Chapter One Hundred One: Lying In It

 I awoke to cold and darkness.

How long had I slept?

I shivered.

Unable to sleep the night before due to nerves, worrying over how the events at the cemetary would unfold, exhaustion had carried me away on sleep here. I had let down my guard.

I was hungry.

Placing a hand on his warm chest, I felt the rhythmic rise and fall. His breathing was regular, even though I could feel the deep rattle of wet lungs.

As I sat up, my hand landed in a puddle of wet soaked up by the bed sheets. A frantic search by my fingers found that he had urinated on himself and on me. 

Damn it!

Leaping up, cursing under my breath, I felt my skirt to discern the extent of it, then felt the bed and his pants. It was cold now and had soaked through the layers of skirt to my stockinged leg. 

I started to undress.

Tears stung my eyes again. Urine? On me? It was fine from an infant but from a grown man? 

Should I wake him? 

No. Not yet.

I stepped out of the black crepe dress and the black petticoat, leaving them in a pile. The stockings came off next. That left me in a chemise and corset. 

Somehow, in the light of day, I would have to figure out how to launder everything. I detested laundry.

I knew, even in the dark, that there was no where else to sleep save this bed and the hard floor. It was too cold. I could lie down on the other side of him perhaps, but just in case of further leakage, I took off the corset. I debated about the chemise, too, to minimize the risk of extra laundry. After all, I had dreamed of lying naked in his bed just this morning, hadn’t I?

But no. Not like this.

What time was it?

I crawled into the bed, feeling the way with my hands to make sure the area was truly dry and slipped under the coverlet. I hugged the wall, unable to sleep. He moaned and shifted, turning over, placing his hand on my breast. 

His face was next to mine. I turned away to avoid his breath but his hand remained in place.

I attempted to move closer to the wall but the plaster would not take me in. Hard and cold and unforgiving as it was. I tried to move his hand away but he stirred so I gave up. I was not yet prepared to interact with him. Would he even sober enough? 

You made your bed…

I tried to remember what his touch had been like before, when I had craved it with such hunger, but that did not help. I was still there with his sleeping shadow, acutely aware of where his hand lay, unable to relax enough for sleep to reclaim me. Instead, I passed the night lying awake for the hours before dawn arrived again.

Chapter One Hundred: Fluids

And so I went back.

I climbed each of those steps again, more slowly this time, filled with dread of a much different sort.

He was still lying in the floor, and had urinated on himself, but was coherent enough that he could assist me in getting him to bed. I helped him stand, leaving the bottle of spilled liquor in the floor.

Halfway across the room he began vomiting. 

Oh, God.

I stopped and waited for it to pass, the vomit splattering to the floor. Bits of it splashed up onto my skirt. I fought back my own urge to retch.

When the contents of his stomach had been completely evacuated, we resumed our halting progress.

His eyes held no recognition. I did not know if that was because of the alcohol, the head trauma, or something else. He groped my breast as he stumbled with me into the bedroom. I brushed his hand firmly away. 

“Stop.”

He didn’t fight me.

His eyes closed as he fell onto the bed, dust rising up from the mattress. He appeared to be unconscious, though his brow remained furrowed. 

I undressed him anyway.

His abdomen was swollen, full of fluid that shifted with every breath, every touch. His legs were doughy, my fingers left a deep imprint that lingered wherever they touched up to his thighs. I could see that he had scratched his jaundiced skin bloody in several places with long fingernails, leaving deep excoriations. The dried blood was still visible under those nails. 

His personal hygiene had been neglected for some time.

It is difficult to watch someone you love, someone you have been so intimate with, so changed. I wrestled with revulsion as I bathed his body with the water I found in the pitcher on the worn dresser. How long had it been there? At least it was cleaner than him.

I realized, as I scooped the vomit into an old dirty towel, that I still cared for him, otherwise cleaning this vomit from the floor would not have been possible.

I walked back to the bedroom and lay down on the mattress next to him and wept. All of his secrets, his pain, his mortality were all on display here in this dimly lit room. We had both suffered. My heart ached.

Chapter Ninety-Eight: Threshold

The foyer was dim. It was clear that this was not a home so much as a cluster of apartments.

It smelled stale and musty, so much so, in fact, that it could be tasted as I opened my mouth to breathe to prevent the odor from permeating my nostrils.

I pounded on the worn door of a downstairs apartment only to have it opened by a scowling, stooped old woman who looked at me suspiciously.

“What?” she demanded.

“I am looking for Nathaniel Brierly.”

“Up there. Top floor.” She cocked her head, using her chin to indicate the direction.

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

She nodded curtly, staring at me for a few moments before closing her door with a slam that made me jump.

Every step I mounted creaked in protest from the weight. A different tone or pitch rose from each as I climbed to the third floor flat.

Would it be locked? Should I knock? Or just enter?

I reached the landing and stopped at the door. I put my hand on the rough wood. What future lay on the other side? Happiness? I wanted happiness. Happiness and love and rest. 

I am so tired of fighting. 

I tried the door tentatively. It cracked open. Unlocked. No knocking, I decided. I would just enter. 

Pushing the door open further, I crossed the threshold. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust further to the darkness. Small slivers of light beamed through cracks at the edges of the heavy drapes, a shard here and a shard there, trapping dust in its light. 

No fire. 

I shivered. Was it cold? 

Walking to the far window, my eyes explored the room. It appeared empty. I pushed the drapes open with a flourish letting light flood in. I moved to the next window, doing the same. I squinted in the light as it assaulted my eyes. Lifting the veil and removing the bonnet, I paused for a moment letting the warm sun hit my face.

Deep breath.

Before I could turn around a snarl came from behind me. “Close them, you fool! Close them or they will see you.”

I turned to see a man standing framed in the doorway, shielding his face from the light with an arm. There was a bottle in one hand. He lurched forward, spilling liquor on his clothes and upon the bare floor. A bloated belly made it appear as if he were with child. The exposed skin of his hands glowed a sickly yellow.

“I said close the drapery!” Another snarl.

He lowered the arm and took another menacing step then stopped.

Should I run? Who was this monster?

“Evelyn?” he gasped softly.

Chapter Ninety-Five: Drawing Closer

The whistle blew its loud, piercing warning. I ran back through the station and was helped up the steps by a conductor. Several heads looked up to stare as I rushed to settle myself in a vacant seat. One by one they returned to their own conversations.

Several moments of deep breaths and I regained my composure.

I clutched the overfilled valise to my chest as the train lurched forward.

A black crepe mourning dress was folded up within. It would end up terribly wrinkled by the time I was able to put it on but it would have to do. I would need a bonnet and long veil at the next stop in Leeds.

The brooch, my Recuerdo, would do nicely. I touched it absently, pinned to the bodice my traveling dress. I had carried it with me all these months. I wanted to open it again, to see his woven hair within but I resisted the urge.

Maybe some jet earrings to complete the ensemble?

Not that anyone would be able to tell beneath the veil…

The fatigue began creeping up on me again, but I was afraid to close my eyes, to let down my guard. The hard wooden bench would not offer a bit of comfort and so I willed myself to remain awake, staring at the passing scenery.

I leaned my cheek against the cool glass of the window.

Soon. 

Soon I would see his hand, his fingers. His face itself was dimmed in my mind but I could remember the feel of his hands in great detail. I had spent many hours in the dark of night tracing the nails and callouses and the feel of the knuckles over and over again in my memory, how my hand always seemed to fit perfectly within his as if they were meant for each other from the beginning.

His words whispered into my ear cloaked in blackness in Edinburgh so many years ago, the words that still sent shivers down my spine… Forgive me.

Love. 

What was love that it could drive a person so mad? Was this love? Or was it something else, something more sinister? How could I really know?

I had thought that Anne would be my consolation, better than a brooch, a living vessel to pour my love into. She was not enough, though. Not when I saw him in her eyes each day, looking back at me.

God forgive me, I had not known. 

If I had it to do over again, what would I choose?

This.

This was the only way to find peace.

What would tomorrow or the next day bring?

I shifted my cheek to a new spot on the cool window glass and closed my eyes for a moment. It was such a chore to focus on the fields of the passing farmland outside with such heavy eyelids.

The color of the red sun filtered through my closed eyelids. The light faded as the train turned, moving my side of the car into the shade, becoming gray and then finally black as we entered into a tunnel…

Chapter Eighty-Eight: Crumbling

I wept bitterly that night and every night after…

The days were spent in a stained jacket of sorts that wrapped my arms around the torso and held them tight. I was placed in a chair and then tied down, only to be wheeled out to the veranda to take in the air twice a day. I was fed by the orderlies as apparently I could not be trusted with utensils. 

They were probably right.

Time passed slowly. 

I thought about all of the ways I could hurt that man with a spoon: evisceration would be difficult but if he held still long enough maybe with some chloroform or ether, I could ram the handle up a nostril and do some damage to his brain, I could scoop out each eyeball or maybe even his testicles, I could shove the handle into each ear and render him deaf, I could use that same handle at his jugular and maybe make him bleed to death….

I asked everyone I came across about my daughter but was only met with blank stares or shrugs. I begged for answers, news, any bit of information. 

None came.

Dr. Jenkins himself was a specter, flitting in and out around my periphery. How lucky he must have felt when I fell into his lap here. Had it been orchestrated, his little charade? Or purely chance? What were the odds anyway? 

I had no uterus. No ovaries. No child. He had robbed me of everything I had left.

Everything but my hate.

It was not a strong enough word, really…

After a week I was pinned down for an exam by him, my legs spread wide and held in place by two male orderlies as he painfully probed with his fingers. All the while he watched my face with a grin, clearly enjoying himself.

I held his gaze until he looked away.

If I could only kick him.

But I could not. I had already tried. 

Hence the male orderlies.

They leaned heavily on my legs, forcing them still. I could no longer feel my feet, the circulation had been disrupted for so long.

I wiped away all outward emotion. I resolved that I would not give him the satisfaction of having control of me in that way any longer. There were places in my mind where he could not touch me. I escaped there until he was done. 

A female attendant stood silently to my right, shifting her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. She had little to do besides serve as an observer, a witness to my humiliation. I wondered what she must be thinking. Whenever I looked at her she looked away.

He moved up to my abdomen and removed the sutures. They had been terribly itchy. Restrained all day and all night, I could not reach the area to scratch. That fact alone was enough to drive me mad…

He was rough but the removal was a kindness, after all. My quality of life would be vastly improved. I hated him all the more for making me feel even this small amount of gratitude toward him.

Soon enough it was all over. 

I should have killed you when I had the chance, you bastard.

My legs were released as he stepped back, my chemise pulled back down to my ankles. The blood rushed back into my toes, a wave of prickly pain that excruciatingly crescendoed and then died away. He walked up to the basin and pitcher placed on the table next to the head of the bed. He washed. 

As he dried off his hands and rolled his sleeves back down he leaned in close to my ear and spoke softly. “I hear your daughter will be adopted out by a nice family. They needed extra hands to labor around the farm. They have adopted six other children from other unfit mothers already. I hope the girl does not mind cow shit…”

I closed my eyes and let the hate wash through me. I could feel it in every hair of my body, every pore, every fiber.

For now hate was my hope.

Chapter Eighty-Five: Retribution

  

Where was he?

I waited at the window for hours with Anne playing in the floor beside me. 

“Don’t pull on the drapery, darling…” I tugged gently at the dark silk but she did not turn loose. Instead she giggled and yanked hard back. “This is not a game!” Edginess showed in my voice.

She smiled up at me but did not release her grip, pulling hard again.

I knelt and unfurled the fingers of her good hand from the fabric. She was strong when she wanted to be. The curtain was quickly draped carefully over the chair back out of her reach. 

Anne pulled herself up on the chair, still smiling. Reaching. Standing on bare tip toes she balanced with the one arm, reaching with the other. Unsuccessful, she switched hands. Realizing she could not reach it, I was quickly met with wails of frustration. 

Still, he had not come.

Darkness descended, empty and foreign.

What did it mean?

My mind explored all possible scenarios: A carriage accident? He had finally come to his senses about me? He was ill? Someone else was ill? The diocese had called a meeting about his suspect activities on these Sunday afternoons? 

Sleep was fitful, punctuated by fear filled dreams of blood and fever.

Monday passed without word from him as did Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. Hurt. Desperation. Anger. Relief. My emotions ran the gamut. 

There was no one I could ask and pride prevented me from sending a letter of inquiry directly to him. I was not sure I wanted to know the answer, quite frankly. As long as it was possible that there had been an accident, I was spared the inevitable rejection.

Another Sunday passed at the window, alone. 

Finally, I was done with it. I would not care. I settled in the flickering shadows after putting Anne down for the night and burned his letters in the fire one by one. 

All except one. My favorite. 

“I hold you in the highest regard and pray for your wellbeing nightly…”

I would keep it as a token, a reminder of my folly. The dangers of hope. The flattery of attention, being led astray…

I traced the letters over and over again, then refolded the paper, returning it to the envelope.

Great wracking sobs came. I mourned. For myself, the loneliness. For Anne. For Nathaniel. For hoping for something better than what I had, better than this miserable existance in its perpetual state of uncertainty…

Mid morning on Wednesday, still with no word, I swung Anne up onto my hip and set out, intending to get bread but instead walking past the bakery. 

We walked on and on, the dappled sunlight filtering through the occasional trees.

There was the beginning of a strange, dull ache and I shifted Anne to the other hip. She rested her head on my shoulder and dozed off a bit, lulled by the movement.

I did not stop.

People crossed to the other side of the street as we approached, fear recognizable in their eyes even from that distance. I was used to anger and loathing. Fear was new and puzzling.

There it was. 

The modest gray stone building in traditional Georgian construct, the rectory. 

I halted at the bottom of the front steps.

There on the heavy wooden door hung my answer. Acid crept up the back of my throat as understanding set in.

Small pox.

A sharp pain suddenly broke through the dull ache in the base of my pelvis. Severe. Crippling. 

Oh, God.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Chapter Seventy-Three: Afterlife

Instead, I took her home.

If given the choice of living as a young woman without an arm, I would choose dying.

What would my daughter wish? Would she choose life at all costs if she could speak?

I had the dubious benefit of knowledge of the world as it was. She would long to be loved but it would always remain unrequited. She would be unable to work or to support herself and how long would my fortune last? There were no relatives upon whom she could rely if something were to happen to me.

To amputate her arm would mean consigning her to utter, lifelong isolation. I could not do that.

Yet, I was not willing to give her up. If she died, I died.

We would fight, she and I.

I needed to gather the coneflowers I had seen growing in Mrs. Fenuiel’s garden. I was surprised when I recognized them, tall and pink, as I thought they only grew in America.

“Oh, those?” She shrugged when I asked about them. “The seed was a gift, sent from an old American friend years ago. I keep meaning to rip them out.” She shook her wrinkled, old head. “I hate that woman now.”

Get all of them!” I ordered, calling after the young maid as she left out the door. Mrs. Fenuiel would not mind, I was certain.

They did not grow as tall as those back home had, the more rainy climate likely did not agree with them. Still, they would serve their purpose I hoped. The pale pink flowers, stems, and roots were for an antiseptic paste I had seen used by the midwives back home as a child. Typically it was made from dried plants but we did not have that kind of time.

I set about readying what I would need.

A knife from the kitchen.

Linen torn into strips for bandages.

Hot water.

I laid Anne on blankets on the kitchen work table, exposing her red and bloated little arm. The older housekeeper held it still in case she moved. Quickly, I cut into the flesh over the site of the inoculation.

Nothing.

I wanted to finish this before the young girl returned with the flowers. She had a gentle spirit and was not cut out for such things. The housekeeper herself was looking pale.

I cut deeper, my hands shaking. Anne stirred slightly as a cloud of foul smelling purulence mixed with blood poured forth. Thankfully she did not scream.

I could not bear it if she had screamed.

I expressed as much of the pus as I could out of the small incision using my fingertips, then rinsed the area with warm water.

Once the maid returned with a large basket of the coneflowers, I rinsed several of them and ground them into a runny paste with the mortar and pestle. Scooping several spoonfuls out, I wrapped it into a wide strip of linen and laid it across her arm, binding it firmly into place, careful to not cut off the circulation.

Warm compresses were laid over that and changed out every 30 minutes as I held Anne in the rocking chair in the drawing room.

Fight like with like… heat for heat.

Every six hours I would change out the coneflower paste. Why six hours? I did not know. It felt right somehow.

In the heat of the moment I had not thought ahead. “Just pull them all!” I had said. Now as I sat waiting, hoping for my miracle, I considered how to store the flowers between paste preparations. Put them in water? Hang them from the kitchen rafters to dry? Leave them to wilt on the counter?

Hang them. Hang them all.

Even though she was not interested, I expressed milk from my aching, engorged breasts a few drops at a time into her mouth.

Two days of this.

Finally the maid could take no more and sent again for the Reverend Drummond, intending that he should give comfort in my daughter’s passing. He had been here once before two days ago, shortly after I cut open the abscess in her arm.

He had not offered peace.

He now entered the room and passed his hat and coat to the weary looking housekeeper, his boots clumping on the wooden floor loudly enough that I woke from a fitful dozing slumber.

Anne also stirred. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at me as if she knew that I was her mother.

Ignoring the fact that a man of God was also in the room, I bared a breast and smiled as she latched on.

My heart sang.

I looked up at the Reverend, full of joy.

He was scowling down at me, hate in his eyes.

“I.. I am sorry for exposing myself.” I stammered. But I did not mean it. My daughter came first. She needed fluids and sustenance.

“Either you brought the favor of the Lord down upon her and saved her life through a miracle or you called upon power from another, more sinister being.” The Reverend’s eyes narrowed. “I doubt your faith is such that it brought about a divine miracle.”

Truth be told, if the devil had shown up on my doorstep and asked for my soul in return for her life I would have given it for her gladly.

But he had not.

Nor had God.

I had saved her.

“Get out of my house,” I said.

Chapter Seventy-One: A Pox Upon You

The waiting room was cold. I shivered, pulling the wrap around me tighter.

Anne played with her fingers in her mouth. I pulled the blanket over her better in case she was also catching a draft. She looked up at my face and giggled.

Was I truly cold or was the shaking merely nerves?

The day before I had run into Reverend Drummond again outside the meat market. He nodded, touching the brim of his hat as he passed. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him aside. At first his eyes registered shock that I had touched him.

“So sorry,” I mumbled. “Why didn’t you tell me that I needed to vaccinate and register?”

“I assumed you already knew.” I could tell that was a lie, his fingers tapped across his lips. A clergyman lying. I wanted to laugh. He paused for a moment, as if weighing whether or not to give voice to his remaining thoughts. Deciding to continue on, he lowered his voice. “I am not sure we should be trying to change God’s will. If God wills someone to have smallpox, who are we to try to step in and change that path? We are not God.”

Mrs. Finueil had not been helpful, either. She had lost a first husband and two children to smallpox but she did not look favorably upon the issues of vaccination.

“There is mixing of the blood of the races.” She gripped the sides of her armchair, her knuckles turning whiter than they already were. “The lymph used is mixed across races. Do you want colored blood being given to your child? It is deplorable.” She had scowled at me. “Don’t you do that to your precious baby!”

And when I had sent for two physicians to come to the house to vaccinate, they had both refused. They refused to vaccinate. Could they do that?

I shivered again.

A door opened and I looked up. A woman was ushered out, drying her eyes with a delicate lace handkerchief. She sniffled and avoided eye contact. I felt that I needed to hug her, offer a condolence of some sort. I wrestled with the urge.

It was not my place, was it?

Then she was gone. The bell at the door tinkled merrily as the door opened and closed behind her.

A throat was cleared. I turned.

The doctor was staring at me. He beckoned silently with his hand, indicating I was to follow him.

I settled myself onto a hard wooden bench in the exam room, propping the cooing Anne up against my chest.

“What brings you in today, Madame?”

Anne squirmed in my lap, drool gurgling from around her fingers. “I understand that my child is required by law to be vaccinated.”

“Ah, yes. You are a bit late on that point, aren’t you?” He looked at Anne and then smiled at me. “We can remedy that in a jiffy.”

“Wait. First, I have questions.”

“No need for questions. This is the best for the infant. You want to be a good mother, don’t you?”

He did not wait for an answer.

You don’t understand, do you? She is my everything. If I lose her, I lose myself…

He began rummaging through a drawer, gray head bent. Not finding what he was looking for, he moved on to another, and then another.

“Ah, wait. I remember.” He stood and walked over to a cabinet against the far wall. He returned with a long ivory instrument with four sharp prongs on one end and a blade on the other. There was dried blood on the prongs.

“Just hold her bare arm out straight for me.” He sat down on a stool opposite me and held up the instrument.

“Shouldn’t that be cleaned?”

He looked down at it, puzzled. “Oh, no. That is the lymph we will be using on him.”

“Her.”

“Her. I beg your pardon.” He reached for her hand and pulled it from her mouth, shoving the sleeve of her little gown up high, exposing a bare forearm. She tried to pull it back but he held tight. She looked up at me, startled.

“This will just take a second.”

I watched in horror as he drew X’s on her arm, the blood welling up and then smeared as he rubbed it in. Ann’s screams of pain and terror were deafening and tears streamed down her face. The doctor tied a bit of cotton bandage to her arm and instructed me to not disturb it for a few days.

“She’ll be fine. It doesn’t really hurt all that much.” He patted her on the head and let out a great belly laugh. “You will have to bring her back so that I can measure the pustule. If it is not big enough we will have to repeat the inoculation before I can give you the required certificate.”

I tried to console her by rocking my body back and forth gently, her snotty face pressed against my chest as I fought back the urge to slap the man before me.

How dare he treat this in such a cold, calloused manner!

We were ushered out through the waiting room as I fought back tears myself.

Another woman sat on a chair with her son, a boy of about five years of age, sitting on her lap. His feverish eyes were wide as they followed the wailing baby in my arms out the door. He was no doubt terrified of what horrors lurked in that place.

As the door jingled closed I could hear a wet cough that clearly belonged to the boy. I prayed silently that he would recover.

Chapter Seventy: Innoculation

“Haven’t you registered her birth?”

The shopkeeper at the millinery shop was a middle aged woman with greying black hair and an extra wide double chin peeking out from the tightly wrapped black shawl about her neck. She stared at me with a single eyebrow raised.

“Registered?” Confusion and some degree of panic washed over me. Was there a rule or law I had broken? “How?”

The woman rolled her eyes. Yes. I saw her do it! She had not been terribly friendly to me and I had wondered about her…

It had not occurred to me, though, that I was required to register. Surely they would just know? From the midwife? From the Reverend after the christening?

No. I suppose not.

“How?” I asked again.

“At the registrars. You register at the registrars.” She spoke slowly, enunciating carefully. “That will be two pounds twenty.” As I dug for the correct change, she added, “You probably don’t know then that you will have to show proof of vaccination.”

“Vaccination?” I lost count of the money and sighed, starting again.

“Smallpox.”

Oh, smallpox.

I paid for my purchase, a new dark blue silk bonnet trimmed in velvet, and travelled home as quickly as I could. My breasts felt heavy, I knew it was time to feed.

On my arrival at the cottage I was greeted by a cooing, giggling baby girl who was obviously delighted to see her mother. I took her from the maid and sniffed her white capped head. Heaven.

Three months old, today.

I put little Anne to my breast. I winced as the sudden sensation of pins and needles signified the let down of milk. Fists balled tight, she slurped greedily, her eyes blinking as they watched me closely.

Smallpox vaccination. I had not even entertained the idea of her ever contracting smallpox. She could, though, couldn’t she? She would be forever disfigured, scarred for life with pockmarks over her face and entire body… if she lived through it.

The vaccination was required? Since when? Was it safe?

By the time Anne was finished with the second breast, she was dozing peacefully. I placed her in the cradle by the fire and went in search of the housekeeper.

I found her in the kitchen head bowed over a chicken carcass, readying it for roasting for dinner. She was deftly wrapping the legs with twine but looked up when I entered.

“Did you know that I needed to vaccinate Anne and register her?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She waited silently, not sure if she should keep working.

“I will need to see a doctor to vaccinate her?”

“Well, you could see one of the public vaccinators but I wouldn’t go and do that.” She went back to the twine and whispered, “They kill people.”

“What? They kill people?”

She tied off the knot. “Oh, miss, I knew of a baby whose arm rotted off when they took him to the public vaccinator and another who died with convulsions eight days later.”

“What do they do?” All of my medical training had been on the battlefields of the Crimea. I had no knowledge of smallpox vaccination practices.

“Oh, ma’am, it’s terrible! They cut the arm and inject lymph from another person into it. Such screaming.” She shook her head disapprovingly.

She tossed the bird into a roasting pan after rubbing it with salt and pepper and sprigs of rosemary and slid it into the oven. The heavy metal door slammed loudly.

Wiping her hands on her apron, she turned back to me.

“It’s the law, though. Bless those fools who think they know better than us folks.”

At that precise moment Anne began wailing.

“Here, you should give her another dose of this.” The maid handed over a large brown bottle. It read:

Atkinson & Barker’s Royal Infants’ Preservative

It is no misnomer Cordial! —no stupefactive, deadly narcotic! —but a veritable preservative of Infants!

I turned the bottle of dark liquid to read the ingredients. None were listed.

“How long have you been giving this to her?”

“Almost a month now, three times a day.” She grinned proudly then busied herself with some potatoes in a pail.

I left the bottle on the table as I left to console the sobbing child, resolving to ask the druggist about the ingredients next time I was in his shop. If that was why she stopped fussing so suddenly back then, I just might be a believer.

Chapter Sixty-Nine: A Need

“…the love of the Father. In that line, grace is sufficient. It by definition must cover all manner of….”

My mind was elsewhere, bathed in joy of an irreverent kind. My heart sang. It had worked!

I had taken the risk to keep from becoming a prisoner to my own body and it had worked.

Baby Anne was at home with the maid and the cook. It felt good to be out and about, even if it was only to church.

A cough from Mrs. Fenuiel beside me brought the elaborately carved pulpit back into focus. The Reverend Drummond smiled benevolently upon his congregation from his lofty perch. He paused as he turned another page of his sermon notes.

When only his head is visible above his robes, he makes quite the pleasant visage.

I shifted in my seat, testing. I could not feel it inside, even when sitting for long periods of time on a hard wooden pew.

Each day that passed the pessary was less noticeable until I lost track of its presence entirely.

Well, maybe not entirely.

I had inserted a finger to feel its shape while lying on the bed in my shift that night and every night thereafter. It was a solid metal pillow with a central hole. I was not certain what exactly it was constructed of, as I was too afraid to pull it out. There was no telling if I would be able to get it back in properly and having to explain to the good doctor how it had “fallen” out would be too mortifying.

Furthermore, I had no intention of keeping my appointment to follow up with the doctor on Tuesday next. Looking him in the face after he had examined and felt of me down there was too much. The device was working. That should be sufficient.

“Let us pray.” The Reverend’s eyes fixed on mine for a moment. Did I look distracted? Surely he was used to distraction. I bowed my head dutifully.

What would it be like to be naked, body entwined with his in a passionate embrace?

My cheeks reddened. Why did that pop into my head? Here? In God’s house? Was what the doctor warned true? Was I becoming a whore? And then a new reality dawned on me. With a pessary occupying space, I could not make love to any man even if I wanted to.

I must not allow myself to want it.

I focused on the rise and fall of his voice, eloquent words masking their own intent.

Reality. I could never be a vicar’s wife. That was not me. I lacked the faith and fortitude. I lacked the innocence and capacity for love of humankind. I could not be his lover.

But protection. I longed to feel loved, safe, protected. God alone could not provide me with these very carnal, human things. Bernini had been wrong. I was fairly sure that even Saint Teresa in her ecstasy probably still felt unfulfilled. I felt the rocking of a ship in the dark. My face on his chest. His heartbeat. I could remember the intense pleasure of the very moment Anne had been wrought, but his features, the details, were lost to me already. Sadness stuck in my throat.

A hand touched the cold, hard oval pinned to my bodice.

There you are.

“Amen.”

No. I did not want to leave this darkness…

Swells of organ music.

I must remain faithful to his memory.

Dutifully, I filed out of the pew, into the aisle, and out the door with Mrs. Finueil on my arm to exchange brief pleasantries with the Reverend Drummond. As we set foot on the steps the sun caught in my nostril and I sneezed.

I smiled.