Chapter 35
Relentless cold had driven the green from the once-bright holly leaves adorning Aunt Wilcox’s door, leaving them tattered and withered like so many scraps of brown paper. They rustled when Nora knocked, and she wondered why no servant had replaced them.
Aunt Wilcox would certainly follow tradition, displaying her holiday greenery until Epiphany, but it seemed unlike her to allow it to look shabby, especially with her party approaching. The wind pushed a smattering of snowflakes against Nora’s face.
She brushed them away, pressed her hand to her temple to lessen the ache, and knocked again. She was rewarded with another long silence. Puzzling. There ought to be half a dozen servants in the house.
Perhaps Aunt Wilcox had gone to Richmond with Daniel’s parents? As outcasts, Nora and Daniel wouldn’t have been informed if she’d decamped and canceled the party. A wise choice, with the current surge in cholera cases.
Nora was about to resign and retreat when she heard footsteps approaching behind the door. It swung open, revealing a stranger, almost. This woman was as unlike Daniel’s mother as anyone could be, in a wrinkled lace-trimmed day dress adorned with tiny flecks of blood.
“Sarah?” Nora froze, taking in the sight of her exhausted mother-in-law in the huge doorway. “What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
Sarah’s eyes closed for a moment. Nora took her hand. “Are you ill?”
“No. Not me.” She swallowed. “You got the message? Come inside.”
The dark house was draped in a perplexing silence. “Message?” Nora echoed, but her question was lost in her mother-in-law’s fussing with the bolt. “Are you alone?”
Sarah shook her head. “There’s five of us. I came for a visit two days ago, but yesterday Fenella fell ill.”
Fenella? Nora’s moment of confusion vanished in a rush. Sarah must be referring to Aunt Wilcox. Nora had never heard anyone use her first name before.
“Her doctor said it was cholera, so we sent the servants to the country house, not wanting them to contract the sickness. Only her lady’s maid stayed, and a footman and cook, but her maid, Miss Pritchard, is suffering a headache and the cook now refuses to leave the kitchen even to deliver broth—”
Nora bit her lip. Headache was often one of the first cholera signs.
“—and the footman, Charles, went hours ago to send word to Daniel and fetch Dr. Adams, but it’s been so long I’m afraid he’s absconded. He’s only been here two months. I said we should keep her butler with us, but Fenella insisted he go with the others because he has a family.”
Aunt Wilcox could have ordered everyone to wait on her hand and foot, but she’d thought of her servants first. Nora cursed herself for not coming to apologize earlier. “Why didn’t you send for Daniel yesterday?”
Daniel’s mother pushed back her hair with a tired hand. “Fenella was still angry at him. But when I saw how severe it was, I ignored her and sent the footman. Hours ago. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“There was no message. I came by chance,” Nora said, her hand naked without the familiar, encouraging handle of her doctor’s bag against her palm. “I don’t have my supplies.”
The stairs creaked as Nora followed Sarah upstairs, the shadows gathering under the unlit sconces. “So what brought you?” Sarah asked, her voice weak.
Nora grimaced. “Regret, I’m afraid. I don’t want Aunt to be angry with Daniel or me anymore. Nor you. I was a fool to try and keep secrets.”
Sarah sighed. “I should have told Daniel right away when Fenella was ill.”
“If we’d known, we’d have come instantly,” Nora insisted.
Sarah shook her head. “It happened so fast. She took ill just yesterday, I think.” She paused on the stairs and counted on her fingers as if trying to make the interminable hours of sickness fit into one night. Nora knew the feeling.
“It’s so hard to tell. We went to the refuge together, her and I. We wanted to give them a party. She had Christmas presents for all of them. They sang and gave us tea and punch, and the place was neat as a pin. But hours later, we had a message saying some were gravely ill.”
Nora’s heart sank through the soles of her shoes.
“By then, Fenella had a sore head, so we sent for her doctor. That must have been yesterday afternoon.” Sarah met Nora’s eyes as they reached the landing. Nora had no idea which bedroom belonged to Aunt. She’d never been this far inside the opulent home.
“It was so fast.” For a moment, Sarah’s lips parted, but weariness washed over her, and she closed her mouth.
“Are you certain it’s cholera?” Nora prodded gently. It was progressing speedily enough, but there were other quick illnesses.
“Without a doubt,” Sarah stated. “Adams confirmed it. He stayed for hours last night.”
“What about the blood?” Nora demanded, stroking a finger across a stain on Sarah’s sleeve. “If the effluvium is bloody, that’s most likely not cholera.”
Sarah looked over her crumpled dress.
“That’s not effluvia. That’s from helping Dr. Adams. He told me to hold the basin.”
“He bled her?” Cold crawled the length of Nora’s limbs.
For a moment, she couldn’t speak. Horace had tried bleeding cholera patients initially, seventeen years ago in the epidemic that had killed her family, but soon abandoned it, telling her his patients were so painfully thirsty he simply didn’t have the heart to keep on with it.
Bleeding might help other things, but it increased thirst. “Show me,” Nora said, already in motion again.
Sarah led her into a dim room lit with a low, fidgety fire in the grate. An ornate bed cradled a sleeping lady.
Daniel’s aunt was a commanding woman. When Nora last saw her, she’d been perfectly turned out in jet beads and taffeta silk, as straight as a bayonet and fierce as a general.
The body before her was shrunken, with hollow eyes and skin the color of a winter sky.
Even her hair seemed a different color, dull and drained.
“She screamed most of the morning yesterday,” Sarah said. “The cramps in her legs… The bloodletting eased that, at least.”
Nora thinned her lips. “How long ago was it? And how much?”
“Yesterday at seven,” Sarah said. “When it didn’t halt the evacuations of her bowels—”
Or stop the shite, according to Horace, who disliked euphemisms. Lately, even Mrs. Phipps was too tired to reprove him.
Focus, Nora told herself.
“Dr. Adams came back this morning and gave me opium to keep her comfortable, but he said barring a miracle, she would pass today.” Sarah’s lips trembled and she pressed a handkerchief to her mouth.
“And you’re alone,” Nora stated with a tongue almost too heavy to lift. Daniel’s mother was not built for such a crisis.
Sarah’s lips wobbled, threatening to break her fragile resolve.
Nora looked again at the bed and the wasted woman in it, taking inventory of the signs of imminent death and the paltry offerings available on the nightstand: blue pills, calomel, a glass of water that probably contained some grains of opium.
“I’m here now,” she muttered, doubtful that would improve the outlook.
She’d brought nothing with her. No medicines. No stethoscope. She’d come for a social call, planning only to say her piece and hopefully patch together some kind of truce for Daniel’s sake.
“What about Aunt’s maid? What’s her name?”
“Agnes Pritchard. She’s in the room next door. She’s been with Fenella for fifty years. I was just with her. She’s still able to walk, but—”
“Give her tea. As much as she’ll take,” Nora commanded.
She would check on Agnes next. “And summon a messenger boy.” On a frozen day like this, they’d be scarce.
Sarah might not find one in the square, but if she walked to the next street or watched for one from the drawing room window…
“We must send for Daniel. And supplies.”
“Dr. Adams said to give them both beef tea,” Sarah said on a fresh sob. “But she can’t even swallow.”
At least he’d been right about that. Probably copying Horace’s methods.
“Let’s try this,” Nora said, pulling out a clean handkerchief and dipping it in the cup.
The liquid had cooled, but at this point, the temperature hardly mattered.
Ignoring the amber drips running down her hand, Nora pushed the soaked cambric between Aunt Wilcox’s withered lips.
They closed, slowly, feebly, barely managing that most basic action: an infant’s instinct to suck.
“Where does Dr. Adams live?” Nora asked. If he was close by, perhaps she could send Sarah to borrow a rubber drinking tube and a syringe. If she waited for Daniel and her instruments to arrive from Great Queen Street, it might be too late.
“Hampstead Row?” Sarah worried her fingers together. “I’m not certain. Perhaps Havers?”
Nora shook her head. No help there, then. And she didn’t really need him, just his tools. “Never mind. We need to work now.”
Sarah looked at her blankly.
“Are there any doctors who live nearby?”
“I don’t know. I’ve tried three of the neighbors, and the houses were shuttered. No one is staying in London this winter…” Sarah’s voice rose with each word, climbing octaves toward the high notes of hysteria.
Nora swallowed. “All right. Don’t fret. I’ll write the note and tell Daniel exactly what’s happened. You only need to find a messenger.”
In harried strokes, she summarized Aunt’s condition—advanced—and listed necessary supplies, closing with, Come quickly. He would know what that meant.
“The hospital at 43 Great Queen Street,” she said, pointing to the address she’d printed in thick black letters. “If you can’t find a message boy, ask a carriage driver or a passing stranger.” Anyone with legs would do. “Offer a pound and tell them to hurry. Offer ten if you must.”
“What about Agnes?” Sarah glanced at the closed door behind her. “She needs someone to tend to her, too.”