NaGeira Read Online Free Page A

how Simon frets about it. It is the curse of the Roses, he says, to wait in vain for a son.”
    “And yet he came to his father and mother.”
    “Late he came,” she murmurs, “late and in extraordinary circumstances.” She turns to face me suddenly. I have no idea what she can mean, so I wait for her to continue. “If we do not have a son,” she says, “there will be no one to take over. We’ll have to sell our boats for labour. We’ll lose our property and our standing.”
    “Your girls can marry,” I suggest before I can stop myself. Is it David’s desperate passion that prompts my words? “Their husbands can be heirs along with your daughters.”
    Elizabeth stares at me for a moment. Old as I am, my face burns.
    “They must marry men of property. My husband is clear about that,” she says. “If not, the business will fritter away to nothing in a few generations.” She pauses. “We supply a grateful merchant in Bristol and my husband has written to him of our daughters.”
    “He has sons, your merchant?”
    “Five. Four as yet unmarried. My husband is hopeful. I amnot. Every man values his daughters as prizes. Women know more of the world. We have had to make do ourselves.”
    I look to the floor for a moment. I have been called so many names signalling moral decay—hag, witch, old devil—but when my husband was alive, I honoured him. I was not making do. I am unsettled by this respectable woman’s cynicism and unsure what kind of help she is asking.
    “I cannot prepare a love philtre to work between here and Bristol,” I say after a pause. “The distance is too great.”
    “I am not thinking of husbands for my daughters now,” she replies. “I’m thinking of a son for myself. I am with child.”
    She holds her palm to her belly and gives me a twitchy smile.
    “Simon doesn’t know it yet. No one does. When I tell him he will pace the floor night and day. He will gaze at my bulging stomach wondering, hoping. The house will cease to sleep and the very walls will tingle with worry and anticipation.”
    “What do you need from me?” I ask.
    She springs forward and grabs my hand. “You must ensure it is a boy,” she says. Before I can pull back, she has drawn my palm into her stomach. I can feel a small swelling.
    “Can you tell?” she asks, her eyes bulging with worry. “Can you tell the sex?”
    “It’s sex isn’t decided yet,” I tell her. “I can make a draft to bring out the man in your unformed child. Please.”
    I pull away and motion her towards my bed. She backs away and sits patiently while I move over to the medicine jars upon my shelves. I feel her expectation tickling my ears like moths’ wings. I reach up to the top shelf and lay my fingers on a jar perched on the edge.
    ———
    A mist rises from the forest floor, though it hardly rained last night. Everything drips—the mushrooms, the rough bark, and the little twigs that catch me as I pass. New buds open like yellowy-green lips parting, yearning for the kiss of the sun. It is the season of universal growth. Birds fly from tree to tree sensing the changes around them and the under-life of the woods scurries about my feet.
    I am afraid my physic will not work with Elizabeth Rose. Her need is too great, as is her trust in me. I steeped the goat’s testicle in water and made her drink the fluid. This is the accepted cure, yet I feel her curse may be stronger. And if it proves so, if a baby girl emerges from between her legs, I will be denounced as a charlatan by the most important family in the settlement and one of the most influential in the whole Bristol plantation. And if the boy David gets his wish and Sara swoons for him, Elizabeth Rose and her husband will have double reason for choler. So I am here, in the place I feel safest, the place that once promised me eternal welcome. I repeat to myself the words the man of the forest whispered to me:
While the woods embrace you, no spirit or beast can harm you, no