‘It must be,’ she answered. ‘It’s already three weeks late.’
Phoebe was beginning to look frightened.
‘I feel something awful be happening to me, Mistress Bersaba,’ she said. ‘Do ’ee think the Lord be punishing me for being wanton like?’
‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘If He’s going to punish people for being like that He shouldn’t have made them that way.’
Phoebe looked frightened. I think she expected the wrath of Heaven to descend upon me to punish me for my blasphemy. It was to be expected. Hadn’t she been brought up in the smithy?
In the afternoon it started to rain, great heavy drops that fell steadily down. At four o’clock I thought Phoebe looked ill and she said she was in pain, so I went down to the stables and told one of the grooms to ride over to the midwife and tell her to come without delay. She lived some two miles away in a little group of cottages just outside our estate.
He went off and I went back to Phoebe. I made her go to bed and I stood at the window watching for the midwife.
Phoebe looked very ill and I wasn’t sure whether it was the pain she was suffering or the fear which had returned now her time had come. For seventeen years she had listened to her father’s ranting about the vengeance of God, so it was small wonder that she was reminded of it now.
I kept telling her that there was nothing to fear. A great many girls had been in her position and come happily through. I was almost on the point of telling her my own experiences just to comfort her, but I stopped short of that in time.
I was at the window when I heard the sound of horses hoofs in the stables so, thinking it was the groom returned with the midwife, I ran down.
It was the groom, but the midwife was not with him.
‘Where is Mother Gantry?’ I demanded.
‘Her couldn’t come, Mistress Bersaba.’
‘What do you mean she couldn’t come? I sent you for her.’
‘I hammered on her door but she wouldn’t answer. I said: “You’m wanted at the Priory. One of the maids is giving birth.” ’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘She just come to the window and shook her head at me. Then she pulled down the blind and said, “Go away, or you’ll be sorry.” So I rode back to tell ’ee, mistress.’
‘You fool,’ I cried. ‘We need a midwife. Why do you think I sent you if it didn’t matter whether she came or not? Saddle my horse.’
‘Mistress Bersaba …’
‘Saddle my horse!’ I shouted, and trembling he obeyed.
‘Mistress Bersaba,’ he repeated, ‘I’ll go back …’
I jumped on my horse and rode out. The rain was teeming down. I was not dressed for the saddle. There was nothing on my head and my hair was soon streaming down behind my back.
I took a certain glory in what I was doing. I had saved Phoebe from her father; I had saved Carlotta from the mob—although I had done my best to throw her to them; and now I was continuing in my heroic role. I was going to arrive just in time with the midwife whom that fool of a groom had not brought back with him simply because the woman was too tired or too lazy to answer a summons for a mere maid.
I came to her cottage. I banged on the door. I heard a feeble voice and I lifted a latch and went in. ‘Mistress Gantry …’ I began.
She was lying back in a chair, and I went to her and shook her before I noticed that her face was fiery red, her eyes glassy.
‘Be gone,’ she cried. ‘Don’t ’ee come near me. Stay away, I tell ’ee.’
‘Mistress Gantry, a baby is about to be born.’
‘Get you gone, mistress,’ cried Mother Gantry. ‘I be sick of a pox.’
I understood why she had not opened the door to the groom and that by coming in I had placed myself in acute danger.
I went out of the cottage and mounted my horse.
It seemed a long time before I got back to the Priory. I went into the stables, where the grooms stared at me. Then, wet and bedraggled as I was, I went up to Phoebe’s room.
My mother was at the door.
‘Bersaba, wherever have you been?’
‘I’ve been to Mother Gantry. She can’t come … She’s sick … she says of a pox.’
‘You saw her …’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I went into her cottage to get her to come to Phoebe.’
‘Oh, my child,’ said my mother. ‘You must get those things off.’
‘Phoebe’s baby?’
‘It is born … dead.’
I stared at her. I could see her concern was all for me.
‘Phoebe?’ I began.
‘She is very ill but she has a chance of recovery. I want you to get those wet clothes off. Come with me.’
She led me away.
I was feeling limp, deflated and exhausted.
ANGELET
In Paul’s Walk
I WAS SAD AS I rode along, for this would be the first time in my life that I had been parted from Bersaba. There was a terrible anxiety in my heart too, for this was a turning point in our lives and I instinctively knew that nothing would be the same again.
I had longed to go to London; so often I had visualized the trip, and I had an uncanny feeling that my very longing had made it come about. Once a wise woman—I think she was certainly a white witch—had come to Castle Paling with her husband who was a kind of travelling pedlar. Aunt Melanie had given them shelter for the night and the woman had earned her lodging by telling fortunes, which amused us young ones. I always remember what she said to me. It was something like this: ‘If you want something badly believe you will get it, think of it, see yourself getting it. It is almost certain that if you do this your hopes will come true. But you may have to pay for it in a way you hadn’t expected—and that way may not be pleasant. In fact it could be that you might wish you had never asked for it.’
That was how I felt now on the road to London. I was here because Bersaba was so ill. I had seen the fear in my mother’s eyes and that she wanted to make sure of my safety, for when Phoebe’s baby was born dead Bersaba had caught the smallpox from the midwife. We did not know this immediately, of course. Bersaba rode out to bring the midwife in the teeming rain and actually went in and shook the old woman before she noticed the terrible signs of illness on her face, and thus she had come into physical contact with her.
When she came back and told us what had happened, my mother herself put her to bed and made her stay there. The next day, however, we heard that the midwife had died and that several people in the village were suffering from the smallpox.
My mother—usually so meek—became like a general gathering her forces about her, going into the attack determined to defeat the enemy—in this case a disease which could kill.
She sent for me and I was immediately aware of her purpose. ‘You will no longer sleep in Bersaba’s room,’ she told me. ‘Your things are being moved to a little room on the east side.’
This room was about the farthest from the one I shared with Bersaba.
‘I don’t want you to see your sister until I say you may.’
I was horrified. Not see Bersaba, I who had been with her almost every hour of my life! I felt as though part of myself was being taken away.
‘We must be sensible,’ said my mother the next day, very calm in spite of the anxiety she was suffering. ‘The fact is that Bersaba has been in contact with a woman who has the smallpox. She had a chill at the time so may well be in a receptive state. We shall know in a week or two at most whether she has contracted the disease. If she has, then I want you to go away.’