Кэндис Робб - The Apothecary Rose

Even so, he was very ill. Wulfstan hurried. By the time he pushed open Wilton’s shop door, the old monk was panting and bent double, clutching his side. The dimness of the shop and his own weakness blinded him momentarily; he could not see if anyone was in the shop. “God’s peace be with you,” he gasped. No answer. “Nicholas? Lucie?”

The beaded curtain in the kitchen doorway rattled as someone stepped through. “Brother Wulfstan!” Lucie Wilton lifted the hinged counter and took Wulfstan’s hand. “You look dreadful.” She smelled of the outdoors. “Your hands are like ice.”

He straightened up with caution. “You’ve been in the garden.” His breathless, shaky voice surprised him. He’d pushed himself even further than he’d thought.

“We wanted to cover the roses with straw before the snow.” Lucie Wilton held a spirit lamp up to his face. He blinked in the light. “Come back by the kitchen fire. Your cheeks are aflame. You’ll burst your heart hurrying so.”

Wulfstan followed her behind the counter and through to the kitchen, where he accepted a bench beside the fire with humble gratitude. Old age and shortness of breath made impossible the polite habit of protesting against kindness. In the cheery kitchen he smiled on Mistress Wilton, who brightened his heart with beauty, gentleness, courtesy. She would have made her father proud at court, he was certain. Sir Robert was an old fool.

She handed him a cup of warmed wine. “Now what brings you out in the snow? And in such haste?”

He told her the purpose of his errand.

“Camp fever. You are tending a soldier?”

“No longer a soldier. With his gray beard and sad eyes, I think those days are over for him.” Wulfstan glanced away from the kind concern in her face to the door that opened onto the garden. “I hate to steal Nicholas from his roses. Do you perhaps know the proper mixture?”

“Nicholas has not yet tested me on it.”

“I hate to be a bother, but the man is so very ill.”

Lucie patted him on the shoulder. “Rest here while I fetch my husband.”

Lucie was apprenticed to her husband, a situation not unusual. Wives commonly learned their husbands’ trades by working beside them. But Lucie’s apprenticeship had been formally arranged by Nicholas to ensure her future. Being sixteen years her senior, and of delicate health, he worried about her comfort after he passed on.

Another man might have looked on her fair face and reasoned that she would remarry. And in Lucie’s case, perhaps marry better, closer to her original station in life. For Lucie was the daughter of Sir Robert D’Arby of Freythorpe Hadden; she might have married a minor lord. Had her mother not died when Lucie was young, it would almost certainly have been so. But with the death of the fair Amelie, Sir Robert had become singularly uninterested in his only child’s lot in life. He’d sent her off to a convent, where Nicholas had discovered her and vowed to free her into a life more suited to her character. Wulfstan liked Nicholas Wilton for what he had done for Lucie. In the long run the apothecary would be a better inheritance than the settlement she might receive as a lord’s widow, and it made her independent.

Nicholas came in, wiping his hands and shaking his head. “The snow was long in coming this year, but how it falls now!” His thin face glowed with the cold, and his pale eyes shone. The apothecary’s garden was his passion.

“Have you finished with the roses?” Wulfstan asked. Gardening was the bond between them. And the lore of healing plants.

“Almost.” Nicholas sat down with the sigh of a pleasantly tired man. “Lucie tells me you have a pilgrim with camp fever.”

“That is so. He’s bad, Nicholas. Weak and shivering.”

“How long since his last bout with it?”

“Five months.”

More questions followed, the apothecary frowning and nodding. “Was he clear-headed when he arrived?”

“Most lucid. While I tended his wounds he sometimes asked about the folk in York. He’d once fought beside Sir Robert in a French campaign.”

Lucie looked up at that with a steely expression. She had little affection for her father.

“Now there was an odd thing,” Wulfstan said. “He was upset with me when I said you had become Master in your father’s place, Nicholas. He insisted that you had died.”

“Died?” Nicholas whispered.

Lucie crossed herself.

Later, Wulfstan was to remember that it was then that Nicholas’s manner changed. He began to ask questions that, to Wulfstan’s mind, had little to do with a diagnosis – the soldier’s name, his appearance, his age, his purpose in coming to St. Mary’s, if he’d had visitors.

Wulfstan had few answers. The pilgrim had wished to remain nameless; he’d made no mention of home or family; he was gray-haired, tall, with a soldier’s bearing even in his illness. No visitors, though he knew the folk at Freythorpe Hadden. And, apparently, knew of Nicholas. “But surely this is unimportant?” The apothecary wasted precious time.

Lucie Wilton touched her husband’s arm. He jumped as if her touch had burned him. “Brother Wulfstan must hurry back to his patient,” she said, regarding her husband with a worried look.

Nicholas got up and began to pace. After an uncomfortable silence in which Wulfstan began to fear Nicholas was at a loss for a proper physick, the apothecary turned with an odd sigh. “My usual mixture will not suffice. Go back to your patient, Brother Wulfstan. I will follow with the physick before the day is out.” He looked distracted, not meeting Wulfstan’s eyes.

Wulfstan was disappointed. More delay. “It is not a simple case, then? Is it the wound that complicates it?”

“It is never simple with camp fever.”

Wulfstan crossed himself.

Lucie put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Is it very serious, Nicholas?”

“I cannot say,” he snapped. Then, thinking better of it, he bent and kissed her gently on the forehead. “There’s no need for you to stay, Lucie.” His voice caressed her. “And no need to worry. You might finish up the last rose bed if you hurry.”

“I thought I might learn something by watching you prepare the mixture.”

Nicholas took her hand. “I will review it with you later, my love. But the snow will not wait.” His eyes were affectionate, gentle, almost melancholy.

Without further argument, Lucie donned her mantle and went out the garden door.

Wulfstan sighed.

“She is a treasure,” Nicholas said.

Wulfstan agreed. “You are both blessed in your contentment.”

Nicholas looked down at the floor and said nothing. It seemed to Wulfstan that his friend avoided meeting his eyes. Perhaps things were not so well between them. “So you will prepare a special mixture?”

Nicholas clapped his hands, back to business. “And you must hasten back to your patient and ply him with mint to bring on a good sweat.”

“I left Henry with sufficient instructions,” Wulfstan protested, but seeing Nicholas’s odd temper, he took his leave.

A bitter cold return journey it was. Nicholas was right. The first snow made up for its tardiness.

At dusk, as Wulfstan nodded by the pilgrim’s sickbed, he was wakened by a tap on his shoulder. Nicholas Wilton at last. But something was amiss with the apothecary. Wulfstan rubbed his eyes and squinted at the man. Nicholas’s eyes were too large in his pale face, as if he’d had a shock.

“You do not look well, Nicholas. You should have sent someone else with the medicine.”

The patient moaned. His eyes flickered.

Nicholas drew Wulfstan aside. “He looks worse than I expected,” he whispered. Ah, Wulfstan thought, that explained the expression on the apothecary’s face. “You must dose him at once,” Nicholas said. “Hurry. A dram in boiling water. I’ll sit with him.”