Prelude to Darkness
"Fetch me some hot water! Find something warm for the babe. If its born alive, it must be kept from drafts and chills!" Abigail Melody Hampton shouted at the already harassed maid. She nodded and ran out of the room quickly.
"If it lives..." Gasped the woman in labor. Abigail looked over the woman's swollen belly and into the face of her sister, Arabella Page.
"Of course it will live, Bella." Abigail said happily. She closed her eyes for a moment, the sight of her beloved elder sister writhing in pain and weariness affecting her greatly. She opened them as the maid came back in, a basin of water in one hand, and warm drying sheets in the other.
"Set them down!" Abigail demanded, then pulled up the sheet once again to check on her sisters condition. It wasn't right. She was too big, too fast. The baby was just barely eight months in the womb. There was still a chance though...
"Abbie?" Arabella croaked, after a particularly nasty contraction wiped her last bit of energy.
"Yes, dear?" Abigail abandoned her post at the woman's feet, and went to kneel besides Arabella.
"If I should die, will you take care of my baby, please?" She tried to say more, but her younger sister shushed her.
"Don't speak. Save your energy. But to appease you...yes, I will. But your baby will grow up to be strong!" Before she could finish her tirade of encouragement, the maid gave a hearty shriek, and Abigail threw herself back to the position at Arabella's feet. The baby was crowning.
"One more good push, Bella! Come on, you can do it!" The baby slipped out easily, and Abigail caught it with the deftness of one at it all their lives. She had been trained well.
"It's a boy!" She cried, holding the wailing baby, a few pounds smaller then she would have liked, but healthy looking none-the-less, to show the mother.
"Bella?" Abigail handed the baby over to the nurse to wrap up, and went back to her sister.
"Name him...name him..." Her sister's voice was so weak now, and so pain riddled. Abigail cursed her brother-in-law for causing the distress to bring it on early. She grabbed fast to her sister's hand, holding tightly.
"No, Bella, please." She begged, more for herself then her new nephew. "Please, don't go on me! You are one of the only ones left who remember momma! You need to stay...to name your baby! To see him grow old and learn to use a sword, and go into the military, or become a rich and wealthy lawyer. Please, Bella."
"Name him Griffith. Please." With that final word, Arabella–the oldest of the seven children– became limp in her sister's arms. Her face in that instant before death, took on one of great relief, and soon, the light was snuffed from her gray eyes...the eyes of all the Hampton children. Abigail reached up with shaking fingers closed the eyes of her now late sister.
"Ma'am?" She turned around to see the maid, holding the freshly swaddled baby in her arms, holding it out to Abigail.
"Take it to the nursery. And fetch that wet nurse. I need to...tell the others." The maid nodded and went out the door to the adjoined nursery, and Abigail went out the one that leaded to the hallway.
It was dark now. The lamps lining the pale yellow walls all lit, giving the place a cherry atmosphere. Abigail loved the old house. With three stories, and an attic, it was perfect in her eyes. It had light oak wooden floors, and ancient Persian rugs that dated back centuries. There was always a crackling fire in the large fireplaces, and portraits of long gone ancestors lined the curved stairway. Situated a little out of Kingston on a large sugar plantation her father owned and operated with his eldest of sons who was only sixteen, and their few darkie slaves.
After the death of their mother, six years ago, and now the death of Arabella the house would be silent with mourning, and desperation.
Abigail wiped her hands on the already stained gown, smelling of the sickly sweet afterbirth, and looked around for her family members.
"Abbie?" Her father, Patrick Hampton rushed to her, an anxious and worried look deepening the worry lines already on his high forehead.
"It's a boy. Griffith. But...she...she didn't," At last the resolve of Abigail's broke, and she lunged herself into her fathers arms. Patrick knew what had happened, and quelled his second oldest, gently rocking back and forth, stroking her long raven hair that had come loose from its net holdings.
And so began the new year of Abigail Melody Hampton.