“Right here, Perce.” I’m trying to keep the shudder out of my voice, and failing. “I’m right here, it’s . . .” I’ve got no clue what I’m supposed to say. “It’s all right.” God, I sound so daft.
“It’s bright,” he murmurs. His voice is muzzy and slurred—he hardly sounds like himself—and his eyes still aren’t focused. Seems he’s having a hard time keeping them open at all—he keeps squinting like he’s looking into the sun. His hands are clamped around my coat, so tight his knuckles are blotched, and when I sit him upon the bed, he clutches me tighter, his voice pitching. “Don’t leave me!”
“I won’t.”
He seems so distressed that I don’t want to peel him off, so I stoop there, my hands around his, trying to convince him to lie down, with my voice shaking. His shoulders slump suddenly, head falling forward against my chest, and I think he’s going to let me go, but then his fingers go tight and he tries to stand again. “I need my violin. Where is it? Where’s my violin? I need it now.”
“I’ve got it, Percy.” Felicity appears at my side, prying Percy’s fingers off my coat and guiding him down onto the bed. “Try to relax, it’s all right. You’re safe now, relax.” On the other side of the cabin, the apothecary pulls a medicine chest from a shelf and begins rummaging through its drawers, bottles clinking together in a soft chorus from inside.
I can tell that I’m useless, so I slink backward, onto the deck and into the cool night air. Above the water, the stars are spread in smudgy handfuls across the twilight. I can still hear the music of the fair, and closer by a slow tune plucked out upon a mandolin, one lonely string at a time. On the bank, crickets are purring. I sit down with my back to the railing, turning my face to the sky and letting the shaky fatigue settle through me.
Turns out, panic is rather exhausting, and I fall asleep without meaning to, my head tipped back against the railing of the boat, before anyone has come out.
9
It feels like I’ve hardly closed my eyes when Felicity is shaking me awake. Sunrise is a spilled glass of wine across the horizon, stars fading back into imaginary things. Someone put a blanket over me while I slept and my knees are aching after so long folded up to my chest.
In spite of the night we’ve had, Felicity looks very awake. Her eyes are wide and alert, and she’s undone the pins from her hair and woven it into a plait that swings over her shoulder as she leans toward me. I, in contrast, feel like a washed-up carcass of myself. My eyes are crusty, and a thin line of spittle has run down my chin while I slept. I swipe it away. I haven’t shaved in a week and I’m starting to get fuzzy.
“Are you well?” Felicity asks.
“What—me? Yes. How’s Percy?”
She looks down at the deck and my heart seizes up. “Sore and weary. He’s trying to rest but he’s been too agitated to stay asleep for long. He’s going to be fine,” she adds, for I must look stricken. “Only a matter of time.”
“Sorry, I should have . . . I should have stayed up with him. With you.”
“You were tired. And there wasn’t much to be done. Pascal bled him and he took some mugwort, so we’ll see if that has any effect.”
“Pascal?”
“The apothecary. The man you found.”
“Does he know what’s wrong with Percy?”
Felicity slides to her knees in front of me, one hand on the rail. “I think you’d best speak to Percy.”
“What do I need to speak to him about?” I ask, dread creeping around me and tightening like a noose.
“He’s got something to tell you and I don’t want to be the go-between.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I should probably go speak to Percy, then,” I say, like it was my idea, and pull myself up. Felicity doesn’t reply. She takes my spot on the deck as I descend the few steps into the belly of the boat.
The cabin is still dark, but they’ve lit a few more lanterns and the shadows sway as the current rocks us. It feels like being drunk, a little tipsy and unsteady, but with none of the warm, comfortable buzz. The air smells of incense and seawater, and there’s a cup of tea resting on the floor beside the bed, steam rising from the surface and threading its fingers with dust motes drifting through the pale light.
Percy is curled up in the corner of the box bed, stripped down to only rumpled breeches and a clean shirt, the translucent material clinging to his skin with sweat. There’s a violet bruise beneath his eye like a crack in a glass windowpane, and a thread of bandage tied off in the crook of one elbow. A small blush of blood has seeped through it. He looks more tired than I’ve ever seen him. His hair is undone from its queue, and it falls in long coils around his face.
I ease myself down on the opposite corner of the bed, one leg pulled up under me, and Percy opens his eyes. “Morning,” I say quietly. Percy doesn’t reply. The sound of the sea kicking against the side of the boat fills the silence.
I’m swallowing the urge to say something daft because I hate this taut band between us. It feels like the walls are closing in. Say something, Monty. Be a friend, be a gentleman, be a human being. It’s Percy, your best friend, Percy who you’ve gotten foxed with, who plays you his violin, who used to spit apple seeds at you from high up in the orchard treetops. Percy who you kissed in Paris, who looks so damn beautiful, even now. Say something kind. Something that will make him stop looking so alone and afraid. But I can’t come up with a damn thing. All I want to do is dash out of reach of whatever it is he’s about to say.
Percy presses his forehead to the wall. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. His voice has a drowsy tint to it.
“For what?”
“For what happened.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Perce. You couldn’t have done—”
“It’s epilepsy,” he says, and I stop.
“What?”
“Epilepsy,” he repeats, then covers his face with his hands so it comes out muffled when he says it again. “I have epilepsy.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I blurt, “Well, so long as that’s all it is.”
I hope it might make him laugh, but instead he lets out a tense sigh through his teeth. “Can you please not be yourself right now?”
I look down at the bed, my hands worrying the worn stitching of the blanket. “So you . . . you’re ill.”
“Yes.”
“Epilepsy.”
“Yes.”
I know almost nothing about epilepsy. Devils and possession and insanity, those are the sorts of things I’ve heard of, but they’re the stuff of horror stories that end with the moral “Thank God each day for your health.” And besides, this is Percy, the best lad I know. None of those things can be right.
“And there isn’t . . .” I halt, and I swear I’m so rotten at this that even the silence winces. I’m not sure what I’m allowed to ask and what I shouldn’t and what questions I’m comfortable hearing the answers to.
Is it contagious?
Does it hurt?
When will you be well again?
Are you going to die?
Are you going to die?
Are you going to die?
I wish we could go back to the moment before he told me and I could just keep not knowing. “Is there a cure? Or treatment, or anything?”