“No,” Jules said, “I would kill you.”
He swooped down and kissed her hard on the mouth, then moved before she could react. “Get some sleep, Juliana.” He gave her a smile that made her shudder. “If you need to relieve yourself, I suggest you ask me to be your companion.”
Saint sat beside Byrony, his chin resting on his folded hands. The bedroom was in darkness save for the one lamp that cast dim shadows on Byrony’s pale face. He’d finally given her some chloroform and she was in a stuporous sleep. He prayed she would regain some strength, because there were still hours before the child would birth itself.
At least he’d managed to turn the baby. He could still feel Byrony’s pain, the dreadful stretching of her small body as he’d eased his hand into her. But the child was now head-down, as it should be.
He finally slept himself, fitfully, his thoughts of his wife. What had happened to her? It was twelve o’clock, midnight.
When Byrony awoke she lay for a moment in a painless, vague realm. She saw Saint’s face above her, gentle, kind, yes, so very kind. She ran her tongue over her dry lips.
“Some water, Byrony,” he said, and helped her sip from the glass.
The pain was nearer now, bringing her to full awareness.
“Chauncey told me you’d tell me where you got your nickname, Saint,” she said, striving desperately for reason, for control over her pain-racked body.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell you. You breathe deeply now, and when that contraction builds, I want you to push with all your strength.”
“I don’t think I have much more strength,” Byrony said.
“Don’t you talk like that,” Saint said, his voice hard and cold. “You’re young and strong. You’re going to birth that baby soon, yes, very soon. Do you hear me, Byrony?”
“I hear you,” she said, her voice so hoarse and raw that she wondered he could even understand her. The contraction built, and she wanted to die, to do anything to escape the pain. But she heard his voice telling her to push, and she did, with all her might.
“Now,” Saint sa
id when the pain eased a bit, “let me tell you about my nickname. Look at my face, Byrony. Don’t fight the pain. You know what you have to do and you will do it. Now, it was when I was a young man, at Harvard Medical School. Various folk would provide the students with corpses to dissect. Breathe sharp, shallow breaths, Byrony! Yes, that’s it.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear any more of this story, Saint.”
“It ends well, I promise.”
He waited, hearing her scream, softer now because her throat was raw from her cries, saw her arch, and said, “Push, Byrony!” He knew she was trying, but she was weakening.
Jules, where are you?
It was four o’clock in the morning. Nearing dawn. When most deaths and most births occurred. He shook himself.
Byrony struggled to hold to something real, not to be dragged into the endless pit. “Tell me, Saint!”
“Yes, well, one day they wheeled in the body of a man who’d just expired at the hospital. The professor, Old Hook Nose, we young men called him, was waving his scalpel about, on the point of demonstrating to us stupid students how one was to proceed. But you see, Byrony, the man wasn’t dead. I grabbed Old Hook Nose’s wrist just as it was descending. There was a lot of shouting and cursing that I, a wretched student, would dare attack such a venerable man. But I’d seen the eyelids of the ‘dead man’ flicker. I thank the good Lord to this day that I’m a large man. I had to fight off a good ten men, Old Hook Nose included. Then, my dear, the supposed dead man opened his eyes. It was he, Robert Gallagher, who named me Saint.”
“Saint, make it stop!”
He wondered briefly if she’d even understood him. He held her, felt the awful wrenching pain, and knew he must do something or she would be too weak to birth the child. She would die, and the child with her.
“Byrony, listen to me!” He clasped her face between his large hands, shaking her until her eyes focused on his face. “I’m going to help you, do you hear me? No, don’t close your eyes. Look at me, Byrony! Here’s what you’ll do.”
He felt her tears wet his hands and wanted to weep himself. For her, for Jules. For poor Robert Gallagher, who’d been run down by a carriage six months after Saint had saved him from being cut open by Old Hook Nose.
Dear God, what was happening? Sunlight poured through the bedroom windows. He glanced a moment toward the clock.
“We got company, Mr. Wilkes,” Hawkins said, poking his head into the cave. “Six, seven men, riding slow, tracking.”
“Ah,” Wilkes said, his eyes turning toward Jules. He saw the wild hope in her eyes. “No, my dear, it won’t be your husband, at least it shouldn’t be. He wouldn’t leave a woman in labor, now, would he?”
“I bet it’s that gambler Hammond, the man who started the nigger town.”