“I told your wife thinking about it like fabric limits what the English can do.” Nkiruka winked. “After the child is born, we can talk about glamour.”
Frank came to stand in front of them, Lord Verbury’s form still limp over his shoulder. “The entrance will make you feel as if you are falling. It is only three strides deep, so set your course and walk straight ahead.”
“You can make people feel motion?” Vincent sounded almost outraged. Jane understood his frustration perfectly, that there might be something with glamour that he could not do.
“Visual and wind.” Nkiruka shoved him from behind. “Not actual motion.”
Frank led them forward along no path that Jane could see. It looked for all the world as if Vincent were about to step off the edge of a cliff. And then the view changed so that what had been below them now seemed to be rushing at them with great speed. Wind whistled past Jane’s ears and stirred her hair. Her every sense told her she was falling. For three strides, and then it all cleared.
They stood on the far side of a narrow bridge across a ditch. A small village composed of wattle and daub houses stood before them in a gently sloping valley. Frank pulled down his cloth mask. “This … this is why I cannot leave Antigua. I have to protect this.”
Thirty-two
A Laborious Enterprise
Frank went ahead to let Dr. Jones know they were coming and to secure his lordship, while Nkiruka led them through the lanes of the village. In the cock-crow hours, Picknee Town was quiet and had the tucked-away, snug feeling of many an English village. In the dim light, the wattle and daub houses could be mistaken for stucco and thatched roofs, complete with cheerful gardens set in front. They passed a blacksmith and what gave every appearance of being a haberdashery. There, Jane had to stop and bend to put one hand on her knee. Vincent held her other arm and supported her with a hand on her waist.
Jane ground her teeth. It was not the pain so much as the fatigue, or perhaps the two in combination. “I am very sorry, but I think I do need to be carried after all.”
Without a word, Vincent shifted his grip and smoothly lifted her into his arms. He smelled of smoke and his shirt was damp against her cheek. Next to her ear, his heart rattled like a runaway carriage. Through the open collar of his nightshirt, her fingers brushed the riot of hair on his chest. Jane pressed a palm to his chest, rubbing a small circle as if that could calm him.
His voice rumbled through her fingers. “I am supposed to be comforting you.”
“You are.”
Their destination was only two streets from where Jane had stopped. They arrived at a two-story shingled building in the heart of the village. A neat sign hung next to the door: Hospital.
As Vincent carried Jane up the stairs of the front porch, Frank opened the door. “I am to ask how often the bearing pains are coming.”
Jane had stopped counting sometime after they left the house. “They were every half hour before we left.”
“She has had three since then, so every fifteen minutes, I think.” Vincent carried her inside.
The door opened straight into a sitting room, which was rustic but very pretty. A pair of candles shone merrily on a small table. A young man of colour sat near it. His round cheeks were slick with sweat, and one leg fidgeted nervously as he stared at a door on the far wall. At the sound of their entrance, he looked round, and his eyes widened.
Frank held up a hand. When he spoke, his voice had nothing British about it. “Dem wid me. Nkiruka, she done vouch fu dem. Dey safe.”
The young man looked as if he would protest, but a young woman cried out in another part of the hospital. Head whipping in the direction of the noise, he tightened his grip on his chair.
Frank led them away from the sitting room, through a broad passage, and into a room on the ground floor. A glamural of stars and clouds covered the ceiling and made the plain, whitewashed walls more appealing. Against one wall, a plain cupboard had been painted white to match the walls. A narrow bed stood against the opposite wall with a table and straight-backed chair next to it. At the foot of the bed, a small brazier gave off a pleasant resinous scent.
In the middle of the room stood the birth stool.
It had a rounded barrel back, but the seat was what drew Jane’s attention. Carved in an open U shape, it was designed to allow an expectant mother to sit without anything to impede an infant’s entrance into the world. Vincent passed the stool and lowered Jane on to the bed.
Nkiruka and Frank conferred by the door. Jane suspected that they had a muddied silence wrapped around them, as she could not make out the words of their conversation. After a moment, Nkiruka patted Frank on the shoulder, and then Jane could suddenly hear them again.
“Dr. Jones is with another patient, but should be in shortly,” Frank said.
“Where is—”