Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Icannot remember the last time I felt quite like myself.
It was nothing she could have named, at least at first. A small flatness to the mornings.
An odd aversion to the smell of the coffee William took at breakfast or in his study, which she had previously not minded at all.
If she walked past the open door, it caused her to put a hand discreetly against the wall and breathe through her mouth until she felt better.
A tiredness that arrived at odd hours, unearned and without warning. She would sit down to read to Celia after luncheon and wake with the sun moved halfway across the rug, the book closed in her lap, and Celia gone.
She had not, in all her life, been a woman who dozed in the afternoon. Even now, she did not think of herself as one. It seemed merely to be a thing that was happening to her, separately from any intention of her own.
“You are pale,” William had noted two mornings later, over breakfast.
“I am always pale. I am a redhead’s cousin. We are all pale.”
“You are paler than that. Are you unwell?”
“William, do not fuss.”
He had not fussed, yet it caused her to roll her shoulders back. He had only studied her and said nothing further, and watched her eat her toast as though her eating her toast were a matter of some importance to the kingdom. She had finished the toast, chiefly to spite him.
On the third morning, she fainted.
She did not think of it as fainting exactly, but more of a wince.
She had risen from her chair in the morning room to cross to the window.
Felicity had called out to her, wanting her to come and see something in the garden.
Suddenly, the room had done a slow and entirely unreasonable half-turn about her, and the light from the window had gone silver at the edges.
Oh. I am going to sit down now, I think.
After that, there had been a stretch of time that was not accounted for. Then, there was the rug beneath her cheek, and Felicity’s high-pitched voice calling for her father.
“Papa, come quickly!”
She blinked her eyes open as the room stopped spinning.
“I am perfectly well,” she said, as soon as she could muster the words. “I am entirely… I only lost my balance… Felicity, darling, do not…”
But Felicity had already run out of the room, her yells growing louder. She could hear the child running down the corridor, calling for William in a tone that suggested the house was on fire.
Anne closed her eyes and briefly rested her forehead against the carpet, trying to decide whether she was going to be sick.
She had finally pushed herself up onto the settee by the time William arrived. She had arranged her skirts with some approximation of dignity. It did not deceive him in the least.
He crossed the room in three strides, went down on one knee beside the settee, and took her hand in both of his. His face, when he looked up at her, had gone a particular shade of grey she had not previously seen on it.
“Anne.”
“I am quite well. I only stood too quickly.”
“You are not quite well. This has been going on for several days now.”
“William, I am—”
“You are not quite well, Anne. Stop. Let me take care of you.”
He sent for the physician within the hour. He carried her himself up the stairs, and she protested, albeit feebly.
He laid her on her bed and drew the curtains against the brightness, then sat on the edge of the mattress, holding her hand in his own. Felicity appeared in the doorway with a wet cloth, and Celia appeared behind her with a small posy of cut flowers from the morning room.
“Thank you,” Anne said. To her own surprise, her voice was not quite steady. “Thank you, my darlings. Come here. Both of you. Come.”
They came.
Celia curled against her side as though she were only five years old and not ten, and Felicity perched at the foot of the bed with the same grave concentration she brought to her painting. William sat at her other side and held her hand.
This is very absurd. I only stood up too quickly. They are making a great deal of fuss about nothing at all. And yet… And yet, how lovely it is to be fussed over.
She closed her eyes.
The physician was Dr. Ashleigh, a lean, grey-haired man with a kind face and cold hands.
He sounded her chest, pressed on her abdomen with an apology, and asked her a number of questions in a low, unhurried voice, most of which she answered, and one or two of which she did not, because her mind had begun to wander.
“Have you eaten anything strange? Have you gone swimming in the Thames? Have you been around anyone ill?”
When the answers were all resounding no’s, and he had finished, Dr. Ashleigh stepped out into the corridor with William.
Anne lay in the dim room with her hand over her eyes, listening to the low murmur of their voices through the door. She could not make out the words, only the cadence. The physician’s measured, cautious words and William’s, sharper and inquisitive.
They came back in together.
“Your Grace,” Dr. Ashleigh started. “I do not wish to alarm you, and for now, I can tell you what it is not. It is not a fever of any consequential kind. It is not the lungs. It is not, so far as I can ascertain, the heart. Beyond that, I am at present unwilling to commit myself. I should prefer to return in three days’ time and examine you again.
Meanwhile, you should rest, eat light food, no strong tea, no exertion. Nothing heavier than a book.”
“I see,” was all she could muster.
“Is there anything you wish to ask me, Your Grace?”
She considered. There were several things, she realized. Several things she did not wish to ask in front of William, which would have been in itself an answer.
“No,” she said. “Thank you, Doctor. You are very kind.”
Dr. Ashleigh bowed and withdrew. William saw him to the door.
Anne lay with her hand over her eyes. She listened to their footsteps retreating down the stairs.
In the quiet, she was beginning to feel something. Not fear. At least not yet. But something that preceded it. Something like the calm before a storm.
William came back into the room and closed the door softly behind him. He crossed to the bed but did not sit. He stood there, looking down at her with a frown.
“Anne.”
“Yes?”
“I would like to ask you a question. You may find it impertinent, but I mean it only in the way he would have meant it.”
“Ask.”
“When did this begin? Truly. Not the fainting, but the sickness. The tiredness. When did you first notice it?”
She made herself think properly, backward through the days.
“A little less than a fortnight ago,” she answered. “Perhaps a little more. It has come on so slowly, I did not…”
“And have you been eating?”
“I have been eating, William.”
“Less than usual?”
“A little less. Some things have…” She made a small gesture. “Some things have not appealed to me. Your coffee. The kippers the other morning. Nothing of… nothing of consequence.”
“I see.”
“William, why are you looking at me like that?”
He did not answer. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the bed. He did not take her hand. Instead, he folded his own in his lap very carefully, as though he did not quite trust what they might do if he did not keep them occupied.
“Anne,” he began. “Forgive me. I do not know how to ask this delicately. When was your last… well, your last…”
She knew before he finished the sentence. She knew because her mind, which had been wandering all afternoon, abruptly went still, like a clock that had been ticking and was not ticking anymore.
She knew because there was a small, cold place that opened in the middle of her chest. Through it a wind was blowing, and the wind was not new.
It was a wind she had known once before in her life, a very long time ago on a night when the rain had been lashing the windows of her family’s house.
Her mother had been screaming in a room she was not permitted to enter.
“Oh.” Her voice came out very small. “Uhm…”
“Anne.”
“Oh… oh, no. Oh. No…”
“Anne, breathe. I am here. I am here. Breathe. Slowly. With me. In and out. Anne, look at me. Look at me, my love. With me. In and out.”
She was shaking. She could feel herself shaking, as though from a great distance, as though her body were detached from her. She could hear a high, thin sound, which she realized after a moment was coming from her own throat. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop it.
Her mother had screamed for six hours. Anne had counted.
She had sat on the floor in the corridor, with her back against the papered wall and her knees drawn up to her chin.
She had counted the chimes of the clock at the end of the hall, one through six, six through twelve, twelve through one.
Her mother had been screaming the whole time, and the thunder had been rolling outside, and the rain had been pelting the tall windows like handfuls of gravel, and a maid had hurried past with a basin full of something dark.
Anne had understood, without being told, that she had not been meant to see that. And then, she had heard a sound that was not a scream. A thinner sound. A new sound. A baby.
And the screaming had stopped.
And then, a long while after, her mother had stopped making any sound at all. Anne had known before anyone came to tell her. She had known in her body, the way she knew this now. She had known because the house had gone eerily quiet.
When the doctor came out grey-faced and sweaty, he sat down on the floor beside her in his shirtsleeves. He did not even try to rise to his feet. She had said, before he could speak, “She is dead, isn’t she?” and he had only put his hand over his eyes and nodded.
“Anne. Stay with me.”
“I cannot do it, William.”
“Stay with me, Anne. I am here.”
“I cannot. I cannot. I cannot do it. Don’t you understand?”
She was crying. Her face was wet, and her shoulders were shaking, and she was crying in the awful, ugly way she had not since she had buried her parents in the churchyard at Kirklow.
She had understood, standing there with Celia, who was not yet a fortnight old in the arms of a wet nurse she did not know, that she was alone in the world now.
And that this thing, this bearing of children, was the thing that had taken her mother from her.
She had known that if she permitted it one day, it could take her from Celia in exactly the same way.
“I cannot do it.” It came out as a wail. “William. William. I shall die. I shall die, and Celia will… Oh God, Celia! And Felicity now—Felicity has already… and you. Oh, I cannot, William. I cannot. I am so afraid. I am so afraid!”
“Anne, just breathe.”
“I do not want it. I do not want it. I know I am dreadful to say it, I know, I know, but I do not, William. I do not want this. Please, I cannot—”
“Anne, look at me.”
She could not. Her face was in her hands. She felt him move closer, felt the dip of the mattress, and then his arms were around her.
He had pulled her up against him, and her face was pressed into the warm linen of his shirt. His hand was cradling the back of her head, and he was murmuring her name over and over into her hair.
“Listen to me, Anne,” he said. “Anne. Listen. We do not know yet. Do you hear me? We do not know. Dr. Ashleigh himself said that he did not know. It may be nothing at all. It may be any one of a hundred things. We do not know.”
“William…”
“And even if it is what you fear. Anne. Listen. Even if it is, you are not your mother. Do you hear me? You are not your mother. Do you understand? You will have every physician in London that money can summon, and you will have me, Anne. You will have me beside you through every hour of it; I will not leave that room. I will not leave your side. I will hold your hand through every moment of it, I swear it to you, Anne.”
“I am so frightened,” she sobbed.
“I know. But we have each other.”
“I am so frightened, William…” she repeated, unable to keep her thoughts straight.
“I know. I know, my girl. I have you. I have you.”
She wept against him.
He held her. His hand slowly stroked her hair, the nape of her neck, the shaking line of her back. He did not tell her she was being foolish. He did not tell her she was being ungrateful. He did not tell her to hush or to think of anything else.
He only held her, and said her name, and promised her, over and over, in a low, steady voice like a rope thrown to a drowning woman, that she was not alone.
Distantly, she could hear Celia laughing somewhere in the garden below. A small, ordinary sound. A child’s sound. The sound of a life going on.
Anne closed her eyes and pressed her face harder into William’s shoulder, letting him hold her.