First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women Read Free Page B

even the insects, seemed to have fallen silent. My mother looked at him for a while; then she breathed deeply and rose from the table. She looked down at her two babies on the grass, considering. I was wide awake, gurgling and waving my arms. But my mother bent and picked up my sister, Johanna, who was still asleep wrapped in her shawl. My mother cradled her in her own arms for a moment, looking into the little sleeping face. Then, decisively, she held her daughter out and placed her in the outstretched arms of my father.
    “Thank you,” he said. His plump face, which before had seemed sullen, was transformed by a smile. He looked down at my sister in his arms, then around at the guests, smiling at them all. He looked down at my sister again, examining her sleeping face, talking to her like a new father.
    “My beautiful daughter,” he said, “my beautiful little daughter,” over and over again.
    Now he wanted to show her off.
    “Isn’t she beautiful?” he said to the townspeople nearest, bending to let them see his little girl. “She’s so beautiful.” He said this even to the men seated at the tables; they agreed uncomfortably, for “beautiful” was not a word the miners used in these Upland towns.
    Gradually, the guests relaxed again and the general chatter began, and the clanking of mugs, and the fiddler played another reel. But my mother didn’t take her eyes off her husband. Nor did my aunt. Nor did some others of the Stroven women who must have sensed something.
    They were all witnesses.
    What happened was this. My father was leaning over to give Jane MacCallum, the Baker’s wife, a better view of my sister’s face. The knitted woollen shawl began to slip on the shiny leather of his gloves. Several of the women seated at the table, alarmed, stretched out their hands to help. My father clutched tighter to stop my sister from falling.
    rack!
The distinctive and sharp sound, like the snap of a whip, was heard by everyone, even above the babble of conversation and the whine of the fiddle.
    Everything stopped.
    My mother jumped up from her seat and rushed over to where my father stood. She took the baby out of his arms. The little green eyes were wide open now, just as though my sister were awake. A trickle of red oozed between her soft lips.
    My mother slumped to her knees, holding her baby to her. My father, standing before her, slowly raised his gloved hands to cover his face. One of the guests, Jamie Sprung, got up from the table discreetly. He walked quickly to the side of the house where there was a gate leading to the front. He didn’t take time to open the gate, but leaped over it and ran along the hot street to the Square. He came back with Doctor Giffen, who took the baby from my mother. He put my sister on one of the tables and performed his examination. Then he pronounced what those in the garden already knew: that she was dead. Even her flexible baby ribs hadn’t been flexible enough—they were crushed, and the jagged ends had pierced her tiny lungs.
    The idea of death by crushing wasn’t strange to these townspeople. For generations, Stroven miners had been killed this way in cave-ins deep under the earth. But they were shocked that it should have happened to a baby, my sister; and that it should have happened above ground, in a garden, on a sunny day.

Chapter Three
    A FTER THE D OCTOR examined the baby, my father, Thomas Halfnight, left the garden and went into the house. My aunt followed him; she tried to talk to him even though she herself was distraught. After a while he left the house. Some people in the town saw him go along the street, past the Square, towards the sheep path that runs east into the hills. The gaunt shepherd Kerr Lawson was up by the sheep pens practising his bagpipes (the townspeoplepreferred their sound at a distance); he saw my father disappear into the hills.
    It was the next morning before anyone went looking for him.
    At dawn, four men headed for Hadrian’s