Three weeks later, the dunes wore a thin crust of ice and the bay had the color of pewter. The salt lantern still hung by Elspeth’s door, though she had taken to lighting it earlier in the evening. Trouble kept country hours now.
It came at dusk—soft knocking, like a sparrow against glass.
When Elspeth opened the door, she found a boy of perhaps twelve, cheeks wind-burnt, eyes too bright.
“Goodwife Thorne,” he panted, “my mother says you must come. My sister shakes so hard the bed squeaks.”
Elspeth’s face tightened. That kind of shaking was not mere cold.
She took her cloak and a small basket—linen cloths, a tin cup, dried herbs wrapped in paper, and a lump of beeswax candle. As she stepped out, she saw the sky low and heavy, and the trees bending as if whispering counsel to one another.
They walked quickly over frozen ground, to a small house near Nauset where smoke came thin from the chimney. Inside, the air was too warm and too still, as though someone feared to open a window lest the world itself rush in.
In the corner lay the girl, perhaps eight years old, teeth chattering, arms hugged tight around herself. Her skin looked pale, then suddenly flushed, as if the color could not decide where to settle.
“Ague,” the mother whispered, voice cracked. “It came yesterday. Then again this morning.”
Elspeth did not contradict. Many illnesses wore similar masks. She touched the girl’s wrist and felt the pulse galloping, then faltering. She laid a hand to the forehead—hot now.
“Has she kept broth?” Elspeth asked.
“A little,” the mother said. “Then she retched.”
Elspeth nodded once. “Fear and fever make poor neighbors in the belly.”
She turned to the hearth. “Do you have oats?”
“A handful.”
“Good. And honey? Or molasses?”
“Honey, some.”
Elspeth set a small pot to heat and poured in water. From her basket she took dried chamomile and a pinch of mint—not for magic, but because the stomach sometimes needed persuasion more than force. She let it steep, then strained it.
“Small sips,” she told the mother. “Not gulps. When she trembles, she cannot manage gulps.”
Next she asked for the oats and made a thin gruel, sweetening it with honey. “This will sit kinder than meat,” she said.
The mother watched, hope flickering like the fire. “Will she live?”
Elspeth answered as she always did when asked for promises she did not have.
“She may. If we keep her warm when she shakes, and cool when she burns. And we do not let her thirst.”
The boy hovered near the bed, terrified and wanting to help. Elspeth put a task in his hands, because helplessness is its own poison.
“You,” she said, “fetch fresh water. And if the pot runs low, you tell me.”
He nodded hard and ran.
Elspeth took out a small cloth bag of dried elderflower and yarrow—her “sweat herbs,” as some called them, though she thought of them simply as helpers that could encourage the body to do what it was already trying to do.
When the girl’s shaking eased and she lay panting, Elspeth dabbed the child’s lips with the chamomile-mint tea. She then placed a cool cloth on the forehead, changing it when it warmed.
Hours went by in that careful rhythm: warm blankets during chills, cool cloths during heat, sips of tea and gruel, and quiet words in the dark.
Near midnight, the girl’s breathing softened. The mother sagged as if her bones had been held up by worry alone.
Elspeth rose and stepped to the doorway for a breath of cold air. She saw a figure outside—Wáhtah, standing where the moonlight made a pale ribbon on the snow.
Elspeth went out, pulling the door nearly closed behind her.
Wáhtah’s eyes were steady. “The shaking comes and goes,” she said.
“Aye,” Elspeth answered. “Like the tide.”
Wáhtah reached into her cloak and brought out dried wintergreen and a small bundle of something darker. “For her chest,” she said quietly. “If it tightens.”
Elspeth accepted it. “Thank you.”
Wáhtah looked past her toward the small house. “Do they blame you, in their hearts?”
Elspeth’s mouth twisted. “Some will, if the Lord calls her home.”
Wáhtah nodded. “Then let your hands be clean. Let your mind be clean. That is all.”
She turned and vanished into the dark as quietly as she had arrived.
Elspeth went back in and added a few leaves of the wintergreen to the next steeping—only a little. She watched. She measured. She did not treat a child’s body like a testing ground for hope.
Before dawn, the girl slept. When she woke, she asked for water in a voice so small it could have been a mouse—yet to Elspeth it sounded like a bell.
The mother wept silently.
Elspeth packed her basket. At the door she turned.
“Do not let the room grow close,” she said. “A crack of fresh air, even in winter. And you feed her gently, often. When the shaking comes again—because it may—do not panic. You follow the rhythm we have learned.”
The boy nodded solemnly, as if he had been given a sailor’s duty.
As Elspeth walked home, the sky turned the faintest rose behind the dunes. The Cape was still harsh and hungry. Yet some mornings, it offered a sliver of mercy.
And Elspeth, for her part, did not waste it.