Horace bowed his head in relief. “Yes. We’ll do that.”
Nora turned back to the older sister. She couldn’t stay, so she passed her as much as she could from her bag. More wine. A packet of tea. “Rest as much as you can,” she instructed. “Drink often—but only tea. As much as you can swallow. A bit of wine, too.”
The girl nodded as Nora led her and the mother to theirbeds. “Keep Elias undressed unless he gets cold. He’ll only mess his clothes and lay in it.”
Still throwing instructions over her shoulder, she allowed Horace to take her by the arm and lead her out.
When they reached the pavement, he stopped and turned to meet her eyes. Nora noticed she no longer needed to look up at him. He’d shrunk considerably. “I’ve no doubt they are sick with virulent cholera,” he said gravely.
“But the father is better,” Nora argued.
“Lucky,” he shot back. “Some are. But the baby died in less than one night, and the boy’s organs have shrunken already.”
Nora raised her eyes to a cobalt circle of sky breaking through the dingy clouds. Broad Street was a good distance from the other reported cases, near London’s docks. “I hoped the disease would stay contained,” she said quietly.
Horace shook his head. “I don’t think it can be in cities. People tried before.”
He looked over the busy street, filled with people blithely going about their business, mere yards away from a dying family. “It will burn through this district like the London fire.” Horace looked at the unending sea of crowded, overfilled buildings. “These people are stacked in here like human kindling.”
Nora took a step back, distancing herself from the words. “What do we do?” She turned to the brownstone behind them, the walls hiding the dead baby and the sinking child.
Horace took her by the arm and pointed home. “We dose the living and bury the dead. It’s all we can do.”
“Horace.” His name wavered on her lips. “Is this what my family looked like when you found us?”
The muscles in his cheek flexed as he tapped the nearest basement railing with his cane. “What matters now is a plan. We need to get home, clean thoroughly, and consult with Daniel and Harry.”
“Did my brother…” She’d never asked for details about six-year-old Peter. Had he been wrapped in his favorite blanket or sprawled helpless on the floor? How much had he suffered?
Horace gave her the same stern glare that, when she was a child, had wrenched tears from her eyes, eliciting prompt and perfect obedience. “Keep your distance from cholera, girl. We don’t know enough.”
She opened her mouth to argue, no longer a cowed little girl who took orders. But Horace’s expression pushed the words back down her throat.
Written in his indomitable blue eyes, she read the small print of fear.
Chapter 23
Nora had imagined their household conference conducted around the dining table, not inside the lecture theater meant to house sixty occupants. Horace had insisted on clearing the air from every common room, beginning with the largest. Smoke from burning pastilles wound thin, white ribbons in the cool evening shadows. The room, designed to pick up a single voice and carry it to a boisterous audience, made their low, anxious mutters echo in the nearly empty chamber.
Daniel and Harry had found cholera patients, too.
“I feel like the pope hiding from the Black Death in his room of fire.” Harry snorted, edging the nearest ceramic burner with his shoe to watch the smoke waver.
“We’re not hiding. We need to clean the air,” Horace answered dully.
Daniel and Harry’s case might have spared Nora an argument or a scold, but that didn’t afford her any relief. Finding two affected families on different streets on the same day meant the incidence of the disease was higher and more widely spread than they’d thought.
They’d been watching for an epidemic, but it had already come, sneaking up behind them, out of sight until now.
“At least it smells nice,” she offered lamely.
“Probably all it does,” Horace said wearily. “I don’t believe cholera has anything to do with odors.”
“Then why bother?” Harry asked.
“It’s something,” Horace snapped. “It hurts no one, so if there’s a chance it helps—”
“We’ll use everything we can,” Mrs. Phipps said coolly. When Nora and Horace returned, she’d already been in the middle of purifying Harry and Daniel, gathering up discarded clothing with tongs, putting it straight into water to boil with soap. There’d been one awkward moment when she threatened to take Harry’s trousers herself if he didn’t hurry. She’d ordered baths for everyone in turn, insisting on thorough scrubbings, hair and all.
