The Endless Forest
Page 186

As long as the little people didn’t come home before time, she’d find out what there was to know with the least possible fuss and then she could decide what she needed to do.
“It’s not like you to be so jumpy,” Curiosity said to Hannah.
Elizabeth was thinking the same thing, but she resisted the urge to agree aloud with Curiosity. Whatever was happening, Hannah must be left to tell them in her own way. Curiosity knew that too, but just now she seemed to have forgot. They were all jumpy.
Martha and Callie exchanged confused glances, and then Callie spoke up. “Is this about Nicholas?”
“No,” Hannah said. “It’s about Jemima.”
The name drew a spark. “What about her?” Callie snapped.
“She’s here. At the Red Dog.”
Curiosity drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Lord God be merciful.”
Elizabeth put a hand on her shoulder, and Curiosity covered it with her own.
“Let me tell it from the beginning,” Hannah said.
Callie began to pace up and down the room, and when she finally came to a stop it was to interrupt Hannah.
“She wanted you to examine her? It must be some kind of trick.”
Callie’s anger was plain to see, but Elizabeth was more worried about Martha, whose expression was studiously blank.
“It isn’t a trick,” Hannah said. “She is sick.”
“With what?”
Hannah looked at Curiosity, and the older woman nodded her encouragement.
“I don’t know if it has a name. She has had episodes on and off for the last year. Swelling and severe pain—” She touched her own abdomen where it met the breastbone. “When the pain comes she can’t hold down food or water. Laudanum gives her little relief. The nausea is so severe that she dry-retches for minutes at a time. Coughing or sudden movement makes the pain worse.”
“I thought she looked on the thin side. What about her stool?” Curiosity asked.
“Full of fat and the stench is—I’ve never come across anything as bad.”
Curiosity nodded. “Rash?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “A very strange rash. It surrounds her navel in a circle. It reminded me—” She broke off.
“Like a bad spot on an apple,” Curiosity finished for her.
Callie made a sound deep in her throat.
“What,” Martha said, her voice coming so rough that she had to swallow, “what are you thinking?”
Hannah turned to the anatomy book that lay open on the worktable and picked it up to hold it in front of herself like a teacher in the classroom.
“You see these digestive organs tucked up against the liver? The gallbladder, the ducts that empty the bile, the pancreas, the stomach itself. The simplest explanation for what is wrong with Jemima would be gallstones that are blocking the bile ducts.”
Callie’s face crumpled. “You did not call us here to tell us Jemima has a bellyache.”
“No,” Curiosity said. “She called us here to tell us Jemima is dying.”
The silence drew itself out, and Elizabeth watched Martha. Her posture, the set of her shoulders, the tension in her jaw, none of that changed appreciably.
Very quietly Hannah said, “I said the simplest explanation would be gallstones, but her condition is far worse.”
“You said these episodes come and go,” Callie said. “Why is this one different?”
“Malignant disease progresses until it can’t be ignored any longer. It is interfering with basic bodily functions and soon her organs will begin to fail entirely.”
Elizabeth said, “Curiosity. are you familiar with this?”
The older woman rocked forward, her arms crossed on her belly. “I never saw a case,” she said. “But I heard about it. That’s the way John Glove’s mother Ebby died. I never met her, but they say she had a problem with drink. Do you get the sense Jemima’s been drinking hard, Hannah?”
“I asked her,” Hannah said. “She denies it.”
Callie’s face was twitching almost convulsively. Elizabeth thought she would burst out in laughter or tears, that she would have done so already, if not for Martha beside her.
Martha said, “Is there any treatment?”
“Death,” Curiosity said. “Death will put an end to it.”
Martha flinched ever so slightly.
“So now we know,” Callie said. She began pacing the room again. “Jemima’s dying. I don’t expect any of us will mourn her for long.”
“Except Nicholas,” Curiosity said, and Callie turned on her heel in surprise.
“He hardly knows her. He never met her until six months ago.”
“Don’t matter,” Curiosity said. “She’s his ma, and he’s a tenderhearted thing. Harper dying took him real low.”
Callie’s mouth pressed itself into a tight and disapproving line.
To Hannah Martha said, “What now?”
That was the question, the one that Hannah had been dreading. Elizabeth knew her stepdaughter’s face, and she thought she knew what she was going to say.
“That’s where things get complicated,” Hannah said.
“Send her home,” Callie said. “Could anything be simpler?”
“There’s no place to send her. I’m not sure the man she had with her last time was even her husband, and she says she has nowhere to go.”