Exile's Return

by Alison Stuart

  ‘You did, but I’m not going anywhere. It would be extremely inconvenient if you were to die on me,’ Agnes responded.

  He tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough.

  Ellen entered the room with a flask and a beaker in her hands. With the practice of two people long used to working together, Kate raised Daniel’s head and Ellen administered a decent dose of the tincture of Jesuit Bark.

  Daniel swore and coughed, screwing up his face in disgust. ‘Filthy stuff.’

  ‘Aye, it may well be, but nothing that’s good for you was ever made to taste pleasant. You know that, lad,’ Ellen said, laying him back on the bolsters.

  ‘He needs to rest,’ Kate said. ‘Mistress Fletcher, you must be exhausted from your travels. Let me show you to a room and I can arrange for a bath … ’

  Agnes shook her head, her eyes only for the man on the bed.

  ‘I will sit with him a while,’ she said, and looked up at Kate with an apologetic smile. ‘This is not what Daniel would have wanted and I … we … would not wish to inconvenience you any more than we have. I can see to him.’

  Kate Thornton’s calm, grey eyes rested on her for a long moment.

  ‘Very well. He is your friend; of course you may sit with him. I advocate that you bathe his face and wrists to try and cool the fever. Ellen will come and relieve you later.’

  Agnes waited until the others had left the room, although Ellen seemed somewhat reluctant to leave her patient in Agnes’s clearly inexperienced hands.

  Taking a deep breath, she poured the cool water into the basin. Soaking one of the cloths, she perched on the side of the bed and sat there, holding the damp cloth in her hands, suddenly afraid to touch him with a degree of intimacy that their relationship had not permitted up until now.

  In his austere dark clothes he gave an impression of being of slight build, but naked, at least from the waist up, his hard muscles confirmed the evidence of a life lived in physical labour.

  He opened one eye. ‘Still here?’ he enquired.

  ‘Yes, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.’

  He sighed and closed his eyes as a feverish tremor shook his body.

  Agnes knew nothing of marsh fever, except that once a person contracted it, it returned again and again – and it could kill. After everything this man had endured, he could not die here, so close to home, and she would do whatever lay within in her power to keep him alive. Even if that one thing was prayer.

  His left hand lay outside the covers and she picked it up, turning it over. There were scars on his palm and calluses on the long fingers that curled with a curious vulnerability. She touched the cool cloth to the inside of his wrist, where the blood flowed closest to the skin. He turned his head away from her.

  Using the cloth she began to stroke the long muscles of his arm, feeling their hardness beneath the fabric of the cloth. He gave a sharp indrawn breath and she looked up.

  ‘Do you want me to stop?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it feels … ’ His eyelids flickered. ‘ … Nice.’

  She ran the cloth across his chest, dampening the dark hair into soft whorls.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were ill? We could have stopped … ’

  ‘I hoped it would pass. I didn’t want to give into it … not in an inn. You wouldn’t have known what to do,’ he murmured, closing his eyes again.

  ‘You must think very poorly of me,’ she bridled.

  He didn’t reply and appeared to be asleep. She brushed a lock of hair away from his eyes. ‘I can’t let you die,’ she whispered. ‘You are my only hope of seeing my son … ’ She broke off, her heart pounding at the disastrous slip, but if Daniel had heard her, he gave no sign.

  ***

  Daniel had been walking for miles, through a swamp wreathed in mist. He could see the tree he sought but it never seemed to grow any closer. Mud sucked at his boots and hands reached out through the swirling miasma, clutching at his clothes, holding him back. His breath churned in his chest in his efforts to reach the tree, and now as the haze cleared he could see that it was not a tree but a gibbet raised high on a hillock, and a figure danced and twisted at the end of a badly tied rope.

  ‘Kit!’ He screamed his brother’s name as the figure stilled, turning a mask of rotting flesh to look at him, the mouldering lips pulled back in a macabre death’s head grin.

  ‘Hush.’ A woman’s voice pierced the fog and he jerked himself awake the nightmare receding.

  It took a moment for his breathing to still. A cool cloth brushed his forehead and he forced his eyes open, blinking to allow the face above him to come into focus. A woman … a young woman with a heart-shaped face and hazel eyes that gleamed gold in the light of the single candle she held in her hand. She had taken off that awful linen cap and soft, brown hair curled around her face.

  ‘Agnes?”

  She smiled and set the candle down. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Where am I … are we?’

  He tried to sit up but she firmly pushed him back onto the bolsters.

  ‘Seven Ways, the home of Sir Jonathan Thornton. You brought us here – remember?’

  He had a brief, shaming memory of collapsing on the doorstep. Not quite the impression he would have wished to make on his brother’s old friend.

  He reached up and touched her cheek, soft as his mother’s satin dress.

  ‘Did I tell you that I like your freckles?’ he said.

  She frowned. ‘My freckles?’

  He traced the scatter across her nose. ‘I’ll count them. One … two … ’

  She should have batted his hand away and told him to stop being foolish; instead, she caught it and held it against her cheek for a long moment.

  ‘I thought you were going to die,’ she said, her voice uneven.

  He extricated his hand from her grasp and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘After all the times in my life I could have died, it would be very annoying to die in a comfortable bed in England,’ he said, adding, ‘But unfortunately for me, the worst is yet to come.’

  ‘But your fever is down,’ she said.

  ‘In an hour or so the ague will be back.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath as he lay back on the bolsters. ‘In the West Indies, at a certain time of the year, they have terrible storms that rage and destroy all in their wake, and suddenly it is calm and the sun comes out. That is the worst time of all, because you know the storm will return again, worse than before. The fever is like that.’

  She swallowed. ‘Ellen said to give you the infusion of Jesuit Bark when you woke.’

  He nodded and she turned away. Liquid sloshed from a jug and she returned to the bed with a horn beaker. Sliding her arm beneath his shoulders, she lifted his head and he grimaced at the familiar taste of Jesuit Bark. Without it, he would have died years ago.

  He swallowed the last of the bitter brew and asked for water. She refilled the beaker and he insisted on taking it from her, controlling his shaking hand with a supreme effort. It galled him to be physically weakened and reliant on this woman, of all women.

  ‘I have some broth. It will take but a moment to warm it.’

  He nodded and she turned away from him, busying herself beside the fireplace, where a cheerful glow lit the old, darkened timbers of the ceiling.

  ‘So you’ve had this fever before?’ She had her back to him as she stirred a pot on the fire.

  ‘Several times. It is the legacy of my time in the West Indies.’

  ‘But you’ve come through it?’

  He shrugged. ‘The attacks are further apart and not so severe,’ he said. ‘They get it in the Low Countries from where I have just come. That and the soaking of the last few days…’

  She returned to stand by the bed, holding a wooden bowl in her hand. All trace of humour had gone from her face.

  ‘It’s not your only legacy of Barbados,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen your back, Daniel.’

  The breath caught in his throat. No choice b
ut to bluster his way out of it.

  ‘Not pretty, is it?’

  ‘Lady Thornton says you should have died.’

  ‘I nearly did.’

  ‘Why? What did you do?’

  He pulled himself up in the bed. The distress in her voice betrayed the shock she must have felt – as any woman must feel. There had been a girl in Fort Royal who had recoiled from him and refused to touch him. That memory still stung like a raw nerve.

  The spoon rattled in the bowl she held as she trembled – with cold, or emotion?

  ‘Who did it?’ she asked in a tight voice.

  He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. How could he explain a man like Outhwaite, who delighted not only in the subjugation of his fellow man, but the infliction of pain?

  ‘It was a long time ago. I survived. I escaped. Are you going to give me that broth or let it go cold?’

  She looked down at the bowl in her hand, as if she had forgotten she held it. ‘Do you need help?’

  He glared at her. ‘I can feed myself, thank you,’ he said, and she handed him the bowl.

  ‘Is Kit your brother?’ she asked.

  His hand jerked, spilling some of the soup on the bedclothes.

  Agnes had cloths to hand and as she sponged the sheets, she said, ‘You called his name in your sleep.’

  He handed her the bowl and lay back, the memory of the dream still harsh and clear. ‘Yes, Kit is … was … my brother. I dreamed I saw him on the gibbet – a rotting corpse.’

  She regarded him, her head slightly on one side, a gesture he had come to recognize in their short acquaintance.

  ‘Were you close to your brother?’ she asked.

  Close? Had he been close to Kit? There had been a ten-year age difference and he had worshipped the ground Kit walked on, driving him mad when Kit graced Eveleigh with his presence. But Kit had always shown great patience with his young brother. Daniel smiled at the memory of his brother teaching him how to use a sword. He lacked Kit’s natural grace and ability, but he had tried so hard.

  ‘Yes, as close as we could be given he was ten years my senior,’ he said. ‘When the war broke out he and my father raised a regiment in support of the King. They fought side by side through the years of the war, returning home with stories of adventure and great victories. I yearned to join them and ride into battle under the banner of the Midhursts, side by side with my father and brother – all in the King’s cause. Guardians of the Crown.’ He could not hide the bitterness in his voice at the last words.

  Agnes frowned. ‘The Midhursts?’

  He glanced at her. What harm in her knowing?

  ‘My grandfather is – was, I can only assume he is dead now – Lord Midhurst.’

  ‘So if your father and brother are now dead, does that make you Lord Midhurst?’

  Daniel’s tired mind grappled with that concept – grandfather, father, older brother, all dead.

  ‘I suppose I am – whatever that means,’ he said.

  A smile caught at the corners of Agnes’s mouth and she laid her hand over his, her mouth curving in amusement. ‘Don’t expect me to start calling you “my Lord”… my Lord.’

  He smiled in response, and his fingers closed around hers. Such a little hand, he thought.

  ‘Go on with the story,’ she said.

  His eyes felt heavy. He needed to sleep and gather his strength for the next bout of the fever, but the dark and the candlelight and a desire to talk after all the years of silence had loosened his tongue. ‘It all ended for us when the country rose again in ’48. Kit and my father fought at the Battle of Preston and lost. They returned to Eveleigh with half the Parliamentary army on their tail. The house had never been built for a siege and my father surrendered, only to be shot in cold blood on the steps of his own home by … ’

  Agnes’s fingers tightened on his and she finished the sentence for him. ‘Tobias Ashby?’

  Daniel closed his eyes. ‘Before my father was even buried, he ordered the house destroyed. He took Kit prisoner, but somewhere along the way Kit escaped and fled to France, leaving us all but destitute with only a few habitable rooms to live in.’

  It was the next part that made the hard telling; Kit’s return in in 1651, full of braggardly tales of how the King would march into England and claim his throne. The angry confrontation with Daniel’s mother, when Daniel had announced he would go with his brother. Anger … so much anger. It seemed to be all he could remember now.

  He swallowed. ‘I followed Kit to Worcester with dreams of honour and glory … and revenge for my father’s death. The battle itself was anything except that.’ The pressure on his fingers encouraged him to go on and his voice cracked as he said, ‘I saw Kit fall just before the butt of musket took me down. When I came around I was a prisoner in Worcester Cathedral, and the nightmare had only just begun.’ He turned his face away so she wouldn’t see the pain that the illness would not let him disguise.

  ‘You’re tired. You should sleep while you can,’ Agnes said. She pushed back a strand of hair from his damp forehead. Her touch sent a wave of fire through him and he shivered.

  He nodded, his eyes heavy, sleep already beginning to steal up on him. ‘I thought Kit had died but he didn’t. He lived to die on a gibbet.’

  Agnes sighed and her hand softly brushed his face, probably as she would gentle the boy … what was his name … Henry?

  Some recollection from his fever drifted into his consciousness. Something about the child. My son – she had said that, hadn’t she?

  The malaise washed through him and he could no longer retain his hold on the world; it dipped and slid, breaking into a multitude of colours and shapes.

  ***

  ‘Outhwaite! I’ll see you hang for this.’ Daniel sat bolt upright, his eyes wide and blazing with anger and fever.

  Agnes caught his shoulders and tried to ease him back on to the bolsters but he fought her off, his flailing arm catching the side of her head. She staggered backwards, stars reeling before her eyes. The ague had returned, as he predicted, only worse than before.

  ‘Outhwaite!’ He screamed the name before falling back, his breath coming in laboured gasps.

  Regaining her composure, Agnes returned to his side, with a wet cloth in her hand. ‘Daniel, hush. He’s not here. He’s gone.’

  She attempted to lay the cloth on his burning forehead, but he knocked her hand away. She stroked his temple and wondered if this man, Outhwaite, bore the responsibility for the scars that marred Daniel’s back. So many secrets for such a young man.

  The man beneath her hands quieted, and entwining her fingers with his, she laid her head on the bed. ‘Live,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t die.’

  She must have dozed. The creak of the door jerked her awake and the faint grey light of dawn illumined the room. The smell of fresh-baked bread preceded Ellen, who paused in the doorway studying the disordered bed, the restless man, and the exhausted woman.

  She set the covered tray she carried on the table and straightened, fixing Agnes with a hard, unsympathetic eye.

  ‘Ye’ve done enough,’ she said. ‘Got him through the worst of it. Now you need to rest. Can’t have two of you ill.’

  Agnes nodded and rose to her feet, too weary for conscious thought.

  ‘You’ll wake me if there’s any change?’

  ‘Only if it’s for the worse. Ye’ll find your bag and a bed made up for ye two doors down from this one,’ the woman said, and shooed her from the room.

  Agnes followed the directions, suddenly so tired she could barely lift her feet. She opened the door on a pleasant, light-filled chamber. Hot water steamed in a ewer beside a basin and fresh towels had been laid out for her. A clean, soft, much-mended nightdress that did not belong to Agnes lay across the bed.

  She studied her disreputable reflection in the mirror. Her hair badly needed a wash and her eyes were circled with dark rings. She sank onto a stool and buried her face in her hands. In the past month she had lost ev
erything and everyone she held dear. It would be easy to curl up on the floor and surrender. Too easy.

  Taking a deep breath, she stripped off her travel-stained clothes, standing naked on a homespun rug that covered the floor. Pouring the hot water into the basin, she found a bar of sweetly-scented soap had been left for her and washed herself thoroughly from head to toe, noting the numerous marks of bed bug bites from the inns with their verminous beds. Pulling the too-big nightdress over her head, she fell into the warm embrace of a soft down mattress and was asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

  Chapter 7

  Agnes stretched her arms above her head and took in a deep breath, revelling in the pleasure of lying between clean sheets redolent with the scent of lavender. From beyond the window she could hear the sounds of the life of the manor house; a woman singing, her sweet voice rising into a tuneful soprano over the sounds of horses’ hooves on cobbles. From within the house a young child cried and music – someone playing the virginals with a deft, sure touch – drifted around her. All these things that Agnes had lost and for which she longed with a yearning that was a physical pain.

  From the gloom she surmised it must be evening. She had slept a deep and dreamless sleep and as she sat up her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.

  The door creaked open and a maid entered the room, carrying a pile of neatly folded clothes.

  ‘Oh good, ye’re awake,’ the girl said. ‘My name’s Essie. I took the liberty of pressing your petticoats, and washed your linens. They may be a little damp, so I’ll hang ‘em in front of the fire.’

  The girl proceeded to hang Agnes’s chemise and petticoat over the back of the chair. She turned to Agnes, a smile on her broad, cheerful face. ‘If I help you dress, ye’ll be in time to join the family for supper.’

  Pushing her disordered hair from her face, Agnes glanced at the window. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four in the evening or thereabouts. It’ll be dark soon.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to sleep so long.’ Agnes swung her feet out of bed and stood up, stretching.

  ‘Her Ladyship gave orders you were not to be disturbed,’ the girl replied. ‘And she said to tell you, your friend’s fever is broken and he’s sleeping soundly, so nothing to worry about. You want me to help you with your gown?’