“Aye. She suffered from the same illness as Isobel. She died the summer of my twelfth year.”
No wonder he’d taken to Isobel so. “I’m so sorry. Do you know what it is?”
“I doona know, lass, but it doesna matter. There is no much that can be done for a great many illnesses here in the Highlands. Only superstitious treatments from witch doctors or healers that know no more of healing than the horses in the stables are available here. There are other places in the world, places I’ve seen with my own eyes that are far more advanced, but they are too far and Isobel too weak to get to them.”
“How long does it last?”
Throwing a handful of chopped vegetables into the water, he turned and moved to stand next to me, his eyes heavy and sad.
“Once she started fainting, she lasted no more than a fortnight.”
I nodded, looking down into the red-colored water and thinking on how short her breath already was. Each lift of her chest was a visible struggle.
Before I could respond, a gust of wind whipped the window Adwen had left cracked to help vent the fire wide open, sending a chill through the room that nearly iced the chilly water my hands were submerged in. Snow scattered the stone ground. I removed my hands, shaking them before moving to look outside.
In the course of an hour, the castle and the small island it sat on had been snowed in, the bridge leading to the mainland entirely impassable.
One name came to mind as I looked out at the wintery mess.
“As ill as she may be, I doona think ’tis Isobel we should fear for this night.”
Adwen’s words mirrored my thoughts exactly. I could hear the strain in his voice as he spoke, every syllable laced with his concern.
Orick had yet to return home.
CHAPTER 20
I woke sometime during the darkest part of the night, lulled awake by the sound of Cooper’s soft voice from the direction of Isobel’s bed.
The stress of the day had exhausted everyone, and we all dealt with our fatigue in different ways. Adwen couldn’t sit still and paced aimlessly up and down the castle halls as he worried over his friend. He attempted, shortly after finishing his broth for Isobel, to leave the castle to go out in search of Orick, but we collectively stopped him from doing so.
I understood his desire to try and do something, but anyone with half a brain could look out the windows and see that nothing good would come from Adwen leaving in the middle of such a storm. With the bridge now impassable, any search for Orick right now would be in vain. God willing, Orick was smart enough to hole up somewhere in the village before the worst part of the storm.
Still, despite our protests, in the end it was Isobel, with her head still gashed open and with what had to be a headache bad enough to make her want to bash her head in completely, who was able to make him see reason.
All she had to do was threaten to get up out of bed and follow him out into the snow, and he promised to stay inside the castle for the rest of the night. We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to the sound of his footsteps trudging up and down the hallways above us.
As the evening passed, Gregor fell asleep next to the fire. Shortly after, Isobel and Cooper followed suit. I fought to stay awake, feeling it necessary to make sure that Adwen wasn’t completely alone in his sleepless worry but, as the hours passed without a sign of him other than his heavy footsteps above, my willpower lost out to the strength of my fatigue.
I didn’t know how long I’d slept but when the soft whispers from the bed stirred me, I looked up to see the fire still burning strongly and knew it couldn’t have been overlong.
“Isobel?” Cooper uttered her name in his version of a whisper, but it was a skill he’d still not mastered.
Isobel’s voice was quieter, and I had to lean to the other side of my chair to be able to hear her response.
“Aye.”
“Can I ask you a question? It’s not a good one to ask, but I want to know.”
“Ye can ask me anything ye wish, lad. For children, all questions are good ones. Curiosity is a bonny way to learn.”
Silence followed and I wondered for a moment if Cooper had succeeded in a true whisper and I’d simply not heard his question—then came the words that stung at my heart.
“Are you afraid to die?”
“No.”
I expected a pause, a moment of shock at his bold curiosity or a brief hesitation to think on the depth of such a question. Instead, she answered him quickly, confidently. It must have been something she’d asked herself many times over.
“Really?”
“Aye, really. I am no afraid to die. I willna be alone when my last breath leaves me. My mother, father, and a sister have long since passed. Still, no being afraid doesna mean that I want to die; nor does it mean that I am ready to do so. ’Tis sadness that lingers in me, no fear.”