The Remedy Read Online Free PDF

slither of discreet feminine footsteps behind me. It had to be pure coincidence; no one suspected me. But all evening, as I wandered among the tooth-pullers and fortunetellers and those colorful purveyors of magical potions, I had an uneasy sense of company. And when I returned to the grille, the abbess was waiting for me there, with a contingent of her flunkeys. Her face was grim, and without ceremony she gripped my shoulder and rubbed a rough hand over my belly.
    “I thought as much,” she said, coldly, and then she kicked my feet out from under me so that I fell forward on to the stone.
    It was then I knew that he had betrayed me. My heart fell immediately into that state that cannot be repaired, and it continued to beat only by grace of mechanical habit.

• 7 •
    A Julep for Child-Bed Women
Take waters of Baulm, and Black Cherries, each 3 ounces; of Barley Cinnamon, and Dr Stephens’s waters, and Syrup of Meconium, each 2 ounces; Liquid Laudanum 40 drops, mix .
It’s a blessed and well-experimented Remedy for Puerperal After-Pains: And none here need fear stopping the Lochia, for that most frequently is occasioned by intense Pain, which by troubling the orderly Motion of the Spirits, convulsing the Fibres, constringing the Membranes of the Uterus, and Vagina, and pursing up the Mouths of the Vessels, suppresses the efflux by these ways: And therefore. Opiates that take off those Pains, hurry of Spirits, and Constrictions of Fibres, must needs promote the Purgation, and render it placid and plentiful .
    My belly swelled hard as a barrel and my complexion flowered, my right nipple turned darker first, and I also favored my rig ht foot when walking. All this confirmed what I already knew: The baby was a boy. When my time came near, the midwife told me with evident relish that my natal passage appeared too slender to allow the great babe an entrance into this world. The nuns threw up their eyes and clasped their hands piously, as if it were a godly act for me to sacrifice my life for his brat.
    I gulped my sweet Consolating Mixture the night my pains began, hoping for oblivion.
    I remember little of my travails, for they continually spiced my water with more sedatives, hoping to quiet my screams. In the end I fell unconscious, and believed, on leaving the bloody scene in spirit, that I would never again wake up in the flesh.
    My thoughts were confused and angry. I had not seen my lover again, after our last great fight. He had evidently “handled” the problem of me remotely, paying the nuns to shelter and midwife me, and to keep my condition secret from my parents. Instead of springing me free from the convent, he had me imprisoned there in a worse state than before. Even so, I could not renounce hope entirely. Every day of my pregnancy I had asked the nuns: “Is there any message? Do I go to him today?” They pursed their lips and looked away, until I ceased asking.
    The nuns concealed my stomach in shapeless gowns. I had no visitors in any case: My last tirade through the grille of the parlatorio had so offended my mother that she had decreed that none of our relatives might come to see me. My cousins and aunts within the convent shunned me entirely. When my pains started, I was as usual alone in my cell, and it was there that they brought the midwife, whose sweating, ugly face was the last thing I saw before I slipped from consciousness.
    When I awoke, I was again alone, weak and sore. There was a smell of blood, sweat, and soap in the room, all unpleasantly fused. I felt my belly: It was lumpy and tender, but clearly emptied of its burden. I raised the sheet and saw that my nether parts were bound up in tight clean linens from beneath, which bloomed great dark bruises halfway down my thighs. I looked around for the little creature that should be resting somewhere near by. There was nothing. Not even an empty cot, or swaddling clothes or a feeding horn, or any sign of maternity whatsoever. I could not raise my