While Beauty Slept (3 page)

“Now is hardly the time for such a discussion,” she said. “We shall see, when you are older.”

At ten years old, I felt my future stretch before me as an unending horizon, with the years of my adulthood impossibly distant. There was time enough to ponder my prospects, to plot the course of my life. But whenever I tried to discuss going into service, Mother changed the subject, and in time I stopped asking.

We did not speak of the castle again until the day she died.

The spring I turned fourteen, fierce rainstorms turned our fields into rivers of mud, delaying the planting even as our winter food stores dwindled. Father had begun to speak of marrying me off early, saying that it would be one less mouth to feed, and such was my hunger that I might have said “I do” to any man who offered me a warm meal. While some trade on their looks to improve their marriage prospects, I did not think such a tactic could work in my favor. When I gazed at my reflection in the river, I saw no signs of the beauty that was remarked upon in certain other girls of the village. While their hair was golden blond and their eyes blue or green, my thick, wavy hair was a deep chestnut brown. My dark eyes, while large and pleasingly framed by long lashes, were incapable of mimicking the flirtatious glances other women had perfected; I looked upon the world with a direct, forthright gaze. I did note a few marks in my favor: My complexion was clear and even, and the curves of my hips and chest gave my body a healthy solidity. With the right clothes, I might make a fitting shopkeeper’s wife, a fate that had become the height of my ambition.

In the end, another village wedding allowed me to delay my own. A wealthy landowner’s wife hired Mother to embroider linens for her soon-to-be-married daughter, saving us from starvation. I shouldered as much of the burden as I could, sitting by the fireside well into the night with a needle in hand, squinting at the flowers I created with colored thread. Life in our one-room cottage revolved around the fireplace, the only place one could be assured of warmth. My mother spent hours there, cooking and heating water for washing; when it was too cool to dry laundry outside, damp underclothes hung on a line in front of the hearth, and we had to fight with the swaying fabric to claim a spot for ourselves. The flour, salt, and oats we were paid for the needlework allowed our family to survive another month, and we thought the worst behind us.

Then the cows fell sick.

We had three, an ancient bull that Father used in the fields and two milk cows. I was the first to notice the red scabs on their teats as I milked the cows early one morning. They felt scaly but showed no signs of blood, and I gave them no further thought. It wasn’t until the next day, when one of the cows stared at me with dazed eyes, leaning against the side of the barn, that I realized something was terribly wrong.

As I went outside to tell my father, I saw him coming toward me, muttering with frustration. He used to hang his head low when he was angry, hurling curses to the ground as he walked, and he did so now.

“Father . . .” I began.

“Hush!” he spat at me. “Sukey’s dead.”

My heart dropped. Sukey was the name we used for the biggest of our pigs; whenever one Sukey died, the next largest took the name, and so the cycle progressed. This latest Sukey had given birth to a litter of pigs not a week before. If she were not alive to suckle them, they might all die, and with them went our meat for the rest of the year.

“What happened?” I asked, trailing after him on the way to the house.

“The pox.”

It was all that needed to be said. The pox was an ailment that swept through farms with no warning, sickening livestock and people with alarming fickleness. It might be mild and merely weaken creatures for a few days, but it also could prove devastating. It was reputed to have killed entire families in the village once, years before I was born.

It was my mother who first noticed the spots on my face the following day. I had woken with a dry, raspy cough and a fever, but that in itself was no reason for me to be excused from my daily labors. Only complete infirmity merited a rest in my parents’ bed, with its feather-stuffed mattress. Usually we children slept packed together in a loft under the eaves, a bleak expanse of wood topped with a pile of straw and worn blankets. It was tolerable when I had to share it with only Nairn, the brother closest to me in age, but as a new sibling appeared almost every year, it grew steadily more crowded. I was often startled awake in the middle of the night by a foot kicking my stomach or an arm flung across my face.

“What is this?” Mother asked, peering at my cheek.

“What?” I asked.

“These spots.” She pushed the hair away from my face and put her palm against my forehead. “You’re burning up.”

I was ready to protest that I felt well enough, until I saw the fear in her face. She was holding my youngest brother in one arm, and she pulled him closer to her body, away from the threat of my illness. The heat I had tried to ignore flashed through my body, leaving a chill in its wake. My skin prickled as if the pox were about to burst through in angry red eruptions.

Mother laid the baby down in the cradle by the fireplace and pulled my wool dress off, leaving me in my chemise.

“You must rest,” she urged, pushing me toward her bed. “If you take care, I have heard that the pox can pass without lasting harm.”

I chose to believe her. What girl, at fourteen, ever thought she was mortal?

The following days passed in an eternal hazy twilight, for the illness tormented its sufferers with a wakefulness that allowed no respite from its horrors. My body blazed with pain as the pox erupted across my skin, yet I was unable to escape into the oblivion of sleep. Delirious, I saw visions of the castle and imagined myself walking along its wide corridors. It was warm, always warm, as I passed one fireplace after another. I gawked at the flames, amazed by the extravagance that allowed hearths to burn day and night. I have dim memories of my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over to wipe my forehead with a wet cloth. Then leaning forward to do the same to my brother Nairn beside me and another brother beside him. Mother watched us without expression, staring as if the heat of our fevers had scorched her eyes to blindness. The baby lay in her lap, ominously still. I closed my eyes, resigned to death.

Yet that was not to be my fate. After what might have been hours or years, I became aware of the sweat-stained pillow against my cheek, felt the weight of the blanket spread across my chest. My eyes burned with exhaustion, yet the fever that had so tormented me had subsided. I saw Nairn lying next to me, his face red and distorted with swelling. I heard his breath laboriously draw inward, then wheeze out. The rest of the bed was empty. Across the room faint embers glowed in the fireplace. Our house, usually bustling and crowded, was silent.

I sat up too quickly, for my head pounded with the effort and I had to shut my eyes to block out the swimming images before me. After the rushing sensation quieted, I looked again. By the dim light of the dying fire, I saw a pile of clothes thrown on the floor. Again Nairn took a shuddering breath and seemed as if he might expire from the effort. I looked at the heap of clothes and saw a movement.

A rat, I thought. They made their way into the house from time to time but rarely lingered, as we ate every crumb we had. I pulled myself from the bed, willing myself the strength to stand and shoo the intruder away. It was not until I had walked unsteadily across the room that I realized the pile of clothes was my mother.

I collapsed next to her. She was wrapped in her cloak, with the hood pulled over her head. Her legs were pressed up against her chest, her hands hidden in the folds of her skirt. I plucked the hood away and was confronted with a terrible sight: my mother’s face, drawn and tired in all the time I had known her but with faint traces of loveliness still, had been transformed to that of a monster. Red sores that oozed pus and blood had erupted from her skin. Her neck was disfigured by a massive swelling, and her lips, stained with blood, were frozen in a rigor of pain. Her eyes slowly opened. They had once been blue and kind; now they were pink and empty of all feeling.

“Mother.” It was all I could think to say. I was not sure she knew me.

Her body did not move, but one hand emerged from the fabric and reached toward me. Her lips parted slightly, and a sound escaped. It could have been my name, it could have been a moan of pain; I could not tell.

“Please, come to the bed,” I urged. I could not think of any way to tend to her, but it sickened me to see her there, lying on the floor like an animal. She deserved better than such a fate.

“Elise.”

This time I recognized my name, and I smiled. If she still knew me, there might be hope yet.

“Come.” I pulled at her shoulders. She lifted them slightly and reached toward me with her arms, but she was not strong enough to stand. I dragged her as best I could across the room, hoping her skirt would lessen the impact to her legs, but she did not complain. I draped her head and arms against the side of the bed, then leaned over to lift her lower body upward. My head ached with the effort, and by the time I had laid her next to Nairn, I was afraid I might faint. I crawled into the bed beside her and began stroking her arm.

“Mother, the others . . .” I began, then stopped. Her watery eyes stared into mine, confirming what I could not put into words. They were dead. In the time I’d been lost to fever, my family had vanished. I remembered seeing the baby in her lap, so small and so still. I hoped it had been quick for him at least.

Yet I lived. Which meant this pox, this terrible scourge that had laid waste to my family, could be conquered. Weak as I was, I could feel my head clearing, my body gathering strength. I wrapped my arms around her body—so very thin, little more than bones—willing the life to return to her.

“Please,” I begged, “do not leave me. I cannot bear it here without you.”

“Agna.” She said it so slowly and quietly, barely even a whisper. The swelling in her neck must have made speaking unbearably painful, and I could feel her suffering with every word. “You must go.”

I leaned my head closer to hers, so she would not have to make an effort to be heard. A thin stream of blood trickled from her nose, and I wiped it gently with the edge of my sleeve.

“Yes, I will go to St. Elsip,” I agreed, “but not till you are well. We can go together.”

Her hands fumbled laboriously in the folds of her skirt. I clutched them in my own, as if my touch could prevent her from leaving me. Her fingers pulled away from my grasp and plucked at her ragged dress. Following her gaze, I looked toward the hem. She nodded, moaning with the effort, and I ran my fingers along the bottom of her dress until I found a hard lump. I could make out the shape of a metal coin, then another and another. Money she had hidden away, unbeknownst to my father. Money that would allow my escape.

The thought of starting a new life alone, without her, brought tears streaming down my cheeks. A low moan, hardly louder than a whisper, rumbled from Mother’s throat, and I realized she was trying to comfort me, that witnessing my sorrow brought more pain than the torments of her body. Determined not to add to her suffering, I suppressed my sobs and forced a smile.

“Do not worry,” I said. “I will find a place at the castle. I will do you proud.”

Her hands suddenly gripped my forearms, and I flinched at the sharp pressure of her fingernails. My fever had not yet fully subsided, but her skin felt like fire against mine. She could no longer speak, only breathe quickly and shallowly, as one does when climbing a steep hill. I can hardly bear to think upon the memory: my beloved mother, so close to death yet so desperate to protect me. A single word escaped her parched lips. It sounded like “pell,” though it might just have easily been “bell.” Was she warning me away? Urging me to go? Frantic, I asked her what it meant, but she could emit no more than a hoarse rasp.

“I will fetch water,” I said, frantic to do something, anything, to ease her distress.

I struggled up from the bed. One of my brothers’ first duties in the morning had been to fetch water from the well, but when had that last been done? The pail stood between the doorway and the fireplace, as if it had been dropped in a rush. I peered inside and saw a shallow pool of water barely covering the bottom. It was enough to wet a corner of my chemise, and I carried it, dripping, to the bed.

But I was too late. My mother’s eyes were closed, and she lay motionless, her face horribly altered by the ravages of disease but free of the rigor of pain. She was at peace. I crumpled by the side of the bed, surrendering to despair. Grief and shock weighed down my weakened body, and I might have been a newborn again, unable to speak or stand. Without my mother, my protector, I had nothing. I sat slumped on hands and knees for what felt like hours, so drained by the ordeal of her death that I could not even cry.

The only sound in the room came from Nairn’s shuddering breaths. One after the other they came, slow but increasingly steady. Grimly, I forced myself to rise from the floor. My brother’s face was flushed, but his skin did not blaze with heat as my mother’s had. I might yet salvage one life.