Chapter 45
Margaretha
Voices around me first hovered on the brink of consciousness, then grew stronger, more coherent, and far too loud. The prince was speaking, his words rushed and rapid, his Latin slurred with a heavy Spanish accent.
“She was just riding, and then she fell. She’d said her illness was nothing. I believed her. In face and form, she seemed unaltered.”
I tried swallowing, but my throat was hot and swollen. My attempt to speak was strangled into an indecipherable groan.
A cool, wet cloth came onto my forehead.
“What happened after she fell?” This voice was softer, somehow comforting, though I couldn’t place it.
“She was insensible. I had to lift her back onto her horse, but then she started vomiting.”
The second voice jumped in. “Can you describe the vomit?”
“Describe it? I didn’t study it.” Felipe’s voice had an edge of irritation.
“I only meant was there anything unusual or distinctive about it?” The second voice stayed calm, and this time I recognized it as Vesalius’s.
Sensation was slowly coming back to my body, and with it, a sharp, piercing pain deep in my belly. I pressed both arms to my stomach, curling my knees up to my chest and rocking to fight back the ache.
“Careful, now. Careful.” Vesalius put a restraining hand on my shoulder. “You’re on a table. Don’t rock too much, or you’ll fall.”
“Drink,” I begged, but Felipe’s voice overshadowed mine.
“What do you think it is?”
“Not sure. Not sure.” There was a series of snapping. “But until I know what it is, I must ask you to leave the sickroom. Your father would not have me jeopardize your health.”
Felipe would leave? But I hadn’t had the chance to talk with him.
I willed my eyes open, blinking hard against the bright sunlight streaming into the room. “Felipe, wait.”
He took a knee by my side, prying my hand off my stomach to hold it in his gloved fingers.
“She wishes me to stay,” he told Vesalius.
“Send for her maid if you fear leaving her comfortless, but I beg you, do not invite the emperor’s wrath against me. I protect you and my position by insisting you leave.”
I spoke Felipe’s name again, but through my swollen throat, it came out a hoarse whisper.
“Rest, Margaretha. I’ll be back as soon as I sort this out with my father.” He lifted my hand to his lips but stopped himself, settling for a soft smile that didn’t quite mask his worry. Giving my hand a quick squeeze, he slipped out of the room.
As soon as Felipe left, Vesalius shoveled his arms beneath my back, pushing me upright. The room spun, and a wave of nausea not to be combated took over, but Vesalius was ready with a bowl. I vomited violently, my whole body shaking from the strain.
Vesalius handed me a clean cloth and moved to dump the vomit out the window while I wiped my nose and mouth. When I dropped my hand in my lap, I froze in fear. The cloth was red with blood.
“Vesalius.” I held up the bloody rag for inspection.
He nodded. “Blood was in the vomit too. I have a strong suspicion you’ve been poisoned.”
He moved around, babbling, snapping—always that infernal snapping—but it was muted, faraway.
Almost underwater for how vague and muffled he sounded.
My mind was still twisting around the notion of poison.
When could it have happened? I’d been eating in my chambers the last day.
It had to be someone close to me. Hette?
She’d fetched food from the kitchens. Maybe she’d taken a bribe?
Yet, Ilsa had served me. Belinda had been handling my food too.
But that was too extreme an idea. She was both sister and mother to me.
The very notion of Belinda plotting my murder was too ridiculous to believe.
Vesalius pushed a cup in front of my face. “Drink this.”
“What is it?” I gripped the cup between trembling hands, taking a tentative sip of the rank concoction.
“A purgative.”
I nearly spat the medicament in the poor physician’s face. “I’ve already emptied my stomach. Twice. Surely whatever poison was there has been expelled.”
“We must be certain.” He guided the cup back to my mouth. “You must purge everything to minimize the poison’s absorption in your vital organs.”
Setting the cup to my lips, I tried not to breathe as the sludge tipped toward my mouth. But then I stopped, putting the cup back down. “What good will this do?”
“It’s to clean out your—”
“Not the purgative, this effort at clearing the poison. Even if it’s successful, I don’t think I’ll have strength for traveling until a few days hence.
In the meantime, I must eat. What use is it to clear my stomach today when the kaiser’s determination and resources make an endless list of assassins ready to feed me poison tomorrow? ”
Vesalius seemed confused. “Why should the kaiser want to poison you?”
“You don’t invest much time in gossip, do you?” I gave him a weak smile. “The prince has asked his father’s permission to marry me.”
Another wave of nausea hit, and I grabbed the bowl from the table, emptying my already empty stomach and staining the bowl with more blood than bile.
“Lie down,” Vesalius urged, putting aside the bowl to lay a cloak over my shivering frame.
My foolish marriage scheme was the cause of all this. A marriage I never intended to enter.
“I d-don’t even want it.” My teeth chattered.
“It will help the shaking,” he answered as if I spoke of the cloak.
“No, the marriage. I must speak with the prince and tell him I will n-not marry him.” If he informed his father I’d changed my mind, maybe the kaiser would call his bloodhounds to heel.
The doctor ran both hands down his beard, straightening his whiskers. “I doubt the kaiser will let his son near you now.”
“Then I’ll write. To Felipe or his father. Y-you could deliver it.” I tried to sit in anticipation of penning the letter, but the pain in my stomach stabbed with a sudden intensity, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying out.
“Perhaps you could write it,” I puffed. My hands trembled too much for writing anyway.
“Oh, yes. Certainly. First, I’ll just . .
.” Vesalius took the bowl to the window for dumping.
Rinsing it out and returning it to me, he then rummaged through drawers and lifted up dead creatures in search of paper and quill.
His space was every bit as untidy as it had been the last time I was here, with books piled high over tables, bowls scattered beside cups of concoctions, and specimens pulled apart and pinned to expose their innards.
There was even another row of rats lying lifeless on the table.
“You’re experimenting again,” I said.
Vesalius stopped searching and cocked his head, then followed my gaze to the rats. “Yes, I managed to get my hands on more of those fish from the New World. I was careful dosing the toxin, but even still, it was too strong. I don’t think any of them survived.”
“Perhaps they’re too small. You need a human subject to test it on.”
“I find myself short on volunteers.” He flicked his hand toward the rats. “I doubt this lot would inspire much confidence.”
“True. It’d require some d-desperate individuals with nothing to lose.
” Pain stabbed again at my stomach, and I curled my knees to my chest again, hugging them tight.
Even as miserable as I was, it was a greater risk than I’d venture.
Only those already slated for death might be brave enough to try.
Slated for death.
Samuel.
“True,” I repeated, uncurling my legs as the idea pulsed excitement through my weakened body. “Vesalius, delay for a spell writing my refusal and instead pen a plea to visit my brother in the dungeons.”
“But you are too weak—”
“Not I. You. Take him a draft of your fish toxin and see if he has the courage to try it.”
Vesalius leaned his hands against the table behind him. “For his pain?”
“For his life. You spoke of the Indians who seemed to come back from the dead. And there was your rat that revived for a time. Couldn’t you give Samuel a potion that put his body in a stupor long enough to appear dead, then when he is removed from the dungeons, he’ll revive?”
The physician rubbed his hand over his beard, contemplating. When he began to pace and snap, I knew he was considering it with real seriousness, piecing out the specifics of dosing and monitoring and recording.
“What about a funeral?” he asked. “He’ll have to be buried.”
“We could ask to transport his body back to Wildungen.”
He shook his head. “It’s not cold enough yet. You’ll arouse suspicion.”
“But it is cold enough that he won’t be buried in the ground.
Maybe a crypt?” I sagged back onto the table, the conversation quickly fatiguing me.
“I’ll suggest it to my stepmother. She is here in Brussels and could see to all funeral arrangements.
Then in a day or two, we can sneak back to his burial place and help him when he recovers. ”
“If he recovers,” Vesalius said. “This is a very dangerous plan. You understand your brother will almost certainly die.”
“If we do nothing, his fate is the same.”
We both sat in silence until the physician raised his eyes. “I’ll think on it more, but you must tell no one. If my involvement is exposed, it’ll be my position or my life.”
I opened my mouth to respond when the scrape of a chair beside the door made us both turn to see Belinda, resetting the chair in its place with an embarrassed smile. “My apologies for the disturbance. Prince Felipe’s attendants told us Lady Margaretha was sick.”
Vesalius nodded toward me, and Belinda came to the table, putting a hand to my forehead. “I knew you weren’t well enough for riding. You should have listened.” She twisted back to Vesalius. “I thank you for your care.”
“Comtess, you should know your stepdaughter is seriously ill.” He held his hands behind his back and rolled up onto the balls of his feet. “In truth, I believe she’s been poisoned.”
“Poisoned!” Belinda’s jaw dropped. “Who would do such a thing?”
“I couldn’t say with any certainty.” Vesalius cleared his throat and leaned toward Belinda to whisper, “Her marriage plans with the prince could well be the root of it.”
“Then she’ll relinquish them. We’ll leave now and get her free of this place.”
Vesalius started snapping. “Right now she’s too ill to travel. She plans to write the prince of her altered intentions—”
“Certainly,” Belinda interrupted. “I’ll see that she writes him today and deliver the letter myself.”
“Yes, well, in the meanwhile, you must take great caution with her meals. And with your own. It’s possible you and your maids could be inadvertently poisoned.”
Belinda’s eyes widened.
“Your stepdaughter should be in bed. Have you anyone to help take her back to your chambers?”
She nodded, signaling the maids waiting in the hall, and the two of them worked me to sitting. My stomach lurched, and Vesalius barely had time to find the bowl before I vomited again.
“You should take this with you.” Vesalius put the bowl in Belinda’s hands, and she looked as if she might expel her breakfast too.
The women pulled my arms over their shoulders and managed to get me to the door, but I called over my shoulder to the physician, “I expect to see you again. You must promise to visit me in my chambers.”
He looked down at his shoes, then back at me with a solemn face. “I promise.”