A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [545]
I had no opportunity to speak with Sadie, and barely time enough to struggle into my bedraggled gown and stays and seize my small bag before being escorted into a carriage—rather bedraggled itself, but once of good quality.
“Would you mind telling me who you are, and where you’re taking me?” I inquired, after we had rattled through two or three cross streets, my companion gazing out the window with an abstracted sort of frown.
My question roused him, and he blinked at me, only then seeming to realize that I was not in fact an inanimate object.
“Oh. Beg pardon, madam. We are going to the Governor’s Palace. Have you not a cap?”
“No.”
He grimaced, as though he’d expected nothing else, and resumed his private thoughts.
They’d finished the place, and very nicely, too. William Tryon, the previous governor, had built the Governor’s Palace, but had been sent to New York before construction had been finished. Now the enormous brick edifice with its graceful spreading wings was complete, even to the lawns and ivy beds that lined the drive, though the stately trees that would eventually surround it were mere saplings. The carriage pulled up on the drive, but we did not—of course—enter by the imposing front entrance, but rather scuttled round the back and down the stairs to the servants’ quarters in the basement.
Here I was hastily shoved into a maid’s room, handed a comb, basin, and ewer, and a borrowed cap, and urged to make myself look less like a slattern, as quickly as possible.
My guide—Mr. Webb was his name, as I learned from the cook’s respectful greeting to him—waited with obvious impatience while I made my hasty ablutions, then grasped my arm and urged me upstairs. We ascended by a narrow back stair to the second floor, where a very young and frightened-looking maidservant was waiting.
“Oh, you’ve come, sir, at last!” She bobbed a curtsy to Mr. Webb, giving me a curious glance. “Is this the midwife?”
“Yes. Mrs. Fraser—Dilman.” He nodded at the girl, giving only her surname, the English fashion for house servants. She curtsied to me in turn, then beckoned me toward a door that stood ajar.
The room was large and gracious, furnished with a canopied bed, a walnut commode, armoire, and armchair, though the air of elegant refinement was somewhat impaired by a heap of mending, a ratty sewing basket overturned and spilling its threads, and a basket of children’s toys. In the bed was a large mound, which—given the evidence to hand—I rather supposed must be Mrs. Martin, the Governor’s wife.
This proved to be the case when Dilman curtsied again, murmuring my name to her. She was round—very round, given her advanced state of pregnancy—with a small, sharp nose and a nearsighted way of peering that reminded me irresistibly of Beatrix Potter’s Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. In terms of personality, not quite so much.
“Who the devil is this?” she demanded, poking a frowsy, capped head out of the bedclothes.
“Midwife, mum,” Dilman said, bobbing again. “Have you slept well, mum?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Martin said crossly. “This beastly child’s kicked my liver black and blue, I’ve puked all night, I’ve sweated through my sheets, and I have a shaking ague. I was told there was no midwife to be found within the county.” She gave me a dyspeptic look. “Where did you discover this person, the local prison?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, unslinging my bag from my shoulder. “How far gone are you, how long have you been ill, and when’s the last time you moved your bowels?”
She looked marginally more interested, and waved Dilman out of the room.
“What did she say your name was?”
“Fraser. Are you experiencing any symptoms of early labor? Cramping? Bleeding? Intermittent pain in the back?”
She gave me a sideways look, but did begin to answer my questions. From which, in the fullness of time, I eventually was able to diagnose an acute case of food poisoning, likely caused by a leftover slice of oyster pie, consumed—with quite a lot of other