When Alejandro knocked on the door of Isabella’s suite, the door flew open immediately, and there stood the princess herself, in her magnificent attire, with a look of smoldering anger on her face.
Her jaw dropped when she saw him. “You!” she hissed. “I thought you were the laundress, the lazy wench! But I am not surprised by your sudden appearance. It is entirely meet that you should be here, for this is entirely your doing, and you have much to answer for!” She pointed to the hem of her dress, which was discolored, and then picked up the skirt slightly, revealing shoes that had obviously been fouled with the contents of some poor soul’s stomach.
So this is how it will be for me here. Still shaking with anger after his frustrating meeting with Gaddesdon, he now faced this unforgiving harridan in her ruined shoes. “I came to seek Adele,” he said finally, “for I must speak with her immediately. And I fail to see how I am the cause of the ill fate that has befallen your shoes.”
“Follow me, then, and it shall be made quite plain to you,” she ordered, and he did, to the sleeping chamber. “Here lies your lover. As you can see, she is unwell, and it is your fault.”
He did not understand what she meant, but there on the canopied bed was Adele, pale and limp, undeniably unwell as Isabella had said she was. As he rushed to her side, the distraught princess continued her harangue, her hands clasping and unclasping nervously as she paced around the room.
“I have loved her well, and I thought her my dearest companion, and now she has betrayed me, deserted me at the hour when I most need her. She threatens to leave my service because of her love for you, a love that has brought her to tragedy! Where is her loyalty to me, and to my family? Can it ever hope to match the loyalty I feel for her?”
Her pathetic diatribe was no more than a dim drone to Alejandro, an annoyance in the background; he was too caught up in his examination of Adele to pay it any heed. It was not until he heard the words lustful misuse and delicacy of her condition that he paid more attention to what was being said behind him. He turned around abruptly and interrupted Isabella.
“What did you say of her condition?”
“Surely, you jest, monsieur. It is you who are the physician. Adele is with child. She claims it is your child.”
Alejandro rose up from his kneeling position and faced Isabella. “She is with child?”
“Aye,” interjected Nurse, nervously keeping an eye on the physician, whose anger was all too visible, “I have determined it myself to be true.” Taking his hand, she led him slowly away from Isabella, away from any possibility of an outburst, and placed it firmly on Adele’s belly. “See how she softens. She will give birth during the frost moon.”
Alejandro looked at her sadly, his face the very image of grief. “Good Nurse, I doubt not that what you say is true, but I fear the lady has a more immediate problem.”
He lifted Adele’s chin gently and pointed to the small but clearly visible bruise. Kate, who had been hiding behind a chair during the whole scene, now rushed forward, and flung herself at Alejandro, who was barely quick enough to open his arms to receive her.
“Oh, Physician,” she wailed. “Please cure her! Cure her as you did me!”
Isabella and Nurse both looked at him, shocked by Kate’s blurted admission, seeking an explanation. Isabella said, “Cure her?” She turned quickly to Kate and said, “Is this true? Were you afflicted, and was the contagion purged from your body?”
Alejandro stood speechless, unsure of what might be safely said. Isabella was already terribly agitated, and he did not trust her to listen to the voice of reason.
But Kate would not wait for him to answer, and cried excitedly, “Yes! Yes! It is true! For a fortnight I lay afflicted, and they gave me a foul-tasting medicine, and see for yourself that I am well again.”
Isabella looked back at Alejandro. “They? Who were ‘they’?”
He hung his head, and answered quietly, “It was myself and Adele, on our journey to see Kate’s mother. The child became afflicted on that journey. While at her mother’s house, we learned of a means of curing the plague, and sought it out. It was by this means that we were able to save her life. It was the reason for our delay in-returning.”
“Adele knew of this, yet she said nothing to me!” She looked at her companion, her girlhood friend, who lay helpless on the bed, and choked back a sob. With tears in her eyes she turned to Alejandro and said, “Was this according to your instructions?”
“We agreed between us that it was best to remain silent. We feared for the safety of the child.”
Deep pain was etched on Isabella’s face. “Oh, what cruel duplicity,” she said bitterly. She looked at Alejandro, her own beautiful face now almost as pale as Adele’s. “You were wise to conceal it, for had my father known of her affliction, she would not have been allowed to return. And now I am afraid I must speak with him about what is to be done.” She looked at the child and said sternly, “You are not to leave this room until the matter is settled.”
Nurse, who had been speechless with shock from the tale she was hearing, finally found her voice again. “Can you now cure the Lady Adele?”
“God alone knows, good woman, if I am already too late. I will go to my death trying.” He turned back to Adele and placed his hand tenderly on her belly. “But I fear she will not keep the child. This illness kills all that is good and holy.”
He looked quickly around the room for a flask or vessel to carry the precious water back from the spring by the cottage, and saw a large vial of perfumed water, scented with Isabella’s favorite flower, the lilac. He overturned it, and the contents splashed wildly all over the stone floor.
“Perhaps this stinking stuff can eradicate some of the foul smell in this room,” he said angrily. “I will need this vessel to carry the mineralized water that is part of the cure. I do not have what I will need with me; I will have to ride out in haste to obtain it. I shall return as soon as possible.”
And before opening the door, he turned and said to the tearful princess, “Pray God that she lives to conceive another.”
After Alejandro’s crazed rush through their midst in the anteroom, Isabella’s other ladies buzzed with curiosity. Isabella herself soon came out of the bedroom, and closed the door behind her, leaving Nurse and Kate alone with Adele. She shrugged her shoulders, saying, “See how men run from the slightest hint of women’s troubles, even this learned physician!” Then she admonished them, “Say nothing to anyone outside this room. I would not embarrass Adele or upset my father on this important occasion. I will be mightily displeased if this private matter becomes idle gossip. Now see to your tasks, and forget what you have seen just now!”
The princess returned to the bedchamber, where she found Kate and Nurse sitting together on a bench near the window, crying and holding each other for comfort. She moved along the edge of the room, staying as far away from Adele as she could, until she came to the window. She spoke first to Nurse, her tone dark with suspicion. “Were you privy to this betrayal of my trust?”
The frightened woman replied, “On my soul, Princess, I knew nothing of it!”
Kate supported the old woman’s claim of innocence. “It was only myself, and the physician, and Adele who knew.”
“You shall remain here with the child,” the princess said to the woman who had attended her from her birth. She flashed the trembling servant a threatening look. “You will help the physician when he returns. I and my other ladies will hasten from here; they shall not know of these events. It is best if they do not find out, I think, so you had better hold your tongue. And should you, too, become afflicted, it shall be God’s just punishment. Tonight we shall see what my father has to say about these unhappy events.”
She took a key from a small box on the mantel, and locked them in as she left.