Chapter 11
Gabriel jolted upright. Another hammer on wood rumbled through the house. He blew out a long breath to calm his racing heart. Would he ever get used to being woken in the middle of the night?
He rubbed his eyes, then fumbled with the tinderbox on the bedside table and struck a spark to light the small candle.
The banging continued, followed by a boy’s cry, “Doctor Sharpe!”
“I’m bloody coming,” he muttered.
Throwing back the covers, he picked up the candlestick and headed downstairs. The pounding began again, and he flung open the door.
Jacob Farrer stood on the step with watery eyes. “Mrs Simmonds sent me to fetch you. My brother is dying.”
“Tell her I am on my way.”
The boy scurried into the night.
By the time Gabriel had thrown on some clothes and arrived at the Farrer’s home, the family huddled at their back door.
Blythe stood at the entrance to the outbuilding. “His fever is so high and nothing I do seems to calm him. He’s been struggling to breathe for the past hour. It’s nothing but bubbles.”
To the Farrers, Gabriel said, “Wait inside; I will speak to you once I have examined him.” He then ducked beneath the lintel and approached the patient, naked save for a damp sheet that lay across his pelvis.
The stuffy air contained sharp traces of mint and woody citrus from the bowl of leaves and steaming water on the table where he set his bag.
Blythe said, “I stripped him to bring his fever down. I’ve bathed him every half hour and tried a vinegar solution on the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands and around his neck, but nothing’s working.”
He placed a hand on James’s forehead. The heat seared his palm. He leaned close to the patient’s face. Shallow breaths barely brushed Gabriel’s cheek. Pustules had spread across the boy’s body, and some had already burst.
“He may have developed lung fever. It is not common, but it can occur alongside smallpox. I will draw the excess blood, but it may be too late. We must make him comfortable.”
Blythe’s hand covered her mouth, but she nodded.
Gabriel removed his leather tool wallet and small pewter bowl, with a semi-circle cut into the wide rim, from his bag.
Blythe poured steaming liquid from the kettle into the porcelain bowl.
After he washed and dried his hands, he asked, “Are you still able to withstand the sight of blood?”
She nodded while washing her hands.
He withdrew the sharpest scalpel, then lifted his patient’s arm and set the bowl beneath the elbow joint. After tapping the clammy skin to find the vein, he made an incision. Red liquid dribbled into the pewter dish. “I will only take a few ounces, and we shall see if he improves.”
After a couple of minutes, Gabriel placed a wadded piece of clean linen against the wound before bending the patient’s arm back.
Blythe removed the bowl of blood.
He pressed firmly on the wound to help the blood coagulate and seal the incision.
“Is there anything else we can do?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I can let more blood if the fever does not abate.”
“What have I done wrong?” Blythe’s voice trembled.
“Nothing, Blythe, you have done everything you could.” Admiration swelled in his chest. Despite her time in York, she remained an intuitive and adept nurse.
James’s uneven, wheezing breaths continued.
Blythe rested a palm against the boy’s forehead.
“He’s on fire and his skin is clammy.” She emptied the washbasin into the slop bucket before refilling it with cold water.
“If only we had an icehouse in the village.” She poured several ounces of vinegar into the water, then returned to the bedside with a saturated cloth.
She ran the cloth across the boy’s forehead, the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet.
He checked the wound, but blood oozed from the cut. Using a strip of cloth on the table, he bound the linen in place around the boy’s elbow and sat in the spindle-legged chair before the brazier while Blythe finished bathing their patient.
Grey smudges marred the skin beneath her eyes, and fine lines bracketed her mouth. “How long has it been since you slept?”
“I don’t… do not know.”
He resisted the urge to rub those fine lines away but could not ignore the increasing desire to take care of her. “Rest, and I will tend to him for the next few hours.”
“I cannot sleep while he is suffering.”
“You are of no use to him if you are exhausted.”
“I will sit for a while until he requires bathing again.” She plopped down on the small cot on the other side of the room.
Blythe resisted the urge to flop onto the mattress. Everything ached from her head to her toes. Even her bones throbbed with weariness, not to mention the leaden weight in her chest.
At least Gabriel was here. Now she need not worry about making a mistake that would endanger the boy’s life. “Do you think he will survive if he has to fight both lung fever and smallpox?”
“I cannot say. He is young and healthy, so he stands a good chance.”
Her eyelids drooped, but she blinked away the heaviness. “Are you certain there is nothing else we can do?”
Gabriel nodded. “Lie down and rest before you topple over.”
She lowered onto the straw-filled mattress tick covered with a thin sheet.
Gabriel rose. “Allow me to remove your clogs.”
The skin beneath her stockings tingled at the heat from his hand around her ankle when he set her feet on the bed.
Her body sank into the mattress, the tension oozing from her. “Is being a doctor as wonderful as you dreamed it would be?”
“I am most content with my situation.” He re-took his seat. “It gives me great pride to know that I live to serve others.”
“I always knew you would be an excellent physician.” She turned her head towards him. “You need to do a better job of collecting your fees, though. Mama says you allow her to pay you with a side of pork and a goose at Michaelmas.”
“You know what it is like for people here. They do not always have the blunt available to pay for my family’s services.”
“My parents have more than enough coin to pay you properly.”
His mouth quirked at the corners. “Do not worry. I charge my affluent patients enough to keep my purse full.”
“You would need to, to live in Squire Rodgers’ former house.”
He rested his elbows on his knees. “I always said I would buy that house for us one day.”
The pang of guilt struck like an unexpected stumble. James’s wheezing breaths and the crackle of the fire continued while she stared at the rafters above, unwilling to open that festering wound. Instead, she said, “Elijah was very impressed by your discussion regarding the inoculation.”
“He is a promising young man. You should be proud.”
“I am.” She yawned and covered her mouth. “Excuse me.” Her lashes drifted closed, but she forced them open again. “I suspect he may consider joining your profession.”
“What about his father’s business?”
“No doubt it will cause… tension in the family, but he will have my support no matter which profession he chooses. I will not force him into something in which he has no interest, unlike…”
Thankfully, Gabriel did not question her pause. “Did you not enjoy your life in York?”
“No, it was tedious.” She yawned again but could not find the energy to excuse herself.
“Nothing but gossip and parties and… money. That was all people talked about. Who had so much money and what they would spend it on. No one cared about the beggars who stood at the doors of the abbey or the sick in the infirmary. I wish I could have made myself useful there. But the wife of a banker should not do such things. The most I could do was donate to the charitable funds that ran the city’s hospital.
I enquired about sitting on the board of trustees but was not permitted. ”
Gabriel chuckled. “I cannot imagine you gossiping in drawing rooms. To me, you are still the girl who liked to be in her garden, tending the soil, drying herbs and helping my mother make her recipes.”
Blythe sighed. “I wish I were that girl again.” Her lashes drooped. It may help to close them for a moment—nothing more.
Gabriel’s deep voice washed over her, and her mind wandered back to the times when they would sit beneath the big oak tree in the pasture in companionable silence while they watched the sun set over the golden fields beyond…
“Blythe.” A warm hand nudged her shoulder.
She blinked. Dust motes danced in the soft beams of light from the window.
Gabriel, his dark brown eyes filled with sadness, came into focus.
Her heart skipped a beat. “Is he—?”
“He has passed.”
She sprang upright.
“No.” Her vision blurred. “Why did you let me sleep so long?”
“You needed the rest, and there was nothing more to be done.”
The back of her throat burned. “He was just a boy, not much older than Elijah.”
“I sent for Reverend Worthing, but he has yet to arrive.”
Tears fell freely down her face and dripped onto her chest. She clasped the boy’s stiff hand. “Lord, I pray you welcome the spirit of James Farrer into your keeping. May he suffer no more and enjoy eternal rest in heaven.”
She swiped at her tears with her free hand. Her gaze wandered over the bandage still wrapped around James’s arm; his pale skin now mottled and his lips blue. His dark lashes fanned over purple smudges beneath his eyes. “I shall cut some rosemary and prepare his body.”
Gabriel rubbed her back. “You need not do this.”
“Who else will? His family should not risk catching smallpox. I have tended him this past week; I shall continue to do so until he reaches his final resting place. And I will pay for the funeral and the headstone so he will not be forgotten.”
“The Farrers will not accept your charity.”
“Tell them the parish donated it or some other—” she cried.
Gabriel prised her fingers from the boy’s cold hand. Strong arms pulled her into his firm chest. She could not control the sobs that wracked her body. Her tears flowed while Gabriel whispered soothing sounds into her hair. She must stink to high heaven, but he clearly did not care.
A wondrous sense of comfort washed over her. How had she survived without him?
A cough at the door had them flying apart.
Blythe swiped at her eyes when Reverend Worthing entered with his prayer book tucked to his chest.