“Amber—Why—why—aren’t you—gone—”
She looked at him warily, like a trapped animal. “I am, Bruce. I am going. I’m just going now.” Her fingers, spread out on the quilt before her, moved backward a little, but she could not stir.
He let go of her hair, gave another deep sigh, and his head rolled over sideways. “God go with you. Go on—while—” The words slurred off and he was almost quiet again, though still softly mumbling.
Slowly and carefully she moved away from him, genuinely afraid, for she had heard many awful tales of plague-victims gone mad. She was sweating with relief when at last she stood on her feet again and out of his reach. But the tears were gone and she realized that if she was to be of any use to him she must hold herself in control, do what she could to make him comfortable and pray that God would not let him die.
With quick resolution she went to work again.
She bathed his face and arms and combed his hair—he had not been wearing a periwig when she had met him at the wharf—smoothed the bed and laid another cold compress on his forehead. His lips were parched and beginning to split from the fever, and she covered them with pomade. She brought fresh towels from the nursery, and gathered all the soiled articles into a great bag, though of course no laundress would take it if it became known that there was plague in the house. And all the while she kept one eye on him, tried to understand him when he muttered something and to anticipate what he wanted so that he would not have to make the effort of reaching or moving himself.
About six the streets began to take on life. Across the way an apprentice let down the shutters of a small haberdashery shop, a coach rattled by, and she heard the familiar cry: “Milk-maid below!”
Amber threw open the window. “Wait there! I want some!” She glanced at Bruce and then ran out, scooping a few coins from the dressing-table as she went past, rushed into the kitchen for a pail and down the stairs. “I want a gallon, please.”
The girl, pink-cheeked and healthy, was one of those who came in every day from Finsbury or Clerkenwell. She grinned at Amber and slid the yoke off her shoulders to pour the fresh warm milk. “Going to be another mighty hot day, I doubt not,” she said conversationally.
Amber was listening for some sound from Bruce—she had left the window open just a crack—and she answered with an absent-minded nod. At that moment a deep boom filled the air. It was the passing-bell and it tolled three times—somewhere in the parish a man lay dying, and those who heard it were to pray for his soul. Amber and the milk-maid exchanged quick apprehensive glances, then both of them closed their eyes and murmured a prayer.
“Three pence, mam,” said the girl, and Amber saw her eyes going over her black gown with a sharp glint of suspicion.
She gave her the three pennies, picked up the heavy pail and started to go back into the house. At the door she turned. “Will you be here tomorrow?”
The woman had shouldered her yoke and was already several feet away. “Not tomorrow, mam. I’ll not be comin’ into town for a while. There’s no tellin’ these days which one might have the sickness.” Her eyes went down over Amber again.
Amber turned away and went inside. She found Bruce lying just as she had left him, but even as she came to the doorway he suddenly began to retch and tried to sit up. She put down the pail and ran toward him. His eyeballs were no longer bloodshot but had turned yellow and sunk into his skull. He had obviously lost all contact with things outside himself and seemed neither to hear nor to see; he moved and acted only by instinct.
Later she made several more purchases. She got cheese, butter, eggs, a cabbage, onions and turnips and lettuce, a loaf of sugar, a pound of bacon, and some fruit.
She drank some milk and ate part of the cold duck left from supper the night before, but when she suggested food to Bruce he did not answer and when she put a glass of milk to his lips he pushed it away. She did not know whether to insist that he eat or not, and decided that it would be best to wait for a doctor—she hoped to see one going past the house, for they carried gold-headed canes to distinguish them. Surely, with so many people sending for them at every hour of the day and night, she would see one soon. She was afraid to leave him alone long enough to go for one herself.
And then at last she found that his vomit was streaked with uncoagulated blood. That scared her violently and she decided that she could wait no longer.
She took her keys, left the building and ran along the street toward where she remembered having seen a doctor’s sign, pushing her way through the crowds of porters and vendors and housewives. A passing coach left such a cloud of dust that she could taste the grit in her mouth; an apprentice bawled out some impertinent compliment which reminded her that her gown was undone; and a filthy old beggar, his hands and face covered with running sores, reached out to catch at her skirts. She passed three houses which were marked with the red cross and had a guard before each.
She arrived at the doctor’s house out of breath and with hard dry pains in her chest, gave the knocker an impatient clatter and then, when no one answered, banged it furiously. She waited for at least a minute and was just picking up her skirts to leave when a woman answered. She held a pomander-ball to her nose and stared at Amber suspiciously.
“Where’s the doctor? I’ve got to see ’im this instant!”
The woman answered her coldly, as though resentful that she had come at all. “Dr. Barton is making his calls.”
“Send him the moment he gets back. The Sign of the Plume in St. Martin’s Lane, up the street and around the corner—”
She raised her arm and pointed, and then she whirled and ran off, pressing her hand against the sharp pain that stabbed in her left side. But to her immense relief she found that Bruce, though he had vomited again—bringing up more blood—and had flung off the blankets, was otherwise as she had left him.
She waited nervously for the doctor. A hundred times she looked out the window, swearing beneath her breath at his slowness. But it was mid-afteroon before he arrived and she flew down the stairs to let him in.
“Thank God you’ve come! Hurry!” Already she was on her way back up again.
He was a tired old man, smoking a pipeful of tobacco, and he started wearily after her. “Hurrying won’t do any good, madame.”
She turned and looked at him sharply, angry that he apparently did not consider this patient to be of unusual importance. But nevertheless she was relieved to have him there. He could tell her how Bruce was, and what she should do for him. Ordinarily she shared the popular skepticism regarding doctors, but now she would have believed implicitly the idlest words of any quack or charlatan.
She arrived at the bedside before he did and stood there, watching him walk slowly into the room, her eyes big and apprehensive. Bruce lay now in a coma, though he was still mumbling and moving restlessly about. Dr. Barton stopped short of the bed by several feet, and he held a handkerchief to his nose. For a moment he looked at him without speaking.
“Well?” demanded Amber. “How is he?”
The doctor gave a faint shrug. “Madame, you ask me to answer the impossible. I do not know. Is there a bubo?”
“Yes. It started to rise last night.”
She turned back the quilts so that he could see the lump in Bruce’s groin, enlarged now to the size of a half-submerged tennis-ball; the skin over it looked stretched and red and shining.
“Does it seem to cause him much pain?”
“I touched it once, by accident, and he gave a terrible yell.”
“The rising of the plague-boil is the most painful stage of the disease. But unless there is one they seldom live.”
“Then he will live, Doctor? He’ll get well?” Her eyes glistened eagerly.