A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [548]
It was full daylight when I woke again, and the fire was out. Mrs. Martin was out of bed, calling fretfully into the passage for Dilman.
“Wretched girl,” she said, turning back as I got awkwardly to my feet. “Got the ague, I suppose, like the rest. Or run away.”
I gathered that while several servants were down with the fever, a good many of the others had simply decamped out of fear of contagion.
“You’re quite sure I have not got the tertian ague, Mrs. Fraser?” Mrs. Martin squinted at herself in her looking glass, putting out her tongue and surveying it critically. “I do believe I look yellow.”
In fact, her complexion was a soft English pink, though rather pale from throwing up.
“Keep off the cream cakes and oyster pie in hot weather, don’t eat anything larger than your head at one sitting, and you should be quite all right,” I said, suppressing a yawn. I caught a look at myself in the glass, over her shoulder, and shuddered. I was nearly as pale as she was, with dark circles under my eyes, and my hair . . . well, it was almost clean, that was all that could be said for it.
“I should be let blood,” Mrs. Martin declared. “That is the proper treatment for a plethory; dear Dr. Sibelius always says so. Three or four ounces, perhaps, to be followed by the black draught. Dr. Sibelius says he finds the black-draught answer very well in such cases.” She moved to an armchair and reclined, her belly bulging under her wrapper. She pulled up the sleeve of the wrapper, extending her arm in languorous fashion. “There is a fleam and bowl in the top left drawer, Mrs. Fraser. If you would oblige me?”
The mere thought of letting blood first thing in the morning was enough to make me want to vomit. As for Dr. Sibelius’s black draught, that was laudanum—an alcoholic tincture of opium, and not my treatment of choice for a pregnant woman.
The subsequent acrimonious discussion over the virtues of blood-letting—and I began to think, from the anticipatory gleam in her eye, that the thrill of having a vein opened by a murderess was what she actually desired—was interrupted by the unceremonious entry of Mr. Webb.
“Do I disturb you, mum? My apologies.” He bowed perfunctorily to Mrs. Martin, then turned to me. “You—put on your cap and come with me.”
I did so without protest, leaving Mrs. Martin indignantly unperforated.
Webb ushered me down the gleamingly polished front stair this time, and into a large, gracious, book-lined room. The Governor, now properly wigged, powdered, and elegantly suited, was seated behind a desk overflowing with papers, dockets, scattered quills, blotters, sand-shakers, sealing wax, and all the other impedimenta of an eighteenth-century bureaucrat. He looked hot, bothered, and quite as indignant as his wife.
“What, Webb?” he demanded, scowling at me. “I need a secretary, and you bring me a midwife?”
“She’s a forger,” Webb said baldly. That stopped whatever complaint the Governor had been going to bring forth. He paused, mouth slightly open, still frowning at me.
“Oh,” he said in an altered tone. “Indeed.”
“Accused of forgery,” I said politely. “I haven’t been tried, let alone convicted, you know.”
The Governor’s eyebrows went up, hearing my educated accent.
“Indeed,” he said again, more slowly. He looked me up and down, squinting dubiously. “Where on earth did you get her, Webb?”
“From the gaol.” Webb cast me an indifferent glance, as though I might be some unprepossessing yet useful bit of furniture, like a chamber pot. “When I made inquiries for a midwife, someone told me