Page 3

Taylor hated a tight collar. He lived with his linen unfastened. Yet today, the fabric is buttoned all the way to the top, ensuring not a single inch of his throat is visible.

I let the mask fall back onto the bench and crouch beside him, working the top button loose before peeling the linen away from his neck. A great, ugly swelling strains beneath the skin, purple-black at its centre and crusted with dried sweat, about the size of a plum.

A bubo.

How did he hide that so well? The bastard must have been in agony.

Gideon’s hushed prayers spill through the air as I empty my pockets onto the stone beside Taylor. There’s enough rosemary and juniper to make the church happy and, with luck, enough of both to stop Robert losing his breakfast when they finally lift him.

“I do not believe you can hear me, which is fortunate, because you would undoubtedly interrupt,” I murmur, tucking a sprig into his collar. “But I hope whatever comes next is kinder than this.”

Gideon’s final blessing has barely faded when the dead cart appears beyond the doorway, pulled by the parish mule with Robert at the bridle, Brother Leon beside the wheel, and Matthias trailing behind them with a shroud folded over his arms.

They gather around the bier and heave him upwards. Taylor’s loose arm swings against Leon’s knee, a boot catches in the folds of the shroud, and by the time they finally wrestle the body onto the cart and wrap it, Robert is panting, Matthias has lost a glove, and a long streak of mud marks the front of Gideon’s cassock.

Gideon rests one hand against the cart. “Go peacefully, old friend.”

I almost laugh. It’s a nice sentiment, if not redundant. I doubt peace will do him any good at this point.

Robert clicks his tongue, leads the mule away, and carries Beswick’s only physician towards the plague pit beyond the southern wall.

I watch the cart shrink into the morning mist, a cold knot twisting in my gut. Taylor was a difficult man who spent half his life complaining about his joints and the other half treating me like a nuisance. But he possessed thirty years of medical training. He knew the Latin names for diseases. Now he’s just another shrouded lump on a cart, and I’m the only person left in this village who knows how to mix a fever draught. Two hundred and eighty people are currently depending on a spinster with a ruined leg to keep them out of that pit.

We are in serious trouble.

Gideon watches the path long after the cart disappears. Then he turns, his shoulders sagging, and heads back inside the freezing church. He makes it to the front pew before sinking onto the hard wood, burying his face in his hands.

As I sit down beside him, Brother Gideon vanishes—the spiritual shepherd of the dying, the untouchable mouthpiece of the Lord—all of it gone. I see only my brother. My infuriating, flesh-and-blood older brother. The same boy who used to pull my hair and steal bread from my plate, now playing at priests in a cassock as the world rots around us.

He lowers his hands with a sigh, elbows settling against his knees. “They’re going to panic.”

I pull the vinegar-soaked linen down from my face and breathe in the dusty cold of the nave. “They’re already panicking, which is why you must write to the diocese today. Beg the bishop to send us another physician.”

Gideon shakes his head. “No sane man is going to ride willingly into this parish, Ophi. The bishop would never allow it.”

“Then lie to him. Beg him.” I rub at my aching forehead. “I’ve carried half of Taylor’s practice for ten years, but I cannot carry the rest. He took the midnight calls and walked the furthest lanes. If you expect me to answer his knocks on top of my own, the exhaustion is going to kill me long before the pestilence gets the chance.”

“You will not be on your own. The Lord will sustain you.”

Perhaps He might also carry my basket across the far lanes when my leg decides it’s had enough.

The terrible fervour I hate so much creeps back into his eyes. “Taylor was an earthly comfort, Ophi, but we may have relied upon him too heavily, and that is why the Lord called him home. God is our true physician. He has left us you, and He has left us prayer, and we must rely upon both.”

“Gid—”

“We will show the Lord that Beswick is still worthy of salvation. Daily sermons. Morning and evening prayers. We will fast where we are able, confess what we have neglected, and bring every soul in this parish back before God. Whatever sin has taken root here, whatever wickedness has drawn His judgement upon us, we will find it. We will tear it out if we have to. We will cleanse Beswick until there is nothing left for the Lord to punish.”

I want to tell him that empty stomachs will not pull the rot from a dying man’s lungs. But I can’t. There are thoughts a woman may carry safely enough inside her own skull, provided she never makes the mistake of giving them sound. Not even to Gideon. Especially not to Gideon. He loves me because I’m his sister. But if I told him what I truly think, I do not know whether he would hear Ophelia at all beneath the heresy. And if those words travelled any farther than this pew, affection would matter even less. One careless sentence could become a whisper, a whisper an accusation, and before long I could find myself dragged before men who have never shared my table or known me without all my teeth, and ordered to repent for a faith I do not possess.

They’d make an example of me before the parish, drag me barefoot into the church and have me confess my godlessness before every neighbour who had ever trusted me with a fevered child. By the time they’d be done with me, I needn’t be hanged or imprisoned. They could simply send me home and let Beswick decide whether a woman without God ought still to be permitted near its sick.

That would be punishment enough.

So I swallow everything I want to say and lean back against the pew instead, turning my attention towards the stained-glass window where a fat spider is drawing its web across the Virgin’s face.

“Write to the diocese,” I say. “Tell the bishop exactly what you just told me. Tell him Beswick is fasting. Tell him you are purging the wickedness from the streets and bringing the flock back to God. Give him a reason to believe this parish is still worth saving and then use it to beg for a physician.”

He sighs. “…He will say there are no doctors to spare.”