The Summer Country Page 30

  Jenny gave herself into the strange woman’s hands, hiding her face as another pain took her, hating anyone to see her like this, hating Charles to see her like this.

  “—nothing to worry about,” she could hear the woman saying to Charles. “It takes all women like this.”

  “I don’t like this,” Jenny managed.

  She heard an earthy chuckle and felt a brisk pat on her side. “My lady, nobody does. It’s the curse of Eve and we all have to bear it.”

  Jenny had some choice thoughts about that, but the pain was on her again and there was nothing but the rending of her body, light dancing crazily at the corners of her eyes, the crackling of the fire subsumed under her own moans. She tried to stop the cries, to stop herself, but they came all the same.

  “Don’t fight it,” the red-haired woman said, and Jenny snarled at her, actually snarled, baring her teeth, and the woman poked at her stomach and did something undignified to her legs and told Charles to hold her hand or get her some water but at any rate to do something useful and not just stand there blocking her light.

  “Push,” the woman told her, and then again, more loudly. “Push. Now.”

  Charles was holding her hand and murmuring something to her, but Jenny didn’t hear it, she was crying and struggling and pushing, panting with the effort, and then there was a cry that wasn’t her own, a cry of triumph from the midwife.

  “Now! Again!”

  With one last, gasping, panting push, Jenny felt the tension release, and before she could quite realize that it had happened, that it had truly happened, the midwife was holding up a red and wrinkled creature covered in slime and blood.

  The midwife cut the cord and expertly wrapped the baby in a blanket, delivering it into Charles’s arms. “A girl,” she said. “Hold her while I deliver the afterbirth.”

  Jenny craned her neck, trying to see her child, irrationally anxious that Charles should be holding her—what if he took her away?

  “Mind on your work, my lady.” The midwife was massaging her stomach, pumping and palpitating. “You’ll have your wee one soon enough.”

  “Here.” Charles knelt down, holding the bundle out so Jenny could see her.

  Jenny stared at the little scrunched face blinking skeptically up at her. She reached out a finger, very tentatively, to touch her soft, wrinkled cheek.

  “It’s our baby,” she said, not quite believing it, not quite believing this little creature, this little person, had come from her, had lived inside her all these months, and here she was, alive and whole and rather displeased at being born.

  “Our little girl,” said Charles, reaching out a finger gingerly, so gingerly. Their daughter clamped her hand around it. He looked at Jenny with delight. “She’s a grip like a land crab!”

  “She’s strong,” said Jenny softly.

  “Like her mother,” said Charles.

  “She’ll be wanting to eat now,” said the midwife, and Jenny realized that while they’d been staring at their child, Jonathan Fenty’s alarmingly competent sister had made a pile of cushions and blankets against the wall.

  Helping Jenny up off the soiled clothes, she led her across to the improvised bed. Jenny’s body felt strange and sore, a mass of aches, but she was only just aware of them, all of her attention focused on the bundle in Charles’s arms.

  “Nah, nah, baby, you’ll not be getting anything from him,” said Miss Fenty, and transferred the baby neatly from Charles to Jenny. The baby began rooting blindly at her chest, nudging the nipple with her nose.

  “Like this,” said the midwife, and expertly guided the baby’s mouth to Jenny’s breast.

  The child sucked for a few moments and then dozed off, mouth open, head lolling back in the crook of Jenny’s arm. Charles sank down against the wall next to her, his arm around her shoulders, both of them quiet, watching their child.

  In the background, Jenny was vaguely aware of the midwife, industriously tidying, piling up the bloodied sheets.

  “You won’t mind if I take these?” she said to Charles.

  “Have them,” said Charles, not taking his eyes off the baby. “Have anything you want.”

  Jenny was tired, so tired. Charles’s shoulder and the cushions were soft, the weight of the baby warm against her. She found herself drifting in and out of sleep, Charles’s lips brushing her forehead, her arms locked around her baby. Every now and then she would start awake and blink at her child, at the wrinkled eyelids, the fine tufts of dark hair, the crumpled little mouth.

  She came awake again to see Charles standing, staring out the door of the mill. The sky had begun to turn from black to gray. Jenny felt a chill steal across her heart and held her baby tighter.

  “What time is it?” she asked, her voice raw.

  Charles didn’t need to consult his pocket watch. He must have already looked. “Nearly gone five,” he said. “We’ll have to go soon.”

  “No.” She didn’t mean to say it, it just came out. “Please, can’t we wait a little more?”

  It was the midwife who answered, her supplies neatly packed, the fire banked, the pot that had sat upon it gone cold and stowed in a straw basket. “It’s time,” she said.

  Jenny’s lips tightened; she blinked hard against a frightening rush of tears, holding her baby close, resisting the urge to hit out at anyone who came near her.

  But to what end? She knew it as well as they. If she refused now, if she took her child back to Beckles, her baby would be marked, forever, as chattel. If they liked, Robert and Mary Anne could take her away from Jenny, give her to another family to raise, sell her, starve her.

  Mary Anne wouldn’t—Jenny didn’t think. But it was so hard to tell with Mary Anne these days.

  “All right,” she said reluctantly. And then, delaying the moment as long as she could, she said to Charles, “What shall we call her?”

  “I had thought . . . Carlota. Since she’s meant to be Portuguese. We can call her Lottie.”

  “But we’ll just call her Baby,” said the midwife, kneeling down to take the child.

  “Wait.” One-handed, Jenny reached up to her neck, yanking so hard that she tore the frayed old ribbon. She tried to tuck the locket into the folds of the baby’s blanket, but her hand fumbled and failed. She could have cried with frustration. “I want her to have this.”

  She had nothing of her own mother, not even her looks. When she looked into the mirror she saw her father. What would it have been to have something to hold, to remember?

  “That’s Mary Anne’s locket.”

  “She gave it to me. You’ll see. It says, inside. You can change it, take off the filigree, cover the inscription. Just so long as she has it.”

  “That’s easily done, isn’t it?” said the midwife, looking meaningfully at Charles. She reached for the baby and scooped her expertly up, and this time Jenny didn’t fight her. “Up you get, little one.”

  Jenny’s arms fell to her sides, numb. Her stomach and her arms felt empty, desolate.

  Charles rose, pressing a kiss to the baby’s forehead. “Good-bye, sweetling. We’ll be with you again soon.”

  Jenny stuffed her fist into her mouth, trying not to cry out.

  The midwife glanced down at her, not without compassion. “My sister Rachel will nurse her with her own. Don’t worry, she’ll be fed and cared for.”

  “And free.” Charles’s voice was hoarse. He knelt down next to Jenny, holding her hands; it felt less like an embrace and more like a restraint. “Remember that. She’ll be free.”

  Jenny stared up at him, almost hating him at that moment, wanting to snap at him, to push him away.

  “It’s only for a time,” he said softly, as the midwife, with a nod, disappeared silently out the door. “We’ll have her back, I promise you that.”

  Promises, promises, what were promises? He had promised so much and done none of it and her stomach was empty, her baby gone, farther away by the moment, and it didn’t matter right now that she had been a pa
rt of this, that she had agreed; her baby was gone.

  Jenny turned her head into Charles’s side and wept, great, ugly, gasping sobs that soaked through his shirtfront and dripped down onto his buckskin breeches.

  He held her and murmured nonsense to her, as though she were their child, the child they had lost. “Hush, hush, my love. Hush, hush. It’s only for a time . . . for a time . . .”

  Light-headed and hollow, Jenny pushed away at last. “I’d best go back,” she said flatly. She felt like a husk, emptied of everything.

  Charles smoothed the hair back from her face, looking at her with such concern and love that her stomach cramped, guilt and love and resentment mixed all together. “You’ll go to Nanny Bell straightaway?”

  “Straightaway,” Jenny lied. It was so hard to hate him when she knew that he was suffering too. But she did, just a little. Hated him and loved him and wanted to hold him close and push him away, all at once.

  “I wish I could see you back.”

  “Oh, and no one would comment on that,” said Jenny, pushing up to a sitting position, even though it made her head swim. She looked down at her soiled skirt. “I’ll tell them the baby was born dead, on the road to Harrow. There’s no reason for anyone to doubt me.”

  Charles wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly, so tightly that Jenny wasn’t sure who was meant to be comforting whom.

  “I’ll call on your mistress tomorrow,” he said, standing and reaching down to help her up.

  “Don’t,” said Jenny. It wasn’t just that Master Robert wouldn’t like it. She wasn’t sure she could bear it, not right now, to see Charles and not be able to go to him, knowing their daughter was with strangers, far in the hills of St. Andrew. “Please.”

  The walk back to Beckles felt endless, her legs like lead, her stomach cramping, blood seeping from between her legs. Step by step, she made her way, the sunlight blurring in her eyes. She hadn’t meant to take Charles’s advice, but she found herself going not to the house but to Nanny Bell’s hut.

  “My baby—she was born dead,” she managed, and fainted, ungracefully, on Nanny Bell’s stoop.

  When she woke, Nanny had a strengthening posset for her. Nanny didn’t ask any questions; no one did. Babies died, some by accident, some by design, and it was always better not to inquire which.

  It was night by the time she made her way back to the big house, to her mistress’s chambers. The candles had been blown out in Mary Anne’s room, and Jenny was grateful for that. All she wanted was to strip off her soiled dress, curl up on her pallet, and drift into oblivion.

  She was creeping across the room when a hazy voice came from behind the netting of the great bed. “Where were you? I wanted you. I called and called and only Queenie came.”

  Jenny had thought she was beyond tears, but they came all the same, clogging her throat, making her voice thick. “My baby died.”

  “Oh, Jenny.” She could hear Mary Anne pulling herself up against the pillows, her voice thick with sleep and laudanum. “You’re not hurt?”

  Not hurt? She felt like she’d been flayed, her emotions raw and aching. “Nanny Bell says I’ll heal.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” said Mary Anne, with real feeling. Clearing her throat, she added, “Well, there’s one good thing to come of this. You can nurse Ned.”

  Jenny stood there, in the middle of the room, grateful for the darkness that hid her. The idea of holding another child, nursing another child . . . it made her whole body recoil.

  The cruelty of it took her breath away. She’d known her mistress long enough to know that nothing was by chance and no slight went unpunished; she was being sentenced for bearing a child without her mistress’s approval, for daring to risk her life in childbirth.

  “Master Ned has a nurse,” she said carefully.

  Mary Anne dropped back against the pillows. “I don’t like that nurse Robert found. She’s slovenly.” Drowsily, she added, “They say babies take their character from their milk. I’d rather have Neddy be like you. At least it’s all in the family.”

  It was the first time Mary Anne had acknowledged her relationship and Jenny knew it was only because of the opium, loosening her tongue, making her say what she would otherwise hide.

  By rote, she went to the side of the bed, smoothing the pillows for her mistress, pulling the coverlet up around her shoulders, trying not to let her anger show in her motions. “I’ll do my best by Master Ned.”

  “Jenny.” Mary Anne reached up, covering one of Jenny’s hands with her own. In the dark, her eyes looked black, the pupils fully dilated. “I am sorry. About your baby.”

  Jenny let her hand lie still beneath Mary Anne’s. Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes. “Thank you,” she managed.

  Mary Anne let go, lifting her hand to smother a yawn. “Such a pity. . . . He might have been a companion for Ned.”

  Jenny stared at her cousin with disbelief, disbelief and something that felt very much like hatred.

  “She.” Jenny yanked the mosquito netting back into place, her knuckles white around the floss, fighting the urge to bring the whole edifice crashing down on Mary Anne’s head. “She was a girl. A little girl . . .”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  St. Andrew, Barbados

  May 1854

  “What was the child’s name?” Emily asked urgently.

  George cocked his head, listening. “She says they just called her Baby.”

  “Her? The child was a girl?”

  Old Betty chuckled and said something that made George’s cheeks turn red. After a moment, he relayed, “She says all babies look alike in skirts. But she changed that child’s swaddling more than once, and she can vouch it had the, er, correct parts.”

  Emily might have been amused if her attention hadn’t been elsewhere, on the baby she hadn’t known existed. “What happened to her? To the child? Did she go to the Carolinas with my aunties?”

  “No.” George cleared his throat. “She says that Fenty—er, your grandfather—took the baby away well before that. How long? A year or so, she thinks. Before the troubles.”

  “That would be sixteen? The troubles, I mean?” A child born at least two years before the troubles, before her grandparents’ marriage. A child her grandfather took away with him.

  No. It couldn’t be. She was refining too much on the disordered memories of a poor old woman, who might very well be telling her a tall tale.

  But why this tale? If she were going to spin stories, why this particular story?

  Emily put her hand to the locket at her throat. Inside, on one side was a lock of her grandfather’s red-gray hair and her mother’s dark brown plaited together under glass, on the other a miniature of her mother as a small child, a replica of a miniature her grandfather had kept on a little stand in his study.

  A little girl with dark brown curls and blue eyes, and a warm skin that her grandfather sometimes put to her mother’s Welsh heritage, and other times, with a chuckle, to a gypsy somewhere in the family tree.

  Or to an unknown woman who bore her grandfather a bastard child.

  It made far more sense for her mother to be a child of her grandmother’s first marriage. And yet . . .

  She didn’t want to ask in front of George. Not when it was probably all nonsense.

  “Do you think we might offer her some of our picnic?” Emily asked George in an undertone. “I’d like to give her something, but I don’t want to offend her with money. . . .”

  “I don’t think she’ll be offended,” said George.

  “Please?” asked Emily prettily, doing her best to pretend to be Laura. “How often do you think she gets to taste meat?”

  “Not often,” admitted George. “All right. I’ll be back presently.”

  “Thank you,” said Emily, with real feeling. She waited until he’d picked his way back along the trail before turning back to Old Betty. She flicked the catch on the locket, feeling the two sides release. It was rather an awkward po
sition, but she didn’t want to remove it from her neck, so instead she leaned forward, holding out the locket on its ribbon as far as it would go. “Is this the child?”

  “Gih muh dah day.” Old Betty reached out and took the locket, angling it toward her faded eyes. She turned it this way and that, forcing Emily to crick her neck at a decidedly uncomfortable angle.

  “This child is older, I know,” said Emily breathlessly, trying not to breathe into the woman’s face. “She would have been three or four here. I know babies don’t look much like anyone yet, but . . .”

  “I in know.” Old Betty released the locket. “Mi’ be.”

  George came back, directing Jonah, who was laden with comestibles and looking distinctly discomfited at being forced to deliver packages to a Redleg. Emily hastily stuffed the locket back into the collar of her dress.

  George cleared his throat, directing Jonah to hand the basket to Old Betty. “For your troubles,” he said. He held out a coin. “For your troubles as well.”

  When she took it and bit it, he looked pointedly at Emily.

  “Thank you,” said Emily, feeling subdued. There was so much she wanted to ask, but she knew she wouldn’t understand the answer and didn’t want to draw George into it. As an afterthought, she added, “Do you know where my grandfather took the child?”

  In the stream of words that followed, only one was clear. Peverills.

  “She says, where else would he take her but Peverills?”

  “Yes, I got that, rather. Thank you,” she said again, and they followed a rapidly retreating Jonah to the horses as, behind them, Old Betty began to explore the bounty of the basket. “I hope that wasn’t the whole of your lunch.”

  George smiled down at her looking a bit strained. “No, there’s plenty. Shall we have that picnic? There’s a lovely spot not far from here.”

  “Yes, let’s.” She wasn’t terribly hungry, but eating was something one did. She allowed George to help her up onto her mount, not really noticing where they were going, other than that it was steep, and the terrain seemed to require all of her companion’s attention, for which she was grateful.