The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,125

… then began to cough – racking coughs that made my ribcage ring like iron and left me aching in every muscle and bone. Only when the fit was over, and I lay back weakly against the pillows, gasping like a fish out of water, a cold sweat clinging to my skin, did I notice that Inge had taken the glass from me before I could spill it over the bedclothes.

‘You must take things slowly at first, Herr Gray,’ she admonished, shaking her head sternly, chins jiggling like vanilla puddings.

With a sense of things clicking belatedly, dreadfully, into place, I asked her how long I had been in bed.

‘Adolpheus found you six days ago,’ came the reply.

Six days! I didn’t remember a moment of even a single one of them. Yet I had no trouble recalling my last moments at the clock tower. They might have taken place just hours ago, they were so fresh in my mind. ‘And was I unconscious all that time?’ I demanded.

‘As good as,’ said Inge. ‘You were feverish. Burning up. You raved, ranted. We took turns sitting with you. Tending you like a newborn baby. Adolpheus, the girl and I. Even Herr Doppler.’

‘I’m grateful,’ I told her. ‘And sorry for any trouble I caused.’

‘Ach, what trouble?’ Inge replied. ‘The important thing is that the fever has broken at last. You’re on the mend now.’

‘You’ll be up and about in no time,’ Adolpheus seconded, grinning through his beard.

‘But you need to build up your strength,’ said Inge. ‘Do you think you could eat something?’

‘I feel as if I could eat a horse,’ I told her.

‘I’m afraid that’s not on the menu at the Hearth and Home,’ she replied with a smile.

‘You could have fooled me,’ interjected Adolpheus.

She ignored the gibe. ‘I doubt solid food would agree with you just now. Better to start with some nutritious broth. I’ll send up a bowl.’

‘Thank you, Inge. You, too, Adolpheus. I’d be dead if you hadn’t come looking for me.’

‘As to that, I may have found you, Herr Gray, but it wasn’t from looking. No, I was about my duties, keeping the pathways clear and the lamps lit, when I spotted you. Didn’t know whether to dig you out or finish burying you!’ He chortled. ‘But what happened to your clothes, Herr Gray?’ He tapped the side of his nose with one finger. ‘An afternoon tryst, perhaps, interrupted by a husband unexpectedly returned home?’

Before I could deny it, Inge broke in.

‘Leave off your teasing, Adolpheus. Can’t you see how tired he is? It’s time we took our leave. You, too, Hesta.’

And in fact, my eyes had drifted shut while Adolpheus spoke. I wasn’t sure if it was a lack of strength or inclination that kept me from opening them again as my visitors left the room. I was tired – I could not remember ever having felt so drained … yet my mind would not stop racing, presenting me with nightmarish images of what I had seen, or hallucinated, and wondering, too, at the mystery of my missing clothes. It seemed that someone must have found me before Adolpheus, and removed them … perhaps wanting me to freeze to death. But who would feel threatened enough by my presence to commit murder? Could it have been Doppler after all?

My musings were interrupted by the sound of my name. I opened my eyes to see once more the girl who had been watching over me when I first awoke. Perhaps I had dozed off, for I hadn’t heard her come in. She was sitting in a chair drawn up close to the bedside and leaning towards me with an anxious expression, as though eager to wake me yet fearful of it, too. A fine gold chain encircled her neck, and dangling from the end of it was a glittering gold ring, like a wedding band. The girl was young – no more than sixteen or seventeen, I thought; surely the ring could not be her own, or she would be wearing it … unless it had belonged to a husband now deceased. Beneath a pale blue kerchief, two wings of blonde hair fanned to either side of a snowy white forehead whose worry lines added an appealing touch of vulnerability to features that were otherwise flawless. Those lines deepened as she blinked hazel eyes and drew back slightly.

‘I-I brought you this,’ she stammered, and raised a steaming wooden bowl from her lap in a flustered motion that sent a