And then one morning, as if by some miracle, the air cleared and magnificent Lisbon came into view, a sparkling new city built on a series of hills, with its grand boulevards and plazas, white buildings, tall windows, red roofs, a vast harbor full of every variety of vessel, masts billowing and full.

I was bedraggled but elated at the prospect of soon being with Fanny in this magical new world. I put myself together as best I could, said my good-byes to my traveling companions, and clambered into a cab. It took me up a long, winding street lined with young trees, then turned into a small courtyard off a narrow lane.

Skeys met me at the door.

“Thank God you’ve come, Miss Wollstonecraft,” he said, a mess in his unbuttoned waistcoat, hair fallen across his forehead, and a beading brow beneath. A servant took my things. “Her labor started in earnest some sixteen hours ago, but I fear she’s too weak to be delivered.”

He took me at once to Fanny, who looked as if she herself had been tossed by an angry sea: stringy hair, skin pale as whitecaps, liquid cough, blood on her pillow, her gown. Thin as I’d ever seen her, cheekbones protruding, sunken eyes. And yet her face came alive when she saw me.

“I’m here, I’m here,” I repeated, springing to action, but calmer than I expected to be, obeying the commands of the midwife (who was no Mrs. B, I assure you). “Mop her brow! Rub her back! Squeeze her hand!” We stayed like that for four hours, while Fanny had not even the strength to scream, and suffered the worst of her labor in silence. I had never seen a child born, had no idea what to expect, but a woman so enfeebled, too weary to push her baby out—a woman I loved as I did her—was a terrible thing to watch. And then, without one peep from Fanny, not even a whimper, he slipped out of her, a little boy. Skeys was called into the room and held the swaddled babe in his arms, but he looked at Fanny, asleep on her pillow, as if she were a corpse already.