And then the poxy days began in earnest: men groaning on their beds for water; women groping their way along the corridors; a girl singing by the rented harpsichord until blood came from her nose and mouth; the linens I dragged down the steps, befouled with sickness; a child uncovering his back to display a mass of cheesy suppuration.
Much of the company was miserable, but not otherwise too incommoded; some a few pocks, but not many; and of course, those upon whom it had been visited before were immune, and could aid in the care for their loved ones, who now lay panting on their mattresses.
My case was benign. The worst of it was the expectation that I still fulfill my duties in ministering to the others who were laid low; so I was employed running ewers of water up the steps; bathing the foreheads of the little ones; and aiding the cook and maids with the management of the dirty crockery. I felt every minute like I should tumble into sleep precipitously. In some quiet moments, I folded myself in a corner and did sleep, and the cook did not wake me.
A few men, slow-witted and pale, played faro at the gaming-tables. Wives doddered through, clutching at chair-backs. There were dramatic readings of poetry in the parlor.
The sickness was heaviest upon three: the boy to first achieve a pock; and one of the love-triangle — the triumphant rival, who now tossed and turned in his fever, his face swiftly stippled with sores; and, last, my mother, whose head was exceeding hot, and whose palms were gathering into virulence. Her cheeks were ruddy and chapped in a way that presaged irruption.
She regained her senses after her collapse. A night’s sleep recalled her to herself. She requested a gourd filled with wine be placed by her side. She lay on her flat pallet in the servants’ quarters, exiled from her bedchamber, where several of the women of quality were sleeping. The maids moved softly around her, padding to and fro from their ticking.
“Octavian,” she said, “must you work?”
“They will let me sleep soon.”
She raised her arm and dabbled her fingers in the wine. Her hand was limp and covered in sores. They were on her elbows now, too. “I was foolish, to dance,” she said. “They must be laughing about me now.”
“They are laughing about nothing,” I said. “The most healthy among them are lying abed, reading out fairy tales to one another.”
“Will you read me fairy tales?”
“I do not have any books,” I said.
She frowned and turned to the wall. “Thank you, Octavian.”
“I will — I will tell you stories. Fairy stories from Ovid. As I remember them. When I am released from my duties.”
I would not have been released from my duties at all — nor would have the other less-fevered servants — and we would have received few of the comforts of the sick, had Mr. Gitney not been conducting an experiment to determine the relative susceptibility of Homo afri and Homo europæi to the pox; which survey, as I demonstrated to him, should be invalidated, did we not receive the same treatment as our masters.
Then he agreed, and sent me to go sleep; which is a good thing; for my balance was growing poor, and my head hurt so prodigiously that I could but picture one of the torture devices I had seen in Bono’s book, a helmet of metal over my skull, constricting, my eyes peering out, like an animal about to be struck.