Page 36 of Exile's Return
He tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough.
Ellen entered the room with a flask and a beaker in her hands. With the practice of two people long used to working together, Kate raised Daniel’s head and Ellen administered a decent dose of the tincture of Jesuit Bark.
Daniel swore and coughed, screwing up his face in disgust. ‘Filthy stuff.’
‘Aye, it may well be, but nothing that’s good for you was ever made to taste pleasant. I think ye know that lad,’ Ellen said, laying him back on the bolsters.
‘He needs to rest,’ Kate said. ‘Mistress Fletcher, you must be exhausted from your travels. Let me show you to a room and I can arrange for a bath…’
Agnes shook her head, her eyes only for the man on the bed.
‘I will sit with him a while,’ she said and looked up at Kate with an apologetic smile. ‘This is not what Daniel would have wanted and I…we…would not wish to inconvenience you any more than we have. I can see to him.’
Kate Thornton’s calm, grey eyes rested on her for a long moment.
‘Very well. He is your friend; of course, you may sit with him. I advocate that you bathe his face and wrists to try and cool the fever. Ellen will come and relieve you later.’
Agnes waited until the others had left the room, although Ellen seemed somewhat reluctant to leave her patient in Agnes’s inexperienced hands.
Taking a deep breath, she poured the cool water into the basin. Soaking one of the cloths, she perched on the side of the bed and sat there, holding the damp cloth in her hands, suddenly afraid to touch him with a degree of intimacy that their relationship had not permitted up until now.
In his austere dark clothes he gave an impression of being of slight build, but naked, at least from the waist up, his hard muscles confirmed the evidence of a life lived in physical labour.
He opened one eye. ‘Still here?’ he enquired.
‘Yes, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.’
He sighed and closed his eyes as a feverish tremor shook his body.
Agnes knew nothing of marsh fever, except that once a person contracted it, it returned again and again — and it could kill. After everything this man had endured, he could not die here, so close to home, and she would do whatever lay within her power to keep him alive. Even if that one thing was prayer.
His left hand lay outside the covers and she picked it up, turning it over. There were scars on his palm and calluses on the long fingers that curled with a curious vulnerability. She touched the cool cloth to the inside of his wrist, where the blood flowed closest to the skin. He turned his head away from her.
Using the cloth she began to stroke the long muscles of his arm, feeling the hardness beneath the fabric of the cloth. He gave a sharply indrawn breath and she looked up.
‘Do you want me to stop?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it feels…’ His eyelids flickered. ‘…Nice.’
She ran the cloth across his chest, dampening the dark hair into soft whorls.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were ill? We could have stopped…’
‘I hoped it would pass. I didn’t want to give into it…not in an inn. You wouldn’t have known what to do,’ he murmured, closing his eyes again.
‘You must think very poorly of me,’ she bridled.
He didn’t reply and appeared to be asleep. She brushed a lock of hair away from his eyes. ‘I can’t let you die,’ she whispered. ‘You are my only hope of seeing my son…’ She broke off, her heart pounding at the disastrous slip, but if Daniel had heard her, he gave no sign.
Chapter 14
Daniel had been walking for miles, through a swamp wreathed in mist. He could see the tree he sought but it never seemed to grow any closer. The mud sucked at his boots and hands reached out through the swirling miasma, clutching at his clothes, holding him back. His breath churned in his chest in his efforts to reach the tree, and now as the haze cleared he could see that it was not a tree but a gallows raised high on a hillock, and a figure danced and twisted at the end of a badly tied rope.
‘Kit!’ He screamed his brother’s name as the figure stilled, turning a mask of rotting flesh to look at him, the mouldering lips pulled back in a macabre death’s head grin.
‘Hush.’ A woman’s voice pierced the fog and he jerked himself awake the nightmare receding.
It took a moment for his breathing to still. A cool cloth brushed his forehead and he forced his eyes open, blinking to allow the face above him to come into focus. A woman…a youngwoman with a heart-shaped face and hazel eyes that gleamed gold in the light of the single candle she held in her hand. She had taken off that awful linen cap and soft, brown hair curled around her face.
