Darcy's stomach turned, and he tasted bile. “I understand.”
“Mr Darcy.” Aldridge paused—his hand on the door, case under his arm. “The young woman is terrified. Terror is not a medical condition, but it is a complication. A patient fighting the surgeon as well as the infection spends resources on resistance rather than recovery. If there is anything—anything at all—that would give her comfort while we wait, I recommend it. Comfort is not medicine. But absence of comfort is poison.”
He opened the door, then paused again. “I should look in on your sister before I go. Five minutes.”
“Thank you, Mr Aldridge.”
The surgeon went up the back stairs to the south chamber. Darcy did not follow. He stood in the study with Aldridge’s words turning over in his mind—Comfort. Anything that would give her comfort. He had carried her from the mere. He had splinted her leg with a broken walking stick. He had sat on the floor of her parlour all night holding her hand while she wept in her drugged sleep. He had made broth, carried water, washed bowls, lit fires that would not catch.
None of it was comfort. All of it was the best he could do, which was not enough, which would never be enough—the infection was in her leg, the bone saw in Aldridge’s case, tomorrow morning the surgeon’s return. The decision would be made by the wound, not the woman.
He stepped into the passage, where Mrs Bannon stood.
This was remarkable in itself—Mrs Bannon, who had spent her days occupying the periphery of the household with the devotion of a woman who had refined avoidance to an art, now standing just outside the parlour door. She was not polishing anything, not examining anything, but with hands folded before her and a face wearing an expression Darcy had not seen before—neither aggrieved patience nor studied blankness. She looked worried.
“Mrs Bannon.”
“Mr Darcy, sir.” She addressed him directly, which was also remarkable. Her usual mode involved speaking to the middle distance while Darcy occupied the foreground. “I could not help but hear what Mr Aldridge said. About the young lady’s leg.”
“You could not help because you were listening at the door, Mrs Bannon.”
She neither denied it nor looked ashamed. If anything, impatience showed—the impatience of a woman with information to deliver and no intention of being diverted by an accusation of eavesdropping.
“The water, sir. The mere water. It should be brought to her.”
“The mere water?”
“For the wound. Fomentation—hot cloths soaked in it, laid against the skin. And for drinking. A cup every hour, warm, no additions. The old families knew. When the flesh turned, they brought the water up. It drew the poison. I have seen it work, sir. Not every time. But I have seen it.”
“Mrs Bannon. You have lived in this valley all your life. You have seen the water applied to wounds of this nature. And you did not tell me this when I brough Miss Bennet up from the lake?”
“You did not ask, sir.”
“I am asking now.”
“I know you are asking now, sir. I am telling you now.”
The exchange was the most direct conversation he had ever had with her, and the directness was the kind that could not be deemed insolent because it lacked heat. Mrs Bannon was not defending herself but stating the terms on which she would share what she knew—when asked plainly about the matter plainly before her—and she had not been asked before because the matter had not been plainly before her. She had been waiting for it to become so. It had become so this afternoon.
“Tell me how. Exactly.”
“Well, I'm no wader, sir. There's them that used to take the sick into the mere, so like. But fetch some hot water from the springs on the southern bank, where it rises nearest the shore. Not boiling—the heat destroys what the water has. Warm, as warm as a baby’s bath. Clean linen soaked through and wrung dry. Laid against the wound directly, changed every two hours. The water must be fresh from the spring—it loses its properties if it stands more than half a day. Someone must fetch it every few hours.”
“Is there a woman in the village who knows more than you?”
“Mrs Hadley at the foot of the valley. Her grandmother before her, and her mother before that. Mrs Hadley knows the particulars of each family tended by it and will have remedies I have only heard spoken of. If you send for her, she will come—though she may need fetching, as she is not one to call at the big house uninvited.”
“I will send for her. Mrs Bannon—in the meantime, can you begin the fomentations yourself? With what you know?”
“I can, sir. If the water is brought up.”
“I will bring the water. I have been bringing water for six weeks. I can bring it for two patients as easily as for one.”
Mrs Marsden came to the parlour doorway. She had heard. Her face, as she looked at Mrs Bannon, bore an expression Darcy could read because he had spent the last day and a half reading Mrs Marsden’s expressions and had become, unwillingly, fluent.
Scepticism. Deep, weary, hard-earned scepticism—the scepticism of a woman who had brought her husband to these waters because they were supposed to heal. The man wasin the churchyard. The widow was in a doorway being told that the same water that had failed her husband might save her sister’s leg.
“Mr Marsden bathed in those springs for five months, Mrs Bannon. He drank the water every day. He followed every recommendation the locals offered. The consumption took him regardless.”
