The Summer Country

by Lauren Willig

  “Laura—”

  “Truly, I never minded that you had no patience for poetry and no ear for music,” said Laura earnestly. “You never claimed otherwise.”

  “Thank you?” said Emily. She’d always thought she sang rather nicely, but now wasn’t the time to quibble about her ability to carry a tune, not when Laura was baring her soul.

  “You had your interests and I had mine and we each respected the other for it. If Adam had told me honestly . . . But it was as though, once he had me, he wanted me to be something else entirely, and I wasn’t sure what it was or how to be what he wanted. I’m not sure I know how to be anyone other than myself.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to be.”

  “Adam did. Everything I wore, everything I said, was wrong. He was so concerned that I might make a poor impression on the Turners, that I sounded too rich or not rich enough.” Laura took a deep breath, letting it out in a gusty stream. “I was so unhappy. I think he was too.”

  “He had other worries,” said Emily, remembering Adam’s frantic attempt to make good, his determination that he wouldn’t go back to Bristol empty-handed.

  “But he didn’t share them with me,” said Laura. She paused for a moment, and then said, with difficulty, “I felt so guilty about you. It haunted me, that I had stolen him from you. I know your grandfather always intended you to marry. If ours was a great love, then it was all for the good. But if it wasn’t . . . I had wronged you to no purpose.”

  “That was Grandfather’s project, not mine.” Emily knelt by Laura’s chair. If Laura could be honest, so could she. “It was comforting to think that Adam was there should I need someone to marry. Had it come to that, I don’t think either of us could have gone through with it. We knew each other too well. I always knew Adam would marry someone else one day.”

  “One day,” said Laura, and Emily didn’t need her to say more to know what she was thinking.

  “I didn’t mind that Adam had married. I minded that it was you.” It was something she hadn’t even admitted to herself. In a rush, Emily said, “I knew I should be glad that the two people I cared for more than anyone had found happiness with each other. But—I didn’t think you would suit. And I minded that I didn’t come first with you anymore.”

  “You were right. We didn’t suit.” Laura’s voice was very small. She stared down at her wedding ring. The polish had already worn off; it looked battered and dim. “Poor Adam. He deserved better.”

  “For what it’s worth, he was very proud of having won you. Even if you had nothing to say to each other in private, he liked to have you on his arm. He boasted like anything about you.” Emily pulled herself up to standing. “I suppose you’ll go back to Bristol now?”

  Laura put her hands protectively to her stomach. “I couldn’t possibly go anywhere until after the baby. And then . . . I wouldn’t want to risk the child in travel. In a year, perhaps. Or two.”

  “I shouldn’t want to live with Aunt Millicent either,” said Emily frankly. “I suppose I should find our hostess. Do you know where she might be?”

  “In the pest house.” Laura grimaced. “I mean, the infirmary.”

  “Pest house is probably about right at the moment,” said Emily.

  Laura took the hand Emily offered her and hauled herself out of the chair. “She’s been there since the sickness started. She’s had her meals sent and won’t let any of us near her.”

  “She’ll let me,” said Emily.

  Laura’s lips twitched. The smile started small and then spread against her friend’s thin face, transforming it. “Oh, Emily, I have missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too,” said Emily. All the weight of everything she hadn’t told Laura pressed around her. Nathaniel, her grandparents, Nathaniel. But there was sickness at Beckles and Laura was with child and had just lost her husband and there could really be only so many revelations in one day. “I’ll just go see what I can do to help. Is there anything you need?”

  “No, I’m quite all right. You will take care?”

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” said Emily firmly. “It can’t possibly be as bad as Bridgetown.”

  It was worse. Or, at least, the smell was. The pest house had never been designed for such extensive or extended occupancy. It was a one-roomed hut, of the sort the servants lived in. Under ordinary circumstances, it was equipped as a sort of consulting room–cum–infirmary, with a single cot, a table, a chair, and a row of deeply outdated medical texts, including Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, which attributed cholera to the unhealthy habit of eating cold cucumbers.

  The smell assaulted Emily as soon as she stepped inside, not just the normal putridity of excrescence but an acrid aroma that seemed to strip the inside of her nose.

  A woman was standing in between two tightly jammed rows of cots, her hair wrapped in a kerchief, her gown swathed in an apron. Emily would never have recognized her, but for the diamonds in her ears.

  “So you’re back, are you?” Mrs. Davenant rasped.

  Emily scrubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands. She couldn’t blame Mrs. Davenant for sounding like that; her own throat was stinging. “What on earth is that smell?”

  Mrs. Davenant came to join Emily in the doorway, leaning heavily against the wall. Her face was gray beneath her brightly patterned kerchief. “Turpentine wraps to induce a sweat. If they sweat they live.”

  Emily peered over her shoulder. “Is it cholera?”

  “No, it’s dyspepsia. Of course it’s cholera. MacAndrews was the first to succumb, the useless old fool.”

  There were aprons hanging on a hook by the wall. Emily helped herself to one, tying the straps behind her back. “How bad is it?”

  “We’ve had ten deaths. Mimbo, Hannah, Joe Horner, Hagar, Rose . . . I saw them all born. Mary Frances, that’s Johnny Cooper’s girl. Little Henry, Quasheba, Philly Ann, Charity. And we’ve twelve more sick.” She turned away, but not before Emily saw the tears seeping from her eyes, tears of exhaustion and loss.

  “What have you done, other than turpentine?” asked Emily briskly.

  Mrs. Davenant drew a rasping breath and then straightened, painfully. “Pomegranate skin, to check the effusions. A decoction of Christmas bush. You pound the leaves in a clean cloth and mix it with salt and a little rum—Nanny Bell taught me. But you wouldn’t know Nanny Bell. She was before your time.”

  “I’ve found laudanum helps, a little.” Emily moved past Mrs. Davenant into the room. There were patients in all stages of the disease, including, she noticed, with a tightening of her chest, Katy’s little girl, who was curled on her side, clutching a rag doll. “You’ve a fire lit to boil water?”

  Mrs. Davenant had been sagging against the wall. At Emily’s comment, she drew herself up. “Why would I do a fool thing like that?”

  “If you’ve read Dr. Snow’s 1849 paper,” said Emily, moving from bed to bed, checking heads and making notes of sheets to change, “On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, he advises boiling all water before use, on the grounds that—”

  “Stop. I’ll light a fire to boil water; it’s little price to pay to prevent you quoting learned authorities at me. I’ve more faith in Nanny Bell than any doctor in Christendom but if a little boiled water will make you happy, boil your water. It can’t do nearly as much harm as MacAndrews’s remedies.” Mrs. Davenant got the words out with difficulty; there was a sheen of sweat across her forehead.

  Emily moved quickly toward her, afraid she might faint. “You don’t look well.”

  Mrs. Davenant pushed her aside, swaying on her feet and nearly overbalancing. “I’m perfectly all right.”

  “You’re not perfectly all right.” Emily took her arm to steady her, and this time Mrs. Davenant didn’t object. “Your face is flushed.”

  “We’re in the tropics.” Mrs. Davenant winced with the effort of speaking, half doubling over. “Queenie laced my stays too tight.”

  Emily didn’t let her waste more breath. “I
’m taking you back to the house. No, don’t argue with me. If you’ll like, we’ll scrub everything you touch, but you’re going to your own bed, and you’re going right now, and I’m calling in the doctor—a proper doctor.”

  Queenie took one look at Mrs. Davenant and took charge, getting her mistress into a nightdress. It was a sign of Mrs. Davenant’s growing weakness that her protests were decidedly pro forma. Emily saw her settled in bed with a dose of laudanum she staunchly refused to take and left her under Queenie’s care while she first sent an urgent message to Nathaniel and then, tying her apron strings about her, returned to the pest house to do what she could, feeling very small and very alone.

  She hadn’t realized, back in Bridgetown, just how much she had relied on Nathaniel. Not to care for the patients—she was perfectly capable of caring for the patients—but to be there. His caustic humor had bolstered her, had kept her going through the losses and the fear.

  If he got her message, would he come? It was selfish of her, she knew. He had patients of his own in Bridgetown. And he had his own reasons not to love Beckles or its mistress.

  She wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t come. Day turned to night, the sun flaring out with the sudden sunset of the tropics. Emily lit a lantern and circulated among her patients, doling out boiled water and broth, and little dribbles of laudanum to those in the worst case. The turpentine wraps she discarded.

  George came and called to her from a safe distance. He seemed relieved when his only instructions were to bear Laura company.

  “Do you need anything?” he called, in the tone of one who hopes the answer will be no.

  “You’ll let me know if Dr. Braithwaite comes?” It was too late now, Emily told herself. It was dark already. No one would attempt the drive from Bridgetown now. There had been rioting of late; gangs of frightened men robbing shops and plantations in St. Lucy.

  “You’ve called Nat?”

  “He’s the best doctor I know,” said Emily. He was also the only doctor she knew, but that was beside the point.

  It was full dark when she heard the sounds of hoofbeats. Emily ran out from the pest house to see the twin lights of carriage lamps bobbing their way toward the house. Emily yanked her apron over her head, dipped her hands in a basin of steaming water, and bolted toward the house, ducking through the gap in the lime hedge, catching him just as he was climbing down from his uncle’s phaeton.

  “You came.”

  “You’re not with Mrs. Davenant?”

  “There are twelve sick in the pest house. Mrs. Davenant had Queenie to look after her.” Emily ran out of words and simply stood, staring up at him. The buttons on his waistcoat glimmered faintly in the torchlight, and his high-crowned hat made him seem very tall. “Thank you.”

  “I could hardly say no, could I?” He sounded rueful, and rather weary, and Emily wasn’t quite sure how to take it. She curled her hands into fists and tucked them behind her to keep from reaching for his arm. “You’ll bring me to the patient?”

  “This way.” Emily led him into the house, through the front door, which opened for them as it always opened, as if by magic. Up the stairs they went, to Mrs. Davenant’s room, dimly lit by a rose-shaded lamp.

  Queenie came to the doorway.

  “Is she sleeping? I’ve brought the doctor.”

  “As awake as you or I,” said Queenie grimly, and stepped aside to let them through, although Emily saw her subjecting Nathaniel to a long, inquisitive look.

  Mrs. Davenant stirred against the pillows, her voice like the rustle of old, dead leaves. “I remember you. Nat Cooper, you were then.”

  “That,” said Nathaniel, setting down his bag, “was then. Any vomit? Diarrhea?”

  “No,” said Emily, hovering by the bedside. “But you know, the more virulent cases sometimes don’t.”

  “Sit up, please,” said Nathaniel to Mrs. Davenant. He took a stethoscope from his bag, a tube of polished wood with an elegant ivory earpiece and chest piece. He saw Emily looking at it and said, shortly, “A gift from my uncle upon my graduation. It’s the latest model from Paris.”

  “Am I to have French treatment, then?” rasped Mrs. Davenant.

  “Breathe in, please,” said Nathaniel, placing the bell-shaped piece against her back and his ear to the other.

  Mrs. Davenant breathed in, flinching at the pain. “I don’t see the reason for this. I’m just tired, that’s all. You’d be tired too.”

  “And out,” said Nathaniel.

  “Cholera’s not in the chest,” said Emily. “It’s in the bowels.”

  “This isn’t cholera,” said Nathaniel, frowning over his stethoscope.

  “I could have told you that,” said Mrs. Davenant. “It’s the grippe, that’s all.”

  Nathaniel ignored her. “Breathe in.”

  Mrs. Davenant took a shallow breath that turned into a fit of coughing that made her whole body shake. When she could speak again, she whispered crossly, “What did I tell you? La grippe. Nothing to make a fuss about.”

  “You can lie back now.” Nathaniel straightened, looking grim. “It’s not la grippe. It’s winter fever.”

  Mrs. Davenant was not impressed. “It’s summer. With all your education, I think you’d know that.”

  Nathaniel packed his stethoscope back in its velvet-lined case. “Lung fever, then, if you prefer.”

  “I don’t. I don’t have lung fever. I refuse to have lung fever.” Mrs. Davenant tried to sit up, and, with a cry, fell back again against the pillows.

  Queenie rushed over to help settle her, casting Nathaniel and Emily a reproachful look.

  “Ow,” said Mrs. Davenant.

  “You have lung fever. Denying it won’t make it otherwise.” To Emily, Nathaniel said, “There’s not much to be done other than what you already know. Rest, quiet, beef tea, if she’ll take it.”

  “Caroline Davenant died of lung fever.” Mrs. Davenant’s voice drifted up from the great bed, so faint that Emily could hardly hear her. “Robert and Charles’s mother. She’d been sick for as long as I could remember, but it was the lung fever ended her. Robert told me. Not that he said it that way. He thought it was his father’s neglect that killed her. He didn’t love her anymore. His attention wandered. And she died.”

  “Men have died . . . and worms have eaten them, but not for love. There’s no medical precedent for dying of a broken heart,” said Nathaniel harshly. Opening his bag, he took out a phial of laudanum. “You’ll want something to help you sleep. Miss Dawson can give you four drops of this in a bit of wine.”

  “No! They gave me laudanum before, after Edward. I won’t have it. I won’t have it.”

  “Shhhh.” Emily went to her, settling her back against the pillows. “I’ll make you up a posset. Don’t worry. No spirits of wine.”

  Mrs. Davenant grabbed at her shoulder, staring up at Emily, her face skeletal in the uncertain light. “She was like you. Answer for everything.”

  “Who?”

  Mrs. Davenant let go. “Jenny, of course.”

  “It takes people this way sometimes,” said Nathaniel in an undertone. “The lung fever. It makes their minds wander.”

  “I’m not wandering!” Mrs. Davenant’s voice broke, her protests lost in a fit of coughing. “Don’t you think I knew who you were from the first? I knew. As soon as you came, I knew.”

  Emily wrinkled her brow at Nathaniel. “Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Davenant. Queenie will sit with you and I’ll be back with that posset before you know I’ve gone.”

  Mrs. Davenant subsided against the pillows. “You’ve come to be a judgment to me. Or to put things right. One or the other. Unless they’re one and the same.”

  “I’ve come to help you rest,” said Emily firmly.

  Leaving Queenie in charge, she went out with Nathaniel into the hall. “Thank you for coming all this way. I would never have guessed that it might be lung fever.”

  “So there are some benefits to all my education, then,” said Nathan
iel.

  For a moment, they stood looking at each other in the dim hall, a candle guttering in its holder on the wall, the air between them charged with memory.

  Feeling like a coward, Emily ducked away, saying quickly, “I know it’s late, but would you mind seeing to the patients in the infirmary before you go? Mrs. Davenant was subjecting them to the most bizarre treatments, turpentine wraps and Christmas bush. . . .”

  “She might not have been far wrong with the Christmas bush.” Nathaniel’s voice was brisk, doctorly. “I’ll stay the night and go back in the morning.”

  “I’ll have someone make up a room for you.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “There’s every need. I won’t have you going into a decline.”

  “Do I look as though I’m going into a decline?”

  Men have died . . . and worms have eaten them . . . Emily covered her confusion by saying primly, “You need to look after your own health. They need you back in town.”

  “Not as much as they used to. It will be over soon. There were fewer than ten new cases today.”

  “So you don’t miss the extra pair of hands?” She sounded, she realized, as though she were fishing for compliments.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Nathaniel.

  “Jenny!” There was the sound of thrashing from Mrs. Davenant’s room, and a thud. “Jenny!”

  Emily seized on the excuse. “I’d best go to her. You’ll be at the infirmary?”

  “I’ll see you in the morning before I go,” said Nathaniel. “We can talk then.”

  “The morning, then,” said Emily, and escaped into Mrs. Davenant’s room, where she occupied herself in changing sweaty nightdresses, mixing possets, and other mundane tasks. He wanted to talk about the disposition of the patients, of course. That was all. Just as they had once before.

  What else was there to talk about?

  Emily wrestled a pillow into a fresh case with unnecessary force and took out her feelings in shaking out the eiderdown.

  Mrs. Davenant slept fitfully, waking often. There were moments she was lucid and knew Emily and fretted about her patients back in the pest house, but, more often, she called out for Jenny or argued with her dead husband, her voice rising so that Emily was afraid that anyone would think she was torturing her.