I hung my head. “I had to look respectable, or the servants might not have let me in. But I know how much you prize it, though you’ve never told me who gave you such precious jewels. You must take it back.”
“No” She turned away. I thought I heard her breathing strangely harsh, but when she spoke, her voice was calm and controlled again. “Keep it,” she said. “I always intended to give it to you sometime before I die.”
She stayed with me all that first day and on into the evening. She taught what I did not already know, and she gave me the comfort I needed and the confidence I lacked. Still, Jak was rarely conscious. Clearly, my mother’s special potion did not produce immediate results, but she put trust in her ointments and medicines, and little in conventional nursing. “Bleeding a patient already so weak?” she scoffed as soon as I mentioned the usual solution of cutting, applying leeches, and prayer. “The poor child already bleeds. See his gums, his eyes and nose. He bleeds from his anus and bladder, fingernails and toes. His liver and kidneys bleed, and his whole body bleeds beneath his skin. We must build his strength, not leech it further. Nor will I lance the buboes as some ignorant doctors do to drain the evil, for the pain alone can burst a man’s heart. My salves dissolve the pus and shrink the boils until they wither, leaving only dry scars.”
Food was brought up for us, and the High-Lord Lydiard came twice to see his son. He was angry with my mother for not having come earlier. “You,” he started to shout, then remembered, and turned yell to whisper. “At last you come, when my boy is well-nigh past curing.”
“Ask your wife why I did not come at once,” said my mother. “Though I’m told she is no longer here and has run from the fear of disease. But before leaving, she sent no message, and I was never summoned.”
But Lord Lydiard did not choose to believe the spite of a madwoman, and he blustered, keeping his distance as if frightened to touch her. “He arranged the poisoning of his first wife in order to marry the second,” my mother told me afterwards. “He was infatuated. He also needed more children. After his son came close to death as an infant, Godfrey of Lydiard believed he should produce other heirs. But lust was an even greater attraction. Now pride will not allow him to admit the choice he made was wrong.”
“And futile. They never had any more children,” I pointed out.
“That was inevitable,” smiled my mother, “but not something Lord Lydiard ever understood.”
“I don’t understand either,” I said. “You talk in puzzles.”
“And will continue to do so as and when I wish,” she said. “I will only remind you of my ability to create many potions, and there is one special powder which ensures infertility. But I’ll promise you this Freia. Before I die, I will tell you – everything. Mine is a grand and dazzling story and will shape your whole future. The story is unique, as I am myself, but for now, you must be patient. The Great Death will not claim us, and I have no intention of dying yet, so you must wait a deal longer before you learn the wonderful secrets of my life and yours.”
When, in the continued dark as if an endless night, Jak woke sane enough to talk a little, my mother supported his back while I held a spoon to his mouth. He accepted my mother’s presence without comment, but once he said to her, “Will you clean below, and treat the pustules if it needs to be done? It is not something I would have Freia do again.”
My mother smiled. “One day,” she said, “I believe you and my daughter will live in partnership and you will have occasion to doctor her, as she now doctors you. For the moment, she is learning what she needs to learn, and intimacy is a part of it.”
“It isn’t only that,” said Jak, shame-voiced, though he accepted her prediction of our union without surprise. “But she’s a baby. I’ve no control of either bowels or bladder. It’s not the way I want her to know me.”
“We have few choices over the manner of our dying or the manner of our loving,” said my mother. “You must accept both as they come to you.”
Later in the afternoon, two stable hands and the kitchen boy I already knew came to change the mattress. “Burn that filth,” ordered my mother. “And wash your hands afterwards.” They bundled it out, having replaced it with a huge feather swathe, all fluffed and covered in heavy linens. I held Jak while they moved him. There was no strength at all in his legs, and he could not support his body. He was too heavy for me to lift even with my mother’s help, but I could steady his weight while he was shifted, and then ease his position again to settle him once the job was done. At all times, his limbs caused him terrible pain. Moving his legs was the worst and sent waves of great agony through the calf and thigh muscles and up his back. Then the sweating would break out again, and he would double over, and vomit bloody slime. After this sometimes he would faint, or slip into a stupefied state of part delirium, part trembling. But he had no more dreadful convulsions and best of all, the buboes began to shrink.
Jak’s hair, being very dark, sprang thick and black around his groin, but the buboes were hairless, cocooned in the creases Between groin and thigh. The ugly uneven lumps had turned to hard stones, still horribly tender but now increasingly pale. I told my mother, peering close and being very careful what I touched even though Jak was unconscious, “They are much smaller and lighter in colour. They were deep purple. Now they are a dirty brown, like smoke on the rafters. At least they haven’t burst.”
“Bursting inwards is the worst,” said my mother, pursing her lips. “It’s rare for them to break open on their own, but I’ve known it to happen. They become infected and the flesh falls away, lying open to the bone. The disease re-enters the body, and so contaminates the lungs. Once a victim of the pestilence spits bloody air and breaths out bubbles of pus, then he is surely dead. The bubo must, therefore, be protected. Be careful you keep the area all around the loins covered thickly in the salve.”
“That’s not so easy,” I said with a sniff. “There’s a lot down there, strange things that I didn’t expect to see.”
“For those united in romantic promise,” said my mother, “both of you seem remarkably squeamish about certain matters.”
“It’s not something you ever taught me,” I said. “I was hardly prepared.”
“And I suppose you never noticed a man’s codpiece,” frowned my mother, “or wondered about its purpose? And have you never watched the wild creatures you nurse, or see how they mate? No? But this isn’t a conversation I intend starting now. Or ever.” She had gone to the window and was looking out over the kitchen gardens and the hills beyond. From the manor, the village spread out below, squashed around its church spire and the little patch of green square, seemed like a child’s toy. “I have taught you the important things in life, Freia. The beauty of nature and the magic of the seasons. I have taught you the great lore of poison and herb. I have taught you how to heal both body and soul. Everything else you must teach yourself. It interests me very little.”
“You never taught me how to make charms,” I murmured, “and I should like to know how to protect the people I love.”
She sighed and shook her head. “That is a skill I cannot and will not teach. You do not share my visions, and never will. Some call me witch, and admire my talent while they fear me, which you should not wish to share. Is foretelling witchery? It is the making of medicine which is important, the understanding of herbs, how to help a woman in childbirth, and how to cure many sicknesses. Only this should absorb you.”
The hours passed slowly while Jak slept. “But since we sit here in peace,” I said hopefully, “there are many things you could tell me if you would. You told Jak something about his future, you predict his recovery and say that he’ll live with me and be my husband. Did you guess we were pledged? Then you said that I’d be sick, and he’d need to look after me. But you’ve always told me I couldn’t catch diseases after you’ve dosed me with herbs all my life and put your talisman around my neck.”
“I can’t protect you from everything,” said my mother so
ftly. “And besides, there are many things which can kill, that are not diseases at all. I believe – eventually - you will suffer from something you have chosen yourself.”
That sounded strange, and anyway, my own health didn’t matter much to me. “But Jak and I will truly, really, be together?”
“You know I hate foretelling,” said my mother, turning away. “I avoid it when I can.”
I nodded. I knew. “But the things you foretell are nearly always right,” I insisted. “You could live in a castle and advise kings if you wanted to.”
“Kings? Kings are even more easily frightened, especially of death. Nor are they more God-protected than the rest of the rabble,” said my mother. “In times to come, on through the long dark centuries of the future, there will be kings who will bring great pride, wealth and power to Eden, and kings who bring bitter ruin.”
“Why tell me that now? I want to know about Jak.” I shivered. “Tell me something useful, something happy, if you tell me anything at all.”
“Happiness is not the province of humanity. But I’ll tell you of the two kings you will know personally,” said my mother, and her voice drifted off into the shadows in the way she had which often alarmed me, as if she had become her own ghost. “The first will pretend to be a man of great love and honour, a king of tolerance who believes utterly in loyalty and justice – and yet will be a creature of subterfuge and cruelty. The second will be your friend. Because of Jak, this king will admire you.”
I whispered, “You keep talking of kings. Just tell me about Jak.”
“It is your Jak,” sighed my mother, “who will put you into the company of kings.”
Chapter Six
She left me late that night and went back to our own cottage and the calls of the sick and dying. “He will recover,” she said again, kissing my forehead as she left. “But it is strangely difficult for me to remain here in this house, in a manner I cannot and will not explain. Not yet. One day I will explain everything. But for now, you must nurse him alone.”
Too tired to think again of my mother’s hints, I curled to sleep on the bundled straw pallet at the foot of Jak’s great bed, pulling the thin cover around my ears. Airless but cold and dank in the dark hours, the room smelled rank, and the sickness hung like clouds from the rafters. The moonlight was faint, escaping the cracks between the shutters and striping my eyelids grey and silver. Throughout all the night I could hear Jak’s struggle for breath, the shallow panting of his effort to live and sudden mutter of exhausted delusion. He was recovering, I was confident of that, but his recovery was erratic. One moment he could speak, breathe deep, and see me clearly. Then he collapsed again, lost all strength, and thought me simply another product of fever as he gasped in pain. Alert for his need of me, I clutched to chill night-hope and barely slept in spite of exhaustion. I yearned to give him comfort. I would have climbed into bed with him had I dared but could not risk causing Jak the very pain and discomfort I wished to ease. He tossed, his sleep constantly disturbed by night terrors in a daze of suffering, but I was a restless sleeper myself and could not risk my elbows sharp to his ribs.
Finally, a little before dawn, I sank into my own rambling dreams. When I woke and scrambled up to see how he was, Jak was awake already. Excited to see him regain cohesion, I knelt, watching him blink, guessing his thoughts. He gazed at me as I grinned back at him from the foot of his own bed. The carmine hatched maze of leaking blood had gone, his eyes were clear and bright as if his sight had been washed, their dark green depths like wells in shadow. It was quite obvious he was vastly improved at last. Although his cheeks were hollow, the skin sprang fresh and soft, the sallow glaze all faded. I jumped up and climbed on to the side of the bed to take his hand. His flesh was supple, warm and full of life, and his fingers closed tight around mine. I was as happy in that moment as I had ever been in all my life.
“You are truly over it,” I breathed.
“I thought I had dreamed you,” he said softly. “To have you here, in my own room, touching and caring for me, I didn’t think it could be true. I thought it was a vision. Fever’s illusion.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “I’ve been here one whole day and two whole nights. Though,” I thought aloud, “it seems a lot longer.”
The wonder in his eyes and their bright clarity was mesmerising, and his voice was again deliciously his own, with that soft resonance I loved so well. “How Freia? How have you brought me back?”
“My mother’s medicine,” I said proudly, “together with my nursing, and your strength and courage.”
“And how, amongst all god’s miracles, have you come here?” he asked.
“I heard you’d caught the sickness. Of course, I had to come,” I answered. “I came at night, so there was no one to throw me out. Then your father realised I was good at the doctoring, so he was happy to let me stay. Yesterday my mother came with more medicine. You’re so much better Jak, but of course, it’ll be a few more days before you are quite right again. How, exactly, do you feel?”
“I feel wonderful,” he lied. “It is immeasurably sweet to wake newborn, and discover an angel at my bedside.”
I put my palm to his forehead. In spite of his exaggerated claims, he was still hot, and his skin felt oddly paper dry. “I need to send down for warm water,” I told him. “I find I can order all the servants to obey me., although, of course, most of them have fallen sick or run away. Enough remain. It’s very exciting.”
He smiled. It was his first smile since I had found him sick. It tip-tilted into the deep corners of his mouth, but as his lips widened, they cracked and began to bleed, bright red beads like the pricking of a finger.
When the boy brought the basin of warm water and the cloths, I held cooled ale for him to drink, wiped his mouth and sat beside Jak on the bed. Then, still wary so very gently, I washed his face, hands and shoulders, as much for pleasure, his and mine, as for necessity. The dreadful dark rash across his chest was so faded that I squealed with delight, and began, a little more robustly, to wash where the dull sepia echoes of the marks still remained like meat juices splashed over his body. But as I touched there, so immediately he recoiled and held his breath. “If you tell me the truth about how you feel,” I said at once, “I’ll know what to do next.”
He continued to smile. “So you have slept here, Fray. So close to me and in my own chamber. But I’ve missed it all, sweltering through delirium, not even aware of my own great good luck.”
“Good luck indeed, since you’ve been very near to death,” I said. “It’s just as well you’ve forgotten most of it. But you’re still not telling how you feel.”
“Must I tell the truth?” He was grinning now, and the corners of his mouth were splitting and bleeding more profusely. But now nothing stopped his smiles. “I feel as though I’ve been run down by a hunt of galloping horses and then severely beaten by my tutor as I was as a child. My legs and back feel broken in many places, and the rest bruised for life, and surely, the top of my head is crushed in and possibly disunited from its neck. Have I perhaps been already executed and quartered? I believe I dreamed it was so, and disembowelled too. Then in places which should not be mentioned, there are spiteful pains like many stabbing knives, and my chest is tight, as though forbidden to breathe too deeply or too well in case it snaps. Is this enough?”
“Gracious heavens, Jak,” I stuttered. “And that’s while you’re getting better?”
“Oh, I haven’t mentioned the throbbing pain in my eyes, continuous nausea, or the aching dizziness,” Jak smiled. “Fray, my love, all this is nothing. Less than nothing compared to what it was before. I am deliriously happy.”
“Delirious is what you have been for two days,” I said. “It’s wonderful to hear you speak so clearly. At first, you couldn’t speak at all, and then everything you said sounded as if you were drunk.”
“It must have been dreadfully wretched for you,” said Jak, the smile dissolving. “As bad for you as for me. I had no
choice. You didn’t need to come.”
“I had no choice either,” I said.
“I hope,” said Jak, with a returning glitter of the smile in his eyes, “that I haven’t shocked you too much. Delirium, after all, makes for a dangerous conversation.”
I remembered the shit on the sheets and my surprise when I pulled down the bedding on the first night. I wondered just how much he had truly forgotten and hoped most of those memories had been lost forever. “You didn’t say anything shocking,” I said. “Most of it made no sense at all.”
“In that case, how mightily boring for you,” grinned Jak. “I apologise.”
But it was when I asked him if there was more pain in his legs around the loins, or if he thought the buboes were shrinking further, that he began to remember. “I have an ointment,” I explained, “that has to be spread very thick. First, the place has to be washed, then salved.”
“And that’s what you’ve been doing?” he said. “By the Lord, Fray. Was all of that nightmare real, then?”
“I can’t climb into your dreams yet, Jak,” I said, “so I don’t know. But if you want to turn modest, then I have to tell you, it’s too late. Whether you like it or not, I now know you rather better than I used to. And considering what you have spent your last two years doing to all the local girls, I can’t imagine how you can feel shy now.”
The Corn Page 6
