Catheryn had no words in which to express her anxiety, but knew that she must say something.
“My lady Adeliza,” she began awkwardly in a whisper, “I want you to know… how sorry I am that this misfortune has visited your family – but… but I know that Fitz and Roger will soon find her –”
“Do not speak to me.” Adeliza’s voice was dark and quiet, and seemed to have the weight of the sea behind it. “Do not talk to me of your sadness; do not mention my husband and son who are risking their own lives to find her; and do not think to repeat my own words back to me. Yes, I see the folly of the words that I spoke to you, only this very evening.”
Catheryn opened her mouth, but she could give no guidance to this woman before her who was almost spitting poison in her attempt to rid herself of the pain that she was feeling.
Adeliza breathed heavily, and yet no tear threatened to fall from her eyes.
“Come with me,” Catheryn said quietly. “We can await the news from the Great Hall, where there is a fire, and we shall hear as soon as anything occurs.”
“No need,” Adeliza said dully. Her eyes were now focused on something Catheryn could not see, something directly behind her. Catheryn spun around.
Chapter Nineteen
Fitz stood there, almost blue with cold: a bundle of humanity in his arms.
“Isabella!”
Adeliza rushed forward as Fitz half lowered, half dropped his daughter onto the ground. As he leaned down, Catheryn could see Roger behind him, pale.
“Isabella?” Adeliza shook her daughter, but her eyes were closed. She did not respond.
“Fire.” Catheryn spoke in a calm voice, but her insides were shaking. Isabella was clearly in a bad way, and if they did not take action, then they were sure to lose her. To be so close to retrieving her, and then to watch her die in their arms…
“We need to get her warm,” Catheryn said fervently. “Is there a fire in her room?”
“I had one lit,” Roger’s voice sounded otherworldly. “Before we left, I gave instructions that one should be lit for when we returned.”
“You did well,” Fitz said listlessly.
Adeliza had tears running down her face. “She needs nought but hot food and blankets; she will recover, she is just a little cold…”
“Nothing can be gained from standing here,” Catheryn said agitatedly, “she must be moved, and quickly. Emma may hear at any moment –”
As if the pronouncement of her name was an invocation, the door beside them opened, and a sleepy figure appeared.
“Isabella?”
“Emma.”
Adeliza almost jumped when her daughter, wet and cold, lying on the floor, responded to the gasp her twin sister had just given.
“She is alive! My child, my daughter, she lives!”
Emma began to cry once more, unable to move from the spot. Isabella said nothing more, but then it would have been difficult to hear her over the sobs of her mother.
Catheryn cast a panicked look at the only person she knew could take charge.
“Fitz, help me.”
The great man hesitated for a moment, and then instinct took over.
“Adeliza, help Emma back to her bed. You may join us once she is settled. Roger, send word: we need Ursule. You know who she is, and you know that she may refuse to come. You must make her come. My lady Catheryn, would you help me take Isabella to her bed chamber?”
Fitz’s forceful words, his commanding air, were all that kept the people in that corridor moving, kept them sane. Emma’s sobs subsided slightly as she was enveloped by her mother’s care, and Roger spun away, running towards the stable without another word.
“My lady?”
Catheryn nodded at Fitz’s words, and reached down to the heap of shivering girl. Together, with much difficulty, they managed to half carry, half drag Isabella to her bed chamber. Thankfully it was but a few steps beyond Emma’s, but as soon as they were able to lie her on her bed, Catheryn breathed a sigh of relief.
“There,” she said, glancing at the grate and seeing with joy that a steady fire was already inhabiting it, “she is safe. Now all we need to do is –”
Fitz collapsed. He had been out in the cold for hours. Another man his age would have fallen sooner. The sound was terrible: his head hit the floor and there seemed to be an echo from the sound. His arm caught the side of Isabella’s chair, and it crashed over him.
Catheryn screamed.
“Fitz! Fitz?”
Kneeling by the unconscious figure of the man she had never believed could be beaten by anything, Catheryn did not know who to tend to first: the girl whose breathing had become more and more shallow with every passing moment, or the man who had a trickle of blood flowing out of his head.
“Fitz?”
Adeliza stood in the doorway, a large fur in her arms. She had evidently brought it to enwrap Isabella. A look of shock filled her features.
“What has – did he trip?”
“I think not,” Catheryn leaned over him, and pulled an eyelid back. His eye roved, and his lips muttered something incomprehensible. “I think he has caught a chill. Isabella is almost the same way.”
“A chill?” Adeliza said, stupefied. “But they can’t be ill – all of the FitzOsberns are strong, they are never unwell.”
“They are now,” said Catheryn grimly. “Where does Isabella keep her dry clothes? We need to get her out of these wet ones as soon as possible. Can you fetch dry clothes for your husband?”
Catheryn had to say ‘your husband’: she could not say ‘Fitz’, or even ‘him’. She had to remind herself, even in the depths of this tragedy, that he was not hers to care for.
“Dry clothes?” Adeliza laughed a laugh of disbelief. “You cannot think that I am going to step one foot further into that chamber? The sickness that he bears could come to me, I could die too!”
Catheryn had moved over to Isabella, and one hand on her forehead told the entire story.
“She has a fever,” Catheryn said hurriedly. “Every moment counts, Adeliza, we must get her warm and dry.”
First pulling Isabella’s shoes off, Catheryn began to remove her clothes. But then she stopped. Adeliza was still standing in the doorway.
“Will you not help me?” Catheryn asked testily. “This is your child, after all.”
Adeliza’s eyes did not leave Isabella as she spoke. “I cannot go in – what if I, too, caught the fever?”
“You may. But that is the risk that we take when we have children: we lay down all of our own fears and worries, and give everything for them.”
“That is easy for you to say. Your child is beyond your help, and therefore you risk nothing.”
Catheryn’s anger, always so carefully kept underneath her skin, erupted. “And yet I risk illness and possible death to care for yours!”
Adeliza did not respond. Eyes still on her daughter, she shook her head slowly. “I cannot do it. I cannot risk the infection, I do not want to be sick…”
Catheryn could not believe what she was hearing. “No one wants to be sick, my lady Adeliza. Neither your husband nor your daughter chose this – but this is the situation. And if you are not going to move one foot to help me, you can at least raise a hand. Bring me dry clothes for your husband.”
Adeliza did nothing; said nothing. Catheryn turned away from her, and continued to strip the shaking child of the icy vestments that were causing her temperature to drop rapidly.
The next time that Catheryn raised her head, Adeliza was gone.
It did not take Catheryn long to discover the location of Isabella’s clothes, and she quickly dressed her in the warmest woollen dress that she could find. Rug after rug was placed over her, and Catheryn finished with pulling the fur from the floor by the fire over the top of them all.
One quick glance at Isabella’s face told Catheryn that it might be too late.
But her next problem was even more pressing: Fitz was still lying on the floor, unable
to move. Catheryn bit her lip. There had been a man who had fallen at her own home: a villager, who had struck his head in much the same way that Fitz had just done. He had not lived.
“Mother?”
Roger’s voice could just be heard from the corridor, and Catheryn almost did not have the strength to reply.
“In here, Roger.”
His worried face soon appeared at the door, but his expression became a look of surprise when he realised that it was not his mother, but their prisoner that was beckoning him in. But she did not retain his attention for long.
“Father!”
Falling down to the ground, Roger desperately tried to speak to Fitz.
“Can you hear me? Father, do you understand?”
“Leave him.” The voice was old, and harsh, and it came from the elderly woman who was revealed when Roger knelt down. Catheryn had never seen such an old person before. Every wrinkle seemed to be carved into her face, and she could only have been about half of Roger’s height. She had a strange fur wrapped around her shoulders, and her dark eyes blinked at Catheryn.
“You must be the Anglo-Saxon woman everyone keeps talking about.”
Her voice was dark: there was a sort of merriment in it, and Catheryn guessed that she was laughing at her.
“I am, indeed,” Catheryn replied over Roger’s mutterings. “And you must be Ursule.”
The woman nodded. The movement stirred the fur around her shoulders, and to Catheryn’s amazement, it turned to face her. The cat jumped down from Ursule’s shoulders – which was not a great distance – and stretched. Its face glared up at Catheryn, and she suddenly had the feeling that she was intruding on its territory. Without a second glance at its owner, the cat stalked over to the bed, leaped onto the covers that Catheryn had created to bring some warmth into Isabella’s bones, and curled up on top of them.
“Don’t mind Reginald,” Ursule said in a low voice. “He never gets up to mischief, and he brings better medicine than I.”
Catheryn simply stared at this strange woman. She had never met anyone like her, and was unlikely to ever again.
“Anything to say?” Ursule raised an eyebrow.
Catheryn took a deep breath. It must almost be the middle of the night, and tiredness dragged at her eyes.
“Nothing except to beg your help in this matter,” she said softly. “Fitz said – my lord Fitz said that you might not come.”
Ursule laughed, and Catheryn inexplicably felt her spirits lift.
“He told you that, did he?” Ursule continued to laugh, almost croaking with the effort. “Then he should know better. I brought him into the world, and if I am not left to my own devices, I may be seeing him out of it.”
Roger was stirred by her words, and he stood up stiffly. Catheryn could see wildness in his eyes, but for once it was a wildness tamed.
“You will help us,” he said to Ursule. “You will… won’t you?” He sounded less certain.
Ursule took in the room with one glance, and seemed to think.
“You’ll pay me double for this, being Christmas?”
Roger nodded vigorously. “Two barrels of ale will be taken to your… home… in the morning. They shall be waiting for you when you return.”
“I’ll be here much longer than one night, my boy.”
Ursule pushed her sleeves up away from her thin wrists, and strode over to the man on the floor.
“There’s sickness here, and it will be many days before we see the end of it. But if you leave me to them, I can help them back onto the path of the living.”
Roger tried to make some sort of sound of gratitude, but it was lost in Ursule’s shout.
“Out with you boy! Sleep is the best cure for you.”
Roger was gone before Catheryn could blink.
“And you too, my lady. Off you go to your chamber, or palace, or whatever you call it.”
Ursule’s voice was still sharp, but she was now preoccupied. She was prodding Fitz, trying to see what reaction she could create. She tutted under her breath when she could gain no response.
“I will stay, and help you.”
“Oh, will you?” Ursule said drily. “You are prepared to face death, for them – your captors.”
Catheryn smiled wearily. “I am reaching the point, my good woman, where I do not feel that I have much more to lose. And these people have been kind to me, and I do not want to see their family diminished by such tragic losses.”
A beady eye stared at her.
“And you know,” Catheryn admitted, “she does remind me of my daughter.”
Ursule nodded. “Annis.”
Chapter Twenty
“How do you know her name – do you know my daughter? Have you had word?” Catheryn almost could not get the words out fast enough, and yet Ursule just smiled quietly.
“This man needs to stay exactly where he is,” she pronounced, completely ignoring Catheryn’s questions. “Moving him would bring him death, and I do not think that he is ready to depart from this world quite yet. Not quite yet.”
“Answer me!” Catheryn almost shouted, but then remembered the sleeping girl on the bed. Out of the corner of her eye, Catheryn could make out the strange outline of the cat, Ursule’s assistant. He was still sleeping on Isabella.
She moved to see how the girl was doing, and could not believe her eyes. Colour had rushed back into her cheeks, and her breathing was deeper, more regular, calmer. She did not look unconscious now: merely sleeping.
“Ah, yes. Reginald is a great healer,” Ursule stated whilst pulling the other rug from the floor over the figure of Fitz.
Catheryn shook her head slowly. “There is no reason to suppose… The warmth of the rugs, of the fire, that is what has brought her back to health.”
Ursule straightened up, and put her hands on her hips. “You believe so?”
Catheryn nodded. “There is no reason why a cat should heal a person from a fever.”
“Take him off, then.”
Catheryn reached out her hands, and then hesitated.
“Harder than it looks, isn’t it?” Ursule laughed. “It is strange how little people believe when they are well, but how much they cling to half-truths and wishes when the Lord seeks to take them.”
Catheryn knew that the cat could be doing Isabella no good; but then, he was certainly not doing her any harm either. And although Reginald was only just beyond her fingertips, she found it difficult to close the gap. Why should she remove anything, no matter how small the chance was, which seemed to be bringing Isabella back to health?
“Ursule,” Catheryn said slowly. “I like you.”
Ursule gave a mock curtsey, and then laughed again.
“I have no strong opinions on you, my lady – which are strong words in themselves, seeing as where you come from.”
In another room, on another day, to a different person, Catheryn might have reacted. But in this room, during this night, to Ursule, the healer that wore a cat like a muffler, Catheryn gave in.
“I leave you this evening, only,” Catheryn said, “for I desperately need rest. But I shall join you in the morn, and together we will bring Isabella and Fitz back to life.”
“Fitz, is it?” Ursule’s eyebrow was once again raised.
Catheryn said nothing. She left the room, went to her own chamber, and collapsed onto her bed.
*
The next five days passed in a haze of tiredness and obedience. Ursule moved into Isabella’s room, and it was only on the third day that she deemed Fitz to be strong enough to be moved to his own room. Adeliza had refused point blank to allow him back into their bed chamber: Catheryn had winced when she had heard the shouts as she had tended to Isabella’s rising fever.
And so a second bed was placed opposite Isabella’s, and father and daughter fought the fever together. Catheryn and Ursule spent days and nights moving from patient to patient, desperately tending to the fever that at once threatened to overcome, and then to disappear. It wa
s like fighting sunlight in mist: you could see more the absence of it than the thing itself. And as the New Year beckoned, still no great change was seen in either Isabella or Fitz.
But no matter what the servants had whispered, the words of Ursule or the unnerving stare of Reginald, Adeliza did not change her mind. So great was her fear of infection that she did not even visit her husband, or Isabella. Twice Catheryn heard the girl cry out for her mother, and twice the message had been sent to the lady of the house, and twice the same reply had been returned: she would not come.
“You look half dead,” Ursule said quietly, returning from Fitz’s sickroom to find Catheryn hunched in a chair beside Isabella’s motionless figure.
Catheryn smiled wanly. “You looked half dead when you arrived here.”
Ursule laughed, but much of the merriment had gone.
Stirring, Catheryn continued, “I have been told that your meal will be coming shortly. ’Tis almost night already, I cannot believe it.”
“Believe it.” Ursule took another step forward towards Catheryn. Catheryn saw that Reginald had already left Ursule and taken up his customary position by Isabella. “And this night shall be the hardest, I warrant you nothing less.”
Catheryn brought a hand to her head. It had been pounding ever since she had awoken, and the pain of it was threatening, even now, to force her to bed.
“You should go. You can do little good here tonight.”
“I can do no worse by staying,” Catheryn said wearily. “I would not feel right leaving them.”
“There are some that would comment on that. Some would say that your affection is… too great.”
“Any concern will seem too much compared to that of the lady of this house.” Catheryn bit her tongue; she should not have said such hurtful words, but Ursule neither raised that familiar eyebrow, nor laughed at the words that she should not have heard.
After a moment of silence, Catheryn spoke again, asking the question that had been burning her lips.
“How do you know of my daughter?”
“I do not.” Ursule’s reply was too quick for Catheryn’s liking, and she stood, determined to wrestle the truth from this woman who was half nurse, half healer, half mystery.