Her eyes, deep as the forest, flickered open. She made a final gesture at me. As her hand fell, I was flung from her world.

CHAPTER 24

Vindication

I returned to my life slowly, almost reluctantly, over a period not of days, but of weeks. Dr. Amicas told me that my case of the plague was unique; that I had passed from the Speck plague into a brain fever that had sent me into a coma. I did not one day “awake” from it. Rather, I slowly drifted out of it and back into my life. The doctor was surprised to see me live, let alone slowly recover my faculties. By the time I was aware of myself, I found I had been moved to a comfortable room in the guest wing of my uncle’s house. Nonetheless, the good doctor came to visit me often during the days of my convalescence. I think he enjoyed seeing me, for I was one of his few distinct successes in a season of terrible failures.

A hired nurse cared for me at first. Either she did not know anything or she had been told to say nothing that I might find distressing. I know that some days of awareness passed before I came to myself enough to know that I should worry about my family and friends. To my halting questions she would only reply that I should not fret, soon I would be better and be able to get about and discover things for myself. If I’d been able to get out of bed, I think I would have throttled her.

But I could not. I suffered a general weakness in my limbs and an aggravating confusion with my speech. When the doctor visited me, I was able to convey both my frustration and my fear to him. He patted my hand condescendingly and told me that I was fortunate, that after a fever such as mine, some men awoke halfwits. He told me to work on my speech, perhaps by reading aloud or reciting familiar poetry. Then he left me and I had to deal with the hired nurse again.

I did not see much of my uncle. Considering the trouble I had brought into his life, I was surprised that he took me into his home at all. My aunt never visited me. My uncle did not visit me often, and his visits were short. I could not blame him. He was still kind to me, but in the new lines in his face I could see that Epiny’s impulsive act had cost him much in sleep and worry, not to mention heartbreak. Under the circumstances, I kept my concerns to myself. He had enough burdens of his own. I would not tell him that I had been culled, and that as soon as I was well enough to travel, I’d be taking Sirlofty and heading home. I tried several times to write to my father, but my wandering handwriting looked like the scrawl of an irresponsible boy or a depraved old man, and my hand always grew too weary to hold a pen long before I found the words to explain to my father how I had fallen. My nurse often exhorted me to take hope for the future in how the good god had preserved me, but most days it seemed to me that continuing my life was the cruelest jest the good god could have played upon me. Whenever I looked at the days of my life that stretched before me, I felt discouraged. What was I to do with them all, now that I’d ruined my prospects?

Epiny herself came at least once a day, to chatter at me until I was exhausted. She herself had been ill for several days with a much milder case of the plague. During recovery, when she had still been too weak to resist him, the doctor had sternly and firmly returned her to her family home. Her mother had reluctantly received her, she claimed.

To me, she seemed completely recovered now. She read the worried letters my family had sent to me, and took it upon herself to send replies to them, assuring them of my steady recovery and fond thoughts of them. She did not comment that there were no letters from Carsina. That was a small mercy. She told me that during the days of my coma, she had sat by my bedside and read poetry to me for hours on end, hoping that I would take comfort from the sound of a familiar voice and that it would help me to recover. I don’t know that it aided my recovery, but it possibly accounted for several rather peculiar dreams from that haunted wandering of my mind.

In her own careless way, she tried to be considerate of me. She made an effort to always be cheery and pleasant in the time she spent with me, but sometimes the rims of her eyes were pink, as if she had been crying, and she now seemed older than her years rather than younger. She wore sedate women’s clothing, and kept her hair up and pinned in a style so tidy that it bordered on severe. I think the conflict with her parents over the choice she had made weighed on her more than she wished me to know.

Epiny waited some time before she judged me well enough to have news. She was worse than the hired nurse. She nearly drove me mad by awkwardly changing the subject whenever I asked for tidings of my friends. One day, when she had provoked me to a coughing fit by refusing to answer my repeated questions, she relented. She then shut the door, sat down by my bedside, took my hand in hers, and proceeded to sketch in the ten days that had vanished from my life.