Eat the Poor

XXXIX

Pain.

My body was on fire. My vision was a blur. I felt arms lifting me, a breeze cooling my face, water trickling down my throat. Then coursing back up.

Darkness.

Someone whispered to me. Caressed my cheek. My mother? An angel? The Devil, perhaps. I lay in cool sheets that rippled like water. Someone - an old man - wrapped my hand in white cloth.

Blood.

I tasted it in my mouth and felt the spray hit my face each night in my dreams. I saw Geoff's face and woke up screaming. Arms held me down as I hit and kicked everything within reach.

Sleep.

Deep, cold sleep. Sleep that lasted so long I wondered if I was dead. If this was what death was. Not Heaven, not Hell. Some sort of Purgatory. Perhaps that was the fate I deserved.

A voice.

A voice I recognized. A man sat beside me, leaning over me. Someone familiar. I could not remember his name for a time, and then all at once, shortly after my fever broke, it came to me. This man was Martin. My brother.

The room slowly came into focus. My brother sat in an armchair, a book in his lap. I was lying in a small bed. I recognized this place. It was the little gray room Philip had given me.

"Martin?" I whispered.

My brother looked up. He dropped his book and rushed to my side. Pain shot through my skull as he adjusted a cloth over my forehead.

"Apologies," he said. "The physician let blood at your temple."

"What are you doing here?" My voice came out weak as if I hadn't used it in years.

Martin drew back. On the bedside table stood a pitcher of water and two cups. He filled one for me. "I was summoned by the King. To bring you back."

I gulped the water. A long moment passed before I could speak again. "Back?"

"From wherever you went, brother. You were gone six days. The court physician refused to waste further time on you." Martin sank into his chair and broke into a wide smile. "But not me. I never lost hope."

Memories flitted through my mind, each one bringing a sharp pain like the slash of a blade. The courtyard. The blood on Henriette's dress. The Duc de Montpensier being devoured alive. The spray of blood as Geoff cut through my fingers.

I looked down. My left hand was tucked beneath the sheet, and when I drew it out I saw a thick white cloth wrapped around my wrist and up between my fingers. What was left of my index and middle fingers was bound tightly.

"Mama," I whispered.

Martin's brow furrowed. "What?"

"Does she... know? What happened to me?"

His eyes widened. "I'll write to her of your waking." His chair scraped the polished floor as he hurried to the table.

My stomach twisted. A letter would take too long. I should go home to see her myself. Home. How I missed it. The home I knew and loved. The home I had forsaken to live in a castle, to serve a king.

A king.

"Where's Philip?" I asked, words half-slurred. Panic swelled inside me. "The King," I said when Martin did not answer. "Where is the King?"

"I don't know."

I gripped his forearm. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"C-Council, I think," he stuttered. "They have been discussing how to move forward after the rebellion."