The sky was turning pale blue and a star or two had come out. There were not very many people abroad now, but as Amber leaned out she saw a boy, going down the middle of the street, hold his nose as he passed her house.
She looked down and saw a guard there, lounging against the wall with his halberd on his shoulder. That meant the red cross had been marked on her door too and they were shut in together for forty days and nights, or until both of them were dead. A few days before she would have been terrified; now she accepted it almost with indifference.
“Guard!” She spoke softly, and he heaved himself away from the wall and stood out from it to look up at her. “Will you give this letter to someone to post for me? I’ll give you a shilling.” He nodded his head, she tossed down the letter and the coin, and closed the window again. But for a moment she stood looking out, like a prisoner, at the sky and the trees. Then she turned and once more spread the quilts up over Bruce.
It was almost nine when the nurse arrived. Amber heard someone below talking to the guard and then a rap on the door. She took a candle and hurried down to admit her. “Why are you so late?” she demanded. “The doctor told me he’d send you here in the middle of the afternoon!”
“I come from my last patient, mam, and he wasn’t a quick one to die.”
Amber ran up the stairs ahead of the nurse, holding the candle high to make a light for her, but the old woman mounted slowly, breathing hard and bracing her hands on her knees at every step to boost herself. At the top Amber turned and looked down, surveying her narrowly. What she saw was not reassuring.
The woman was perhaps sixty, and fat. Her face was round and flabby, but she had a sharp-pointed nose and her mouth was compressed into a thin line. She was wearing a gnarled yellow wig set crookedly on her head and a dark-red velvet dress, soiled and worn shiny, which exposed her sloping shoulders and fitted too tight across the great loose breasts. She had an evil smell, reasty and stale.
“What’s your name?” Amber asked her, as she came puffing to the top.
“Spong, mam. Mrs. Spong.”
“I’m Mrs. Dangerfield. The patient’s in here.” She walked into the bedroom and Mrs. Spong waddled after her, her stupid blue eyes rolling over the splendid furnishings. She did not even glance at Bruce until at last, in exasperation, Amber said, “Well!”
Then she started slightly and gave a foolish half-grin, exposing a few blackened teeth in her gums. “Oh—that’s the patient.” She observed him for a moment. “He don’t look so good, does he?”
“No, he doesn’t!” snapped Amber, angry and disappointed to have been sent this stupid old woman. “You’re a nurse, aren’t you! Tell me what to do. How can I help him? I’ve done everything the doctor said—”
“Well, mam, if you’ve did everything the doctor said there’s nothin’ more I can tell ye.”
“But how does he look? You’ve seen others sick of it—how does he look compared with them?”
Spong stared at him for a moment, sucking on her teeth. “Well, mam,” she said at last, “some of ‘em looked worse. And some of ’em looked better. But I tell you truly—he don’t look good. Now, mam, have ye got some food for a poor starvin’ old woman? Last place I was they didn’t have nothin’ to eat. I vow and swear—”
Amber gave her a glare of disgust, but as Bruce suddenly began to retch again she rushed to hold the pan for him, motioning toward the kitchen with one hand. “Out there.”
She felt more tired than ever, and completely discouraged. This filthy vulgar old creature would be no use to her at all. She would not have let her touch Bruce, and it did not seem likely the nurse would do so anyway. The best Amber could hope would be that she might induce her to watch him tonight so she could have a few hours of sleep, and tomorrow send her away and get someone better.
Half an hour went by and she heard not a sound from Spong. At last, in a fury, she rushed out to find her immaculate kitchen littered and dirty. The food hutch stood open; there was a broken egg on the floor; great chunks had been cut from the ham and the quarter-wheel of cheese. Spong looked around at her in surprise. She had a piece of ham in one hand and the bottle of stale champagne—which they had opened the night before—in the other.
“Well!” said Amber sarcastically. “I hope you won’t mighty near starve here!”
“No, mam!” agreed Spong. “I’d rather nurse the quality, let me tell you. They always got more to eat.”
“Go in there and watch his Lordship. I’ve got to get some food ready for him. Call me if he throws off the blankets or starts to vomit—but don’t do anything yourself.”
“His Lordship, is it? And you’re her Ladyship, I doubt not?”
“Mind your own business, and get on in there. Go on!”
Spong shrugged her shoulders and went off, and though Amber clenched her teeth together, a sullen scowl on her face, she began immediately to prepare the tray. A few hours earlier she had given him a bowlful of the soup left over from their supper. Resentful at being disturbed, he had sworn at her and tried to shove the spoon away, but she had persisted until she poured it down him. Within a quarter of an hour he vomited it up again.
This time, as she held the basin beneath his chin while he threw up the soup, she was so filled with frustration and despair that she wept softly. Spong was not at all concerned. She sat sprawled in a chair five or six feet from the bed, drinking her wine and gnawing at the last of the cold duck. She flipped the bones out the window, exchanging bawdy pleasantries with the guard below, until Amber rushed in from the kitchen in a blazing anger.
“Don’t you dare open that window again!” she cried, and slammed it shut and locked it. Spong jumped. “What are you trying to do?”
“Lord, mam, I wasn’t doin’ the gentleman no harm.”
“Do as I say and keep the window closed—or I’ll make you sorry for it! Filthy old sot!” she muttered beneath her breath, and went back to finish washing the dishes and putting her kitchen in order. Sarah Goodegroome had been a meticulous housekeeper, and now that Amber had the work to do herself again she intended to have her rooms spotless if it meant working eighteen hours a day—which it probably would.
Bruce was increasingly restless and violent, which Spong informed her was most likely the effect of the rising carbuncle. Two of her patients, she said placidly, had been unable to stand the pain and had gone mad and killed themselves.
To watch him suffer and to be unable to help or ease his pain was an agony. She hung over him constantly, trying to anticipate his every need. She replaced the blankets each time he flung them off and put the mustard-plaster back again and again—once, as she bent above him, he struck out violently at her with his clenched fist, and if she had not moved quickly the blow would have knocked her down. The plague-boil had risen steadily out of his groin until now it was the full size of a tennis-ball and the taut-stretched skin over it had thickened and turned dark.
Spong sat humming or chanting to herself, softly beating her thigh with an empty wine-bottle. Most of the time Amber was so busy, or so haunted with worry over Bruce, she forgot that she was there—and otherwise she ignored her.
But at eleven o’clock, when she had everything clean for the night and was herself undressed and washed, she turned to the old woman. “I only got about three hours sleep last night, Mrs. Spong, and I’m tired as a dog. If you’ll watch his Lordship for three or four hours you can call me and then I will. We’ll have to take turns, because someone’s got to be with him every moment. Will you cover him again if he throws the blankets off?”