Outside the cloister, the morning was cool and fresh, with dawn colors still soft in the clear sky, though there was suggestion in the light wind of rain maybe not too far away. Inside the guesthall there was neither cool nor calm. The hall was shadowed, its air close, with a whiff of stinking sickness to it that told Frevisse more than she wanted to know of how bad Breredon’s night had been. As she headed toward the chamber he had been given yesterday, she ordered at the nearest man-one of Rowcliffe’s, as it happened-“It’s morning outside. Open the shutters,” but kept going without seeing if he obeyed.
Even if she had not known which of the lesser rooms opening off the hall Breredon had been given, she would have guessed it from Ela shuffling unhappily from foot to foot in its doorway. The night had not been good to Ela. She was more than ever bent and huddled in on her old body, her head cricked hard to one side so she could look up to Frevisse instead of only at her feet. More than that, she was the sickly pale of someone underslept and over-worked, and guilt panged in Frevisse, because she had done this to Ela, had willingly let Ela take the guesthall in charge again because it was so familiar and easy to work with her. But Ela was old, and while her mind was willing to much, her body was not; Breredon’s illness looked to have served her almost as badly as it served him, and Frevisse said quickly, “How is it with him? Tell me, and then do you go to bed.”
Time was that Ela would have scorned the latter part of that order; but then time was that it would not have been needed. Here and now she only ducked her head in an accepting nod to it while answering, “It was about halfway from Matins to dawn it took him. Maybe somewhat before. His man Coll came for me, said his master was taken with cramps in the belly, was in a cold sweat and likely to vomit. So up I got and came, and that’s what he’s been doing ever since. Only he’s not thrown up for a time. He’s maybe past the worst, but it’s left him poorly and weak.”
To Frevisse’s eye it had left Ela poorly and weak, too, and she said, “Dame Claire will see to him from now, and I’ll see to everything else here. Luce.” She turned to the hovering woman. “See Ela to her bed and tend on her. Food. Drink. Another blanket or pillow if she wants. See she stays there until Dame Claire or I say otherwise.”
It was sign of Ela’s weariness that she made no complaint at that nor protested at all when Luce stooped to put a hand under her elbow and an arm around her to help her away. Only belatedly Frevisse asked, “Where’s Tom?”
“Here, my lady,” he said from Breredon’s doorway.
In his own way, by rumpled hair, untucked shirt, and eyes red-rimmed with sleeplessness and worry, he showed as plainly as Ela did what a bad night it had been, but he was young and upright and hearty enough that he would take no lasting harm from it. What worried Frevisse was what he and the rest of them might take from Breredon, because if this was not something simply in the man’s own belly, if it was something that could spread, the priory was in for a worse time than they presently had.
And Abbot Gilberd, almost here, would have to be warned away.
She wanted to join Domina Elisabeth in clutching her head and moaning, Why now? But she settled for asking Tom as she went forward, “How does he?” Then could see for herself as soon as she was in the room, with no need for Tom saying, “Not good, I’d guess.”
The room stank of sickness, and Breredon lay curled on his side on the very edge of the bed, probably to be in ready reach of the basin on the floor near his head should the need come on him again. Just now he was lying quietly, eyes closed, but with a tautness to his stillness that said he was neither asleep nor at ease. He was pale-faced, too, his hair lank with old sweat while new sweat was beaded on his forehead. The only bold thing left of the confident and prospering man of yesterday was the black stubble of his beard against his pale flesh, and from where she stood near the bed his servant Ida pleaded, “Are you going to do something for him, my lady?”
Frevisse said, going no nearer, “Our infirmarian will soon be here,” knowing there was nothing she could do for Breredon except help Dame Claire. “Where’s Coll?”
“Gone to wash out the other basin,” Ida said.
“I just brought this one back,” Tom offered, pointing to the one on the floor, to show he was not idle.
“He’s still being sick, then?” Frevisse asked Ida.
The woman looked the least marked by the night, was neither strained with exhaustion like Ela nor disheveled like Tom nor gone dithering like Luce. She was openly worried, her apron was stained, and she had foregone her veil, her head covered by a simple cap tied under her up-bound hair, but she answered steadily enough, “It’s not so often now. He was again a few minutes ago, but there was nothing come up. Only bile. I’ve asked some water be warmed so he can rinse his mouth.”
“Anything you think he needs, ask for,” Frevisse said, grateful for the woman’s steadiness and even more grateful to hear Dame Claire in the hall behind her asking where the sick man was. Leaving the room, though, she saw Dame Claire had come alone, carrying the box of medicines kept ready for need outside the cloister but without Dame Johane.
Before Frevisse could ask, Dame Claire said, “I thought better of her coming. On the chance it’s contagious.”
Frevisse accepted that with a nod and a deliberately calm face and left Dame Claire to her work. She was not free to leave the guesthall though. Far from it. The Rowcliffe father and son and their cousin Symond were standing on the other side of the hall, plainly waiting for her and surely with questions about just how ill Breredon was and with what, but they had to go on waiting because Mistress Lawsell was nearer and demanding as she closed on Frevisse, “What is it? What does he have? Is it plague? I want to leave. Elianor and I are leaving today, even if we have to walk to do it!”
Firmly Frevisse answered, “It doesn’t have the look of any kind of plague. It’s more likely an ague.” And even if that was not the truth, even if Dame Claire determined it was one sort of plague or another, she would do all she could to keep the Lawsells here rather than let them take whatever it was with them to infect others. But that grievous need was not yet to hand, and still firmly calm, she went on, “We’ve had no sickness here for him to have caught, and his servants are untouched by whatever it is.” So far, she silently added, while in the back of her mind she wondered sharply whether Peter could have brought something back with him from Northampton. But when would he ever have been near Breredon? And how could Breredon have sickened from it so quickly and no one else? No. This had to be something other than plague, surely, and she said with forced confidence, “Whatever it is, I think we’re all safe from it. What we need to do is pray for him.”
Fortunately, Mistress Lawsell preferred to be comforted. Mollified, she unflustered enough to say, “Well, we’ll keep well away from him. Elianor and I. Well away.”
“That would probably be for the best,” Frevisse agreed. For Breredon as well as the Lawsells, she added silently.
John Rowcliffe’s theme was different from Mistress Lawsell’s. When Frevisse went to him, he said bluntly, angrily, “Breredon’s feigning it. He’s made himself sick, thinking we’ll lower our guard against him.”
“I doubt that,” Frevisse returned, words clipped short with impatience.
“What you can doubt is that we’ll lower our guard. You can tell him that. When is your abbot going to be here?”
“Sometime today is all I know. Now if you’ll pardon me,” she said, not caring whether she had his pardon or not, and left him with the barest jerk of her head in a nod of parting toward his son and cousin.