The Corn (Cornucopia Book 1) by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

Author:Barbara Gaskell Denvil [Gaskell Denvil, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gaskell Publishing
Published: 2019-07-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

More interesting perhaps to wonder why Lady Lydiard had planned to murder her husband. Probably because she discovered his intentions towards her. Certainly not because of his mistress. That had already been as accepted as all normal court practises. Adultery, abhorred by a church that preached ghastly after-death punishment, was in practice considered just as essential for general comfort as a mug of ale for breakfast. I’d been told that and although this was Jesha’s house, being her legitimate husband’s home and business, Lord Lydiard clearly often slept here with his mistress, or even in the master chamber without her. It hardly surprised me. But it surprised me that Lady Lydiard also came here, had been here the evening before, administering wine and meat as if the place and the right were her own. My father’s habits, I decided, were as unattractive as I had always imagined them.

But this time I did not sleep on a pallet at the foot of the bed, nor stayed curled in the big chair. It was deep into the night when Jesha showed me to a secondary bedchamber, tucked away at the back of the third floor where the walls, protruding out into the street above the lower structures of the building, creaked all night in the wind like a barge caught in the river currents. It was a lullaby I welcomed. Before the first light of morning, she brought me ale and bread and begged me to come quickly. The dawn was still barely flushing the sky through the unshuttered window.

“I have dismissed the servants for the day,” Jesha whispered. “I will do anything you need myself, and privacy is best. My husband understands. He has gone to stay with his mother. I think my lord is a little better, but he is in great pain.”

But it was exhaustion that gave the appearance of peace. And he was never going to recover. “I can give him a little more poppy drink,” I said, “but I have no other antidotes, for there are none. If I give more foxglove juice, it will kill him.”

The rash had not subsided. It was spreading across his chest and up into the merged layers of his neck and chin. Where his mouth had been wet with a froth of saliva, now his lips oozed blood and formed protuberant scabs like calluses. His voice was dry rasping, an effort of speech, but he was clear-sighted and awake. “I cannot swallow,” he stuttered. “But the thirst is terrible. I must drink.”

Jesha held a bowl of milk for him. He had already refused the morning beer. “Milk will further coat the tongue. Boiled water would be better,” I said. “At what hour does the delivery come?”

“The water-carrier has already been,” she said. “I’ve mixed water with the sheep’s milk and warmed it. That’s what my mother always gave me when I was young.”

Lord Lydiard was drinking greedily with a burning thirst, but it gushed from his mouth, and he choked and spluttered as he tried to swallow.

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