by Lisa Cach
Chapter Twenty-two
“Keep her away from me!” Charmaine cried.
Valerian locked eyes with Howard. “Explain to her. I must be allowed to help.”
Howard stood motionless, his eyes wide as he stared at his wife, writhing on the mattress, her brow being cooled by the wet rag in Alice Torrance’s hand.
“Howard!” Alice commanded, evidently as frustrated as Valerian herself. “Do as Valerian says. Your wife will not listen to anyone but you.”
Valerian flashed a look of gratitude to the woman. She had not expected help from that quarter.
Howard shuffled slowly over to the bed and tried to take Charmaine’s hand, but she snatched it away and pointed her finger at his face. “You will not let her touch me, you know what unnatural forces are in her hands. You know, Howard!”
“Your mother cannot come, darling. She told me to fetch Valerian.”
“I want my mother, not her,” Charmaine cried.
“She cannot come,” Howard said, his voice rising, spurred on by his fear for her.
“I want my mother! Go back and get her!”
“You cannot have her, Charmaine!” the normally gentle Howard shouted at last. “Shut up for once and listen to Valerian. She knows what to do.”
All three women blinked at him, and a silence fell. Howard mumbled an apology, then beat a quick retreat from the room, the door shutting quietly behind him.
“I never knew he had it in him,” Alice said. Valerian felt the woman’s eyes turn to her, examining for the fourth or fifth time her bizarre outfit. Alice’s voice hardened. “I do not trust you. I know the evil forces Charmaine speaks of are real, but you know the healing ways, and I cannot think that you would hurt your own kin. I will give you what help you need.”
“Thank you.” Even grudging assistance was more than she would have hoped for from the woman.
Valerian slowly approached the bed. “Charmaine, will you let me touch you?” she asked in her most soothing tones, the ones she used to lull people into trance.
“I wanted my mother with me,” Charmaine complained, turning her face into her pillow.
“I know. I would have wanted her with me, as well. You are frightened and need comfort. You hurt and need healing.”
Valerian waited while Charmaine made up her mind. Another contraction convulsed her body, making her cry out.
“Oh, go ahead,” Charmaine gritted out as the pain faded. “You cannot make it any worse.”
Valerian sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hand over Charmaine’s belly, closing her eyes and gathering her thoughts to send her senses seeking for what was wrong, for what had caused the baby to come early.
She did not expect what she found.
The baby was not right. She caught a confused sense of two hearts, one of which did not beat, both within the same form. There were the wrong number of limbs, and yet it was just one body in Charmaine’s womb, one body that even if it survived the birth, would not survive more than an hour or two in this world.
“Charmaine,” Valerian said, “Listen to me. The baby must come now. You cannot keep it within you.” Charmaine’s body had chosen to abort the child, and it would be best to trust it. If it continued to grow, the birthing of it at full term might be fatal to Charmaine.
“It is too soon, it has not been nine months,” Charmaine said, pleading in her voice. “Help me keep my baby, Valerian. Do whatever you have to, just let me keep my baby.”
“I am sorry, Charmaine. It must be now.”
Time moved slowly as Valerian and Alice sat with Charmaine, waiting for her body to go through the process of birth, the contractions still far apart. Dawn came, and then morning turned to afternoon, and still the baby did not come. Valerian lay her hand again on Charmaine’s belly, and listened to what her cousin’s body told her. The contractions were growing further apart, not closer. The labor was ending, without delivery.
Valerian went to her basket of medicines, and then to the fire where there was water heating, and mixed up a concoction of ergot. It would bring back the contractions, and help expel both the child and the placenta, and help as well to prevent hemorrhage. It was a drug she only used in the most critical of cases, for it had side effects that could be severe.
Charmaine made a face at the ugly brown liquid, but drank it. She was too tired to protest.
It was over an hour before the drug began to take effect, and the first signs of it were not good.
Charmaine’s eyes darted from one side of the bed to the other. “What is that?”
“What is what?” Valerian asked.
Charmaine’s eyes moved as if tracking something, over to the corner of the room where the shadows had begun to gather. “That,” she whispered, staring, and then was overcome by the pain of a contraction. She shut her eyes and writhed, moaning. Alice held her hand and murmured soothing words to her.
When the contraction ended, Charmaine opened her eyes, staring again at the corner of the room. “It is still there. What is it?” Her voice rose. “It is watching me, stop it, it is watching me!”
“Charmaine, listen to me,” Valerian said calmly, her voice as low and commanding as she could make it. “It is the medicine I gave you. It is making you see things that are not there. It is not real, whatever you see.”
Her cousin seemed not to hear her. Her feet jerked, and then she was kicking at the empty space at the foot of the bed. “Get away! Get off me!”
“What is it?” Alice asked, eyes wide. “What do you see?”
“Do not touch my baby!”
“What is it?” Alice shouted, catching Charmaine’s panic.
“Alice, it is an illusion,” Valerian explained, but the woman did not hear her, her eyes focused on Charmaine.
“A demon, a black demon with yellow eyes,” Charmaine cried. Another contraction hit her, and she screamed. “It claws at me! It rips my belly!”
Alice backed away from the bed, dropping Charmaine’s hand and beginning to recite the Lord’s Prayer, her eyes wild. “Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be—”
“Alice. Mrs. Torrance!” Valerian demanded, trying to pull the woman out of her terror, to no effect. Damn. Damn, damn, and double damn, she cursed silently.
The contraction ended, and the room fell quiet except for the soft chant of Alice’s prayer, “. . . this day our daily bread, and forgive us . . .”
Charmaine’s terrified gaze slowly moved from her feet, across the bed, and then over Valerian’s shoulder. Despite herself, Valerian turned her head to look, so intense was Charmaine’s gaze.
“You brought it,” Charmaine said. “You called forth the demon.”
Alice’s chanting stopped as she listened.
“It is the medicine, making you see things, Charmaine. That is all. I will try to take its effects from you,” Valerian said, moving towards the bed, reaching out a hand to lay on Charmaine’s forehead.
Charmaine shrank from her, then rolled to her side and tried to claw her way off the bed. “No!”
“Where is it now?” Alice asked, her eyes darting about the room.
“Do you not see it?” Charmaine cried, clinging to the edge of the bed, her legs drawn up around her belly. “It crouches there upon her shoulder, its tail wrapped round her neck.” The next contraction hit, and she screamed, the cry one of terror and pain. “It claws me! It chews upon my baby!”
Alice gaped in horror first at Charmaine, and then at Valerian, and then ran from the room.
Chapter Twenty-three
It was late afternoon when Nathaniel and Lord Carlyle rode into the meadow around the cottage. No smoke rose from the chimney, and all was quiet. Nathaniel dismounted, Lord Carlyle following suit, and went to go knock upon the door.
There was no answer. Nathaniel could almost feel the tension in his companion’s body, waiting for some sign from within the silent cottage. To come after all these years to find no one at home seemed to Nathaniel too much for the man to bear
. He sent a silent plea for forgiveness to Valerian and her aunt, and pushed open the door uninvited.
The familiar scent of herbs and wood smoke was overlain with an odor of illness. The interior of the cottage was no warmer than the outside, the fire long dead in the grate, and at first he thought that there could not possibly be anyone at home. And then, in the quiet, he heard the rasp of labored breathing.
He took the three strides that separated him from the curtained bed, his boot heels loud on the plank flooring, and pulled back the draperies. The sight that met his eyes hit him like a punch to the gut.
“My God,” Lord Carlyle swore behind him, as he too saw. “Theresa.”
Nathaniel stepped away as Lord Carlyle shoved the draperies farther back and knelt beside the bed, finding one of Theresa’s hands and taking it in his own. “Theresa, can you hear me?”
Nathaniel watched as her eyes slowly opened in the gaunt, yellowed face. The body that he remembered as being stout and robust now barely caused a rise in the blankets that covered her. She must have been ill for several weeks, and Valerian had never told him how bad it was. The thought that she had been living with this secret for weeks, and had not trusted him with it, made him almost dizzy with rage and hurt.
And where was she now?
“Thomas,” Theresa said softly to Lord Carlyle, apparently unsurprised to see him at her bedside. “It is good to see you.”
“Shall I fetch a doctor?”
Theresa smiled at him. “No. It will not be long now.”
Nathaniel went and rebuilt the fire, then came back to the bedside, his agitation only growing. “Where is Valerian? She should be here, caring for you.” When he thought that she had been happily accompanying him at the ball last night while her aunt lay here dying, it made him sick inside. It did not fit with what he knew of her, but the evidence before his eyes appeared irrefutable.
“She is needed elsewhere.”
“By whom? Who could be more important? How could she leave you?”
“Nathaniel,” Lord Carlyle said. “This is no time for arguments.”
“Valerian is the one person who could save her,” he bit out, then turned again to Theresa. “Why is she not here?”
“Hush,” Theresa ordered him, a hint of her old authority in her rasping voice. “She has followed my wishes in all things. She does not know how close my time is, and you will not tell her.”
“Like hell—”
“No!” Theresa ordered, and Nathaniel snapped his mouth shut. “There is nothing she could do for me,” Theresa explained more quietly. “And there is much she can do for Charmaine. She has been brought to childbed too soon, and Valerian labors to save both her and the child. Would you have me give up my daughter and grandchild for an hour more of my own life? I will not have her distracted by worry over me.”
“And how will she feel when she finally returns and finds you dead?” Nathaniel asked.
“That will not happen. You will see to it that she is not alone when she hears of my death.”
He looked into her eyes for a long moment, and then could only nod in silent assent, feeling some of the anger drain out of him. He did not have it in him to argue with the wishes of a dying woman. If Valerian had indeed followed Theresa’s wishes in all things, then it could have been Theresa’s idea to keep her illness a secret. His anger would do nothing to help Valerian when she learned she had lost her aunt. “What can we do for you?”
“Stay with me.”
Nathaniel almost smiled at that, suspecting she did not trust him not to fetch Valerian. He dragged two chairs over to the bed. Lord Carlyle did not release Theresa’s hand as he rose from his knees to sit in the chair.
Theresa’s eyes closed and she seemed to drift off to sleep. Neither of them spoke, watching, listening to each of Theresa’s labored breaths. The shadows grew deeper, and Nathaniel rose to light candles and add more wood to the fire.
Nathaniel did not know how much time had passed when Theresa opened her eyes again, but it felt like hours.
“Still here, are you?” she asked Lord Carlyle.
“It was wrong of me to abandon you the first time. I would not do it again.”
“Oh, Thomas,” she said on a sigh. “Have you been feeling guilty all these years?”
“I could have done more for you.”
“You gave me more than you will ever know.”
“I loved you. I love you still.”
“No, Thomas, you do not.”
“You cannot know what is in my heart,” he protested.
“Can I not? Do not confuse guilt with love. Do not confuse decades of regret with decades of pining for a woman. You do not love me, Thomas, except as a reminder of the pain shame can bring.”
“You are wrong,” he said, and even Nathaniel could hear the thin thread of doubt in the words.
“I never thought ill of you, Thomas. And it was a very fine horse you gave us upon which to escape.”
Lord Carlyle’s lips quirked at that, and Nathaniel saw their eyes meet in silent communion as understanding and forgiveness passed between them.
Theresa’s eyes closed again, her breathing slowed, and then stopped. Lord Carlyle released her hand, and lay it gently on the counterpane.
Theresa Harrow was dead.
Chapter Twenty-four
Valerian felt tears of frustration start in her eyes, and sniffed them back with determination. Aunt Theresa would not cry. Aunt Theresa would not let the situation get the best of her. She would do something about it.
She stood still and blocked out the sounds of Charmaine’s howls of pain and terror. She summoned all her reserves, drawing from deep within herself the love she felt for her parents, her aunt, and the people of Greyfriars, her love of mountains and ocean and green growing things, her love of Oscar and the animals of the forest and the meadow. She drew on the tenuous bond she held with Nathaniel. She drew on it all, to a depth she had never before attempted, and let it fill her body, then flow down through her hands.
She approached the bed, and Charmaine huddled away from her, her eyes glassy, her limbs too weak for her to escape. Valerian lifted her hands and placed them both over Charmaine’s eyes. She saw light glowing around her hands, then spreading over Charmaine’s face and down her body.
Valerian could sense her cousin’s dark illusions, and feel them slowly giving way under her touch. The ergot was still active, but under the influence of her healing touch the images metamorphosed into sunlight and heavenly creatures, there to help and not to harm.
She lifted her hands away, and saw that the terror had left her cousin. Her eyes were still lost, but in a place of light rather than darkness.
Another contraction came and Charmaine whimpered, her jaw clenching, but she did not fight it. Valerian knew the time had at last come, and she helped her cousin out of the bed and to the low, crescent-shaped birthing stool that stood beside it.
The birth itself did not take long, and Valerian helped ease from Charmaine’s straining passage the small, misshapen body of her children.
For it was not one child, she saw now, but two, twins who had not separated in the womb as they should have, and were forever melded into one form. She felt the life ebbing from the surviving child, and with the touch of her hand sent love and quiet peace to its fragile consciousness as it slipped away.
She wrapped the children in a blanket and set them gently aside, returning the focus of her concentration to Charmaine. Once the placenta was delivered, she helped her cousin back to the bed, washing her, and changing her sleeping chemise.
“My baby?” Charmaine asked on a whisper, her eyes heavy with weariness.
“They sleep with God,” Valerian said softly. She kissed her cousin on the forehead, sending her into a deep sleep of her own where she could begin to heal, and where she could avoid for at least a time the loss of her babies.
Valerian’s own strength began to fade, now that the crisis was finished. She cleaned up the floor as
best she could, and washed her hands and forearms, bloody from the delivery. She looked at the small bundle lying on the floor, then went and picked it up, sitting down in a chair.
She pulled back the cover of the blanket, looking at the two small faces, touching one downy cheek with the tip of her finger. They were so small, so fragile. Their life had been taken before it could even begin. Tears slipped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, dripping onto the blanket, and she covered the children once more. She would have to tell Howard.
But first, for a moment, she would rest. She was so tired. Her eyelids drooped shut, and she let her head fall forward, resting her chin on her chest. Just a moment of rest, just a moment . . .
The pounding of many footsteps rushing up the stairs woke her with a start. For a minute she was disoriented, blinking at the dim room, then at the bundle on her lap, held there by the weight of her arm.
The door flew open, banging against the wall, and a group of villagers piled in, led by Alice and a confused Howard. The quiet in the room brought them to a halt, and for a long second they were frozen there, taking in Charmaine’s quiet sleep, and then the bundle on Valerian’s lap.
“Hush,” Valerian said softly, and gently shooed the crowd back. Bewildered by the peaceful scene, they obeyed, murmuring lowly, and Valerian followed them out of the room, for the moment her only concern that Charmaine not be disturbed.
Once down below in the kitchen, voices rose in volume, arguing over the peaceful scene above. Obviously, there were no demons tearing at Charmaine now.
Valerian held the bundle close to her chest, and as she felt the unnatural form through the blanket it dawned on her what danger she might be in if these villagers asked to see the baby. Eddie’s imagined groin ailment was as nothing compared to concrete proof that evil was at work.
She wanted to believe that here in her cousin’s house, she was safe. And she could be, if she handled this well with Howard.
There was no space to speak privately with him in the kitchen, so she led him into the shop in front while the others continued their debate. Alice made as if to follow, but Howard, perhaps having had enough of her, asked her to wait. He looked nervous, although whether of the group in his kitchen or of Valerian herself, she could not be sure. She had known him as a gentle man, but never known him well. She did not know how thoroughly he might share Charmaine’s dislike of anything bordering on the supernatural.
