But when she got up and held the candle down close so that she could look at him he was always lying as he had been, moving constantly, muttering from time to time beneath his breath, his face twisted into an expression of angry anxiety. She could not tell whether he was conscious or not, for though his eyes were partly opened he did not seem to hear her when she spoke to him or to be in any way aware of her. Sometime in the middle of the night the sweating stopped and his skin became hot and dry and his face and neck violently flushed. His pulse beat rapidly and his breath came in quick shallow gasps, and sometimes he gave a slight cough.
About four it began to grow light and Amber decided to stay up, though her eyeballs ached and she was dizzy with tiredness. She put on her smock and one petticoat, stuck her bare feet into a pair of high-heeled shoes, and got into the dress she had been wearing the day before which, without her busk, she could not fasten all the way up the front. She pulled a comb hastily through her hair and rinsed her face, but she did not powder it or stick on a patch. For once it made no difference how she looked.
The room stank, for all the windows were closed. She was not afraid of the night air herself but she shared the common belief that it was fatal to a sick man. And she clung superstitiously to the country belief that if there was serious illness in the house death would not come if all doors and windows were kept tight shut and bolted. The smells were thick and heavy. She did not realize how overpowering they had become until she opened the door into the parlour and took a breath of clean air. Then she lighted the fire in the bed-chamber and flung on a handful of dried herbs.
She made up the trundle and shoved it back out of sight and then, while he seemed to be somewhat quieter than usual, she took the slop-pans and went down to empty them into the courtyard privy and rinse them out. She made two more trips to bring up pails of fresh water. It had been a long while since she had remembered how tedious and how inconvenient were the simplest tasks of keeping house.
His intense thirst persisted, but though she gave him one glass of water after another the thirst was not allayed and he soon threw it up. Again and again he vomited, retching with a violence it seemed would tear out his bowels; each time it left him pouring sweat, exhausted and all but unconscious. Amber, who ran to hold the pan and to support him, watched him with horror and pity, and a growing rage.
He's going to die! she thought, holding the pan beneath his chin, pushing herself against his back to help him sit upright. He's going to die, I know he is! Oh! this filthy rotten plague! Why did it come! Why did he get it? Why should he be the one—and not somebody else!
He dropped down once more, flat on his back, and suddenly she flung herself across him, her fingers clutching at his arms— the muscles, though useless now, still looked hard and powerful beneath the brown skin. She began to cry, holding onto him defiantly and with all her strength, as though determined she would not give him up to Death. She murmured his name, mingled with curses and endearments, and her sobs grew wilder and more frantic until she was almost hysterical.
She was jerked out of her orgy of self-pity, back to reality by Bruce, whose fingers took hold of her hair and pulled her head slowly upward. She looked at him, her face smeared with tears, her eyes oddly slanted as his grip on her hair dragged at her scalp. Sick with shame and remorse she stared at him, wondering desperately what she had been saying—and if he had heard her.
"Amber—"
His tongue had swollen now until it almost filled his mouth, and it was covered with a thick white fur, though the edges were red and shiny. His eyes were dull, but he looked at her with recognition for the first time in many hours, scowling with the agonized effort to seize hold of his thoughts and express them.
"Amber— Why—why aren't you gone—"
She looked at him warily, like a trapped animal. "I am, Bruce. I am going. I'm just going now." Her fingers, spread out on the quilt before her, moved backward a little, but she could not stir.
He let go of her hair, gave another deep sigh, and his head rolled over sideways. "God go with you. Go on—while—" The words slurred off and he was almost quiet again, though still softly mumbling.
Slowly and carefully she moved away from him, genuinely afraid, for she had heard many awful tales of plague-victims gone mad. She was sweating with relief when at last she stood on her feet again and out of his reach. But the tears were gone and she realized that if she was to be of any use to him she must hold herself in control, do what she could to make him comfortable and pray that God would not let him die.
With quick resolution she went to work again.
She bathed his face and arms and combed his hair—he had not been wearing a periwig when she had met him at the wharf—smoothed the bed and laid another cold compress on his forehead. His lips were parched and beginning to split from the fever, and she covered them with pomade. She brought fresh towels from the nursery, and gathered all the soiled articles into a great bag, though of course no laundress would take it if it became known that there was plague in the house. And all the while she kept one eye on him, tried to understand him when he muttered something and to anticipate what he wanted so that he would not have to make the effort of reaching or moving himself.
About six the streets began to take on life. Across the way an apprentice let down the shutters of a small haberdashery shop, a coach rattled by, and she heard the familiar cry: "Milkmaid below!"
Amber threw open the window. "Wait there! I want some!" She glanced at Bruce and then ran out, scooping a few coins from the dressing-table as she went past, rushed into the kitchen for a pail and down the stairs. "I want a gallon, please."
The girl, pink-cheeked and healthy, was one of those who came in every day from Finsbury or Clerkenwell. She grinned at Amber and slid the yoke off her shoulders to pour the fresh warm milk. "Going to be another mighty hot day, I doubt not," she said conversationally.
Amber was listening for some sound from Bruce—she had left the window open just a crack—and she answered with an absent-minded nod. At that moment a deep boom filled the air. It was the passing-bell and it tolled three times—somewhere in the parish a man lay dying, and those who heard it were to pray for his soul. Amber and the milk-maid exchanged quick apprehensive glances, then both of them closed their eyes and murmured a prayer.
"Three pence, mam," said the girl, and Amber saw her eyes going over her black gown with a sharp glint of suspicion.
She gave her the three pennies, picked up the heavy pail and started to go back into the house. At the door she turned. "Will you be here tomorrow?"
The woman had shouldered her yoke and was already several feet away. "Not tomorrow, mam. I'll not be comin' into town for a while. There's no tellin' these days which one might have the sickness." Her eyes went down over Amber again.
Amber turned away and went inside. She found Bruce lying just as she had left him, but even as she came to the doorway he suddenly began to retch and tried to sit up. She put down the pail and ran toward him. His eyeballs were no longer bloodshot but had turned yellow and sunk into his skull. He had obviously lost all contact with things outside himself and seemed neither to hear nor to see; he moved and acted only by instinct.
Later she made several more purchases. She got cheese, butter, eggs, a cabbage, onions and turnips and lettuce, a loaf of sugar, a pound of bacon, and some fruit.
She drank some milk and ate part of the cold duck left from supper the night before, but when she suggested food to Bruce he did not answer and when she put a glass of milk to his lips he pushed it away. She did not know whether to insist that he eat or not, and decided that it would be best to wait for a doctor—she hoped to see one going past the house, for they carried gold-headed canes to distinguish them. Surely, with so many people sending for them at every hour of the day and night, she would see one soon. She was afraid to leave him alone, long enough to go for one herself.
And then at last she found that his vomit was streaked with uncoagulated bloo
d. That scared her violently and she decided that she could wait no longer.
She took her keys, left the building and ran along the street toward where she remembered having seen a doctor's sign, pushing her way through the crowds of porters and vendors and housewives. A passing coach left such a cloud of dust that she could taste the grit in her mouth; an apprentice bawled out some impertinent compliment which reminded her that her gown was undone; and a filthy old beggar, his hands and face covered with running sores, reached out to catch at her skirts. She passed three houses which were marked with the red cross and had a guard before each.
She arrived at the doctor's house out of breath and with hard dry pains in her chest, gave the knocker an impatient clatter and then, when no one answered, banged it furiously for at least a minute and was just picking up her skirts to leave when a woman answered. She held a pomander-ball to her nose and stared at Amber suspiciously.
"Where's the doctor? I've got to see 'im this instant!"
The woman answered her coldly, as though resentful that she had come at all. "Dr. Barton is making his calls."
"Send him the moment he gets back. The Sign of the Plume in St. Martin's Lane, up the street and around the corner—"
She raised her arm and pointed, and then she whirled and ran off, pressing her hand against the sharp pain that stabbed her in her left side. But to her immense relief she found that Bruce, though he had vomited again—bringing up more blood —and had flung off the blankets, was otherwise as she had left him.
She waited nervously for the doctor. A hundred times she looked out the window, swearing beneath her breath at his slowness. But it was mid-afternoon before he arrived and she flew down the stairs to let him in.
"Thank God you've come! Hurry!" Already she was on her way back up again.
He was a tired old man, smoking a pipeful of tobacco, and he started wearily after her. "Hurrying won't do any good, madame."
She turned and looked at him sharply, angry that he apparently did not consider this patient to be of unusual importance. But nevertheless she was relieved to have him there. He could tell her how Bruce was, and what she should do for him. Ordinarily she shared the popular skepticism regarding doctors, but now she would have believed implicitly the idlest words of any quack or charlatan.
She arrived at the bedside before he did and stood there, watching him walk slowly into the room, her eyes big and apprehensive. Bruce lay now in a coma, though he was still mumbling and moving restlessly about. Dr. Barton stopped short of the bed by several feet and he held a handkerchief to his nose. For a moment he looked at him without speaking.
"Well?" demanded Amber. "How is he?"
The doctor gave a faint shrug. "Madame, you ask me to answer the impossible. I do not know. Is there a bubo?"
"Yes. It started to rise last night."
She turned back the quilts so that he could see the lump in Bruce's groin, enlarged now to the size of a half-submerged tennis-ball; the skin over it looked stretched and red and shining.
"Does it seem to cause him much pain?"
"I touched it once, by accident, and he gave a terrible yell."
"The rising of the plague-boil is the most painful stage of the disease. But unless there is one they seldom live."
"Then he will live, Doctor? He'll get well?" Her eyes glistened eagerly.
"Madame, I can promise you nothing. I don't know. No one knows. We must simply admit that we don't understand it— we're helpless. Sometimes they die in an hour—sometimes it takes days. Sometimes it's easy, without a convulsion, other times they go in a screaming agony. The strong and healthy are as vulnerable as the frail and weak. What have you been giving him to eat?"
"Nothing. He refuses everything I try to feed him. And he vomits so often it wouldn't do any good."
"Nevertheless, he must eat. Force it down him someway, and feed him often—every three or four hours. Give him eggs and meat-broth and wine-caudles. And you must keep him as hot as possible. Wrap him in all the warm blankets you have and don't let him throw them off. Heat some bricks and pack them at his feet. If you have some stone water-bottles use those. Start a good fire and don't let it go out. He must be induced to sweat as profusely as possible. And make a poultice for the boil—you can use vinegar and honey and figs if you have them and some brown bread-crumbs and plenty of mustard. If he throws it off tie it on someway, and keep it there. Unless the boil can be brought to break and run he'll have but little chance of recovery. Give him a strong emetic— antimony, in white wine will do, or whatever you may have on hand, and a clyster. That's all I can tell you. And you, madame —how are you?"
"I feel well enough, except that I'm tired. I had to stay up most of the night."
"I'll report the case to the parish and a nurse will be sent to help you. To protect yourself I'd advise you to steep some bay-leaves or juniper in vinegar and breathe the fumes several times a day." He turned and started to go and Amber, though keeping an eye on Bruce, walked along with him. "And by the way, madame, you'd better hide whatever valuables you may have in the house before the nurse arrives."
"Good Lord! What kind of a nurse are you sending?"
"The parish has to take whoever volunteers—we have too few already—and though some of them are honest enough, the truth of it is that most of them are not." He had reached the anteroom now and just before he started down the steps he said: "If the plague-spots appear—you may as well send for the sexton to ring the bell. No one can help them after that. I'll stop again tomorrow." Even as he spoke they heard the bells begin to toll, somewhere in the distance, two tenor notes struck for a woman. "It's the vengeance of God upon us for our sins. Well—good-day, madame."
Amber went back and set immediately about her new tasks, for tired as she was she was glad to have work to do. It helped her to keep from thinking, and each thing that she did for him gave her a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
She poured some of the water which she kept hot in the kitchen into several stone bottles—wrapped them in towels and packed them all about him, and she brought out half-a-dozen more blankets from the nursery. He protested, pushing them down again and again, but each time, patiently, she covered him and went on with what she had been doing. The sweat began to run off his face in rivers, and the sheets beneath him were soaked and yellow. The fire roared and she heaped it with coals, making the room so hot that though she took off her petticoat, pushed her sleeves high and opened her gown, the silk clung to her ribs and there were wet spots beneath her breasts and in her arm-pits. She pulled the heavy hair up off her neck and skewered it on top of her head, and she mopped at her face and chest with a handkerchief.
She poured the emetic into his mouth and then, without waiting for it to take effect, administered the clyster. This was a difficult and painful process, but Amber was beyond either disgust or fastidiousness—she did what was necessary as well as she could, and without thinking about it. Afterward, she cleaned up the mess it had made, washed her hands, and went out to the kitchen to prepare the mustard-plaster and to make a sack-posset of hot milk, sugar and spices and white wine.
He made no protest when she laid the poultice on the boil and did not seem to know that it was there. Relieved—for she had been afraid that it might hurt him—she went back to finish making the posset.
She tasted the curdled drink, sprinkled on just a bit more cinnamon, and then tasted again. It was good. She poured it into the double-spouted posset pot and started for the bedroom. At that moment she heard a yell, a strange terrible sound that sent a quivering chill along her spine. Then there was a thud and a loud crash.
She slammed the pewter pot onto the sideboard and ran toward the bedroom. He was half-crouched on the floor, just getting to his feet—he had apparently fallen as he climbed out of bed, and overturned the table beside it. "Bruce!" she screamed at him, but he was not conscious of her or of what he was doing. Slowly he lunged to his feet and turned to push open the casement window which she
had left unlocked. She rushed on toward him, grabbing up a candlestick from a chest-of-drawers and just as he put one foot on the recessed sill she grabbed his arm and swung the heavy stick, striking him hard across the base of the skull. Vaguely she realized that there were people below in the street, looking up, and she heard a woman scream.
He started to fall, sagging slowly, and she flung her arms about him, trying desperately to push him back onto the bed. But he was too heavy for her and in spite of her efforts slid slowly toward the floor. Knowing that she would never be able to lift him from there onto the high bed, she gave a sudden violent shove and he fell sideways, sprawled half across it; she stumbled and pitched down onto him. Swiftly she was on her feet again, and she jerked a quilt from the bed to fling over him, for he was naked and streaming sweat. Pulling and hauling, swearing with fright and rage, at last she got him back into the bed. She collapsed then into a chair beside it, completely exhausted, her muscles quivering and jumping resentfully.
Then, as she looked at him, she saw that a dark streak of blood was beginning to make a crooked path down his neck, and she got wearily to her feet again. With cotton and cold water she sponged it off, and wrapped a clean linen band— torn from a towel—around his head.
"Pox on that nurse!" she thought furiously. "Why doesn't she get here?" She replaced the mustard-plaster and filled the hot-water bottles again, for they had begun to cool.
On her way back to the kitchen she stopped and took a long drink of the posset. It was supposed to be highly invigorating and, at least for a time, did make her feel stronger. Putting the pot down she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. If only that pestilent wench would arrive! she thought. Maybe I could sleep then. I'll die if I don't get some sleep. Exhaustion came over her in waves and for several minutes she would think she could not make another move, or take another step. And then it would pass, leaving her no less tired but able to do what had to be done.