Scarborough Fair

A Cry in the Night

A shrill shriek pierced the darkness. So raw and loud it was! The whole manor fumbled for their slippers, tripping over their own feet trying to get them on. Doors were opened and faces peered out in the dark hallway. Candles were lit and whispers ravaged the corridor. The guests were dumbfounded at the sound. It seemed to come from all around: here, there, everywhere.

Just then a yawning maid still in her bedclothes made a sleepy appearance before the guests and announced in a thick, Scottish accent, "Mrs. Price would like to inform her guests that the noise you hear ("More like a banshee screaming!" said Mr. Bates off to the side.) is just the young bairn voicing his discomfort." She yawned, forcing her already chubby chin into a triple. "The matter will be dealt presently and you may return to your quarters." The maid shuffled back toward the servants' rooms, her candle displaying wild, dancing shadows resulting from her unsteady feet.

The guests shook their heads, lamenting the ten mintues of sleep lost to the young babe, and blew their candles out, muttering their way back into their rooms. ("Perfectly barbaric!" "I wonder what Mrs. Price did to the child to make it cry so." "I'll never hear the end of it from the Mrs." "Conrad! Come back to bed this instant!" "Yes, dear, I'll be there in a moment.")

Across the manor, a young woman glided gracefully to her crying babe. Her eyes were tired and weary but her face glowed with happiness. A socialite from birth, she knew how to walk, talk, throw parties, and yes, pacify angry guests who had come from all over to celebrate the arrival of her son. She did not care much for the guests at her estate but invited them anyway to keep up a reputation as a good woman of society. She did not care that her Edmund had screamed up a storm nor did she care that all her visitors were grumpily complaining about her loud rambunctious child; all she worried about was her son's well-being, and that made her an excellent mother.

"Oh, Claudia what happened now?" moaned Mr. Price from their four-poster bed. "Is he hungry again? Good God he ate only two hours ago! Remind me why we didn't get a wet nurse!" 

"Charles, you know they want to be fed every two hours and in the most inconvenient of hours for us. It's just how babes are. And you know I refuse to get someone to do the job mothers have been doing from the start of time. I prefer we know where our baby feeds." Mrs. Price waited for her husband to respond but all she heard was the thump of a pillow descending on his head. She scoffed silently at her ignorant husband and returned to the matter at hand. The tired mother hoped it wasn't another feeding for it would rob her of another half hour of sleep. Mayhap he needs a mother's touch, she thought hopefully.

"Hush, Edmund, hush," Claudia whispered in his ear. "Mother's here, don't cry, babe, don't cry." Edmund refused to be pacified and his purple face almost turned blue. She sighed and sat with him near the fireplace, now a glowing pile of embers barely illuminating her round, pretty face. She lifted her nightgown to her breast and Edmund instantly forgot his whole business of raising holy bedlam; he suddenly became very interested in a midnight meal and apparently, a lullaby.

So the lithe, graceful Mrs. Price obliged to her son and sang in a sweet, soothing voice:

"Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

Remember me to one who lives there.

She once was a true love of mine."

Claudia looked down at her beautful newborn. He was peacefully sleeping now with a ring of milk around his chubby mouth. She smiled at her child, this little wonder she had anticipated for nine months, the miracle she had been waiting for her whole life. 

"Goodnight, little Edmund," she whispered, kissing his head full of peach fuzz, "may your dreams be ever-sweet..."