He did not know how long he stayed by the bed they had shared. Sergios’s cries finally roused him. He changed and fed the baby. He had joked with Helen about that, back in another lifetime. Remembering their laughter reached him as the brute fact of death could not. He set down his son and buried his face in his hands. The tears came then, and for a long time would not go. At last, moving stiffly as one ofHephaistos’s bronze men in the Iliad, he made himself go do what he had to. Arethas Saronites’s sympathy sounded forced; the medical officer had said the same words too many times these past weeks. So too with his final advice: “Go home and wait for the burial party. It will come soon.”
Two shaven-headed convicts bore Helen away to one of the large, newly dug graves outside the city. An overseer with a bow stood by. If the convicts lived through the epidemic, they would go free. Had it not been for Sergios, the magistrianos would have given way to despair. The baby was far too little to understand his mother was dead; he only knew he needed someone to take care of him. He did not give Argyros much time to dwell on his own grief.
Argyros thought once more about getting the boy a wet-nurse. Before, he had balked because he did not think one would come into a house of sickness. Now he did not want to expose Sergios to more outsiders than he had to. The baby was all he had left to remember his wife by. He did not count her family. After he sent the message telling them she was dead, he intended never to have anything to do with them again.
When the knock on the door came, he thought it was his father-in-law, come to try to make amends. His hand was on his knife hilt as he went to the front of the house. But instead of Alexios Moskhos, Gian Riario stood waiting.
The doctor’s shoulders sagged when he read Argyros’s face. “Oh, damnation,” he said. “She was young and strong, and if she pulled through the crisis I thought I’d be able to help her.
These are the hard ones to lose.”
“What do you know about that?” the magistrianos lashed out at him.
“Do you think I was never married?” The question, and the raw hurt behind it, brought Argyros up short. After a moment, Riario went on, “Your baby is still well, I hope?”
“Yes.”
“Something, anyway. I wasn’t so lucky,” the doctor murmured, more to himself than to Argyros. He grew brisk again: “Listen—if you so much as mislike the way he breaks wind, call me. I live on the street of the church of St. Symeon, six doors up from the church. Do you write? Yes? Good—you can leave a note on my door if I’m not there, and I probably won’t be. Even if he farts funny, do you understand?”
“I do—and thank you.”
Riario snorted, very much his cynical self again. “You’d thank me more if I really had a hope of doing something.”
“You try.”
“Well, maybe so. As I told you, the smallpox has done everything to me it can. I’m not afraid of it anymore.” He laughed harshly. “Futile, aye, but not afraid.”
The magistrianos was afraid: he and Sergios were still vulnerable. After Riario left, he went back and fed the baby. Every syringe of milk his son gulped down felt like a triumph—what could show health better than a strong appetite?
Sergios was cranky the next day, but not enough to worry his father, in spite of Riario’s words. Argyros went on with the melancholy tasks that sprang from Helen’s death. He was packing her belongings in sacks and boxes to take them to St. Symeon’s church, where the deacons could distribute them to the needy.
Then the baby started crying again, and Argyros’s head came up without his having to think about it. He knew the difference between fussy cries and those that meant something was really wrong. He hurried into Sergios’s room, expecting that one of the fibulae he had used to fasten the baby’s linen had come undone and was poking his son, or some similar minor catastrophe.
But nothing was obviously wrong. Sergios was not even wet. The crying stopped; Sergios seemed listless. Shrugging, Argyros bent to lift him out of the cradle and cuddle him. He almost dropped him—the baby’s skin felt much too warm.
Icy fear shot up Argyros’s back. As if to deny the reality of what his fingers told him, he filled the syringe bladder with milk and offered it to his son. Sergios gave a couple of halfhearted sucks, then spit up the little he had eaten. Argyros wrapped him in a blanket and dashed for Riario’s house. By good luck, the doctor was there. His eyes narrowed when he saw the baby. “Fever?” he asked sharply.
Argyros nodded, unable to make himself say yes out loud.
“It could be any of a myriad things,” the doctor said. He cocked an eyebrow. “They do fall sick of other illnesses than smallpox, you know.”
“Yes, and also from that. I low will you know if it is?”
“The rash, of course, if it appears.” Argyros was certain four days of waiting would drive him mad. That must have been plain on his face, for Riario went on, “It acts faster in infants than with adults. If no eruptions show up by tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, you’ve probably escaped.”
I le disappeared into the back of the house and returned with a small stoppered vial. “Here’s poppy juice from Egypt. It will help the little fellow sleep, and that will do some good. I’ll be by tomorrow morning to look at him again.” He clapped the magistrianos on the back. “Even if it is smallpox, not everyone dies of it.”
“No,” Argyros agreed. He could not help remembering, though, what Riario had said before about smallpox and infants. He put that thought down by brute force as he carried Sergios home. He gave his son a dose of the poppy juice and waited until the baby had fallen into a heavy, drugged sleep. He sniffed at what was left of the jar of milk he had bought the day before. His nose wrinkled: it was sour. As soon as he was sure Sergios would not wake, he hurried to Skleros’s dairy. The dairyman’s wife greeted him at the door and exclaimed over his grim visage. Maria Sklerina’s plump features went pale when, flat-voiced, he told her Sergios was sick.
“Mother of God, not your little son too, after your wife!” she said, crossing herself. “I thank the Lord every day for sparing Peter and me and our eight, and he and I both added you to our prayers. Who can say why God does as He does?”
“Not I,” Argyros replied. He scratched absently at the back of his hand, which itched. Maria said, “Here, give me your jug and let me fill it for you. I know you won’t want to spend a moment more than you have to away from him. They’re dear, aren’t they, even when they’re so small you know loving them is such a gamble?” Her eyes grew sad. “We lost two babies ourselves, my husband and I, and mourned them almost as much as if they’d been grown. And we’re luckier than most families we know.”
“Indeed you are,” Argyros said; his own parents had raised only three children out of seven births. He was glad not to have to make any more conversation as he followed her out to the barn. She rinsed the jar and drew fresh milk from a cow that looked amazingly bored with the whole process. As her husband had before, she refused to take his money. He felt the sting of tears as he thanked her; any small kindness touched him deeply.
Still mostly asleep, Sergios ate a little and did not throw it up. That gave Argyros enough hope to seek his own bed. His rest, though, was fitful, and Riario’s knock not long after dawn came as a relief. He sprang up to let the doctor in.
But Riario had no good news to give him. He hissed in dismay when the magistrianos led him into Sergios’s room. “The first eruptions already,” he grunted, and Argyros saw-he was right. Raised red patches were beginning to cover the baby’s face, just as they had Helen’s. But with Helen, they had taken four days after the onset of the fever to appear. This was only the next day for Sergios.