Dark Heart

by Tina Daniell

  It was difficult to understand what Gregor had seen in her mother in the first place. Maybe she had been pretty once, Kit admitted grudgingly. She was a good enough cook. Yet whatever Rosamun once was, more and more in recent months she had become the kind of sickly, indoors drudge that Kit planned never to be.

  Rosamun didn’t have very many friends or people sympathetic to her sick spells. That’s where Minna came in. Kitiara had to admit that Minna tended to her mother as best she could. And she never pressured Gilon to pay her mounting bill.

  Even so, Kitiara detested the bossy busybody.

  “Gilon,” Kit emphasized the name, since he was not her father, “is cutting wood in the forest. I don’t know where, probably miles away. Otherwise I’d run and get him. My mother has been feeling well enough lately, and I didn’t want to ask him to stay home even though we knew it was close to her time. Can’t you hurry?”

  Kit looked out the window and wished she were anywhere but in this house, anywhere except perhaps her own cottage. She couldn’t forget the anguished sounds that Rosamun had made, and the look of fear on her face.

  “Well, who’s in a hurry now, young lady? Do your best to keep up.”

  With that, Minna swept past Kitiara and out the door. Kit would have liked to kick her in the behind. But the thought of Rosamun at home, in the throes of childbirth, made her repress the impulse.

  Indeed, Kit practically had to run to keep up with Minna, who moved along the walkways with quick strides.

  When they reached the cottage, Kit saw that her mother had climbed back onto the bed, where the blanket and sheets were already soiled and bloodstained. As they rushed to her, Rosamun uttered a low groan and her breathing quickened with the beginning of another contraction. This time, she seemed nearly too exhausted to scream. Her long, pale blond hair was plastered against her skull with perspiration. Her delicately boned face was drawn. When Rosamun’s lips parted, only a strangled moan escaped as her body curled forward. After the contraction crested, she collapsed back against the sheets.

  Minna hurried up to feel her forehead. The contractions were speeding up. Rosamun’s bed was almost soaked. “Good, your water has broken,” Minna declared. But the midwife frowned slightly when she noticed the greenish stain on the bedclothes.

  Minna unceremoniously pulled up Rosamun’s smock and checked on the labor’s progress. “Put some water on to boil and get the clean cloths ready. The baby will be coming any time now. That green water means there might be trouble,” she said meaningfully.

  Never a deft hand with household chores, Kit awkwardly helped Minna slip clean sheets onto Rosamun’s bed. She gathered what clean cloths she could find, then lugged in a bucket of water from outside and put it in a pot to boil on the fire.

  By now Rosamun was so consumed by her struggle to give birth that she barely acknowledged the presence of either Kitiara or Minna. Her gray eyes were glassy, her body buffeted by the painful contractions that came relentlessly.

  Minna pulled a small pouch out of her birthing bag and ordered Kit to bring a clean bowl filled with hot water to the bedside table. She poured the contents of the pouch into the bowl and wrung out a cloth in the brownish liquid. Minna used the cloth to wipe Rosamun’s brow and, occasionally, pulling up the smock Rosamun wore, to bathe her swollen stomach.

  “What is it?” Kit ventured to ask.

  “Secret ingredients,” responded Minna smugly. “Don’t know myself, actually.” She tittered. “Buy it off that kender I was telling you about, Asa. He calls it his ‘Never Fail Balm.’ ”

  Kit had to admit her mother breathed a bit more easily after these ablutions.

  Minna kept Kit busy. She ordered her to bring a chair to the bedside, to find more blankets, to brew a pot of tea, to get some more wood for the fire. Kit knew Minna did not like her and had counseled Rosamun that her young daughter was too headstrong and should be reined in a bit. Now Kit chafed under the midwife’s orders, realizing how much Minna gloried in her authority over Kit in this emergency.

  Rosamun’s groans and screams kept the two of them preoccupied, however. Her agony was terrible for the child to witness. At times Rosamun’s eyes rolled up into her head and her body went rigid as she endured the repeated contractions.

  As the labor dragged on, Kit secretly longed for Gilon’s calming presence and wondered when her stepfather would return. But she realized forlornly that it was only about midday, and that, typically, Gilon did not return until dusk.

  About an hour after Minna’s arrival, Rosamun’s breathing slowed dramatically. The midwife thrust her hand under Rosamun’s smock and gave Kit a nod. “Push the baby out, Rosamun,” she commanded.

  Kit looked at Minna in surprise. Rosamun, pale, delirious, and drenched in sweat, seemed barely able to turn her head on the pillow, much less push anything. Nonetheless, at Minna’s urging, Kit climbed onto the bed and helped Rosamun to sit up. She then placed her small back against her mother’s sweat-stained one and braced her feet against the wooden headboard, thus propping up Rosamun while Minna again exhorted her mother to push.

  “Push!” cried Minna, “if you want it over and done with, push!”

  An hour after that, nothing had changed except that Kit’s legs felt like logs and Rosamun’s head had lolled back against her daughter’s as if she had lost consciousness. Minna had sat down, strands of hair falling over her sweat-beaded brow. Though exhausted, the midwife methodically urged Rosamun to keep pushing.

  Then, finally, with one drawn-out moan, Rosamun gave birth.

  To Kit, the baby looked like a reddish-purple monkey covered with blood and a white, cheeselike goo. A lusty cry that seemed to shake the windows in their frames immediately established the child’s virility.

  “A boy!” Minna crowed. “You have yourself a fine, healthy boy, Rosamun!” she said as she expertly wiped down the infant, diapered him, and swaddled him in a clean blanket. “Why he must weigh ten pounds! He’s a giant!”

  The information was lost on the baby’s mother. Rosamun’s eyes fluttered open, then closed as Kit slipped out from behind her, letting Rosamun sink back, exhausted, against the pillows.

  Almost instantly, a sharp intake of breath wrenched Rosamun fully awake, her eyes huge and startled.

  “Just the afterbirth,” Minna muttered to herself, glancing at Rosamun. But the midwife quickly thrust the swaddled infant at Kit and turned back to the mother. Gazing at her intently, Minna reached for her birthing bag at the foot of the bed. She dug through its contents and pulled out another small pouch, this one with a double clasp. As the midwife carefully opened it, Kit, who stood near Minna, could have sworn that a light glowed from within!

  Minna drew out a pinch of something. Turning her back on the bed, Minna tossed a sprinkling of particles into the air while chanting a few words Kit didn’t understand. The light in the room seemed to shimmer. An instant later, Kit felt a sense of well-being descend on her. The infant in her arms even stopped bawling. More amazing still, Rosamun smiled, heaved a deep sigh, and sank back against the pillows. In that split second, Kit’s mother seemed to fall serenely asleep! The girl could not believe the evidence of her eyes.

  Then almost as quickly as it had come, the peaceful aura evaporated.

  Rosamun’s breathing quickened. Her eyelids flew up, but the eyes had rolled up into their sockets again. Minna leaned over Rosamun worriedly, patting her cheeks.

  Only the baby seemed to have received some lasting benefit from Minna’s hocus pocus. Kit held the infant stiffly away from herself as she edged over to the cradle Gilon had lovingly crafted. Luckily for everyone present, Kit’s new brother forgot his initial irritation at being pushed out of the warm comfort of the womb. Immediately after Kit laid him in his new bed and set the cradle rocking, he fell asleep, cooing.

  Minna yanked up Rosamun’s smock and firmly placed two hands on her swollen stomach. She took what looked like a small drum out of her medicinal bag, only it was a drum whose bottom tapered to
a narrow neck, then flared out into a flexible cup.

  “A listening drum,” Minna said to no one in particular—certainly not to Kitiara. She placed the cup end on Rosamun’s bulging stomach and inclined her ear against the drum covering. As Rosamun began to whimper, Minna pulled her head away decisively. Sure enough, it was the start of another contraction.

  “There’s another baby in there,” Minna declared with amazement.

  A drawn out, guttural “No-o-o-o!” escaped from Rosamun’s pursed lips.

  “Another baby!” Kit exclaimed. “How can that be? Why didn’t you know that before? What are we going to do? My mother can’t survive another childbirth.”

  “Listen here, young lady. Don’t you sass me.” Minna whirled on Kit with surprising ferocity, her patience almost gone. Her beehive of hair was badly mussed, and her usually tidy uniform was disheveled. Her sharp eyes pinned Kit down.

  “I don’t need advice from a stripling. These things happen. I can’t be expected to know everything, to fix everything—”

  Whimpering from Rosamun sent them both scurrying.

  Once again Minna began searching through her birthing bag. Practically shouting, the midwife directed Kit to put a fresh kettle of water on the fire and to fetch more clean blankets. Suddenly Kit, who had been up since sunrise and had missed eating lunch, was swept by fatigue. Her knees buckled, and she nearly swooned.

  Minna reached over and grabbed the girl before she fell, shaking her violently by the shoulders. “You’ve got to bear up now, Kit,” she said fiercely. “Don’t go sissy on me. I need you. Rosamun needs you.” She gave Kit a push toward her duties.

  The girl could barely keep her eyes open as she trudged around the room, doing what Minna had asked. The afternoon had grown awfully warm, and with the fire that had been kept burning to heat the water, the inside of the cottage seemed hotter than a dwarven forge. Kitiara felt as if she were suffocating.

  “Pour some over your head,” advised Minna.

  “What?”

  “The water, over your head,” the midwife repeated.

  “Oh,” said Kitiara, scooping cold water out of the bucket and splashing it over her head so that her face and clothes were soaked. It felt good. Refreshed, she dashed out to get another load.

  “Idiot girl,” Minna murmured under her breath.

  Rosamun was likewise fevered, and Minna did the best she could to keep her cool, sponging her constantly with water. Looking limp and lifeless, Kit’s mother faded in and out of consciousness, her store of energy all but exhausted. The contractions persisted. What should have been a short labor dragged on interminably.

  “I don’t understand. That baby should slip right out,” Minna said in a low voice to Kit.

  Feeling around underneath Rosamun’s covering, Minna muttered an oath as she discovered the reason. She drew Kit aside.

  “This baby is coming out feet first,” she confided ominously, “not head first like most babies are born. It’s a breech birth. No telling how long her labor will last. It’s not normal.”

  Kit digested Minna’s report numbly. She looked over at the first baby, who was still sleeping, eyes shut peacefully. “Can you do anything?” she asked hopefully.

  “I can try,” said Minna plainly, “but Paladine is going to have to help.”

  Hours passed as the birth dragged on, until it was almost sundown. At one point, Rosamun’s eyes began to blink uncontrollably. Her face flushed a bright pink and her body writhed restlessly. When Kit touched her mother’s hand, it was burning hot.

  “She has a high temperature. You have to do something,” cried Kit, almost accusingly.

  Minna, clearly worried, ignored the girl, except to ask for more heated water to mix a new batch of “Never Fail Balm.” She had been bathing Rosamun’s stomach with it continuously since after the first birth.

  Rosamun was unconscious most of the time now. Kitiara had to hold her mother up as best as she could from the back. Minna didn’t even bother asking Rosamun to push.

  Finally, there was some progress, and Minna perked up. “A toe, I see a toe. Now, if only I can get both feet coming out together, we might be able to see this stubborn twin born.”

  Eventually both feet did emerge, then the legs, then the hips—it was another boy. Still wedged against her mother’s back, Kit listened to Minna’s excited reports on the progress of the second birth. Over her shoulder she could see her mother’s eyes were lidded. Rosamun’s breathing came in weak spurts. At last, just past dusk, the baby’s head started to slip out. Kit heard Minna curse.

  “By the gods! He’s not breathing, and blood is running out of your mother like a river.”

  Acting swiftly, Minna took a small knife from her bag and severed the umbilical cord, then lay the baby across the foot of the bed. Now her attention turned to the infant’s mother, who was unconscious, drenched in sweat and blood. One hand massaged Rosamun’s stomach to stimulate the afterbirth contractions that would help stem the bleeding. The other hand stirred crumbled aspen leaves into a cup of water to make the clotting drink.

  “I’ve got my hands full with your mother now. You’d better try to help your second brother,” Minna told Kit. “Rub his feet. Try to get some breath into his body. Do something!”

  Kit slid out from behind Rosamun and climbed onto the bed next to the baby. Fighting panic, she grabbed several clean blankets and began rubbing his small body, as she had seen Minna do with the first baby. At last, a rasping noise came from this one’s chest as he spit up a small amount of green liquid and drew in a few pitiful breaths. After a minute, his ragged breathing stopped.

  “Minna, what should I do? He doesn’t seem to be breathing very well,” Kit asked the midwife urgently.

  Minna was cradling Rosamun’s head and, through a dropper, easing some of the aspen leaf liquid into her mouth. The midwife looked up only briefly before turning back to Rosamun, who herself was barely holding onto life.

  “Take him over to the fire and just keep rubbing him, especially the bottoms of his feet. If that doesn’t work try pinching his cheeks. Blow in his ears, softly. Anything. But mind you, the second twin is like an afterthought and often weak-spirited. Maybe he’s a lost cause.”

  At that comment, Kit’s head snapped up and she glared at the stupid midwife, but only for a second. Her thoughts quickly focused on saving her half-brother, and she rushed to the hearth. Using her foot to kick more logs onto the blaze, she threw herself into rubbing the frail baby with an intensity she usually reserved for practicing moves with her wooden sword. After a tense silence, the infant’s breathing resumed.

  Finally the baby let out a few mews of dissent at his rough treatment. His color began to look slightly more pinkish than bluish to Kit. But when she tried stopping his vigorous massage, the infant’s breathing slowed again. So the therapeutic rubbing continued. Kitiara was as determined to prove Minna wrong as she was concerned for the welfare of her second-born half brother.

  She stole a glance at the first twin, snug in Gilon’s cradle. That baby boy, chubby and cherubic by comparison, slept soundly. How unalike they were! Yet as Kit continued to gaze at the older of her new brothers, she had the impression that he was breathing in unison with his weaker twin. She could pause in her rubbing now. The second baby was breathing more easily and had drifted off to sleep.

  Across the room, the midwife relaxed. She, too, had succeeded. Rosamun’s bleeding had stopped. Kit’s mother lay in an exhausted slumber, looking like a wan corpse.

  “Well,” sighed Minna, pulling a sheet and blanket up around Rosamun, “about as close a call as I’ve ever had. Not that I was worried. When you’re as experienced in these affairs as Minna, child …”

  Kit, sitting on the hearth, cradling the baby, was hardly paying any attention. She looked up to see Minna standing over her, her face flushed, her stack of auburn hair now lopsided.

  “Someone needs to rouse your mother every two hours and give her a generous sip of tea made from th
e aspenwood leaves,” said the midwife with crisp efficiency. “You or Gilon will have to go out tonight and find some goat’s milk. Your mother is in no condition to nurse those babies, and goat’s milk is the best thing for newborn humans. Goats have kids, too, you know.”

  Studying the look of obvious dislike on the girl’s face, Minna decided Kitiara needed to learn some common courtesies. The girl glanced away, peering intently at the second-born twin, gauging the effects of her diligent massage. The baby made a congested sound. Kit went back to massaging him.

  “I don’t know that I’d get my hopes up,” Minna said brusquely. “You’d be better off using that energy to take care of your mother. I told you, second twins are notoriously short-lived. We may have to dig a grave for that one come morning.”

  All the fear and helplessness and frustration of the past hours welled up in Kit with Minna’s unfeeling remark. Anger surged through her small frame, pulling her to her feet. Without actually deciding to do it, Kit reached up and slapped the midwife across the face as hard as she could.

  “Don’t say that again!” Kit screamed.

  Shocked and infuriated, Minna grabbed Kit roughly by the shoulder, almost jostling the infant from her arms. Distracted by a sound near the door, first Minna, then Kit turned to observe Gilon standing there, his face solemn. A slight gust of wind blew into their faces.

  “Did you see that, Master Majere?” Minna let go of Kit’s shoulder and hurried over to Gilon, bobbing with outrage. “Did you see that? She struck me! You can’t allow her to get away with it. I demand an apology, and I claim the right to strike her in punishment. Unless that child is properly disciplined, she’s going to end up just like her father—worthless!”

  Gilon looked from the midwife to his stepdaughter. His weary brown eyes showed not fury, but sadness. He put his ax down inside the door and slowly took his jacket off. His big dog, Amber, who always accompanied Gilon on woodcutting forays, sensed something amiss and trotted away. The stolid Gilon ran his fingers through his thick, brown hair and took a long time before speaking.