He stared at the patch of thick dark hair between her legs, and he was seized by a feeling of panic. How could a baby come through there? He had no idea how it happened. Then he told himself to be calm: this took place a thousand times a day all over the world. He did not need to understand it. The baby would come without his help.

“I’m frightened,” Lizzie said during a brief respite.

“I’ll look after you,” he said, and he stroked her legs, the only part of her he could reach.

The baby came very quickly.

Mack could not see much in the starlight, but as Lizzie gave a mighty groan something began to emerge from inside her. Mack put two trembling hands down there and felt a warm, slippery object pushing its way out. A moment later the baby’s head was in his hands. Lizzie seemed to rest for a few moments, then start again. He held the head with one hand and put the other under the tiny shoulders as they came into the world. A moment later the rest of the baby slid out.

He held it and stared at it: the closed eyes, the dark hair of its head, the miniature limbs. “It’s a girl,” he said.

“She must cry!” Lizzie said urgently.

Mack had heard of smacking a newborn baby to make it breathe. It was hard to do, but he knew he must. He turned her over in his hand and gave her bottom a sharp slap.

Nothing happened.

As he held the tiny chest in the palm of his big hand he realized something was dreadfully wrong. He could not feel a heartbeat.

Lizzie struggled to sit upright. “Give her to me!” she said.

Mack handed the baby over.

She took the baby and stared into her face. She put her lips to the baby’s as if kissing her, and then she blew into her mouth.

Mack willed the child to gasp air into her lungs and cry, but nothing happened.

“She’s dead,” Lizzie said. She held the baby to her bosom and drew the fur cloak around the naked body. “My baby’s dead.” She began to weep.

Mack put his arms around them both and held them while Lizzie cried her heart out.

32

AFTER HER BABY GIRL WAS BORN DEAD, LIZZIE LIVED in a world of gray colors, silent people, rain and mist. She let the household staff do as they pleased, realizing vaguely after a while that Mack had taken charge of them. She no longer patrolled the plantation every day: she left the tobacco fields to Lennox. Sometimes she visited Mrs. Thumson or Suzy Delahaye, for they were willing to talk about the baby as long as she liked; but she did not go to parties or balls. Every Sunday she attended church in Fredericksburg, and after the service she spent an hour or two in the graveyard, standing and looking at the tiny tombstone, thinking about what might have been.

She was quite sure it was all her fault. She had continued to ride horses until she was four or five months pregnant; she had not rested as much as people said she should; and she had ridden ten miles in the buggy, urging Mack to go faster and faster, on the night the baby was stillborn.

She was angry with Jay for being away from home that night; with Dr. Finch for refusing to come out for a slave girl; and with Mack for doing her bidding and driving fast. But most of all she was angry with herself. She loathed and despised herself for being an inadequate mother-to-be, for her impulsiveness and impatience and inability to listen to advice. If I were not like this, she thought, if I were a normal person, sensible and reasonable and cautious, I would have a little baby girl now.

She could not talk to Jay about it. At first he had been angry. He had railed at Lizzie, vowed to shoot Dr. Finch and threatened to have Mack flogged; but his rage had evaporated when he learned the baby had been a girl, and now he acted as if Lizzie had never been pregnant.

For a while she talked to Mack. The birth had brought them very close. He had wrapped her in his cloak and held her knees and tenderly handled the poor baby. At first he was a great comfort to her, but after a few weeks she sensed him becoming impatient. It was not his baby, she thought, and he could not truly share her grief. Nobody could. So she withdrew into herself.

One day three months after the birth she went to the nursery wing, still gleaming with fresh paint, and sat alone. She imagined a little girl there in a cradle, gurgling happily or crying to be fed, dressed in pretty white frocks and tiny knitted boots, suckling at her nipple or being bathed in a bowl. The vision was so intense that tears filled her eyes and rolled down her face, although she made no sound.

Mack came in while she was like that. Some debris had fallen down the chimney during a storm and he knelt at the fireplace and began to clear it up. He did not comment on her tears.

“I’m so unhappy,” she said.

He did not pause in his work. “This will not do you any good,” he replied in a hard voice.

“I expected more sympathy from you,” she said miserably.

“You can’t spend your life sitting in the nursery crying. Everyone dies sooner or later. The rest have to live on.”

“I don’t really want to. What have I got to live for?”

“Don’t be so damned pathetic, Lizzie—it’s not your nature.”

She was shocked. No one had spoken unkindly to her since the stillbirth. What right did Mack have to make her even more unhappy? “You ought not to talk to me like that,” she said.

He surprised her by rounding on her. Dropping his brush, he grabbed her by both her arms and pulled her up out of her chair. “Don’t tell me about my rights,” he said.

He was so angry she was afraid he would do violence to her. “Leave me alone!”

“Too many people are leaving you alone,” he said, but he put her down.

“What am I supposed to do?” she said.

“Anything you like. Get a ship back home and go and live with your mother in Aberdeen. Have a love affair with Colonel Thumson. Run away to the frontier with some ne’er-do-well.” He paused and looked hard at her. “Or—make up your mind to be a wife to Jay, and have another baby.”

That surprised her. “I thought …”

“What did you think?”

“Nothing.” She had known for some time that he was at least half in love with her. After the failed party for the field hands he had touched her tenderly and stroked her in a way that could only be loving. He had kissed the hot tears on her face. There was more than mere pity in his embrace.

And there was more in her response than the need for sympathy. She had clung to his hard body and savored the touch of his lips on her skin, and that was not just because she felt sorry for herself.

But all those feelings had faded since the baby. Her heart was empty. She had no passions, just regrets.

She felt ashamed and embarrassed to have had such desires. The lascivious wife who tried to seduce the bonny young footman was a stock character in comic novels.

Mack was not just a bonny footman, of course. She had gradually come to realize that he was the most remarkable man she had ever met. He was arrogant and opinionated too, she knew. His idea of his own importance was ludicrously inflated, and it led him into mischief. But she could not help admiring the way he stood up to tyrannical authority, from the Scottish coal field to the plantations of Virginia. And when he got into trouble it was often because he stuck up for someone else.

But Jay was her husband. He was weak and foolish, and he had lied to her, but she had married him and she had to be faithful to him.

Mack was still staring at her. She wondered what was going through his mind. She thought he was referring to himself when he said “run away to the frontier with some ne’er-do-well.”

Mack reached out tentatively and stroked her cheek. Lizzie closed her eyes. If her mother could see this she would know exactly what to say. You married Jay and you promised to be loyal to him. Are you a woman or a child? A woman keeps her word when it’s difficult, not just when it’s easy. That’s what promising is all about.