She began to explain, but found she was crying. As the other two riders cantered into sight along the narrow lane, Nicholas waved them away. “Rob and Harry have taken the lower road,” he said. “Find them and tell them to meet me back at the Fox.”
After a while, Nicholas slowed his pace to an uncertain amble, and then stopped. Emeline was still trying to finish her story. She mumbled eventually, “But I’ve promised to go back to that poor man tomorrow. With medicines and something to stop the pain. And then I have to stay there, because it will be me next.”
He kissed her ear and the back of her neck, and he loosened the reins so the horse again began to jog, a desultory trot along the dark path. Nicholas murmured, “Silly puss. Nothing like that will happen. I’ll sort a way to fulfil your promise to your dying friend. But I want you back safe at the Fox, even if I have to smuggle you in. We’ll need a separate chamber, something small and out of the way, with no questions asked. David can sort out clothes for both of us, and buy a supply of medicines. I’ll keep you apart and in bed, so there’ll be no contagion. The locals have all heard the rumours, but I’ve a habit of getting my way when I want it. I intend looking after you until we see whether there’s danger or not.”
She struggled out of his arms and turned to look at him. “You, of all people, I can’t risk making you sick.”
“Not me. I’ve twice proved myself against the pestilence, and if needs be I’ll prove myself again.” He sighed, then smiled, cradling her again against him. “It’s the greatest horror of our age, greater than battle and the power hungry, greater than French threats and treachery, greater even than the pox and poverty. Every year it kills hundreds. It slips in quiet as moonlight, and in a week there’s another village where new graves are dug across the land and the dying sob in desolation.”
“I realised, back there,” she mumbled, “how you must have felt. And I can’t bring it to Avice or Sissy.”
“No one knows how this infection spreads. Touch – breath – the air around – the clothes we wear. Or does our ever merciful God simply decide who will catch this filth, and who deserves to die in agony? But clearly He has no desire for me to sit at His feet, for I’ve survive it all. There’s those who catch it and there’s those who don’t. I don’t. Nor does David, for he’s never even had a headache. So it doesn’t frighten me, little one. Once you’ve passed the days of possible risk, as I promise you will, then I’ll take you back home.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “This nightmare will soon be over, I promise.”
“You promise?”
“And from now on, my love, my promises will always come true.”
Chapter Forty-One
Eventually they left the road. Nicholas dismounted, guiding his horse up through the beeches. Then turning sharply, they followed a thin track barely visible in the moonlight through the summer leaves. The hostelry stretched out on the rise, its smart thatch and beams creaking a little in the evening breezes, and its three chimneys gusting their smoke up to the stars. Alan was waiting outside the main stable block. He nodded, taking the horse, and whispered, “Bill’s still sick, my lord. The others have talked of throwing him out under the trees, afraid of what he has, for rumours are rife. But he’s still here, since no one is brave enough to touch him. If you ask me, my lord, he’s suffering from the influenza.”
Nicholas sighed. “That’s well nigh as bad.”
“I’ll sort it, my lord. You get the lady safe. David has a chamber waiting.”
David was at the hostelry door, holding it open. There was a sudden glorious warmth and the welcome of torchlight in the doorway.
“Up the stairs to the attic, my lord, if the lady can walk that far. It’s the only chamber they had left, away up under the eaves. Little larger than a pantry, but it has a garderobe privy, a fair bed with soft pillows, and I’ve ordered the mattress warmed, a fire lit though the hearth is as small as a bean pod, and there’s both a jug of decent Burgundy and some steaming hippocras waiting.”
“I thank you. And the landlord wasn’t suspicious?”
David smiled slightly. “If he was, my lord, I permitted no word of it. It’s the Earl of Chatwyn’s heir, come back with his wife and wanting privacy, I told him. He didn’t dare argue, nor complain about the time of night. The nobility, I said, has their own habits and will brook no interference.”
“Nor will I, since this is far too important.”
Three flights up, then the final steps were steep, rickety and winding to the solitary attic chamber, once only used for storage but now the last resort for an overflowing hostelry. There Emeline collapsed on the simple posted bed, leaned back against the heaped cushions and mumbled, “I promised Mister Cole back at the village –”
“That will have to wait for morning,” Nicholas said, “though you’re mighty obliging considering it seems to have been entirely his fault, and knowingly. But since nothing terrible will happen, we need not speak of it.”
She shook her head, and said, “But if you’d watched his wife die, and him so caring –”
Nicholas said softly, “I watched my mother die. And I cared. I cared very much. I watched my little sister die. I loved her almost as much as my mother.” He turned and continued speaking while pouring the hippocras. “They died in such pain and degradation.” He handed Emeline one cup, then drained the other himself. “And my baby brother,” he said very quietly. “All that pretty plump pink flesh sinking into dark bruises and loose wrinkled skin with no flesh left around his blood stained pleading eyes. He didn’t understand, you see, why the pain was so terrible, and why I could not make it go away. I was only six myself, but I felt such guilt and wished I could suffer too, as if that would make it better for them. I watched them all die and could offer so little help, so I know exactly what you saw. I’m sorry you had to see it.”
Emeline was crying again. “Will you watch me too, when I die?”
He paused, then spoke slowly, as if to emphasise the words. “You won’t die. Emma, I shall forbid it.” He had already removed her drinking cup and now refilled it. “I have to go down now, to explain the situation since the others will be worried. While I’m away, you will drink this, you will make yourself comfortable, and you will think of pleasure instead of pain. I shall be back very quickly. In minutes, no more, bringing your clothes, and mine, and anything else I think we need. We’ll stay up here for just five days. Five days to wait and see. Five days to enjoy alone together, to talk, to kiss, and to think ourselves lucky to escape our relatives. And tomorrow, if you wish it, I’ll buy medicines and take them to your sad widower.”
She sat up again. “If you go there, the patrol will try and make you stay.”
“No one,” said Nicholas, “makes me stay where I don’t want to.”
She was asleep when he returned, but she woke, hearing his steps and the creak of the door. Still half drowsy, she heard him say, “Now we’ll both sleep, my love. Your sister is greatly relieved, Sissy still awaits her brother, and my men know exactly what is expected of them.”
Emeline snuggled next to him as he lay beside her and held her close. “You told them about the risk of the pestilence?”
He smiled. “You think me a poor liar, it seems.”
She buried her head against the soft musty warmth of his doublet. “On the contrary.”
She heard him chuckle. “Our own people know the truth, and will keep it to themselves. The servants at the hostelry know nothing, or we’d have panic and possible retribution. But in truth, we’re not tucked away here because of danger and disease at all. We are here, my sweet, for all the love making we’ve missed these past weeks.”