Read Online The King’s Concubine: A Novel of Alice Perrers by Anne O'Brien - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anne O'Brien
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From that first red-and-purple pattern on his arms there was no recovery.
I bathed his face and body, holding my breath at the stench of putrefying flesh. I racked my brains for anything Sister Margery had said of her experiences of the pestilence. It was not much but I acted on it, flinging the windows of Janyn’s chamber wide to allow the escape of the corrupt air. For my own safety I washed my hands and face in vinegar, and ate bread soaked in Janyn’s best wine—how Signora Damiata would have ranted at the waste—but for Janyn nothing halted the terrifying onset. The empty house echoed around me, the only sound the harsh breathing from my stricken husband and the approaching footsteps of death.
Was I afraid for myself?
I was, but if the horror of the vile swellings could pass from Janyn to me, the damage was already done. If the pestilence had the ability to hop across the desk where we sat to keep the ledgers, then I was already doomed. I would stay and weather the storm.
A note appeared under the bedchamber door. I watched it slide slowly, from my position slumped on a stool from sheer exhaustion as Janyn labored with increasingly distressed breaths. The fever had him in its thrall. Stepping softly to the door, listening to someone walking quietly away, I picked up the note and unfolded the single page, curiosity overcomingmy weariness. Ha! No mystery after all. I recognized Greseley’s script with ease, and the content was written as a clerk might write a legal treatise. I sank back to the stool to read.
When you are a widow you have legal right to a dower—one-third of the income of your husband’s estate. You will not get it.
You have by law forty days in which to vacate the house: for the good of the heir—her nephew—who will take his inheritance. You will be evicted within the day.
As your legal man, my advice: Take what you can. It is your right. You will get nothing else that is due to you.
A stark warning. A chilling one.
Leaving Janyn in a restless sleep, I began to search.
Nothing! Absolutely nothing!
Signora Damiata had done a thorough job of it while her brother lay dying and I preoccupied with his dire sufferings or fallen into a torpor of utter bone-weariness. His room of business—the whole house—was empty of all items of value. There were no bags of gold in Janyn’s coffers. There were no scrolls; the ledgers and tally sticks had gone. She had swept through the house, removing everything that might become an attraction for looters. Or for me. Everything from my own chamber had been taken. Even my new mantle—especially that—the only thing of value I owned and that the Signora would covet.
I had nothing.
Above me in his bedchamber, Janyn shrieked in an extremity of agony and I returned to his side. I would do for him what I could, ruling my mind and my body to bathe and tend this man who was now little more than a rotting corpse.
In the end it all happened so fast. I expect it was Janyn’s wine that saved me, but the decoction of green sage from the scrubby patch in Signora Damiata’s yard, used to dry and heal the foul ulcers and boils, did nothing for him. Before the end of the second day he breathed no more. How could a man switch from rude health to rigid mortality within the time it took to pluck and boil a chicken? He never knew I was there with him. Did I pray for him? Only if prayer was lancing theboils to free the foul-smelling pus. Now the house was truly silent around me, holding its breath, as I placed the linen gently over his face, catching a document that fell from its folds at the foot of the bed. And then I sat on the stool by Janyn’s body, not daring to move for fear that death would notice me too.
It was the clatter of a rook falling down the chimney that brought me back to my senses. Death obviously had no need of my soul, so I opened the manuscript that I still held. It was a document of ownership in Janyn’s name of a manor in West
From that first red-and-purple pattern on his arms there was no recovery.
I bathed his face and body, holding my breath at the stench of putrefying flesh. I racked my brains for anything Sister Margery had said of her experiences of the pestilence. It was not much but I acted on it, flinging the windows of Janyn’s chamber wide to allow the escape of the corrupt air. For my own safety I washed my hands and face in vinegar, and ate bread soaked in Janyn’s best wine—how Signora Damiata would have ranted at the waste—but for Janyn nothing halted the terrifying onset. The empty house echoed around me, the only sound the harsh breathing from my stricken husband and the approaching footsteps of death.
Was I afraid for myself?
I was, but if the horror of the vile swellings could pass from Janyn to me, the damage was already done. If the pestilence had the ability to hop across the desk where we sat to keep the ledgers, then I was already doomed. I would stay and weather the storm.
A note appeared under the bedchamber door. I watched it slide slowly, from my position slumped on a stool from sheer exhaustion as Janyn labored with increasingly distressed breaths. The fever had him in its thrall. Stepping softly to the door, listening to someone walking quietly away, I picked up the note and unfolded the single page, curiosity overcomingmy weariness. Ha! No mystery after all. I recognized Greseley’s script with ease, and the content was written as a clerk might write a legal treatise. I sank back to the stool to read.
When you are a widow you have legal right to a dower—one-third of the income of your husband’s estate. You will not get it.
You have by law forty days in which to vacate the house: for the good of the heir—her nephew—who will take his inheritance. You will be evicted within the day.
As your legal man, my advice: Take what you can. It is your right. You will get nothing else that is due to you.
A stark warning. A chilling one.
Leaving Janyn in a restless sleep, I began to search.
Nothing! Absolutely nothing!
Signora Damiata had done a thorough job of it while her brother lay dying and I preoccupied with his dire sufferings or fallen into a torpor of utter bone-weariness. His room of business—the whole house—was empty of all items of value. There were no bags of gold in Janyn’s coffers. There were no scrolls; the ledgers and tally sticks had gone. She had swept through the house, removing everything that might become an attraction for looters. Or for me. Everything from my own chamber had been taken. Even my new mantle—especially that—the only thing of value I owned and that the Signora would covet.
I had nothing.
Above me in his bedchamber, Janyn shrieked in an extremity of agony and I returned to his side. I would do for him what I could, ruling my mind and my body to bathe and tend this man who was now little more than a rotting corpse.
In the end it all happened so fast. I expect it was Janyn’s wine that saved me, but the decoction of green sage from the scrubby patch in Signora Damiata’s yard, used to dry and heal the foul ulcers and boils, did nothing for him. Before the end of the second day he breathed no more. How could a man switch from rude health to rigid mortality within the time it took to pluck and boil a chicken? He never knew I was there with him. Did I pray for him? Only if prayer was lancing theboils to free the foul-smelling pus. Now the house was truly silent around me, holding its breath, as I placed the linen gently over his face, catching a document that fell from its folds at the foot of the bed. And then I sat on the stool by Janyn’s body, not daring to move for fear that death would notice me too.
It was the clatter of a rook falling down the chimney that brought me back to my senses. Death obviously had no need of my soul, so I opened the manuscript that I still held. It was a document of ownership in Janyn’s name of a manor in West
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