‘Am I sick?’ she asked. ‘Am I going to die?’
Panic billowed through me. I felt my gut drop, my mouth slip open, before I remembered myself. ‘Of course not,’ I said, and I smiled and placed my hand on her forehead. She was fire.
Thea pulled my hand down against her cheek and held it there, searching my face as though she did not believe me. ‘This feels like dying.’
‘It’s just that awful water,’ I said. ‘As soon as it rains, as soon as we arrive, you’ll feel better.’
‘Hanne.’ Her eyes were a hot blue.
‘You’re not dying.’
‘You won’t leave me, will you? Please – stay with me.’
I watched her kiss the crease in the middle of my palm.
‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Promise me.’
‘I promise.’
As I arrive at it now, the great hinge of my existence, the taste of that foul water creeps back across my tongue and remains with me. It bristles against my throat even now, all these years later, even here, in the valley, the sky pearling with coming dawn.
That night I saw Thea curl like a leaf in flame. I saw the colour go out of her. I saw her turn to ash.
‘Hanne.’
I woke to find Thea pallid and filmed with sweat. She did not smell as herself; she was the smell of turning meat. ‘Help,’ she was saying, eyes closed. ‘Help me.’
I woke Mutter Scheck. Anna Maria was sent for and I gave up my space in the berth and moved my things to Ottilie’s bunk, which had remained unoccupied since her death. My mouth was dry. I did not dare believe Thea had caught the sickness, even though I had spent the evening feeling the fever in her skin, holding her steady over the bucket. I watched as Mutter Scheck and Anna Maria stood in soft conversation. I could not hear what they were saying, but I thought I heard Anna Maria’s voice lift in vexation. At ten o’clock, Christiana silently rose and put out the light, and shortly afterwards I heard Mutter Scheck’s prayers as she readied herself for bed. I heard her say Thea’s name.
She is not dying, I told myself. She will be well again soon.
I did not sleep that night. I could hear Anna Maria tending to Thea in the gloom, bringing her boiled water and urging her to swallow all of it. I heard a spoon clink against a bottle. Heard the low, private sounds of Thea’s body as it rejected anything that promised recovery or sustenance. When the lamps were lit in the morning, they illuminated a grey scene. The Wend, sentry over her daughter, mouth grim.
‘Is she better?’
Anna Maria looked up. Her eyes found mine and they were kind and worried. ‘Not yet.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Nervous fever.’ Her voice was soft. Full of bruising. ‘Typhus.’
‘It was just a headache,’ I said. My voice was strange to my ears. I did not recognise it. ‘Because of the pig.’
Thea groaned in her bed and Anna Maria turned back to her.
‘What can I do?’ I asked.
‘Pray for her,’ Anna Maria replied without lifting her eyes off her daughter. She stroked her cheek. ‘Pray for her.’
I did not dare leave my berth that day. I prayed again and again, until it felt as though my words were a kind of talisman, as though they were circling about Thea and, as long as I prayed, they would hold her fast to the world.
I did not eat. When night came, I told myself that Thea would feel the weight of my gaze and be calmed by it, protected by it. I prayed, eyes open. Almighty God, I implored, spare her and make her well. Lord, spare her and make her well. Spare her. Spare her.
I fell asleep eventually, my body betraying my will. And when I woke the tween deck heaved with slow breathing, sleep and creaking. The air was heavy. The light from the hatchway swung with the regular rocking of the ship, and in its glow I saw Anna Maria sitting next to Thea. At first I thought she prayed over her, but when I heard Thea’s voice, I saw that Anna Maria held a book in her hands and was pressing it upon her daughter’s chest.
‘Accept it,’ she was saying. ‘Accept it.’
Thea was pushing the book away with what remaining strength she had, and when I heard Anna Maria speak again, I could hear tears in her voice.
‘Please,’ she was saying. ‘Please, you must accept it.’
I did not hear Thea’s reply, and although I waited, nothing more was said between them. Anna Maria rose and staggered to the water barrel, and I shut my eyes so that she would not know I had seen her.