“I will wake you then, my lady,” he said.
Blaze went back into the barn, and curling up in the captain’s cloak, quickly fell asleep. She awoke instantly at the captain’s touch on her shoulder, asking, “How is she?”
“There is no change, my lady,” he said, “but each hour longer she lives is to the good. By tomorrow the earl and his men will reach us. As for Mistress Heartha, she will either be alive or dead, for the sickness rarely is longer than two days.”
The night seemed to go so slowly. In the barn only the snores of the sleeping men and the rustlings of the rats in the straw seemed evidence of life. Blaze carefully nursed the small candles she had, which were her only source of light. She had to be so careful with them lest she set the barn with all its stored straw and hay afire. Heartha moaned now and then, but she seemed to have ceased her great thrashing. She still burned with fever, but the quantities of sweat that had previously poured from all her pores seemed to have eased to a mere dampness upon her skin.
Toward dawn Blaze struggled to keep her eyes open. Her huge supper had not set well upon her nervous stomach. Several times her head fell forward upon her chest, and twice she had to splash water from the bucket onto her face to keep herself awake. Finally, unable to help herself, she dozed, awakening with a start to the deathly silence of the barn, suddenly devoid of noise of any kind. Frightened, she reached out her hand to feel Heartha’s forehead, for although she could see that the tiring woman was still breathing, her breathing was quiet.
“M’lady?”
Heartha’s voice! Considerably weakened, but Heartha’s voice nonetheless, and her eyes were open! Open for the first time in several days. Open, and looking up at Blaze!
“Oh Heartha! You are alive!” Blaze cried joyously. “You are alive, and you have survived!”
Heartha somehow managed a wan smile at her mistress, and then, closing her eyes, she fell into a completely natural sleep.
“She’ll make it now,” said the captain, who was kneeling beside Blaze. “She just needs rest to gain her strength but the sweating sickness is gone from her, praise God!”
Blaze began to weep with relief, while the captain, rising to his feet, shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Though his instinct bade him comfort her, for she was naught but a woman, his sense of propriety forbade such an intimacy, for she was his better. To his great relief, her tears were brief, as if she recognized his predicament.
“I am all right, Captain,” she said, “but if you would have someone watch Heartha now, I need to get outdoors and clear my head.” Without even waiting for his answer, she arose and moved out into the budding day.
To the east the dawn was even now breaking, and the horizon was stained with a vibrant red-orange that gave way to a swath of coral pink that was followed by a band of deep purple that ran into lavender and was edged in a ribbon of gold that seemed to run across the entire horizon. Blaze watched with pleasure as this wonderful display heralded the great red ball of the rising sun. Suddenly she became aware of two things. The birds were singing, and there was the distinct sound of hoofbeats on the western road. The hoofbeats of a large party of riders. Her heart began to hammer with excitement even as her husband and his men came into view.
“Captain!” she called excitedly. “Captain! The earl has come!”
The horsemen swept into the barnyard, and leaping from his horse, Anthony gathered Blaze up into his arms. “Thank God, you are safe!” He breathed. “Thank God!” and then he kissed her, to the cheers of his men. Then he asked, “Heartha?”
“The crisis has come and passed,” Blaze said. “She will survive, the captain tells me. She is sleeping now.”
“Good! We must get you both home, my angel.”
“The children? You sent them to Riverside as I bade you? The danger is not over yet, Tony. Not until I am certain that we have brought no other contagion from Greenwich.”
“They were gone with my mother within an hour of your message, Blaze. I value their lives every bit as much you do.”
“Tony, there is so much I have to tell you,” she said. “When I was at Greenwich—” she began, but he cut her off.
“Time to talk on it, madam, when we are home again. Heartha needs a more comfortable place to regain her strength than this barn, and you, I suspect, would like a bath. How near is this inn your messengers spoke of to me?”
“But down the road and around the bend,” she answered.
“I shall send some of the men to purchase two additional teams of carriage horses. With four teams drawing the coach, we should be able to reach RiversEdge by midnight. See to Heartha now, that she is ready to travel, my angel.”
He had seemed glad to see her. Even grateful that she was unharmed, yet suddenly his manner was brusque. Blaze turned away from her husband, and returning to the barn, gently woke Heartha.
“You must help me to get you back into your clothes, Heartha, for the earl has come to take us home,” she said, and the tiring woman nodded. Together they managed to give Heartha some semblance of order in her dress.
“Thank you, my lady,” said Heartha, her voice sounding a bit stronger than it had previously.
The extra horses were brought from The King’s Arms and the eight beasts were harnessed to the vehicle, which was made ready for its departure. The captain carried the now conscious Heartha to the coach and settled her onto one of the seats. She was weak, but yet able to drink the egg beaten in wine that Blaze had also had her husband’s men bring from the inn along with the additional teams. Other food had been brought, and the account settled with the innkeeper. The men ate heartily, but Blaze was still feeling queasy from her meal of the night before, and the thought of having to ride within the coach did not encourage her to add more food to that already souring in her stomach. Someone, however, had to sit with Heartha, and Blaze did not feel it fair to ask one of the captain’s men, for they had been so helpful during the last two days.
Dutifully she climbed into her carriage to endure the long hours and many miles of the ride to RiversEdge. The coachman climbed upon the box, and with a lurch they were off. Anthony had hardly spoken to her. There was so much she had to say to him, yet he had not given her the chance. Suddenly it occurred to her that in reaching out to him for help she might have endangered him as well. She had no idea whether or not he had ever had the sweating sickness. What if in her need she had infected him, and he grew ill and died? The worry began to niggle at her as the carriage rumbled along the road. If only Anthony would call a halt to this journey so she might ask him. She shifted edgily in her seat. The coach, despite its lowered windows, was stifling. She felt a trickle down her back. Across from her seat, Heartha seemed not to mind it, snoring peacefully. Blaze loosened her laces so she might undo her bodice a little. There was no one to see, and she would correct her dress when they stopped.
Riding in the forefront of their party, Anthony silently thanked God that she was all right. When the messengers had arrived, he had been in terror that anything should happen to her. All he wanted to do now was get her home safely. Relentlessly he rode on, until finally his captain, drawing his own mount abreast of the earl’s, called out to him over the thunder of the hoofbeats, “My lord, we must stop! The horses must be rested or they will not last.”
The earl signaled his party to a halt, heeding the advice of his captain. The men tumbled from their horses, relieved, while Anthony went to the coach to check on his wife and Heartha. Heartha was still sleeping, but Blaze, relacing her bodice, seemed restless and edgy.
“This coach is unbearable,” she complained to him. “I am dying of the heat. Heartha is safe by herself for the next few hours. I want to ride, Tony!”
“You are not too tired?” he fretted, thinking that she really did look hot and flushed.
“Nay.”
“I will have your horse brought then,” he agreed. “Would you like some wine?” and he offered her some from the leather wine bottle that he carried.
Blaze drank several eager swallows, “I am so damned thirsty,” she said as she handed it back to him. “You were right, earlier. I want a bath! A lovely cool bath, for it is much too warm for May.”
They rested for close to an hour, allowing the horses to browse in the meadow that bordered the road. Heartha was awakened and fed some wine and a little bit of bread soaked in wine before she fell back into another restful sleep. The captain appointed one of the younger of his men to ride within the coach with the recovering tiring woman.
“She should have someone with her, my lady,” he said, and Blaze thanked him.
Their journey began again, and at first the air upon her skin was refreshing, but as the afternoon faded into evening and the sun sank behind the hills, Blaze realized that she felt no cooler. If anything, she was growing warmer by the minute, and then suddenly she felt the moisture break as it ran down her back in several streams.
“Anthony!” She could barely hear her own voice over the pounding of the horses’ hooves. “
Anthony!
” She was growing dizzy, and she couldn’t seem to hang on to her reins. Blaze slumped forward onto her horse’s neck, and the man riding behind her, seeing it, pushed his mount forward so he might signal the earl.
Anthony turned at the man’s frantic signals, and seeing her barely able to hang on to her horse, he drew his own animal to a stop, leaning over to catch up her flapping reins so he might control her beast too. He leapt from his saddle only seconds before his wife fell from her horse, and catching her up in his arms, he cried frantically to her, “Blaze! Blaze! What is it, my angel?”
“Hot,” she muttered, not even opening her eyes. “So very hot, Tony.”
“My God,” Anthony whispered. “She has the sweating sickness!”
“Let me take her and put her in the coach, my lord. You must not get infected!” the captain interjected.
“No,” his master answered him. “I had the disease when I was a young man.” He carried Blaze to the coach, and calling the young man-at-arms from the vehicle, he placed his wife upon the seat.
Their journey began again, but this time it was a desperate race to reach RiversEdge. Heartha had passed the crisis, and was now well on the road to recovery, but Blaze was only beginning to run her course of the illness. They had to get her home, where she could be nursed properly. The captain had sent two of his men ahead to alert the household staff of the latest developments, and of their needs.
The moon rose, lighting the road ahead for them as they traveled along. Finally the night landscape began to grow familiar, and at last they recognized that they were on Langford lands. They galloped through sleeping villages, hurrying to get their precious burden to safety, cutting over onto the shorter river road. The moon silvering the waters of the Wye gave the impression of great tranquillity, a peace broken only by the thunder of frantic hooves and the noise of the lumbering coach. At last the house itself came into view, the windows lit and awake as RiversEdge anxiously awaited their arrival.
Servants poured from the house as the vehicle clattered up to the front door. The doors of the carriage were pulled open before Anthony was even off his horse, gentle hands reaching in to lift their countess out of the coach; to help the weak and dazed Heartha. Blaze was quickly carried to her own bedchamber and laid tenderly upon her bed, which was already prepared for her. A bevy of maidservants scurried forth to remove her garments, to place her in a dry nightrail.
“The lasses will watch her ladyship around the clock, my lord,” said Mistress Ellis, the housekeeper.
“No,” said Tony, shaking his head. “I will care for her myself. I must!” He removed his traveling cloak and his doublet. “Bring me what I need, tell me what I must do, and allow only those who have had the disease into this apartment.”
“My lord,” Mistress Ellis admonished him, “it is not a man’s place to nurse a sick woman.”
He looked up at her, and his eyes were filled with such pain and fear that the housekeeper was startled. “She is my wife,” he said simply, and drawing a chair up near the bedside, he sat down. She looked so small, he thought, looking at her lying there, and when her body began to be racked by tremors, he felt actual pain knifing through him. He remembered the sweating sickness from his youth, when both he and Edmund had contracted it. Neither of them had suffered greatly, and within a day, each had passed through his crisis; but he also remembered that there had been many deaths from the same epidemic that had struck them.
Blaze could not die. She could not! There was so much he had to tell her. So much that they had to do together. She was his very life. She was the heartbeat of Langford and its peoples. Surely God could not take her from him, from the children, from them all. Gently he mopped the perspiration that streamed down her face, and placed a fresh cool cloth upon her forehead.
Hot. Hot
. Why was it so hot? she wondered. She could never remember a summer at Ashby being so hot.
Mama?
Where was her mama? Bliss! Blythe! Where is Mama? Probably taking care of her new baby. There was always a new baby. This one was called Delight. Father John had gotten so angry at Mama when she had told him the baby’s new name. Mama had laughed, saying the baby would be baptized Mary Delight, as her other daughters were baptized Mary Blaze, Mary Bliss, and Mary Blythe, and the church would be satisfied. Mama said that Mary was the best of saints’ names.
Hot. Hot
. Would they ever find husbands? There was no gold for their dowries. Papa and Mama were worried. The squire’s oldest son tried to kiss me in the orchard. I hit him. He will not dare to tell. Bliss says I am a fool, for if he’ll take me without a dowry at least one of us will have a husband. I would sooner remain a maiden than marry the squire’s son. Let Bliss have him, the slimy toad, but she will not, for she would climb higher.