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I was surprised to hear him talk so of the pox. I had thought, more fool me, that somehow he had not noticed my pockmarks. So I, for a time, had forgotten them also. But now I knew that he had noticed and felt pity for me. The thought depressed me even further.
Sebastian stretched out a hand slightly, as if to touch my shawl, but then withdrew it. ‘Was it ... very bad for you, child? You can tell me.’
I drew a deep breath. Sebastian was the first person I’d met who was willing to lend a sympathetic ear. So hesitatingly, I told him how the doctor had instructed the windows in my room to be shut tight and blankets nailed over them. How it had been turned into a boiling, airless space to contain the infection and sweat the pox out of my body. But this hadn’t cured me. It had made the symptoms worse.
‘My back felt like hot needles were being poked into it, and my legs were heavy like tree trunks. There was a thick red rash spread across the top of my stomach. Then after a few days, white pustules appeared on my hands. The blisters soon spread to my face and all over my body,’ I recounted.
Filled with a watery fluid that then turned yellow, they had left no inch of me spared. Coupled with the horror of turning into a blistered monster, I had felt sorely wretched, like someone had laid me across one of my father’s anvils and pierced me all over with a red hot poker.
My mother was too afraid of catching the disease. So it had been my father, a thick white handkerchief fashioned around his face, who comforted me at night and lifted my head and spooned warm broth down my aching throat during the day. It was also he who changed my bed linen when it was soiled, rolling me gently on my side, despite the doctor giving strict orders that my sheets were infected and mustn’t be touched. In my weakened state, I had thought he was an angel come to deliver me from hell.
‘After a couple of weeks, the pustules turned into scabs and started falling off. I felt better and could sit up and feed myself,’ I told Sebastian, whose face had gone rather pale after hearing all this. ‘It was then I knew that I would live. And the doctor, who checked me over when the infection had truly passed, said it was a miracle I hadn’t bled within or been left blind.’
‘And your father, was he spared?’ Sebastian asked.
I shook my head. ‘He started having symptoms not long after I recovered and was moved to the pesthouse so as not to infect my mother and sister. But he never came out. That’s why my mother advertised my services in the paper. She needed the money.’
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, child,’ murmured Sebastian as he pressed my hand.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said stiffly and turned my head away. The guilt of killing my father pressed upon my chest like a stone, but I didn’t want to talk about it with him.
Sebastian must’ve got my hint as he said, ‘Let us talk no more about the pox and look forward to happier times.’ Then he lay down on his side in the sun and opened his book. It was ‘on philosophy’, he told me; and I opened mine, a sweet romance about a boy who bought a cow for his father and fell in love with the hired milkmaid. For a time, we read in silence.
Soon, though, Sebastian started sighing and plucking at his shirt. ‘So hot!’ I heard him mutter. Eventually, he sat up and pulled the shirt over his head. I was shocked at the sight of his bare chest.
‘Sir!’ I exclaimed.
He laughed at my horrified tone. ‘Apologies, Mercy, but I had to free myself of this cumbersome article of clothing. Rest assured I don’t normally go gadding about with my shirt off. Ahem. But I was dying of the heat. You do not mind?’
‘Er, no, sir,’ I said, not knowing where to look or what to think. I felt like making the sign of the cross but knew he would see and laugh. I tried instead to concentrate on my love story. The boy was helping the milkmaid out in the dairy and they were laughing and having fun as they made butter.
After a time, I sneaked a peek at Sebastian. He appeared to have dozed off, but then I knew he hadn’t as he gave a lazy slap of his hand to his chest to disturb a fly that had happened to land there. I gulped and averted my eyes. As if he felt the weight of my gaze, Sebastian opened one green-grey eye and looked in my direction. ‘Have you made the sign of the cross yet, Mercy? I can feel your disapproval burning from here.’ He chuckled with amusement.
I said nothing and kept reading about the boy and the milkmaid, thinking that Sebastian, though kind-hearted, was a very odd rector.
Chapter 5
The next morning at work, I was two cups of faculty coffee down and trying to make sense of the pages of scrawled notes I’d taken after reading Mercy’s memoir. I agreed with her: Sebastian’s shirtless behaviour was unconventional for a rector (and rather entertaining). But he also seemed like a genuinely caring person from what she’d described. Because of him, she’d opened up about her physical experience of contracting the disease and hinted at its emotional impact, which was invaluable information for Jeremy’s book. Besides that, the fact that Sebastian had been inoculated in Constantinople was an interesting turn-up.
I knew from my research that before the development of the smallpox vaccine in the late 1700s, the only option for protection from the disease was inoculation. This involved either inhaling highly infectious smallpox scabs or having them put into a small incision in your arm to contract variola minor—a mild form of the disease that wasn’t violent enough to kill you. However, if you were unlucky, it turned into the full-blown version, variola major, which could be deadly. Inoculation was common in Europe, Asia, and Africa but considered dangerous in Britain. So Sebastian willingly undergoing this process in a foreign country marked him as a bit of a risk-taker.
But it was also thanks to him that Mercy was able to read and write, and it looked like her desire to write a book had been fulfilled, though I didn’t yet know how it had eventuated or why. She’d obviously deemed her stint as a maid adventurous enough to write about in later years. But what else had gone on in the rectory that had compelled her to put quill to paper?
My lunch with Eleanor was at Queen’s Lane Coffee House, a fifteen-minute walk from the faculty. Dating back to 1654, it cited itself as the longest-established coffee house in Europe. So for us history girlies, it appealed more than the closer, but run-of-the-mill Caffè Nero. They also did reasonably priced yummy paninis.
Despite my rumbling stomach, I wasn’t looking forward to our lunch as I had a feeling I was going to get the hard word about Jeremy. Eleanor was forthright and didn’t pull any punches. When she decided you needed to hear the plain truth, the result was searing—like a branding iron on your bum.
When we were settled in our seats (with paninis on the way), I headed her off at the pass by asking about the research she was doing into Victorian slang and its social significance. If I could get her talking about that, I might escape the spotlight.
‘It’s fascinating. Some of the words and phrases they used back then crack me up. I sit there chuckling away in my corner of the office like a gigglemug.’
‘Gigglemug?’ I queried.
‘Someone who’s always smiling or laughing.’
‘Ah. What are some other ones?’
‘“Enthuzimuzzy”. Making fun of someone who’s excited about something. Or there’s “arf’arf’an’arf”. That means “embarrassingly drunk”. And I quite like “doing the bear”. I might start using that myself.’
