The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [380]
She was disappointed. She had not heard anything of him since Lessay. If he had stuck to his plan of going to Compostela he would almost certainly have come to Tours. She began to fear that he might have changed his mind.
She went to the church of Saint Martin, as everyone did; and there she saw a team of builders engaged on extensive repair work. She sought out the master builder, a small, bad-tempered man with thinning hair, and asked if he had employed an English mason.
“I never employ the English,” he said abruptly, before she had finished her sentence. “English masons are no good.”
“This one is very good,” she said. “And he speaks good French, so you might not have known he’s English. He has red hair—”
“No, never seen him,” the master said rudely, and turned away.
Aliena went back to her lodgings somewhat depressed. To be treated nastily for no reason at all was very dispiriting.
That night she suffered a stomach upset and got no sleep at all. The next day she felt too ill to go out, and spent all day lying in bed in the tavern, with the stink of the river coming in at the window and the smells of spilled wine and cooking oil seeping up the stairs. On the following morning the baby was ill.
He woke her with his crying. It was not his usual lusty, demanding squall, but a thin, weak, sorry complaint. He had the same upset stomach Aliena had, but he was also feverish. His normally alert blue eyes were shut tight in distress, and his tiny hands were clenched into fists. His skin was flushed and blotchy.
He had never been ill before, and Aliena did not know what to do.
She gave him her breast. He sucked thirstily for a while, then cried again, then sucked again. The milk went straight through him, and seemed to give him no comfort.
There was a pleasant young chambermaid working at the tavern, and Aliena asked her to go to the abbey and buy holy water. She considered sending for a doctor, but they always wanted to bleed people, and she could not believe that it would help Baby to be bled.
The maid returned with her mother, who burned a bunch of dried herbs in an iron bowl. They gave off an acrid smoke that seemed to absorb the bad smells of the place. “The baby will be thirsty—give him the breast as often as he wants it,” she said. “Have plenty to drink yourself, so that you have enough milk. That’s all you can do.”
“Will he be all right?” Aliena said anxiously.
The woman looked sympathetic. “I don’t know, dear. When they’re so small you can’t tell. Usually they survive things like this. Sometimes they don’t. Is he your first?”
“Yes.”
“Just remember that you can always have more.” Aliena thought: But this is Jack’s baby, and I’ve lost Jack. She kept her thoughts to herself, thanked the woman, and paid her for the herbs.
When they had gone she diluted the holy water with ordinary water, dipped a rag in it, and cooled the baby’s head.
He seemed to get worse as the day wore on. Aliena gave him her breast when he cried, sang to him when he lay awake, and cooled him with holy water when he slept. He suckled continually but fitfully. Fortunately she had plenty of milk—she always had. She herself was still ill and kept going with dry bread and watered wine. As the hours went by she came to hate the room she was in, with its bare flyblown walls, rough plank floor, ill-fitting door and mean little window. It had precisely four items of furniture: the rickety bed, a three-legged stool, a clothes pole, and a floor-standing candlestick with three prongs but only one candle.
When darkness fell the maid came and lit the candle. She looked at the baby, who was lying on the bed, waving his arms and legs and grizzling plaintively. “Poor little thing,” she said. “He doesn’t understand why he feels so bad.”
Aliena moved from the stool to the bed, but she kept the candle burning, so that she could see the baby. Through the night they both dozed fitfully. Toward dawn the baby’s breathing became shallow, and he stopped crying and moving.