The Farm Ch. 07

Chapter 07: Fever

Gordy broke for the stable. He saddled his mare, hands trembling and thundered for the free-hold at the bottom of the hill. He kept from the winding road and took the fields bright under the moon that set the oak at the crest of the hill to shining silver. The mare easily cleared the first fence and stretched her neck as she surged in full gallop. Gordy leaned forward in the saddle and bent low over her neck. They met the road at the bottom of the hill. The small cottage waited. Gordy jumped from the saddle slipped and stumbled; he hammered the door with his fist.

An eternity passed before the door opened a crack and the William's face appeared. "Lord Downcliff." The head bobbed. "Come in." The door flew open. "What's amiss?"

Gordy clutched the front of the nightshirt. "Go for my physician. Take the mare. Where's Nanny Grey?"

"She's to bed."

She stood there solid and calm as always. "She'd be dead if she slept through this noise. What's happened, my Gordy? You look like death itself?"

"I need your help. He's ill." Gordy wiped his forehead with a shaking hand and slumped against the door jamb.

"Husband, to the doctor. I'll on to the cottage." She stepped back into the house to dress and gather a few things.

Gordy moved to his mare and held the bridle to keep her from dancing away from the old man. He gave him a leg up and slapped the mare's rump and sent her off with William flapping like a scarecrow on her back then harnessed the pony to the cart.

They found him naked on the floor where he had collapsed trying to escape the bed and room; one arm stretched out before him his knee bent, his tortured breathing filling the room, his flesh clammy and waxen. His lips blue with cold.

"I'll help you lift him to the bed. He's cold as a river rock." Nanny lifted her hand from Prize's back inches from the mark left by the crop and moved to grab his ankles. Gordy gently rolled Prize onto his back and slid an arm under Prize's shoulders and one under his knees and pulled him to his chest and stood. He carried him like a child to the bed and laid him on linen sheets and covered him with a wool blanket and yellow-damask coverlet.

"Done then." Nanny Grey looked at Gordy in surprise. She'd seen what had been done to his body. All of yesterday's reclamation. "Build up the fire. Find bricks to heat and place at his feet. I'll to the kitchen and start the fire there. Draw water. Steam will loosen his lungs." She rolled up her sleeves.

Prize trembled on the bed. He smelled the lemon. He felt the sheets beneath his back. His cough filled the room. He drifted away. Beneath closed eyelids his eyes moved with dreams. Gordy prayed the dreams were of the secret Rahim. Sweat tickled down Gordy's back. He was loathe to leave his side but there was a fire to build and rocks to heat and water to carry. He tucked a limp arm under the blankets.

Gordy slid the first warm brick wrapped in a shirt pulled from the dresser drawer under the covers at Prize's feet. The next at his knees. He pulled the covers tight to hold in the heat. Nanny arrived with a pitcher of steaming water and poured it in a basin. Gordy lifted the insensible Prize gently to a sitting position and supported him, hand on his chest as a cloth was draped over his head to capture the steam. Prize's breath rattled and the coughs rolled deep and hard. His arms limp at his sides. Another pitcher of hot water and more steam. Cooling bricks removed and warmer ones slid in place.

"Fetch whisky or brandy." Nanny barked. He did, stumbling down the stairs. Taking them two at a time on his return. "Rub his wrists with it. Rub his chest. More hot bricks." She bullied and directed. They massaged whisky on his wrists to increase the circulation and Nanny avoided the hurt skin at the wrist bone. She shot a look at Gordy. Had he not been so exhausted and terrified he would have mustered the grace to blush.

The covers were pulled down exposing Prize's chest and Gordy rolled up his shirt sleeves and rubbed whisky across the pale skin, and the coughs rolled and the air whistled and gurgled as Prize struggled to breathe.

"Get behind him and hold him up so he can get air in his lungs."

And Gordy slipped behind Prize in the bed and supported him with his body against his torso. The heat that radiated from Prize startled him. He wrapped his arm around Prize's chest; he used the other to support his head by cradling it softly in the crook of his elbow. Through the remaining night they worked with whisky, steam, and heated bricks.

The curtains in his mind parted and Prize dreamt of drums like a heartbeat. Of a rope new and prickly. The sky blue, the one Rahim saw from the door of the shop behind the palace. There was a drop, sickening and slow, long enough for his stomach to turn over. The rope stretched. His neck did not snap. The rope tightened. He gasped for air as he strangled and twisted, his bound legs kicked. Urine burned his thighs. His dick grew hard. When he felt his body surrender and as the struggle come to an end, something pulled him back to the scaffold, the drum beat, and the drop to again kick and strangle and claw at the rope. Rahim stood in the crowd, Gordy's arm around his shoulder. He turned his face and Gordy smiled. Prize clawed at the rope around his neck and strong hands pulled at his arms and lifted him. The curtains closed. Prize rhymes with dies.

The physician arrived long after the sun kissed the branches of the oak. A grim stoop-shouldered man with long, white side whiskers climbed the stairs ushered along by William and found Gordy and Nanny Grey lifting Prize from soiled sheets. The room wet with steam and stinking of sweat, whisky, and urine. He waited for clean bedding to be placed under the man. He placed his ear to Prize's heaving chest and pronounced pneumonia. He poured powder into a glass of water and pressed it to light-blue lips. Prize turned his head from the glass.

"Make him drink." He thrust the glass into Nanny's water-puckered hands. He felt the pulse, fluttering. "I'll have of cup of tea."

Gordy moved slowly from his place by the bed, lowered Prize to the pillows, and follow the doctor down the stairs. They sat at the dining table. Gordy poured tea into cups with forget-me-not flowers. He held his head in his hands. William passed through with another steaming pitcher.

The doctor looked at him with concern. "You'll make yourself ill, Lord Downcliff."

Gordy lifted his eyes to the doctor and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "It's not my health with which I'm concerned."

"No, but it is mine. I can have people sent to take care of him. Discreet people." He cast is eyes at the ceiling. "You needn't drive yourself to exhaustion." He directed his eyes to the long scratches on Gordy's forearms. "What happened here?"

"He's my responsibility. Mine. Mine to care for."

"I'll give you a salve for the scratches."

The physician lifted his cooling tea to his lips and fixed Gordy with stony glare, "I'm glad your father isn't alive to see this. We were sure you'd put this, this, these," he lifted a hand, "behind you." The clatter of the cup punctuated his statement.

***

The people in their circle called them Jack Sprat and his wife only the other way around. Lord Downcliff corpulent and short and Lady Downcliff willowy and tall. Her waist still small after five pregnancies. And of those five only two babies lived, Anthony, body twisted and heart weak and George one year younger. The others, the three others, were carried away in enameled basins covered by clean white cloths by the midwife under the direction of Dr. Fellows. More creatures than children, things to be suspended in formaldehyde and displayed heavy jars to the curious at a sideshow to make young women gasp and press against their escorts and snot-nosed boys test their bravery in the company of their friends and cry for their mothers when they woke from their nightmares. They rested on the estate marked by marble lozenges each chiseled in relief with the same words, Baby Ryman and a date.

Anthony was bound in iron and leather to straighten his back. George listened to him cry in the night in the nursery near the top of the manse. He crept to his brother's narrow bed and loosened the leather buckles that held the braces in place and rocked Anthony until the muscles relaxed and he slept. Nanny Grey often found them asleep and at peace in each other's arms in the morning when she came to wake them for breakfast and lessons, Anthony held tight in his younger brother's arms, blond curls and dark brown hair.

The tutor checked their lessons: Latin, Classical Greek, geometry, geography, history, and mathematics. Anthony knew his by heart. The same was not true for George. Failure to conjugate, amo, amas, amat brought ten strokes of the stick across the seat of the britches. George never cried. George didn't care.

At twelve years George urged his hunter over four rails and Anthony watched. Anthony played the Piano Concerto 21. Their mother loved Mozart. Their only other companion the boy who worked in the stable, Tom. The three of them roamed the estate. George and Tom adjusted their pace so Anthony with his slow dipping gait kept up.

They stood at the crest of a small knoll knee deep in spring grass and flowers and scanned the sheep below. Behind them branches swayed slowly in the soft breeze. The shadows danced on the young grasses. Pollen floated yellow in the air and a chaffinch trilled.

"The Czar's troops," Anthony whispered. "They haven't seen us."

"Where?" said Tom.

"Below there." George extended his arm toward the sheep.

"We'll avenge the Light Brigade," Anthony whispered back. "See their commander there." He pointed at a black and white dog resting in the sun, tongue lolling. The dog turned its head toward the boys and gave them a wolfish grin.

"We've been seen. Charge!"

George hoisted Anthony onto his back, his knees tucked up around George's ribs, and the boys ran pell-mell through the grasses and flowers stick sabers raised above their heads, war cries cutting through the air. The ewes raised their heads in alarm at the charging boys. An early lamb ran to its mother. The black and white dog barked.

Back and forth they chased and scattered the Czar's troops until George stumbled and sent Anthony sprawling to the ground. The three boys lay laughing in the trampled grass and caught their breath. The dog set about its duty and brought the scattered fold back to order, but the damage was done to the pregnant ewes. The three returned to the knoll, Tom carrying Anthony on his back to allow George to catch his breath and spare his knee.

They were dirty and sweaty and victorious. George's knee hurt where it had struck the ground. His trousers torn. But the rout brought elation. They recounted their individual victories as they made their way back to the manse. Anthony's voice hoarse with excitement his breathing shallow.

Tom to the stables and work and Anthony and George to the manse and Nanny Grey who whisked the boys up the servants' stairs for baths. She clucked her disapproval at the dirt and torn and stained clothing as the boys regaled her with stories of their victorious battle against the Czar's men, their eyes bright with excitement. Dinner came on trays and their parents followed soon after.

He stood in the doorway of the nursery a furious egg of a man, his wife beside him in a mauve dinner dress, diamonds in her thick hair; she stood graceful as a treble clef. In his hand the razor strop his valet used. "You inconsiderate fool. You put your brother's life in danger over a stupid, destructive stunt." He advanced on George.

Anthony spoke up from his spot at the small table, "Father, Gordy didn't hurt me. We were having fun." His face blanched. His voice trembled. "Playing."

"Nanny, remove Anthony from the room."

Nanny threw a protective arm around Anthony's shoulders and guided him to the door. They paused and Anthony looked back at his brother and opened his mouth to speak. Gordy shook his head and they were gone. The door shut firmly behind them.

"Remove your nightshirt. Bend over the bed."

George pulled his starched nightshirt over his head and dropped it at his feet. He bent over the narrow bed and bunched the coverlet in his fists. Ten strokes for the aborted lambs lost when they ran the ewes in their charge of revenge. Twenty more for Anthony. The strop fell. George didn't cry out. He didn't cry. He couldn't stop his body from twitching and jumping as the strop landed on his back and buttocks.

His father sweated with the exertion and fury. His mother fixed her eyes on a framed print of a boy in knee pants and wide collar his head of golden curls inclined on the neck of a ruffed collie. George's knees buckled and he slid to the floor pulling the bedclothes after him. Lord Downcliff stopped the beating, turned, and left the room. George's mother turned and followed. The hem of her dress whispered on the floor. In the hall Anthony sobbed in Nanny Grey's arms.

"Calm him with a lavender bath." She laid the palm of her hand on Anthony's cheek. "Don't be so foolish again, my love."

Nanny washed George's back and applied salt and vinegar poultices to reduce the bruising. The skin wasn't cut but blood oozed up through the pores where the strop struck. She covered him with a clean sheet and pushed his hair out of his eyes. Anthony wept in his bed and his iron braces.

In three days, George returned to the small classroom. He stood for his lessons. He botched his translation of Caesar crossing the Rubicon though Anthony had taught it to him the night before, and the tutor reached for the rod. George grasped the edge of the school desk and took his strokes.

In three weeks, George rode again. Tom saddled the red hunter and told George of the beating he'd received from his father for running the ewes. "But it was a glorious battle. I'm sorry for the lambs. My Da says his Lordship won't take my wages. And I thank him for that." He tightened the cinch. "Why haven't you come to ride? Did you get whooped?"

"No," was all Gordy said and eased himself into the saddle.

***

Dr. Fellows left packets of powders and instructions with Nanny Grey. He promised to return in a few days. Nanny Grey threw the packets in the bin and sent William for onions and sugar. These she boiled in a copper pot and ladled into a clean cloth. The poultice, when placed on Prize's chest, caused him to gasp and turn in the bed. Gordy pressed firmly on his shoulders to hold him still. The eyes remained closed. The gurgle in the chest eased. The cough remained as persistent as the honking of geese. Dark-blue circles formed beneath Gordy's eyes. When he slept, he slept in the chair his head resting on his arms on the side of the bed. He lived on tea and whisky. Two of the scratches Prize put on his arm began to fester and Nanny Grey cleaned them with carbolic. The salve left by Dr. Fellows was useless.

***

It was Dr. Fellows who broke the news to the Lord and Lady. Anthony's heart was failing as he warned it would. It was only time. Anthony spent more time in his narrow bed and George roamed farther with Tom. But after dinner in the nursery when Nanny Grey put out the lights, George crossed the floor to Anthony's bed and unbuckled the straps on the braces and crawled into bed and told him what they did and saw. The hawk's nest, the cygnets on the pond, the pheasants hatching down at the gamekeeper's hut, where the fox had her den, the badger in its bank, an otter and her kits at the stream, and the lower kitchen girl and the married footman. He didn't tell him how she wept and struck with small fists against the footman's chest. He didn't tell him he kissed Tom under the willows and that his lips were sweet as wild strawberries, and Tom kissed him back. And when Anthony fell asleep, George laid his cheek on the hump on his back and cried. He listened to the slosh of Anthony's heart and cried and held him closer. The brace of iron and leather discarded on the floor.

"I'm not afraid, Gordy," Anthony said.

"I'm here. I won't let you go."

"I'm most sorry to leave you. Don't cry."

The rain fell softly through the trees. It pattered on the stable roof. The ewes lowered their heads, the black and white dog circled three times in the dry spot beneath a bush and slept. On the pond the cygnets sheltered under their mother's wing. An owl on silent winks plucked a mouse from the grass.

George held him close. That's how Nanny Grey found them on that clean washed morning late in August. The birds singing the promise of a beautiful day. George held his cold brother in his arms the back of his nightshirt damp with tears. Blond curls and brown hair.

The coffin was small. It rested in the main parlor surrounded by flowers grown in glass sheds removed from wind and rain and the natural turning of the seasons. Flowers bound by glass and lead. Candles burned at the foot of the coffin and George stood there in his nightshirt and shivered. He watched for two nights waiting until the footman quit the wake to hunt down the under kitchen girl.

Beneath the coat and shirt, the iron and leather brace pushed against his brother's skin. It pulled his bent body. It left angry marks on his skin. He wouldn't leave him bound and hurting in the ground. He reached into the small coffin and unbuttoned Anthony's coat and shirt, his hands trembled. The brace pressed against Anthony's flesh. He undid the buckles and tried to ease the brace from Anthony's body. It didn't pull free, held in place by the weight of his body and the tightness of the coffin. George tugged harder. He turned his head from the sight of the blue skin and sweet odor. The coffin rocked on the cooling board over the tub of ice, sending a creak and rumble through the silent room. George felt panic rise. He listened for the footman. He pulled harder at the brace and the board slipped and the coffin tipped and fell to the floor with a crash. The footman rushed into the parlor, doing up his pants. Footsteps sounded on the floor above.

They found him, the Egg, Treble Clef, assorted maids, the valet, the disheveled under kitchen girl, and Nanny Grey, sitting in a pool of cold water and ice franticly pulling the iron and leather brace from his brother's naked corpse, sobbing and crying, "Not forever."

The coffin righted. The brace replaced. The clothing buttoned and smoothed. The servants hurried away. The Treble Clef given powders. The Egg a triple whisky. The under kitchen girl reprieved. The footman sacked. And the mad boy in his wet nightshirt locked in the attic until the funeral was over. There he wept and screamed, "Not forever," until Dr. Fellows silenced him with laudanum.

Nanny Grey brought him food that he didn't eat, rocked him in arms he couldn't feel, said soothing words that didn't penetrate the hollow of his ear.

***

Prize opened his eyes and looked at the room yellow in the lamp light. He knew well where he was and whose bed he lay in. His limbs felt heavy and stiff as he pushed himself to the far side of the bed away from where Gordy slept in his chair. Slowly he eased a leg from under the blankets and placed it on the floor. His body washed in sweat. His muscles trembled. He stood for a moment and the room tilted. The cough caught him. He grabbed for the side table to stop the fall. His legs gave out and he fell, pulling the table with him.

Gordy lurched awake at the sound. He saw the empty bed. He lunged across the twisted covers and saw Prize a heap on the floor eyes open in fear. A moment and he crouched at his side to lift him back to the damp sheets.

Prize raised his arm, "Please, no."

Gordy lifted Prize in his arms. The arm and fist fell on his shirt front. "Please, no."