Page 40 of Black and Silver

“Fetch the wise woman, then, Silas, if you please,” he said.

“As soon as you help me unburden the carriage, my lord.”

Lawrence winced. He hated leaving Minerva’s side, but the quicker they managed to complete the task, the sooner Minerva would have help.

The rain had stopped, but the roads and paths around the parsonage and the church were still muddy and slippery. On any other day, Lawrence would have laughed uproariously at the way he and Silas struggled with his lurid statue as they carried it from the carriage to the church. Silas only dared to drive the carriage as far as the road, rather than all the way to the church door, which meant the two of them had to struggle through the mud before carrying the heavy carving into the church.

As it happened, some of the mud splashed to a particular spot near the backside of the male figure in the arrangement, givingthe appearance of the whole a completely different connotation. Lawrence prayed that Minerva would recover soon enough to come view the statue where they placed it, atop the baptismal font, with the mud lodged in its current crack.

As hopeful as Lawrence was once Silas drove away with the carriage, being without conveyance in a strange place, while the woman he was willing to admit he adored above all others lay abed with an affliction that was known to have ended lives, had Lawrence feeling restless and anxious.

He did whatever he could think of to combat his anxiety, bringing firewood into the house to dry after the night’s rain, searching the cupboards for anything resembling food and attempting to cook, and even fetching one of Minerva’s books of poetry and submitting himself to the extreme pain of attempting to read it.

All of his activities did nothing to ease his troubled mind, so when the grey-haired old matron who professed herself to be the village healer arrived at the parsonage door, Lawrence nearly wept with relief.

“How long has she been like this?” the old woman asked as she leaned over a fitfully sleeping Minerva, pressing her hand to Minerva’s face.

“I believe she began to take ill yesterday morning,” Lawrence said, “then progressively became worse throughout the day. She washed up before bed last night, but she has not truly been sensible at all yet today.”

That worried him enough, since he was sure it was close to midday, but when the old woman made a dire sound, his nerves all but shattered.

“It’s the wasting fever, to be sure,” she said, turning away from the bed and shaking her head. “It’s been scourging the countryside these last few weeks, taking young and old indiscriminately. I am sorry, my lord.”

Lawrence had to fight not to yelp. “Is there nothing you can give her for it?” he asked. “No tea or tablet or tincture?”

The old woman shrugged, then gestured for him to follow her into the main room. “I’ve got herbs for a tea, if she’s well enough to drink it. Otherwise,” she shrugged, “it’s up to the will of God.”

“But there must be something that could help,” Lawrence fretted.

“Not with a fever like this,” the woman said.

Lawrence was in no way satisfied with that answer. Someone somewhere must have had the ability to do something.

A flash of inspiration hit him. “My father will know what to do,” he said, speaking more to himself than the old woman. “He has lived a long time and suffered more than his fair share of illness. He would know what the cure for this particular fever might be.”

“I could have him fetched,” the old woman said.

Lawrence winced. “He’s all the way down at Godwin Castle, on the Isle of Portland.” He paused, then said, “Truly, we should travel there, to him. I would feel far safer if my Minerva could convalesce in my family home.” He would most certainly be able to find a more competent physician to attend her there.

“You could write to him, explain the situation and tell him you and your lady are on your way, though whether she lasts that long is up to God, not us,” the old woman suggested. “I’ll see that the letter is delivered.”

A deeper sort of distress struck Lawrence. Of all the times for the one skill he had never mastered to be the singular one he needed, it had to be now.

He was too desperate for Minerva to be well to hold onto his pride, so he admitted to the woman, “I cannot write.”

The old woman stared at him for a moment before saying, “Then you’re lucky I can.”

She toddled off to the side, to a desk in the corner, as if she’d been in the parsonage before and knew where things were. She helped herself to the chair, then produced a piece of paper from one of the cubbies and a bottle of ink from another.

Lawrence paced behind her as she wrote. He wondered if he had just fallen victim to the Curse of Godwin Castle. Surely, that was the devilry behind Minerva’s illness. It was the curse, he was certain, that had led to him being so unlucky in love thus far in his life. The curse had thrown him together with Minerva precisely at the point when something as pedestrian as a fever would take her from him.

If it was the last thing he did, as soon as Minerva was well enough, he would marry her and…and doom Dunstan to suffer with the curse alone?

He could not worry about his cousin just yet. In the moment, Minerva was the only one he could have a care for.

“There,” the wise woman said, finishing the letter, then presenting him with the pen. “Can you sign your name or make your mark?”

“Yes, I can,” Lawrence said. He rushed forward, took up the pen, and scribbled his name across the bottom of the paper.

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