Sylvestra looked faintly embarrassed. She turned from Rhys to Hester.
'Perhaps I had better show you your room?”
'Thank you,' Hesteraccepted. She would change into a plainer and more practical dress, and return alone to try to get to know Rhys Duff, and learn what there was she could do to help him.
Her first evening in the Duff house was unfamiliar and oddly lonely.
She had frequently been among people who were profoundly distressed by violence, bereavement, even by crime. She had lived with people under the pressure of investigation by strangers into the most private and vulnerable parts of their lives. She had known people whom dreadful circumstances had caused to be suspicious and frightened of each other.
But she had never before nursed a patient who was conscious and yet unable to speak. There was a silence in the whole house which gave her a sense of isolation. Sylvestra herself was a quiet woman, not given to conversing except when she had some definite message to impart, not talking simply for companionship, as most women do.
The servants were muted, as if in the presence of the dead, not chattering or gossiping among themselves as was habitual.
When Hester returned to Rhys's room she found him lying on his back staring up at the ceiling, his eyes wide and fixed, as if in great concentration upon something. She hesitated to interrupt him. She stood watching the firelight flickering, looked to make certain there were enough coals in the bucket for several hours, then studied the small bookcase on the nearer wall to see what he had chosen to read before the attack. She saw books on various other countries, Africa, India, the Far East, and at least a dozen on forms of travel, letters and memoirs of explorers, botanists and observers of the customs and habits of other cultures. There was one large and beautifully bound book on the art of Islam, another on the history of Byzantium. Another seemed to be on the Arab and Moorish conquests of North Africa and Spain before the rise of Ferdinand and Isabella had driven them south again. Beside it was a book on Arabic art, mathematics and inventions.
She must make some contact with him. If she had to force the issue, then she would. She walked forward where he must see her, even if only from the corner of his eye.
'You have an interesting collection of books,' she said conversationally. 'Have you ever travelled?”
He turned his head to stare at her.
'I know you cannot speak, but you can nod your head,' she went on.
'Have you?”
He shook his head very slightly. It was communication, but the animosity was still in his eyes.
'Do you plan to, when you are better?”
Something closed inside his mind. She could see the change in him quite clearly, although it was so slight as to defy description.
'I've been to the Crimea,' she said, disregarding his withdrawal. 'I was there during the war. Of course I saw mostly battlefields and hospitals, but there were occasions when I saw something of the people, and the countryside. It is always extraordinary, almost indecent to me, how the flowers go on blooming and so many things seem exactly the same, even when the world is turning upside down with men killing and dying in their hundreds. You feel as if everything ought to stop, but of course it doesn't.”
She watched him, and he did not move his eyes away, even though they seemed filled with anger. She was almost sure it was anger, not fear.
She looked down to where his broken and splinted hands lay on the sheets. The ends of the fingers below the bandages were slender and sensitive. The nails were perfectly shaped, except one which was badly torn. He must have injured them when he had fought to try to save himself… and perhaps his father too. What did he remember of it?
What terrible knowledge was locked up in his silence?
'I met several Turkish people who were very charming and most interesting,' she went on, as if he had responded wishing to know. She described a young man who had helped in the hospital, talking about him quite casually, remembering more and more as she spoke. What she could not recall she invented.
Once, during the whole hour, she saw the beginning of a smile touch his mouth. At least he was really listening. For a moment they had shared a thought or a feeling.
Later she brought a salve to put on the broken skin of his face where it was drying and would crack, painfully. She reached out with it on her finger, and the moment her skin touched his, he snatched his cheek away, his body clenched up, his eyes black and angry.
'It won't hurt,' she promised. 'It will help to stop the scab from cracking.”
He did not move. His muscles were tight, his chest and shoulders so locked, the pain of it must have pulled on the bruises which both Dr.
Riley and Dr. Wade had said covered his body.
She let her hands fall.
'All right. It doesn't matter. I'll ask you later, and see if you've changed your mind.”
She left and went downstairs to the kitchen to fetch him something to eat. Perhaps the cook would prepare him a coddled egg, or a light custard. According to Dr. Wade, he was well enough to eat, and must be encouraged to do so.
The cook, Mrs. Crozier, had quite an array of suitable dishes, either already prepared, or easy to make even as Hester waited. She offered beef tea, eggs, steamed fish, bread and butter pudding, baked custard or cold chicken.
'How is he, Miss?' she asked with concern in her face.
'He seems very poorly still,' Hesteranswered honestly. 'But we should keep every hope. Perhaps you know which dishes he likes?”
Her face brightened a little. 'Oh yes, Miss, I certainly do. Very fond o' cold saddle o' mutton, he is, or jugged hare.”
'As soon as he's ready for that, I'll let you know.' Hester took the coddled egg and the custard.
She found him in a changed mood. He seemed very ready to allow her to assist him to sit up and take more than half the food prepared for him, in spite of the fact that to move at all obviously caused him considerable pain. He gasped and the sweat broke out on his face. He seemed at once clammy and cold, and for a little while nauseous as well.
She did all she could for him but it was very little. She was forced to stand by helplessly while he fought waves of pain, his eyes on her face, filled with desperation and a plea for any comfort at all, any relief. She reached out and held the ends of his fingers below the bandages, regardless of the bruising and the broken, scabbed skin, and gripped him as she would were he slipping away from her literally.
His fingers clung so hard she felt as though she too would be bruised when at last he let go.
Half an hour passed in silence, then finally he began to relax a little.
The sweat was running off his brow and standing in beads on his lip, but his shoulders lay easy on the pillow and his fingers unclenched.
She was able to slip her hand out and move away to wring the cloth again and bathe his face.
He smiled at her. It was just a small curving of the lips, a softening of his eyes, but it was real.
She smiled back, and felt a tightness in her throat. It was a glimpse of the man he must have been before this terrible thing had happened to him.
Rhys did not knock the bell for her during the night; nevertheless she woke twice of her own accord and went in to see how he was. The first occasion she found him sleeping fitfully. She waited a few moments, then crept out again without disturbing him.
The second time he was awake, and he heard her the moment she pushed the door. He was lying staring towards her. She had not brought a candle, using only the light from the embers of the fire. The room was colder. His eyes looked hollow in the shadows.
She smiled at him.
'I think it's time I stoked the fire again,' she said quietly. 'It's nearly out.”
He nodded very slightly, and then watched her as she crossed the room and took away the guard, and bent to riddle the dead ash through the basket and very gently pile more small pieces of coal on what was left, then wait until it caught in a fragile flame.
