Until the Dawn (34 page)

Sophie couldn’t believe what was happening. The wave of sickness had come so suddenly. One moment everyone was laughing, and the next her world had been upended as sickness swept through the crowd with appalling speed.

Pieter was the sickest. His entire face was blue, and he gasped for breath. He’d been brought into the parlor, where he struggled
to suck air into his lungs. He coughed and wheezed, his throat swelling so large it seemed to be strangling him. Quentin held him in his arms, begging him to keep fighting.

Every second was torture. Between Pieter’s desperate, wheezing gasps and the panic in Quentin’s voice, she’d never lived through such a traumatic experience. She’d already dumped all the oyster chowder on the ground and flung the platter of uneaten oysters over the cliff, listening to the plate shatter on the rocks below.

She didn’t care. She’d fed these people tainted food, and impossible as it was to believe, Pieter might die because of it. He could barely breathe. She had been boasting for days about her oysters, and now this precious boy might die. She loitered in the open doorway, twisting her hands and forcing herself to listen to his tortured gasps. She deserved no less.

“Please, Lord,” she whispered. “Please open his lungs and make his breath flow. I’m sorry. Please don’t make this child suffer any longer, please.”

A clattering of horse’s hooves declared the arrival of the doctor, and Sophie ran to the front door. A lead weight landed in her stomach when she saw Dr. Weir step out of the carriage, followed by the village pastor. The sight of Pastor Mattisen’s white clerical collar, normally so comforting, was ominous and terrifying tonight.

“This way,” she said as she led the men to the parlor. There were half a dozen sick men in this house, but only Pieter seemed in such terrible danger.

Quentin looked up, and when his eyes landed on the pastor, his face turned hard. And when he looked at her, there was murder in his eyes.

19

Q
UENTIN
DARED
NOT
MOVE
P
IETER
. The first hint of sunrise was on the horizon, pushing back the darkness with faint traces of purple. The doctor was still here, treating others who’d been clobbered by some sort of illness last night, but thankfully Pieter was out of danger. His breaths were shallow, but regular and no longer labored. The swelling in his throat had subsided.

It had been an allergic reaction to the oysters. Dr. Weir examined the other men taken ill, none of whom shared the same symptoms as Pieter. Those men curled over and vomited, seemed to be weak and clammy . . . but none of them had swollen throats or tongues. None of them struggled to breathe.

Of the two dozen people in the house, all but three had sampled the oysters. If the oysters were tainted, or if Sophie had done something bad to the food, more people should have fallen sick.

Sophie. She’d been so certain in her assertion that it was safe to eat oysters in high summer so long as they were fresh, and at first he’d cursed himself for blindly taking Sophie’s word,
for her irrational enchantment with Dierenpark made her judgment unreliable. He endured the worst few hours of his life as he listened to Pieter struggle to draw each breath, wishing he could lend Pieter a bit of strength to make his lungs keep pumping, his will to live stronger. If Pieter had died, he would have been tempted to strangle Sophie.

But as the night wore on, it became obvious the problem wasn’t the oysters or anything Sophie had done—it was that Pieter had suffered an allergic reaction, seizing up his lungs and sending his body into a radical immune reaction. The quick wave of others who fell ill was a dramatic example of how otherwise intelligent people could be fooled by the power of suggestion, proof that the human mind was capable of believing anything. The assumption that the oysters had been tainted sent panic through the group.

Not that he cared what provoked healthy men to succumb to panic and let themselves believe they were sick. All he cared about was ensuring Pieter’s safety.

Now that the terrors of the night had passed, it felt like a physical weight had been lifted from his chest, but he would never forget the desperation of this night. The mind-numbing sense of panic, the howling frustration of helplessness.

And in those moments, he had prayed. He clasped his hands together and sent out hundreds of desperate prayers into the universe, begging for his innocent child to be spared.

Fear had prodded his urge to pray, but the danger had passed, and now . . . now what? As the terror diminished, so did the frantic sense of neediness. Pieter’s immune system might have overcome the shock all on its own without any sort of divine intervention.

But he couldn’t quite be sure.

He glanced out the window, streaks of pink and purple lightening the rim of the horizon, about to flood the countryside
with the pure light of day. The sunrise in this valley was always splendid, but this one captured his attention in a new way. It hinted at a new beginning that was as old as time.

“Thanks,” he whispered, just in case there really was a God hovering somewhere in that awe-inspiring sky.

Sophie felt like a sleepwalker as she cooked the pot of oatmeal. It was the same pot she’d used to prepare the chowder, and she didn’t even want to touch it, but it was the only pot large enough to serve everyone. She’d taken it out back this morning and scrubbed it with sand and lye, rinsing it over and over, then repeated the process for good measure. Dr. Weir assured her the oysters served last night were fine and she was not to blame for the sickness in the house, but guilt still lingered.

When she went to the larder for milk, two of the professors were behind the hedge, sipping their coffee as they recounted the events of the previous evening. Neither heard her approach.

“She had the dish covered and told Marten she made the sauce especially for him,” one of the men said. “She hovered over him and watched him eat then covered it back up because, she said, the raspberry vinegar would attract flies. No one got sick before that dish was uncovered.”

“You don’t really think she did it, do you?” the other man asked. It was Professor Armitage, one of the kindly old archaeologists with round spectacles.

Sophie leaned closer to the hedge, and the silence was uncomfortably long.

“Rumor has it that Miss Sophie had her wedding dress all sewn, embellished with seed pearls she had sent in from the city,” the first man said. “Sewed those pearls on herself. They say she was inconsolable after he jilted her.”

There was another long pause as Professor Armitage drew
a sip of coffee. “Well, if she did it, I can’t believe she meant for everyone to get sick. Just that Marten fellow.”

“Probably,” the first man said. “Still, it was a reckless thing to have done. I heard the boy almost died.”

Her chest tightened, and she felt lightheaded. Was this what everyone was thinking? Hadn’t Quentin looked at her with murder in his eyes? He blamed her for Pieter’s illness, even though Dr. Weir assured everyone it was only an allergic reaction, something that would have happened no matter where Pieter sampled his first oyster. She still didn’t understand how the others could have fallen sick, since most of them had eaten oysters often and never suffered from such fits.

She drew a steadying breath. These men didn’t know her, and God would give her whatever strength she needed to get through this day of whispers and sidelong looks. Walking forward, she rounded the hedge and headed toward the larder.

“Good morning,” she said to both men with a wobbly smile. It was the best she could manage. Their coffee cups frozen mid-sip, they watched with flushed embarrassment as she opened the larder door to reach for the canister of milk.

Professor Armitage rose, pushing his spectacles a little higher on his nose. “Can I help you, Miss Sophie?” He swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his thin neck. She didn’t know if it was from the embarrassment at being overheard or from suspicion of a scorned woman poisoning the communal cooking pot. She supposed she would find out when breakfast was set on the table.

“No, thank you,” she murmured as she retrieved the milk and butter from the larder. The morning was cool, but when she returned to the kitchen, the hot stove added to her nerves as she stirred a little more milk into the pot to loosen the oats. She wished this day were already over.

There weren’t many people in the kitchen. It had been a late
night for all of them as everyone pitched in to help care for the sick. She dreaded seeing Quentin again but wouldn’t abandon the kitchen in case there were special needs for Pieter’s care.

“You look overheated,” Florence said as she reached for the spoon. “I’ll finish here if you go prepare the table.”

The old woman meant to be kind, but the last thing Sophie wanted was to wade out among those men, many of whom apparently believed she was willing to poison them all in a spiteful attempt to punish a wayward fiancé.

Conversation sputtered to a halt, and the weight of a dozen men’s eyes seared her as she carried a stack of bowls to the table. She set the bowls down gently, but the silverware jangled as she set a basket of spoons in the center of the table. No one met her eyes, and she wanted to flee the house to escape the awful scrutiny.

The distinctive tapping of Quentin’s cane and lopsided gait heralded his arrival. Sophie’s stomach clenched, and she braced herself for another blast of that furious glare, but his face was calm.

Chairs scraped as everyone rose the moment Quentin appeared. Exhaustion was carved into his face, with grooves around his mouth, and he was still wearing the rumpled clothes from last evening.

“How is the boy?” one of the professors asked.

Sophie held her breath as Quentin reached for a bowl. “Better. He’s still sleeping, but his breathing is steady.”

“That was a close call,” a history professor said. “I prayed for him all night.”

“Thank you.” Quentin’s voice was devoid of the mockery he usually used when discussing religion. “My grandfather is with him while I grab a quick meal. Then I hope everyone will return to their work. There is still plenty more to be done, and loitering in the kitchen won’t help the sickened men recover any faster.”

With a casual hand, he flipped open the cover of his pocket watch then pierced her with those enigmatic gray eyes. “It’s ten o’clock,” he said.

And she was unusually late getting breakfast on the table. “One moment, and I’ll return with the—”

“Miss van Riijn.” Quentin’s words stopped her in her tracks.

“Yes?”

“It’s ten o’clock,” he repeated in a pointed voice.

And the table wasn’t even set, nor was the oatmeal ready to serve. She was a little embarrassed about that, but Quentin seemed to be driving at something she couldn’t grasp. For the first time, a hint of amusement lightened his face.

“It’s ten o’clock and you haven’t checked the weather station yet,” he said.

She sucked in a quick breath. “You’re right!” The Weather Bureau urged them to take their readings as close to nine o’clock as possible for the sake of consistency throughout all the stations. Normally she completed that morning task as routinely as rising from bed or combing her hair, but she still had breakfast to serve, and these men must be hungry.