"I know. " "Not me," Maisie said. "You. " Clara looked down at her own hand, the one Maisie was holding. Her hands were cold from the wet cloths. "Sorry," Clara said. "It's okay," Maisie murmured.
She didn't let go. This was the moment years later when Clara was a grown woman with her own kitchen and her own children and her own life that she would think of first when she thought of that night. Not the fear, not the fever, not the sound of the storm. Maisy's small hand holding her cold fingers and saying it was okay. At 11:30, Margaret Vale arrived.
This was not expected by anyone. Wesley heard the buggy before he saw the light, and he was at the door before the knock came. Because Wesley was always at the door before the knock. And he opened it to find Margaret Vale standing on the porch in a rain soaked coat with a bag over her arm and an expression that was not her usual expression, not the carefully maintained neutrality she brought to official visits, but something more direct and harder to name. I saw Boon ride past my house, she said at this hour in the storm.
She looked at Wesley. Which of them is it? It was not entirely a question. Maisy Wesley said fever. Margaret came in without being invited, which was notable because Margaret was a woman who waited to be invited, always as a matter of principle.
She handed Wesley her coat and went straight to the bedroom doorway and looked at Clara and Maisie, and then she came into the room and set her bag down and began unpacking it with the efficient, unscentimental movements of a woman who had apparently been in situations like this before. "How long has she had the fever? " she said to Clara. I found her at 10:15. She seemed fine at 9:00. The cloth is the right idea.
You're doing it correctly. Margaret took out a small brown bottle. This is willow bark tincture. It won't break the fever, but it'll slow it. Can she swallow?
She was talking a little while ago. Margaret measured a small amount into a spoon with the precision of someone who had done this before. And she helped Maisie take it, and Maisie took it with a grimace and then lay back, and Margaret put the cloth back on her forehead. Then she sat down in the chair beside the bed, not standing, not supervising. She sat down the way you sit down when you have decided to stay.
Clara looked at her. You can go be with the others, Margaret said. I'll sit with her. I don't want Clara. Margaret looked at her directly.
You've been in here for 2 hours. Go eat something and come back. I'll call you if anything changes. Clara stood for a moment and then she went in the main room. Wesley watched her come out and sit at the table and put her head down on her arms, and he went to the kitchen and got the last of the bread and a cup of water and brought it to her without comment because that was what you did.
Clara ate without looking up. The storm went on. Around midnight, Wesley stationed himself at the window with a blanket around his shoulders, watching the road. He did not tell anyone why he was watching the road. He did not need to.
Everyone in the room knew the fire crackled. Rain hit the windows. Margaret's voice came low from the bedroom. Not her usual voice. She was saying something to Maisie, something quiet and steady.
And Maisy's voice came back in the thin way that meant she was awake, but just barely. Eddie fell asleep near the fireplace somewhere around 12:30, and Rose had been asleep since before midnight. And Ruth stayed awake because Rose staying asleep depended on Ruth being awake. A dynamic that no one had ever explained, but that was simply true. Jonah had not moved from the hallway outside the bedroom door.
"You should sleep," Wesley told him. "I know," Jonah said. "Are you going to? " "No. " Wesley accepted this and went back to the window. At 10 1 in the morning, the lamp oil in the main room burned down to where it needed to be trimmed. And Benny, who was still awake, sitting in the corner with his knees pulled to his chest, and his eyes open, got up quietly and trimmed it without waking anyone, which was another thing that would have seemed impossible 2 months ago, and which he did as naturally as breathing.
He went back to his corner. He looked at the string on his wrist, the one Calder had tied there on the second morning. It had been replaced twice since then. Then it wore out and frayed and Calder had retied it without being asked and Benny had let him. And now the third string sat on his wrist, and Benny looked at it in the low lamplight.
He didn't take it off. At 12 minutes 2 in the morning, Wesley heard the horse. He was at the door before the sound fully registered as hoof beatats, and he pulled it open to the rain and the dark, the chape of Rook coming up the road at a walk that said the horse was done and had been done for the last mile, but had kept going anyway. Behind Calder, another horse. A man Calder had clearly roused from bed in a coat thrown over nightc clothes with a bag strapped to his saddle.
Wesley stepped back from the door and called, "Not loudly, he's here. " Something released in the room. It was not audible and it was not visible, but it was real. The particular quality of the air changing when the thing you have been holding your breath about finally comes through the door. Calder came in soaked through the kind of wet that has gone past uncomfortable and arrived somewhere beyond it. He stood in the main room doorway and his eyes went around the room counting.