Elizabeth woke with a start.
William needed her.
She sat up on the small mattress placed on the floor that was used by wealthy guests who wished to have one of their servants present in the room at all times to help them. The room was completely dark. A musty scent from the sweat which soaked into her night clothes during the hot summer night. She had not had an easy sleep.
Her uncle breathed in a low nasal snore and despite having begun the night on the opposite side of the bed, Mrs. Gardiner now slept entwined with her husband.
The mattress on the floor was too thin and Elizabeth's bum and back hurt from sleeping on it.
She needed to go to William.
Elizabeth stood silently. She stared at the bed and decided not to cast an illusion over her mattress, to make it seem as though she were still there. That would be a lie to her aunt and uncle. She was doing nothing wrong.
Their bond told her William needed her. She would leave the door to his room open when she entered it.
Elizabeth softly padded to the room. A small spell kept the door from creaking as it opened, and she silenced the sounds of her footsteps. That was simply being polite, to keep from waking her relatives.
She entered his room. William moaned. With a toss of her finger Elizabeth cast a ball of light so she could see him.
William's hair was wet and plastered to his forehead. The sheet around him had soaked through with his sweat. Elizabeth opened the window so a breeze could blow through.
She placed her hand on William's forehead. He burned with a high fever. But as her hand sat on his forehead, painful magical bubbles popped into her hand from his skin.
William let out a long sigh. "Lizzy…"
She wanted to touch more of him. So, following the dreamlike urging of her mind, and the sense that this was right, Elizabeth crawled into the bed and put her arms around him. Once she held William he sighed and shifted his body closer against hers.
His magic bubbled through his skin into her constantly now that they were so close. That should not happen. The circulation of magic through his body must be damaged if pools of magic gathered within him.
They lay entwined for the next hour. Elizabeth's heart beat in fear for William. She was not sure if his skin had cooled, or if her own skin had grown warmer. But he fell into a deeper sleep, so her closeness must help, perhaps because his excess potentia flowed into her.
Elizabeth lingered between sleep and waking, and strange images passed vividly through her mind. With a start she sat up and saw that the sun had risen, shining through the opened window. Her aunt and uncle would wake, and they would complain if they saw her limbs covering William's.
She did not want to leave him. She felt so good and comfortable and right when she lay next to him. He would feel sicker again once she left.
After she stood, Elizabeth put her good hand upon his forehead again.
William still had a fever.
Elizabeth walked to the window and looked at the rosy dawn lighting the thin clouds. A pleasant chill blew through the curtains. The sun slowly rose over the horizon, shining into her eyes. Birds sang, giving a loud endless chorus of happy chirps. The air smelled fresh.
She left the room, and quickly changed into a light summer dress so she could bring breakfast in case William woke hungry again. As she did her aunt and uncle stirred themselves awake. "Already up, Lizzy?"
"William is ill. He has a fever."
"You should have woken me to go with you to check on him," Mrs. Gardiner snapped. "Promise to not enter his room alone again."
"I shall make no such promise. But I left the door ajar, and we did nothing to be ashamed of. I am going to get breakfast. He was so hungry all yesterday."
"Lizzy."
Elizabeth ignored her aunt, and she exited their suite of rooms and went across the hall to the kitchen to give their orders. Piles of seared meat and steaming eggs were piled into the skillet by the cook. The smell of the bacon was thick and made her feel as hungry as William had been. It was nice feeding him.
She would miss having the task of helping William to eat when he could feed himself.
She left the cook to finish preparing their tray and returned to the room. Mrs. Gardiner talked quietly to her half-dressed uncle. Mrs. Gardiner said, "William has a decided fever. When I shook him awake he moaned and vomited. We do not think we can travel today."
"Oh! Is he awake?"
Elizabeth rushed into the room. William's face was pale. He looked at her wanly from the bed. The sheet had been pulled off the bed and stuck in a clump on the edge of the floor by Mrs. Gardiner. Elizabeth faintly smelled the vomit. He shivered.
"William…you are sicker. I thought…"
"I am almost well. A mere inconvenience. Once my body is used to potentia again it shall go away."
"I will call a physician. It is time."
He held out his hand to her, and Elizabeth took it. She felt that bubbling flow of their potentia working together again. He smiled at her. "I am perfectly well in your presence."
"Where does it hurt?"
"Everywhere. A surfeit of potentia in the muscles and organs. My fluvia must have atrophied along with my muscles."
"Fluvia? You mean the veins for our magic — I am worried."
"Elizabeth…" He smiled softly at her. "I am glad you are here."
"What if…what if you do need a doctor."
"I am not dying. If I were, a rural doctor would be outside his skills to help me in any case."
Mrs. Gardiner and Mr. Gardiner entered the room. Mr. Gardiner said, "Eh, Mr. William how do you feel? I think we will not travel today while you are in this state."
"Merely a little uncomfortable."
"Only a little uncomfortable?" Mr. Gardiner's eyes twinkled. "You…ah, you relieved yourself through your mouth."
William laughed.
"If you need a physician," — Mr. Gardiner patted William on the shoulder — "we'll send for the best, otherwise rest a day or two more. Most illnesses pass off on their own."
The food arrived, the scent of bacon and eggs made William perk up. He looked towards the food with a smile. "Despite my earlier nausea, I would rather like food."
Elizabeth helped him to eat. She had become expert at feeding and helping him drink tea or ale, even though she had to use her left hand. He sometimes had an expression, as though it hurt to force food into his stomach, but he was too hungry not to.
Each time Elizabeth touched him, the little bubbles of accumulated magic dissolved from William to her. But not enough. Even when she had been pressed against him in the bed it had not been enough for all of the accumulated potentia to flow into her.
After the torment of having been bled for a year, it seemed to Elizabeth like a heresy to suggest bleeding, even in her own mind. But William probably should be bled. Again.
But the process to do so was more complex than simply cutting a commoner's wrist open. If done wrong severe injuries could be caused. She should not try to do it on her own.
In any case Elizabeth did not know how to create a sucking cup, or its equivalent.
William vomited up half his meal an hour after breakfast. Elizabeth got on her hands and knees and cleaned the stinky half-digested acids out of the rug like a servant. She dared not call a maid.
Elizabeth had imagined her first days after rescuing William…differently. Oddly, like William himself, this was better than what she had imagined.
Heroics could include caring for a sick man without the help of a servant.
William lay back with his eyes closed. He was in pain. All of his body seemed full of discomfort.
Elizabeth spent the rest of the morning and the beginning of the afternoon reading to William. When the noon bells rang from the parish church, he did not eagerly ask for food, but Elizabeth thought he was still hungry as his body desperately needed the stuff from meat and food to rebuild itself at the pace his magic allowed.
A body wasn't like a cotton garment which a spell could make grow from the stuff floating in the air — though such garments were far inferior to one woven from grown cotton. Even with magic a person needed animal or plant matter to grow new muscles and skin.
The entire time Mrs. Gardiner sat in the room, frowning heavily at them both and knitting or reading her own book. It was clear that her aunt intended to ensure Elizabeth could engage in no intimate interludes with William.
She wanted to hold William's hand. She would feel better, and more importantly he would. Some of the magic that she was sure was pooling up in him, and causing his illness, would drain away.
They talked in low tones, and William rolled around to find a pleasant spot to lie. She repeatedly checked his temperature on his forehead, leaving her hand there as long as she thought her aunt would accept, just so she could touch him. His fever did not go as high as it had before she came to him in the morning, but he constantly was hot.
Early in the afternoon William fell asleep while she read to him.
The shaved curves of his thin face caught the high summer light. His hair was messily growing into a handsome fuzz after being burnt away like hers had been. She stared at him for a long time.
Mrs. Gardiner stood and put her hand on Elizabeth's shoulder, pulling her to her feet. She whispered, "He sleeps, there is no reason for your presence here."
In frustration at days of inactivity, Elizabeth stood and followed her aunt's advice. She left the room, though stepping further from him did not seem right. But she needed a walk. After telling her frowning aunt and her rather happier uncle her plan, she went to the door. Elizabeth pulled her blue bonnet off the rack next and arranged it flatteringly over her head. She pulled on a pair of summer sandals.
As she stepped out the door of the inn, Elizabeth had an idea. She had visited the nearby bookstore the evening they arrived at the inn, to distract herself from anxiety about her plan to search for William the next morning, and she purchased a guide to the area in hopes it would give her some information about William's location.
The owner had kindly spent ten minutes answering her questions before she bought the book which still sat on her nightstand next to William's head. The bookstore was well stocked. Surely she could find something there that would tell her how to help William, or at least warn them if he needed to be examined by a true physician without delay. He needed to be bled, most likely. Perhaps she could find a book describing the procedure.
When Elizabeth entered the friendly small bookstore, the bell rang as she opened and closed the door.
"Miss Bennet! Hullo, hullo again. Enjoyed the guide?" The bearded storekeeper with his large horn-rimmed spectacles smiled with friendship.
"Exceedingly. I looked all around a day past."
"Did you go to the east — something most strange occurred ten miles distant. Some flow of potentia, from a ley line perhaps, caused an explosion in a well pit no one knew was there. Rattled the windows in Snarestone, two miles distant. A big black bog was left where the well had been. Strange doings."
"In the opposite direction." Elizabeth tried to keep all nervousness from her laugh. "Which is a pity. That would have been quite exciting to experience."
"If not dangerous — but what sort of book do you look for today? Another guide, or perhaps a novel?"
"A matter of curiosity struck me recently. Have you books on medicine for the gentry that I might look at?"
"Of course. Of course." He pulled his ladder with him to the correct shelf and began pulling books down from the second to top shelf and handing them down to Elizabeth so she could set them on the table in the middle of the shop to look at. As he did so he said, "I heard you extended your stay. Could not leave the town — prettiest in England."
The smile of the shopkeeper seemed too knowing to Elizabeth. As though he could see through her.
"Enjoy the country." He continued, "The loveliest weather of the year is during this month. Are any of these books to your liking?"
Elizabeth thumbed for the next half hour through the man's offerings. Several were not even written by gentlemen. A few were lists of house remedies for minor matters. None useful.
She pushed the seat back and slumped in it. Upon her honour, she never had looked so dejectedly at a pile of fifteen books.
Elizabeth looked out the window. A cat sunned herself in the garden, ignoring a squirrel which ran up and down the tree behind it. A bee buzzed from flower to flower on the windowsill. A cart creaked up the long single road which the village was built along. The bookstore filled with the musty smell of paper and parchment and there was that tingle in her spine from active magical workings. Many books had spells placed upon them by their makers or owners.
She should get back to William. Perhaps he'd woken up and needed her again.
Maybe he was better already, and she would see him healthy and at a normal temperature again, and she would no longer feel scared.
Elizabeth pushed the chair back with a scratchy grind over the wooden slats of the floor.
"Did you find what you wished, Miss Bennet?"
Elizabeth grimaced and shook her head. "Have you any other books on medicine?"
The bookseller shrugged. "Not that you could use."
Elizabeth felt a surge of excitement and a feeling of rightness. "What do you have?"
"There is a book left by an old gentleman. He'd been the doctor in these parts for many years — his heir sold everything he'd owned and I took a chance on buying much of the library. Likely this book has the information you wish, but in Latin."
William would be able to read it! "Might I see it?"
"Of course, Miss."
The owner shuffled along the shelves tapping the back of different volumes and humming. He took a heavy volume from a high shelf. It hummed with magic when brought close to Elizabeth. She eagerly opened the book.
As promised the tome was written in Latin.
Elizabeth paged through the volume. This was the only medical book which appeared to be actually learned in the store. She would either return with it, or with nothing.
Such a pretty drawing!
Elizabeth studied a detailed anatomical drawing in the middle of the book. She recognized it from some lesson she'd been given as a child concerning the nodal points of a gentleman's flows of potentia, but this drawing was far more detailed and enchanted so it could be seen with minute details if mage sight was used to magnify it.
Elizabeth pulled the thick volume close to her body and asked, "What cost?"
"Quite an expensive book. Not for less than four pounds. I'll not part with it for less."
"Four pounds!" Despite her expression of dismay, he had offered an almost reasonable price. Elizabeth had gone with her father on book collecting expeditions many times. This volume, in addition to being large and old, had magic infused into it to protect it from decay.
"An old volume. Quite valuable."
"How can it be so valuable when it is written in a language no one can read?"
The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows. Elizabeth blushed.
He asked, "Can you read Latin?"
"A little."
"Perhaps rather than bargaining me down and trying to rob me by getting a price far below the value of this book, you ought to take your pick from one of those volumes." He pointed at the useless pile Elizabeth already rejected.
The entirety of her remaining allowance and savings was three pounds and twelve shillings.
"I do not care that it is in Latin. The illustrations will be of use! Not more than three pounds. The best I can offer."
"I must insist on three and fifteen at least. You could ask your uncle for more money."
"My uncle knows I do not read Latin." Elizabeth smiled with a sweet expression that made it clear what reply she expected if she made such a ridiculous request to him.
"I will not give it to you at three simple."
Elizabeth sighed. She wanted the book. "Will three and ten do for you? That is almost the entirety of what I possess."
The cash was handed over and Elizabeth walked down the cobblestoned streets back to their inn. The book was awfully heavy, but she had a good feeling about it. Elizabeth whistled a pleased tune as she walked.
