“Yes, my lady. He is in the parlor. This way.”
Benjamin Wood sat in the parlor, his face taut with grief. One of the older children sat on his lap. “Thank you for coming to see her,” he said. “Elizabeth is upstairs. She is melancholy and has asked for you.”
“You should be with her,” I urged him.
He smiled weakly. “I’m helping to mind the children. They want her, but she does not need the burden.”
“Let them go to her,” I suggested. “They might take her away from her grief for a time.” He nodded. Birdy had done this for me when I lost Michael, but when she died I had nobody.
“I’ll take you upstairs,” he said. “The baby is there, too.”
Martha and I followed him up to Elizabeth’s bedchamber. The same room where she had given birth was now her lying-in room, and it was here that Martha and I would prepare the child’s body for burial. We entered the room and found Elizabeth sitting on the edge of the bed, talking softly with one of her neighbors. When she saw us, she smiled slightly and stood to greet us. The lines on her face had deepened in the two days since the birth, and her eyes were watery and bloodshot. She embraced me and Martha and began to cry again. I fought back tears, and I saw Martha doing the same. Elizabeth reached out and took Martha’s hands, and it struck me that the two women were comforting each other.
“Ben was never long for this world,” Elizabeth said. Martha nodded, clenching her jaw to keep from bursting into tears. I looked around for the child and saw that he had been loosely wrapped and laid in the crib that should have been his bed. Two women sat with him and would do so until his burial.
I crossed the room to the crib and picked up the child’s body. I found myself unable to breathe as I was hurled back to the day Michael died, and I recalled how my own midwife had prepared his body for burial. That too had been a sunny day, only much colder. I remembered the murmuring of my gossips as they comforted me and how I had tried to find a way to tell Birdy what had happened to her brother. Losing her father had taught her much about death, but she had so loved Michael, I wondered if his death might pitch her into a deeper melancholy than it did me. At first she hadn’t understood or at least refused to admit what had happened. She screamed the most horrible curses at me and at God for taking him away. Then, when she saw his body and held it in her arms, she wailed long and loud, as if to raise the dead. It was a wonder that her heart, and mine, too, did not break from the crying.
Like Michael, Ben seemed to weigh nothing at all with his breath stopped. I asked Elizabeth’s maidservant for a towel and basin of warm water. When she returned, I spread the towel in the crib, laid the child on it, and motioned for Martha. She looked down at the tiny body as I carefully loosened the swaddling clothes and showed her how to wash an infant’s corpse. Unbidden, Martha produced the strips that she had torn, and with shaking hands we wrapped the child. After we finished, we left the body with the women and returned to Elizabeth.
One of Elizabeth’s other children, a boy of perhaps four years, lay in the crook of her arm, gazing blankly at his dead brother’s body. I sat next to her and took her hand, but I could think of nothing to say. Soon it was time to go to the church. I picked up Ben and brought him to Elizabeth so she could hold him for the last time. A low moan escaped her chest as she took him in her arms, and tears fell from her cheeks onto his. The sound of her sobs wrenched my heart, and I wondered at the God who would do this.
Elizabeth kissed her boy, gave him to me, and bade us farewell. Accompanied by Benjamin and a dozen neighborhood women, we walked slowly to St. Martin’s church as the bell tolled softly. The summer sun blazed down from a brilliant blue sky, making our party’s grief seem small and out of place. I wondered what the Lord meant by this. The priest met us at the entrance to the church and sang out, “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” We entered and took our seats. Because it was not the Sabbath, the service would be a short one. I closed my ears to the priest’s words and sought refuge in prayer. I begged God to comfort Elizabeth and Benjamin in their grief and asked Him to heal me, to make me whole.
After he finished his reading, the priest led us to the churchyard. Ben’s grave seemed terribly small. I saw that the digger had laid a bed of straw at the bottom and hoped that the same had been done for Michael. We said the Lord’s Prayer, and with shaking hands Benjamin lowered his son into the ground. Then, as gently as he could, he shoveled in the grave. I thought then of the cold earth that covered Michael first and then Birdy, but my heart was so sore that I could feel nothing more. I heard some snuffling from the mourners but few sobs. I think by then we had all cried enough. As we walked back to his house, I put my arm through Benjamin’s and told him of my prayers. He looked at me with red and haggard eyes and offered his thanks. The maid met us at the door and whispered in Benjamin’s ear.