While Beauty Slept Read Online Free Page A

painful, and I could feel her suffering with every word. “You must go.”
    I leaned my head closer to hers, so she would not have to make an effort to be heard. A thin stream of blood trickled from her nose, and I wiped it gently with the edge of my sleeve.
    “Yes, I will go to St. Elsip,” I agreed, “but not till you are well. We can go together.”
    Her hands fumbled laboriously in the folds of her skirt. I clutched them in my own, as if my touch could prevent her from leaving me. Her fingers pulled away from my grasp and plucked at her ragged dress. Following her gaze, I looked toward the hem. She nodded, moaning with the effort, and I ran my fingers along the bottom of her dress until I found a hard lump. I could make out the shape of a metal coin, then another and another. Money she had hidden away, unbeknownst to my father. Money that would allow my escape.
    The thought of starting a new life alone, without her, brought tears streaming down my cheeks. A low moan, hardly louder than a whisper, rumbled from Mother’s throat, and I realized she was trying to comfort me, that witnessing my sorrow brought more pain than the torments of her body. Determined not to add to her suffering, I suppressed my sobs and forced a smile.
    “Do not worry,” I said. “I will find a place at the castle. I will do you proud.”
    Her hands suddenly gripped my forearms, and I flinched at the sharp pressure of her fingernails. My fever had not yet fully subsided, but her skin felt like fire against mine. She could no longer speak, only breathe quickly and shallowly, as one does when climbing a steep hill. I can hardly bear to think upon the memory: my beloved mother, so close to death yet so desperate to protect me. A single word escaped her parched lips. It sounded like “pell,” though it might just have easily been “bell.” Was she warning me away? Urging me to go? Frantic, I asked her what it meant, but she could emit no more than a hoarse rasp.
    “I will fetch water,” I said, frantic to do something, anything, to ease her distress.
    I struggled up from the bed. One of my brothers’ first duties in the morning had been to fetch water from the well, but when had that last been done? The pail stood between the doorway and the fireplace, as if it had been dropped in a rush. I peered inside and saw a shallow pool of water barely covering the bottom. It was enough to wet a corner of my chemise, and I carried it, dripping, to the bed.
    But I was too late. My mother’s eyes were closed, and she lay motionless, her face horribly altered by the ravages of disease but free of the rigor of pain. She was at peace. I crumpled by the side of the bed, surrendering to despair. Grief and shock weighed down my weakened body, and I might have been a newborn again, unable to speak or stand. Without my mother, my protector, I had nothing. I sat slumped on hands and knees for what felt like hours, so drained by the ordeal of her death that I could not even cry.
    The only sound in the room came from Nairn’s shuddering breaths. One after the other they came, slow but increasingly steady. Grimly, I forced myself to rise from the floor. My brother’s face was flushed, but his skin did not blaze with heat as my mother’s had. I might yet salvage one life.
    I picked up the pail and stumbled toward the door, intent on fetching fresh water from the well. When I walked outside, it was a surprise to be greeted by daylight. The closed-up house had seemed to exist in an eternal night. I heard sounds coming from the barn; the horse at least might have survived. As I approached the building, the door was flung open, and I stood face-to-face with my father.
    “Elise!” He froze in place, astonished. I must have presented quite a sight in my chemise, flushed and filthy, but his appearance was even more shocking. For the father I had taken for dead looked the same as ever. Weathered, as always, with bent shoulders and a suspicious frown. But