Mary, still successfully disguised as a boy, has found independence and income as a footboy, disguising both her breasts and her periods. But the greatest threat yet to her freedoms is close at hand.
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Fakers Will Always Be Discovered
Jim doesn’t join up. Sometimes a quart of beer makes him a soldier but then it wears off and he keeps with his lacings. Another winter comes, and it’s a fierce one. A wind that’s sharp as grit on the face, followed by three weeks of deep snow, and birds falling dead out of the trees in St James’s Square. There is no hiding from what it brings on its coat tails, either. Pestilence, as Mister Thomas says biblically. What this means in real language is the smallpox, which grabs Fred the butcher’s boy first, and while it still has Fred by the throat, it collars one of Kate’s more ardent suitors to add to its furnace, and then Kate herself. Cook says she herself had it as a girl, which means she will not have it again, but it will burn them all up, all the young people, with a looking to me that seems almost hopeful. Demoiselle, afraid for her health, banishes me from within a breath of Kate’s room, so that I might continue to serve her safely. She has Cook scrub the scullery and pantry and anywhere Kate has touched in recent days, in case she has left some trace of the pestilence there. Even the sheets Kate most recently washed, Demoiselle has re-washed by Cook herself, though Cook grumbles very loudly about it, saying she is not obliged to do housework, but nevertheless pocketing the crown she is given to do so. Demoiselle will not have any more of her staff made ill by this tedious disease, she says, and not a one of us will be carried off if she can help it. Cook mutters that smallpox is no respecter of rank. The queen’s two daughters died of it many years ago.
I am spared the smallpox. Fred the butcher’s boy dies, as does Kate’s suitor. Kate recovers her health. But the glowing loveliness of her skin, her singing of songs at the tub, have gone. I seem unscathed.
But the winter will have its way with me, and one day in the sharp tail of February, I become sick. My day is not the best to begin with, as it is my time, and my cramps are harder and heavier than usual, and I have no excuses at my elbow: cannot say this is a delicate time, a lady’s day, my Flowers as Kate sometimes says, so am expected to do my errands as usual. In the afternoon Demoiselle is determined that I should come with her to St James’ Park where she is meeting her friend, Lady Susan, for a turn around the gardens, to stretch her legs as she says with the delight that foreigners have for another language’s expressions. I am to stay close by in case I am needed.
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