Free The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley Page A

great jewel and a very fine plume. His eyes were very pale, and he kept looking all about him. I took him for a very brilliant sort of man, too brilliant for me, I must say. I could hear him talking to others, so very high, with things like Latin words just thrown in, the way lawyers and clerks do, so very learned! He wore a robe in mossy-colored velvet, and his hose were silk, real silk. Fine as a king’s, they were.” Mistress Hull might not know Latin, but she knew price better than a pawnbroker.
    “And don’t forget the gold chain, very massive, with a strange device on it.”
    “They told me he was a magistrate, an important magistrate, and a very rich man. Oh, you have no idea how we longed for your eyes to open. And now, you see, there’s so much to know.” Nan didn’t say any more but I am sure she was thinking what occurred to me at that very moment, that there is something entirely suspicious about rich important magistrates who suddenly ask to look after someone’s baby, especially when it is not a prince but just an ordinary sort of baby that has not even been kidnapped by Turkish pirates.
    “Oh, quiet, quiet. Can’t you see we’ve tired her? How do you feel, my poor little dove? Better now? Surely, you must be better.” In answer, I shrieked. The pains were on me, and this time there was no mistaking it. The creature would be born.
    “Cat, go and fetch Goody Forster—and don’t dawdle,” cried Mistress Hull. “Run, now!” And the widow’s daughter was off, while Nan stroked my hand and tried to tell me that everything would be all right, and that early babies were often lucky.
    “But it won’t be, Nan, I saw him in a dream. A boy, with black hair—”
    “Hush, now, hush. You must pray to Saint Margaret. Surely she will see it born safely.”
    “But I don’t want it born. I tell you, I saw it. It’s a boy. A boy with black hair. And, and—there’s something wrong with it.”
             
    At midnight, by the light of candles, the midwife brought out the head of the creature, and soon after, held it in her hands. “It’s a boy,” she said softly. “Born dead. Most likely dead awhile.” Goody Forster was a round woman with kindly eyes, and much experience of grief. I lay as limp as a dead eel, but I could hear.
    “What—what color hair?” said Nan, her voice low and shocked.
    “Black, from what I can see,” answered Goody Forster. “And—oh, God, look at the mouth!” Her voice rang with horror.
    “Jesus save us,” said Nan. “It’s got teeth. Pointed ones!”
    “God in heaven, I’ve never seen the like.” Mistress Hull’s voice was shocked. “Look at them, all fine and small, like fish teeth. Just as well it’s dead. What woman would give it suck?”
    “Don’t let her see it,” said Goody Forster. “The sooner it’s buried, the better.” Even so, I caught a glimpse of the dreadful thing, dead and shriveled up, no bigger than a bald rat, with a head the shape of a ferret’s. But it had very nicely made tiny hands even if they did have fingernails just like claws, and as I saw it there, lying with its shriveled afterbirth in a great copper bowl that might have served for its first bath, I could feel tears running down my face with the shock and disappointment. Was there something so secretly vicious in me that this was what I had earned in life? Somewhere, someone was howling like a wolf.
Shh
, I heard them say, and I could feel hands shaking me, so I knew the howling was me.
    “I’ll get rid of it quietly,” said the midwife.
    “No, we’ll manage,” said Mistress Hull, laying some extra money in her hand to keep her quiet. “I don’t trust that woman, she’s a talker,” she whispered to Nan as Goody Forster stumped off downstairs.
    “We’ll wrap it up tight and have it buried properly, and give out that it was a beauty, slain by its mother’s grief, and gone to join its father in heaven. Heaven, ha! It’s gone to join him somewhere, but