Page 13 of The Queen’s Witch

“I am not.”

She started to cry. I saw my chance, and took it. Approaching her slowly, I said, “Are you in need of a nurse? I can nurse. Who is ill?”

“Mam. Da run off. Come in, come in. I do not . . . I cannot . . . I do not know how . . .” More tears.

I entered a cottage more prosperous than most, but smelling of sickness. The girl was either too ignorant or too distraught to perform the simple necessities. The hearth was cold, the woodpile empty, a plucked chicken a feast for flies on the dirty table. In a tiny bedchamber a woman lay on the bed, shaking with chills. The room smelled of vomit, sweat, shit.

The girl hung back in the doorway as I opened the window. “No,” she cried, “ye must keep her swaddled and shut in!”

“I am the nurse,” I said, in Grandmother’s sternest tone. “Bring me two buckets of water from the river. Bring in wood, start the fire on the hearth, and bring me a cup of hot water. Then cook that chicken to broth. Boil it well. Can you do that?”

“Aye,” she said, pathetically grateful not to be needed in the bedchamber.

I washed the sufferer with cool water, stripped the filthy blanket from under her, and laid her on the less-filthy top blanket. The woman moaned, seeming not to even know that I handled her. Then she began to rave in fever and delirium, shouting both curses and Christian prayers in unholy mix.

I spelled her to lessen the pain, brewed a herbal tisane from my pack, made her as comfortable as I could. That was all that could be done for the Sweat. It took its victim quickly, or not at all. When the broth was ready, I forced a few sips down her. The woman’s fever rose hotter, although her raving ceased as she fell into brief, uneasy sleep.

“Go to bed,” I told the girl. “What is your name?”

“Alice Haddon.”

“I am Mistress Elyn Bryn. Sleep beneath the open window in the other room, away from the bad air.”

“I dare not!” she cried, in what would be her only act of defiance. “Spirits may enter by night and harm me!”

I did not argue with her; it would have been no use.

I watched as long as I could, then slept a few hours. When I woke, Mistress Haddon’s fever had broken and she slept deeply.

Alice did not seem to mind her father’s desertion. Early in the morning a neighbor woman knocked but refused to come in. She demanded, “Who be ye?”

“Elyn Bryn, from Coulthurst. A nurse.”

“Martha’s sister, she never come?”

“No.”

She nodded without changing expression. “Dead, then. That no-good husband come back?”

“No.”

“Good if he be dead too. Alice, give the nurse a penny when she leaves.” She started back down the path.

The girl, panicky, looked at me. I said, “Your mother will recover. But you must stay in the other room until I am sure she is well. Cook what food you can.” My stomach grumbled with hunger.

Alice had been taught to cook simple meals, and both larder and garden held a bounty. As long as I told her what to do and when to do it, she worked steadily. On the third morning, when Mistress Haddon could sit up and talk, I left the cottage. Alice gave me tuppence, a bundle of food, and an embrace I did not want.

The morning, for a change, was bright and warm. At a bend in the River Eden, I again bathed, scrubbed all my clothes, and spread them and myself on rocks and bushes to dry in the sunshine. The air smelled sweetly of flowers and strawberries. But my mood was dark.

What if my Third had fallen victim to the Sweat and died? Mother Redcap had said she did not know if the Goddess would grant me another Third. If She did so, how would I know? I had no one to ask. As far as I could tell from runes and minor searching spells, there were not even cunning folk in Hever, let alone a fully bound Sister who could conduct my thrice-braided ceremony.

And in six weeks’ time would come Lughnasadh, the second sacred day of Grandmother’s anguish. Inflicted by her daughter, my mother. I could not stop picturing it, even as I knew that I could not picture it. For what mortal can see the Otherworld except in imagination?

Imagination tortured me with the dream I had had on Beltane, Grandmother’s flesh burning over and over again as she screamed in agony. And with the agony, horror in her eyes that this torture in the Otherworld might, like the Otherworld itself, last for eternity. She could not bear it. I could not bear it.

It was a terrible afternoon. But Mother Redcap had always been fiercely adamant about not indulging fear, and eventually I stirred myself to throw off my dark mood. Dressed in my still-damp clothes, I made my way back to the road. A cloud of dust rose along with the beat of hoofs, and a group of riders rounded a turn and came into view. Hastily I stepped out of their way.

Six men, well mounted, two in rich velvet and silk, with hat plumes waving like agitated cocks’ combs. From somewhere in their center came a woman’s voice, loud and furious. “God’s blood, I said to halt!”