by Joan Smith
“She doesn’t go out much. Who will see her but ourselves?”
“She does not go out, but that is not to say we don’t have company coming in. We are a sociable family. Entertaining is restricted at the moment, but when we are out of mourning, we are fairly sociable. I think you will settle in and be happy with us. At least I hope so. It does these tired old eyes any amount of good to have such a charming breakfast companion.”
He left, and I went to seek out Millie. Before I finally found her, I required the help of not less than three servants. The downstairs maid directed me abovestairs, where the upstairs maid led me to a staircase up to the third floor. I wandered for ten minutes before I came across a footman who was tightening up a loose door, and it was he who steered me down a dusky corridor to a room in the northwest tower. Millie, part child in her dotage, had a crude sign drawn by hand tacked to the closed door: “GENIUS AT WORK. DO NOT DISTURB.”
I ignored its warning and tapped at the door. She came to greet me wearing a scientist’s white smock over her merino gown. “Come in, come in. I am just preparing some aloe vera for cook,” she said cheerfully. “She is bothered with an inflamed colon, poor thing. Nothing cures her but my decoction. Would you care to try some?”
“No, thank you!” I exclaimed, stepping into a scene from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. It was a laboratory fit for a mad scientist. The room was vast, with rough, discarded kitchen and dining tables set up around its edges. A variety of strange plants decorated the numerous window ledges. They were not ornamental, not bearing flowers or even attractive leaves.
“My indoor garden. It is doing poorly,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “I forget to water it, you see. There is no water up here, and the servants are too lazy to oblige me with buckets. Never mind that. You want to see my work. Here it is,” she said, throwing out her age-speckled little hand towards the tables.
Clear bottles were ranged along some tables. They held liquids of varying colors and states of clarity. They were green, blue, red, yellow. Some looked like ordinary water, some more like mud. Upon closer examination, some of them had leaves or berries floating in them. Another table had a series of gas burners set up, on which assorted small pans bubbled merrily.
“We’ll have tea,” she decided. “I have mint or ginger, or if you are feeling venturesome, I’ll give you a draught of my own special blend.”
“I’ve just had breakfast, Millie,” I told her quickly. She cast a sly smile on me, knowing she had frightened me by the offer.
“I have alcohol, if that’s what you’d prefer,” she tempted. “I put a few drops in the servants’ medications. I take a gulp myself, too, when I feel low.”
“What are all these...things you are preparing?” I asked, not knowing what word to use to describe her experiments.
“Cures, remedies, antidotes, restoratives, poisons,” she slid in quietly at the end of her list. “For the mice, dear, and the rats in the barns,” she explained, but there was no ignoring she enjoyed frightening me. “Bulow calls me a witch doctor, only funning of course. He wants me to decoct him an aphrodisiac. Do you know what an aphrodisiac is, Davinia?”
“A love potion,” I replied, not satisfying her to display any astonishment.
“How clever you are! I might have known Norman would not marry a peagoose. Do you want some of my aphrodisiac?”
“Not today, thanks.”
She laughed. “You won’t need it. You’ll never need it. Your sort is a walking aphrodisiac all by herself. There is nothing so fascinating to men as a pretty young widow. The more she makes long faces and says she ain’t interested, the harder they chase after her. She decks herself out in black to enhance her pallor. Her wide skirts pretend to be a barrier, but their swaying, swinging rhythm, lifting to show her pretty ankles, is a seduction in itself. Then they lace, to show off their little waists. My waist is eighteen inches, and I don’t lace,” she boasted. So it was, but her hips and bust were hardly more than twenty inches.
“We are not expected to blossom out in bright colors when we are in mourning, Millie.”
“Indeed not. Black is so much more attractive.”
“Well, where shall we begin? What’s in this container?” I asked, stepping to the closest table and adopting a businesslike manner. I rather regretted this visit.
“That’s nothing interesting. Only some spruce gum I am refining for my own sore throat. I have used the gum fresh in the past, but am experimenting to see what aging does for it. It works better than a salted herring around the neck. Never mind smirking, miss!” she added sharply. “The salt of the herring excites the blood flow and draws off the poison. It does some good. We must attack the poison from within and without. And if a demmed cold sore afflicts me, I use honey.”
“It tastes pleasant, at least.”
“I also cured the stable boy of shingles with it. Of course I had to add a few things,” she admitted grandly. “Cobwebs are a marvelous help. I keep my spiders in the closet. You will see the door is all plugged up with cotton, so they can’t get out. It is full of cobwebs and spiders,” she added gleefully.
Glancing to where she looked, I saw the cracks around the door were indeed plugged up, but whether spiders were spinning cures within was debatable. I began to suspect Millie was not only senile, but actually quite mad.
“They find sufficient food from the termites,” she told me. “I put in some deathwatch beetles as well, but the greedy spiders didn’t give them time to breed. At least I can’t hear them ticking.”
She went on to explain other preparations. “I am in the midst of improving my fever draught at the moment,” she said, going to another table, the one with burners. “I don’t like the looks of this Peruvian bark they have sent me. It is very coarse. Two drops of oil of cinnamon, can you smell it? Powdered coral, all to be mixed in barley water. There in that large glass bottle I am brewing barley water. The field hands drink gallons of it when they are harvesting. Nothing quenches the thirst like my barley water.”
More than a dozen such mixtures were under preparation. Linseed oil, camphor, and turpentine found a place in many of them, and sat heavily on the air. They were to cure colds and warts, some were fomentations for the stable, others for assorted aches of the head or tooth, some simply for insomnia.
“I don’t make the laudanum too strong,” she explained, in a relievingly sane way, for it seemed the family did actually use her medications. I would as soon put myself in the hands of a certified lunatic.
“This has been very interesting,” I said, looking towards the door to escape.
“You can’t go yet! You haven’t seen my poisons. They’re the best part of all. Come, I keep the ingredients locked in an old tea chest. I have the key here, around my neck.”
She pulled out a key on a piece of plain string, once white, now gray, and walked towards a table in the corner. Within the tea chest on top of it were a dozen glass-stoppered bottles. She explained the contents to me. There were raw roots of skunk cabbage and jack-in-the-pulpit. “Harmless when cooked, but raw they will burn the mouth and throat,” she assured me wisely.
“Why do you keep them?” I asked.
“For experimentation. I am writing an extract on vegetation that is usually considered edible, but that is poisonous in some of its states. The elderberry, for example, is highly poisonous when green. With the mayapple it is the roots that are the killer. The blue cohosh, often mistaken for the common blueberry, is not fatal but can induce a stomachache. Of course I also have the known plant poisons here. Belladonna, henbane, oil of wintergreen. I get the wintergreen from the birches that grow around the old windmill. Just pull off the bark and you can taste the oil of wintergreen in the bit of green underlayer. Such a lot of poison all around us.”
“It is well you keep this chest locked.”
“There are no children in the house. Everyone knows it is poison inside. See, I painted the skull and crossbones on the lid of the chest, and Bulow got me the
padlock as an extra precaution.”
“How did you learn about all these cures and poisons?” I asked.
“I am in tune with nature. Since I was a girl, I have roamed the meadows and woods, talking to the flowers and plants. Folks thought me a little strange, but it is they who are odd. They have strayed too far from their true nature. We were created from earth, and a knowledge of the earth and her products is natural to us. The animals know by instinct what to eat, don’t they?”
“Not always. Lambs will eat clover, and get bloated.”
“They’ve been domesticated. Man has ruined their instincts, turned them from nature. Violent storms are nature’s way of chiding us. Earthquakes and tornadoes and possibly even snow—all are warnings. The wind sometimes tells me of Mother Nature’s anger.”
Mad. Mad as a hatter. “Does the sun tell you of her approval?” I ventured to ask.
“She helps me to understand. If you will stand against that white wall, I will tell you what the sun has to say about you, miss.” A commanding gleam in her eyes told me it was best to humor her. I moved against the white wall, while she took up a position three yards in front of me. She stared and stared at my head, till I believed she was going into a trance.
“Look and relax,” she said, in a crooning voice. “Yes, it is coming now. Here it is, just a glimmer. Ah, too bad, it is still gray. You are still nervous, coming to your new home. Nerves always muddy the aura. But there is a little brightness around the outer edge. Blue, definitely blue. That indicates feelings, emotion. Are you frightened of me? Is that it?”
“What are you doing, Millie?”
“Reading your aura, the halo around your head. The mind radiates its feelings. We who are in tune with nature can read them like a book. I’m red—you must have noticed! All enthusiasm and energy, with some purple to show my commitment. Every nature has its color. I don’t believe you are a natural blue, dear. You’ll improve as you settle in. It might be your condition that accounts for it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, mistrusting her sly face.
“Why your pregnancy, to be sure. Didn’t you know you were pregnant?’“
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m not.”
She shook her head slowly, with an air of absolute certainty. “Go back to your room and look in your mirror. You’ll see.”
“I looked in my mirror this morning. I didn’t see any aura.”
“No, you wouldn’t, but even you can see the mask. You must have got it out riding with Homer yesterday. The sun does it, traces that swarthy shadow on your forehead and under the eyes. Stay out of the sun, Davinia, or you’ll look like a raccoon, with a black mask. Ha, pregnant and not knowing it! I can’t believe it!”
“I am not!” I exclaimed angrily.
“Well then you were, and your body still thinks you are. I know the mask when I see it. You have been irregular in your monthly cycle of nature?”
“What do you...” Then I realized what she referred to, and stopped to consider it. In fact, I had been irregular, but in the troubled period of Norman’s passing, I scarcely thought of it. When I did once check on the calendar, I assumed my emotional trouble had upset me, as had happened a few times in the past. Surely a woman could not be pregnant, and not know it? I had thought it would be some earth-shattering sort of experience. “Yes, I have been,” I admitted.
“Are you overdue?”
“I—yes.”
“How long?”
“Two months perhaps. I’m not sure.”
“Definitely pregnant. How fortunate for you. I have never experienced that gift, that natural increase in nature’s bounty. I’ll take care of you, Davinia. Don’t worry about a thing. I know all the tricks. I’ve seen any number of servant girls through their terms. They wouldn’t let me tend Thal, but I’ll take good care of you. And if it’s a girl, you must call her Millie.”
A film of moisture gathered on my brow, my upper lip, across my shoulder blades, as the most horrifying visions of Millie tending me were conjured up. I felt positively ill. “I must go.”
“I’ll make you up a restorative jelly. Damn the aloe vera for cook. She can chew a ginger root.”
I brushed past her, got out the door somehow, stumbled downstairs to my room, and lay on the bed. I felt violently sick to my stomach. And was not that a symptom of pregnancy, morning sickness, as I had experienced since awaking? My God, how was it possible Norman was dead nearly two months and I only now realized I was carrying his child! All during our marriage I had looked forward to this happy day, and now when it came I was devastated. I didn’t want to be a mother, with the father in his grave. I didn’t want Norman’s child, not now! I wanted Norman himself.
After the first wave of apprehension had passed, I arose and walked reluctantly to the glass in the. corner to stare at my face for this “mask” Millie had mentioned. It was by no means pronounced, but extending from the hairline was a faint discoloration of the skin, repeated beneath the eyes. I thought, then, that I had heard such a phenomenon discussed before. Yes, of course, Mrs. Bramley back home carried her umbrella when she was enceinte to avoid this same effect.
So it was true. I was with child. I stood transfixed with the wonder of it. A human life was taking form within my own slim body. The anger began to ease at the miracle that was going forth. Norman, dead and in his grave, had not completely died. Some part of him had been given to me, to continue carrying his nature forth into the world, to increase and multiply in its turn.
It was a gift, not an imposition. I would cherish this new life, and when it came forth, completed, I would nourish and sustain it, whatever form it took. Looking into the mirror again, I noticed my hands had found their way to the magical cradle, were cupping this new incipient life in their protective fingers. “Thank you, God,” I whispered.
What form of posthumous gift had Norman left me, was my next thought. Girl or boy, which would it be? Some part of me wanted a tiny baby Norman, to know from birth, but a stronger desire soon overrode this one. I wanted a girl, a friend. I had always loved to see the village girls in their pretty pinafores and curls, playing with dolls and playing at house. Boys were less domestic. They caught tadpoles and frogs; they got into puddles and trees, to come home in tatters. But either one would be entirely acceptable. Such a gift would be treasured, whatever its sex.
I suddenly wanted to share my joy. Who but Thalassa should I run to? She would rejoice with me, congratulate me, and say all those warm, sensible things my own mother would say, were she alive on this day. I sprang up and hurried to the door, my step light, my heart soaring, a smile on my face, thinking I was taking good news to her. How precipitous of me, and how ill-advised. But I did not think of that. I thought only of myself, and my child to be.
Chapter 7
“It can’t be true!” Thalassa exclaimed, in a hollow, agitated voice. “Tell me it is not so. Oh, what a tragedy! How will I ever tell Homer? Are you sure, Davinia?” Her face blanched at the news, as she sank her head against the pillows.
I tumbled from the cloud I had been floating on at her disappointing, even angry reaction. She didn’t care anything for me. And what did she mean, “tragedy”?
“Homer?” I asked, thinking, and then it was suddenly clear to me. Yes, definitely I should have stayed in my room and thought through all the ramifications of this news. But it didn’t take me long to figure out wherein was the tragedy, whose relaying to Homer was so dreaded.
“You don’t know what this will mean to him. Such a disappointment,” she went on, shaking her head in distress.
What it meant, of course, was that if Norman’s child was a male, Homer would not be able to keep his inheritance. It would go to the elder son’s son, my unborn child. “Don’t despair, Lady Blythe. Perhaps it will be a girl,” I said angrily. “There is a fifty-fifty chance of it.” I turned on my heel and marched from her room, my little moment of happy anticipation thwarted.
What a fool I had been, not to
have foreseen this development. It would have been better had they known before I came. For Homer to have already taken the reins, then to have to relinquish them would seem little less than thievery on my part. And how very proud and pleased he was to have become Sir Homer too. The joy was visible on his face every time he looked over his domain. I would see a new expression on it next time we met.
It was upsetting in the extreme, to consider my welcome at Wyngate was at an end. Coming on top of the shock at my condition, it was enough to prostrate me. I lay down on my bed and looked out the window at the motionless wheels of the windmill. From that position, nothing else but sky was visible. Swollen white puffs were just turning gray, around the edges, as the wind chased them along. If Lady Blythe’s reaction was indicative of what I could expect, I almost dreaded to arise and go below. I was hurt and disappointed, which was halfway to anger.
For half an hour I lay quietly, envisioning various futures, everything from relinquishing all claim to Wyngate to the other extreme. I could not relinquish my son’s claim to it if I wanted, and it would be grossly unfair to do it if I could. Till we knew which sex my child was to be, the estate was in limbo, or its legal equivalent. Homer had no more right than myself to rule now, and if he was half as angry as his mother, we would doubtlessly come to cuffs. So be it. He would learn the wrath of a mother defending the rights of her child. I would not meekly accept their ill nature. On this defiant thought, I arose, tidied my skirts and hair, and went in search of Sir Homer—or possibly Mr. Homer—Blythe.
He chanced to be coming out of his mother’s room as I went along the hall. The grim set of his lips told me what they had been discussing. She had sent off for him the moment I left her. I lifted my head, holding my chin high, and said, “Your mother told you the good news?”
“We have been discussing it,” he admitted, spurning to comment on my “good,” thrown in to annoy him.
“We will have many other things to discuss now, you and I.”
