This was the part of her that didn't argue or calculate or resist. This part simply moved.
She sat on the edge of the mattress and looked at the child properly.
Six years old. Slight, not the slight of a small child but of a child who had spent too much energy on other things. Dark hair, damp at the temples. Eyes closed.
His chest moved with each breath, but moved wrong. A shallow pull, a pause, then a desperate catch at the top, as if each breath had to be negotiated rather than simply drawn.
I ken that sound.
She'd heard it in adults who'd breathed smoke for too long, in children born in cottages with no ventilation, in old men whose lungs had hardened with decades.
But in a child this young who had survived it this long, she pressed her lips together. Counted it as something, quietly, to herself.
He's stronger than he looks.
She pressed two fingers gently to the inside of his wrist. Counted. Placed her palm lightly on his sternum, feeling the rise and fall directly.
Behind her, Anthony had taken up a position against the far wall, arms folded, gone completely still.
She felt him there.
Not the same way she felt the hearth, the hearth didn't watch her. He was still and silent, and she was aware of every second of it, aware that he was reading her face for information she hadn't decided to give him yet.
Fox had padded in silently and settled himself beneath the bed frame.
Good lad.
Without being sure which of them she meant.
"Windows," she said without looking up. "Open them slightly. Nae wide, two fingers of gap, nay more."
A beat.
Servants hesitated, she assumed, because the room had been sealed against the cold and no doubt had been sealed that way by command.
Anthony nodded. She didn't see it, but she heard the immediate compliance.
The soft scrape of a shutter being eased open, the thin thread of outside air that reached her a moment later. Cool. Clean. She breathed it herself and felt the difference.
"Good." She opened her satchel. "Bring me water. Hot but nae boilin'. And clear the room. Everyone except the Laird."
Movement behind her.
The brief sound of people filing out, the door pulling mostly closed. She didn't check. She was already measuring dried lungwort into the mortar, working by feel, her hands knowing the ratios.
“Aye, lad, I'm yer new healer.”
She spoke softly to James while she worked. Not to wake him, just to be a sound in the room, something calm and continuous that the sleeping body could register without alarm.
She'd learned that from her grandmother, who'd learned it from hers.
Ye talk to them,her grandmother had said,even when they cannae answer. The body hears more than the mind does.
She mixed the first compound and held it near his face, letting the steam carry the vapor into the air above him rather than forcing anything.
Then she adjusted the blankets. Peeling back two layers, which she suspected had been added out of love and were making things worse, and repositioned him slightly so his chest could open more fully.
Minutes passed.
