When Mary’s fever burned, Mrs. B stripped her down to her chemise, threw open the windows, and kept a cool cloth on her head. When the cold shivering fits took over, she heaped on clothes and covers, gave her wool socks and bottles of hot water at her feet, offered sips of warm tea or broth, hot spices, and spirits. But she knew there was no amount of heat that could prevent the rigors in a puerperal woman. It was nearing twenty-four hours of fever taking turns with rigors for Mary; anything longer, after childbirth, was considered a terrible sign. There was little to do but keep clean linens about her and hope she would sleep. She tried to help Mary onto her side, then her back again, to give her a few moments of relief, but Mary struggled against each wave shaking her body. In the moments between she was thirsty and restless. Her skin was translucent yellow, her eyes red.

“I thought I heard my baby cry,” she said when morning came.

“Yes,” said Mrs. B, patting her hand. “Your little girl is hungry.”

Mrs. B had tried a few drops of thin gruel from her bubby pot when the baby fussed in the night, but of course she wanted the nipple and her mother’s sweet milk, now that she knew it.

“Let me feed her, please, let me,” Mary said, hanging on Mrs. B’s sleeve.

Fordyce was awake now, rumpled but accounted for. He felt Mary’s forehead, took her pulse. “For Poignand,” he said with a sideways wink.

Mrs. B, who hadn’t slept all night, picked up the little one in her arms and lightly bounced her, trying to buy some time for them all. She knew what was coming.

“Can you hear me, Mary?” Fordyce sat on the edge of her bed, and waited for her eyes to focus on him. “Yes, that’s good. Now, I want you to listen to me. Your girl needs a mother’s milk to grow strong.”

“I can nurse her. I want to.”

“I know you do. But your milk, just now, may not be healthy for her. It could even do her harm.”

“How do you know that?” It was an effort for her to think, to talk, Mrs. B could tell. Her tongue was thick and white.

“We don’t know that. In fact, we don’t know very much at all. We are observers, really. Asking questions, writing down what we see, looking for patterns. I do not like to admit it, but each patient is a sort of experiment.”

“Then experiment on me!” Mary held out her upturned forearms. “Bleed me. I don’t care. Anything. If it will let me nurse my daughter.”

“We don’t want to weaken your circulatory system, which may help to move whatever putrefaction you’re suffering out of your body.”

“I’m begging you,” Mary said.

“I’m afraid I must forbid it.”