Hope - Lesley Pearse [3]
She looked down at the wrapped parcel in her arms and tears welled up in her eyes. Her folks had nothing, ten children brought up in a tiny cottage with a leaking roof, yet each new baby had been greeted with joy. This one had never been kissed, and it wouldn’t even be given a name or get a proper funeral.
The burden of being witness to the birth was a heavy one too. Nell didn’t know how she was going to be able to talk to Lady Harvey normally after this, or if she could ever forget. She and Bridie might even be cursed for their part in it!
Everyone knew how a curse was put on Sir John Popham. He was an ancestor of the Pophams who still lived at Hunstrete House, the mansion closest to Briargate on the other side of Lord’s Wood. Sir John was the judge at the trial of William Darrell of Littlecote who was charged with murdering a newborn baby by throwing it on the fire. Darrell put the curse on the Pophams because the judge took Littlecote, and with it Hunstrete, which was part of the Littlecote estate, in exchange for his acquittal. The curse was that the Popham family would never have a male heir. They hadn’t had one either, only girls.
Nell had to suppose Darrell murdered the baby because he hadn’t fathered it. She and Bridie hadn’t murdered this one, but perhaps not attempting to make a newborn baby take its first breath amounted to the same thing?
If anyone found out they could be hanged!
Nell’s heart began to race and her stomach churned. Was Bridie intending to bury the baby’s body out in the garden? How did she think they could do that without old Jacob the gardener seeing?
As she began walking down the backstairs, a faint stirring against her chest surprised her. She stumbled and nearly dropped the little bundle before steadying herself. With trepidation she drew the covering flannel back a little, and to her utter astonishment she saw one tiny hand move, and the baby opened its mouth in a yawn.
For a moment she could only stare, convinced she was imagining it, but the hand moved again, more vigorously this time. ‘It’s a miracle!’ she exclaimed aloud, her voice echoing in the stairwell. Everyone knew newborn babies cried to proclaim they were alive and well. She had never ever heard of one remaining silent unless it was too weak to survive.
Unless it was a fairy child.
Nell’s education amounted to little more than being taught her letters and a few sums by the Reverend Gosling between the ages of six and eight. But she’d learned superstitions from birth, from her own parents and many of the old folk in the village.
The story went that fairy children came into this world to bestow good fortune. They could be recognized by their unexpected arrival, their exceptional looks and gentle nature. Joan Stott in the village was barren, and then at well over forty she finally gave birth to a little girl who looked like an angel. Joan and Amos Stott had scratched less than a bare living from their land, and no one expected their baby to survive, but she did. And she was hardly put into her cradle before the Stotts’ hens began to lay, their crops increased, and even their old sow produced a litter of twelve fine piglets. That child was over six now, still as pretty as a May morning, and the Stotts were becoming almost prosperous.
But whether Lady Harvey’s baby was a miracle or a fairy child, Nell knew Bridie wasn’t going to rejoice that it was alive. She had been in service to the Dorvilles, Lady Harvey’s family, since she was fourteen. She had risen from scullery maid to nursemaid to the Dorville children, and eight years ago when Anne, the youngest, was to marry Sir William Harvey, Bridie came here to Briargate with her as her personal maid.
Bridie’s whole life pivoted around the mistress she’d helped bring into this world, and she wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to bring disgrace and shame to her.
But the