An Appetite for Violets (32 page)

‘Here we are,’ I said, hauling the kettle in one hand and the clouts in the other. I nearly dropped them when I saw her. She had been sick all over her bedclothes, a vivid greenish mess that had spattered all across the sheets. When I rushed to wipe her face she was as limp as a wet rag in my arms. It took me a long while to roll her this way and that and to change the bed sheets and finally set her straight against the bolsters. By then I was getting mighty agitated and listening all the time for horses. But I urged myself to be calm and steady, for I knew that many women survived the most monstrous travails. Once she was cleaned up, my mistress looked a little better. I poured hot water in her washing ewer and had the cloths all waiting. I told myself all was ready, just as if I were attempting the making of some fearsomely difficult dish.

With a sharp scream her pains began again, and this time the sound of her rasping for breath was most terrible to listen to. I stroked her wet hair, holding my own breath too, wondering if she could survive. At last the anguish seemed to ebb and she lay back, as weak as a lamb.

‘Biddy? Are you there?’ Her voice was a whisper.

‘I am mistress. I will not leave you.’

In reply a faint squeeze pressed my hand.

‘It is a judgement on me. All the journey. I have known it.’ Her lips were very pale and cracked, moving slowly in her wretched, weary face.

‘Don’t talk nonsense. Save your breath for the child, dear.’

But she would not still herself. Her fingers dug into my arm.

‘It is true. Listen. We did a bad thing. I confess it.’

‘This is no time to talk—’

‘Listen, Biddy. For God’s sake.’ For a while she halted, catching her breath. Her mouth was so drained of colour it looked tinted blue. I stared hopefully at the window, I listened for hooves on the drive, but nothing relieved my alarm.

She licked her dry lips and spoke again. ‘Together we plotted against the old man. It was all a contrivance. For his money.’

I listened, not wanting to hear it at all.

‘Christ forgive me,’ she said. ‘I am going to die. I know it.’

I could not meet her beseeching eyes. Then another forcing pain began and she curled up and bore it, pinching my hand as tight as a pincer. When it was over she stared towards me with eyes like glass. Her lips began to move again, making words from feeble breath. ‘We were poor. I needed it. Money.’

‘Forget that now,’ I said, for such talk made me sick. All the money in the world cannot buy life, I thought grimly.

‘The doctor?’ She was staring dully at nothing.

‘He may still come.’ Yet I caught from her a mood of hopelessness.

A little later, she turned her eyes to mine and they were that sunken I could not be sure she truly saw me. ‘I committed a terrible sin—’

‘Hush now. You told me already.’

‘No. Worse—’

The forcing pains began again and she struggled at last to lift her knees. If she could but deliver the child, I prayed, maybe all would be well. But when she tried to push she was too weak, all the pain seemed forced back inside her. It was an agony to watch her.

‘The child,’ she whispered in a quiet spell, so soft I could barely hear. I dipped my head and felt her breath, sour and hot against my cheek. ‘Take care of it, Biddy.’

‘You will live, dear,’ I entreated. ‘You will live to care for it yourself.’

‘Give Kitt the jewel,’ she said in short gasps. Then, ‘Not Pars. Kitt.’

It was an odd thing to say, but then she had sworn to her dying mother to provide for her brother. Before she could say more the pains were on her again. I never saw a body suffer such as she did. She was too weak to scream out; her whole being was racked like a torture. Then a time came when she could not breathe at all, her chest made a dreadful creaking sound as she tried to take in air. I tried to lift her up, though my hands were trembling and dithering. Then I felt it, like a great shock travelling through her, as if an invisible cudgel struck her chest. The mighty power of the convulsion was so strong that she flung her arms backwards.

‘My Lady, raise yourself.’ I tugged her shoulders, trying to raise her. Her head fell forwards. A string of greenish spittle hung from her open mouth.

‘My Lady!’

I tugged again and saw the fixed stare of her eyes. Her lips were parted and had a blue shadow about them. Her soul had departed from her body, all in a moment.

‘Carinna,’ I called, drawing near to her again. ‘Speak to me, dear.’ Her lips stayed rigid; her eyes did not move a jot. I stroked her cheek and it was warm but very still.

I knew it was over. And I was so heartbroken for my mistress that I burst out skriking like a disappointed child. My poor mistress, I sobbed. She had come all this way to die without kith or kin to comfort her. Tenderly, I wiped her sweat-rimed face. Then her arms, and her milky, blue-veined breasts. Only as my warm cloth moved across her great swelling belly did I remember the poor trapped child. For it was then that her belly-skin suddenly rippled, a flutter passing fast across the surface. I dropped the cloth and covered my mouth. The baby was still alive.

‘No,’ I gasped out loud. Surely it could not survive its mother’s dying? My legs felt weak and I pulled a stool beneath me, trying to straighten my thoughts. A horrid memory jostled in my mind: of that little deer springing from its dead mother’s carcass back in Mawton’s larder. I glanced again at Carinna’s face. She was as stiff and lifeless as a stone statue out on the terrace. I reached out again to her belly. It was not quite cold, and still felt yielding. Another movement trembled across the smooth skin, pushing outward like the kick of a tiny foot.

I told myself I must do it fast. That of anyone save a surgeon, I had the best skills with a knife. Shaking only a little, I laid a clean cloth over her privy parts and grasped my silver knife.

‘God forgive me,’ I prayed. I poked at her with my fingertips, calculating that a slice straight across her middle would probably kill the child. I decided her lower parts must be sacrificed, so the opening had to be made at the bottom edge of her belly. I tried to calm my ragged breathing. At that moment, I confess I would have known relief if the child had died. But it did not. It moved again, struggling for air, trapped in her womb like a kitten in a sack.

As gently as I could, I set the knife tip against her pale flesh. I pressed and the blade sliced through the skin. A slow ooze of blood welled up and hindered my view. I wiped some of it away and set the knife a little deeper, mumbling ‘Our Father,’ and scraps of prayers beneath my breath. The first cut was too shallow; all I did was make a horrid mess of blood. A faint-headedness nearly struck me down.

‘It is only common butchery,’ I said to myself. This time I commanded myself to slice deeper. I cut through to a layer of white fat and slid my knife deeper. Next came meaty red flesh, but I could find nothing there. My mouth was dry, my throat was tight. I began to gag and cough to see my vile handiwork. More blood was flooding over my hands now, so I paused to wipe it with the drenched cloth. I wanted to sit and get my breath back but the notion of precious time passing made me slice even deeper. I thought my blade must be close to the child now, and was terrified of killing it. So with a clutch of my heart I lifted up the cut flap of my mistress’s belly and peered inside.

Something dark and matted caught my eye amongst the scarlet flesh. Sliding my hand inside the fetid warmth of her belly I felt a roundness and upon it, slippery matted hair. Then I cut in earnest, careless of the bloodbath I was making, desperate only to free the trapped child. A second time I reached inside her body and grasped the slippery skull. Then I yanked hard. All in a slithery tumble the baby came out of the gash, looking very grey and blood-smeared. It dropped on the bloody sheets, its eyes closed but its limbs weakly flailing. Behind it trailed the grey wrinkled sausage of its cord. With a slice of the blade the baby was free. I knew it must be washed, but nearly dropped it on the floor as I carried it to the ewer. I was muttering prayers of thanks as I did, so amazed was I that it lived.

Once the baby was washed of its warm lardy slime it took on a better colour. It was a little girl, with dark tufts of hair on her head and a squashed-up nubbins of a face. Her skull, mind you, was bent to one side like an apple grown askew, but I reckoned that was from the long squeezing she’d suffered. My heart swelled to see her live. I lifted her to my breast and was glad to hear her cry with a healthy bawling. Just the soft feel of her heartened me, the kicking of her thin legs and her bumpy peach of a head wobbling against my lips. Then I wrapped her in a piece of swaddling and set her down in the wooden box that was her crib. For a long while I stood over her, marvelling as she snuffled and jerked and then fell to sleep.

Before I let myself go to bed I began to tidy up my mistress. I got a fancy that if I cut strips of sheeting I could bind up her belly. I was standing over her with my knife raised to cut the cloth when I felt a prickle on my skin as if I was being watched. When I turned my head I jumped with fright, for there was Mr Pars standing in the doorway.

‘Biddy!’ he barked. ‘What have you done to your mistress?’

I started to gabble out the tale, that she had died in her travails, my words coming all in a jumble. ‘Thank God you are back,’ I ended. ‘I waited and waited for the doctor. But it’s too late now.’

He did not move from his place in the shadow of the door. I could see him frowning at my mistress as she lay white and almost naked, slashed about like a corpse on a battlefield.

‘I see that. Now put the knife down, girl.’ I looked down at my hand that was bloody to the elbow. I dropped it and it clattered to the floor.

‘Thank God you are back, sir,’ I said, very heartily. ‘When she died I knew not what to do.’

‘When she died?’ I could not see his face for he was far from the candles. ‘No Biddy. She could not live after you had butchered her.’

‘Butchered?’ I cried. ‘I told you she was dead and growing cold when I cut her. Look.’ I motioned to the crib. ‘I saved the baby.’

He took a few steps and peered towards the little scrap that now lay quiet in the cradle. ‘Great god, it has a monstrous head.’

‘It may mend, sir. It was a terrible birthing.’

‘I see what I see, Biddy. A knife in your hand, your mistress dead. Look,’ and he pointed at me in a grave manner. ‘Your gown is soaked in blood. No, it is her gown is it not? Her golden gown from Paris? Girl, what have you done?’

It was then I felt a sinking like a plummeting stone in my guts.

‘Your mistress was quite well when I left her.’ His accusation was not hot-blooded, rather it sounded right sorry, as if he pitied me.

‘Mr Pars, sir, I could never harm My Lady. I cared for her. You know that.’

‘It may not come to my opinion, Biddy, in a court of law. I left her – Christ believe me, I left her well and happy. And I come back to this horror. Oh, was your head so much turned by jewels and junketing that you must murder her?’

‘Mr Pars, sir! It is I, Biddy. How can you say such a thing?’

He backed away then, further from the light till he was no more than a speaking shadow. ‘I did once think I knew you, Biddy. But consider how you have altered these last weeks. There are witnesses aplenty to your gadding about pretending to be her, while she was too sick to stop you. She had her part to blame, I grant you that. But I must follow my conscience. If I am called before a magistrate, I can only tell what my own eyes saw.’

‘You would not. God help me, I would swing for this!’

Then, perhaps seeing the terror that struck me, he looked on me with a little more kindness.

‘It has been a long, weary night. Let us sleep before we take any sudden action.’ I felt such gratitude towards the man that my eyes brimmed.

‘Thank you, Mr Pars, sir.’

‘There may be means and ways to sort it out, if you do as I bid.’

‘I would do anything, sir.’ My voice shook with relief.

Then he shuffled off to his chamber and I heard his key turn in the lock. I returned to cleaning the room, which looked like a slaughterhouse. Try as I might, I could not close my lady’s eyes, lacking heavy English pennies. And so it seemed to me that my mistress’s staring eyes beseeched me as I bundled the bloody sheets away to be thrown in the fire. If only she could speak in my defence, I thought. And I wondered what Mr Pars would have said of my mistress’s confession, that she and her uncle had indeed tricked Sir Geoffrey of his money. That he had suspected her all along, I supposed. I did my best to make all neat again, carrying the ewer, knife, and pots down to the kitchen. Bengo still yapped behind the door, but with a boot to his hind quarters I forced him back so he could not escape. Then, unable to leave Carinna’s tiny daughter alone in such a chamber of death, I lifted the innocent bantling into my arms, and took her off to my own bed.

XXXIII

Villa Ombrosa

Being Easter Saturday, 1773
Biddy Leigh, her journal

Funeral Cakes

Take a pound of sugar and a quarter pound of almonds blanched and beat them very well, then strain them with five spoonfuls of cream. Add grains of ambergris and so mix it up, and put into it three or four spoonfuls of flour. Then put into paper coffens and bake them in the oven. When dry tie each pair with white ribbons and seal with black wax. A fitting verse for the paper is set out thus:

            
Farewell my weeping friends, farewell,

            
My dearest friends adieu!

            
I hope ere long in heaven to dwell

            
And then I’ll welcome you.