Martha shook her head, and put her hands to her belly. "Starting again," she panted. When the contraction had let up its grip, Martha collapsed against her pillow and blew a damp tendril of hair away from her face. "I like Miss Elizabeth," she said. "I wouldn't do nothing to cause her misery."

"You wouldn't lie to the judge?"

"I can say what I saw, but I wouldn't make nothing up."

Curiosity grunted softly.

"Can I have something to drink?"

When she had finished sipping from the cup Curiosity offered her, she wiped her mouth and glanced at the older woman fitfully. "But it weren't right, her running off that way in the dead of night. I wouldn't have thought it of her." She said this softly, but she meant it. Curiosity wasn't surprised, she had heard it before in the village.

"We do what we got to do," Curiosity said quietly. "Ain't that so, Miz Kitty?"

Kitty was standing at the foot of the bed with the basin in her hands. She watched as Martha coped with the next pain, grabbing hold of the rope Curiosity had tied to the foot of the bed so that the tendons on her lower arms stood out in relief as she pulled. The bed creaked and groaned with it, and at the end Martha put back her head and howled. The water sloshed in the basin as Kitty took a step backward.

"You come over here by her side," Curiosity said. "Help her sit up when the pains come, so she can put some muscle behind her push."

Kitty hesitated, and Curiosity shot her a sharp look.

"I got things to do down on this end," Curiosity explained. "She cain't keep her misery to herself anymore, and she will yell it out. A little noise ain't goin' to turn you blue, now is it?"

"I didn't know it hurts so much," Kitty said. "There's nothing I can do."

"You can stop whining," Curiosity shot back at her. "It's Martha here who's got the hardest work to do. Don' you go running out on her."

Kitty came forward reluctantly. Curiosity took the basin from her and set it down, and then she took the girl by the wrist, startling her. She pressed Kitty's palm against the bulk of Martha's belly.

"Feel this child trying to find its way into the world."

There was a sudden tightening and a ripple. Kitty's face rippled and changed, too. Not in horror, but in sudden understanding.

"It feels like a hand," the girl said, hoarsely.

Martha moaned softly.

"Let's hope that's a foot," she said to Kitty. "Otherwise we got our work cut out for us."

Kitty was looking between Martha and Curiosity. Her sleepiness was gone, the distant look in her eyes banished for the moment. "Will you come to me when it's my time?"

"I surely will," Curiosity said. "If you want me there. Now will you do something for me?"

"I can't tell you about Albany and the court and Elizabeth," Kitty said. "I promised Richard I wouldn't. He says it's important."

Curiosity laughed. "Men got one kind of important," she said. "Women got another." She was folding the nightclothes back, her slim, dark hands busy and knowing as Martha's flesh bulged and buckled.

"It's coming," Martha panted.

"So it is," Curiosity agreed. "Whether it's got a mind to or not." But her face was suddenly set in worry lines that she could not hide.

* * *

The public house was a dark, small place, an extension tacked onto Anna Hauptmann's trading post without attention to detail or comfort. It had once been a pigsty, until her father claimed it for his own purposes in a fit of boredom. Axel rebuilt one wall to put in a hearth, and he began to divide his day between his daughter's place of business and the distillery he set up in the barn. There he turned out a respectable ale and a clear schnapps that earned a reputation as far away as Albany. He kept the secrets of the distillery close to the vest, but Axel was soon forgiven this lack of generosity because he sold his products cheap, as he was more interested in company and discussion than he was in profits. Within a year the tavern was known up and down the territory as a place a man could go after sunset and be sure of a welcome and a strong drink. In the winter it was warm and in the summer the doors stood open, and it was a rare evening that Axel had less than three men to entertain him. As the floor was usually awash with tobacco juice, they were relatively safe from skirted visitors, a situation which was not the least of the tavern's attractions.

Julian Middleton had soon become his most reliable patron. The hunters and trappers who came out of the bush to call had adjusted to Julian without any trouble, once they had figured out that he could be ignored. He was the overdressed, under worked son of a man who couldn't hold on to his money or govern his daughter, but he had a gift for light talk and looking the other way and so they tolerated him. Night after night Julian sat in front of Axel's fire and took up whatever subject was offered to him while he drank warm ale or warmer cider from a crusty old jug that had to be plucked out from among the cinders. Some of the farmers came in, too, but only for long enough to toss back what they weren't allowed at home, rarely contributing to the conversation. Sometimes Julian chose not to talk; nobody much seemed to mind that, either.

For his part, Julian saw the crude tavern as the only amusing spot in Paradise. The drink was cheap and the company was anything but demanding. When he had money to spend on schnapps, he applied himself to an appreciation of its rude integrity. Since Lizzie had solved all their financial problems—or the ones she knew about—there was a bit of swag in his pocket, and Julian had been making a careful study of Axel's art.