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  “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