jaw. He remembered coming into a house in Paris, smelling that smell as he ascended the stairs.
"It will be all right." He took the candelabra from her unsteady hand.
There were eight beds in the long, low attic above the school's three rooms. Three were occupied. A girl of thirteen-Zizi-Marie's age-sat beside one of the beds, a china basin of water and a candle on the floor beside her. She turned, gratitude flooding her round, pug-nosed face as she heard the steps on the stairs, saw the light of the candles imperceptibly brighten the terrible blackness of the room.
"Mamzelle Vitrac, I think she's worse." Mademoiselle Vitrac bent to hug her reassuringly befare going to look at the girl on the bed.
"She's thrown up twice," the girl went on, fighting tears. "The second time I didn't think she was ever going to stop. She's so hot. Genevieve keeps thinking I'm her sister, and Victorine-I've checked a couple times to see if she's still breathing, with a feather like you showed me, but she hasn't moved or made any sound or anything. And Isabel left and I don't know where she went, but she said she wasn't going to stay and catch the fever from the others."
Her dark eyes begged for reassurance. "It isn't catching, is it? Will I catch it from-from Genevi?ve and Victorine and Antoinette here, from staying and taking care of them?"
"No, you won't, Mamzelle," said January firmly. He set down his satchel beside the girl Antoinette's bed.
"I take care of people every day at the Hospital, and I haven't got the fever yet."
"And anyway, you don't get fever from people who have fever, Marie-Neige." Mademoiselle Vitrac gently took the sponge from the girl's hand. "You get fever from swamp mist and night air, and you see we've got all the windows closed up tight. The fever can't get in and get you. Marie-Neige, this is Dr.
Janvier. He's here to help us take care of the girls this morning."
"M'sieu Janvier," corrected January. "I'm just a surgeon, not a doctor... and I think Marie-Neige and I have met already, at her mother's house. It is Marie-Neige Pellicot, isn't it, Mamzelle?"
The youngest Pellicot daughter nodded. January calculated he'd probably climbed through the window of her attic bedroom last Saturday. He remembered Agnes Pellicot complaining to his mother, "What earthly use is it to educate a girl? It costs a fortune and in the end to whom is she going to speak in Greek or Italian or whatever it is?"
"Well, you can go find Isabel now," said Mademoiselle Vitrac gently. "Tell her I'm not angry at her for leaving. And don't you rip up at her for it, either, Marie Neige, please. Everything turned out all right in the end. Is there anything you can do for them, M'sieu Janvier?" She asked this as Marie-Neige took up her candle in one hand, gathered her voluminous petticoats in the other, and made her careful way down the ladderlike stairs.
"Only what you've been doing." January walked to the pink-and-green china veilleuse that stood on one of the room's plain cypresswood dressers, its candle providing the sole illumination in that corner of the long attic. He touched the backs of his fingers to the vessel's smooth side, and found it warm. From his satchel he took the powdered willow bark and herbs Olympe had recommended, and poured the heated water over them in one of the bedroom pitchers.
"It's all anyone can do," he went on. "The fever is like a hurricane. It passes through the body, tearing up everything in its path, and it's going to take as long as it takes to pass. All we can do is keep the girls alive, keep the fever down by whatever means we can: cool water on the skin, vinegar, herb draughts like this one, saline draughts. Nothing is going to rebalance the body's humors or drive the fever out."
He saw her relax, and nod. "Can I get you water?" she asked. Later, when she brought it, she said, "My mother died of fever, but she suffered cruelly at the hands of the doctors before she died. They bled her; and after they'd gone, my grandmother thought it would be a good idea to blister her, to `revive her,' as she said. I was afraid..." She hesitated. "I was afraid that in not seeking a doctor yesterday, or the day before, I might have... have done them harm. As I said, I'm not very good with the sick.