The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits Read Free

air would be fatal in my condition. Instead he let me have some more beer. I began to hate him.
    I tried to remember if childbirth itself was as bad as this mockery of it. With my last boy I was three days in labour, but at least I knew there was a real child to bring forth, not like this hollowness, this straining over nothing.
    The doctors spent hours in the inn; I could hear their quarrel from across the road.
    The end of it was, I had to go to London with Sir Richard Manningham. I never thought of going to London before; folk said it was full of rogues that'd steal the skin off your feet. But I was not given a choice. So I took my guinea that Mr. Ahlers gave me, though Joshua would have rathered I left it at home, and my sister Toft said I should not forget she was entitled to her cut of the guinea and the pension too, after I met the King. I was terrified when I heard that Mr. Howard was not to come to London with myself and my sister Toft and Sir Richard, but he did lean in the carriage window and tell me my reward could not be far off. He seemed so full of the story, now, he almost believed it.

    We lodged at a sort of bath house in Leicester-Fields. I was locked in my room at all times, and kept without my shoes, and nursed by a stranger with a flat face. When I asked for my sister Toft, Sir Richard said she was kept downstairs, and there she must stay.
    One might have thought Sir Richard was my father, or my lover, so tirelessly did he sit up all night watching over me, and writing down everything I said or did. I complained of the most peculiar pains; I fell into fits. My acting grew more desperate, like a strolling player trying to be heard over a crowd. I curled up my fingers, rolled my eyes, and whined like something dying in a trap.
    All the time my mind was sniffing out ways of getting hold of a rabbit. Just one more, that's all I needed. Just a part of one even, as little as a furry foot, for luck.
    One day when Sir Richard had stepped out for a moment's air, the porter came in with some mutton for my dinner. I talked sweetly to him, and mentioned I had an aversion to mutton, and begged him to tell my sister Toft in the kitchen to send up a rabbit for my dinner.
    The porter let out a great guffaw and asked what he would get for it. I had no change, so I had to give him my guinea.
    Sir Richard stalked in later. I could tell by his face the porter had betrayed me to him.
    I sobbed. I said, "I had such a strange craving to eat rabbit, sir, because I am big with one still."
    He was staring at me, and I could not tell if it was with triumph or disappointment. "You are big with nothing but lies," he said, very low. He examined me once more. His hands on my legs were so familiar, they almost felt safe. But then he said to me, "Mary Toft, I have prevailed upon the Justice not to send you to prison yet, but to keep you in custody here, until the full story emerges, that we can only see the tip of now."
    I groaned and clawed at the bed like a woman in the throes of death. Sir Richard's eyes were sad. I realised then that, for all his suspicions, he half wanted to be wrong. I would have been so glad to have brought out one last rabbit, to let it fall like a holy miracle into his fine hands.
    Towards evening I fell into a real fit and lost all consciousness of who or where I was. When I woke up my face was as hot as a coal and there were cramps in my belly like the grip of fingernails. My lies had infected me, I supposed. My counterfeit pains had come true.
    Sir Richard came in, then, with a case under his arm.
    "I have a fever," I told him, very hoarsely.
    He ignored that. He opened his case so I could see what was inside. There was a scissors, forceps, a hook, a crotchet, a small noose, a saw, and various knives, with other instruments I didn't know the names of. The points and blades caught the firelight.
    I thought I was going to vomit.
    "I have come to the conclusion, Mary Toft, that you are a fraud." Sir Richard