Page 81 of Malady

All jests aside, I know what is coming.

I have been this frightened before, when I was clinging to the inside of a well with my ruined leg folded beneath me and black water lapping against my chest. My fingernails scraped against the stone as I struggled to keep my grip, my hands so cold that I could barely feel them. Far above me, that little circle of daylight remained impossibly out of reach, but at least I had somewhere to direct my fear. Every shadow passing across the opening brought the hope that somebody had heard my screams and come with a rope.

And then Gideon found me.

I was crying with relief before I could even make out what he was saying. I was certain he would fetch help, that within minutes somebody would haul me over the edge and carry me somewhere warm.

Instead, he ran for the priest, and the two of them knelt in the weeds and asked God what sin of mine had led me there, leaving me in the freezing dark until the blacksmith finally heard my screams hours later.

“You are thinking very loudly,” Iscairn says.

I drag my eyes away from the ceiling as he lowers himself into a crouch beside the bed and presses the freezing cloth across my forehead. The cold bites through the fever at once, sending water into my hairline and down beside my ear, and for a few blessed seconds I can do nothing but groan and let my head roll towards him, looking up at his mask until he lifts the linen away to cool it again.

“You still don’t know, do you?” I murmur. “What happens when I die?”

He wrings the cloth out over the bowl. “I do not.”

“So there could be something?”

“There could.”

“Or nothing.”

“I apologise,” he says quietly. “I know that is not much comfort.”

I lift one hand and wave it weakly between us. “It’s fine.”

His head tilts.

“All right, it is not fine, but I asked, and you answered.” I close my eyes. “That is already more useful than somebody standing over me and telling me the agony is cleansing my soul.”

The cloth settles over my forehead again, cold enough to ease some of the pressure behind my eyes, and I let myself sink further into the pillow while Iscairn smooths a wet strand of hair away from my face.

“Will you sleep for me?” he asks. “I still have rounds to finish, and I need to feed.”

“Mmm. Yes.” My mouth barely bothers shaping the words. “Go and eat, you fat lard.”

A low chuckle moves through his mask, and his thumb brushes my temple once before he rises from beside the bed.

“Iscairn?” I rasp as he heads for the door.

The black cloak pauses beneath the doorframe. “Yes?”

“I want a pasty. A hot one, with the crust all crimped and the peppery mutton grease soaking straight through the paper.”

Silence sits between us in the gloom. “When you are upright again, Ophelia Harrow, I shall procure you half a dozen.”

“Liar,” I murmur.

The door clicks shut behind him, and I let my eyes fall closed, worrying the edge of the blanket between my fingers.

Because I’m never going to get another pasty, am I?

Nor will I ever walk out onto the moors when the first warm winds of spring come through, or stand in my shop grinding mustard seed until my palms sting. All those ordinary little things I’ve spent my life doing without a second thought, and now I’d give just about anything to do them once more.

Beswick will carry on without me. Winter will come again, the lanes will fill with slush, and somewhere among all the names in Gideon’s parish register, there will be mine.

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