Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (84 page)

   The pain doubled, tripled. It was blinding, staggering. He fell to his knees in front of the window, clawing at it. A rock, the mightiest rock in the world, was on him, on his chest, crushing him, crushing him. Down, down, down. He fought it. Richard. He struggled to push it off. Philippe. He struggled to breathe. Barbara. He had no power, no strength. No, he thought, as the fog rolled in over his mind. Not now. Not yet, I am not ready. I am still young. Barbara. Young enough to…and then the fog, gray, cold, crushing, slipped over into soft darkness, soft like a woman, soft. And his last conscious thought was how glad he was of the softness, because the other, the pain, life, was unbearable.

Chapter Twenty–Six

No, Mama," Jeremy said.

   Shaking with fever and chills, his voice rose high and strained in the room as he recognized the doctor, with his black bag of pain. Jeremy looked at Jane with begging, fever–bright eyes.

   "No, Mama. Please!"

   The baby within her kicked in sympathy with Jeremy, with her own feelings. Whenever the doctor came, he brought more pain: in the black river leeches that made Jeremy scream with fright; in the stinging, burning plasters; in the bad–tasting medicines; in the hot liquids poured down throats and ears. She did not blame Jeremy; she could barely stand the sight of the doctor herself, but Jeremy was not better. The others, after weeks of nursing, lay wan, weak, but well in their cribs and beds. But not Jeremy.

   His cough had deepened. He complained of new, sharp pains in his chest. "It hurts me to breathe," he said. His fever did not go away. And yesterday there was blood among the yellow mucus he had coughed up. The sight of that blood made Jane's heart stand still. As she stared at him, with his too–thin body and his too–bright eyes, and the tiny rattle in his breath, she thought, dear merciful Lord Jesus, we are beyond pepper possets and barley water and fever cordials. Dear merciful Lord Jesus, make him well.

   "Mama! Mama!"

   Jeremy tried to climb out of the bed, but Gussy caught him and held him, and his thin arms and legs flailed wildly against Gussy. The doctor had opened his bag and was taking out a jar filled with small, black river leeches, which were applied to the body to suck out the bad humors of the blood.

   "No! No! No!" screamed Jeremy. "Mama, Papa, do not make me!"

   Jane put her hand to her mouth. The little bit of supper she had eaten rose in her throat.

   "Mama! No! Oh, no–o–o."

   Jeremy was screaming and flailing and thrashing on the bed, his face transformed into something primitive and feral. Large drops of sweat gleamed on Gussy's forehead, rolling down his face, as he tried to hold a child whose voice was shrill with terror as he struggled to get away.

   Thin wails joined Jeremy's; his screams had frightened the others. The baby inside Jane kicked again, harder. The bile rose in her throat. Jeremy's eyes rolled back white in his head, and he began to foam at the mouth. The doctor laid the leeches across Jeremy's chest, carefully, one after another. The boy screamed for his mother, over and over. She managed to open the door and step into the dark hallway. Now she heard how loudly the others were crying, their terror mirroring Jeremy's. Her throat closed and she leaned against a wall, feeling something rise inside her.

   "Jane," she heard Gussy call, her name drowned out by the sound of Jeremy, a terrible, breathless sobbing that tore out her heart— "Mama, Mama, Mama." Nothing but her name over and over and over.

   She ran. Down the stairs, standing a moment in the hall, breathing heavily, her eyes wild, darting into the kitchen. Cat and Betty sat before the fire, roasting nuts, oblivious of the screams from the floor above as they whispered and laughed.

   "See," Cat was saying, with her pretty smile pointing to the grate on which hazelnuts were roasting, "Jonathan's is burning brightest. Jonathan is my true love." Beside her, Betty nodded. Damn them, thought Jane. It was All Hallow's Eve, and they were practicing the country customs which would foretell their sweethearts. You put hazelnuts in the fire, naming each one after a boy, and the one that burned brightest was your true love. Long ago, she and Barbara had done the same thing.

   "Damn you!" she said.

   They turned to stare at her, their mouths dropping open.

   "Damn you both for the lazy, worthless sluts you are!" She heard herself screaming, but she could not stop. "I will beat you both! I will turn you out in the night! I will! Go take care of those children. Go–o–o!"

   The veins stood out in her throat as she screamed the last word, holding it in a long, high sound that was becoming hysterical. She heard herself but she could not stop. She put her hands over her ears and ran out of the kitchen, into the dark, the cold. All the while the baby within kicking its fluttering kicks, over and over. I am killing it, she thought, as she ran blindly in the dark. Killing it. And then: it must be easier to birth a baby gone five months than nine months. That would be a blessing. And then: God forgive me, I did not mean it. And then: Jeremy, Jeremy, please do not scream. Please do not die. I love you so. And then she stumbled, falling over a tree root, and plunged to the ground, catching herself at the last moment with her arms. But the weight of her body made her arms tremble with pain, and she sank down, down to the earth, the cold, dark earth, and she curled up into a ball, feeling the fluttering kicks of the child inside her, but thinking, I have killed it. I have killed it for sure. And she lay there, numb.

   How tired I am, she thought after a while. For four weeks, she had run up and down stairs, holding one child or another, staying up with their fevers and frets, stirring broths and cordials and possets over the hot fire, the child within her growing, growing, while she became thinner and thinner, too tired at night to eat. There was never time to rest; everyone was ill, crying, tossing with fever. And then had come news about Harry. She could not comprehend it. Not Harry. She did not believe it still. She found herself looking up at odd moments during her day, expecting to see him ride up, a grin on his face. What a jest I have pulled, Janie, he would say, the old, mischievous light in his violet eyes. I made them think I killed myself.

   She wanted to grieve over him, wanted to sit quietly and hold the soft leather gloves he had given her in her hands and rub them against her cheeks and smell the cinnabar and think of the apple trees and how they had once sat under them and pledged their undying love. But Harry had died. Perhaps she should have gone to the funeral, perhaps then she could have accepted it. But there was no time, no time for Harry. South Sea, Gussy had said to her before he left, trying to explain, knowing by her stunned silence that the hurt went deeper than she showed. He talked of rivalries between great companies, Bank of England, East India Company, South Sea, about stocks rising and falling, and everyone believing in magic. Even he, he told her. He had lost their savings, he said, confessing in the shock of the news about Harry. All our savings, he had said, which I will save again. She stared at him. Above them, a child was crying. Always, a child was crying. Harry could not be dead. Not Harry. Yet Gussy said he was….

   And there was Jeremy. While the others healed, he kept the fever. He held his little chest and cried when he had to cough. She bathed him with lemon water, fed him all the remedies she know for coughs and fever, the combinations of maiden hair, coltsfoot, saffron, sugar, pennyroyal, rose leaves, nutmeg, ribwort, ale, but nothing worked, He tossed and turned and shook with chills, even though she lay in the bed with him, sweating under the number of covers over them both, holding him in her arms, humming little tunes, telling him little rhymes, telling him stories of her adventures with Barbara and Harry when they had all been children. Tell me again, he would beg, between bouts of shaking. Tell me again. And she would, until her voice was hoarse.

   But he did not get any better. And, then yesterday, in that moment of heart–stopping stillness, she saw the blood he coughed up, mixed with the mucus and phlegm. Blood. Frightful thoughts raced through her head: consumption, years of dying, the children separated, sent away so the others should not catch it, consumption. Not Jeremy. Not her dear Jeremy who had grown under her heart and helped her heal over Harry. Her firstborn. Her little son. Her helper. Her brave, dear boy, with his wayward hair and thin legs and sweet, high voice. She would not let it be so. It must not be so. She had not endured those hours of bone–wrenching labor, the clumsiness of that first midwife, the pain, the total depth and breadth and width of that pain, for Jeremy to die now. What was the use of enduring childbirth if the child you bore did not live? It was the sight of it, its helplessness, the way it nestled blindly in your arms, that made the pain bearable. The child was the reward. God could not take her reward from her. She would never survive it. Never.

   She shivered with cold. She was a fool to be out here lying in the dark. Country folk believed the spirits of the dead were out on All Hallow's Eve. Harry, she thought, are you out here wandering, wandering…? Take a candle, go to the looking glass, eat an apple before it and comb your hair—the face of your loved one will be seen looking over your shoulder. Long ago, when she was a girl, she and Barbara did all the country charms, Barbara laughing at them but doing them, she more serious. Harry. She never saw his face in that mirror, but she had once loved him nonetheless. He slit his throat, Gussy had said. Harry. Wild. Boyish. A dream. He will never have any money, her mother told her, trying to comfort her long ago as she cried and cried and cried. There is bad blood there. Bad blood. Fly, Ladybird, fly north, south, east, or west. Fly where the man is found that I love best. How the blood must have gushed from his throat when he cut it. Harry. The blood. In Jeremy's throat, too, coming up with the phlegm and mucus. Jeremy.

   Someone was lifting her up from the ground. Someone was murmuring her name, wrapping a woolen cloak around her, kneeling beside her and chafing her cold, cold hands. Gussy. Her dear Gussy. Fly where the man is found that I love best.

   "Jane," he began, and, she heard his voice break in the darkness. She put her hand to his face. He was crying. Her rock, her steadfast husband, was crying, as one of her children cried. She listened, her mother's ears straining for the sound of children, but the house was quiet. She must have frightened Cat and Betty into seeing about the children, even on All Hallow's, which was sacred to servants as a time of play and games. There was no sound of Jeremy screaming for her. To save him, to make him well, to take the hurt away. As she would if she could. What had the doctor said? What had he found that made Gussy, with his faith in the Lord and his serene calm, cry this way? She knew. Jeremy was going to die. She knew.

   Gussy still knelt before her. She found his hand in the darkness and pulled him down so that his head was in her lap, against the baby, which fluttered weakly. In her lap, Gussy cried and cried. She put her hand on his hair. He did not have on his wig, and his own hair was thinning. She stroked that thinning hair, the high bulb of his forehead, thinking of all the knowledge, the sweetness under her fingertips. She smiled to herself. Cat and Betty were probably standing at an upstairs window, staring down at the two of them murmuring that the witches had possessed them, and cast an All Hallow's spell over them.

   "What did the doctor say?"

   "He said that Jeremy has an inflammation of the lungs."

   "And—"

   "He will give him medicines to bring down the fever, but—" Gussy could not finish.

   "But there is a possibility he will die," Jane finished for him, calmly. The knowledge that he was going to die settled into her firmly, securely, and…for now, calmly. This is real grief, she thought, her thoughts seeming to her to be like stars shining brightly on a clear summer night, pinpoints of clearest light against dark sky. True grief. The death of a child, my child.…

   Gussy pulled her up to stand beside him. For a moment, they stood together, and she felt his tears dropping onto her face. Dear Gussy. He would have need of the Lord in the next weeks, as would she. Only the love of God, the thought of a peaceful afterlife—suffer the little children to come unto Me—would reconcile her to Jeremy's dying. And the reconciliation would not come easily. Even now, she could feel denial of it rearing back inside of her. She would fight Death with every breath she took, every recipe, water, cordial, herb that existed. With her mother's love.

   "I love you," said Gussy.

   "I love you, too," she said.

   Together, they walked back to the house.

* * *

   Barbara's carriage lurched into the courtyard of Saylor House in London, the horses' mouths foaming against their bridles because the coachman had driven them so hard. It did not matter that his mistress had said they could drive into London late; he refused to be on the road after dark on All Hallow's.

   In the carriage, Barbara fell against Thérèse. Damn him, she thought, knowing it would do no good to scold him; country superstition was stronger than harsh words on All Hallow's. How weary I feel, Barbara thought, the excitement of coming to London lost now, evaporating with the miles, as the carriage lurched on and on and Thérèse sat so silent, so quiet, none of her usual chatter, her rosary beads clinking over and over; and thoughts of Harry rose, in spite of herself, in her mind. She did not want to think of him, but the thoughts pushed themselves up. She did not want to cry over him, but tears welled anyway. Roger, she kept thinking, I will tell Roger, and he will hold me and make the hurt well. Harry.

   She walked up Saylor House's broad steps, Thérèse behind her, thinking of how a cup of tea would refresh her, take the tiredness, the dreariness from her. In the great parlor, as the murals of her grandfather's battles rose up on the walls all around her, she had a sudden vision of Harry, lying on that table, and the thin, red, stitched line under his neck. Hysteria rose in her throat along with a wild impulse to cry, to scream, to pull her hair, to shake her aunt and Tony, who were rising out of their comfortable armchairs before the fire, staring at her as if she were a ghost. She was not a ghost. Harry was. Roger. How she needed him. And how she feared that need. There were so many things yet between them. Things which must be settled for her peace of mind.

   "You are here so quickly," her Aunt Abigail was saying, an odd note in her voice.

   "It took no longer than usual. There has been no rain. The roads are not impossible yet. Are there scones? I am famished."

   And she kissed both Tony and her aunt, and sat down abruptly, even though the two of them still stood, and began to butter a scone.