Chapter Sixteen Oh, Sweet One, Come Homeward
Chapter Sixteen
Oh, Sweet One, Come Homeward
‘It came on quick,’ the Coast Guard blathered, ‘I do not know the cause.’ As he paced before the porch, the ends of his long brown coat, once smart and now fraying, twisted on the wind.
‘You will come now,’ he said with a jabbed finger.
‘You will heal my daughter.’ It was an order, yet his red-rimmed eyes were desperate and his tone pleading.
Kensa stood, numb. Elowen sick? Her heart tightened. It was not as though her sister’s illness was a new occurrence. Mr Skewes was here. He never would have stepped a single foot in their direction if he could help it, not unless it was urgent.
From behind her came Isolde’s voice. ‘I shall fetch my cloak.’ Hers was a heavy presence at the cottage doorway, offset by the hens at her ankles. An urge to hide with them, to chick under their wings, almost moved Kensa’s feet backwards.
Mr Skewes looked directly at her. Since she was a little girl and he had first begun to court her mother, the Coast Guard had never met Kensa’s eye.
He avoided it, glancing over her shoulder or to a mid-point, if ever he need address her.
Now, his irises were fixed to hers and she knew she could say anything, demand anything, and he would obey if it helped his dear Elowen.
It was power, of a kind. There was temptation in it.
Leave my mother and I will heal your daughter, was Kensa’s first thought.
She dared not speak it. Instead, she fetched her satchel.
Kensa turned her collar against the cold morning.
Her boots flayed mud from the path, growing heavy with it.
Isolde was unreadable, as she often was in such situations.
Occasionally, she checked an onion in her pocket, though each time it looked no different.
Always was it dark and rooted and weeping.
Kensa cleared her throat. ‘What does it say?’
Isolde’s mouth tightened in reply.
Elowen. Elowen. Elowen.
Mr Skewes half-walked, half-ran ahead, halting often (and impatiently) as though his cricket-hop steps and shaking fists could propel them to move faster.
Isolde would not be rushed. ‘I am no use to no one if I am too fatigued to offer assistance upon reaching them.’
Portscatho came into view soon enough, first with a church spire and second with the cob-walled houses squashed together along the lanes. Kensa was reluctant to enter her mother’s house, fearing what she would find. The front door was ajar and Derwa soon appeared at its frame. She looked tired.
‘Oh,’ she said, the softest ‘oh’, and pulled Kensa to her chest. It was serious, then.
Elowen lay on her pallet. Her pale hair was matted with sweat and bunched at her ears. As for her eyes, they were sunken in their sockets, above a red rash that marked her cheeks. She barely stirred when Derwa sank beside her, to place a hand on her forehead.
‘It’s the same fever that’s been running through Truro,’ said Derwa. ‘I thought she was doing well and through it, back on her feet again, until she wasn’t.’
Kensa thought on that night in Mr Aldridge’s cottage, to the perspiration on Elowen’s face and her trembling which came and went. Had she been sick even then?
‘Let’s have a look,’ said Isolde, stretching her mouth into a non-smile. This was her kindly face, the no-nonsense and reassuring one she always started with, which would either soften to sadness or brighten in gladness.
Please be the last one …
Kensa stood awkwardly to the side. Mr Skewes paced.
In fact, he only ever stopped pacing to look to his daughter, though he never seemed to like what he saw.
Not for the first time, Kensa viewed herself as an intruder in this home.
Her breath came hard, as though her lungs had fused to her other organs and, when she inhaled, the expansion pressed and pulled on places it should not press and pull against.
Kensa did not feel like a healer here. Usually, she was at Isolde’s elbow. There, she watched and made her own guesses based on what she had learned. Now, she hovered, unable to clear her mind, and stared unrelentingly at Elowen’s face.
Kensa cleared her throat when the silence had gone on too long to be bearable. ‘Is she all right, then, Isolde?’
The old woman’s fingers tarried at Elowen’s wrist. ‘Has she been sleeping long?’
Derwa shook her head. ‘She had a chill and shivered as I’ve never seen, then caught a fever I could not cool. After, she complained her chest was sore and then could hardly stay awake till she grew faint.’
‘Why did you not call on my services sooner?’
Derwa looked to Mr Skewes, her silence accusation enough. The Coast Guard only swore under his breath and uttered nothing else.
‘We shall know in the next day how she fares,’ said Isolde. ‘If she can get through tonight, she will mend well enough.’
‘Get through tonight?’ Mr Skewes said it once, slow, then again, quick. ‘No, you’ll help her now! You’ll do your potions or your chanting, everything you bitches do, you’ll do it.’
Isolde brushed off her skirts, nails finding a mark only she could see. ‘The illness must run its course; there is nought anyone can do bar keep her comfortable.’
Mr Skewes stared at Isolde blankly.
Dust motes were the only motion in the room, alongside Elowen’s fitful, uneven rasps.
No one spoke, until Kensa did. ‘I don’t catch your meaning.’ Over by the small hearth, Derwa’s back heaved with sobs, though she made no sound. ‘Do you mean she might die?’
Isolde rose slowly to her feet.
Kensa blinked. ‘Wait, I don’t— What should I do?’
‘You will set up a cot beside her.’
‘Until she’s on her feet again, yes?’
A long sigh followed, yet no reassurances came.
‘I shall be back shortly.’ Isolde readied herself. There was a forced and controlled tone to her voice. ‘If we are to stay here tonight, I must see to those now who I’d planned to see later.’
Kensa barely heard a word. The door shut behind the old woman and the cob walls closed in on the apprentice, as her mother and Mr Skewes both looked to her.
For answers, for action, for hope. What could she offer?
Nothing, only a hand to help. Kensa began by boiling hot water, fetching spare linen from her mother’s blanket box and keeping her sister clean.
All that could be done, Kensa did. Made broth, ignored grumbles from Mr Skewes, reassured her mother, swept the house and kept busy in body to quiet her mind.
‘You must eat, Kensa,’ said Derwa, herself weak with the care she had given. Occasionally, her mother slept, although it was a fitful sleep and yielded no strength.
‘I will eat,’ said Kensa, ‘I am eating,’ though not a spoonful passed her lips.
The day ran its length and ran it long. Evening fell outside and pushed its slim lights through the kitchen’s small window. It was then that Isolde returned. She had a basket tucked under her arm laden with loaves, preserves and a wrapped and roasted pheasant.
‘Portscatho sends what help it can,’ she explained.
Mr Skewes curled his lip in disapproval at the last bundle. Game birds were Sir George Trevanion’s property and meant for his table, guarded by poacher’s traps which could take a man’s leg clean off, though none in the cottage refused a bite. Well, none aside from Elowen.
‘Has she stirred while I’ve been gone?’
Kensa shook her head, almost to the ground with how heavy it was.
Isolde thinned her mouth even further. ‘Sleep now,’ she said to Kensa. ‘I will need you rested for what’s to come.’
Kensa would normally have objected, although these were not normal times.
Mr Skewes jerked his chin upwards, to where the main bed lay in the rafters.
Her steps were heavy on the ladder and she almost missed the last one.
The straw-tick mattress smelled of the Coast Guard and her mother.
Kensa’s nose twitched. Yet, no sooner did she lie flat than sleep took her and took her soundly.
She heard nothing and dreamed on nothing.
Only eternity and its unpricked stars, blank in a blank sky.
Kensa woke hours later to a liver-spotted hand on her shoulder.
‘Your mother should rest herself,’ said Isolde. ‘Watch over your sister, would you?’
It was dark, the heavy dark of early hours.
Kensa nodded and blearily knuckled herself awake.
Beside Elowen’s pallet, Derwa was already asleep.
Her upper body lay against the bed’s end and her hand – outstretched – was limp and curled, having once held Elowen’s.
Isolde kept to a chair by the low hearth, while Mr Skewes had bunched himself at the window, his slumber a growling, contorted one that stank of brandy.
After changing Elowen’s soiled sheets and gently cleaning her slim form, Kensa’s eyes found no fixed place. She gazed out to nothing while the fire worried the grate at her feet. In her daze, she almost missed her name, whispered and small.
‘Kensa?’ Elowen’s speech was near inaudible.
‘M’here,’ said Kensa, pushing a small cup to Elowen and bidding her to drink from it.
She did, slowly and a little, though not enough.
There was a translucency to Elowen’s features, where blue veins had pushed up against her skin, making patterns like cold faces on a glass window. ‘I meant to – I meant to tell you.’
‘You rest now,’ ordered Kensa. ‘Guard your strength.’ She busied herself. Checked the blankets and pulled them straight, convinced herself nothing bad could happen if she smoothed out each wrinkle, as there would be nowhere for the bad to hide.
‘I’m sorry I lied to you – about what I’d been doing, where I’d been doing it.’
Kensa stilled her movements.
Whenever Elowen inhaled, it was with a rattle. A distinctive sound, like a body filled with broken pottery for wet air to whistle through. Kensa had spent enough time around death lately to recognise it here, in this room.