While Beauty Slept Read Free Page B

cows fell sick.
    We had three, an ancient bull that Father used in the fields and two milk cows. I was the first to notice the red scabs on their teats as I milked the cows early one morning. They felt scaly but showed no signs of blood, and I gave them no further thought. It wasn’t until the next day, when one of the cows stared at me with dazed eyes, leaning against the side of the barn, that I realized something was terribly wrong.
    As I went outside to tell my father, I saw him coming toward me, muttering with frustration. He used to hang his head low when he was angry, hurling curses to the ground as he walked, and he did so now.
    “Father . . .” I began.
    “Hush!” he spat at me. “Sukey’s dead.”
    My heart dropped. Sukey was the name we used for the biggest of our pigs; whenever one Sukey died, the next largest took the name, and so the cycle progressed. This latest Sukey had given birth to a litter of pigs not a week before. If she were not alive to suckle them, they might all die, and with them went our meat for the rest of the year.
    “What happened?” I asked, trailing after him on the way to the house.
    “The pox.”
    It was all that needed to be said. The pox was an ailment that swept through farms with no warning, sickening livestock and people with alarming fickleness. It might be mild and merely weaken creatures for a few days, but it also could prove devastating. It was reputed to have killed entire families in the village once, years before I was born.
    It was my mother who first noticed the spots on my face the following day. I had woken with a dry, raspy cough and a fever, but that in itself was no reason for me to be excused from my daily labors. Only complete infirmity merited a rest in my parents’ bed, with its feather-stuffed mattress. Usually we children slept packed together in a loft under the eaves, a bleak expanse of wood topped with a pile of straw and worn blankets. It was tolerable when I had to share it with only Nairn, the brother closest to me in age, but as a new sibling appeared almost every year, it grew steadily more crowded. I was often startled awake in the middle of the night by a foot kicking my stomach or an arm flung across my face.
    “What is this?” Mother asked, peering at my cheek.
    “What?” I asked.
    “These spots.” She pushed the hair away from my face and put her palm against my forehead. “You’re burning up.”
    I was ready to protest that I felt well enough, until I saw the fear in her face. She was holding my youngest brother in one arm, and she pulled him closer to her body, away from the threat of my illness. The heat I had tried to ignore flashed through my body, leaving a chill in its wake. My skin prickled as if the pox were about to burst through in angry red eruptions.
    Mother laid the baby down in the cradle by the fireplace and pulled my wool dress off, leaving me in my chemise.
    “You must rest,” she urged, pushing me toward her bed. “If you take care, I have heard that the pox can pass without lasting harm.”
    I chose to believe her. What girl, at fourteen, ever thought she was mortal?
    The following days passed in an eternal hazy twilight, for the illness tormented its sufferers with a wakefulness that allowed no respite from its horrors. My body blazed with pain as the pox erupted across my skin, yet I was unable to escape into the oblivion of sleep. Delirious, I saw visions of the castle and imagined myself walking along its wide corridors. It was warm, always warm, as I passed one fireplace after another. I gawked at the flames, amazed by the extravagance that allowed hearths to burn day and night. I have dim memories of my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over to wipe my forehead with a wet cloth. Then leaning forward to do the same to my brother Nairn beside me and another brother beside him. Mother watched us without expression, staring as if the heat of our fevers had scorched her eyes to blindness. The