Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“Must I?” he asked, his eyes closed. “I have not been bathed so since I was a child.”

She stood up and got a bottle off the cabinet at the foot of the tub. “Is this the shampoo?”

“Does it smell like sunlight in a bottle?”

“Yes, it does.” She could hardly bear to take it away from her nose. “What is in this stuff?”

“Great secrets,” William said. “No man in my family has ever seen inside Beth’s book. That book of receipts is passed from one woman to the next and no man is allowed to see it. I think the women fear that we men will find out that they are using black magic to ensnare us.”

“I think this came directly from heaven.” She poured a bit out into her hand and began to shampoo his hair. It was matted and she could feel sores on his scalp. Lice, she thought.

“You have the hands of a goddess,” he said, his eyes closed. “Did you step off Mount Olympus to attend to this lowly human?”

“And were you born with a silver tongue?”

“Enough to get me in more trouble than I should have been,” he said.

There was half a bucket of warm water on the floor and she used it to rinse his hair.

He had been in the tub for nearly an hour and Faith thought that was quite long enough, but Thomas wasn’t back yet with the fresh water.

“Is there some reason you don’t want to tell me about your illness?” she asked. “Was it caused by your visiting places you shouldn’t have?” She thought that if he had a venereal disease all the washing in the world wasn’t going to cure him.

“I broke my leg,” he said.

Faith heard a sound and saw that Thomas was arriving with a wagon. “Then what happened?”

“I had the leg set but I developed a fever that would not go away.” He shrugged his thin shoulders.

“I don’t understand. You obviously didn’t die from the fever, so what happened?”

“I could not get well. Dr. Gallagher did all that he could. He isolated me in my nephew’s house when I was the most sick, and he gave me a nurse, but I did not recover. I was out of my head for nearly a month, and when I awoke, I was as you see me, only not so bad as I am now.”

Thomas came into the orangery carrying two big buckets of hot water. Faith got him to pull William upright, then hold him so she could rinse the back of him. The big man held his arms straight out, under William’s frail arms, so his rough hands wouldn’t hurt the sores on William’s back. Faith washed more of William as he hung in Thomas’s strong arms, then she poured warm water from a dipper over him.

Thomas and she carefully turned him, then she did the same to the front of him.

When he was as clean as she could get him, Thomas held him while she gently pulled a clean nightshirt over his head.

“I beg you,” William whispered. “I must sleep now. I have no more strength.”

“Not yet,” Faith said. “First, you’re going to eat.”

“I cannot,” William said as Thomas carried him to the bed and gently put him on clean sheets, a big feather pillow behind his head.

“Yes you can,” Faith said. “You eat and I’ll let you sleep.”

“My teeth…” William began, his eyes closed.

“I’m going to work on them when they’re strong enough to handle a good brushing. But right now you’re to drink this.”

She glanced at Thomas and saw that he was smiling. She knew he must be as horrified by William’s skeletal form as she was, so he was glad she was making him eat. He dipped the buckets in the dirty water in the tub and took them outside to empty.

By the time the tub had been emptied, wiped out, and leaned against the wall, Faith had managed to get most of a glass of lemonade and half a cup of warm spinach soup down William. When she finished, he was so tired that he was barely conscious, but she knew that what she was doing to him was what he needed.

When she finally let him sleep, his head fell to one side in complete exhaustion.

“Good,” Thomas said. “Good.”