hobbled across the ward to pour a bowl of cool water and dunked a clean square of linen into it. After placing it across Tom’s fevered brow, Bella quickly found a maid and told her to summon the physician. All her reading told her the rapid onset of a high temperature did not bode well and signalled something nasty.
Back at his bedside, she sat and used the cold flannel to cool the boy’s skin. ‘The doctor is on his way, Tom. Are you in any pain?’
‘My throat.’ His voice was so hoarse he winced as he whispered and frightened tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.
‘Let me see.’ His mouth was so swollen that seeing was impossible. Remembering the spare medical tools Dr Warriner kept in the cabinet, Bella rummaged through them and returned with the ivory tongue depressor she had seen him use before. ‘Say ah, Tom.’
The boy did as instructed, with some difficulty, but Bella saw the swollen and infected tonsils. To her untrained eyes they appeared very infected indeed, which suggested quinsy. The high temperature and general malaise confirmed the diagnosis. The poor lad must be in agony and his rapid fever was a worry.
‘Dr Warriner is attending a birth, my lady.’ The matron, Mrs Giles, scurried in, looking flustered. ‘His housekeeper says he might be gone many hours, but she will send him with all haste as soon as he returns.’
‘Then send for Dr Bentley!’ Bella did not want to wait hours. Hours of high fever killed children.
The matron shook her head. ‘Dr Bentley won’t come here.’
‘If it is a matter of money, Mrs Giles, tell him I will pay him personally.’
‘It’s not the money, my lady...it’s the family. Dr Bentley will not come here because it is owned by a Warriner.’
Bella had never heard anything so ridiculous in her life. ‘The man is a physician, is he not? As such, his first duty is to attend to those who need him. Send for him immediately.’ Petty feuds had no place in an emergency.
Just a few short minutes later, word came that Dr Bentley would not be attending the foundling home, now or at any time in the future and no amount of money would sway him. ‘I’m sorry, my lady, but the old prejudices still run deep in Retford. I’m sure Dr Warriner will be here presently.’
Such an outrage beggared belief and at some point she fully intended to give the silly man a piece of her mind, but in the meantime Tom was burning up. ‘Can you brew some willow bark tea, Mrs Giles?’ That was known to help reduce a fever. ‘And some ice.’ Common sense told her cooling the boy’s skin might help, just as it had her hot, swollen ankle. Then Bella remembered her conversation with the doctor in his office. Honey fights infection... If it worked externally, then there was a chance it might work internally as well. She called at the woman’s retreating back. ‘And bring me a jar of honey, Mrs Giles!’
A few minutes later, she helped the boy to sit and carefully spooned the warm, hastily mixed willow bark and honey concoction into his mouth. He really didn’t want to swallow, so she tilted his head back to allow the liquid to trickle over those inflamed tonsils and into his stomach.
Mrs Giles moved the other boys to another room at Bella’s insistence and all the windows in the sunny infirmary were thrown open and the blankets stripped from the bed to allow the linen parcels of ice she had made to rest against his limbs, torso and head. Despite her best efforts, the boy’s temperature remained dangerously high. The willow bark alone was not going to be enough. What else could she use? Feverfew—wasn’t that known to have a calming effect on inflammation? And she had recently read a very enlightening paper on the benefits of echinacea flower...
‘Mrs Giles, send somebody immediately to Dr Warriner’s surgery and ask his housekeeper to send us the following things.’ Bella listed all the herbs she could think of which might be of use: yarrow root, black elder berries, chamomile, ginger, more white willow, much more honey. In the absence of a proper physician, Bella was all little Tom had.
* * *
It was almost midnight when Joe finally made it to the infirmary. The twins he had just delivered had been most uncooperative. The first had been breech and the second baby had the cord wrapped around his neck. It had been a difficult and dangerous birth and he was supremely grateful he had been called early enough to be able to save the mother and both of her babies. Now he was practically dead on his feet and had already called for a large pot of coffee to sharpen his wits ready for his next emergency. He only hoped the child’s fever was manageable and that the hours of delay had not been catastrophic. Dealing mostly with the many poor of the parish, Joe was often spread too thin and, because of his innate need to rescue, felt personally responsible for every failure—especially the children. Today, three of them had needed him and he prayed he was not too late for the third.
The ward was dim as he walked in. A single candle burned in one corner of the room and he could just about make out the outline of a napping nurse resting in the chair beside the sleeping boy’s bed, her head buried in the scrunched-up pillow which had been propped behind her and her legs tucked under her skirts. He crept to the opposite side of the bed and rested his palm on the boy’s forehead. He was warm, but not burning. A good sign. Fortunately, this nurse had not closed up the room or had a roaring fire burning in the grate. No matter how many times he told Mrs Giles heat was the worst thing to use to treat a fever, the old matron was set in her ways and always reverted to it in an emergency. It was all she knew.
This nurse was obviously more intelligent. Tom was covered in only a thin cotton sheet, the fireplace was stone-cold and the lace curtains billowed in the gentle summer breeze coming through the wide-open windows. Joe placed his bag on the edge of the bed and the movement woke up the sleeping woman with a start. Her terrified eyes were round in the darkness.
‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
‘Dr Warriner!’
He knew that voice. ‘Lady Isabella?’ To find her still here, at a sick child’s bedside so late at night, was a huge surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to stay with Tom...just in case his fever returned.’ She had hastily stood and was in the process of lighting a lamp close to the bed. ‘His temperature was so high earlier I was worried about him.’ As usual, she was already backing away towards the open doorway, her posture stiff. He could see her chest rising and falling rapidly almost as if she was in the midst of a panic, but her features were composed, if slightly strained.
‘Is he having any difficulty breathing?’
She took a step forward and gazed down at the sleeping child and shook her head. ‘Not so far—thank goodness.’ In the lamplight, he could see her hairstyle had collapsed on one side. One slippery coil of dark hair hung down against her cheek almost to her waist. The rest of that side of her head charmingly resembled a bird’s nest. Rumpled and groggy with sleep, she appeared younger and much softer than usual. Instead of their usual wariness, those soulful dark eyes were now filled only with concern for the little boy. ‘The fever came on so suddenly.’
‘His temperature is not unduly high now.’
Almost as if she didn’t believe him, her own palm brushed against the boy’s brow and she exhaled in relief. ‘I mixed willow bark with feverfew, echinacea and chamomile in a tea to fight the fever and have been feeding him it every two hours since midday. I didn’t know what else to do.’
Joe took in the scene, the open windows, the ice, the cool cloths draped over the boy’s arms and head. The
