“And mine,” Alinor reminded him.
“They could have met with anyone. He could have taken the plague from a ship. They could all three have taken it. They came home by ship to Portsmouth.”
“I’ll need to examine him,” she repeated, hiding her own dread. “I can’t say yet.”
Sir William would not take the risk of the man staying in his house another moment. “Get him carried over to the stables.” He turned to Mr. Tudeley. “Carry him on the rug so he’s not hurt. Leave the rug there. We’ll lock him in to be on the safe side until we know.” He turned to Alinor. “Mrs. Reekie, I have to ask you, will you go in with him and nurse him till he is well?”
“I can’t,” Alinor said flatly. “I have a son and daughter of my own. I will examine him, but if he has the signs I can’t be shut in with him. I’ve never been a plague nurse.”
“I beg you,” he said. “I will pay you well, very well. Go in with him now and examine him. If he has it—God forbid that he has it—I will get a plague nurse from Chichester to come and be locked up with him and you shall come out, before she arrives, before we declare it, and go to your own cottage and not stir until it is over. If he does not have it I will still pay you three shillings a day to nurse him until he is better.”
She hesitated.
“You don’t want him to be put into his bed in the boys’ room,” he reminded her. “Not with your son and mine. Better for us all, if you nurse him in the stable loft.”
She looked at James’s white face, at the fall of his dark curling hair, his black eyelashes lying on his pale cheek, the darkening of his chin and upper lip that marked him as no angel but a mortal man. She saw the rapid rise and fall of his chest and how the cold sweat darkened the curls on his forehead. She knew she could not bear to leave him. She could not bear to hand him over to the rough care of a strange woman.
“Ten shillings.” His lordship raised his bid for the safety of his household. “Ten shillings a day, till the plague nurse comes. Every day.”
“I’ll do it,” she decided. “Rob can fetch what I need from your stillroom, but then he must stay away.”
The rooms above the stable, hastily vacated by the grooms, were light and airy with dappled windows not of glass but of thin cut horn set at each end into the eaves. Down below, the hunters stirred and snorted in their stalls and the room smelled comfortingly, of clean straw and hay and the warm oaty smell of horses. Stuart and two of the grooms lugged James, still wrapped in the hearthrug, up the ladder and laid him on the bed.
“I’ll send over food,” Mr. Tudeley said, keeping his distance, halfway down the ladder. “You can pull it up on the rope.”
“And a bucket of hot water for washing and a pitcher of cold water. A big jug of small ale and some little dishes for mixing. I’ll need fresh bread, cheeses, and meat for when he wakes, and at noon someone must bring breakfast,” Alinor instructed. “I’ll need a pail for a chamber pot, and strewing herbs.”
“Of course, he’ll be served as an honored guest, and you too, Mrs. Reekie,” Mr. Tudeley said. “Shall your boy come and sleep here with you?”
“No,” she said firmly. “He’ll stay in the house with Master Walter. I’ll sit up tonight with Mr. Summer and if he is well tomorrow, God willing, he can come back to the house and I will go to my own home. This is just for a night.”
“You will tell us at once,” the steward said nervously. He would not mention the word “plague.”
“I’ll tell you the moment that any marks show, and you’ll call another nurse and I’ll hand over to her,” Alinor assured him.
“I’ll send over everything,” Mr. Tudeley promised, then descended the ladder and closed the hatch behind him. Alinor waited a moment and then went over and bolted it from her side, so that no one could come up the stairs unexpectedly. She and James were quite alone.
She went to where they had left him, limp as a corpse in the rug, and she unfolded him, as if she were unwrapping a precious parcel. As the carpet fell away, he sighed and seemed to gasp for air. Alinor lifted his head and shoulders a little and slid a bolster behind his head. He seemed to breathe easier and a little color came into his cheek. She found she was looking at his pale mouth and remembering how he had kissed her.
She unbuttoned his fine lawn shirt. The buttons were made from mother-of-pearl. She touched each one, seeing the sheen on it, and then opened his shirt so that she could see his chest and his belly.
His shoulders were broad, his chest and belly flat. He was well muscled as a man who rides and runs every day. A dark trace of hair ran from his belly down towards his breeches and Alinor, who had undressed her drunken husband more than once, unlaced his breeches without hesitation and peeled back the flap. For the first time she saw him naked. She saw the darkness of his thick hair, the strength of his sleeping cock, the muscled line of his haunches. She looked at him for no more than a moment and felt her desire like a fever of her own. Carefully, she eased the breeches from under him, bending over him and smelling the clean warm male scent of him; she had to stop herself dropping her head to kiss his belly and laying her cheek against his hot skin.
She peeled the riding breeches off him, down to his boots, and then she unlaced the boots and slipped them from his feet, then the fine hose. He lay before her naked, except for his open shirt and jacket.
There were no red spots of smallpox. She lifted one arm and then another and felt in his armpits. There were no swellings of the buboes that were a certain sign of plague. There was no sign, on any part of his smooth creamy skin, that anything was wrong with him except the heat of him: he was burning up with fever.
Gently she raised him higher on the bolster, and felt him nestle towards her and groan a little as if he were in pain. She buttoned up his shirt again to protect him from cold, and she felt a passionate tenderness as she did so, as if she were tending to Rob or Alys when they were babies. She left the rich carpet underneath him, and she covered him with one of the blankets from the other bed. Most physicians would heap blankets on a feverish patient and add a warming pan to burn out the fever. Alinor treated her patients as she had treated her children, keeping them cool and still. Again, she put her hand against his forehead. She could almost feel the heat pulsing through the blue veins at his temples. She put two fingers inside his shirt collar on his neck and felt the drumming of his heartbeat.
There was a call from the yard outside, and she went to the window and opened it to find Stuart, the serving man, with linen and small ale, a bucket of hot water and some washing bowls, some linen towels and a box of herbs and oils chosen by Rob from the stillroom. There was a pulley and a rope above the window for raising sacks of grain. Alinor lowered the hook and Stuart sent up the basket loaded with a tureen of soup, and bread and cheeses on platters, then all the other things he had brought, until he said: “Will that be all, Mrs. Reekie?” as if Alinor were a guest and not a servant like him.
“That’s all,” she said. “Tell Rob to come here after breakfast. I’ll speak to him from here. But nobody is to come in until I know what ails the tutor.”
“Beg pardon, Mrs. Reekie, but d’you think it might be plague?” Stuart whispered fearfully.
“There are no signs now,” she said cautiously. “I will watch him today in case of the signs. There are no marks on him yet. Wait there.” She went to her basket of herbs and brought out a bunch of dried sage, and tossed it down to him. “Light this at the kitchen fire,” she said, “and then blow it out and bring it to me still smoking.”
He was gone only a few moments and brought it back, smoldering in an earthenware bowl. Alinor lowered the rope and he put it in the basket and she pulled it up.