Saraband for Two Sisters

I kept telling her that there was nothing to fear. A great many girls had been in her position and come happily through. I was almost on the point of telling her my own experiences just to comfort her, but I stopped short of that in time. I was at the window when I heard the sound of horse’s hooves in the stables, so thinking it was the groom returned with the midwife, I ran down.

It was the groom but the midwife was not with him.

“Where is Mother Gantry?” I demanded.

“Her couldn’t come, Mistress Bersaba.”

“What do you mean she couldn’t come? I sent you for her.”

“I hammered on her door but she wouldn’t answer. I said, “You’m wanted at the Priory.

One of the maids is giving birth.’”

“What did she say to that?”

“She just come to the window and shook her head at me. Then she pulled down the blind and said, ‘Go away, or you’ll be sorry.’ So I rode back to tell ‘ee, mistress. »

“You fool,” I cried. “We need a midwife. Why do you think I sent you if it don’t matter whether she came or not. Saddle my horse.”

“Mistress Bersaba…“

“Saddle my horse!” I shouted and, trembling, he obeyed.

“Mistress Bersaba,” he repeated, “I’ll go back…“ I jumped on my horse and rode out. The rain was teeming down. I was not dressed for the saddle. There was nothing on my head, and my hair was soon streaming down behind my back.

I took a certain glory in what I was doing. I had saved Phoebe from her father; I had saved Carlotta from the mob-although I had done my best to throw her to them; and now I was continuing in my heroic role. I was going to arrive just in time with the midwife whom that fool of a groom had not brought back with him simply because the woman was too tired or too lazy to answer a summons for a mere maid. I came to her cottage. I banged on the door. I heard a feeble voice and I lifted a latch and went in. “Mistress Gantry…“ I began.

She was lying back in a chair and I went to her and shook her before I noticed that her face was fiery red, her eyes glassy.

“Begone,” she cried. “Don’t ‘ee come near me. Stay away, I tell ‘ee.”

“Mistress Gantry, a baby is about to be born.”

“Get you gone, mistress,” cried Mother Gantry. “I be sick of a pox.” I understood why she had not opened the door to the groom, and that by coming in I had placed myself in acute danger.

I went out of the cottage and mounted my horse.

It seemed a long time before I got back to the Priory. I went into the stables where the grooms stared at me. Then, wet and bedraggled as I was, I went up to Phoebe’s room.

My mother was at the door.

“Bersaba, wherever have you been?”

“I’ve been to Mother Gantry. She can’t come. She’s side ... she says of a pox.”

“You saw her.”

“Yes,” I said. “I went into her cottage to get her to come to Phoebe.”

“Oh, my child,” said my mother. “You must get those things off.”

“Phoebe’s baby?”

“It is born ... dead.”

I stared at her. I could see her concern was all for me.

“Phoebe?” I began.

“She is very ill but she has a chance of recovery. I want you to get those wet clothes off. Come with me.”

She led me away.

I was feeling limp, deflated, and exhausted.

ANGELET

In Paul's Walk

I was sad as I rode along, for this would be the first time in my life that I had been parted from Bersaba. There was a terrible anxiety in my heart, too, for this was a turning point in our lives and I instinctively knew that nothing would be the same again.

I had longed to go to London; so often I had visualized the trip and I had an uncanny feeling that my very longing had made it come about. Once a wise woman-I think she was certainly a white witch-had come to Castle Paling with her husband, who was a kind of traveling peddler. Aunt Melanie had given them shelter for the night and the woman had earned her lodging by telling fortunes, which amused us young ones. I always remember what she said to me. It was something like this: “If you want something badly, believe you will get it, think of it, see yourself getting it. It is almost certain that if you do this your hopes will come true. But you may have to pay for it in a way you hadn’t expected-and that way may not be pleasant. In fact, it could be that you might wish you had never asked for it.”

That was how I felt now on the road to London. I was here because Bersaba was so ill. I had seen the fear in my mother’s eyes and that she wanted to make sure of my safety, for when Phoebe’s baby was born dead Bersaba had caught the smallpox from the midwife. We did not know this immediately of course. Bersaba rode out to bring the midwife in the teeming rain and actually went in and shook the old woman before she noticed the terrible signs of illness on her face and thus she had come into physical contact with her.

When she came back and told us what had happened my mother herself put her to bed and made her stay there. The next day, however, we heard that the midwife had died and that several people in the village were suffering from the smallpox.