Free The Midwife's Revolt by Jodi Daynard Page A

before I could reply, it was time for him to board the vessel. I waved until I could see him no longer. I thought it probable that I would never see my brother again and wept my fill before arriving back at the farm.

11
    NEAR THE ANNIVERSARY of my brother’s departure, I was seized with cramps and a dizzy headache that made me puke. I could not go far from the necessary. Without, it was cold. Autumn leaves swirled about as if a storm were brewing. I was gathering the last of the pompions and gourds when I had to drop them upon the ground and curl up in pain. I called weakly for Thaxter, who, as usual during a crisis, was nowhere to be seen. Finally, with a break in the cramps I knew would be quite mercilessly short, I ran to the fields and found him having a smoke by our back fence.
    “Take Star and go to the Adamses at once. Tell Abigail I’m ill and need help.”
    I never liked to ask for help, but I knew my illness would soon grow worse. Indeed, I did not know how I would make it back to my house without soiling my dress. Arriving in my kitchen, I had just enough strength left to throw a pallet by the fire and collapse onto it. There, I lost consciousness. At some point later in time, I know not exactly when, I heard Abigail enter and call out to me.
    “Lizzie?”
    “I’m here,” I replied weakly from my bed in the kitchen.
    I heard her approach, then stop. No doubt she was taking in the mess. Tasks I had started lay unfinished where I had begun them. My loom stood undressed in the second parlor. Baskets of tow, apples, and corn were strewn about, rotting and gathering dust.
    Abigail came at last to the kitchen entrance and peered in. I lay by a fire that had gone out long ago. I felt her stare at me for a moment, then heard her say, “You are quite unwell. Rest. All shall be well.”
    I fell into a delirium that lasted a full week. At one point, Abigail told me, I sat upright in horror, for to me Abigail had become the living image of my dead mother.
    I was not aware of her comings and goings, but I was later to learn that Abigail visited twice a day until the dire nature of my illness made her come one morning with her trunk and stay for several days. It seems she had sent the children off to her sister’s so she could nurse me.
    I certainly owe my life to her. But, upon my waking after a time of grave illness, there was no tender scene, no expression of love and devotion. Instead, my first sight was of her tiny face peering down at me with an expression of disgust.
    “Abigail? Dearest, is that you? How long have you been here?”
    She ignored my question. “Truly, Lizzie, I am quite put off.”
    I merely lay there, thinking she meant the stench of my sick-room.
    “Let there be no mistake. It is not the dangerous state of your house that annoys me. I can forgive you that. It is your pigheadedness I cannot abide. You are getting a servant this week, and that’s that.”
    Without waiting for a response from me—I was too weak to proffer one in any case—she set about removing my chamber pot, opening my windows, and scrubbing the kitchen floor. Indeed, she shrank from nothing, stopping only now and again to scold me—me, still sick and in my bed!—for having no help, and mine a bigger farm even than her own.
    At one point in her cleaning, she reached over my limp body to remove a pot from the hearth. As my voice was not yet strong, I whispered to her, “You don’t frighten me, you know!”
    And bending down with a fierce, hawk-like face, she said, “Well, I should .”
    Greatly cheered, I attempted a laugh, for had I been expiring, she would not have abused me thus.

12
    I WAS ABLE to rise from my bed in a week’s time. I began to attack the tasks I had sorely neglected during my illness and was just hanging herbs to dry when, from the parlor window, I saw a beautiful carriage drive down my bumpy lane. Its painted swaths of French blue and gilt wavered through the glass. Two very fine horses stood