaking. “I’ll stay with you until you’re well again.” The words stuck in his throat past Nahamkin’s seventh mug of water.
The Medusa Plague Page 11
