When I returned again, they had opened the shutters and lit several lamps. The room was unbearably hot on this unusually still night. When I reached over Rachel to hand Hannah another mortar I discovered why: I could feel her fever several inches from her skin. I took a closer look at Theodore and saw his shirt was soaked through everywhere she had pressed against him. The sheets below her were sodden as well.
Muri was soaking rags in a basin of cool water. She began handing them to Theodore, who placed them on Rachel’s head.
“Can she have water?” I asked Gaston. “To drink. It looks as if she has produced more sweat than she has blood.”
He was busy mixing herbs. He glanced up at her. “Oui, if we can get her to drink it.”
I ran and fetched another ewer of drinking water and a small cup.
“’Ow is she?” Henrietta asked as I passed.
“She fevers.”
She gave a knowing nod, her features grave. “Liam has gone for the midwife, but with Lord Montren and those two up there, she’s already got the best.”
“I agree, still the midwife might know some trick the others do not. One can never tell.” She might also cause all sorts of difficulties and have to be thrown out of the house.
Bones ushered Father Pierre into the atrium as I reached the stairs. I motioned for him to follow me. Once we were on the balcony I quickly explained what I knew. He crossed himself and followed me without comment to the room. Rachel seemed pleased to see him, and between the good father and Theodore, they got her to drink some water.
As the room was now quite crowded, I retreated to the doorway and watched Gaston deliver the mixture he had prepared to her entry and squirt it high inside her with the syringe. I wished to ask him what it would do, but shouting the question from where I stood seemed inappropriate. I knew there were concoctions a woman could drink or put in her vagina if she wished to end a pregnancy: I guessed this was the same or something similar. I realized I knew little of the process. I had always heard talk of a woman being open and ready to push the babe out. I did not know how they kept a baby in. I sat with my back to the railing and sifted through a morass of memories: things I had overheard, Vivian’s birth, Gaston’s occasional informative statement on the matter, and remembered sensations from being inside a woman. Sadly, my cock, as sensitive as it was, had proven less than informative: it was surely not a fingertip. I supposed I could go and look at one of the medical books in the library. One of them surely had a diagram explaining a woman’s internal parts.
There was movement to my right. I turned to find Agnes waving me closer. I reluctantly stood and went to join her.
“I will have another baby,” she blurted. “This… What Rachel now endures, is a rare thing. I was fine last time. I will be fine again.”
I wished to argue that Rachel had purportedly been fine last time. Instead I wondered at Agnes’ change of heart. I glanced about and did not see Yvette. “Does Yvette wish for you to have a child?” I asked.
Her lips tightened briefly and her eyes flicked away. “Aye. But it is because she knows I want one and I am only scared.” She added quickly, “So please continue to give me your seed.”
Something in her manner and her choice of words raised my hackles, but Gaston called for me and I endeavored to shake the unease away. “If that is what you truly wish, then so be it.” I told her. “Think it over, we will discuss it when we all feel better and this is behind us.”
Agnes seemed pleased with this, and I went to Gaston only to be sent on another run to the medicine cabinet in the surgery. Liam caught me as I began to mount the stairs on my return.
“The midwife’s across the island,” he said. “Tendin’ another birth.” He watched me expectantly.
I shrugged. “We have two here from what I understand, and Gaston. I am fairly sure she is not needed. Thank you for trying, though.”
“Is there anything else we can do?” he asked.
“Nay, I think not. The priest is here. Events will unfold…”
“As God wishes, aye,” he said sadly. “We’ll be prayin’ for ’em.”
I nodded and wondered if that was perhaps the best course for me to take as well. Was there not a Goddess responsible for childbirth? It was not Juno, or Vesta, or surely Athena. Nay, it was Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, but also of such disparate things as childbirth and slaves.
Agnes was once again thankfully absent when I reached the door. I delivered my burden and retreated to the balcony again. Inside, Father Pierre was reading the Bible to Rachel while Theodore and Muri continued to sponge her burning skin. Gaston and Hannah were waiting on something. They sat and stared at nothing. I was about to creep inside and ask my matelot what was happening when he sat up and carefully shoved his hand up Rachel’s passage. His tongue appeared at the corner of his lips and he adopted the frown of concentration he always did when examining something with his fingers alone. Then his frown changed to one of concern. He pulled his hand free and regarded his fingers. His nose wrinkled. Hannah turned her back to Rachel, smelled Gaston’s fingers, motioned for Muri to join them and they began to confer in rapid whispers.
They finally nodded in some mutual agreement and Gaston stood and came to join me on the balcony. He squatted beside me with a worried mien.
“The baby has died and been rotting inside her for weeks,” he whispered.
“Gods…” I breathed as I considered the implications.
“It is foul. Hannah and Muri say that usually the woman goes into labor of her own accord after a baby dies. Sometimes it takes weeks. Rachel has gone too long and the baby has begun to decay. Now it is a sepsis in her womb. That is why she fevers. They say many women live after bearing a baby that has been dead—even if it has been for days or over a week. Normally they do not fever. Normally, they say, the baby does not begin to decay such as this one has. We must get it and the afterbirth out. But Rachel’s womb does not seem to want to contract. We have applied a substance to the cervix that usually causes it to contract and cramp in the hopes this will cause her to open. It seems to be working, but it is very slow.”
“Servicks?” I asked.
“The sphincter at the bottom of the womb,” he said.
That explained a great deal. I decided not to regale him with my ignorance on the matter.
“Muri says that if we can get the cervix to open fully, Rachel should begin to labor,” he said.
“Should?” I asked. “What if she does not?”
“I do not know, Will. It is like a big wound that must be cleaned, and I know not how to do it and have her live except through that opening. If the cervix does not open enough… In a cow you can reach in and turn the calf, but only if the womb is fully open. Women are quite a bit smaller, and I can only get two fingers in there now.” He regarded his digits and grimaced.
“So we wait?” I asked.
“She could die from the sepsis while we wait,” he said. “She could die from the sepsis even if we get it out. She knows she was foolish in not telling anyone so that we could start this sooner. I guess she hoped it would live after all.”
“I cannot imagine walking about with a dead body inside me,” I said.
Gaston shuddered in answer.
Something else he had said echoed in my thoughts. “You said that normally women do not do this. Perhaps that is why her last child died. Perhaps she is not normal.”
“But then how did she have the first one?” he asked.
I shrugged and he mirrored it.
“There is so damn much we do not know, Will,” he said sadly.
We waited. Gaston sat beside me and took my hand. The house quieted as people returned to bed, each one asking if they could be of assistance before they did, and assuring us they were there if we should need them no matter the hour or circumstance.
The women and Gaston took turns examining Rachel’s passage. Rachel began to pass in and out of a fevered delirium. I silently asked Diana and the Gods for their aid. I
contemplated madness in women. I wondered how much someone must want a child to carry it around dead in the hopes it would somehow come back to life. I wondered if women were more inclined to be creatures of their Horses, or less.
I dozed—until someone kicked my foot. I woke in time to see Doucette shuffling into the room. I cursed. It was echoed to my right by Yvette who was running around the balcony to catch her husband.
Gaston was sitting at the foot of the bed conferring with Muri again. They looked up with surprise at Doucette’s entry. Yvette and I stood in the doorway. Gaston motioned us to silence. Rachel and Theodore appeared to be sleeping; as were Hannah and Father Pierre in the room’s two chairs.
Doucette looked the room over. “What is wrong?” he asked loudly enough to wake everyone.
Gaston sighed. “Let us go out and I will tell you of it.”
“Non, stay with your patient. Tell me here,” Doucette said.
“The baby has died inside her,” Gaston said with his best physician’s voice. “We are attempting to induce her to labor so that we might remove it. As of yet, her cervix has not opened to the necessary size. She is fevering as if suffering from severe sepsis.”
Doucette nodded. “How long?”
“The baby might have been dead for three weeks,” Gaston said with a grimace: as if it was his fault.
Doucette cursed with incredulity, ending with, “Women are mad when they are pregnant—and after. Non, they are never in their right mind—always at the whim of their heart and loins and not their heads.”
“Dominic,” Gaston said tiredly. “Do you have any aid to offer or not?”
Doucette snorted. “How wide is the opening?”
Gaston showed him three fingers.
“Here is what you do, then,” Doucette said. “Get a length of copper wire, the kind jewelers use. There should be some in the surgery. Make a loop of it as wide as your fingers. Affix it to a stick or leather handle so that you can grip it. Then insert it in her uterus and pull the body parts out. If they are not free to move, the wire will cut them so that they will fit through the hole. The skull might be difficult. If the body is good and rotten, it might be easier. Otherwise you will need to just tear the cervix and get your hand in there and crush it. Remember to scoop the placenta out. Then rinse the womb out with salty water. If you cut her or she hemorrhages, she will die.”
I believe everyone was stunned speechless. I surely was.
Yvette was the first to move. “Dominic! You heartless bastard!” she screeched as she cuffed his head and began dragging him from the room. I snatched his cane as they passed to stop him from trying to strike her with it.
Rachel had started making a strange keening sound. I saw very little sanity in her eyes. Above her, Theodore’s gaze was no better.
Hannah and Muri appeared grim and they were arguing fiercely with one another.
Father Pierre had his eyes closed and his lips moved in fervent prayer.
My greatest concern was my matelot. He knelt there, very still, with his Child about his face. It was as if someone had struck him and he did not know why.
I knelt before him. “Laudanum?”
“Oui, please,” he whispered.
“For everyone?”
He nodded slowly. “That would be best.” He looked to Hannah and Muri.
Hannah backed to the wall with a grim shake of her head. “It could save her, but it is evil.”
I did not think she was referring to the laudanum, as she had not heard my exchange with Gaston.
Muri said something in her own language and pushed around Gaston and ran from the room.
“There is no question it is dead?” Father Pierre asked in her wake.
Gaston shook his head.
Father Pierre nodded. “It is an awful and terrible thing, but if it will save her life?”
Gaston nodded, and then with a sad sigh he turned to the Theodores. “I think Doucette is correct. That method should work. It might save your… her life.” He stopped, he had been addressing Rachel, but she had begun to rock in Theodore’s arms and now she buried her face in his chest and wailed. “It is the best option we have,” he added.
Theodore gave a tight nod.
I stood and went to the door. Gaston lunged after me and we slipped out into the cool night breeze that had finally risen.
“I do not know if I can do this, Will,” he said with a small voice. I saw only his Child about him now.
I was telling myself it was only a body: it was no longer a baby. It was tumor or wound that was killing Rachel and it must be excised and cleaned to save her. But I understood my matelot’s duress. I had seen him amputate limbs, cauterize wounds, dig lead balls and splinters from all manner of flesh, and drain putrescence that stank like opened graves or worse; but none of that surgery had been done to a baby, or more importantly, a woman. Even now, they were all his sister. Other than his delivery of healthy babies of healthy women, we had never had an opportunity or reason to inure him to performing surgery upon a woman. This thing he was now asked to do was horrific even to a man without a wounded and scarred soul; but for Gaston, I could not see where it would be possible.
A sickening wave of resignation flowed over me like tar: scalding and coating me until I felt I could not move or breathe.
“Can you watch?” I asked my matelot.
He gasped. “She might bleed.”
I saw him slip away until there was nothing left but a sad little boy whose sister had died in his arms. I swore vehemently and embraced him. He returned it in the curiously tender way he had when the Child as about him.
I released him enough to take his shoulders. “Stay here. Sit down,” I said gently. “I will fetch the medicine.”
He took a step with me as I began to move, his eyes pleading. With a sigh, I took his hand and we went to the surgery. I made him sit on the stool and close his eyes while I searched for, found, and fashioned the wire as Doucette had instructed. Then I collected everything else I thought might be needed; rags, another basin, and—though all conscious thought as to how it should be used sickened me—a large spoon.
Then I found the laudanum and gave us both a small dose.
Once we were back upstairs, I bade Gaston sit in the corner with his eyes closed. Father Pierre, Theodore, and Hannah regarded him with curiosity and then concern.
“Do not say a word,” I snapped at the three of them as I handed Theodore a dose of the drug. “Drink this. Then I will prepare a draught for Rachel. If you two,” I pointed at the priest and Hannah, “cannot bear this, then leave now.”
“What is the matter with Lord Montren?” Father Pierre asked.
“His sister died in a bloody mess and this is… No sane man should be asked to do this, much less… Leave him be!”
Father Pierre nodded. “What can I do, my son?”
I took a steadying breath as I measured out Rachel’s dose. “When I begin to vomit, would you please clean it up.”
“I can do that,” Hannah said. “I will not touch her or…” She shook her head and looked away. “But I will help you. You must understand. My soul will be in trouble if I…”
“You need say no more,” I said tiredly.
I handed the cup to Theodore, and Father Pierre tried to help him get Rachel to drink it. She fought them.
“Rachel!” I roared. “Do you want to live? For Elizabeth? For your husband?”
She stilled. “Aye,” she said weakly.
“Then drink that so that you do not feel this,” I said softly.
She drank.
I felt the drug as I knelt before her. I did not think I had given myself enough; still, the room seemed distant and hushed. The flicker of lantern light was mesmerizing. Father Pierre moved the lamps closer and held one so that it would shine between her legs. I wished to tell him to stop because I did not wish to see a damn thing, but it seemed too much effort.
Even dulled as I was, I vomited when I smelled the vile odor emanating fro
m her passage. I heaved again the first time the wire caught. Then I was empty, and there was only the crying and cursing and working—all mine.
I could not tell anyone how I accomplished it. I prayed every second that the Gods would be merciful and I would remember none of it.
At some point toward the end I looked up and saw Rachel staring down at me. Her expression was beatific and her pupils huge with the drug. She smiled kindly and told me to go ahead and finish. There was blood flowing from between her legs.
I prayed Gaston was unconscious. I did not dare look toward him. I knew meeting his gaze would make it all real and then some piece of my soul would die and I would never recover it.
And then it was over and I was staggering into the soft and comforting grey of dawn. It was raining, not in torrents, but a pleasant drizzle that cooled my brow and back and began to soak away the stench. I stumbled down the stairs and found myself in the middle of the atrium.
I spread my arms and turned my face up to the rain. The words rose unbidden, pouring from my mouth and climbing the weave of drops to the hidden stars. I guessed I was recalling some passage I had read by Hesiod or some other Greek or Roman. “Oh Goddess Diana, merciful goddess of women and the forest, please hear my prayer. I implore you to protect the women I know. To never allow another of them to suffer as Rachel has this night: to never allow another child to die and be remembered in that manner. I am afraid for them, for all of them, and I offer you… a temple, in exchange for your aid. Aye, I will build you temple on the land on the mountain. Please accept it as a gift of my faith and worship.”
I did not know how I would build a proper temple, but that part also seemed correct based upon all I had ever read of Rome and Greece. Heroes were always building shrines and temples or some such thing for their patron deities.
There was no miraculous rumble of thunder or any other such ominous thing to indicate I had done ought but make a fool of myself. Yet, I did feel better. I supposed that was part of faith— if not all of it.
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