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First day, first day and hauling his body from the cart, her hands still covered in blood and dirt from burying his parents and pulling Bianca with her own hands away from the mud and to a place where she could pray for her, first day and trying to scrub it away before she changes his bandages, like the apothecary said to do, slipping in the old marigold poultice that she learned to make and remembering that it didn’t save Samuel, did it? What if she can’t save him, either? What if with him dies the last of her treasures from Skalitz?
There is a sort of heavy fog that falls over her when she thinks of her beloved brother. A deep dark red mist that spreads from the leaking edge of his bandages over her hands and up over her skin into her eyes, her ears, her nose, as she sees in her mind’s eye her father fall to the blade, as she remembers how it felt to take a man’s life, that cuman was still a man, wasn’t he? No devil. Just another man. They are all such flesh. She should go to confession for her mortal sin, but she does not even know where the church is here, and whether those from Skalitz would be welcome sheep to the flock.
She falls asleep still holding his hand, and awakes so afraid that he has stopped breathing that she dare not move. It has been all night, her hand on his, and she aches as she pulls herself upright and faces the emerging dawn. Another day. A second day. Peshek looks on them with a snarl, reminds her of the debt, and will she pay it, if he does not wake? She doesn’t like the suggestion at the corner of his voice. He is her uncle, but that does not mean he won’t send her to the baths if he needs the groschen.
The intimacy of a held hand is so profound, so overwhelming, how she would have dreamed of it back home. How often she would watch Bianca his arms and feel her heart flutter at a kiss placed tenderly on a forehead, the tender simplicity of touch that she longed for, still longs for, touch not for the desperate need to save, to heal, but for something simpler and more profound.
She places her hand over his heart, and feels it beating.
Day three, changing the bandages, and there is a foul smell. She is loathe to leave his side, but there is nothing to be done, she must be brave, she must, and so she takes herself back up the hill and waits for the bell to chime for trading. She leaves with a strong painkiller and another dash on the ledger which leaves her mouth dry, and when she tries to feed it to him he spits half of it back up on her pinny.
Day four, and he is restful, for a spell, and then the shaking starts again, the throwing of his head from side to side. She puts the hilt of her spoon between his teeth, to be safe, and he growls like a kicked dog at the intrusion of it. She finds the strength to move from him, but the fear remains, fear in her stomach as she adds to the pot for supper, fear in her hands as she sweeps the floor, fear in her cheeks as she scrubs herself in the yard, as she hauls the sacks from the wagon, as she tries to be useful, tries so hard to be useful, what is left if he dies and she is left alone, one final ghost from Skalitz?
Day five, and finally, finally, he comes to when she tries to wake him from his nightmares, and there he is, her Henry, even though his brow is slick and the blood is still dried to him, and she calls hallelujah as she tells him he is safe.