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I straighten, folding my arms across my chest. “You have barely slept, and yesterday you spent half the day standing beside a pit with nothing but a heel of hard bread to sustain you. At this rate, you will collapse into dust.”
She scoffs into her cup. “And who else is going to do what we do? Brother Matthias? Gideon with his prayer book? The hens?”
She sets her cup aside and rises from the stool, catching herself on its edge as her bad leg protests, then steadies herself and brushes past me.
Stubborn thing.
“I am fine, Iscairn,” she says. “Perfectly fine. My leg is behaving, the tea is hot, and we have fourteen houses waiting on the eastern lane.”
She reaches for her basket and rearranges the contents, tucking fresh linen down beside the bottles and checking each stopper with her thumb. I ought to be doing the same with my satchel. Instead, I remain where I am and watch a loose strand of hair slip forward over her shoulder as she bends over the counter.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, I cross the space behind her. I am not entirely certain what I intend to do until I have already bent my head and the curve of my beak is resting lightly against her cheek, and when I nudge against her, she pauses with one hand still buried in the basket.
Her chin lifts a little. Then, very slightly, she leans back into me and sighs.
“If you do that in the lane,” she mutters, “people will think you have taken up pecking like a crow.”
“Then they will have something new to discuss besides their imminent demise,” I reply, my hand dropping to give the curve of her hip a gentle squeeze.
She shakes her head, a faint smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth before she ducks away to hide it. Pulling out of my reach, she goes back to the counter, tucking the last of her supplies into the basket.
“Come on, Doctor,” she says, swinging her cloak around her shoulders. “We don’t have all morning to flirt over vinegar.”
She soaks her mask and ties it behind her head while I pull my glove back on, working the stiff leather over my fingers. By the time I have finished, she is stepping out into the lane, leaving me standing at the counter as the smell of chimney smoke and wet slush drifts in.
She has been tired for days. That is all.
I have examined perhaps four thousand fevers in my lifetime, and I know perfectly well how I would read this one in anybody else. But Ophelia has barely slept in a fortnight—it is hardly surprising that her body has begun to protest. Mortals are remarkably good at working themselves into an early grave whilst insisting they are perfectly well, and she has made something of an art of it.
That is all it is.
I follow her outside, pulling the door shut behind me just as a bitter gust comes sweeping down the lane.
There are colder places in the world than Lancashire. I have visited several of them. None, however, seems quite so determined to force the weather beneath a man’s clothes. The wind comes down from the moors with nothing to slow it, driving damp cold through every seam in my cloak and whipping Ophelia’s skirts around her legs as we make our way towards Butter Lane.
Unfortunately, that is where our morning begins.
Nell Mercer’s eldest boy caught me at the end of the lane in the early hours, begging for something to settle his mother’s stomach. Now, she sits by the hearth of the damp-smelling cottage, grey and frail, while the youngest of the children clings to her skirts and watches us with one thumb in his mouth.
“The sickness will settle,” I tell her, measuring peppermint into the cup Ophelia has set beside me. “Though exhaustion and grief will do very little to help it.”
Nell’s fingers tighten around the linen in her lap. “I’m not grievin’.”
The words are so quiet I almost mistake them for the crackle from the hearth.
She keeps her eyes lowered. “Forgive me, Doctor. I know I oughtn’t speak ill of me husband, not now, but I…” Her cheeks bulge, and she gags into her hand before shaking her head. “I’m not grievin’ for him.” She glances towards the children before leaning closer, lowering her voice. “I’m afeared they’ll find him alive.”
“You need not apologise to me,” I say, passing her the cup. “The body has very little interest in what a widow is supposed to feel. Fear will turn the stomach just as efficiently as grief.”
Ophelia stays quiet beside us, but she reaches down for the little boy’s hand and gently coaxes him away from Nell’s skirts, murmuring something about letting his mother drink while she leads him a few steps towards the hearth.
“And if William Mercer frightened you while he was here,” I add, “his disappearance does not require you to miss him.”
Her shoulders drop a little, and she gives a small nod, blinking down at the cup in her hands. But the relief lasts perhaps three seconds. Her mouth tightens, and she bends forward with another gag, one hand clamping over her lips while the cup slips in the other. I take it from her before it falls and set it on the hearth, then crouch beside her as she retches onto the stones, rubbing a slow hand between her shoulders until there is nothing left but yellow bile.
When it finally passes, she stays bent over for a moment, breathing carefully through her nose.
“There,” I murmur, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I think your stomach has made its feelings on the matter sufficiently clear. Now, if you will permit me, I should like to examine you.”
