by Anne Groß
The lieutenant reached down to lay a hand on Mrs. Briggs’s shoulder. Under his touch, she revived. She puffed large, in fact. Outrage twisted the features of her face and straightened her body. Her muscles tensed and her shoulders rolled back. All eyes lifted to rest on her bosom, swollen with breathless anger. “Your touch is a violation,” she hissed, and slapped away the young officer’s hand.
“Your pardon, madame.” He bowed deeply and stepped backwards with a glance at his captain. His derisive shrug was almost imperceptible.
“Madame, I am Capitaine Oscar de la Soie, of La Damquiris. Your husband’s ship is now under my—”
“No! Never!!” cried Mrs. Briggs. “I’ll never let you take the Otter!”
“Please, madame, it is inevitable that you submit—”
Mrs. Briggs was suddenly on her feet with a pistol in her right hand leveled squarely at de la Soie’s chest. “Take your men and leave this ship, or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
No one moved.
“Leave!” screamed Mrs. Briggs. She reached around with her left hand to force back the pistol’s heavy hammer, but de la Soie drew his own firearm, and cocked it easily with his thumb.
The crack of the pistol caused Adelaide to let out a startled scream.
As one, the captain, his lieutenant, and the crew of La Damquiris swung their heads from Mrs. Briggs’s crumpled body to look at the sail under which Adelaide was hidden.
“Well, now you’ve gone and done it,” Nigel said. He threw his knitting down and folded his arms across his chest in disgust.
WATCH OUT FOR VAPORS
Three hours after Mr. George Russell’s total rejection of Elise’s plea for assistance, Amanda Collins’s baby still hadn’t turned. Elise had taken a wait-and-see approach to the delivery, but with the baby’s head not engaged in the birth canal, Amanda’s cervix wasn’t dilating fast enough. It wasn’t a stretch to think it would be another day for labor to progress. But given the conditions on board the Valiant and the weeks of poor nutrition Amanda had endured, waiting was no longer an option. The kid had to come out. “Hey, buddy,” Elise whispered to the rippling muscles of Amanda’s contracting stomach, “time to get off your back and do a headstand.” The baby wasn’t going to do it on its own, however. She’d need some muscle, and some support for the young mother.
Thankfully, even if the baby hadn’t turned, the weather had. The waves were still choppy, and the rain was still pouring, but the ship was no longer pitching over giant swells. Elise finally felt confident that the vomit bucket was no longer needed, and happily passed it to the other side of the curtain where Bill Stanton took it away (after being encouraged to do so with a slap to the back of the head delivered by Private Cox).
“Where’s Peter Collins?” she asked stepping to the other side of the blanket while being careful to maintain Amanda’s privacy. The entire company was seated near the Collins’s corner. The vigil caught Elise off guard. She hadn’t expected to feel included by the ranks, but the show of solidarity was heartening. She told herself that it had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with Amanda. Her husband was a well-liked member of the company unlike Richard, who turned his nose up at the “rabble.” Still, she felt like an essential member of a team again, and that felt good.
To pass the time, Hobart, Cox, Ben O’Brian, and Richard were all holding fanned cards close to their face in the dim light, while the others huddled around them. “Playing whist again?” Elise piped. She was thankful for a break and a little fresh air while Amanda rested with her head in Mrs. Gillihan’s lap. “Who’s winning?”
“Shhhhhh!” Richard hissed. “For God’s sake, you’re louder than that whelping bird of the Collins’s. Haven’t I told you no one speaks whilst whist is being played? It’s just not done! Do excuse my wife’s exuberance, gentlemen.”
“How is she?” Peter suddenly appeared at her elbow, hissing his question so as to not disturb the game. Elise could smell the alcohol on his breath, which made sense. If you’re already helpless to control a situation, might as well go all the way and get drunk.
“She needs you.”
“Me? Now? Why me? Really?”
“Just give me a few minutes, but yeah.” She sat on an upended bucket and bent her head, propping it up in her hands. “Just give me a few, okay?” She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was.
“A few what? I don’t take your meaning. What is an ‘oh-kay?’” Eyes wide as saucers, Peter stared at Elise, waiting for clarification.
“Shhhh!!” said Richard, taking a trick of cards.
“She’s asking for a few minutes’ rest,” Thomas grumbled from the shadows.
“Ding ding ding ding,” Elise said, without looking up, garnering more puzzled looks.
“Of course—take all the time that you need,” Collins whispered.
It did feel good, Elise decided, to be needed. She sighed, feeling the loss of her previous life. Being a nurse wasn’t glamorous, but at least she knew what her purpose was. She woke up each evening knowing she’d be spending the night managing lines and saving lives, going home in the morning tired and satisfied. She hoped that if she could pull Amanda through the birth of her first child, then she might gain, at the very least, a friend. Amanda was young and naive, but Elise had to hand it to her—she was teeth-clenchingly tough. She took a deep breath. “Okay, Collins. Let’s do this.”
“For God’s sake, must I?” He turned pale. He could volunteer to go to war, but apparently helping his wife give birth was too much to ask. “What can I do? If you wish to be paid in ale, then it should be you to do the job, not me.” A thin wail came from behind the curtain.
“A woman needs a woman, not a man,” Hobert said, sniffing. A murmur of assent rolled through the company. “It’s not right for a man to see his wife in that condition.”
“Is that what you said when your sheep were squeezing out lambs?” Elise countered. “I suppose you just stood aside and shielded your virgin eyes while your flock managed by itself? An ewe needs an ewe, right?”
“That’s not the same thing, is it? An ewe ain’t a woman.” There was an uncomfortable silence amongst the men as everyone considered how Hobert might have come to that conclusion.
“Hobert’s point is sound,” Collins said. “It’s not my place. It’s not right.”
“None of this is right,” Elise swept her arms out to include the entire ship. “If it was right, your wife would be in a clean bed and her mom would be holding her hand.” The audience made an assenting hum at her line of reasoning. Everyone was enjoying the distraction from their boredom and had to agree the ship wasn’t an ideal place to give birth. “Look, you don’t have to do anything you haven’t already done before. I’ll take care of the messy end. You just need to take care of the front end. Talk to her. Hold her. She’s terrified.” Elise grabbed a beam in the ceiling as the floor rolled. “Please,” she begged, “Amanda doesn’t know me. She needs a friend with her. She needs the man she loves encouraging her. Be her husband, Collins. Be her friend.” Elise looked at Thomas who was standing slightly apart from the others. “He’ll listen to you, Thomas. Tell him he needs to be with his wife.”
Everyone turned to look at Thomas and he lifted his hands helplessly. “It’s not for me or you to say how a man treats his wife.”
“Oh, bullshit. Come on! You know Mrs. Postlethwaite would be on my side.” Elise hoped that invoking the old beloved cook at the Quiet Woman would persuade Thomas.
“Hobert is right. A woman needs a woman.”
“There now, that’s settled,” said Richard, “Tom agrees with Hobert. Shall we finish the game, gentlemen?”
Thomas’s hand shot up. He wasn’t finished. “A woman also knows what a woman needs. Collins, if Elise says your wife needs you, then she needs you.”
“Don’t listen to MacEwan,” O’Brian slapped a card onto the small pile that was growing between the men’s knees. “I must’a hit him too hard—he’s gone soft in the head.
Why should you follow the advice of a woman as threw herself into the ocean? Bloody foolish, if you ask me, following any slag’s advice, but that one?” He shrugged, washing his hands of the entire situation.
Elise felt heat rushing to her cheeks. Thomas quickly moved to place himself between her and the card game, casting a sharp eye at Elise’s balled fists. “O’Brian’s still sore that I beat him,” he said. “There’s not a thing I could say that he wouldn’t say the opposite.”
“Fight didn’t end proper. You didn’t beat me.”
“Seem to recall it was you on your back when it was called, not me.”
“It wasn’t called.”
“Oh, who cares!” Elise snapped, stepping around Thomas. “What are you going to do, Collins?”
The young man hesitated. “She really wants me?”
“Yes! How many times do I have to tell you?” Elise couldn’t explain why it meant so much to her to have Amanda be with the man she loved, but something told her that the baby’s outcome would be better if the experience was shared between both parents. Amanda needed all the small advantages she could scrape together, and it wasn’t much.
“All right then, if she needs me.”
Elise was overjoyed at the small victory and ducked back under the curtain with renewed confidence. “Look who’s here, Amanda!” she chirped happily as Collins shyly followed behind her. “I brought him back with me.”
Amanda’s eyes were clear as she turned. She was on her hands and knees—a stable position in an unstable environment. The frightened smile she tried to give Elise melted into horror as she recognized her husband standing backlit in the opened curtain. “Nooooooo!!!” cried Amanda.
“For heaven’s sake, Mrs. Ferrington,” barked Mrs. Gillihan. “Why would you bring him in here? Leave us at once, Mr. Collins. At once.”
Collins’s mouth rounded in a surprised pucker, mirroring his wife’s mouth as she wailed, and he turned to bolt. Elise grabbed his forearm and meaningfully dug in her fingers. “Shut up, Mrs. Gillihan! Collins, tell Amanda how much you love her.”
“Make him leave! He can’t see me like this,” Amanda wailed.
Despite the cold, sweat rolled down the back of Elise’s neck. Once again, despite all her good intentions, her modern values were colliding with the values of the nineteenth century. She was positive she was witnessing a crossroads in Amanda and Peter’s marriage. After this day, the couple’s union would be forever changed. But Thomas was right—it wasn’t for her to decide after all, and she would always advocate for her patient. “You heard her,” she said to Collins, who was gaping stupidly at his wife. “Out!”
The directive was more than he could bear. Peter Collins fell to his knees and reached for his wife. “Oh my darling Amy,” he cried, his cheeks wet, his face twisted ugly by emotion. “Let me help. Let me lift your burden.”
Amanda recoiled from him, and the rejection caused him to melt into a nearly incomprehensible stream of pet names and cooing. In normal circumstances, any woman would have relented under this barrage of tenderness, but a sudden contraction turned Amanda inward so that she seemed to barely hear her husband. What did entreaties like “my sweet pickle-bottom” matter when, outside of her own control, powerful biological mechanisms were underway to create a hole the size of a honeydew melon between her legs? Luckily for Collins, his two long, bony thighs pressed together provided an alternative cushion from Mrs. Gillihan’s lap, and she pragmatically accepted his questionable comfort and rested her head. He bent over her, cooing and murmuring in her ear while gently stroking her hair. When the contraction ended, Amanda breathed out a long exhale of relief and curled her arms around her husband’s waist.
Gently, Elise eased her patient back onto her hands and knees and pressed against her swaying belly, feeling for the baby’s head and shoulders. She had a few minutes before the next contraction took over, just enough time to quickly explain what she needed to do to push the baby’s head into position. Even after she heard the muffled “yes” of understanding from Amanda, she hesitated before beginning the cephalic version. She knew there was a possibility the baby wasn’t in position because it was caught up by the umbilical cord, or cordoned off by a placenta that had attached at the wrong place on the uterine wall. Forcing the baby to move into position could potentially create a situation that might strangle it, or cause Amanda to bleed to death. Then there was the possibility that the baby would swing into breach position if Elise mistook its head for its butt.
Swallowing her nerves and wishing with all her might for a sonogram machine, Elise gently prodded Amanda’s pendulous stomach to find the lumps of baby on either side. She pressed her fingers harder into flesh and felt for thighs, for the solidity of skull, for width, and then she took a deep breath. “This might hurt,” Elise said, wishing it wouldn’t.
“Hold her,” she ordered Collins, and motioned a very disapproving Mrs. Gillihan back to Amanda’s side with a thrust of her head. To Collins’s credit, he gripped his wife solidly by the shoulders and nodded his readiness with a steely grimace. Elise braced herself against Amanda, hugging her from behind. She pressed deeply into Amanda’s stomach with the heels of her hands, kneading, removing space, cornering the baby against her fists and giving it no choice but to swim against the pressure.
Eight hours later, Edwina was born. After having been pushed, squeezed, and otherwise mauled by Elise and Amanda, she flopped onto the deck with a gush of blood and howl that matched the weather. Elise’s chest swelled with joy and relief as she and Mrs. Gillihan cleaned the red faced cherub and swaddled her for her parents. Little Edwina was met by all with the love and awe due to a miracle of biology. Only months earlier in Amanda’s womb, she’d had pharyngeal slits and a post-anal tail, but now she was a fully-fledged bobble-headed, frog-limbed, pee-producer.
Elise’s head was a jumble of conflicting thoughts and emotions as she helped make the new family as comfortable as possible. As the storm eased into a light rain, she staggered sleepily to her own corner of the ship and climbed back up onto the pile of crates. Although dawn was undetectable, as deep as she was in the bowels of the Valiant, Elise knew she’d worked an entire shift.
Up above her, the sailors changed their watch, just as they had the morning before, and the morning before that, and the morning before that. It was the same world, just another day in a long string of days, another long trudge through the past, and yet, for Elise, everything felt different somehow. Already men were climbing out along the yard arms to remove the reef in the sails. The deck was being scrubbed clean of the refuge the sea had tossed aboard. The wheel was being unleashed and a new course was laid.
Richard, asleep with his heavy great-coat under his head as a pillow, lifted the blanket and made room for Elise to curl up under it. She tucked her spine against the warmth of his body and nearly didn’t notice when he pulled her in closer. It was just another day, but now with new life in it. A squirmy baby, with the nub of a pointy carrot for a nose and a conical head, was fiercely nursing a few yards away. Elise smiled, closed her eyes, and fell instantly asleep.
Even though it was late afternoon when Elise finally woke up, the whole world seemed inexplicably lighter after her long sleep. Elise was vaguely aware that Richard had slipped away not long after she’d gone to bed to do whatever it was that Richard did—gamble, trade for favors, polish the buttons of his waistcoat—but she hadn’t been aware that the other infantrymen walked on their tip-toes and spoke in hushed voices when passing the stack of crates where she slept. All Elise knew was that when she woke she found a breakfast of salt pork and hard tack artfully arranged near her head. The offering was a sign of gratitude from the company, and although it softened her towards the men, it didn’t move her as much as the small effort Collins was making to hold a conversation.
“I trust you’ve slept well?”
“Like a log.”
“Ah, ahem, I am gladdened. . .uh, that is to say, I believe I’m not mistaken in taking
your meaning—”
“I slept well.”
Conversation with Collins was a stuttered and uncomfortable effort of two people with nothing in common. However, spending hours together encouraging Amanda had created a guarded friendship between them. Collins handed his porter to Elise with a companionable smile and she tipped the skunky-smelling stuff back without thanks, secure in the knowledge that she’d earned every last drop. Weeks in a cask at sea did nothing to improve the flavor of the beer, but Elise swallowed it on ceremony, cementing the relationship.
“Well. . .” Elise said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Yes.” He nodded decisively.
“I’ll just go check on Amanda.”
“Right.”
“Catch you later.”
“Err?”
“I mean, ‘bye.’”
Elise ducked away, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. It wasn’t the first time she’d ever had beer for breakfast, but she would have preferred a cup of coffee. It would have helped to prepare her for Amanda’s worried whine when she entered the Collins’ corner.
“Edwina is off her feeeeeed.”
It took Elise a few breaths before she was able to translate the new mother’s concern. “Maybe she’s not hungry?” Elise swore under her breath. This was moving well beyond her expertise. Amanda needed a lactation specialist.
“No, she’s hungry alright. She’s just too weak—can’t suck hard enough, poor sweet girl.” Amanda nuzzled her daughter, who emitted a strange, lengthy drone that wavered as she bounced in her mother’s arms. Then Amanda mashed her heavy breast against Edwina’s face in an effort to tempt her to eat. “See? She won’t eat. It’s been nearly five hours. That’s too long, isn’t it?” Edwina continued her drone, muffled, but determined.