Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) Page 14

  There had been a myriad of faces in the outer room, but they had swum together for her as she had hurried to the woman. Beth looked up now. “Do you have a daughter, sir?”

  John’s head popped up when he realized she was addressing him. “Yes.”

  She was going to need help here, Beth thought, a woman’s help. And Sylvia’s stomach was too weak. There was no point in sending for her.

  “Of age?” She wanted no child weeping and moaning at her side.

  “Soon.” He nodded vigorously, his eyes upon his wife. “She’s thirteen summers old.”

  She’d been twelve the first time she had stood by her father to help. Beth nodded. “Send her to me, with the basin.”

  Duncan leaned in for a moment. “Hot water in it, or cold?”

  “Cold, for now.” She wanted the woman’s forehead bathed. The girl could do that, while she saw to the rest. “When Samuel comes, have the one he brings filled with hot water. Now, get out.”

  “Yes, General,” Duncan said, a touch of humor mingled with respect.

  Beth had turned her back on the lot of them. They ceased to exist for her. There was only the woman now, writhing on the bed, her face as shallow as the cloth upon which she lay.

  Enid’s lashes, weighed down with sweat, fluttered open. “Who—?”

  She could not even manage a single question, her breath stolen from her by the continuous onslaught of pain.

  Beth gave the woman her most reassuring smile. “My name is Beth. My father’s a doctor, and I’ve helped him at some birthings.” She squeezed the woman’s damp, bloodied hand in hers. “I’ll do what I can for you.”

  Enid heard only part of what Beth said. She was drowning in a sea aflamed with agony. “Am .. . I., . to ...die?”

  It wasn’t in Beth’s nature to lie, but she could not bring herself to deny the woman some small token of hope, even if she felt there was little to give. “Not tonight, you won’t.”

  “Aaaaii! “

  The shriek that tore from the woman’s lips vibrated within Beth’s very chest.

  “Enid?” John cried from the other side of the door, afraid of the answer.

  “She’s still with us, John, giving it the good fight,” Beth called in response.

  The door behind her opened.

  “I said, stay out,” Beth snapped, as she turned toward the offender.

  A young girl with hair the color of wheat stood hovering in the doorway, a basin in her hands. She was trembling so much, the water was spilling from either side. Her ice-blue eyes were wide with fear.

  “They said—“ She couldn’t finish, her eyes frozen to her mother’s pain-wracked body.

  “No, not you,” Beth beckoned. “I thought your father was entering.”

  When the girl remained standing where she was, Beth took her arm and gently ushered her into the room. She closed the door again.

  “Set it there, please.” Beth nodded at the chair by the bed.

  The girl did as she was told, then began to back out of the room once more, her hand clawing for the latch behind her.

  Beth had pushed the sheet from Enid’s swollen body, intent on examining her. She looked up as the girl retreated.

  “No, I want you to stay.” The girl froze, as if she was afraid to move in either direction. “What’s your name, child?”

  “Jane.” The name dribbled from the girl’s lips, her eyes never leaving her mother.

  “It isn’t always this way for a woman,” Beth assured her gently. “I want you to bathe your mother’s forehead, Jane.”

  The girl nodded slowly, and did as she was bidden.

  Enid’s heels were moving quickly against the mattress, as if she were attempting to scramble away from the pain that wracked her body.

  Beth’s eyes were on Enid’s, her voice calm. “I’m going to see where the baby is, Enid.”

  “In me. Dear God, in meee!” Enid pulled the sheet free beneath her, fisting it in both hands.

  Jane jumped at the scream, almost overturning the basin. She was quick to catch it before it tipped.

  “Yes, I know,” Beth’s voice was low, soothing, belying her own agitation. “But I need to see exactly how it lies within you.”

  As gently as she could, Beth felt the outline of the swell. Her heart began to hammer quickly. Dear God, the child was sideways. Dropping her hands, she stood back.

  Another wave of pain seized her and Enid stuffed her hand into her mouth. Beth grappled with the woman and pulled her hand out once more. She quickly gave Enid the stick to bite on in its stead.

  She’d seen this before, a breech baby. The child would never pass. The woman would die unless the child could be turned. Or taken from her.

  Pushing her sleeves further up her arms once again, Beth began to talk to the woman, her voice steady, never varying above the screams. She tried her best to turn the child.

  And failed.

  Disheartened, Beth moved toward the door and cracked it. “Duncan.”

  In the lull that followed the last scream, Beth’s voice was hardly above a whisper. Duncan still appeared instantly. He’d been listening for her.

  He didn’t like the look upon her face when he entered. “Yes?”

  She motioned him to the side, away from Jane and her mother. The words did not come easily. “I need to take the child from her.”

  He stared at her, not understanding her intent. “What do you mean, ‘take?’ “

  Beth fought to keep the wave of hysteria from her voice. Giving in would do none of them any good. Still, she could taste it in her mouth. It was bitter as bile.

  “It won’t pass the normal way. The child is within her sideways.”

  The news numbed him. Women died giving birth. He thought of John. And the children. “What are you going to do?”

  There was nothing else she could do. “I have to cut her. To operate.”

  Her words stunned him. What manner of woman was she? “You know how?”

  Beth placed a hand to her throat as if to calm herself. She nodded slowly. “I’ve seen it done. If I don’t try—“ She hated the sound of that word, it was so weak. Try, not succeed, but merely try. “If I don’t try,” she repeated, “we’ll lose them both. If I do, there’s a chance of saving them both. Or at least the child.”

  Duncan looked over her head at the woman in the bed. The cry that came from her wasn’t human. Duncan’s jaw grew ridge.

  “Do it.”

  Beth looked up at him in surprise. “The decision isn’t yours to make.”

  The look in his eyes silenced her. He didn’t take the decision lightly, but there was more to think of than just the immediate situation.

  “It can’t be John’s if it goes wrong.” He knew that John could not live with himself if he agreed to this and then Enid died. Duncan accepted the burden, and the outcome that might go with it.

  Duncan looked down at Beth’s face. He was placing his faith in her hands, hands that had worked to make him well. “What do you need?”

  Quickly she enumerated the tools she would need to try and save not one life, but two. “A sharp dagger, cleaned well.” He nodded. “A needle no less sharp, strong thread, and whisky to cleanse her with.”

  Beth took a breath and it hitched within her lungs. There was no denying the fact that she was frightened. And there was no denying the fact that she knew of no other way. “And prayers, if you know any.”

  The prayers he remembered were few, and none had ever received an answer. His expression hardened. “I’ll fetch what you requested.”

  Beth turned to look at the woman and said her own prayers as another scream ripped through the heavy air.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Duncan wouldn’t leave her side.

  Though Beth had instructed him to go and calm the others, he handed that task over to Samuel. It was Samuel who stayed with John and kept him from breaking down the door when Enid’s screams swelled and intensified. Duncan remained with Beth.

 
It was Duncan who held Enid’s frail arms down when Beth made the first painful cut in the woman’s belly. Enid’s scream tore from her lungs, even though Duncan had encouraged her to drink liberally from the whisky bottle to help numb her.

  “She’s fainted from the pain, thank God,” Beth whispered, glancing up as Enid fell back against her flattened pillow. There were times, she thought, when God was merciful.

  Beth worked as quickly as one who was uncertain of what to do was able. The lantern that Samuel had brought with him to guide their way now stood on the chair next to her, guiding her hand instead. She’d sent Jane away. Only she and Duncan were in the room with Enid.

  There was not a part of Beth’s body that wasn’t held fast by tension or drenched with oily sweat as she moved the tip of the dagger along the faint brown line upon the woman’s swollen belly.

  Duncan felt his own stomach turn more than once as he watched Beth’s hand move steadily downward. Blood dripped like mournful tears along the whitened skin as the stroke lengthened.

  Every prayer that Beth knew filled her head and her lungs. This had to work. It had to. What if she lost them both, mother and child? How could she face the woman’s husband? His children?

  How could she face herself?

  Please God, please. Let me remember the way, and guide my hand.

  The incision was finally completed. Her hands covered with the woman’s blood, Beth reached into her belly and took Enid’s baby from her. A lusty cry filled the air as the infant took his first breath. Trembling within, her hand sure and firm without, Beth severed the chord that joined mother to child.

  One was alive, she thought. One more to save.

  Quickly she handed the infant to Duncan. There was no time to look at his expression or say more to him than, “Give him to his sister to clean off. I have need of you here.”

  Every moment counted.

  Beth knew she had to close the opening she had made quickly, before there was too much blood gone. So much had been spilled already, and the woman’s breathing did not please her.

  In her hurry, her fingers began to get in each other’s way. She took a long breath to calm herself, then swabbed the area with a bit more whisky. The skin along the sides shrank and danced in fearful spasms, as if it had a will of its own.

  Exhausted, clinging to shreds of hope, Beth swiftly sewed the flaps of skin together, first one layer, then the other. Her motions imitated her father’s the time she had seen him perform this same surgery on the young slave on their plantation. Angel and her child had lived.

  Please God, so would Enid and the boy.

  She was not certain just when Duncan had entered the room again. She just knew he was there, offering words of comfort, of encouragement. As he spoke, as he soothed, there was a deep reverence in each word.

  “Shine the light here,” Beth instructed, and Duncan lifted the lantern so that it cast its light lower. “Almost done,” she murmured, more to herself than to Duncan or the woman who could not hear her. “Almost done.”

  Duncan was in awe as he watched Beth’s fingers move skillfully. It was like watching St. Peter spin a miracle, he thought. “Will she live?”

  “I don’t know,” Beth muttered, when she realized that she had answered silently the first time.

  She was close to tears, the tension wrenching them from her. She wished her father were here. With all her heart, she wished that it was he who was working upon this human flesh and she the one who held the lantern.

  Would she ever see him perform surgery again? Would she ever see him?

  No, there was no time for that; the woman needed her complete attention. She could not allow herself to lose her heart to sorrow now.

  “But at least the child will live.” Beth let out a long, ragged breath. “There, I’ve finished.”

  With shears that had been used to shear a sheep only a week ago, Beth cut the last bit of thread away. She brushed her hair aside with the back of her wrist, smearing more blood on her face.

  The woman needed to be cleaned better. Her body and bedclothes were all filthy with blood. Beth glanced at the basin. Its contents were dark with blood she had washed from Enid.

  “Is there any more clean water?” Beth asked hoarsely.

  Duncan nodded. He cupped her chin in his hand and slowly rubbed the blood away from her cheek with his thumb. “I had Jamie fetch a bucket from the well.” He glanced toward the window. There was a lightening cloak of gray about the world outside. ‘”Tis almost morning.”

  “Is it?” she asked vacantly, too tired to know the difference. Or care. She stood over Enid and watched as the woman’s chest rose and fell. Still alive, she thought. Enid was still alive.

  Fresh water was brought in. Beth lost no time in cleansing Enid as best she could. Sometime during the night, Amy had come from the manor with food for John and the children. She had brought a fresh change of bedclothes and another nightshirt for Enid. Beth recognized it to be Sylvia’s.

  Beth smiled to herself. So, in her own way, Sylvia had joined this crew as well. Beth slipped the nightshirt on the woman.

  Enid had not awakened since she had fainted earlier. Beth did not know if that was merciful, or a sign of something much worse.

  “Please live,” she murmured.

  Duncan heard and was moved. She was not just a woman to be bedded, but one to be prized as well. He watched as Beth’s fingers touched the woman’s brow. No woman could have been gentler, even with her own mother, he thought.

  The forehead was cool, Beth thought, relieved. Her pallor was the color of day-old porridge, but at least the woman was breathing.

  With a sigh, Beth settled into the chair where the basin had been but a few minutes ago. The seat was damp, but she did not care. If felt as if she hadn’t sat down in a fortnight.

  She saw Duncan looking her way, his brow raised in question. “I’ll stay with her ’til she wakes.”

  He wondered if saints were perverse and tried the patience of their Maker. He knew Beth tried his.

  “Beth,” Duncan said sharply, “you’re tired. It’s been a long night. I’ll take you back to the house.”

  Beth gripped the arms of the rickety wooden chair, holding fast. “I’ll stay with her,” she ground out stubbornly, between teeth that were clenched. Her nerves frayed, she was far beyond reason now. If he argued with her, she would surely hit him with what little strength she had left.

  “As you wish.”

  Duncan knew the signs. She was past exhaustion, and would fight like a wildcat. The only way to remove her would be by force. It was easier to let her stay. Perhaps she would fall asleep where she sat and he would carry her back.

  The thought appealed to him.

  Meanwhile, he closed the door and left her.

  By and by, the woman’s eyes fluttered open. Pain returned, an ever-present bedfellow, but it was a different sort of pain, like the time she had cut her hand with the carving knife. It was like that, but multiplied a thousandfold.

  “Oh, God, the pain,” Enid cried. Her hand flew to her belly. Her eyes widened as her fingers spanned the flattened mound. “Where—?”

  Beth scrambled forward, falling to her knees beside the bed. Her heart was bursting with relief. “You had a son, Enid. A beautiful, lusty boy.”

  “A son,” Enid whispered. Another darling baby boy to love. Then her eyes narrowed as the memory of the long night returned. “He’s alive?”

  “Yes,” Beth breathed, her fingers laced with Enid’s, gratitude flowing through her veins. “And so are you.”

  She remembered, through the haze of pain, hearing words. The baby was turned wrong. She knew two women who had died because of it.

  “But how—?”

  Tired though she was, Beth couldn’t help smiling. It spread from ear to ear.

  “I had to take him from you. There’s an ugly cross on your stomach, but it will heal,” she promised. “And I can give you something for the pain you feel.” There were herbs easil
y found in the meadow that could be used and brewed to deaden the worst of it. Her father had taught her much, as had Callie, a wizened old slave who knew the ways of the land. “And best of all, you’ve a son to show for your wound.”

  “I want to hold him. I want to hold my son,” Enid begged, a mother’s love washing away the pain coursing through her.

  Beth nodded. She rose, her body feeling like lead, and moved from the room to the doorway. She opened it and something felt as if it had been set free.

  “John, your wife wishes to see her newborn son. And you,” she added for good measure, when she saw the sudden fear in the man’s eyes.

  “She’s not—?” John choked upon the word as Samuel and the others crowded around.

  “No,” Beth smiled, content, as she shook her head, “she’s not dying.”

  The door of the cottage was opened and Beth could see the sunrise from where she stood. Long, golden fingers were reaching out across the meadow, nudging aside the darkness.

  As if drawn by the sight, Beth moved to the doorway and leaned against the doorjamb. Behind her, the others filed into the tiny bedroom to see Enid.

  She had to remember to tell Samuel to gather the herbs she needed, she thought, too weary even to form the words now.

  Duncan moved out of the way of the others. Enid would be fine and the burden of her life lifted from his shoulders. By the grace of Beth’s skillful hand.

  He crossed to her. When he slipped his arm around her, Beth leaned against him. He smiled, content just to hold her.

  For a moment, Beth allowed herself to lean into the strength she felt emanating from Duncan. Her own was depleted, like a rain barrel with a hole in it.

  “Have you ever noticed how lovely the sunrise is?” she asked softly.

  “Not nearly so lovely as you.”

  She raised her eyes to look at him and for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her right here, in the midst of all this activity. It was not a thought that met with resistance, though she knew it should.

  “You were magnificent in there.”

  Far from magnificent, she had been frightened beyond belief, but there had been no choice open to her, save the one she had taken. She felt his arm tighten around her. It felt better than she could say to have him here with her like this.