Chapter 22 #2
Cracked lips and perishing thirst, a pounding head that overpowered everything else…
one by one, the symptoms came back to her.
She remembered sharing the care of her younger brother, Peter, until her mother lay down and didn’t get up.
She thought she remembered crawling across a threadbare carpet for a dipper of water, finding the pail empty, and knowing it was impossible to fetch any more.
The recollection was so cloudy it might have been real or made up, pieced from bits in Horace’s carefully edited account. He was right. It was dangerous to stay.
“I’ll work fast,” she promised.
Behind her, Horace sighed. She heard him unclasp his bag and rummage through the contents. “I’ve a spouted cup here and a clean cloth.” He grunted. “It won’t be nearly enough.”
“We’ll send a messenger to Great Queen Street,” Nora said, blinking her eyes clear as she measured tea leaves and dropped them into the pot of steaming water.
“Staying here is your foolish decision,” Horace warned.
“Not mine. I can’t force you out the door, but your husband will be…
” He’d never spoken this cautiously before.
Arteries might burst, bones might shatter, he might desperately pray for luck or divine intervention, but his voice and his face never betrayed it.
Revealing anything but optimism and robust confidence was bad form.
And she couldn’t afford his uncertainty, not with her courage wavering so much already.
“Tell Daniel I couldn’t be stopped.”
“I will. But what will you tell him?”
Nora paused. Daniel wouldn’t understand, no matter what she told him. Even though a year ago he’d treated highly infectious children with diphtheria when no other doctors would.
It was different, when you were responsible to guard your own child. Your own family.
Nora bit the inside of her lip and studied Horace, too frail after his stroke to be exposed to any virulent disease, let alone cholera. Her hand went involuntarily to her stomach. Daniel and Horace may have treated countless dangerous diseases, but they’d never done it while harboring a stowaway.
“Cazzo,” she muttered, the familiar Italian curse escaping before she could stop it.
Horace blinked, reminding her that cursing wasn’t safe in any of her languages, at least not from him.
“We should go. But someone must check back here soon,” she insisted.
Horace bowed his head in relief. “Yes. We’ll do that.”
Nora turned back to the older sister. She couldn’t stay, so she passed her as much as she could from her bag. More wine. A packet of tea. “Rest as much as you can,” she instructed. “Drink often—but only tea. As much as you can swallow. A bit of wine, too.”
The girl nodded as Nora led her and the mother to their beds. “Keep Elias undressed unless he gets cold. He’ll only mess his clothes and lay in it.”
Still throwing instructions over her shoulder, she allowed Horace to take her by the arm and lead her out.
When they reached the pavement, he stopped and turned to meet her eyes. Nora noticed she no longer needed to look up at him. He’d shrunk considerably. “I’ve no doubt they are sick with virulent cholera,” he said gravely.
“But the father is better,” Nora argued.
“Lucky,” he shot back. “Some are. But the baby died in less than one night, and the boy’s organs have shrunken already.”
Nora raised her eyes to a cobalt circle of sky breaking through the dingy clouds. Broad Street was a good distance from the other reported cases, near London’s docks. “I hoped the disease would stay contained,” she said quietly.
Horace shook his head. “I don’t think it can be in cities. People tried before.”
He looked over the busy street, filled with people blithely going about their business, mere yards away from a dying family.
“It will burn through this district like the London fire.” Horace looked at the unending sea of crowded, overfilled buildings.
“These people are stacked in here like human kindling.”
Nora took a step back, distancing herself from the words. “What do we do?” She turned to the brownstone behind them, the walls hiding the dead baby and the sinking child.
Horace took her by the arm and pointed home. “We dose the living and bury the dead. It’s all we can do.”
“Horace.” His name wavered on her lips. “Is this what my family looked like when you found us?”
The muscles in his cheek flexed as he tapped the nearest basement railing with his cane. “What matters now is a plan. We need to get home, clean thoroughly, and consult with Daniel and Harry.”
“Did my brother…” She’d never asked for details about six-year-old Peter. Had he been wrapped in his favorite blanket or sprawled helpless on the floor? How much had he suffered?
Horace gave her the same stern glare that, when she was a child, had wrenched tears from her eyes, eliciting prompt and perfect obedience. “Keep your distance from cholera, girl. We don’t know enough.”
She opened her mouth to argue, no longer a cowed little girl who took orders. But Horace’s expression pushed the words back down her throat.
Written in his indomitable blue eyes, she read the small print of fear.