The Secret of Isobel Key by Jen McConnel

Author:Jen McConnel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

1663

When the news reached Isobel that her sister had died in labor, she was overcome with grief. She refused to eat and barely slept, weeping and mourning for her beloved sister. No one ever said it aloud, but Isobel was certain that her sister would have been alive and delivered of a healthy child if she and not that fool doctor had been called to attend the birth.

Isobel went almost mad in her grief, and for months no one saw her. She ceased tending patients, and many of the folk around the village who had been loyal to her began to seek out the doctor when they were plagued by aches and pains.

Michaelmas passed, and still no one saw Isobel. When All Hallow’s came and went, the people of St. Andrews were quite certain that the poor woman was dead. But one day in late November, she emerged from her cottage, for she had decided to call upon her brother-in-law and offer to raise her namesake, for surely a man who had just lost his beloved wife had no way to raise a little daughter. Isobel thought that perhaps little Nan would heal the gaping hole left in heart by her sister’s death, and despite her less than amiable relationship with her brother-in-law, she was determined to plead with him. She was prepared to beg humbly, if she had to: the child was the only family Isobel had left.

The signs of her grief were written plainly on her face: her eyes were sunken and dark in her pale skin, and where she had once been a healthy, robust looking woman, now her clothing hung off her like oversized drapery. There were new lines carved around her mouth, lines which gave her once joyous face the appearance of frowning constantly. She passed a few people as she made her journey, but they could not bear to look at her more than once, for her grief seemed so raw and powerful that many who saw her fancied they would begin to weep if they gazed upon her long.

None who saw her that day could bring themselves to warn of what she would find at the Nairn home, and they turned away from her in shame. When Isobel knocked smartly on the familiar blue door, she was startled to see a woman standing on the other side of the threshold. They stared at each other for a moment, and Isobel collected her wits and announced that she was the sister of the wife of Alexander Nairn, and she would like to speak to her brother-in-law at once. The woman, standing like a statue before her, made no move to invite Isobel in, but rather gaped at her, dumbfounded. When Isobel repeated her request, louder this time, for it occurred to her that the serving woman might be hard of hearing, the woman shook her head and started to close the door in her face. Isobel pushed herself inside, and the woman began to yell at her to leave her home, at once, before she called the town watch.

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