The woman lay silent but her eyes were open. They were bleeding. Her husband knelt beside her. “I’ve brought water,” he whispered, “and will get your drinking cup. No ale, for there’s no stalls on the green no more and Daisy Green won’t be brewing, for the lass is sick as you. But this is water from the stream, and safe to drink.” The woman spoke, but Emeline could not hear or understand her. “Her name’s Maud, and mine’s Ralph,” the man said, dipping the cup in the water bucket and then holding it to his wife’s lips. “Drink my sweet.” He lifted her head, but the liquid ran from her mouth and she could hardly swallow.
Emeline found a stool and sat heavily. The smoke was noxious and she could breathe only with effort. “It was like this for him,” she whispered into the fumes of soot and misery. “Now I understand. He went through this. The black agony and the black terror.” The weight of her own mounting fear was even thicker than the smoke. “He could have died too.” She was whispering to herself, not caring if the others heard. “He was trapped, just as I’ve been trapped. And I’ll face it with courage, just as he did.”
The man frowned, looking up. “You’re coughing from the smoke, lady. But my Maudie mustn’t catch a chill. Doctors always say to stop draughts, and any sick chamber must be kept hot.” He shook his head. “And we’re used to the smoke, lady. All autumn, all winter, mostly all spring.” Maud had managed to drink a little, and Ralph refilled the cup. He spoke over his shoulder. “Our beautiful little babe got it first, then my poor girl here. I got it two days later. But she’s worse today. I reckon she’ll go tonight. And once she’s gone, I’ll want to go too.”
Through the sallow sepia swirl, Emeline stared at him. The rash was hidden beneath his shirt, his eyes and nostrils were clear. But his wife’s suffering was visible. If she had once been as pretty as her husband was handsome, it was no longer evident. Her face was swollen and marked as though beaten and trickles of blood seeped from her eyes, her nose and her ears. Her hair was matted where blood stuck and as she drank, gulping as if it hurt her even though she gasped for water, her gums bled and her lips cracked, breaking into bright bloody beads. Her small pointed nose was crusted black in dried blood, softening as new blood joined the old. As she tried to grasp the cup, her hands trembling, her fingertips oozed blood from beneath her nails, and all her skin was patchy and dark.
Emeline wondered if Nicholas had looked like that. Then she imagined him as a child watching his mother and tiny siblings die. Finally she imagined herself covered in the rash of bruises, the huge black abscesses, and the taste of blood in her mouth. She imagined never seeing Nicholas again. She felt bilious and began to cry.
Ralph Cole looked up. “Mistress?”
She shook her head, gasping back tears. “Give me something to do. Can I build up the fire? Are there more sticks outside?”
“I’ve had this fire constant for days,” he said, “and they wouldn’t let me out to collect wood. I meant to get some today, but couldn’t even carry the water.”
They watched Ralph’s wife die. The moon slipped shy into the clouds behind the silent church steeple and a slow dawn peeped through. After a while Ralph hurried out to grab small twigs and handfuls of leaves from the grassy square nearby, and scrambled back before he might be seen, trembling and panting, bare able to walk himself. So the fire burned and smoke filled the cottage and the woman on the pallet began to moan. Her cry was so faint and so mournful that Emeline cried too, sitting on a stool near the fire with nothing she could do to help but warm her own helpless hands.
Ralph said, “Will the Lord God have mercy, do you think, lady? My wife is a good woman, and never did wrong to no one. We’ve been wed only a year, and was happy when she fell quick, being with child. Our little boy. She were so happy, and made pretty clothes all ready before he were born, with soft colours for the bonnet, and stockings for the little feet, a big fluffy blanket and best linen for the swaddling. And then, as my beautiful girl grew large and the birth was near, and we kissed and prayed the birth would be easy – then it all changed. He had no time to wear them pretty clothes, our sweet lad. Why did the Lord send the pestilence, when we done nothing but love each to the other, doing our work best as we could?”
“I don’t understand either,” Emeline whispered through her tears. “I wish I did.”
“But you says you’s a lady,” said the man, squatting back on his heels beside his wife. “Being a lady, you should know more than simple folks.” He sighed, disappointed, and took his wife’s hand, holding it gently as she moaned, her eyes closed. “Every bit hurts, she told me before, like knives to her knees, and a flogging to her back. Like her insides was all screaming and falling apart. We had a potion of willow bark ready for the birthing, and juniper berries for the pain of the pushing. I bought wine too, to give hot with a little spice for I got a pinch of cinnamon though it cost my last pennies, but I wanted my girl and my new child safe. But she’s drunk it all, my sweet Maudie, and there’s no more to give.”
Emeline came to sit on the ground beside the makeshift bed. She wiped away the tears and blinked back her own wretchedness. “Poor Maud. Poor Ralph I’m so sorry. If only I could get out, I could buy such things tomorrow, and come back to help.”
“They patrols,” Ralph said. “Night and day both. But now at least she has water to drink,” he sniffed, clasping Maud’s hand a little tighter, “She hasn’t long, I reckon, then she’ll be with our little Dickon. She were so sad, my poor wife, to lose her babe bare four days old. To carry a little one for all them months, and feel its squirming and its little toes kicking and that lovely big warmth inside, and then to bring him into the big bright world only to lose him forever. She told me often how it was. All for nothing. It isn’t right. She wanted a little girl, and me, I wanted a son. But all we got were the pestilence and pain enough to die thankful in the end. Is there more pain, d’you think, in Purgatory? She’s had enough, my dear girl, and don’t deserve no more.”
“I’m sure,” Emeline said softly, “she will find only comfort, and her baby waiting, and no more pain forever and ever.”
“That’s good, then,” Ralph said, his frowns softening. “I’ll let her go, and be happy for her, and I’ll pray for her all the day until I goes to join her.” Emeline started crying again and Ralph hung his head “’Tis my fault,” he muttered. “You should kill me for it, though I’m dying anyways. I just wanted the water, for my Maud cried so pitiful for thirst. But when I couldn’t carry the bucket, so I thought of my dear heart and cared nothing for you, lady. I shouldn’t have let you near me, and told the truth to you from the start. It were wrong, and I’m so sorry. But there’s nort now I can do for it.”
Maud Cole began to wail. Her moans turned to howls, and she opened her eyes. Her lower lids ran with blood. Ralph had a cloth, already badly soiled, and he wiped away the trails and trickles and the bloody tears, and whispered to her that he was near, and would hold her if she wished. But she tried to shake her head, choking on her own pain. Ralph licked a corner of the cloth and started to clear the crusts from her nostrils, helping her to breathe. He looked over at Emeline. “She has two great black lumps in her armpits, you see,” he said. “And when she moves, they hurts so bad, ’tis like the devil’s pinch. And there’s another down in the soft part of her leg, and it pains more than all the rest. I tried to touch it once, to put on a slave I thought might help. But she screamed, for just the touch of a finger. When she gave birth to our little Dickon, she grunted and no more, for she’s always been a brave lass. But with this, it’s different. The pain’s too strong.”