Storming the Castle

Wick stared after her for a moment.

At the door, she looked over her shoulder. “You have to show me to the kitchen.”

“Kitchen?” he echoed, trying to figure out how to get Jonas from her arms without waking him. Gabriel would never forgive him. He didn’t even want to think about how Kate would react. “Look, you must give the baby back to me. I promised His Highness that I, and I alone, would hold Jonas—that is, the young princeling.”

“He needs water,” Miss Damson said. “Or he will die.” She looked down again. “I think there’s a chance he won’t live through the night, actually. Babies die awfully quickly if they don’t drink enough.”

Wick walked forward and pushed the door open before her. “Straight to the end of the corridor and down two flights.”

When they reached the kitchen, nine or ten heads swiveled almost in unison. The castle’s kitchen was a vast space with a stone floor. Worktables were arrayed around the room, scrubbed to a fare-thee-well, and covered with copper pans of all sizes and shapes. It was full of people, as always: the cook, three kitchen maids, a dairymaid, and a couple of scullery maids working at the sink to one side.

They all snapped upright at the sight of Wick, except for Madame Troisgros the cook, who considered herself his equal, if not his better. The already complex hierarchy of castle staff was further complicated by Wick’s relationship to the prince. Even had Gabriel (who showed no such inclination) wished to keep their fraternity a secret, one of his elderly aunts regularly took pleasure in shocking polite company by announcing that she preferred Wick to his brother Gabriel.

By rights, a young nursemaid would find herself quite far below the cook, though certainly above the dairymaid. And yet Philippa Damson walked into that kitchen like the lady of the house. She unerringly put her eye on the cook, a lady twice as broad and four times as fierce as anyone else in the room.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?” snapped Madame Troisgros.

Without pausing for breath, Miss Damson broke into charming, if urgent, French. As all could see, she had the little prince in her arms. He needed water, but it must be special water, water boiled, then cooled. And she also needed a cloth, a clean linen cloth, to be boiled in a different pot of water, then cooled.

Madame Troisgros had the eyes, Wick thought, of a rabid French weasel, if such a thing existed—small and rather crazed-looking. As she opened her mouth, undoubtedly to refuse, Miss Damson walked across the kitchen to her.

“Regardez,” she said, drawing back the cover that protected the prince’s face.

Confronted by that tiny, exhausted face, Madame Troisgros flinched and pointed with her ladle to a chair. Miss Damson obediently sat down. A few minutes later, an immaculate piece of linen was shown to Miss Damson for her approval, then carefully placed in a pot of boiling water.

Even more servants began drifting into the kitchen, although the room remained as silent as a church as everyone strove to keep Jonas asleep. The housekeeper appeared and hovered in the background; two or three footmen had apparently deserted their posts in the front hall as they now stood quietly against the walls. The knife boy had stopped sharpening his wares and was sitting on a three-legged stool, his mouth open.

“Stop hovering!” Miss Damson ordered Wick in a low voice. “Babies don’t like nervous influences.”

“Gabriel might have woken; he might be searching for us in the gallery,” Wick said, entirely forgetting that he generally referred to his brother as His Highness in public. Miss Damson was that sort of woman. She made a man lose his head.

“Why not send a footman to stand outside the prince’s bedchamber so as to inform him of our location when he wakes? Meanwhile, you’ll have to take the baby while I wash my hands,” she said, and slipped Jonas back into Wick’s arms with no more fuss than if she were transporting a pudding.

To Wick, Jonas looked worse than he had even an hour before. The skin around his eyes was the deep blue of a bruise. His little nose stood out from his face, as if the skin had receded around it. He was an extraordinarily unattractive baby, which did nothing to assuage the feeling of pure grief and panic Wick felt at seeing his nephew in this state.

“It’s not too late, is it?” he heard himself saying. Everyone in the kitchen froze.

Miss Damson had washed her hands, and was now wringing out the cloth and dipping it in the pot of boiled, cooled water. “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “Sit down.”

Wick thought a bit dazedly about the fact that he never took orders except from his own brother, but he sat. She bent over and slipped the corner of the wet cloth into the baby’s mouth. He sucked reflexively, realized it wasn’t milk, and let out a pained cry. Quick as she could, she dipped the cloth again, returned it to his lips. Over and over and over.

It was a messy business. Within minutes the baby was wet, Wick was wet, and Miss Damson’s dress was splashed with water. But Jonas kept swallowing, and soon he was crying only between sucks.

“Do you know if he has had normal bowel movements?” Miss Damson asked.

Wick blinked. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

She turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Apple, could you perhaps help with my question?”

“Lily’s the one you want,” Mrs. Apple said. With a nod, she dispatched a footman to fetch the appropriate maid.

“You can’t mean that the baby merely needs water,” Wick said. “One of the nursemaids who was here last week said he had sciatic gout.”

“Gout? Most unlikely. I think it’s colic,” Miss Damson said. “Surely a doctor has seen the child?”

“Yes, but he didn’t hold out much hope. He said Jonas was too ill for colic. First, he thought the baby had an intestine stone, then he suggested a quartan ague. Yesterday, he tried an emetic to clean out his guts, but it made Jonas vomit, and after that the princess ordered the doctor out of the castle.”

“She was absolutely right,” Miss Damson observed. “The child needs more fluids, not less.”

“I sent off to Manchester for other doctors. Someone must have some medicine they can give him. The doctor planned to try Dalby Carmel next, something like that.”

“Dalby’s carminative,” Miss Damson said with obvious disdain. “And I suppose castor oil as well.”

“His mother would be able to say more precisely. I believe he also suggested opium, but Her Highness disagreed.”

“No medicine will work,” she announced, dipping the cloth back in the pot once more.

There was a collective gasp from the kitchen staff. “No medicine,” Wick repeated, his heart speeding up. “But you said—”

“It’s simple colic,” Miss Damson said. “I’ve seen it before. There’s something about his stomach that doesn’t like milk at the moment. But he won’t die of it, not unless he goes without water or milk too long.”

At that moment, the door to the kitchen burst open and a wild-eyed apparition surged through. “How could you, Wick?” Kate cried, running to Jonas.

Miss Damson plucked Jonas from Wick’s arms and turned to the princess, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She put the baby straight into his mother’s arms. “Your son is going to be all right. You see? He’s not crying.”