A Crooked Rib by Judy Corbalis Page A

now to her bed, her door closed against me. I crawled inside my tree, frantically stirred flower petals, sugar lumps, honey and any other sweet and fragrant ingredients into a healing paste, then stole inside to smear it on the floorboards and about the door by Mama’s room, taking care that none of the servants or Papa should catch me.
    Mama did not recover.
    ‘Mistress be no stronger today,’ said Martha to Joseph, ‘so Master be dining at the Rooms again tonight. Be weeks now since she be out of her bed.’
    Eating my bread and milk at the kitchen table, I listened dejectedly.
    ‘Where be ye doll?’ asked Ellen, as she put me to bed.
    I had left Marie as a sacrifice, laid out in her best French frock on a slab of wood inside my tree. I thought of rats gnawing at herbeautiful face and her delicate arms … how cold she must be, how lonely without me … Unable to sleep, I quit my bed, determined to pray by Mama’s door. But what if Papa should find me there? And had I not promised Mama I would never again take up a vigil outside her room? I shut the door and knelt at my own door jamb, opposite hers. ‘I am sorry, God,’ I wept. ‘Please, I beg You, restore Mama. Let me be ill, not her. I will … I will even throw Marie off Church Cliffs if You will give Mama back to me again.’
    Tears flowed down my cheeks; I shivered in the night chill. And then … I must have fallen asleep, for I woke at the sound of heavy footsteps. Scrambling to my feet in panic, I tried to gain the safety of my bed before Papa should see me. But my legs were numb, and I stumbled and fell again to the floor, sobbing from a mixture of misery and fear as he loomed over me. The strange thick smell of the Maltings engulfed me, whisking me back to the canal by the mill and the sight of Ellen’s witch. I trembled and shuddered.
    ‘Why, what’s all this?’ said a voice. ‘What has happened, child?’
    I felt myself lifted up.
    ‘It wasn’t Mama’s door,’ I cried. ‘I promised only her door, not my own.’
    ‘Ssh, ssh,’ said Papa, ‘or you’ll wake poor Mama and that would never do. Come now, we’ll go downstairs to the fire and warm you a little.’
    I quivered against him. ‘And then you will whip me?’
    Momentarily, my papa looked shamefaced, then he said, ‘Of course I shan’t whip you if you’ve done no wrong.’
    ‘But I have done wrong. Very wrong. It’s all my doing that Mama is dying and—’
    ‘Your mama is not dying. Not a bit of it.’
    ‘Then why is she all the time in bed?’
    ‘Why, she is merely … a little indisposed …’
    Desperate with misery, I laid my head against his jacket and wept. ‘And now I have sacrificed Marie and the rats are eating her.’
    ‘Sacrificed Marie?’
    ‘My doll, my beautiful French doll.’
    ‘And why would the rats be eating her?’
    ‘I promised God that if He would restore Mama, I would sacrificeMarie. She’s alone in the garden … and she has never been away from me before.’
    ‘Dear me,’ said my papa, ‘what a very sorry and complicated state of affairs. Now, where is this unfortunate Marie?’
    I cried harder. ‘Under the mulberry tree.’
    ‘Wait there,’ said Papa, placing me in a chair by the fire. He strode to the door and disappeared into the garden, returning in minutes carrying Marie, damp but unharmed.
    He handed her to me.
    I shook my head. ‘I promised God …’
    ‘I don’t think God has any need of Marie and, if He had wanted her as a sacrifice, He would surely have sent the rats to seize her by now. I’m quite sure He wishes you to take her and look after her kindly.’
    ‘And Mama?’
    ‘Tomorrow, you may go in and see your mama. But you must promise to be good and quiet and not disturb her. She has need of rest just now.’
     
    I sat slowly absorbing warmth from the fire. ‘Papa?’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘It’s Ellen who hears my primer now, and she doesn’t know her letters so … my dame is vexed with my reading.’
    ‘That