Chapter 33 Promise Me
PROMISE ME
LIZZY
I dragged my eyelids apart and saw Mary’s frightened gaze framed by her hanging brown hair. Her arms were straining to hold me upright.
I set my feet and found my balance. “What happened?”
“You fainted,” Mary said worriedly. “Briefly.”
I rubbed my aching eyes. “I am tired. The maid did not set the fire right in that last inn. I woke soaked with perspiration and freezing as well. I sat on the floor and shivered half the night.”
“Lizzy. Let me see your eyes.” Mary spoke so intently that I obediently moved my shielding fingers, then squinted when painful light glared off her golden rims. Mary tilted her head left and right. “Your pupils are giant. Have you taken some tincture? Laudanum?”
“What? Of course not. I do not trust it since Mr. Jones tried to give it to Jane.” Mary appeared so concerned that I blurted out, “Could it be the child?”
Her eyebrows shot upward. “Child?”
“I am with child. Or… well, I thought so—” I was cut off as Mary swept me into an embrace. That was unexpected, but I let out a breath and closed my eyes, enjoying the respite of darkness. “I did not mean to announce it so clumsily…”
My words tailed off. Mary’s hands were methodically pressing my body—an examination, not an embrace. Briefly, she cupped my breasts, then pushed me to arms’ length. Her brow was furrowed. “You are skin and bones. I have never felt you so thin.”
I swallowed. “Why do I feel that you are not about to congratulate me?”
“Why do you think you are with child? Have your menses stopped?”
“They had. But they were only late. Weeks late.”
Mary scowled. “And you think you are pregnant?”
“I… we are not all doctors, you know. I had gotten used to the idea, and… my brain has been addled for this entire trip. It was the battles at the museum, I think.” Mary pulled the window curtain wide, and daylight blazed in.
I squeezed my eyes closed. “Please do not. Light hurts. Perhaps I need spectacles? You had headaches before yours were fitted.” I heard the curtain thump closed and the room dimmed. Cautiously, I opened my eyes.
Mary’s hands were clutched together as if she did not know where to put them. “Light hurts. You have chills and sweats at night. How are your days?”
“Well, I am sometimes boiling. People tell me I am hot. I thought… I know ladies with child are often overheated.” Mary was very still, her eyes bright. “Mary, you are frightening me.”
“I must examine your neck,” she whispered.
The precision of her request filled me with foreboding. I nodded, and she touched both sides of my neck, her fingertips pressing exactly where I had feared. When she drew back, her face had blanched.
I managed a breath. “I noticed that, too, a few days ago. Little bumps, like dried peas. They do not hurt. I suppose I sound even more foolish when I say that I wondered if they were due to pregnancy.”
Mary spoke in a rattle of words. “Education of women regarding conception and childbirth is poor. The bias of religious stigma and male medical establishment…” She stopped.
“What is wrong with me?” I said as steadily as I could.
“I am not a doctor.”
“But you know. Do not torture me with delay.”
In a whisper, she said, “You have consumption.”
For an instant, I was shocked, then the rush of relief was overwhelming. My dread fell away, and I laughed. “Do not misunderstand when I say this, but I rejoice that you are not a doctor. I cannot have consumption. I do not even cough!”
Mary said in a desperate, tiny voice, “It is not that kind of consumption.”
“Is there more than one kind?” Mary gave an unwilling nod. “What kind is it?”
“Lymph and…” She swallowed, then set her shoulders and stepped closer, studying my eyes. She steadied my forehead with her left palm, placed her right hand behind my neck, then pressed in at the top of my spine. White-hot pain lanced down my neck and up into my skull.
I gritted my teeth. “Ow.”
“I am sorry.” Those words were polite reflex, but when she stepped back, white as a sheet, the rest came raggedly.
“The bumps in your neck are tubercles of consumption. In some cases, they spread to the spine and brain. Meningeal infection, it is called. It is unusual, though not… not truly rare. I have attended cases at Dr. Davenport’s public clinic.
Your eyes hurt because the optic nerves are infected, locking your pupils wide. You see haloes? Shining auras?”
I nodded mechanically. My relief at Mary’s supposed inexperience had vanished. This was the most precise diagnosis I had ever heard.
“Consumption is so slow, though,” I said. “People live with it for years and years. I have heard that recovery is a matter of lifestyle. I do not even have the cough yet. That must be good.”
Long seconds dragged, then Mary said, “It is good you do not have the cough. The cough is painful.”
The truth was in her tone. “The cough is painful and slow. The kind I have hurts less because it is quick.”
“Lizzy, do not ask me these things! Let us find the royal physician.”
“No.” My own voice was thick, but I forced words out. “You must advise me. How quick? I do not ask from morbid curiosity, or to… to argue, or to beg. The sole dragon protecting England is bound to me. I must know how long I have.”
Mary bit her lip. “Can you detect any change within the last week?”
“It is worse in the last week. Much worse. It is noticeably worse every day. Mary, how long? When will I become unable to… perform duties?”
“A week,” she whispered. “Or days.”
Her answer fell through my chest like an anvil. I was twenty years old. I would not live to be one and twenty. I would not finish my first year of marriage.
“First Papa,” I said. The words stung. “Then Lydia. Bennets are dropping like flies. Thank goodness Jane is doing her part.” Mary made a desperate sound, but I waved her silent.
“Miss Bingley will weep copiously at the funeral. You must judge the sincerity of her tears, then be touched or vexed as appropriate. Either will gratify me.”
Mary pulled me into a ferocious embrace—far tighter than her examination. Some perverse anger made me push against her, then I collapsed and clung. She whispered, “Do not practice your wit on me,” and my tears burst free. They flowed for a long time.
Finally, though, I was simply leaning my forehead on Mary’s soaked shoulder while she sniffled in my ear.
I pulled my head up. “I am very thankful that I married. Darcy and I wasted months staring at each other and exchanging trivialities. What fools we were to be bound by society’s strictures.
” I pushed Mary back to see her red-rimmed eyes behind round glass circles.
“You told me that you are in love. Do not waste it. Promise me.”
Mary choked, swiping at her eyes with both hands, then nodded.
Then, unexpectedly, hope burst into my mind. “Emma is a healer! She is treating Nessy for consumption. She has that special tea!”
“I am considering that. But… Lizzy, I recognized the leaves of her tea. I have tasted it. It is common spearmint. Nessy improved for a time, but now she weakens quickly. I say nothing because Emma’s care does no harm.
” Mary must have seen my crushed expression because she became resolute.
“I shall speak to her. She has a remarkable skill to diagnose.”
“I am already diagnosed.” I knew Mary was right. Something had been seriously wrong with me for weeks. I had been deluding myself. Hiding from the truth.
“We will pursue every chance,” Mary said. “The issue is… the complication is that Emma must touch a patient to see.”
I breathed an ironic laugh. The great wyfe of healing’s skills required touch, but Emma could not touch me because I had bound her dragon.
Darcy, though, would never accept that Emma could not help. He would not accept that he could not help. Every doctor within a hundred miles would be summoned.
Like my despair had been a fogged window to push aside, my choices turned clear. “Do not tell Mr. Darcy. Do not tell anyone.”
“This cannot be hid!” Mary exclaimed.
“The slavers use venom to ‘test’ their victims. I can sense a wyfe affected by venom. With Lydia, I sensed it miles away. I could search London in hours, find the wyves, and find the dagger. But if Darcy knows I am ill, he will insist I am stuffed in a bed for a parade of doctors. And Lord Wellington will insist I stay to guard the royal family. Both would be foolish. If Fènnù attacks, Yuánchi cannot stop her. And if I delay for hopeless treatments, I will grow too weak to recover the dagger.” I grasped Mary’s fingers.
“And I must free your friend. To atone for what I did. For the death of Miss Rees. It is all the more urgent to me now.”
Mary was staring in disbelief. “It is winter. If there is snow, the trip alone to London could take a week.”
“Not if I fly.”
Mary’s jaw dropped. “Lizzy. You are too ill. You cannot do this.”
I squeezed her hands between mine. “You do not know what I can do. I am the wyfe of war.”