Authors: Emily Murdoch
“How do you know her name – do you know my daughter? Have you had word?” Catheryn almost could not get the words out fast enough, and yet Ursule just smiled quietly.
“This man needs to stay exactly where he is,” she pronounced, completely ignoring Catheryn’s questions. “Moving him would bring him death, and I do not think that he is ready to depart from this world quite yet. Not quite yet.”
“Answer me!” Catheryn almost shouted, but then remembered the sleeping girl on the bed. Out of the corner of her eye, Catheryn could make out the strange outline of the cat, Ursule’s assistant. He was still sleeping on Isabella.
She moved to see how the girl was doing, and could not believe her eyes. Colour had rushed back into her cheeks, and her breathing was deeper, more regular, calmer. She did not look unconscious now: merely sleeping.
“Ah, yes. Reginald is a great healer,” Ursule stated whilst pulling the other rug from the floor over the figure of Fitz.
Catheryn shook her head slowly. “There is no reason to suppose… The warmth of the rugs, of the fire, that is what has brought her back to health.”
Ursule straightened up, and put her hands on her hips. “You believe so?”
Catheryn nodded. “There is no reason why a cat should heal a person from a fever.”
“Take him off, then.”
Catheryn reached out her hands, and then hesitated.
“Harder than it looks, isn’t it?” Ursule laughed. “It is strange how little people believe when they are well, but how much they cling to half-truths and wishes when the Lord seeks to take them.”
Catheryn knew that the cat could be doing Isabella no good; but then, he was certainly not doing her any harm either. And although Reginald was only just beyond her fingertips, she found it difficult to close the gap. Why should she remove anything, no matter how small the chance was, which seemed to be bringing Isabella back to health?
“Ursule,” Catheryn said slowly. “I like you.”
Ursule gave a mock curtsey, and then laughed again.
“I have no strong opinions on you, my lady – which are strong words in themselves, seeing as where you come from.”
In another room, on another day, to a different person, Catheryn might have reacted. But in this room, during this night, to Ursule, the healer that wore a cat like a muffler, Catheryn gave in.
“I leave you this evening, only,” Catheryn said, “for I desperately need rest. But I shall join you in the morn, and together we will bring Isabella and Fitz back to life.”
“Fitz, is it?” Ursule’s eyebrow was once again raised.
Catheryn said nothing. She left the room, went to her own chamber, and collapsed onto her bed.
*
The next five days passed in a haze of tiredness and obedience. Ursule moved into Isabella’s room, and it was only on the third day that she deemed Fitz to be strong enough to be moved to his own room. Adeliza had refused point blank to allow him back into their bed chamber: Catheryn had winced when she had heard the shouts as she had tended to Isabella’s rising fever.
And so a second bed was placed opposite Isabella’s, and father and daughter fought the fever together. Catheryn and Ursule spent days and nights moving from patient to patient, desperately tending to the fever that at once threatened to overcome, and then to disappear. It was like fighting sunlight in mist: you could see more the absence of it than the thing itself. And as the New Year beckoned, still no great change was seen in either Isabella or Fitz.
But no matter what the servants had whispered, the words of Ursule or the unnerving stare of Reginald, Adeliza did not change her mind. So great was her fear of infection that she did not even visit her husband, or Isabella. Twice Catheryn heard the girl cry out for her mother, and twice the message had been sent to the lady of the house, and twice the same reply had been returned: she would not come.
“You look half dead,” Ursule said quietly, returning from Fitz’s sickroom to find Catheryn hunched in a chair beside Isabella’s motionless figure.
Catheryn smiled wanly. “You looked half dead when you arrived here.”
Ursule laughed, but much of the merriment had gone.
Stirring, Catheryn continued, “I have been told that your meal will be coming shortly. ’Tis almost night already, I cannot believe it.”
“Believe it.” Ursule took another step forward towards Catheryn. Catheryn saw that Reginald had already left Ursule and taken up his customary position by Isabella. “And this night shall be the hardest, I warrant you nothing less.”
Catheryn brought a hand to her head. It had been pounding ever since she had awoken, and the pain of it was threatening, even now, to force her to bed.
“You should go. You can do little good here tonight.”
“I can do no worse by staying,” Catheryn said wearily. “I would not feel right leaving them.”
“There are some that would comment on that. Some would say that your affection is… too great.”
“Any concern will seem too much compared to that of the lady of this house.” Catheryn bit her tongue; she should not have said such hurtful words, but Ursule neither raised that familiar eyebrow, nor laughed at the words that she should not have heard.
After a moment of silence, Catheryn spoke again, asking the question that had been burning her lips.
“How do you know of my daughter?”
“I do not.” Ursule’s reply was too quick for Catheryn’s liking, and she stood, determined to wrestle the truth from this woman who was half nurse, half healer, half mystery.
“You must tell me,” she said desperately, “you must help me reach her.”
Ursule sat down in the chair that Catheryn had just left, and put the back of her hand on Isabella’s forehead.
Then she looked at Catheryn.
“It is all around the village,” she said heavily, “that you left a child behind. A girl, almost a young woman. Many say that you left her because you did not care for her. But I know you, Catheryn of England: you are a woman who would not leave anyone behind in a place like that.”
Catheryn could feel her legs trembling, but she was determined to stay strong.
“And that is all they say?”
Ursule hesitated.
Catheryn dropped to her knees in front of the older woman.
“Please,” she said, tears that had been threatening for days finally approaching the surface. “Please, you must tell me. You must help me.”
“There has been talk,” Ursule said softly, with a nervous glance at the outline of Fitz to her right, “that the lord of this place has not forgotten your child. Letters have gone out from here, with our lord William FitzOsbern’s seal, to all parts of England.” She leaned close towards Catheryn. “To find your child.”
Catheryn stared. “Fitz – my lord has been trying to find my Annis?”
Ursule shrugged. “That is what they say. And now you must go to your bed chamber – no, I will brook no excuse. You are no good to me in the same state as they, and that is where you shall end up if you do not take rest.”
Catheryn’s head swam. “You are right,” she said thickly, “though I wish it were not so. You will send for me if… if anything changes?”
Ursule smiled a bitter smile. “If either one of these dies this night, you shall know of it.”
*
Catheryn was raised from her nightmare by a scream. For a moment, she thought it was her own; she had often had to muffle her terror in the night for fear of waking the entire castle. But this time, it was not her mouth that was desperately shrieking: it was another’s.
The sun had not yet broken the night into day, and Catheryn bit her lip. There was no knowing what had happened, but if Ursule really needed her, then it would likely be impossible for her to come and fetch her.
Sighing, and wrapping a cloak around her shoulders for warmth, Catheryn rose from her bed. The hysterical screams had not ceased, and Catheryn opened the door to the corridor to hear them even louder.
Strangely, the screams did not seem to be emanating from the room where Fitz and Isabella were being nursed. Instead, Catheryn thought they were coming from much further away.
Hurrying, bare feet catching on the rushes that were laid down on the floor, Catheryn almost ran. She pushed open the door to the Great Hall, and a terrible sight lay before her eyes.
Adeliza.
The woman was lying prostrate by the fire. It was a miracle that her hair had not caught aflame – it was uncovered and perilously close to the flames licking at the ground. There was a servant beside her. Both of them were crying, and it was Adeliza that was screaming.
“Adeliza!”
Catheryn rushed over to the woman who was both captor and rival, and tried to pull her into an upright position. Adeliza was completely limp, a dead weight in Catheryn’s arms, and she seemed unaware of where she was.
“Adeliza, can you hear me?”
Her eyes were closed, but her mouth continued to cry out. Catheryn turned in bewilderment to the servant. Panic flooded through her veins. This could only mean one thing.
“…dead,” was all that the servant was able to say between hiccoughing tears.
Catheryn’s mouth went dry. Her worst fears had been realised: the long journey in the snow, the darkness, the cold, the damp, had claimed from this family one of their own. Someone had been wrenched from life, and now lay lifeless in the chamber just down the corridor.
But which one?
“Tell me,” Catheryn shook the servant, not caring whether it was seemly or not to lay hands on another person, “tell me who is dead.”
The servant, an elderly woman with wisps of grey hair, took a deep breath, and managed to speak clearly.
“She is gone – Isabella has gone. The Lord took her not a moment ago, and my lady, my poor lady…”
The servant descended into sobs once more, and Catheryn swallowed, her mouth feeling like death.
Isabella was dead. The vibrant, lovely girl that continuously goaded her father, and mocked her brother. The twin sister that Emma could not live without had disappeared, and in her place there was but a body, with no life within it.
Catheryn’s eyes overflowed with tears, but instead of allowing them to fall she tried to control her emotions. A tiny part of her that she would not own as herself was glad that it was not Fitz, glad that the man that she had learned to love had not disappeared down the same dark tunnel. But Catheryn hated that part of herself: she could not imagine how Adeliza was suffering.
A thought crossed her mind that, if she knew of her own daughter’s fate, she too may be joining with Adeliza in her desperate screams and passionate crying.
It did not do to dwell on such things.
“Adeliza,” Catheryn said thickly, her voice full of emotion. “Come. Let us get you to bed; you need to rest. Come with me.”
Adeliza could not be persuaded, and she could not be goaded; she was beyond coercing, and beyond cajoling. Her child had died, and she did not want to live any more.
Catheryn and the servant eventually managed to carry Adeliza back to her chamber. Catheryn tried not to look around with curiosity at the place where Fitz spent much of his time; she attempted not to see the clothes lying across the floor, the intimacy of man and wife that was so evident in the room, and the pieces of parchment that Catheryn could only assume were personal letters adorning the top of one chest. This was not her place to be.
“Get her on the bed,” Catheryn panted. The weight of Adeliza was incredible, and Catheryn knew that she had not totally woken up yet.
The servant helped Catheryn to put Adeliza underneath the covers, but during all of this Adeliza refused to say anything. She merely continued to cry, her sobs punctuated with screams. Now Catheryn was close to her, she realised that each scream was the name of the daughter she had just lost.
The servant hurried out, and Catheryn did not have the heart to force her to stay. The entire household would mourn this tragic loss – and Fitz was certainly not free from death either. There was much to be fearful of still.
“Adeliza,” Catheryn sat on the other side of the bed, and tried not to think that this was Fitz’s side. “Look at me. You need to sleep.”
Adeliza turned to look at her, but there was only a small fraction of recognition in her wild eyes.
“Sleep,” said Catheryn, kindly. “Staying awake will bring you naught but pain, and your mind needs to escape. Sleep is the only place that you can go, and I am sending you there immediately, my lady.”
Adeliza’s tongue reached out, and wet her dry lips.
“She is really gone?”
The croak was nothing like Adeliza. It had none of her strength, none of her pride, none of her power. Catheryn was devastated to see all of the fight truly gone.
“Yes,” she managed, finally. “Isabella is gone.”
Adeliza’s face crinkled up as she began to cry again, but they were quiet tears.
“You… you will stay with me?”
“Of course I will,” Catheryn reassured her. “I will not leave your side all night. And in the morning, I will go with you to see your husband, and –”