Return to Summerhouse

  “Yes and no,” she said. She dipped the soap in the water, sat down on a little stool by the tub, and began to gently wash him. After just one arm, the water turned dark. “I’m a widow.”

  “Ah,” he said, leaning his head back against the tub. “You have lost the husband but kept the mother.”

  “And you thought you lived in hell,” Faith said.

  William laughed and, in spite of his weakness, it was a good sound.

  She knew he was embarrassed by her washing of him, but she wasn’t. She had bathed Eddie hundreds of times. “Will you get me some more hot water?” she asked Thomas. That he left her alone with William seemed to be a sign that he trusted her.

  “Tell me about your illness,” Faith said.

  “Must I?” he asked, his eyes closed. “I have not been bathed so since I was a child.”

  She stood up and got a bottle off the cabinet at the foot of the tub. “Is this the shampoo?”

  “Does it smell like sunlight in a bottle?”

  “Yes, it does.” She could hardly bear to take it away from her nose. “What is in this stuff?”

  “Great secrets,” William said. “No man in my family has ever seen inside Beth’s book. That book of receipts is passed from one woman to the next and no man is allowed to see it. I think the women fear that we men will find out that they are using black magic to ensnare us.”

  “I think this came directly from heaven.” She poured a bit out into her hand and began to shampoo his hair. It was matted and she could feel sores on his scalp. Lice, she thought.

  “You have the hands of a goddess,” he said, his eyes closed. “Did you step off Mount Olympus to attend to this lowly human?”

  “And were you born with a silver tongue?”

  “Enough to get me in more trouble than I should have been,” he said.

  There was half a bucket of warm water on the floor and she used it to rinse his hair.

  He had been in the tub for nearly an hour and Faith thought that was quite long enough, but Thomas wasn’t back yet with the fresh water.

  “Is there some reason you don’t want to tell me about your illness?” she asked. “Was it caused by your visiting places you shouldn’t have?” She thought that if he had a venereal disease all the washing in the world wasn’t going to cure him.

  “I broke my leg,” he said.

  Faith heard a sound and saw that Thomas was arriving with a wagon. “Then what happened?”

  “I had the leg set but I developed a fever that would not go away.” He shrugged his thin shoulders.

  “I don’t understand. You obviously didn’t die from the fever, so what happened?”

  “I could not get well. Dr. Gallagher did all that he could. He isolated me in my nephew’s house when I was the most sick, and he gave me a nurse, but I did not recover. I was out of my head for nearly a month, and when I awoke, I was as you see me, only not so bad as I am now.”

  Thomas came into the orangery carrying two big buckets of hot water. Faith got him to pull William upright, then hold him so she could rinse the back of him. The big man held his arms straight out, under William’s frail arms, so his rough hands wouldn’t hurt the sores on William’s back. Faith washed more of William as he hung in Thomas’s strong arms, then she poured warm water from a dipper over him.

  Thomas and she carefully turned him, then she did the same to the front of him.

  When he was as clean as she could get him, Thomas held him while she gently pulled a clean nightshirt over his head.

  “I beg you,” William whispered. “I must sleep now. I have no more strength.”

  “Not yet,” Faith said. “First, you’re going to eat.”

  “I cannot,” William said as Thomas carried him to the bed and gently put him on clean sheets, a big feather pillow behind his head.

  “Yes you can,” Faith said. “You eat and I’ll let you sleep.”

  “My teeth…” William began, his eyes closed.

  “I’m going to work on them when they’re strong enough to handle a good brushing. But right now you’re to drink this.”

  She glanced at Thomas and saw that he was smiling. She knew he must be as horrified by William’s skeletal form as she was, so he was glad she was making him eat. He dipped the buckets in the dirty water in the tub and took them outside to empty.

  By the time the tub had been emptied, wiped out, and leaned against the wall, Faith had managed to get most of a glass of lemonade and half a cup of warm spinach soup down William. When she finished, he was so tired that he was barely conscious, but she knew that what she was doing to him was what he needed.

  When she finally let him sleep, his head fell to one side in complete exhaustion.

  “Good,” Thomas said. “Good.”

  Thomas didn’t look as though he were going to win any awards for scholarship, but she could see the love he had for William. His words of praise made Faith feel the best she had in a long time. “Thank you,” she said. “Will you stay with him while I see to some things?”

  “Aye, I will,” Thomas said, and sat down on the chair he’d brought with him in the last wagonload.

  Eighteen

  “Good morning,” Faith said to William when he finally woke up. He’d slept for nearly eighteen hours. Maybe the way he found himself upon waking was a bit disconcerting, but not to Faith. He was lying on his stomach, his nightshirt up to his neck, the whole back of him naked, and Faith was dabbing at his sores with a soothing herbal ointment.

  The sun was coming in through the overhead glass so the room was pleasantly warm. Yesterday, while William slept, Faith had gathered equipment and cut herbs, then worked into the night brewing potions to use on William. Thomas had made a pallet on the floor for himself, and his even, quiet snoring was calming as she worked. She’d gone to bed only when it was too dark to see what she was doing.

  When the sun came up, Faith was at work again, and by mid-morning, she was ready to start on the sores on William’s body. Thomas had walked to the main house and brought back a box of food and more things that Amy thought they’d need. He produced a box of oranges with a smile of triumph. There was a note from Amy in the box, written on heavy paper with what looked to be a quill. Yet another use of the geese, she thought.

  Tristan went to Southampton yesterday as he said he could ride the fastest. He rode all night, got the oranges, and came back immediately afterward. He didn’t sleep. I told you William is a well-loved man. Tell Thomas whatever you need. If it can be had, we will get it.

  Faith read the note to Thomas and he smiled. “Aye, he is well loved.”

  She wanted to say, Then why the hell was he allowed to rot in a bed? But she said nothing as she sat down at the table he’d brought with him and ate breakfast.

  She couldn’t help admiring the change in the old orangery. The surfaces were covered with objects that, to Faith’s eye, were beautiful. There was no plastic, nothing that hadn’t been painstakingly made by hand. The herbs she had placed about the room smelled divine. She’d even put sprigs of wormwood around the edges to repel bugs.

  Yesterday she’d started to tell the men to cut down the old grapevine, but on impulse she’d watered it. The vine grew out of a cleverly designed trough into which water was poured at one end and flowed out across the whole root system. Time would tell if there was life in the vine.

  The room was filled with steam from the pots of water she’d boiled on the fire that Thomas had built for her outside. The tops of the cabinets were covered with pots and bowls and a couple of big marble mortars and pestles.

  After she and Thomas had eaten breakfast, she’d asked him to turn William over onto his stomach so she could get to the sores.

  Faith gently lifted William’s nightshirt off his sleeping body and began to apply the ointment she’d made of self-heal and soapwort. It was something that she’d used on Eddie when a bandage had made a blister on his skin.

  William wasn’t embarrassed by his nudity or Faith’s
touch. “Ah, at last,” he said when he woke up to feel her warm hands on his skin. The sun was shining through the tree leaves and into the building. “I have at last died and I am in heaven.”

  Thomas gave a guffaw of laughter.

  “Dear Thomas,” William said. “He always laughs at my jests.”

  “I don’t think your death wish is a reason to laugh,” Faith said.

  “I have never wanted to die,” he said. “I just thought it was God’s plan for me.”

  “All right,” Faith said, “you win. Sorry.” He’d flinched when she touched one of the many sores on his back. Now that he was clean, and he was in a bright room, she could see the extent of his wounds. She didn’t know what had started his illness, and without a modern doctor and equipment, she’d never know, but from what she could see, his real problems were lack of food and care.

  When she’d covered the back of his body with ointment, she pulled his gown down. William asked Thomas to take him to the outhouse, and Faith was pleased. Now William had the energy to want to get out of bed.

  While they were gone, Faith glanced at the mirror that Amy had sent and tidied her hair. It was pulled off her face but not too tightly. And Amy had sent Faith a clean dress. Last night she’d managed to give herself a sponge bath and today she hoped to use some of Beth’s shampoo to wash her hair.

  “Hungry?” she asked William when Thomas brought him back inside.

  “I am,” William said as though it were the strangest thing he’d ever felt. He winced when Thomas put him in the bed, and he lay back against the pillow wearily, but there seemed to be some color in his face.

  First, there was fresh-squeezed orange juice that Faith had made that morning. She got an entire glass of it down William, who used a real straw to sip from the glass that Amy had sent to her. Hand-blown, hand-etched, eighteenth-century glass, Faith thought as she looked at the beautiful object.

  Thomas went outside with a skillet and a big pat of hand-churned butter and fried an egg that was laid that morning. Faith dipped bread that was still warm from the oven in the egg and mashed it up for William to eat with his loose teeth. He couldn’t really chew but he could dissolve the food in his mouth.

  With every bite, he closed his eyes and gave himself over to the flavor. For Faith, watching him eat was close to a sensual experience. He was thin and gaunt, but she could see a bit of the man he’d once been.

  “Can Thomas shave you?” she asked.

  “Perhaps he should shave my head as well,” William said as Faith fed him another bite.

  She knew he was referring to the head lice. “I have parsley seeds,” she said. “I could wrap your head in them, but if you’d rather have Thomas shave your hair off, I’ll understand.”

  “Thomas or a beautiful woman?” William said. “I will have to think on that.”

  Faith laughed. “Maybe I shouldn’t help you get well. You might be dangerous.”

  “And since when did a woman dislike danger in a man?”

  “You, Mr. William, are going to be a problem,” she said as she took his empty plate to the cabinet where she had a big porcelain bowl of water.

  She tidied up while Thomas took the bowl of hot water Faith handed him and the straight razor and a bar of Beth’s soap. For a moment Faith held her breath, but from the way Thomas wielded the razor and the way William moved his face, this was something they’d done many times before.

  Thomas gently cleaned William’s face of excess soap.

  “I hope I—”

  William broke off because they heard the sound of a horse approaching. Faith went to the door and saw a tall, dark man sitting atop a black horse as if he’d been born on the animal. She knew without a doubt that this was Tristan. Even though she’d been his guest for a few days now, she’d seen him only from a distance.

  “I believe this is your nephew,” Faith said, turning to look at William. He was watching her intently.

  “Tristan,” he said, and tried to sit up straighter. Faith ran to help him.

  “He is beautiful, is he not?” William said when her face was close to his.

  It was probably her imagination but she thought she heard jealousy in his voice. “If you like boys,” she said under her breath.

  William gave a sound like a laugh and he seemed to sit up straighter in the bed.

  When Tristan Hawthorne walked into the orangery, it was as though the room filled with him. It was a big area, at least sixty feet long, but Tristan seemed to take up all of it. When Faith had first seen the drawing of him that Zoë did, she’d thought he looked like Tyler, but now she knew he didn’t. Tyler was a good-looking, hometown boy, and wasn’t in the same league as this man.

  “Tristan,” William whispered and lifted his arms. Faith could see his thin arms shake with fatigue, but he held them aloft to welcome his nephew.

  Tristan took his uncle’s hands in his, then bent forward to kiss his cheek. “You look…” He couldn’t say anything else as he stared at William, his eyes drinking him in.

  “I was saved by an angel,” William said. “I was praying for death, when this angel came and saved me.”

  Faith could feel her whole body turning red. “I only did what anyone would do,” she managed to say.

  Tristan turned to look at her, an intense gaze that made her uncomfortable. In that moment she had even more admiration for Amy. How in the world had she been able to take on this man? Faith knew that she would never have had the courage to stand up against his intense glare.

  “No,” Tristan said, “you have done more than what we did. I thought that the doctor…”

  He couldn’t seem to say more, but she couldn’t let him carry his guilt. She knew how it felt to think that if only she’d done something different, the bad wouldn’t have happened.

  “You did the best you could, and it’s to your credit that you trusted me, a woman you’d never met, to take care of your uncle. For all you knew I could have been a charlatan.”

  “No,” he said. “I trusted Amy. I have trusted her from the beginning.”

  And loved her, Faith thought. Tristan was as in love with her as much as she’d ever seen anyone in love. Amy, Amy, Amy, she thought. What are you doing to this poor man? His beloved wife had died and now he was in love with Amy—and she was going to leave him in less than three weeks.

  Faith smiled modestly and stepped away from the two men, giving them time alone. She didn’t know what was going to happen with William. She could clean him all she wanted, but if there was something wrong with the inside of him, he still wouldn’t be well. She would just have to wait and see.

  She left the walled garden and walked toward the old house. The front of it was trampled by cows and thick with manure, but she could see how beautiful it had once been. But the house had been abandoned when Tristan had built the new one for his doomed wife.

  As Faith walked around the house and even got close enough to look in some of the windows, she knew that to these people the old house was nothing special, but to her modern mind it needed to be preserved and treasured.

  She picked some wildflowers from the fields and when she got back to the orangery, Tristan was gone and William was asleep. But he woke up an hour later and said he was a bit “peckish.” Faith knew this meant he was hungry.

  Three days later, William’s mouth had healed enough that he could chew food, and with Faith’s help, he had taken a few steps. At first Thomas had tried to support him, but William said he was a clumsy oaf and not good as a crutch.

  “But I guess I’m the right size,” Faith said.

  “Exactly the right size,” William said as he put his thin arm around her shoulders and took his first hobbling steps. His legs had been unused for nearly a year and the muscles had come close to atrophy.

  After the first attempt at walking, Faith had to rub his legs to relieve the pain of cramping.

  At the end of the first week, William was walking on his own with the help of two canes—and that’s how
Beth saw him. Faith knew that Tristan had ordered her to stay away from her uncle, but it looked like he had at last rescinded his order.

  Beth rode her horse into the walled garden and when she saw her beloved uncle, she slid off before it stopped. When Thomas and Faith saw the way the girl was running toward her uncle, as though she meant to launch her strong, young body onto his, they took off to intercept her. But Beth reached him before they did. William was smiling, not in the least worried that his healthy young niece was going to tackle him.

  Beth stopped just short of leaping on her uncle, took his hands in hers and pressed them to her face. Behind her Thomas and Faith stopped, out of breath and panting. William looked at them in amusement over Beth’s bowed head.

  “You look wonderful,” Beth breathed. “You have doubled your weight, and you are walking.”

  “Not quite double,” William said as he put his hand on her hair that was warm from the sun.

  “Not from lack of trying,” Faith said. “He eats his weight in food every day. Amy says she’s going to have to hire a new cook just for him.”

  “Tristan will hire a dozen cooks,” Beth said. “A hundred of them.” She still held her uncle’s hands and couldn’t take her eyes off his face. “Come and tell me everything that you have done,” she said. “I want to hear it all.”

  William tucked Beth’s arm in his and started to walk toward a bench. When Faith saw that he’d left his canes behind, she picked them up and didn’t remind him of them. He wanted to make his beautiful young niece think he was more well than he was.

  Faith went into the orangery and began clearing up from their last meal. As she looked around she thought that soon there’d be no need for her to stay here alone with William and Thomas in their own little world. But she knew that the last week had been the happiest of her life. She’d had her own house, her own kitchen of sorts, even her own garden. Every afternoon in the last week William had sat on a chair while Faith had taken a shovel to the plants. He’d told her that she could get someone to do the work for her, but Faith had wanted to dig for herself.