“To a lonely rock under a burning sun, with a vulture gnawing on your liver,” I said, and laughed.
So did Jamie.
“Aye, well, a lonely rock under a burning sun is a verra good place to have company, I should think. And I dinna mean the vulture, either.”
His hands gave a final squeeze to my shoulders, but he didn’t take them away. I leaned my head back against him, eyes closed, taking comfort in his company.
In the momentary silence, we could hear small sounds across the hall, from the surgery. A muffled grunt from Marsali as a contraction came on, a soft French question from Fergus.
I felt that we really ought not to be listening—but neither of us could think of anything to say, to cover the sounds of their private conversation.
A murmur from Marsali, a pause, then Fergus said something hesitant.
“Aye, like we did before Félicité,” came Marsali’s voice, muffled, but quite clear.
“Oui, but—”
“Put something against the door, then,” she said, sounding impatient.
We heard footsteps, and the door to the surgery swung open. Fergus stood there, dark hair disheveled, shirt half-buttoned, and his handsome face deeply flushed under the shadow of beard stubble. He saw us, and the most extraordinary look flitted across his face. Pride, embarrassment, and something indefinably . . . French. He gave Jamie a lopsided smile and a one-shouldered shrug of supreme Gallic insouciance—then firmly shut the door. We heard the grating sounds of a small table being moved, and a small thump as it was shoved against the door.
Jamie and I exchanged looks of bafflement.
Giggles came from behind the closed door, accompanied by a massive creaking and rustling.
“He’s no going to—” Jamie began, and stopped abruptly, looking incredulous. “Is he?”
Evidently so, judging from the faint rhythmic creaks that began to be heard from the surgery.
I felt a slight warmth wash through me, along with a mild sense of shock—and a slightly stronger urge to laugh.
“Well . . . er . . . I have heard that . . . um . . . it does sometimes seem to bring on labor. If a child was overdue, the maîtresses sage femme in Paris would sometimes tell women to get their husbands drunk and . . . er-hmm.”
Jamie gave the surgery door a look of disbelief, mingled with grudging respect.
“And him with not even a dram taken. Well, if that’s what he’s up to, the wee bugger’s got balls, I’ll say that for him.”
Ian, coming down the hall in time to hear this exchange, stopped dead. He listened for a moment to the noises proceeding from the surgery, looked from Jamie and me to the surgery door, back, then shook his head and turned around, going back to the kitchen.
Jamie reached out and gently closed the study door.
Without comment, he sat down again, picked up his pen, and began scratching doggedly away. I went over to the small bookshelf, and stood there staring at the collection of battered spines, taking nothing in.
Old wives’ tales were sometimes nothing more than old wives’ tales. Sometimes they weren’t.
I was seldom troubled by personal recollections while dealing with patients; I had neither time nor attention to spare. At the moment, though, I had much too much of both. And a very vivid memory indeed of the night before Bree’s birth.
People often say that women forget what childbirth is like, because if they remembered, no one would ever do it more than once. Personally, I had no trouble at all remembering.
The sense of massive inertia, particularly. That endless time toward the end, when it seems that it never will end, that one is mired in some prehistoric tar pit, every small move a struggle doomed to futility. Every square centimeter of skin stretched as thin as one’s temper.
You don’t forget. You simply get to the point where you don’t care what birth will feel like; anything is better than being pregnant for an instant longer.
I’d reached that point roughly two weeks before my due date. The date came—and passed. A week later, I was in a state of chronic hysteria, if one could be simultaneously hysterical and torpid.
Frank was physically more comfortable than I was, but in terms of nerves, there wasn’t much to choose between us. Both of us were terrified—not merely of the birth, but of what might come after. Frank being Frank, he reacted to terror by becoming very quiet, withdrawing into himself, to a place where he could control what was happening, by refusing to let anything in.
But I was in no mood to respect anyone’s barriers, and broke down in tears of sheer despair, after being informed by a cheerful obstetrician that I was not dilated at all, and “it might be several days—maybe another week.”
Trying to calm me, Frank had resorted to rubbing my feet. Then my back, my neck, my shoulders—anything I would let him touch. And gradually, I had exhausted myself and lain quiet, letting him touch me. And . . . and we were both terrified, and terribly in need of reassurance, and neither of us had any words with which to give it.
And he made love to me, slowly and gently, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms—and woke up in a state of panic several hours later when my water broke.
“Claire!” I suppose Jamie had called my name more than once; I had been so lost in memory that I had forgotten entirely where I was.
“What?” I swung round, heart pounding. “Has something happened?”
“No, not yet.” He studied me for a moment, brow creased, then got up and came to stand by me.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
“Yes. I—I was just thinking.”
“Aye, I saw that,” he said dryly. He hesitated, then—as a particularly loud moan came through the door—touched my elbow.
“Are ye afraid?” he said softly. “That ye might be wi’ child yourself, I mean?”
“No,” I said, and heard the note of desolation in my voice as clearly as he did. “I know I’m not.” I looked up at him; his face was blurred by a haze of unshed tears. “I’m sad that I’m not—that I never will be again.”
I blinked hard, and saw the same emotions on his face that I felt—relief and regret, mingled in such proportion that it was impossible to say which was foremost. He put his arms round me and I rested my forehead on his chest, thinking what comfort it was to know that I had company on this rock, as well.
We stood quietly for some time, just breathing. Then there came a sudden change in the surreptitious noises in the surgery. There was a small cry of surprise, a louder exclamation in French, and then the sound of feet landing heavily on the floor, together with the unmistakable splash of amniotic fluid.
THINGS DID MOVE quickly. Within an hour, I saw the crowning of a black-fuzzed skull.
“He’s got lots of hair,” I reported, easing the perineum with oil. “Be careful, don’t push too hard! Not yet.” I spanned the curve of the emerging skull with my hand. “He’s got a really big head.”
“I wouldna ever have guessed that,” said Marsali, red-faced and panting. “Thank ye for telling me.”
I barely had time to laugh, before the head eased neatly out into my hands, facedown. The cord was round the neck, but not tightly, thank God! I got a finger under it and eased it free, and didn’t have to say, “Push!” before Marsali took a breath that went to China and shot the infant into my middle like a cannonball.
It was like being suddenly handed a greased pig, and I fumbled madly, trying to get the little creature turned upright and see whether he—or she—was breathing.
Meanwhile, there were shrieks of excitement from Malva and Mrs. Bug, and heavy footsteps hastening down the hall from the kitchen.
I found the baby’s face, hastily cleared the nostrils and mouth, blew a short puff of air into the mouth, snapped a finger against the sole of one foot. The foot jerked back in reflex, and the mouth opened wide in a lusty howl.
“Bon soir, Monsieur L’Oeuf,” I said, checking hastily to be sure that it was indeed Monsieur.
“Monsieur?” Fergus’s face split in an ears-wide grin.
“Monsieur,” I confirmed, and hastily wrapping the baby in a flannel, thrust him into his father’s arms while I turned my attention to tying and cutting the cord, then tending to his mother.
His mother, thank God, was doing well. Exhausted and sweat-drenched, but likewise grinning. So was everyone else in the room. The floor was puddled, the bedding soaked, and the atmosphere thick with the fecund scents of birth, but no one seemed to notice in the general excitement.
I kneaded Marsali’s belly to encourage the uterus to contract, while Mrs. Bug brought her an enormous mug of beer to drink.
“He’s all right?” she said, emerging after thirstily engulfing this. “Truly all right?”
“Well, he’s got two arms, two legs, and a head,” I said. “I hadn’t time to count the fingers and toes.”
Fergus laid the baby on the table beside Marsali.
“See for yourself, ma cher,” he said. He folded back the blanket. And blinked, then leaned closer, frowning.
Ian and Jamie stopped talking, seeing him.
“Is there something amiss, then?” Ian asked, coming over.
Sudden silence struck the room. Malva glanced from one face to another, bewildered.
“Maman?”
Germain stood in the doorway, swaying sleepily.
“Is he here? C’est Monsieur?”
Without waiting for answer or permission, he staggered forward and leaned on the bloodstained bedding, mouth a little open as he stared at his newborn brother.
“He looks funny,” he said, and frowned a little. “What’s wrong with him?”
Fergus had been standing stock-still, as had we all. At this, he looked down at Germain, then glanced back at the baby, then again to his firstborn son.
“Il est un nain,” he said, almost casually. He squeezed Germain’s shoulder, hard enough to elicit a yelp of startlement from the boy, then turned suddenly on his heel and went out. I heard the opening of the front door, and a cold draft swept down the hall and through the room.
Il est un nain. He is a dwarf.
Fergus hadn’t closed the door, and the wind blew out the candles, leaving us in semidarkness, lit only by the glow of the brazier.
36
WINTER WOLVES
LITTLE HENRI-CHRISTIAN appeared to be perfectly healthy; he was simply a dwarf. He was slightly jaundiced, though, with a faint gold cast to his skin that gave his round cheeks a delicate glow, like the petals of a daffodil. With a slick of black hair across the top of his head, he might have been a Chinese baby—bar the huge, round blue eyes.
In a way, I supposed I should feel grateful to him. Nothing less than the birth of a dwarf could have deflected the attention of the Ridge from me and the events of the past month. As it was, people no longer stared at my healing face or stumbled awkwardly to find something to say to me. They had quite a lot to say—to me, to each other, and not infrequently, to Marsali, if neither Bree nor I was in time to stop them.
I supposed they must be saying the same things to Fergus—if they saw him. He had come back, three days following the baby’s birth, silent and dark-faced. He had stayed long enough to assent to Marsali’s choice of name, and to have a brief, private conversation with her. Then he had left again.