I stared at the maid, uncertain how to respond. I knew word spread quickly in a house like this, but how much did she actually know? And how much should I allow her to know? “Go on.”
She pulled a vial from her apron pocket. “My mum gave this to me.” She placed the vial in my hand and took a step back. “When I told her the distress you were feeling about the—” She nodded at my midsection. “She gave me this remedy.”
I stared at the vial. The dark, thick fluid slid down the glass like oily mud.
“She said to put the contents into warm water and drink it down. In a day or two, you’ll feel awful sick, but it will take care of your ... problem.”
Revulsion filled me as I realized what she was suggesting, and I quickly handed the vial back to her, shaking my head. I could never do what she was suggesting. “Please leave,” I told her, “and destroy the contents of that vial immediately.”
Mary’s eyes widened, and she took a step back. “I’m only trying to help, milady.”
“I know your intentions were—” I couldn’t think of the right word. “But I have no wish to do as you’ve suggested. If you’ll please leave, I’d like to rest.”
Backing up, Mary bumped into a chair and then the vanity. She hurried from the room, closing the door behind her.
I lay back upon the pillow again, my heart pounding. I placed my hand on my flat stomach, imagining the child growing within. If she was a time-crosser, then somewhere in a different time and place, another mother was learning about her impending arrival. It was so hard to fathom, even though I had lived such a life for over twenty years.
I found myself praying for the other life my daughter mightlive, for the mother and father who would help me raise her. My mind wandered, thinking of what she might see and do, the people she would know, and the experiences she would have. Would they be good? Bad? What if her second life was as challenging as mine? Or more so? What if she was meant to do something extraordinary?
I thought about Congressman Hollingsworth for the first time in a long time and smiled. What if my daughter was meant to be one of the great heroines in history?
Without a doubt in my mind or heart, I knew that this child’s life was important, and I would have the privilege of being her mother. It was an awesome and frightful thing to imagine, bearing and nurturing a child, but it also gave me the strangest feelings I’d ever experienced.
Hope mingled with the broken places in my heart, binding them together into a new vessel to hold a new kind of love, the love I would have for my child. I felt inadequate and unprepared but also very much in awe of the miracle of her life.
I had not chosen to bear this child, but for some reason, she had chosen me. Making the decision to keep her would mean losing almost every person I cared about and loved—yet Mama’s words rang true in my heart. I would love this baby more than life itself, and I would give up everything for her, over and over again. It was the power and the miracle of life. It was the same love that Christ had shown for me when He gave up His life on the cross. He had laid down his life so that others could live. I would be asked to do the same for my child.
I closed my eyes as tears slipped down my temples, pondering the great mysteries of life, and my thoughts strayed to Henry. My heart ached with a longing that would never ease. Yet I had made my decision, and it was final. Unless God intervened in a way I could not fathom or expect, I would stay in 1915 upon my twenty-first birthday.
It gave me but five short months to say good-bye.
23
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
APRIL 20, 1775
Spring had returned to Virginia on the breath of warm sunshine. As I walked along Nicholson Street, three months after learning about the baby, I admired the sight of green shoots poking through the black soil. I loved spring in Williamsburg. It was my favorite time of year, and knowing that this would be my last somehow made the colors brighter, the smells stronger, and the noises louder.
While my body changed in 1915, my heart had begun to change in 1775. I still mourned with each passing day, and Mama and I still cried together when we were alone. I prayed for a miracle to spare me, yet the longer I knew my growing child, the more I loved her and wanted her.
But it didn’t make me want Henry any less. I hadn’t seen him in three months, though he had sent several letters. His responsibilities had taken him to Philadelphia and then Boston, and though he claimed it was business for his father, I suspected he was also working with the Sons of Liberty. I prayed ferventlythat he would come home soon, if for no other reason than to remove him from the dangerous region where the first shots of the American Revolution had been fired just yesterday.
Though news had not yet reached Virginia, I knew the Battles of Lexington and Concord had transpired the day before. Mama and I had prayed for all those involved. What Williamsburg would soon learn was that British troops had marched from Boston to Concord, Massachusetts, to destroy a store of ammunition held there by the local militia. Men like Paul Revere and William Dawes learned of this march and rode ahead to warn those in Lexington and Concord. By the time the British arrived, a group of minutemen had assembled on the village green in Lexington as a first line of defense. Shots were fired, and the British continued their march toward Concord. The local militia fought back, hiding along the road and confronting the soldiers in combat. At the end of the day, the British had lost almost three hundred men and the Americans had lost almost a hundred. It would be considered the first American victory.
But Williamsburg would not know any of this for several more days.
I passed Peyton Randolph’s red house and nodded a greeting at his wife, and then I was at my own back gate.
The stable in the corner of the property had been empty for the past two months, since Lieutenant Addison had been called away to Boston. It would not surprise me if James had participated in the march into Lexington and Concord. I hoped and prayed he had survived.
I passed Abraham and Mariah, who were cultivating our large gardens in preparation for planting. Rebecca and Hannah were sitting on the bench under the elm tree, doing sums, and Glen and Louis were busy in the printing room. I bypassed all of them and went into the house, planning to get a head start on next week’s paper, but I paused in the hallway when I heard a male voice coming from the sitting room.
The door was open, so I entered. Mama and Mister Goodman, the widowed cobbler, were sitting close together, and when I appeared, they both stood quickly.
Mama’s cheeks blossomed in color. “You’re back so soon, Libby. Did you enjoy your walk?”
Mister Goodman was a tall man, and he made Mama look much shorter by comparison. He had been visiting us regularly since Christmastide, and we had enjoyed his company, Mama most of all.
