The Wet Nurse's Tale (20 page)

“But how could you be sure it was a baby?” said I, weeping. “The stables are a good bit from here, too far to see clearly.”

“It was indeed a baby,” she said.

I stuffed my apron into my mouth lest my howl overcome the household. “You must help me,” I said when I was able to speak. “I beg you to help me. I must speak to the mistress as soon as she can be got. Please help me.”

She looked at me. She might almost have been made of stone, for as much as her expression gave away. I had nothing to give her, nothing she might want as a bribe for her to let me see the mistress. But it might be . . .

I calmed myself, but not so much that she would think me a con niver. “Perhaps,” I said, “perhaps you are right. Perhaps it would do better to talk to Freddie himself.”

She looked at me, suspicious.

“He will know what to do, I’m sure he will,” and then I stopped speaking.

She looked at me and I at her. She knew that Master Freddie would never know how to do anything at all. She knew that I knew it too. She did not know what I was up to exactly.

I cast my eyes down as if I was humble. And I prayed.

She thought a minute. I hoped that Mrs. Hart was thinking that her mistress would better like it if I stayed away from Freddie once and for all. I hoped that Mrs. Hart was thinking that if she told her mistress on me, right then and there, that she would get the credit for saving the poor boy from the unpleasantness of my tears. I hoped that Mrs. Hart was thinking that this was my punishment for reaching so far above my station and that if the mistress cast me out, then all I got was what I deserved.

“Master Frederick is not at home,” said Mrs. Hart. “But if you like, I will see if the mistress can be disturbed from her guests for a moment.”

“Not at home?” said I like I was distressed. “The mistress?” I said like I was afeared. “Well, I suppose that will have to do,” said I, thanking God under my breath. Mrs. Hart left the room and I waited.

MRS. PADGETT’S REASON

Mrs. Padgett—my own Elizabeth—and I had loved each other as tiny children. I distinctly recall holding her little hand in my own as we tripped across the lawns of her home at Mansfield in pursuit of a jackrabbit. Our mothers were cousins and admitted to us, after we professed our fondness for one another, that they had both long harbored the hope that we each would find our hearts in the other. When I asked her father, Lord Elliott, for her hand, I believe that I saw him dash a tear of joy from his eye as he agreed.

Our engagement was lengthy; Elizabeth had come into society but recently, and her mother wished her to have a season in London before we married. We were eager to wed, but she, always the best of daughters, would bow to all her parents’ words with perfect obedience. This innocence was in part why I had remained so attached to her. I hoped to feel that same perfect trust one day from her as my wife as they did as her mother and father.

Our marriage trip was among the happiest in the world, I am certain. We visited Florence and Venice, and when her brown eyes widened with the splendors of those ancient cities, I realized once again that in her I had picked a rare and perfect blossom.

Elizabeth found herself with child after a half-year of our marriage. As is the custom for the eldest son and his family, we lived in my father’s manor as it will one day be mine to inherit. I had previously taken on much of the responsibility of the estate, and when we returned from our wedding trip, my father was very glad to shift the remaining work to me. He is older now and more and more interested in his botanicals and I was glad to take the burden from him.

Elizabeth and I were very happy. But then a shadow entered our lives. As her slender frame grew round, she found less rest in her sleep and began to be troubled by dark and terrible dreams. Often she would waken in tears and would sob words of nonsense, about black horses and horns. Her morning illness, so common in the bearing of a child, did not lessen but only grew as time passed, and her eyes, once so bright, seemed to dull. She sometimes mumbled and when asked to repeat herself would quake and quiver as if threatened with some physical violence. The doctor prescribed a healing purge and then cupping, but these did no good.

One terrible morning, she came to breakfast in her shift, upon which she had vomited. The look in her eye was frightful, and when I took her poor arm to assist her up the stairs I heard her mumble that I was a demon and that this was hell.

By the end of her time, her plight was very dire. No one could help her, she knew no one, not even her dear mother who came to be with her. Dr. Frame refused her the laudanum that might have soothed her, and I think he was right to do so: he feared that it would hurt the child she carried and that no good could come from that. When her pains began, he had to tie her down so that she would do no harm to the baby as it was expelled from her body. He did not tell me so, but I saw her binds when I looked in from the next room where I waited.

Her labors were fierce and lasted for twenty hours. I prayed constantly for God’s mercy, that He would find it in Himself to free her of the shadows that had taken her, so that she would be able to love her child. And, I wish to say, so that she would come back to me the Elizabeth I have loved for so long.

It was not to be. When shown the babe, she shrieked and would have scratched it with her fingernails had not the nurse quickly removed it. I must confess that I was in despair at this time. Dr. Frame, who is a good and wise man, knew of a wet nurse in Leighton, a Mrs. Rose, whom he had trusted for some years. He told me candidly but with great gentleness, that he had recently ascertained that she did indeed have a place for an infant. I understood that he had assumed that my Elizabeth would prove inadequate to the baby’s needs, and I thanked him for his foresight. My brother Harold took my mother and the baby to the lady’s house on that very day since she lived but one hour hence by chaise.

Mrs. Rose kept the baby, a girl called Elizabeth after her mother, and nursed her for sixteen months at which time she was weaned and came home to us. She brings light to our lives. My wife lives in an asylum some leagues hence where she is dosed by laudanum daily, lest she do damage to herself or others.

Nine

M
rs. Hart told me to stay where I was and locked the door when she left. I had nothing to do but pace like a prisoner before the gallows while I waited. I wished I could break down the door and kill Mrs. Bonney. My baby! I blamed her as much as I blamed my father. I did not know exactly what he’d said to her to convince her to take Davey off his hands, but I did know that she was a mother too. She was not so old and her children were not so old as to keep her from remembering the smell of her own baby’s head. And she took mine away. I prayed to God that after He gave me my baby back, He would cause a canker to grow inside her so that she might know the pain that I suffered now. As for my father’s fate: I only hoped that he drank himself to death and drowned in a ditch.

My pacing did not hide the rustle of her silks. When she opened the door and came in, I curtsied. I thought it best to keep whatever manners I could lest right away she have enough of me. Oh, what I needed from her! Twas a horror to me that she had so much power to refuse. For an instant I recalled young Mrs. Holcomb in Aubrey and how she wished to deny me my visit home to Joey. The rich—they have more than what they need and yet they take so much from us. Tis like the story of David and Bathsheba: David had plenty of wives while Uriah had but one and that’s the one David wanted so he took her. Twas the same then as it is now.

“I should like to sit down,” was the first words out of her mouth. There was a chair not three steps from where she stood, but I quickly fetched it and put it behind her knees. She smoothed her dress before she spoke again.

“You needn’t worry. I have made the best possible arrangements for Freddie’s son. He’ll be raised as a gentleman. If you are a good girl, you will thank me and leave it be.”

I stood in front of her, my mouth agape. Her words surprised me more than I can say. I had thought that she would scold me, that she would call me a repulsive ugly thing, so far above my station as to be unnatural. Twas the farthest thing from my mind that she might be calm and in fact not cruel.

“I did not see him myself, but Anne told me that he resembled Freddie very much around the eyes and the forehead,” she said. I started. I had thought to tell her right away that the baby was not Freddie’s. But when she told me that she had taken care that the baby would be cared for well, I was not so sure. Whatever might she do when she found out it was not her son’s? Would her wrath thrust Davey into some danger that I could not conceive of ? I could not take the chance.

“Ma’am,” I said hoarsely, “he needs me. He is my baby. You have a mother’s heart, I know it. Please, I shall die without him.”

“Susan, is it?” she said quietly. “Please think of what is best for the child. Does it not occur to you that he will be given a good education, a fine upbringing? It is best this way. After all, girl, it is not as if Freddie is the first young man to be tempted by a servant, nor you the first servant to birth her master’s bastard. I might’ve simply dismissed your father when he came to see me, but I wished to do something for the child. Be grateful, girl,” she repeated, “and leave it be.”

“Mrs. Bonney,” I said, standing as still as I was able, “I did not ask you for anything. I want nothing from you nor from . . . the young master. I ask only that you return my child to me.”

“You believe that now, Susan,” said she. “But I expect that soon enough you would come to want something from us and then something more. You might not mean to do it, but you would begin to expect what you may not expect from us. It would never do.”

I could see that my father had put that idea into her head. He had explained it to her thus: give me money now, he’d said, and take this brat, or I will haunt you for the rest of your days.

She began to look distracted. I talked fast. “You said yourself, ma’am,” said I, “that this is not such a uncommon thing—for a gentleman and one such as me to have . . . done what . . . to have it happen as it did. It’s true, just as you said. It does happen, indeed it does! Why then did you not turn your back on my father when he came to bother you?” I was panting as I spoke, for I spoke quick so she would not quit me before I had done with her. “Listen, please, my lady,” I said. “I am sure you gave him money, my father. And that is all he wanted and I am very sorry for it. But if you will give me my son back, I will never bother you again . . . indeed, I will take the child and go away and never bother you anymore, I swear it to God, if you will only do that.”

“No, Susan, I cannot,” was all she said.

“But why,” I wailed. “Why do you spend a care on what happens to him, as he is but a bastard and means nothing to you?”

“Because it is my Freddie’s!” she said very suddenly and loudly.

I was astonished. Twas not the blackmail, then. Twas the tenderness for her own son.

“Surely Master Freddie does not know of the child? I know that I never told him!”

“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Bonney coldly.

“And what if I were to tell him then,” I said wildly. “I shall tell him!”

“You shall never find him,” she said. “He is in Italy and you, I think, will not go there. Now, my guests await me.”

“Please, ma’am,” I said, “please. I cannot just forget my child. I must know where he has been taken. Please,” I began to panic as she moved toward the door, “please! Please! You owe it to me! You owe it to me!”

“And what do you mean by owe,” said she, whirling, her mouth tight. “What could we possibly owe you?”

“My Ellen,” I sobbed to her. “You already took Ellen from me. You may not have Davey too.”

She looked down on me to where I knelt, on my knees, on the floor of her folding room. Her mouth softened just a bit. “Ah,” said she, “that was a loss, was it not. But you know,” and she became stern and cold in her look, “I could not chance that you’d lose this child too.”

“What do you mean?” I whispered.