A Lady Under Siege

18

Thomas had for many nights been in the habit of staying up late at Daphne’s bedside, propping himself up with pillows on a divan, watching his daughter by candlelight. Some nights he called for the night nurse and returned to his own bedroom to sleep; on others the soft pillows and dim flickering light caused his eyes to droop and shut, and in the morning he would awake to a cold room, sore-necked and fully clothed. This night was something new—when he awoke the candle was still lit, and the night nurse stood over him with a look of concern on her face.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I thought you called me, Sire.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You were talking quite strenuously,” she suggested.

“Was I? Yes, likely I was.”

He remembered now, and remembering, he sprang to his feet in excitement, colliding with the hapless nurse in his zeal. He caught her by her arms before she fell, righted her, then hurried to the bed and his sleeping daughter. He leaned in close and whispered eagerly, “She hears me, Daphne. The woman of my dreams hears me.”

To the nurse he barked, “Go and see that Lady Sylvanne is roused and brought to me—No, on second thought, I’ll pay her a visit. I must speak to her at once.”

“Then should I—” the night nurse began, but he had already hurried past her out the door.

THE GUARDSMAN ON DUTY outside Sylvanne’s room had fallen asleep, a young soldier hardly more than a boy propped up against the stone wall, resting his cheek on the pole of his halberd. When Thomas snatched it from him and brought the bayonet-like tip to his chin, the poor lad nearly died of fright. “Forgive me, m’Lord,” he pled.

Thomas tested the blade of the oversized axe and proclaimed, “I should behead you here and now.”

“As you wish Sire, as you wish,” the young man sputtered.

“I wish you would stay awake,” Thomas scolded him. “Now find the key and let me in. If you’re unlucky I’ll remember this later, but for now I’m intent on a greater purpose. Hand me that candle.”

The soldier did as told. Thomas entered a small anteroom, where he could make out the maid Mabel lying on a small cot against the wall. Fussing in her sleep, she turned and rolled away from the candle’s light. The door to Sylvanne’s room was open a crack. Thomas pushed it wide and entered. She lay upon a large bed in the center of the room. He moved quickly to her bedside, and called her name softly.

Sylvanne heard a voice, and felt herself shaken awake. She opened her eyes and saw Thomas standing over her bed, whispering, “M’Lady, m’Lady.”

She recoiled from him in fright. As she gained her senses her fear turned to fury.

“You’ll not have me,” she whispered. Finding her voice, she shouted for Mabel.

“Have you? You misjudge me,” Thomas chided her. He announced eagerly, “I bring wonderful news—the woman of the future, the one of whom I spoke, who looks your twin, who lives in my dreams—she also lives in dreams, or so it seems. She told me she is inside you, she has seen me, and it’s my hope that she is watching me now, and hears me as I speak.”

“How dare you come to me in the night like this,” Sylvanne hissed. “Have you not compromised me enough? Get out!”

“Madame, Madame. I know now what you are about. You have no more secrets from me. This Meghan—from her vantage point inside your mind, she sees all, and can tell me what goes on there. Judith and Holofernes! You see! I know all about it. She is the one who told me—how else could I know?”

“Mabel!” Sylvanne screamed. From the other room came the sound of Mabel grunting as she woke. She came running quickly, quite disoriented, and made more so by the sight of Lord Thomas in her Lady’s chamber. Sylvanne fixed her with an accusing glare. “What lies have you been telling this man?”

“Nothing, ma’am. I’ve spent no time with him at all.”

“M’Lady, whether you believe me or not has no further relevance,” Thomas interjected. “I speak to another, one whose soul has migrated the centuries and lodges now in your mind. She is unfelt by you, that much is apparent. Yet she sees me, and hears me, and when I communicate with her you become a mere vessel of transmission. When the sun rises in a few hours I intend to bring you to Daphne’s bedside, where you will listen to my physician describe his remedy. Through you that other entity, the woman Meghan, whom I pray may be my daughter’s saviour, will be informed. Even though you don’t intend it, you do me a great service, and I am grateful.”

He spoke with such enthusiasm that Sylvanne almost believed him for a moment. She put a hand to her chest as if seeking her heart’s pulse. “I don’t feel her,” she said.

Thomas answered without hesitation, “I’m certain she is there. I do not merely believe it, I know it, absolutely.”

A FEW HOURS LATER, with the arrival of daylight, the three of them gathered at Daphne’s bedside—Thomas, Sylvanne, and the Physician, a portly, ruddy-cheeked man of middle age named Blunt, who had laid out his tools upon the bed beside the girl, spreading them atop the same swath of coarse hemp cloth in which he normally kept them wrapped. He took hold of Daphne’s forearm and removed a filthy bandage. On her white flesh, just below her elbow, a pus-filled, swollen wound gaped grotesquely. Thomas and Sylvanne watched as he took up a rust-flecked scalpel that looked more suited to woodworking, and gently scratched it across the wound. Pus gushed out and soaked into a dirty rag he had placed under her arm.

“And so you see, this is how I’ve been attending to her of a morning, for some weeks now,” he pronounced. “Of the four humours, she withholds too much yellow bile—this is how we encourage it to the surface so as to drain it off. As you can see, the blood itself is corrupted.” With the scalpel he made a small incision near the wound. Blood began to trickle down her arm into the rag, soaking it crimson red. “It’s absolutely vital to allow some blood to escape, in order that poison burble out with it. The poison concentrates around the wound.”

Thomas turned to Sylvanne, and said gravely, “Do you see what is being done? Give it full attention.” To the Physician he said, “An authority I trust has opined that fresh vegetables and fruits, oranges in particular, might be beneficial.”

“Oranges?” the Physician scoffed. “Worst possible thing. Too acidic. And besides, where would you get them?”

“I’ve already sent someone to the south,” Thomas said. “I’m hoping that he might with luck find a trading ship arrived from Spain.”

“I’ve thirty years experience. Never heard of oranges causing anything but cankers in the mouth. Do you wish to give her those?”

“There’s plenty you don’t know,” Thomas replied.

“I’m not a magician, although I wish I were, Sire. I use what cures I’ve found success in previously. Fresh vegetables? In this case I trust more in what I’ve prescribed—the bark of an oak sapling, boiled with the guts of a songbird, given morning and night. Oak for strength, and the songbird to restore her to girlish vitality. Grant me some credit, and excuse me for speaking plainly, but she has lived much longer than her mother did after she acquired similar symptoms. You should have engaged me in her mother’s case, instead of those quacks you relied upon.”

“But I see no progress here,” Thomas protested. “She declines more slowly than her mother, that is certain. Yet she still declines.” Again he turned to Sylvanne. “Look upon her as closely as you can,” he exhorted. “Take in every clue, as much as your senses can absorb.”

Sylvanne stood over Daphne and reached out to her face, solemnly stroking her cheek with her fingers. The absence of sympathy or pity in the gesture unnerved Thomas as he looked upon her. Suddenly Daphne’s eyes opened. She looked quizzically into Sylvanne’s face.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“This is Lady Sylvanne, darling,” Thomas interceded. “She’s come to help you.”

“You’re an innocent in this, and I wish you no ill,” Sylvanne said neutrally. “But your father suffers delusions.”

“Stop,” Thomas demanded.

“He fantasizes that I might cure you, yet he gives me only reasons to wish him suffering and grief. Do you think that wise of him?”

“Close your mouth!”

Daphne, confused and troubled, looked plaintively to her father.

“Daddy?”

“She doesn’t mean it, darling.”

“I do—” Sylvanne meant to say more, but Thomas slapped his fleshy palm across her mouth. She bit at it, and he swore at her, vulgar words he immediately regretted using in front of his daughter. He yelled for the guard to return her to her quarters. The same young man from the previous night was still on duty. He made to take hold of her, but Sylvanne snarled at him, “You needn’t handle me. I know the way.”

“Before you go, I’ll say one more thing to you,” Thomas told her. He came and blocked her exit, looking straight into her eyes. “I speak now to that other. To Meghan. Did you see? Did you see enough? I pray you did. Please let me know it. I live for this exchange.”

Sylvanne returned his gaze, staring at him with a fiery rage. “Are you finished? Then get out of my way.” He stepped aside and she strode out the door.

Thomas looked at the bite marks she had left across his palm. He held it up to the Physician. “Lucky she didn’t break the skin, or I’d have need of you too,” he told him.

On the bed Daphne shuddered for a moment, like an underfed puppy. She looked at her father with wide, inquisitive eyes. “Daddy, why did she say you killed her husband?”

“It’s a long story, my darling,” he sighed. “Not one I’m prepared to tell just yet. Perhaps if all goes well.”