Authors: Suzette Haden Elgin
The Purdys, now, were forever in some sort of mess, and usually by their own stupidity. But they did put some effort into their actions. (They would in fact have been better off if they’d learned to put in less; usually they got themselves so entangled and benastied that it took more effort to extricate them than it would of just keeping them out of it all from the beginning.)
With the Wommacks, it was different. They were capable people, and intelligent, and sensible. About most things, that is. So long as whatever obstacle faced the Wommacks couldn’t be laid at the door of the famous Wommack bad
luck
, they just turned to and took care of things. Bad luck, though, the Wommack curse, the long burden of paying and paying for the Granny that had laid out the Improper Name ... anything that seemed due to that, they just gave up on, on the principle that it was no use trying in such a situation. This, I gathered, was one of those situations.
I tucked up my skirts then and ran up the stairs toward the woman that still stood there, the water in her basin getting colder by the passing minute, if it was water, and paid the family behind me no more mind.
“You’re Castle staff?” I asked the laggard nurse, and she nodded.
“Your name, please.”
“Violet,” she said. “Violet of Smith.”
“Very well. Violet of Smith—take me this instant to the sickroom, and let me see how bad things are in this place!”
“Which sickroom, miss?” she asked me. “We’ve nothing but sickrooms on this whole second floor,”
“How
many
are down?” I demanded, but she only shrugged.
“I’ve lost count, miss ... might could be thirty, might could be twice that.”
“And both your Grannys.”
“And both our Grannys.”
“Well, take me to Granny Copperdell, then,” I said, “and set down that basin—whatever it is, it’s no use to anybody now.”
She turned without a word, but I had to take the useless basin from her hands myself, and I followed where she led me. I could smell the sickness now, and I wanted those windows open at the front of the Castle, and fresh air in here as fast as it could decently be accomplished.
“Are many people sick in the town?” I asked her, wishing she’d hurry.
“Oh no, miss,” she said. “Not in the town. Only in the Castle.”
Hmmmph. That would be fuel for the dratted Wommack curse, of course.
She knocked twice at a doorway, and then opened it and stood aside to let me pass, saying, “That’s Granny Copperdell there in the bed, miss, and I hope you can do something for her; for I surely can’t. And I’m too busy to stay with you, so you’ll excuse me, please.” And she was gone.
“Well, Granny Copperdell!” I said, making it a cautious challenge. “So this is how you run things!”
Hers was the only bed in the room, and she was tiny in it; three featherbeds under her, I was willing to wager, and half a dozen pillows propping her up in them.
“Land, who is it bothering me
now?
” came from the depths of the bedclothes, and I saw an encouraging flurry. “Can’t leave an old woman to die in peace, can you? Come near me and torment me again with one of your so-called Magicians and you’ll find
out
if I’m sick, I warn you, and me that’s
sick and tired
of
warning
youall! Magicians! Phaugh—what’s a Magician know about healing? No more use than— Well, who
be
you?”
It did my heart good. She might be sick, but she surely was not dying. She was behaving absolutely as a Granny ought to behave, and that meant I’d get useful information here at least.
“It’s only me, Granny Copperdell, Responsible of Brightwater,” I said. “And sorry to see you so poorly. May I come sit by you there?”
“Come ahead,” she ranted, “come right ahead! Why ask? If it’s not one sort of meanness, it’ll be another ... why can’t you stay home where you belong, ‘stead of meddling in our affairs, and tormenting an old woman as is about to draw her last breath?”
I tried the bed, but it was impossible; you sank into the featherbeds and disappeared from sight unless you weighed no more than a Granny, and that did not apply to me.
“You get a chair and get yourself off my bed!” she ordered me, whacking at me with a handkerchief like I was a gerdafly; and I did so gladly, pulling the chair up close beside her head.
“Now, Granny Copperdell,” I said firmly, “there’s no need for you to keep on with your carry-on. It doesn’t impress me, and I’ll be no use here if I don’t hear some sense and hear it quick.”
“Likely,” she said. “Likely!”
“Granny, you know I’m right,” I said, “you a Brightwater by birth; and every Castle on this planet knows quite well why I’m traveling round it. You’re in a wild place here for sure, but this high up the reception on your comsets is certain to be perfect.
You
know why I’m here!”
“Took you long enough,” she muttered.
“No comset on my Mule, Granny,” I said. “I’ve been four days, and all of them
long
days, flying here, and I’ve landed only to make my camp and sleep; I’ve had no news. If I’d known there was trouble here I’d not of stopped for anything.”
She sighed then, and settled back, and I plumped up her pillows for her,
“Speak up. Granny Copperdell,” I said. “For I’ve had not one sensible word out of anybody else in this house—what am I up against?”
“Three days ago, it began,” she said. “You’d already left Castle Purdy, I reckon.”
“Started sudden?”
“A child’s sitting on a windowsill, playing with a pretty and eating a biscuit, happy and fit as a bird,” she told me. “And then in two breaths that child is burning alive with fever, and racked head to foot with misery, and writhing like a birthing woman, fit to break your heart. I’ve never seen anything, not anything, so quick.”
I touched her forehead, though she pulled away from my hand; it was blazing hot.
“What kind of sickness is it?” I asked her
“Well. I wish I
knew
that!” she said, fretting, and turned her head side to side on the pillows. “Think I’d be lying here like an old fool if I knew that? If I knew even the name, it might could be I’d know what to tell the idiot females in this Castle to do ... what’s its name, that’s half the battle won any time.”
“And the Magician doesn’t know either”
I said that under my breath, thinking out loud, and regretted it immediately. A Magician could set bones, and take out sick and useless organs such as an appendix, and deal with cancers. If it had been any of those, the Magician would already have taken care of the matter. And there was no Magician of Rank on Kintucky.
“I’m sorry, Granny Copperdell,” I said, before she could start on me, “I wasn’t thinking straight; just forget I said it. But you help me ... tell me the symptoms of this stuff. Even the little things that you don’t really think matter.”
“High fever,” she said, reciting it like a lesson. “Racking pain in every joint and bone and muscle. That’s likely the worst of it, that pain. All the lymph glands swollen and tender, especially in the armpits. A bloody flux, and pain high on the right of the belly. Rash around the ankles and the hands, and a flaming red patch over both cheeks. Sores in the mouth, sores in the privates ... Hurts to breathe, hurts to swallow, hurts to hear any noise much over a whisper—that’s why the windows are shuttered, child.”
“What have you tried for it?”
“Everything a Granny knows, and some made up new,” she said. “And none of it any use.” She was in no danger but she was exhausted, and I was wearying her more. “I’m not a good patient for you to be observing,” she said accurately, “I’m hardly touched with it yet, and tough as I am I doubt it’ll get much worse. You go look at the others and you’ll see what it’s like.”
“Can I get you anything, Granny, before I do that?”
“You can get
on
with it, and leave off pestering me!”
I plumped the pillows up again, and checked to see that the water was easy to her reach, and I went on out and closed the door behind me. She’d keep a long while yet.
Ah, but the others; they were another matter altogether. I counted fifty-one, and they were truly sick. Even Granny Goodweather. She didn’t so much as ask me my name when I leaned over her, and that frightened me.
They lay in their beds and they twisted, slowly—I can think of no other way to describe it. As if they hung from intolerable bonds. One arm would stretch, the fingers spread like claws, pushing, pushing till I thought the fingerioints would crack, and then the other arm, pushing against some unseen wall. And then the legs, one at a time, stretching till the soles of the bent feet lay flat against the mattress. And no more would the foot reach its terrible extension than it began to move back upon itself ... and then the arms would start. It was like a horrible, endless, solemn, tortured, dance of death; and it was very clear that it hurt them like raw flames. There were women from the town trying to tend them, but I could see that they weren’t accomplishing much. Changing the bedlinens and bathing flesh, bringing them water to drink and soothing the little ones ... that seemed to be it.
As for treason, the thought was indecent. The Wommacks were so grimly convinced their whole household was cursed that they considered the most absolute neutrality no more than their duty toward their fellows. Even when they were without other troubles to distract them, no Wommack took sides, for fear their bad luck would rub off on the side they’d chosen. With things as they were here right now, 1 could put all else out of my mind and consider only this sickness.
As it happened, I did know what it was. But I wasn’t that surprised the Grannys hadn’t recognized it, especially since they’d come down with it almost immediately themselves. They’d not really had time to think before their own fever set in, and it was not a common disease.
I went down the stairs and found the Wommacks still gathered there silently, waiting for me, and I had a strong suspicion looking at them that most—including the Master of this Castle—would be in their beds themselves before the day was out. Considering the number sick upstairs, they’d made a brave showing, and I credited them for that; but not a one that wasn’t white around the mouth, and the red tinge coming up on their cheeks, hectic, and a line of beads of moisture at the edge of the coppery hair to betray them further. All that time out in the sun with me had surely done them no good, and I’d of bet the party food they’d put down lay heavy in their stomachs this minute like Kintucky stone.
“I know what it is,” I said to them, not bothering to dawdle and back and fill.
“But neither of the Grannys had any idea, nor the Magician either!” objected a thin boy by the name of Thomas Lincoln Wommack the 9
th
.
“Well, I
do
,” I said, “whoever does or doesn’t, and the Grannys would of known, too, if they hadn’t been taken themselves before they could run it down. What you have upstairs, by my count, is fifty-one cases of something called Andersen’s Disease. Or, if you prefer less formality, some call it deathdance fever—which does describe it. And looking at youall, I see a few more cases to add to the count—you’d better every one of you get to your beds.”
“And those upstairs?” asked Gilead.
“You need capable people up there, taking care of your sick,” I said. “Not townswomen wandering around wondering where to fling water next. It’s no trifle, this disease, people can
die
of it! Why haven’t you sent for help?”
They looked at me, and I looked back, and I said a broad word, not caring particularly if I did shock their sensibilities. They hadn’t sent for help because, being the Wommacks, they figured it would be no use anyway. Bad luck was bad luck, and those as were marked for death would die, and a lot of similarly superstitious nonsense. And I was very grateful that none of them knew something I wasn’t going to take time to think about right now, which was that Andersen’s Disease was
not
contagious. If they’d known that, and it running through their castle like wildfire, I daresay they’d of just given up and died on me on the spot; I had no plans of telling them.
“Shame on you’” I said. It was uppity of me, and not kind, especially toward Jacob Donahue, who was a good fifty years my senior; But I was thoroughly disgusted. The idea of half a hundred people stretched on the rack for the last three days while helpless hands were wrung and mournful moans were made about the Wommack curse ... it turned my stomach. Eventually I would have to face the problem of just who among the Magicians of Rank was behind this monstrous cruelty, but not now. Now what mattered was putting an end to that cruelty, and without delay.
“You need a Magician of Rank here,” I said, “and you need him at once. There’s two good ones on Arkansaw—”
“We’ll have nobody from Arkansaw,” said Jacob Donahue Wommack.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I say, we’ll have nobody. Magician of Rank or anybody else, from Arkansaw. Not in this Castle.”
“In the name of the Twelve Gates and the Twelve
Corners
, Jacob Donahue Wommack, why
ever not?
” I shouted at him. “Have you seen those people upstairs?”
“I’ve seen them- I live here.”
“Then—”
“They’re feuding on Arkansaw,” he said doggedly, “and have been these past six months. No talking them out of it, either—we’ve had good men trying. And we want no part of it.”