Susannah raised one arm as though it weighed a ton and slowly pushed back her sopping hair with her wrist to fix an eye on Jamie.
“You say so, Mr … Fraser?”
“Aye, I do,” he said.
She went purple and bit her lip, breathing heavily through her nose, head hanging. When the pain let go, she raised it as though it were as heavy as the big iron cauldron.
“Your wife says … I’m gonna die.”
“Aye, well, I’ve got more faith in her than she does, but I suppose it’s your choice who to believe.” He glanced at me, hands half-curled for action. “What d’ye want to do, Sassenach?”
“She needs to be lying down.” My mind was made up and I already had what I needed laid out on the bench. “Can you get her onto the bed? Quickly.”
Susannah had been panting, eyes closed. At this, her eyes sprang open and she straightened, clutching her belly.
“Not the bed! You ain’t gonna spoil my good featherbed! Gaaaarrg!” She curled up like a shrimp again. Agnes was breathing so hard I thought she might faint, but no time to worry about it.
“The floor, then,” I said briefly. “Hurry. Stand back, Agnes!”
Between us, Jamie and I heaved her up, turned her, and laid her down as carefully as we could. She was tremendously heavy, very ungainly, and slick with sweat, though, and came down on the pounded dirt with a solid bump, at which she uttered a wild cry and Jamie said something very blasphemous in Gaelic.
“Bloody hell,” I said, under my breath, and reaching for the bottle of dilute alcohol, I pushed the soggy folds of her shift up and sloshed it over the huge belly, fish white and striped with purple-red stretch marks.
“All right,” I said, and snatched the heaviest of my surgical scalpels. “Jamie, hold her—oh, you’ve got her, good.” Muttering “Jesus, Mary, and Bride, bloody help me …” I laid the blade at the base of her navel.
But before I could make the incision, she screamed as though the touch of cold metal had been a cattle prod, jerked her knees up, then drove her heels down into the dirt, arched her back, thumped down again, and …
“What the devil’s that?” Jamie said, trying to look over the obstruction of Mrs. Cloudtree’s belly.
“It’s a head,” I said. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Push, Susannah!”
She hadn’t waited for instructions. With a ferocious noise, she pushed, and the baby did shoot out like a greased pig. I caught him—was it a him? Yes, it was—in my apron. I thumbed his nose and mouth clear, turned him over, and thumped his wet back lightly. The tiny buttocks squeezed together in protest, relaxed and let out a small spurt of dark fecal matter, but he was making regular huffing noises, sounding much like his mother, though not nearly as loud.
“Agnes!” I shouted. She was already at my shoulder as I turned and I detached my apron, wrapped it hastily round the infant, and thrust him into her arms.
“Shall I cut the cord, Sassenach?” Jamie was squatting by my other side, sgian dubh in hand.
“Yes,” I said breathlessly, and forgot about it, thrusting my hand into the birth canal, hoping for another head.
No such luck. Limbs everywhere, in the tight, slippery dark. I closed my eyes to see better, feeling urgently for a foot. Just one, I prayed. Just one foot … And then a powerful contraction came on, quite different, like an ocean wave rolling through Susannah’s body, but slowly enough that I managed to get my hand out of the way. And there it was. A tiny foot, its limp toes tinged with unearthly blue.
“Bloody, bloody, bloody …” I realized that I was muttering senseless things and clamped my jaw tight. I knew it was too late, but there was nothing else to be done. Once more I reached up, fumbling into the dark, and this time found the other foot without trouble. Without trouble because the baby wasn’t moving.
A sense of remoteness came over me, and I closed my eyes and swallowed, feeling the solid stillness of a tiny body come into my hands. They call it stillbirth because it is. Not because the child is dead, but because everything—everything—goes quiet. A tiny, still girl. I knew she was gone, but stubbornness made me lift her and try to push breath into the still lungs, my fingers on the tiny chest, hoping against hope … but she was gone.
And yet the vivid joy of the first birth was still fizzing through my body—I could hear the baby yelling his indignation, and Susannah’s breath, a deep, slow panting, low voices and the crackle of the fire, the bubbling of water in the cauldron—but all of it was wrapped in silence, the beating of my own heart all I felt. It was peace, a deep peace, not yet sorrow, and I held the tiny body, and used my hem to wipe her—yes, her—tiny face, eyes closed, never to open. A moment longer, and then I placed her on a clout that Agnes had brought, and turned to take care of her mother.