“I beg you,” he said. “I will pay you well, very well. Go in with him now and examine him. If he has it—God forbid that he has it—I will get a plague nurse from Chichester to come and be locked up with him and you shall come out, before she arrives, before we declare it, and go to your own cottage and not stir until it is over. If he does not have it I will still pay you three shillings a day to nurse him until he is better.”

She hesitated.

“You don’t want him to be put into his bed in the boys’ room,” he reminded her. “Not with your son and mine. Better for us all, if you nurse him in the stable loft.”

She looked at James’s white face, at the fall of his dark curling hair, his black eyelashes lying on his pale cheek, the darkening of his chin and upper lip that marked him as no angel but a mortal man. She saw the rapid rise and fall of his chest and how the cold sweat darkened the curls on his forehead. She knew she could not bear to leave him. She could not bear to hand him over to the rough care of a strange woman.

“Ten shillings.” His lordship raised his bid for the safety of his household. “Ten shillings a day, till the plague nurse comes. Every day.”

“I’ll do it,” she decided. “Rob can fetch what I need from your stillroom, but then he must stay away.”

The rooms above the stable, hastily vacated by the grooms, were light and airy with dappled windows not of glass but of thin cut horn set at each end into the eaves. Down below, the hunters stirred and snorted in their stalls and the room smelled comfortingly, of clean straw and hay and the warm oaty smell of horses. Stuart and two of the grooms lugged James, still wrapped in the hearthrug, up the ladder and laid him on the bed.

“I’ll send over food,” Mr. Tudeley said, keeping his distance, halfway down the ladder. “You can pull it up on the rope.”

“And a bucket of hot water for washing and a pitcher of cold water. A big jug of small ale and some little dishes for mixing. I’ll need fresh bread, cheeses, and meat for when he wakes, and at noon someone must bring breakfast,” Alinor instructed. “I’ll need a pail for a chamber pot, and strewing herbs.”

“Of course, he’ll be served as an honored guest, and you too, Mrs. Reekie,” Mr. Tudeley said. “Shall your boy come and sleep here with you?”

“No,” she said firmly. “He’ll stay in the house with Master Walter. I’ll sit up tonight with Mr. Summer and if he is well tomorrow, God willing, he can come back to the house and I will go to my own home. This is just for a night.”