“Richard,” Elias said before they left. “If he gets well, I’m killin’ him.”
Richard nodded. There wasn’t much else he could do. No one would stop Elias from what he meant to do.
“Ye took Lily from her family,” he growled, giving Bertram a shove forward. “Someone verra close to me was taken from his family at a young age. I have seen the effects of it firsthand. I will not let ye live.”
“Ye are a Scot,” Bertram breathed out in front of him. “A Highlander judgin’ by yer plaid. Ye know how lonely winter can be.”
Elias pushed him through the door and hurled him inside the half-empty shed.
“Ye know ye have been stricken with the pestilence, aye?” Elias asked him, dragging him to a post. “Ye are dyin’.”
“I suspect it.”
“Ye brought it here,” Elias said, tying him to the post. “For that, I might allow the villagers some time alone with ye before ye die.”
“The bishop knows I’m here,” Bertram warned.
“Good, I will invite him here to examine yer body,” Elias promised, then kicked him in the kneecaps to get him to sit on the floor.
“Take a nap or somethin’,” Elias told him, leaving him alone. “Enjoy the short time ye still have alive.”
“Ye do the same, MacPherson,” Bertram called out in a low, guttural voice.
At the door, Elias turned to him and smiled. “I will.”
He shut the door and took a long, deep breath. What was he to do now? Come to terms that he would likely be dead within a few days, and Lily a few days after that? No. No, he wouldn’t.
He stepped outside and found a dozen villagers, including Lily, Richard and Simon staring back at him. A blink of his long spray of lashes was all it took to get them all talking. It all came at once. Most begged him to take them to Invergarry. Everything was ready to leave. Mayhap none of them were afflicted, but he wouldn’t take that chance.
“What will we do now?” Walter called out.
“My girls are just children,” Norman lamented.
“Aye, our son, Terrick is only eight summers,” cried Walter’s wife, Eleanor.
“Richard, are we going to die?” Martin Miller asked, holding on to Joan and his daughter.
The apothecary held up his hands to try to quiet them. ”We know very little about this illness. We do not know how ‘tis spread only that ‘tis moving quickly. That is all we know, so…based on that alone, I would say ‘tis likely that many of us have become afflicted.”
Horror ensued. Two women fainted. Men cried out and fell to their knees.
Elias understood it. He never really had before. He’d grown up in the sheltering safety of a fortified, mostly self-sustaining village—with no reason to be afraid. Life had been dull and he’d grown curious for more. He’d been trained to master the art of fighting and he’d wanted to use his skill in battle. He left the stronghold at seventeen to fight the English in Dunbar.
It wasn’t that he didn’t feel fear. He felt it. He liked how alive it made him feel. He’d experienced it often in battle, but something was different with this enemy. This enemy wanted her… his gaze flicked to Lily trying to calm Estrid and Eleanor.
Miserably, he reconciled himself to the fact that he was beginning to care a bit too much for her. He was sorry for it, but that didn’t stop it. He’d have to confess the deep, dark things that crossed his mind at times…things about her husband, his friend.
Would the sickness take her? He had the sensation of his heart and belly sinking downward. A different kind of fear, like nothing he’d ever felt before, encased him like a dark cloud. It didn’t feel invigorating. It felt as if he were being smothered to death. Slowly. He wanted to take Lily and run. Take her and hide.
But there was no place to go without possibly spreading the sickness to others. He wouldn’t do it and he wouldn’t let the others do it.
“Everyone!” he shouted once, and then again in a thunderous voice. “There is no sense in cryin’ over what canna be changed. The pestilence may be here, but we have the most intelligent apothecary the good Lord has ever created here with us. Let us help him find a remedy. If ye want to be a part of doin’ somethin’ to help, to give us all hope, then grab some of Richard’s bags containin’ his herbs and let us help him bring them back to the shop.”
He took a step forward and clasped one hand around Richard’s thin arm and the other around Lily’s even thinner wrist. “Come, there is work to be done.” He pulled them gently along, leaving the villagers to follow or not.
There was nothing left to do but find a cure…and pray. Pray hard.
Chapter Ten