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He barely seems to hear me, and when his nails finally break the skin, I hiss. “Oh, let go of me!”
I wrench my arm free and shove my sleeve towards my elbow. Four angry crescents have already begun to bleed, one deeply enough that a little trickle is making its way towards my wrist. I stare at them, scarcely able to believe he’s drawn blood while lecturing me about the state of my bloody soul.
“You are my brother, Gideon, and you are talking absolute rot. No great winnowing is taking place here. It is sickness. Rotten blood and fever, and bodies failing faster than we can keep them alive. You can pray until your knees wear through the earth, but it will not pull a single body back out of that pit, and it will not save anyone still standing here.”
“Blasphemer.” His hand darts out again, clutching desperately at my bleeding forearm. “Do not blaspheme! Not here, not beside the open ground! If you turn your heart from Him now, what hope do we have? Who will protect us?”
Nobody. Nobody is protecting us. You stupid, arrogant fool.
A spade strikes something hard in the second pit, the iron ringing out across the field, and Gideon’s grip loosens just enough for me to look over his shoulder.
Iscairn has stopped digging. He stands at the edge of the trench with both hands resting on the handle of his spade, staring straight at us. I can’t see his face behind the bone and amber glass, but by now I know him well enough not to need it. He’s glaring. He leaves the spade where it stands and crosses the slush towards us, lime and damp earth streaking him from boots to chest.
When he reaches us, his beak dips to the hand gripping my arm, then to the blood trickling across my knuckles, and without a word he steps straight between us, forcing Gideon’s fingers loose.
“The apothecary is required elsewhere,” he says. “She is bleeding, Brother Gideon, and she has heard enough. Go and pray.”
Gideon looks between Iscairn’s mask and my face, his mouth opening and closing as if he’s ready to start condemning Iscairn too, but when he notices the blood, his shoulders slump, and he turns back to the pit.
I turn towards the village, but my knee buckles in the churned mud and I gasp as a hand closes around my upper arm—not Gideon’s clawing fingers this time, but Iscairn’s broad, gloved hand, hauling me upright before I can go down.
“Walk, Ophelia,” he says quietly.
I do, though with my leg aching as it is, I’m making a rather miserable job of it. Iscairn keeps a firm hold of my arm as we limp through the dirty snow towards Beswick; Gideon’s preaching fades behind us until there’s little left but the occasional cry of ‘Repent!’ carried on the wind beneath the crackle of the street fires.
By the time we reach the first houses, I’m coughing into my cloak, struggling to draw a decent breath through the thick yellow-grey smoke that hangs beneath the eaves. Every alleyway seems to have another smouldering barrel, and the wretched fumes have nowhere to go, leaving us practically wading through the stuff as Iscairn guides me along the slush-covered cobbles.
At the end of the lane, we pass the first black cross I painted.
There are another three doors farther down, then two more opposite, each one dragged across the timber by my own hand. I painted every bloody one of them, the people inside watching through the shutters whilst I tarred their doors with their death sentences.
A nasty, barking cough erupts from behind one of the doors, followed by the clatter of a stool overturning and the rasp of someone trying to draw in more air.
My feet slow.
Perhaps they need poppy. I could knock, see how bad the fever is, make sure they have enough water—
No, Ophelia.
I try to look down, keeping my eyes focused on the dirty tracks and my body focused on the heat radiating from Iscairn’s side. But I know each one that’s marred. I know the name of every family there and gone.
We pass another.
Then another.
And another.
Do not cry. I can’t cry. Not here. If I start crying here, I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.
By the time the apothecary comes into view, I’m swallowing every few steps and blinking so hard against the tears that the windows blur anyway. I keep them in until Iscairn gets the door open and steers me across the threshold, following close behind before he draws it shut against the cold and slides the bolt into place.
Brittle bundles of mint and rosemary sway from the beams overhead, their familiar scent mingling with the sharp vinegar I left steeping yesterday. Usually, between the two, there’s precious little else I can smell.
But today, the stink of the pit is still there. In my cloak. In my hair. Under my nails. It’s worked its way into the greasy soot clinging to my skin, making my forearms prickle and itch.
I dunk my hands into the bucket of freezing water by the counter and gasp as the feeling comes rushing back in a thousand vicious little needles. I barely give the burning time to ease before reaching for the lye soap, working it hard over my palms and between my fingers before snatching up the stiff-bristled brush and scrubbing beneath my nails, over my knuckles and up across my wrists until the water clouds grey around my hands. The bristles catch on the little crescents Gideon left behind, and a sharp sting shoots through me, soap biting straight into the broken skin. But instead of stopping, I scrub over them again.
And again.
