Instinctively, Francoise and Lisette flanked Denise and held her hands as Julianne slipped her hand into the womb. All three faces watching her were tight with determination. Francoise’s lips moved in silent prayer while Lisette reminded Denise to breathe.
Julianne felt the crack in the baby’s soft bottom, then up higher, the fold of a thigh. Refraining from probing any further for fear of releasing the tar-like meconium, she gently followed the curve of the baby’s knee, then the line of his lower leg, and firmly pulled a foot down into the birth passage. Quickly, she reached back in for the other foot, but the muscled walls of the womb clamped down. Francoise and Lisette murmured encouragement until Denise drowned them out with her cries.
The muscles eased. Arm tingling from the pressure, Julianne coaxed the other foot down into the passage.
“Push,” she urged, and Denise struggled to obey. Exhaustion circled the mother’s eyes, and her hair coiled darkly against her temples. Her lips had lost their color.
Slowly, evenly, Julianne pulled the feet out into the world. Ten little toes pointed heavenward, and she wrapped them with a clean cloth to keep a firm grip. Once the knees emerged as well, she rotated the body so his jaw would not catch.
“Francoise.” Julianne glanced at the older woman for help but saw she had paled whiter than alabaster and leaned on the bed for support. “Lisette.”
Without a word, Lisette hurried to her side. She was no younger than Julianne had been when she’d first begun attending births.
“The feet.”
As Lisette held the half-born child, Julianne reached in and straightened the baby’s arms, and the delivery proceeded into Lisette’s steady hands.
“A girl,” Julianne announced. “Well done, Mama.” But the baby was weak. After tying the navel string in two places, she cut between the knots.
Still, the baby didn’t stir.
“Why isn’t she crying?” Denise pushed up on her elbows. “Is something wrong with her?”
Julianne didn’t answer. The baby will die in my hands.
“What do you need?” Francoise, beside her, quietly jolted her back to the moment.
“Cloths soaked in strong wine or eau-de-vie. Crushed onions. A bath for the baby of lukewarm wine and water.” Lord, help. Let not this little one pass.
She focused on clearing out the baby’s nose and mouth, then dropped a tiny amount of wine into her mouth. Turned her over onto her arm and thumped her back to dislodge anything that may be blocking the flow of oxygen to her lungs. The baby breathed, but faintly.
Francoise brought what Julianne had requested, and together they wrapped the cloths around the baby’s head, chest, and stomach. Julianne held the crushed onions beneath the baby’s nostrils long enough for her own eyes to water. “Come, little one. Wake up for us now.”
The baby’s eyes opened, and she let out a wail.
Tears thickened in Julianne’s throat. “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered, then smiled at Denise. “She’s fine. She’s perfect.”
“She’s a miracle,” Lisette whispered. “What have you named her?”
“Angelique,” Denise breathed. She pushed herself up on her pillows.
While Julianne tended the delivery of the afterbirth, Lisette and Francoise bathed the infant and wrapped her in clean cloths.
Exhaling relief, Julianne shuddered to think how things may have concluded if such a delivery were attempted on a rolling, pitching ship. “She knew exactly when to make her entrance, didn’t she, Denise?”
“A lady always does.” Tears tracing her cheeks and gathering beneath her chin, Denise stretched out her arms for her baby and hugged the tiny bundle to her chest. “Look at her nose! Look at her mouth! Look at her hair!”
Julianne laughed. “She has erased all doubt as to who her father is, hasn’t she?” After washing her own hands and arms up to her elbows, she untied the apron and came to admire Angelique in her mother’s arms.
Denise clutched Julianne’s hand. “Thank you.” Her voice strained with emotion. “Do not pretend this was a simple birth. Thank you. If you hadn’t been here—”
“But she was.” Francoise bent and kissed Denise’s temple and then the baby’s velvety head. “And so was God, who faithfully guided her.” She spoke a simple prayer of thanksgiving in that easy way of hers, then beamed at Julianne and Lisette before tenderly cradling Angelique’s head in her palm. “Remember this, mes chères: There is no person so small that the Lord cannot see her, no voice so quiet that He cannot hear it.”
A sacred quiet surrounded the women as they marveled at the delicate child, stirred only by Angelique herself.
Denise wiped tears from her cheeks. “My mother will never see her.” She sniffed. “Nor my sisters. I always thought—well, whenever I dreamed of becoming a mother and pictured myself having a baby, they were in the room with me. Sharing the pain and the joy as if it were their own.” Her watery eyes were rimmed with red.
Francoise bent to stroke Denise’s brow. “If I may speak for all of us, it is an honor to stand in for your family.”
Her heart full to overflowing, Julianne nodded, unable to squeeze words past the lump in her throat. Lisette smiled broadly for the first time, revealing a narrow gap between her two front teeth.
Pounding shook the door from the other side, shattering the tenderness of the moment. “Denise! Why would you lock out your husband? Denise!”
After dabbing her eyes, Julianne opened the door, and Jean Villeroy’s eyebrows plunged. “I was expecting to see one woman in my room. Not four.”
“Try five,” Denise called, smiling. “But this tiny one here is the only one who has your hair.”
His hand flew to his head. “What the devil do you—”
“Shush! Watch your language around our daughter.”
Jean’s eyes flared wide. The new father moved to his wife’s side and knelt by the bed. “Is she—can I touch her? Will I hurt her?”
Laughing, Denise assured him it was safe. With one finger, Jean traced the slight indentation in Angelique’s chin, then smoothed the dark red hair over her pulsing fontanel. “My daughter,” he whispered. “She is mine, isn’t she?” Amazement cracked his voice.
Julianne beckoned Lisette and Francoise out into the hall to give the happy family their privacy. Francoise wiped a tear from beneath her eye. “A baby changes everything.”
A longing swelled in Julianne that she had not allowed herself to feel in years. She folded her arms across her waist, yet they ached with an emptiness so heavy, she labored to carry the burden.
Chapter Nine
MISSISSIPPI RIVER
JULY 1720
Suffocating heat wrapped around Simon, wringing perspiration from his pores. Feet planted firmly as he stood inside the sharp-bowed vessel, he paddled against the Mississippi River’s current along with nineteen other rowers. Pine trees scrubbing the shoreline released sweet perfume into air that teemed with mosquitoes and midges.
In addition to hauling supplies for French colonials, the flat-bottomed boat carried items earmarked for the Natchez Indians, whose villages were eighty-eight leagues upstream from New Orleans. Gunpowder, balls, guns, limbourg fabric of red and blue, vermillion, awls, combs, and horn-handled knives would be given to the Natchez on credit. In return, the Natchez would hunt deer, dress their hides this fall and winter, and present them to the company trading post next spring so they could be transported back to New Orleans and sold for shipment to Europe.
“Keen eyes, men. Keen eyes.” The captain kept his voice low, and the four armed soldiers also on board were as alert as Simon had ever seen men be. Sunlight flashed on their bayonets.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Jean Villeroy dared to ask as he rowed directly in front of Simon.
“English agents, maybe. But savages are the main concern,” the captain clarified.
“Excepting we won’t see them until we’ve got an arrow or tomahawk in our chest,” offered another rower, and Simon shu
ddered inwardly.
“Enough,” the captain growled. “Just keep your mouths shut and your eyes open.”
Obediently, Simon combed his surroundings with his gaze. On the east bank of the river, he spied an alligator sunning itself, about nineteen feet long. Further on, a family of ducks bobbed in the water, ripples circling outward from their swimming feet. But after a while, the rhythmic stroking of his paddle lulled his mind away from possible lurking danger. His thoughts nested with Julianne instead.
By the time he left her for this trip, their home was much better situated. The cabin now had a door made of canes lashed together with leather thongs, and there were even some crude furnishings inside. A rope bed with mattress, blanket, and pillow. Two chairs and a table. A chimney so she could cook indoors. A kettle, a pan, mortar and pestle, corn and salt pork. The debt of credit would have to be paid as soon as he was. Cringing, he owned that he had already spent more than the fifteen livres he would earn for the month. At the company warehouse, one watermelon cost three livres. A single pot of bear oil was twelve. He’d had no idea when he accepted this job how little a livre could purchase in Louisiana.
Still, he was committed to earning honest wages, however paltry, for Julianne’s sake. Guilt coated him as he considered how he’d resisted her request to look for Benjamin. It was selfish of him and irrational. Truly, he didn’t want to lose her. Many of the couples who had been forced to marry in Paris were now seeking divorces from the Superior Council in New Orleans, and the Council was granting them. That little blond waif Lisette Dumont had shed herself of her debauched husband as soon as she learned how, and Simon didn’t fault her. But the ease with which it was done had stunned him. Simon had thought marriage was for life. If it wasn’t, well, he didn’t want to give Julianne any reasons to end their union.
“Take. For you.”
Simon snapped from his reverie. Standing at his side was Running Deer, the Indian slave sent along by the Company of the Indies to both serve and interpret at the trading post. His long, loose hair shone like obsidian in the sun, and the few turkey feathers he had woven into it fluttered in the breeze. Wearing nothing but his breechcloth, moccasins, and a shell necklace against his tattooed chest, he offered Simon his fourth and final ration of alcohol for the day. After downing the bittersweet rum, Simon nodded his thanks and handed the empty cup back to Running Deer. Next, the Indian gave him salt beef, boiled rice, and a biscuit. Dinner on the move.
Steadily, Simon rowed upstream for the final stretch of the day until the sun sank in the west, bathing the sky with fire. Mosquitoes hummed in his ears as the rowers found a place to camp for the night and tied the boat securely to some tree trunks. While several men drew lots to determine who should stay on guard for the first watch, Simon went about the task of gathering long reeds and sticking both ends in the ground to form a row of arches. With bearskins for mattresses and cloth topping the reeds for canopies, the boatmen had the best protection they could manage against biting insects while they slept.
Muscles burning, he crawled into his makeshift abode, and Jean crept in after him. The heat in the airless space proved as dense and unforgiving as the darkness, and yet it was still preferable to being eaten alive by midges and deerflies.
Groaning, Simon turned onto his side and glared at his bedfellow. If Jean’s sour body odor wasn’t strong enough to alert any nearby Indians of their presence, his raucous snoring certainly would.
Simon rolled to his back and raked his hand through his hair, trying to shut out Jean’s crude presence and shove aside any thoughts of savages waiting in the shadows. How he ached to be lying beside Julianne instead.
A single thought curled around him. If she was so happy just because he agreed to look for Benjamin, what would she do if he were actually able to find him?
Julianne’s nerves thrummed as Captain Girard led her between the sweet-smelling orange trees outside the settlement. Standing at the door of Bienville’s country residence, she reminded herself that the governor needed a woman with her skills. The colony needed her.
Girard rapped on the door, the picture of confidence in his deep blue waistcoat lined with yellow trim. An African the captain greeted as Caesar answered the door and ushered them to the commandant’s office. Before Bienville looked up, the captain tucked his tricorn hat under one arm and swiped his hand over his black hair from his brow to the queue at his neck.
Setting down his quill, the commandant rose from his upholstered chair and circled his walnut writing desk, deserting the half-written page behind him. His slave followed him, fanning him with a large palmetto branch. Though he was not a large man, Bienville’s bearing commanded respect. The white curls of his wig cascaded over the shoulders of his grey brocade coat patterned with fleur-de-lys. A paisley-covered waistcoat beneath resembled any French gentleman’s typical taste. Covered from the tips of his buckled shoes to the silk cravat wrapping his neck, no one would have guessed that—if rumors were true—his chest was heavily tattooed with the Virgin Mary, the infant Jesus, Constantine’s cross, and Indian symbols.
“So this is the girl?” Bienville asked.
Julianne made no sign of being insulted at the rough greeting as she curtsied. If Bienville’s mother had raised him with any manners, she certainly hadn’t had much time. The captain had told her that Bienville joined the French colonial navy at the age of twelve. “Julianne LeGrange, monsieur.” Her honey-colored hair was pinned in coils to her head so that, covered with a lace cap as it was, the short length of it remained disguised.
“And you’re a midwife, Captain Girard tells me.”
“I am. Just delivered a brand-new colonist last week at Madame St. Jean’s Inn. A baby girl. It was a footling breech delivery, but both mother and daughter are doing fine.” Too late, she wondered if her words smacked of pride or arrogance, when all she intended was to demonstrate her credentials.
When Bienville studied her eyes overlong, her gaze slipped beyond him to a map-covered table behind his desk. Vaguely, she could make out the sweeping lines that symbolized the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River, and the Great Lakes, which bordered New France to the north. Truly a vast territory, and wild. No wonder populating it remained such a concern.
Captain Girard cleared his throat. “She was trained in Paris, sir. Started attending births when she was fifteen, formally apprenticed for the requisite three years, and passed with honors her examination from the faculty at the College of Surgery.”
Surprised at the clarity of his memory, Julianne stole a glance at the officer beside her. Had she really told him all of that in the course of their conversations?
“I haven’t seen you before. You came with the convicts? Rough company for you, I’m afraid. Blasted idea, sending worthless souls over here,” Bienville muttered, and Julianne flushed despite Caesar’s efforts to create a breeze. “At least someone was thinking when they recruited a midwife to make the crossing too. We need our French women to survive childbirth as many times as possible so they can continue bearing children for France. Every French baby is a vital asset to the colony, you understand.”
Her fingers played in and out of the pleats in her skirt. “I do understand. Every life is precious.”
Bienville wagged his finger. “I said every French baby, and I mean full-blooded French, is important for the success of Louisiana. You mustn’t misunderstand. We need a colony midwife for the colony.”
Her hands stilled at her sides. “I understand that, monsieur. But your colony includes women who aren’t French, does it not? I am quite prepared to tend all mothers.”
“Are you quite prepared to follow orders?” Bienville crossed his arms and puffed out a breath that smelled of coffee. “I’m going to speak plainly, madame, and you best listen well. For years Louisiana has been composed of primarily French men. When they needed to slake their thirst for women, they found it easy enough to do so with willing native girls. Some of the men even professed to love the Indian women they slept wit
h.”
Beside her, Girard tugged his cravat away from his throat.
“But half-French is not French. Aha, let me put it this way.” Bienville pivoted on his high-heeled shoe, picked up a glass of water and a cup of coffee from his desk, and held them both aloft. He poured some of the coffee into the water glass, and the brown liquid plunged and swirled until the water took on a shade of its color. “You see? No longer pure. Water does not make coffee clean and clear. On the contrary, coffee muddies the water.” He set the drinking vessels back down. “Half-Indian babies will not preserve French culture. Half-breed children are far more savage than they are civilized. It can only ever be this way. It is simply the law of nature.” He spread his hands innocently. “My job—and should I hire you as the colony midwife, your job—is to care for the interests of France. Do I make myself clear?”
Julianne swallowed. “Abundantly.”
Bienville nodded. “Done. You shall be given a stipend of six hundred livres a year.” He dabbed his handkerchief to his brow, then returned to his chair at his writing desk. Caesar followed him.
Captain Girard set his hat back on his head and saluted his commanding officer. As Julianne curtsied once more, her mind spun. Six hundred livres a year! It was more than three times Simon’s salary, saints be praised!
“One more thing.” Bienville did not trouble himself to look up from his correspondence this time. “As part of your duties, you will tend the ill among the soldiers.”
“Pardon me?” She glanced from the governor to Girard, who raised his shoulders in an unhelpful shrug.
“We have no doctor. You will care for the garrison’s health. Or your pay will be reduced by half.”
“Monsieur, with respect.” Julianne paused to master her composure. “The health of the mothers and babies is my utmost concern. If I expose myself to your ill men, I compromise the health of the women in my charge.” Her voice grew stronger with every syllable.
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