Corben's Thirst: The Thirst Within Part 1.5 Read Online Free PDF

is medicine?”
    “Monsieur, these are special herbs that I learned to use from my mother. She is a healer.”
    A healer back then was the equivalent of a person that practices natural medicine in modern times; preparing herbal remedies and the like.
    I left Sara to her tea and ran to see Charlotte. I was relieved to find her in the same condition as she had been that morning, not worse as Sara had led me to believe.
    “Do not worry, my love,” Charlotte said when I told her about her maid’s fears. “Sara’s teas are helping. It is probably just a bug.”
    But it was not just any bug. The apothecary came and went, gave her medicine, but she would not get better. After another week her condition had not improved and in fact was quickly deteriorating. The baron’s most eminent physician was called from London, and declared she had an infection. Her family visited but her stepmother and younger sisters were kept away. Only her father entered the sick room.
    By then I was cold with fear and would not leave her bedside. The baron took me aside. “ Fils , let us talk in your study.”
    When he called me fils , or son, I immediately knew there was something wrong. Confused and frightened, I got up and called Sara to her mistress’ side. Then I went downstairs, my father-in-law following me to my study. I slumped in a sofa. He closed the door behind me and sat next to me.
    “ Fils , my dear Charlotte has always been a sickly child. In the last few years she has been concealing her spells of sickness, downplaying her condition. But I should have known that she never fully recovered.”
    “Condition! What condition?”
    “She has never had a strong heart. As a child she had frequent fainting spells. Her physicians told her she should never carry a child; that it would be too much for her frail body. I had seen her much improved these last years, but now I believe she might have only been hiding the truth from us. To let her get her way, and become a mother. As a little girl, she always wanted to be a mother. Probably because… she never met hers.” He cast his head down.
    My wife had a heart condition and I never knew .
    “You should have told me,” I moaned. “I would have prevented it. But perhaps she will get stronger. She is so close—she has carried our child for nine months.”
    “She has… but this fever, it is a sign of her frail immunity. If she does not recover, this illness could claim her life…” the baron said, his voice suddenly thick with emotion.
    “You do not know that,” I said, but I had thought of the possibility many times. It consumed me, but I refused to accept it. “You cannot know that.”
    “There is…” he murmured something.
    “What?”
    “There is someone who may be able to help,” he said timidly.
    “Who?” I practically yelled. “A better physician?”
    “A woman… a sort of medicine woman. Her name is Deborah.”
    My enthusiasm vanished. “What can this Deborah do that your physician cannot?”
    “She is special. She is….” He sighed and shook his head. “She has healing faculties. She can heal.”
    “What? What kind of healing? And how come I have never heard of this woman? Why has she not been contacted?”
    “She is very reclusive. But she will come,” he added, answering my next question before I could speak it.
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “There is something… I should tell you. You should know. Deborah… she is Charlotte’s birth mother.”
    I froze and looked at him, unbelieving. Charlotte’s mother was dead, supposedly. The baron had been a widower; that’s why he had married his wife. But that was a different matter. If what he claimed was true, I needed this Deborah. I wanted to believe she could help. I was ready to try anything.
    When I didn’t reply, he kept going. “I could not marry Charlotte’s mother, and she could not raise a child alone, so I… I took Charlotte and invented a wife that never existed, and pretended she