Lake in the Clouds (28 page)

“I’ll just bring it up,” she said, stopping to rub her stomach. “But later on I’ll have a bowl of that turtle stew, wait and see.”

Elizabeth had helped with some twenty births since she came to Paradise, and she had seen how every woman came to the experience differently. Some seemed to lose track of the world around them and flounder in confusion; some lost courage early on; others turned irritable and rancorous; some seemed to find an almost mystic state of calm. Selah was simply focused, minute by minute, on what her body might be asking of her, as if childbirth were a puzzle to be solved.

When the last of the light was gone and a fine drizzle had begun to fall, she reluctantly agreed to move inside, where she walked up and down the length of the stone corridor, stopping sometimes to lean against the wall.

Nathaniel started a small fire in the cave where Selah slept, set out the candles that would be needed later, and filled the water barrel. Curiosity had given Elizabeth a package of things she might need in case Selah went into labor, and now she opened it for the first time.

Each item was wrapped carefully in muslin: a pair of scissors, a small ball of string, needle and thread, a scalpel that Elizabeth recognized as belonging to Hannah, a bundle of soft muslin cloths, swaddling clothes, and three small stone bottles, each tightly corked and with a tag attached. The handwriting was Hannah’s, and the sight of it touched Elizabeth. She would very much like to have Hannah here right now.

At the very bottom was a note in Curiosity’s hand:

Elizabeth read the note twice, and then she folded it neatly and put it back where she had found it.

A third child will come sliding into this world like the heart of a boiled onion from its shell.
Most times. Elizabeth thought back to the morning that Daisy Hench had brought her Solange into the world, and the calm good spirits that had prevailed in that birthing room. Mariah Greber’s third daughter Hope was much the same, and Willy LeBlanc’s arrival had taken Molly by surprise as she hung wash, so that there was barely time to call for help. And Robbie, Elizabeth’s own third child.

She had labored all through a warm night in June. The twins had been born in the middle of a storm, with only Hannah to attend Elizabeth; by comparison Robbie’s birth had felt almost dreamlike. The birthing room had been very quiet for the most part, not the quiet of dread or despair but absolute calm and something that could only be called joy. Nathaniel had been nearby, and all the women she loved and trusted most in the world: Curiosity and Hannah and Many-Doves. Elizabeth could close her eyes and see it whenever she pleased: Curiosity holding Robbie up for them to see in the first light of dawn.

She braced her shoulders, took a deep breath, and went to get herself ready.

Nathaniel came to talk to her while she changed.

“She’s been through so much,” he said. “She’s not likely to panic now.”

“I think you’re right.” Elizabeth wound her plait around her head and secured it with a kerchief.

He was silent for a while, but Elizabeth could feel his unease.

“Did you want to say something?”

He grunted softly to himself. “I suppose I do. The thing is, Boots, I don’t mean to tell you your business—”

She turned to him, and raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“But you might want to talk to her, during.”

Elizabeth heard the irritation in her own voice. “I wasn’t planning on taking a vow of silence for the duration, you know.”

He cleared his throat. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. It’s just that you tend to go quiet when you’re anxious, and I got the idea that you don’t even know you’re doing it. When you were in labor with Robbie, Curiosity talked to you the whole time. I seem to remember she made you laugh more than once. And things went easier for it, as far as I could tell.”

Elizabeth did not answer at first. She was changing into her second, cleaner overdress, and wondering whether she should cut her nails. Hannah would quote Hakim Ibrahim to her if she were here:
the devil lives beneath the nails.

“I see your point,” she said finally. “But Curiosity is much more at ease in a birthing room than I could ever be. I’ll do my best to make her comfortable.”

He cleared his throat. “To tell the truth, it was more you I was thinking about, Boots.” Nathaniel reached out and cupped her face in his hand.

Elizabeth stepped forward to put her arms around his waist. With her forehead against his shoulder she took a deep breath and then another, and slowly the tension that had cramped the muscles of her shoulders and back began to leave her. She trembled, and it seemed to her that he was trembling a little too, in sympathy for what she must go and do alone. To stand like this in Nathaniel’s arms was more comfort than any talk, and when she pulled away she could smile at him with honest good humor.

“Elizabeth?” Selah’s voice came down the corridor. “Elizabeth?”

“Things seem to be moving along,” said Nathaniel. “You call me if you need a hand, I’ll be just outside.”

Elizabeth remembered the most difficult part of her own labors as the time just before the urge to push came over her. In those endless minutes her stoicism had evaporated, and she had not been able to keep herself from howling in agony. Selah had come to this point in her travails, but she would not let herself scream even after Elizabeth read Curiosity’s advice out loud.

She was squatting with her back against the wall. Elizabeth crouched with her, holding on to her hands. In the pause after a particularly long contraction, when Selah’s strength seemed to be ebbing, she asked, “Have you thought what you want to name this child?”

Selah’s gaze had been turned inward, but now she came back to the world long enough to focus on Elizabeth. She managed a small smile. “That depend,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, and Elizabeth reached over to get a dipper of water. Her own shadow jerked and danced on the wall in the light of the fire and the candles.

Selah swallowed and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“What does it depend on?”

The long tendons in Selah’s neck stood out when she rested her head back against the wall. “On whether this child look like my Violet or not.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. She had meant to distract Selah, and instead had reminded her of Hubert Vaark. Before she could decide whether an apology would make it worse or better, another contraction had started.

When it was over Selah said, “Sometimes you got to wonder what people are thinking when they name children. There’s an alderman down in the city used to come by Pearl Street, his name was Mr. Mangle Minthorne. Now why would his mama call him Mangle? He look normal enough. I always wondered if maybe it was a hard birth and she held it against him.”

Elizabeth had to smile. “There’s a family in Paradise, Horace and Mariah Greber. They have five girls called Faith, Charity, Hope, Prudence, and Constance. Then the sixth child came along not long ago, their first boy.”

The muscles in Selah’s stomach had begun to contract again, like a small mountain intent on moving itself. Elizabeth
held Selah’s hands until it was over, and then she wiped her brow.

“More water?”

Selah shook her head, and she managed a smile. “Five girls and finally a son come along. What a happy day. What did they name the boy?”

Elizabeth smiled, as she did whenever she thought of the morning Horace Greber had announced his new son’s name at Sunday services. For once he lost his dour expression and smiled so broadly that his whole face had folded into great pleated wrinkles.

“Mariah wanted to name him Paul after her father, but Horace had another idea, and he got his way. They named the boy Hardwork.”

Selah’s head snapped up, and she let out a croaking laugh. “What?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Horace said he never would have believed it would be so difficult to produce a boy, and he didn’t want his son to forget it.”

Selah giggled hoarsely until the next contraction started and then for the first time she let out a great groan. When it was over she said, “There is a lawyer in the city called Mr. Plunket Plunderheit,” and she put back her head and giggled again. The next contraction drew out and out, and ended in a long shuddering.

“Are you ready to push?”

Selah grunted in response. She was panting as if she had run a mile, and had another mile before her.

“Don’t rush,” Elizabeth recited. “I’m not supposed to let you rush.”

“Not rush?” Selah looked at her as if she had said,
let’s not have this baby after all.

“So you don’t tear.” Elizabeth said this more firmly. “You don’t want to tear.”

“What I want,” Selah said, fixing her with a furious expression as she bore down with all her might, “is to get this child
out.”

Elizabeth had seen women push for hours to expel a child, but Selah seemed to have other ideas. There was no time to be anxious or to anticipate complications, because in three great,
groaning pushes the baby’s head was free, and in one more it rotated slickly and slid into Elizabeth’s waiting hands.

He was a big child, well rounded, and he wiggled and flexed like a fish, arms and legs jerking as if he meant to swim away through the air. Then he opened his eyes and looked straight at her, and his lips spread in something that Elizabeth could only think of as a smile. He blinked, his expression all surprise and curiosity.

You remind me of your grandmother.
Elizabeth almost said it out loud, but then she stopped herself.

“A son,” Elizabeth said. “You have a healthy son.”

Selah let out a shuddering sigh and held out her arms. When Elizabeth handed the boy to her, Selah’s hands fluttered closed over him like dark wings. Under the waxy white coating that had eased his way through the birth canal his skin was almost exactly the same shade as hers, the deep rich color of good loam with nothing of red or yellow in it at all.

“Thank you,” Selah said clearly. “Thank you.”

Elizabeth did not want to be thanked, not until the afterbirth was safely delivered. With hands that were shaking slightly she checked and found that Selah’s great rushing had brought with it only two small tears that wouldn’t need to be sewn.

When the thick cord that still joined mother and son had stopped pulsing Elizabeth tied it carefully in two spots and picked up the scissors. She paused and took a deep breath, almost hearing Curiosity’s voice at her ear.

Better too much than too little.

She had said it out loud, and Selah made a sound deep in her throat, of agreement or worry Elizabeth couldn’t be sure. The scissors made a crisp sound as they severed the cord, and at that the boy let out his first cry. It grew quickly into a great squalling that continued until Selah directed him to the breast.

Delivery of the afterbirth was what concerned her most, but it came in one last push, whole and intact.

“Don’t throw it away,” Selah whispered. “I want to bury it myself.”

Nathaniel was waiting out in the open when Elizabeth finally came to find him. His hair was damp with rain but he was smiling when she walked directly into his open arms. A
shuddering passed through her in great waves, relief and joy and exhaustion.

“A boy,” she said finally, her mouth against his chest. “She’s going to name him Galileo. She says—” Elizabeth’s voice cracked, and her throat swelled shut with tears.

“What, Boots?”

“She says the boy looks nothing at all like his sister Violet. And I didn’t know if I should be happy for her, or sad.”

Nathaniel held her until she was done weeping, and then they went in together to formally greet Almanzo Freeman’s firstborn son.

On the brightest and sweetest of spring evenings Nathaniel came back from Little Lost with a brace of trout and a stranger. One moment Elizabeth had been scouring out the pot with sand and rehearsing to herself the plan she would present to Nathaniel, and the next she looked up to see a solution she had not considered standing before her.

“This is Elijah,” Nathaniel introduced him, although the resemblance to his brother was plain enough to see. Elijah was as well built and muscular as Joshua, with the same jaw and nose and set of the shoulders, but there were raised tattoos on his cheekbones and a long silver ear-bob dangled from his left lobe, almost exactly like the one Nathaniel wore. Across the chest of his fringed hunting shirt he had strung a simple wampum belt, and he carried a rifle slung across his back with easy familiarity. His skin was black, but everything about his demeanor and the way he moved spoke of the Kahnyen’kehàka.