Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [131]
She obeyed and managed to gasp out a coherent sentence. "It's her ladyship. She's dying."
Raphael turned pale. "Sister Marianne?"
The girl nodded and looked back and forth between us. "Is it true that Eisheth's granted you the power to work miracles?"
"Someone has." Raphael glanced at me. "Moirin?"
I couldn't refuse. "Let's go."
The young acolyte—whose name was Gemma—had run on foot all the way from Eisheth's temple. Raphael sent for his carriage. While we waited on the front steps, he gently pried the details from Gemma. It seemed the Head Priestess at the Temple of Eisheth had been bitten on the hand by a rat in the granary. The wound turned septic and refused to heal despite being drained and poulticed. Now it was poisoning her very blood.
"You know she might have to lose the arm," Raphael said gently. "I can't promise a miracle and I'm not a chirurgeon."
"I know." The girl swallowed. "It's too late to amputate."
"How high has the red streak climbed?" he asked.
She touched her armpit. "Here, when I left."
Raphael swore violently. "Why did you wait so sodding long?"
Gemma flinched. "Her ladyship… she hid it from us. She tended it herself. By the time the fever and chills took over, it was too late. And you…" This time she avoided looking in my direction. "There are rumors. The others are fearful."
"Because of me," I said.
She nodded. "They say better a clean death than an unnatural compact with a witch. But I came anyway."
The carriage pulled into the outer courtyard. We scrambled inside and Raphael ordered his driver, Nevil, to make haste for the Temple of Eisheth. In a trice, we were clattering swiftly down the streets of the City.
"What in Blessed Elua's name was the Head Priestess doing chasing rats in the granary?" Raphael asked Gemma.
She laughed through her tears. "She's always been a right scourge. Says they carry disease. She doesn't even trust the cats to do a proper job of it."
He shook his head. "I've known Sister Marianne Prichard since I was a boy," he said to me. "She was the royal chirurgeon of House Mereliot for many years. She took vows in Eisheth's Order after my parents died."
"Oh," I said softly.
"I missed her." Raphael's voice was wistful. "When I came to the City, she was one of the first people I sought out."
We arrived at the Temple of Eisheth in short order and disembarked from the carriage. The building and grounds passed in a blur. Raphael and I hurried after Gemma as she hoisted the skirts of her robes and ran through the temple, down one corridor and another.
Gemma halted and flung open a closed door. "Is she—?"
"Shhh." A priest in sea-blue robes put a finger to his lips. There were half a dozen priests and priestesses clustered around a bed in which a small figure lay. "Trouble her not."
"Sister Marianne?" Raphael called. "It's me."
There was an inaudible whisper in reply, followed by a quiet commotion around the bed. With obvious reluctance, the members of Eisheth's Order bowed their heads and stood aside, looking askance at me.
Raphael beckoned. "Come."
I knew nothing of medicine. Even so, it was obvious to me that the elderly woman in the bed was dying. In her sunken face, her eyes were bright with the awareness of it. She shivered feverishly and convulsively. One arm was skinny, the skin loose and wrinkled on the bone. The other was swollen, the skin taut and streaked with red. It seemed to throb visibly.
"Raphael de Mereliot," she whispered.
He knelt and clasped her good hand. "Why did you hide it?"
She gave a near-soundless wheeze of laughter. "The Head Priestess laid low by a rat? I was embarrassed."
"That was foolish."
"Yes." Her fever-bright gaze drifted onto me. Her withered lips twitched in an attempt at a smile. "So this is your witch. She's quite lovely."
"This is Moirin," Raphael said firmly. "She's here to help you. We're here to help you."
Sister Marianne's eyes glazed.
"Ah, no!" I said in alarm.
Raphael rubbed his hands together, generating heat. I could see his gift, Eisheth's gift, coiling around