While Beauty Slept (45 page)

“I don’t see how that will do any good,” Rose said. “I know Mother’s books by heart.”

Of course she did; books were a rare commodity at court. Suddenly I remembered the neat stack in Mrs. Tewkes’s room and how astonished I had been to see it when I’d first arrived at the castle. Other than the queen and Sir Walthur, Mrs. Tewkes was the only person I knew who read anything other than Bible verses. Would she have taken her books when she left? Surely not all of them; a woman traveling alone would spare herself such a heavy burden. I decided to surprise Rose and excused myself to go downstairs and take a look.

The door to Mrs. Tewkes’s room at the end of the Lower Hall was closed, as it had been since she left. Like most doors at the castle, it had no lock, yet I hesitated before entering. Mrs. Tewkes had been such a powerful force to those of us who served under her; rifling through her things felt like a betrayal of the high standards she had always upheld. I told myself I was only doing this to help Rose, a goal Mrs. Tewkes would have praised, and then I pushed the door open. The room was shrouded in darkness; a heavy gray tapestry had been drawn over the window, blocking the sunlight. The stack of books sat in their usual place on the table, but deciphering their titles in such dim light was impossible. I walked toward the window to pull back the cover but stumbled over an obstacle between the desk and the bed. Distracted by the clatter, I reached down to right a stool that had fallen. From my lowered position, I found myself at eye level with the bed. Low enough and close enough to see that a human figure lay there.

The shock froze me in place. Who would show such disrespect to Mrs. Tewkes by sleeping in her bed? Could I back away unnoticed?

“Elise?”

The voice was little more than a croak. I crept to the head of the bed and stared down at Mrs. Tewkes, her face blistered and burning. The signs of pox were heartbreakingly clear.

“I was told you had left . . .” I began.

She stopped me with a shake of her head, wincing at the pain of the movement. “I did not wish to worry the queen.” Her voice was weak, yet still tinged with its former authority.

“You cannot lie here alone! You’ll need fresh water, food—”

“Who would tend to me in this state?”

Mrs. Tewkes, who once commanded an army of servants with little more than a glance, was now no better than a leper. Were it known she carried the pox, the king himself might push her out the gates. Watching carefully to make sure no one saw me leaving the room, I fetched water and a piece of bread, then emptied the waste from the chamber pot at the foot of the bed, my eyes watering at the stench.

“What else can I do?” I asked.

“My suffering will not continue much longer. I need nothing but your prayers.” She turned her face from me. “You have already endangered yourself. Go.”

“I will check on you again soon. Be assured, I will tell no one.”

The sight of Mrs. Tewkes, resigned to her terrible fate, haunted me for the rest of the day. The following morning I returned to her room with a pitcher of water and more bread. I dampened a cloth and laid it over her forehead. The swollen spots looked close to bursting. Already I could see her eyes succumbing to the burning redness that came from hours of wakefulness. It was a mercy she had not seen the pox before, for she was spared the knowledge of what was to come.

This was Millicent’s doing,
I thought with a surge of anger. Though Mrs. Tewkes was too weak to respond to my questions, I knew she had been given charge of Millicent when the old witch returned to the castle. Millicent may have clutched her arm. Whispered in her ear. By cursing Mrs. Tewkes with this affliction, she had doomed all the servants as well, for few dodged the housekeeper’s attentions. I felt the pox gathering like a mist around us, yet I could do nothing. Nothing but tend to Mrs. Tewkes as best I could, cooling her fever to offer a brief respite from pain.

She died two days later. She had not spoken a word since my first visit, and near the end, lost in a haze of eternal, blazing fever, she could hardly have been aware of my presence. Death, when it came, was a blessing, for it brought her the rest she had been so long denied. When her eyes closed at last and her body was released from its anguish, I pulled the bedclothes over her disfigured face and whispered a prayer for her soul. Every hour that I tended to her, I had known it was my duty to alert the king and queen to her fate. Yet I had not done so, hoping my care might be enough to save her. It was not. Mrs. Tewkes’s death was a harsh reminder of the plague’s grim resolve to claim both the wicked and the good. Yet my skin remained unblemished, my eyes clear.

As I left Mrs. Tewkes’s room for the last time, closing the door behind me, a group of male and female servants walked past me in the Lower Hall, seemingly uninterested in my presence. They spoke in low tones, with none of the spirited banter that had always made this the liveliest part of the castle, but I saw no signs of fever or ill health. Had Mrs. Tewkes distanced herself early enough to halt the pox’s spread? Was it possible the other servants might be spared? So intent was I on rooting out sickness among the maids and footmen that I did not look for it a few floors above, among those of higher rank.

Most ladies-in-waiting had deserted the castle, leaving Lady Wintermale as the queen’s primary companion, a prominence she had not enjoyed for some years. She spent her days at Queen Lenore’s side, disparaging the latest gossip even as she shared every morsel. I did not begrudge the woman her attentions to the queen; unlike so many who curry favor with flattery and lies, she prided herself on speaking the truth. Demanding and imperious though she might have been, all she did was for love of her mistress.

I first heard the sound as Lady Wintermale passed me in the hallway outside the royal apartments. She swept by with a brief nod in my direction, enough for me to see that her face was more flushed than usual, and then she cleared her throat with a brief, dry rasp. I stopped and turned. Lady Wintermale entered her room, pressing the door shut behind her. I followed, looking around to ensure I was not observed, and leaned my head against the wood. The cough came again, harsher this time. Then again. I had heard such sounds before, years before, on the farm. I had coughed in just the same way one morning, feeling flushed and out of sorts; the next day spots had erupted across my skin. Lady Wintermale might not know what such a cough portended. Or perhaps she was scouring her body even now for signs of those deadly blisters. My heart sank with misery. Such news could not be kept from the king and queen, yet I shrank at taking on such a duty.
I must be sure,
I told myself.
Not until I am sure.

I waved toward a passing chambermaid. “Have you seen Lady Wintermale’s maid?”

The girl shook her head. “Not today, ma’am. Nor yesterday, now I come to think of it.”

I knocked on the door to Lady Wintermale’s room. After a moment she opened it and glared at me suspiciously. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bloodshot.

“Excuse me,” I said, bowing my head respectfully. “If I might have a word with your maid?”

“She’s taken ill,” Lady Wintermale said. Then, seeing my face fall at her words, she hurried to explain. “A problem of digestion, she tells me. She has always had a weak stomach.”

Mrs. Tewkes. A sick maid. A noble lady with a cough, staring at me with red-rimmed eyes. I saw it all in an instant, death progressing ever forward. Unyielding. Unstoppable.

But what could I say? Even as my world crumbled, I could not fling accusations at a woman who outranked me.

“Your own health is good, I hope?” I asked.

Lady Wintermale pulled her shoulders back, the very picture of righteous offense. “Excellent!” she pronounced. I did not understand then how a woman as direct as Lady Wintermale, so quick to point out fault in others, could blind herself to the truth of her own condition.

“If that’s all,” she sniffed before closing the door in my face. I waited a few moments, listening. The coughs did not resume. Would my suspicions alone convince the king to confine Lady Wintermale to her room? Who would be next?

A terrible vision struck me then, so clear that my stomach clenched in horror. I saw every inhabitant of the castle, servants and masters, stricken one by one with coughs and swellings, dying all around me in a surge of blood. Myself, alone in this vast castle, the only living person in a realm of corpses.

Eighteen

ENTOMBED

O
n my way to Queen Lenore’s chambers, I was greeted by the king, who was arriving to accompany his wife to supper. With the court’s drastic change in circumstances, many of the usual formalities had been abandoned, and the evening meal was now the only one served in the Great Hall. Multicourse feasts had been replaced by a few simple dishes, and the number of tables set was half what it had been before the war. Yet the royal family continued to sit on their dais, presiding over what remained of their court.

Queen Lenore greeted us with a smile.

“Allow me a moment, I must ready myself,” she said, indicating her unadorned neck and arms. A woman of her position would never appear in public without jewels appropriate to her rank.

“Lady Wintermale . . .” I began, my heart pounding.

“Of course. She has the key to my jewel chest. Where has she gone?”

“I believe she has taken ill.”

I spoke the words in a near whisper, but that did not lessen their effect. Queen Lenore caught her breath and took a step toward me.

“Ill?” she asked, clutching my arm. “What ails her?”

My somber face was answer enough, and she dropped her hold with a look of such despair that I ached for her.

“I am so sorry, but you should know that Mrs. Tewkes succumbed as well, though she took care to hide it from you. She died a short time ago.”

“Mrs. Tewkes? Dead?” Queen Lenore’s voice rose along with her panic. “If the pox has taken her, it will take us all. I thought us protected, but there can be no escape from such evil, I see it now. . . .”

I waited for the king to hush his wife. Instead he allowed her terrified ramblings to run forth unopposed. He sank into a chair and stared into the distance like one gone blind. It was the first time I had seen his gift for stirring words desert him, and his stillness chilled me more than the queen’s prophecies of doom.

“We must leave this place.” Queen Lenore’s hands twitched in the folds of her skirt as she paced before her husband. “The king of Hirathion would give us refuge, would he not?”

King Ranolf did not respond.

“A boat!” she exclaimed. “Yes, yes, that is the way. We will keep to the river until we have sailed past the contagion. If we make it as far as the sea, there are many lands that would offer us shelter. I could send word to my father. He would take us in as long as need be, I am sure of it.”

Even if the king had approved such a mad plan, I knew from my walks atop the walls that there were no vessels to be had. St. Elsip’s harbor stood empty; anyone with a boat at his command had long since sailed away. There would be no escape by water.

“We are none of us spared.” The king’s hushed voice brought an instant stop to his wife’s frantic movement. “I was a fool to think I could keep the pox at bay.”

His voice was wistful, that of an old man recalling his youth. “If Lady Wintermale has fallen, there is nothing to be done. We must accept our fate.”

Queen Lenore’s legs crumbled underneath her skirts, and she fell at her husband’s feet, burying her face in the hem of his tunic. Her trembling body erupted with desperate, tormented wails, distilling the very essence of human suffering. I could not help remembering the queen I had once known, long ago, who could lie in bed crying yet not utter a sound. Years of self-reproach had worn away that inner strength, and no defenses remained. King Ranolf sat motionless, making no attempt to ease his wife’s anguish. Was this moment the death knell of their once passionate marriage? I could never have watched with such coldness as someone I loved suffered. Had it been Rose sobbing before me, I would have embraced her, stroked her hair, murmured words of encouragement—

“Rose!” I blurted out.

On hearing her daughter’s name, Queen Lenore turned to me, her tear-stained face frantic with terror.

“She is well,” I reassured her. “She has largely kept to her rooms since the gates were closed.” I looked at the king, hoping he would understand where my thoughts were leading. “It may be her salvation.”

“So there is still a chance for Rose,” the king said with sudden urgency. “She must be distanced from anyone who might carry the pox, courtiers and servants alike. Elise, is it true that the illness cannot befall the same person twice?”

I nodded.

“Then you are the only one I trust as my daughter’s companion.”

I glanced from the king to the queen. She listened with her lips pressed tightly, stifling her objections. She would not oppose her husband’s commands in my presence, but she would never agree to a separation from her daughter. That would be too high a price to pay.

“We would need food,” I said quietly. “Firewood as well.”

“See to it, then. Now. I’ll send my man to assist you in the storerooms.”

I nodded.

“Go about your tasks quietly. If word of this should spread, it might bring on panic. You and Rose must be locked away before anyone knows why.”

Locked away. My heart sank at the prospect, but I forced my thoughts toward more practical matters. How long would we be shut off? What other supplies would we need? It would take more than a few days for the pox to make its way through the castle. Could we survive alone for weeks? Months?

“Go!” the king ordered.

Before I had time to understand what was happening, the process was set in motion. I rushed to my room and filled a sack with clothing and my few personal belongings; by the time I’d brought the bag to Rose’s room at the top of the North Tower, barrels of wine were already being carried up the winding stairs behind me. I made my way down to the kitchens to help gather food. With Mrs. Tewkes and half the staff gone, the servants’ quarters had sunk into disarray: Fires were no longer lit in the mornings, and meals for anyone outside the king’s circle were prepared haphazardly, if at all. Yet the king’s words still held sway there, and the kitchen maids assisted me quickly and without question. The castle had not fallen so low as to disregard the wishes of our master.