The Wet Nurse's Tale (4 page)

MRS. CROSS’S REASON

I do admit that I am quite exhausted, though, of course, very happy. My Georgiana is so dear to me, and I did fret about her welfare during her lying-in as it is her first and she is but slight. But thanks be to God, she passed through the trials with considerable spunk and her discomfort was not above what it might have been. The baby is a dear little mite, a girl, and sleeps well. I saw her suckle and now they both sleep.

My daughter is not averse to the idea of feeding her own baby with unborrowed milk and it filled me with gladness to hear it. Her husband seems agreeable to her idea and thus she will nurse her children, or at least this child, til it can eat gruel, if indeed it does live as it ought. I believe that it may have been my example that convinced her to keep her child with her and nurse it as it needs. It is what I did myself, as much as I could, and I credit it with the excellent health of my children. Women should not be afraid of it: it is, after all, best for babies to sup from the milk of their own mothers who carried them. I give thanks to God every day for each of my six children. I never buried one. My only sadness is that I was not able to provide the same benefit for the last of my children, my Robert, as I did for his brothers and sisters. I will tell you how it happened.

My children were set as follows: Mary and then William and then Adine and then Georgiana and then Maude and last Robert. I had not one whit of trouble nursing the first four of them, though I do recall how painful the suckling was when the babes were but small and the tits not yet readied. The trouble came with Maude, my fifth.

After nursing her for some weeks—thirteen, I believe—unvexed by any problems, one morning I woke with a fever. It came from my breast, which had become hard and streaked. No compress would help. The pain was quite terrible and I am not ashamed to admit that I wept with it as I had not in any one of my lyings-in. My husband, the best and most sensible of men, called for Mr. Diggory, who prescribed what he could but the infection was such that he must finally lance the nipple. The lancing relieved the pressure but the wound was hard to heal and when it did at last, I could see scars. I gave thanks to the Heavenly Father that little Maude had set enough that my one unharmed breast sufficed to give her suck. I began to give her gruel a bit earlier than the others to be sure that she had enough and did not want. She throve.

When I found that I was again with child, I fretted very much. Would I be able to feed this one with only one good dug? When he was born and my milk came down, it was terrible: very quick did I get yet another fever and this time in my good breast. I was miserable and the baby, who had suffered from yellowness, did not do well. I feared very much that we should lose him. Mr. Diggory, who again attended me, told me that he could not guarantee that once I recovered from this breast fever, another would not follow. He suggested that we find a wet nurse. I refused at first, but after much soothing and petting, my husband convinced me to do so. Though I was much in pain, I demanded to meet the nurse. We took the baby, whom I held in my arms the whole way, to the woman, who resided in the town of Leighton. Mrs. Rose lived in a small house with a wood floor and several rooms. Her children were mostly clean and well-behaved. The children ate their dinner at table—bread and milk and turnips and even a pie—and the girls curtsied nicely. One girl was a plump little thing, which I liked to see as it told me that they all had enough to eat. I asked to see Mrs. Rose’s husband and so she called for him, and though he did not smile overmuch at me, I could see that he was not of the poorest stock, which I could tell from his eye. I wept very much when I left Robert and pined for him all the months of his absence which were six. I would have him back as soon as I could and did not leave him a moment longer than there was need. When we rode up to Leighton to claim him back, we brought a present of ale and sugar and fruitcake to Mrs. Rose as a thanks for keeping him so well.

Robert is now a man and a fine one, though not as tall as his brother William, though if that is truly because of his young experience, I cannot say absolutely.

Two

J
ust the other day, on my half-day off from the twins, I lost myself on the wrong end of Charlotte Street and saw a sign that showed the Hebrew star with its six points and realized that I had wandered into their district. Also I saw the boys with their books. So many of them had spectacles! I longed to laugh but didn’t. You ought to do what you’d have done to you is what I learned from Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I know my Bible through and through, though I can’t read a word of it myself. My mother would see to it that we were all at church on Sunday so I heard the stories there. And Tim, my eldest brother, born right after Mary, learnt to read a bit at school and could make out the stories for us pretty well. There’s one tale I’ve thought of often and that’s Rebecca. When I saw those boys on Charlotte Street carrying those books like the books themselves was infants, I thought, Well, that’s Rebecca’s doing. She connived the smart one forward to get that blessing over the big one, she did, and if they’re a shrewd race, it’s her they have to thank for it.

But after all, doesn’t every mother favor one more than the other? Mine loved me the best. The mistress favored Freddie, never mind what his father thought of him. Even this Mrs. Chandler, if she has any mother feeling in her at all which I haven’t seen yet but still she may, will care for one more. I’ll wager it’s the boy if he lives; he’s the prettier of the two.

As Mary and I walked over the fields to the Great House after Ellen’s burial, we held each other and cried, but knew we was bound to go back. Our younger brothers and sisters were still small, some of them. Indeed our mother still took in babies from outside to nurse, though she told me when we were home to bury Ellen that the one in the cradle would be the last. Our father, almost as useless as a pot about bringing in money, could drink it up fast enough. It was us, I told Mary, who had to send some little money back lest Mam end up in the poorhouse with all those brats.

It seemed almost too hard to go back to the Great House. There they all were, playing and gallivanting, as if our poor thing wasn’t cold in the ground because of them. I blamed them all for the master’s evil doings. I wished his dogs would turn on him and tear out his throat. If he walked into a room, I would have to leave it, even if I left my chore half-done, lest my stomach turn and I spew my breakfast on his shiny boots. I’d hide in the drapes outside the room and when he left it, I’d run back in and finish whatever task I was at, double quick-like, so’s not to get in trouble with Mrs. Hart, the housekeeper.

The first month hurt the worst, of course, but it passed and then came my half-day and I meant to go home to my mother for it. Twas a lovely day, with a breeze and bouncing clouds and for all my heft, I am a good walker, with a firm step. Mary stayed behind to walk with her young man who, if you ask me, just wanted to feel her bosom as much as she’d let him. But really, I couldn’t blame her for letting him. It was as good a way as any to take her mind off poor Ellen, wasn’t it?

I walked away from that house, feeling as light as if I were one of them clouds in the sky. The fields had flowers all over and I reached down to get some. I felt like I did when I was a lass, and my mother’d let me play for an hour. The freshness of the day recalled to me one of my mother’s paying babies whose mother said she’d given it over to nurse so it might have the country air in its lungs. “If she wants to pay for air, I won’t say no,” my mam had said. We had all of us laughed, but now that I thought on it, it seemed like the baby’s mother got the ripe end of the bargain. Twas a true English day, as my dad would say, and I had the whole afternoon and need not be back til nightfall.

I climbed the hill that separated the Great House from the village where we lived and stood atop it. The breeze blew my cap off and I scrambled to get it, though the scrambling put me out of breath and made me laugh. My hair tumbled out of its bun. I must have looked a fright, but I felt big and healthy and I recalled it to me that there was joy in the world, even after it seems there’ll never be gladness anymore.

The view from the top of the hill afforded no sight of any house at all; the Great House was hidden by its forest and the village wasn’t yet near enough. I saw only one lone horse rider, at the bottom of the hill, small as a pinprick. The figure raised his arm to hail someone and I pretended it was I and waved back.

I came upon an old oak, the same one that John and Ada and I would climb as youngsters. It seemed the very place to rest and eat the apple I had in my pocket. Now, though I’m plump, you’d hardly believe how I can bend myself. My foot will go nearly behind my ear, if I sit on the floor and bend up my leg; that’s how I’d make Ellen laugh til there were tears in her eyes. “I never saw a girl so big as you and spry,” she’d say, wiping the tears away. “Just think, Susan, if your stomach wasn’t in the way, you could bend yourself like a Chinee!”

As there was no one anywhere to spy me, I heaved myself up into the tree, gathered my petticoat around me and plumped myself down on a branch. There I sat in my tree, munching and spitting apple seeds on the ground. My father’d slap us if we wasted, but once a town boy stared at me and laughed, “Look at the big one eating the core as if she’s a horse.” So that’s what I recall every time I eat an apple: my father’s hand and that boy.

Twasn’t long before the rider I’d seen came along up the hill. The tree was all over green leaves and I knew I’d stay hidden if I didn’t shift sudden, so I sat still and moved only my jaw with chewing. Wasn’t I surprised to see Master Freddie on that black horse. After those few words about the picture of the lady and her babe, he’d never talked to me again, and of course, I’d never met his eye. I’d never wanted to. I felt sorry for him, is how I felt, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling for a servant to feel, is pity for her master.

He walked right over to the tree and stood with his back to the trunk of it so that if I’d have had a mind to, I could have jumped down and ridden on his shoulders the way my brothers did with each other when they swam in the pond. Truly, I was looking at the crown of his head. I was half amazed with not knowing what to do when of a sudden, he undid the front of his breeches, and before I could even clear my throat, he had his thing in his hand and was pissing, a great arc. I was so stiff with fright I dared not even look away lest he hear my eyeballs move, so I couldn’t help but see his thing, though his belly was big enough to jut out.

I’d seen one before on my brothers and on animals but this was the young master and that was entirely different, of course. Oh, Susan, I said to myself, you’ll lose it now, for sure, your position. Master Freddie finished his piss and I thanked God, but he didn’t put it away! Instead he held it for a minute and seemed to look at it, for I know not what reason, and then I belched out of the sheer shame of it and the apple, too. It was a huge belch and he started and looked up and there I was looking straight down at him, straight into his eyes.