A Breath of Snow and Ashes (57 page)

Evidently, someone was listening. When I got Marsali boosted up onto the table, I was terribly relieved to find that the cervix had begun to dilate—but there was no sign of bleeding. It didn’t remove the risk of hemorrhage, by any means, but it did mean the probability was much lower.

Her blood pressure seemed all right, so far as I could tell by looking at her, and the baby’s heartbeat had steadied, though the baby had stopped moving, refusing to respond to pokes and shoves.

“Sound asleep, I expect,” I said, smiling at Marsali. “Resting up.”

She gave me a tiny smile in return, and turned onto her side, grunting like a hog.

“I could use a bit of a rest, myself, after that walk.” She sighed, settling her head into the pillow. Adso, seconding this motion, leapt up onto the table, and curled himself into her breasts, rubbing his face affectionately against her.

I would have slung him out, but Marsali seemed to find some comfort in his presence, scratching his ears until he curled up under her chin, purring madly. Well, I’d delivered children in much less sanitary surroundings, cat notwithstanding, and this was likely to be a slow process; Adso would have decamped long before his presence became a hindrance.

I was feeling a bit more reassured, but not to the point of confidence. That subtle feeling of wrongness was still there. On the way, I’d considered the various options available to me; given the slight dilatation of the cervix and the now-steady heartbeat, I thought we might try the most conservative method of inducing labor, so as not to put undue stress upon mother or child. If emergency intervened . . . well, we’d deal with that when and if we had to.

I only hoped the contents of the jar were usable; I’d never had occasion to open it before.
Laminaria,
said the label, written in Daniel Rawlings’s flowing script. It was a small jar of dark green glass, corked tight, and very light. When I opened it, a faint whiff of iodine floated out, but no scent of decay, thank goodness.

Laminaria
is seaweed. Dried, it’s no more than paper-thin slips of brownish-green. Unlike many dried seaweeds, though,
Laminaria
doesn’t crumble easily. And it has a most astonishing capacity to absorb water.

Inserted into the opening of the cervix, it absorbs moisture from the mucous membranes—and swells, slowly forcing the cervix further open as it does so, thus eventually causing labor to start. I’d seen
Laminaria
used, even in my own time, though in modern times it was most frequently employed to assist in expelling a dead child from the uterus. I shoved
that
thought well to the back of my mind, and selected a good piece.

It was a simple thing to do, and once done, nothing to do but wait. And hope. The surgery was very peaceful, full of light and the sounds of barn swallows rustling under the eaves.

“I hope Ian finds Fergus,” Marsali said after a period of silence.

“I’m sure he will,” I replied, distracted by an attempt to light my small brazier using flint and steel. I should have told Lizzie to have Brianna bring matches. “You said Fergus hadn’t been home?”

“No.” Her voice sounded muffled, and I looked up to see her head bent over Adso, face hidden in his fur. “I’ve scarce seen him at all, since . . . since the men came to the malting floor.”

“Ah.”

I didn’t know what to say to this. I hadn’t realized that Fergus had made himself scarce—though knowing what I did of eighteenth-century men, I supposed I could see why.

“He’s ashamed, the wee French gomerel,” Marsali said matter-of-factly, confirming my supposition. She turned her face, one blue eye visible above the curve of Adso’s head. “Thinks it was his fault, aye? That I was there, I mean. Thinks if he was better able to provide, I shouldna have had to go and tend the malting.”

“Men,” I said, shaking my head, and she laughed.

“Aye, men. Not that he’d
say
what the trouble is, o’ course. Much better go off and brood about it, and leave me to hame wi’ three wild bairns!” She rolled her eyes.

“Aye, well, they do that, men,” said Mrs. Bug tolerantly, coming in with a lighted taper. “No sense at all to them, but they mean weel. I heard ye clickin’ away with that steel like a deathwatch, Mrs. Claire; why would ye no just come and fetch a bit o’ fire like a sensible person?” She touched the taper to the kindling in my brazier, which promptly popped into flame.

“Practice,” I said mildly, adding sticks to the infant flame. “I have hopes of eventually learning to light a fire in less than a quarter of an hour.”

Marsali and Mrs. Bug snorted in simultaneous derision.

“Bless ye, lamb, a quarter-hour’s no time at all! Why, often I’ve spent an hour and more, trying to catch a spark in damp tinder—in Scotland, ’specially, since nothing’s ever dry in the winter there. Whyever d’ye think folk go to such trouble, a-smooring the fire?”

This caused a spirited discussion of the best way in which to smoor a fire for the night, including an argument over the proper blessing to be said while doing so, and this lasted long enough for me to have coaxed the brazier into a decent glow and set a small kettle in it for tea-making. Raspberry-leaf tea would encourage contractions.

Mention of Scotland seemed to have reminded Marsali of something, for she raised herself on one elbow.

“Mother Claire—d’ye think Da would mind, if I was to borrow a sheet of paper and some ink? I’m thinkin’ it would be as well if I wrote to my mother.”

“I think that would be an excellent idea.” I went to fetch paper and ink, heart beating a little faster. Marsali was entirely calm; I wasn’t. I’d seen it before, though; I wasn’t sure whether it was fatalism, religious faith, or something purely physical—but women giving birth seemed very often to lose any sense of fear or misgiving, turning inward upon themselves and exhibiting an absorption that amounted to indifference—simply because they had no attention to spare for anything beyond the universe bounded by their bellies.

As it was, my lingering sense of dread was muted, and two or three hours passed in quiet peace. Marsali wrote to Laoghaire, but also brief notes to each of her children. “Just in case,” she said laconically, handing the folded notes to me to put away. I noticed that she didn’t write to Fergus—but her eyes darted toward the door every time there was a sound.

Lizzie returned to report that Brianna was nowhere to be found, but Malva Christie turned up, looking excited, and was promptly put to work, reading aloud from Tobias Smollett’s
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle.

Jamie came in, covered with road dust, and kissed me on the lips and Marsali on the forehead. He took in the unorthodox situation, and gave me the ghost of a raised eyebrow.

“How is it, then,
a muirninn
?” he asked Marsali.

She made a small face and put her tongue out, and he laughed.

“You haven’t seen Fergus anywhere, have you?” I asked.

“Aye, I have,” he said, looking slightly surprised. “D’ye want him?” This question was addressed to both Marsali and myself.

“We do,” I said firmly. “Where is he?”

“Woolam’s Mill. He’s been interpreting for a French traveler, an artist come in search of birds.”

“Birds, is it?” The notion seemed to affront Mrs. Bug, who put down her knitting and sat up straight. “Our Fergus speaks bird-tongue, does he? Well, ye just go and fetch the mannie this minute. Yon Frenchman can mind his own birds!”

Looking rather taken aback at this vehemence, Jamie allowed me to usher him out into the hallway and as far as the front door. Safely out of earshot, he stopped.

“What’s to do wi’ the lass?” he demanded, low-voiced, and darted a glance back toward the surgery, where Malva’s clear, high voice had taken up her reading again.

I told him, as well as I could.

“It may be nothing; I hope so. But—she wants Fergus. She says he’s been keeping away, feeling guilty for what happened at the malting floor.”

Jamie nodded.

“Well, aye, he would.”

“He would? Why, for heaven’s sake?” I demanded in exasperation. “It wasn’t
his
fault!”

He gave me a look suggesting that I had missed something patently obvious to the meanest intelligence.

“Ye think that makes a difference? And if the lass should die—or mischief come to the child? Ye think he’d not blame himself?”

“He
shouldn’t,
” I said. “But rather obviously he does. You don’t—” I stopped short, because in fact he
did.
He’d told me so, very clearly, the night he brought me back.

He saw the memory cross my face, and the hint of a smile, wry and painful, showed in his eyes. He reached out and traced the line of my eyebrow, where a healing gash had split through it.

“Ye think I dinna feel that?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head, not in negation, but in helplessness.

“A man’s wife is his to protect,” he said simply, and turned away. “I’ll go fetch Fergus.”

THE LAMINARIA HAD BEEN accomplishing its slow, patient work, and Marsali was beginning to have occasional contractions, though we had not really got down to it, yet. The light was beginning to fade when Jamie arrived with Fergus—and Ian, met on the way.

Fergus was unshaven, covered with dust, and plainly hadn’t bathed in days, but Marsali’s face lighted like the sun when she saw him. I didn’t know what Jamie had told him; he looked grim and worried—but at sight of Marsali, he went to her like an arrow to its target, gathering her to him with such fervor that Malva dropped her book on the floor, staring in astonishment.

I relaxed a little, for the first time since I had entered Marsali’s house that morning.

“Well,” I said, and took a deep breath. “Perhaps we’ll have a little food, shall we?”

I left Fergus and Marsali alone, while the rest of us ate, and returned to the surgery to find them with heads close together, talking quietly. I hated to disturb them, but it was necessary.

On the one hand, the cervix had dilated very appreciably, and there was no sign of abnormal bleeding, which was a tremendous relief. On the other . . . the baby’s heartbeat was skipping again. Almost certainly a cord problem, I thought.

I was very conscious of Marsali’s eyes, fixed on my face as I listened through my stethoscope, and I exerted every ounce of will in order to let nothing show.

“You’re doing very well,” I assured her, smoothing tumbled hair off her forehead and smiling into her eyes. “I think perhaps it’s time to help things along a little.”

There were assorted herbs that could assist labor, but most of them were not things I’d use, were there any danger of hemorrhage. At this point, though, I was uneasy enough to want to get things moving as quickly as possible. Raspberry-leaf tea might be a help without being so strong as to induce major or abrupt contractions. Ought I add blue cohosh? I wondered.

“The babe needs to come quickly,” Marsali told Fergus, with every appearance of calm. Obviously, I hadn’t been as successful in hiding my concern as I’d thought.

She had her rosary with her, and now wound it round her hand, the cross dangling. “Help me,
mon cher.
”

He lifted the hand with the rosary, and kissed it.

“Oui, cherie.”
He crossed himself then, and set to work.

Fergus had spent the first ten years of his life in the brothel where he’d been born. Consequently, he knew a great deal more about women—in some ways—than any other man I’d ever met. Even so, I was astonished to see him reach for the strings at the neck of Marsali’s shift, and draw it down, exposing her breasts.

Marsali didn’t seem at all surprised, merely lying back and turning slightly toward him, the hump of her belly nudging him as she did so.

He knelt on a stool beside the bed, and placing a hand tenderly but absently on the bulge, bent his head toward Marsali’s breast, lips slightly pursed. Then he appeared to notice me gaping at him, and glanced up over her belly.

“Oh.” He smiled at me. “You have not—well, I suppose you would perhaps not have seen this, milady?”

“I can’t say that I have.” I was torn between fascination and a feeling that I should avert my eyes. “What . . . ?”

“When the birth pangs are slow to start, suckling the woman’s breasts encourages the womb to move, thus to hasten the child,” he explained, and brushed a thumb unconsciously over one dark-brown nipple, so that it rose, round and hard as a spring cherry. “In the brothel, if one of
les filles
had a difficulty, sometimes another would do such service for her. I have done it for
ma douce
before—when Félicité came. It helps; you will see.”

And without more ado, he cupped the breast in both hands and took the nipple into his mouth, sucking gently, but with great concentration, his eyes closed.

Marsali sighed, and her body seemed to relax in the flowing way that a pregnant woman’s does, as though she were suddenly boneless as a stranded jellyfish.

I was more than disconcerted, but I couldn’t leave, in case anything drastic should happen.

I hesitated for a moment, then pulled out a stool and sat down on it, trying to be inconspicuous. In fact, though, neither of them appeared to be at all concerned with my presence—if they were even aware of me anymore. I did, however, turn away a little, so as not to stare.