Firebrand by Elizabeth Fremantle

Author:Elizabeth Fremantle [Fremantle, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Often Dot wakes to find Katherine, looking for all the world like a ghost in her pale nightgown, sitting on the corner of Meg’s bed, singing quietly to her, or kneeling beside her whispering a prayer.

Meg is fading, her petals falling one by one, and these last few days she seems as if she is not really here, but in some other place. A better one, Dot hopes. She blathers about angels, never making much sense, and then she seems peaceful until a fit of coughing wracks her, as if her body is trying to turn itself inside out.

And sometimes she grabs Dot’s hand and says, “I am afraid, Dot. I am afraid to die.”

Dot sits beside her bed, wondering if all the believing and the praying and reading of the Bible will help Meg when it comes to it.

She stays with her constantly, washing her, feeding her, administering her physic, just as Katherine had done for Lord Latymer. Dr. Huicke comes daily. He says there is nothing that will save her, that he can take some of the pain away with tinctures, that is all. But then they knew that, had known it from the moment Dot had found the blot of blood in the white handkerchief.

Elizabeth doesn’t come, though Katherine has called for her. She is at Ashridge with her brother. She has sent a letter, which Meg reads over and over again. Dot has read it too. It doesn’t say much, just a few platitudes. That is a word Dot learned from William Savage. There has been nothing from him since he left months ago and Dot has tried to forget him, but inside she is eaten up with longing. She tells herself not to be so stupid, that William Savage is no Lancelot, he is just a man who got his end away with a silly lass.

But what of the time spent teaching her to read, and the time spent gazing at her and saying, “There is not a maid in the world like you, Dorothy Fownten, and no one I would rather pass my time with”—surely all that was not just to get a tumble from her? He could have got that from Betty just by patting her on the behind and offering her a cup of ale.

If she lets herself think about it she cannot find a good reason why there has not even been so much as a note. For all that teaching her to read, and not one single letter. Perhaps he is afraid that such a thing might get into the wrong hands and cause trouble for her, but she fears she is forgotten.

Katherine mentioned William’s name the other day, said she missed his playing, and Dot had wanted to ask where he was, whether he would return to court. But she was afraid of giving her secret away with a blush, or that it might show all over her that she loves him. Besides, he has been gone so long now she struggles to hold the image of him in her mind.

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