The Wet Nurse's Tale (24 page)

My first errand took me several blocks toward the town where the barristers had their chambers, which I knew from a man in the pub who said he’d been one once, before the drink got him. I did not need a lawyer, more my luck, for I had not nearly enough money for one. What I was after was a scribe and there I found one, right on a street corner, as I knew I should. Where there’s lawyers, there’s papers with writing.

I asked how much and was told, and I asked about the stamp and the mailing and was told. The scribe was an old man, which I chose though there were many younger, both men and some women too. I chose the old one for I thought in his long life, he’d have heard much and be surprised by little. Here is the letter—I have memorized it.

Dear Madam,

Please forgive my intrusion but it is my Christian duty to warn you of a worm lurking in your very household. I do so hope that you will see me later this very afternoon so that I may explain—before it is too late.

I remain very sincerely yours,

Anna Caraway

I will tell you, Reader, where I got the name Anna Caraway: from off a gravestone in a small churchyard in a little village on the way to London. When the coach stopped—I cannot even tell you the name of the town for it was in the dark of the night and I never heard it—I found I had to piss so, that I could not wait for the outhouse, for there was a line what with Jeannie and the coachmen and others needing it too. I stepped over to the churchyard and knelt right there, for the dead do not know what we do here on earth, even right above their heads.

I was a little frightened, but not too much for I was much relieved with my pissing, but as my eyes could see better in the dark, I saw that I was making my water very nearly on top of a brand-new grave, so new twas not yet sunk. There was a gravestone but I could not read it. Back at the inn, I asked the stable boy who it was that was buried there in that new grave and he told me her name which was Anna Caraway. He said she had died in the birthbed just a fortnight past, but when I asked him if the child had lived or died he could not tell me.

Once my letter had been posted, I asked the scribe for a used-clothes seller and he pointed me the way. I recalled to myself the Hebrew section of Aubrey, where I had got my sprigged that I was wearing even now, and I thought upon Harry Abrams and what he might be about. London was so vast that there was no telling where Hebrews lived there, not that I had the need to know; I needed only a used-clothes seller and they come in many faiths. I found the stalls soon enough and saw right away what I needed. I bought a black veil, and though it cost me dear and I did not want to spend the money, I bought a black bonnet to go with it. My purse was shrinking, which gave me a chill.

Back in my room, I lay on the bed and slept for a time, for I was much exhausted from the journey as well as the thinking and walking. I kept my bundle under my head as a pillow, for I did not know who shared this room with me. That I did not see any item of theirs I took as a cue for myself to leave none of my own. It was but a room with a bed and a basin, and that was all.

When I woke, I found that I had cried in my sleep, for my cheeks were wet. In my dream, I had seen the face of a girl I remembered, no more than thirteen she was, and she’d brought us a baby, for her mother had been took too ill with childbed fever to nurse it herself. The girl’s face had stayed in my memory, though I was but eight or nine when she left off her charge. She was pale with worry, she was, and not able to take the porridge my mother pressed on her. She said her stomach felt too knotted up to eat it. She had not tarried, but had left the babe and gone back to her mother.

It did not surprise me that my own dream was an unhappy one. I felt despair, Reader, and there’s no other way to put it. Though it seems to me now there’s two kinds of it: the sort that causes a person to surrender and then the sort I had which made me take risks and make plans. Considering it all, I was glad to have the second sort for I do believe it kept me alive through those horrid days.

I fell to my preparations. First, I went down to the pub, where I bought a meal of bread and cheese and oatmeal with a glass of beer. Then I fetched a pitcher of water full to the brim. Back in my room, I again milked myself like a cow, though this time I did not cry, for my mind was too full. Then I took a rag and washed my body: my face and my breasts very well and my armpits and then my crotch. I had a comb and I combed my hair as best I could and arranged it in a way that I did not like and that did not favor me at all: pulled back very tight. From my bundle I took my weeds that I had not worn in so long and put them on. The dress was tight but not so much that I could not do it up. At last I donned the ugly black bonnet and veil. There was no looking glass in my room.

I crept down the stairs to the pub and waited til I saw the girl who tended the bar go into the back room, and then I walked quickly out of the door onto the street. After a minute, I walked back into the pub. She looked up at me and nodded, quite polite.

“May I get you anything, then?” she asked me, and I could see by her face that she did not recognize me. That had been my aim, so I asked her some slight question about the coach which she answered easily, and then I thanked her and went out. I did not even change my voice much when I spoke to her, but as she did not know me at all, I knew that my disguise had done its duty.

Twas mid-afternoon which, as I knew from my work in Aubrey, is the time that gentlemen and ladies go a’visiting each other. I knew that I did not resemble a lady, but I thought that my letter along with my weeds might gain me entrance into that house. I did not worry that the lady’s brother James would be at the house any longer, for I had heard him tell her that he would visit her again the following week as they rose from their bench in the park. I felt that I could make myself understood to Mrs. Norval for I had learned to mimic a higher kind of accent when I lived with the Chandlers; indeed, I used to make the maids laugh with imitating Mrs. C. asking for this or that. I thought of the lady who let me go from nursing for not being able to understand me and shrugged; if I’d thought to learn her accent then, I could’ve kept my place and only God above knew how different my life would be. For my present chore here I did not need high speaking, just high enough to make myself clear.

I walked up to the front door of the house on Hampstead Street. I had never knocked at a front door of a fine house before. Even with my fist ready, I remembered in time that a bell would ring if you pulled the rope outside, so I did that instead of knock. The blood drummed in my ears. The door opened. The maid, I could see, did not know exactly what I was. So I quickly asked to see Mrs. Norval.

“She may be expecting me,” said I quite calmly. “My name is Mrs. Caraway.” The maid went off. I stood very still and waited for her. My baby was in that house! He was in that very house, my own baby, who I carried in my belly and who I birthed and who I nursed and who I loved. He was just up the stairs, perhaps, with some woman who did not love him like I loved him, be she as mild as she may. I wished again to cry and to shriek, but I counseled myself thus: Remember yourself, Susan, remember how it is when you’re a’nursing and you must be patient til the babe had drunk its full. Remember that and act with that patience now and you will get your Davey back. And so I took my deepest breath and I waited for the maid to return.

“Please come this way,” she said when she came back to get me, when she could have left off the “please” or she could have just said, “Follow me.” It seemed that the maid did not know what to make of me and thought to play it safe with manners. This was just as I wished. I began to understand that if I was to make myself believed, I had to half believe my own story, or act like I did. I tried to imagine as if there was an actress on a stage with my face and I myself was sitting on the benches looking up at her doing her playing. It somehow made me calmer and better able to tell my fibs to think on it this way.

The maid took me into the drawing room and there was Mrs. Norval sitting on a settee. She had my letter in her hand. I bobbed a curtsy to her, for I had seen plain country people bob to higher folks and thought that it would make me seem real.

“You are Mrs. Caraway, I think?” said Mrs. Norval in a tight voice.

“Yes, if you please, ma’am, I am,” said I.

“Will you sit?”

I sat.

“You see I have had your letter this afternoon,” said Mrs. Norval. She was quite pale and so thin that her arms seemed scarcely able to hold her hands, they were that much like sticks. Could she not eat? I wondered. Did she never feel hungry?

“Perhaps, Mrs. Caraway,” she said, “you will illuminate me as to the meaning of this letter.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” said I though I thought I knew what she was about.

She sighed and fretted. “Do tell me the meaning behind your letter, won’t you? ” said Mrs. Norval. “It has worried me very much.”

“As well it should,” said I, confidential-like, “but I shall be as plain with you as I know how. But first I must ask you one question, if you will allow it.”

She nodded and fixed her eyes on me to listen.

“I know that you have recently brought a baby into your household?” Again she nodded. “My question is this,” said I. “Will you please tell me the name of the baby’s nurse?” I whispered this last part as if to draw a curtain over the very name I was to learn myself.

“Why, it is Sara, Sara Moore,” said Mrs. Norval. “Why?”

“Does the poor little mite cry very often?” said I, “or is Sara Moore able to quiet him readily?”

“Oh,” said the lady very fast, “he does cry ever so much! It does indeed make my head throb to hear him. But what of it? What do you know, Mrs. Caraway?”

I sighed, though I wished I could kill her for having him when he was mine. “Surely you have heard, Mrs. Norval, that a nurse’s milk may turn if her actions are evil, if her heart is impure? It will turn, Mrs. Norval, if she is not the Christian she ought to be, and can you imagine that milk in an innocent baby’s tiny stomach? How it must burn him!”

Mrs. Norval sat on the couch as if in horror, her eyes wide and her hand to her mouth. “But what makes you think it, Mrs. Caraway? What is it that makes you think that Sara’s milk is impure? What is it of which you accuse her?”

“I will tell you,” said I. I drew a breath. “Sara Moore and I are from the same part of the country, indeed, we are cousins far removed. She was not a good girl, Mrs. Norval, though I am sad to say it. I am sure that she told you that she was married?”

Mrs. Norval nodded. “Yes. She is recently widowed, I believe.”

“That is true enough. She was married to John Moore, and a more decent man you could not hope to find. But while he loved her, she did not love him no more than a stone loves the wind.”

As I told my story, I made my voice low. When I had told stories of goblins and witches to my brothers and sisters, I had done the same, and the hush around us would scare them so that they could not sleep for it. I saw the same thing in Mrs. Norval now, which was just as I’d wished it when I had earlier thought of how I would say what I knew I would say.

“The worst of the story is this,” said I to her, our eyes locked together. “She would have his brother! And it was not for true love, no, it was for matters of the flesh that they were drawn together. Twas like a devil was in them. Twas the talk of the town. Indeed, the brother lived in their very house with them and so they were thrown together, overmuch, and the consequence was as wicked as it could be.”

Mrs. Norval’s knuckles were white where her one hand clutched the other and her brow drawn up.

“Go on,” said she.

“One morning, John Moore was found dead in his kitchen. Sara had found him, she said, and had run for the doctor, but the talk was that she had not run, not run at all, no indeed. Rather, it was said that she and the brother, whose name was Tom, sat down to their breakfast as the poor man lay dying on the floor from poison!”

“Aah,” Mrs. Norval gave a gasp, “but this is so like the story in the paper just recently, from out Cambridge way. Did you happen to hear of it? The man and his wife’s sister murdered her with arsenic!”

“What?” said I, stunned-like, “but that is exactly what they thought John Moore to have died of ! Only they could never find the poison itself! They searched the house, but not a trace did they see.”

“And was there a trial?”

“No,” I shook my head, “no trial for lack of evidence.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“You know,” I said as if I were thinking deep and not really conversing no more, “you know, they said poor John Moore ate the poison in a mess of bread and water that she gave him . . .” I shot Mrs. Norval a horrified look and met her own. “Oh, ma’am,” said I, pretending my best, “you have never seen Sara eat a mess of bread and water, have you, ma’am?”

“Dear God,” said the lady, shaking, “I believe I have seen it. With my own eyes. Oh, Mrs. Caraway!”

I wondered if I had not perhaps gone too far. Mrs Norval trembled and gasped, and looked so pale that I thought she might faint.

“Ma’am,” said I, moving next to her on the couch, “are you well? I am sorry to bear these tidings. I am indeed. I thought it was best you should hear them.”

Suddenly, she quit her shaking and sat up straight and gave me a look I had not seen from her yet but had thought that I might. “May I ask,” she said very stiff and stern, “may I ask what business this is of yours, after all? Why do you travel here to tell me such things? What have you to gain from it?”

I had indeed wondered if she would think to ask that question. It had given me pause to wonder what I would answer if she did, for what could I say that would make her trust me, as I needed her to do? I had not solved the matter before I’d gone into her house; I had simply hoped that she would not ask me what I was about, for I had not thought out an answer that seemed as if it would satisfy. Whatever would, after all, make a woman journey to tell such an awful tale as I had told? I looked at my hands where they were folded in my lap and I prayed to the good Lord to help me.