“But I was gonna ride him!” Joel protested, hopping off the wagon’s red-enameled step. “You said if I set here real quiet—”
“Me, too!” Lily cried.
Billy was reaching up to caress the horse’s glossy black neck when a frightened cry rang out from the bedroom.
“No! Don’t you tell me the Lord’s gonna take that girl!” Sedalia Gates wailed. “She just a child! Jesus knows some wicked man done had his way with her—”
“Out!” came a guttural command. “Ze angels, zey cannot help if you defy zem!”
Frightened, the two little children rushed toward Billy. When he scooped Lily up to silence her sobs, Joel scurried toward the folks who were coming out the front door as though the Devil himself were on their heels: Michael Malloy grabbed the little boy, while a nearly hysterical Sedalia Gates was being escorted between her wide-eyed husband and a very pale Agatha Vanderbilt. Mercy brought up the rear of this ominous parade, knuckling away tears.
Christine wavered, but her curiosity won.
To the window she went, deathly afraid yet drawn like that proverbial moth to some mysterious flame in the bedroom. Peering in, she knew better than to breathe a word when Tucker came up beside her.
“We must pray,” he whispered. “Maman, she’s going to summon God’s mightiest angels. We must lend that poor girl our strength.”
Petrified, Christine nodded. What was she about to witness? Who dared to call upon God’s angels?
Yet she silently joined in when she heard the familiar cadence of the Lord’s Prayer—even though Tucker whispered it in Latin. He was making the sign of the cross, as was the woman kneeling at the foot of the bed. A dark figure entered the unlit room.
It was Asa, setting candles on either side of the headboard and lighting them, as Veronique Trudeau instructed him. In the light of their flickering flames, Liberty Gates lay so still she might already be dead.
Seeing the poor girl distinctly for the first time, Christine pressed her fist to her lips. Libby was so wretchedly thin, her collarbone protruded above tiny buds of breasts. Her ribs were clearly visible above her distended belly.
Why had she wanted to gawk, anyway? She didn’t dare move, though, for fear that oddly dressed seer might focus those evil-eye powers on her.
So she stood stock-still, drawing courage—and a little thrill—from the closeness of Tucker’s warm body. If he felt safe standing here, Christine figured she would be all right, too.
“Maman, she is praying to St. Michael, the highest of the archangels, and to St. Raphael the archangel physician,” he said in a reverent tone. “She will also beseech Mary, the mother of Christ, to be present.”
Praying to saints and angels was totally foreign to Christine. But Liberty’s situation was grave—and when the midwife pulled a large knife from her bag, Christine sucked in her breath.
With wide eyes, she watched the little midwife heat the blade in a candle’s flame. Asa brought her a stack of clean rags and a pot of something with acrid-smelling steam rising from it.
“Maman, she is an herbalist,” Tucker explained, his breath tickling her ear. “Le bébé is too big, perhaps, and she needs to take it out from the top.”
The blood rushed from her head, and Tucker slipped an arm around her.
“She has done this many times,” he reassured her. “If you don’t want to watch, just keep sending prayers up for the girl. And for Maman, of course.”
Praying for a woman who so obviously despised her didn’t set well, so Christine offered another suggestion. “We should pray for poor old Asa, too. He works with herbs himself, but mostly for cooking. He probably wants to run away so fast not even Billy could catch him.”
Indeed, Asa moved with a nervous energy, carrying out Mrs. Trudeau’s wishes as she prepared for this surgical birthing. He stirred the pot of foul-smelling brew, then checked Libby’s forehead for signs of fever.
The girl opened her eyes and caught a flicker of the knife in the candlelight. “Sweet Jesus, please don’t kill me! I didn’t want him to do it!” she whimpered, as weak as a half-starved kitten.
“Here, child, you drink some more of Asa’s tea now,” the old man coaxed.
“You go on back to sleep, and when Miz Trudeau’s fixed what ails ya, why, you’ll feel good as new.”
Libby gulped from the cup he held to her lips, clinging to Asa’s wrinkled fingers as though they might help her hold on to life itself. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
Christine gasped, afraid she would faint—or worse, vomit—on the man whose arm still supported her. Tucker was crossing himself, looking into that room as though he’d seen such trouble before and didn’t like it one bit.
When his mother positioned the blade beneath the girl’s navel, Christine looked away. She swallowed several times, trying not to cry while Tucker held her face to his shoulder. He surely must think her a fool for losing her nerve—and almost her breakfast—since she was the one who’d come to the window.
“Ah . . . that explains it,” he murmured near her ear. “The cord, it was wrapped around the baby’s neck. Such an ordeal that girl has . . . oh, my. Maman, she is having one of her visions.”
Too curious for her own good, Christine peeked through the window again. Mrs. Trudeau was handing the baby to Asa, quickly, as though it scorched her fingers. She grimaced fiercely, her body shuddering in a seizurelike convulsion. For several seconds, she was at the mercy of whatever ghastly images she saw behind her twitching eyelids. She began to babble in disjointed foreign phrases—apparently unaware of what she was doing.
Asa seemed to recognize what was going on and spoke softly to her. After a few moments, she sucked in a deep breath to compose herself again, although she still looked very upset. Then she reached inside Liberty again, raising her voice in a sing-song tone that resembled a chant.
“My God, I will never have children!” Christine rasped against the shoulder that cradled her again.
“Shhh, now. It will all be over soon, chérie,” he crooned. “You will have fine, healthy babies, Christine, because you are a fine, healthy woman.”
It will all be over soon. Just what did he mean by that?
“Keep praying,” he continued, “because—oh, mon Dieu—”
His intake of breath made Christine peek into the room again. Libby had raised her head to cast an evil glare at Veronique, with her eyes still rolled back. The horrible image had Christine thinking the girl must be possessed by a demon, but she couldn’t look away this time.
The midwife crossed herself, gazing up above the bed and to the corners of the room, beseeching the unseen powers that hovered there. As she threaded a long needle, the candle flames began to flicker wildly, as though a storm were about to break loose.
Veronique Trudeau raised her reedy voice in a prayer that sounded desperate, even though Christine couldn’t understand a word of it. Asa, too, fell to his knees beside the bed, close enough to assist with a packing of hot herbs. His eyes widened as he gazed fearfully around the room, but he kept squeezing out handfuls of the steaming greenery so the midwife could position the poultice inside Libby as she stitched. The air whirled about them—or so it seemed to Christine, as she focused on the candles rather than watching the midwife’s needlework.
“It might be a while before I can stitch another sampler,” she mumbled, a weak attempt at humor.
“Come away, ma belle,” he said gently. “You’ve seen enough.”
Christine turned—to find her brother, the Malloys, and Reuben and Sedalia Gates all wanting answers to their unspoken questions: Had it come down to life and death in that room? Which side had won?
Not ready to analyze what she’d just witnessed, Christine found herself in another awkward situation. Here she stood, in the arms of the very man who’d dumped her life upside down just yesterday. Everyone knew who he was, of course, but that didn’t excuse her from making proper introductions.
“This—as you know by now—is Tucker
Trudeau,” she said in a halting voice.”Tucker, meet Michael and Mercy Malloy, the newlyweds who just moved into this house. This is Reuben and Sedalia Gates, who just hired on—”
“That’s my little sister in there,” Reuben said with a nod. “We sure glad your mama happened ’long when she did, sir.”
“It weren’t no accident, though—was it?” Tears trickled down Sedalia’s coffee-colored face. “That woman in there, she got the power, praise Jesus! She knowed what was happenin ’fore y’all got here.”
“Oui, Maman, she is a seer and a healer who has birthed many babies,” Tucker confirmed. “She takes the gifts that God has given her and uses them to help others. She does not charge for her help, so it is I who must see to her needs. Which is why she has come along on my new commission,” he added with a glance at Christine.
Letting go of Sedalia’s arm, Agatha Vanderbilt stepped forward with her hand daintily extended. “I am Agatha Vanderbilt, and I must apologize for misjudging you, Mr. Trudeau,” she said quietly. “When I withheld your letters from Christine at the academy, she was only thirteen—”
“And you, too, were caring for one who depended on you,” he replied with a gracious smile. “I was disappointed, oui, but I could not be angry. I lived hoping that someday it would be my destiny to meet Miss Bristol again.”
As he raised Miss Vanderbilt’s hand to his lips, Christine thought she might cry. She’d never seen such a heartfelt apology and an eloquent acceptance.
A grunt from the front of the house made them all look at Tucker’s mother, whose eyes were shining like hard marbles as she glared at Christine. Veronique Trudeau obviously didn’t envision the same destiny for her beloved son—which she told him in a torrent of unpleasant French.
Tucker listened, then smiled wryly at those around him. “Maman, she says we will stay to see that the girl awakes tomorrow. Then we must be on our way.”
“Meanwhile, though,” Asa said wearily, “we got us a baby to bury.”
Sedalia Gates flew at him like a shot from a gun. “You ain’t tellin’ me you couldn’t save that baby!” she cried. “Poor Libby, bearin’ such a burden she durn near lost her mind over it. Possessed by a demon, she was! I thought that’s why you was calling in the angels, to—you can’t tell me—”
Christine held her breath. Libby’s rolled-back eyes had indeed appeared demonic, and she would never forget how the girl had glared at Mrs. Trudeau with such a fiendish expression.
The wiry old cook grabbed Sedalia by the arms, pinning them to her side with more force than any of them knew he had. His white-sprigged hair shook with his wrath, and it took him a while to get the words out.
“Hear me now, woman, ’cause I ain’t sayin’ this but once!” he commanded. “Me and Miz Trudeau did our damnedest in there! Couldn’t nothin’ be done ’bout the baby’s cord bein’ wrapped around its neck.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over them as Asa continued to rant.
“It’s a wonder Libby didn’t keel over long ’fore this, what with that dead baby festerin’ inside her!” He dropped Sedalia’s arms, but his gaze challenged them all to defy his beliefs. “I’m tellin’ ya, I felt the angels’ wings beatin’ in that room! And they was fightin’ for that little girl’s life.”
His voice cracked, and he stepped away with an exhausted sigh. “I see it as a sign. The good Lord’s tellin’ us He’s savin’ Libby for a special purpose,” he whispered. “He’s chargin’ every last one of us with her care, ’cause if she lives till tomorra—it’s nothin’ short of a miracle. Tell that to your demon, Miz Gates!”
Chapter Ten
“This is just the saddest thing I’ve ever seen,” Christine whispered. “We never so much as looked into that baby’s face, and yet—yet—”
“It seems so unfair,” Mercy agreed in a muted voice. “God surely must’ve known and made His plan accordingly, but I don’t understand it. Makes me realize how much I have to be thankful for. How blessed I am.”
They swayed together in silence then, Mercy holding a sleeping Solace to her shoulder as Christine cradled a very subdued Lily against her hip. The October morning had dawned frosty, and their breath came out in wisps of white. They stood beneath a maple tree arrayed in its red autumn glory, beside a hole that held a pitifully small box.
Michael had made the little casket with lumber and paint left from building the house. They’d lined it with the pink blanket Lily had come with in her basket last spring. He turned to them now, opening his Bible.
“As we commit this innocent child to God’s care, let’s also pray for Liberty. Let’s ask for His tender mercies and her recovery, so she may indeed follow a higher purpose. For without our hope, our faith, and our help, these two lambs have suffered for nothing.”
On the other side of the tiny grave, Tucker and his mother knelt and made the sign of the cross. The little woman looked more like a Gypsy fortune teller than ever, with a threadbare shawl around her shoulders and a lace scarf covering her head. Christine also noticed how Tucker’s flannel shirt pulled across his broad back as he remained on his knees. Her gaze lingered on his lips as he murmured his prayer.
Joel tapped on Billy’s thigh. “What’re they doin’?” he whispered.
“Prayin’ for that little dead baby and its mama,” he replied quietly. “Let’s listen now, while your papa reads the Scripture.”
The little boy’s sandy hair drifted on the breeze as he nodded, considering this. Then he, too, tapped himself on both sides of his chest and went to his knees, glancing toward Tucker to be sure he was doing it right.
“I’ve chosen a familiar passage from Isaiah’s eleventh chapter,” Michael began in a solemn voice. “To me, this has always painted a beautiful picture of how peaceful—how perfect—the Lord’s dwelling will be. A place where our babies will be safe because all danger has been taken away.”
He glanced at the well-thumbed page, paraphrasing for them.
“The wolf shall live with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid . . . the calf and the lion and the fattling together, and a little child shall lead them,” he said softly. “The cow and the bear shall feed; their young will lie down together, and the lion . . .”
Christine let her mind drift over these images, picturing Lily walking fearlessly among the beasts he named. She hugged the little girl close. Poor Liberty would never know the joy of her child’s warm weight, the softness and scent of its hair.
“. . . the suckling child shall play over the hole of the snake, and the weaned child shall put its hand in the snake’s nest. They won’t hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for all creatures on this earth will know the Lord.”
Michael glanced at the grave, blinking. “We all recall the verses from Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus opens his arms to the children, bidding them to come, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven. I find that passage a comfort, knowing this innocent baby has already been welcomed and given a home by Christ Himself.
“And now, Lord, we commit this little one to Your care and Your kingdom,” Michael said as he bowed his head, “for You understand the agony of losing a child, and You grant your tender mercies to those crying out with their grief. Help us make sense of a senseless situation. Let us go forward from this day more aware of every precious moment You’ve given us, that we might give the best of ourselves—that we’ll hear You say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ when our earthly time is done. Amen.”
For a moment there was only the whisper of the wind in the brittle leaves, a chill reminder that winter would soon descend on the plains. It left Christine feeling bleak, knowing this funeral would weigh upon her for the rest of the day.
What if Liberty died, too? How long would it be before Tucker got back in that fancy wagon and rolled down the road?
“If it would be all right—if everyone please will stay here—I will play us a song,” Tucker said, as he rose to his feet. “It is a shame, to send this little soul to God wit
hout music.”
Everyone’s face brightened when Tucker returned from his wagon with an accordion. He slipped his arms into its straps and placed his fingers over the buttons and keys. Then he closed his eyes and began to play.
The tone was sweet and mellow, and as the morning sun glowed over the accordion’s mother-of-pearl inlay, Christine stood in awe. Lily sat straight up in her arms, watching the bellow’s steady in and out as Tucker’s fingers caressed the ivory keys and black buttons. When Joel went to stand closer, Tucker stooped forward so the boy could see better.
He began to sing. “ ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus, safe on His gentle breast—there by His love o’ershadowed, sweetly my soul shall rest.’ ”
Who could’ve guessed that this man with the mischievous eyes and dancing accent had such a wonderful voice? As his tender rendition of the song wrapped itself around them, no one could keep from swiping at tears.
“ ‘Hark, ’tis the voice of angels, borne in a song to me. . . .’”
Lily gazed upward then, raising her little arm in delight. “Looky, Kwis-teen,” she whispered. “Angels!”
She and Mercy and Miss Vanderbilt sighed as one. When the sunlight hit the crystal-kissed leaves of crimson and gold, they did indeed sparkle and shimmer like wings.
“You’re exactly right, Lily,” Christine murmured, hugging the little girl hard. “Thank you for showing them to us.”
When she turned back to watch Tucker sing again, it was his mother she noticed instead. Mrs. Trudeau was staring at Lily with wide eyes, as though she knew a secret about the child who’d been abandoned here last spring. The old crone actually looked happy, as she, too, raised her face to receive the blessing of the morning sun.
“ ‘Here let me wait with patience, wait till the night is o’er,’ ” Tucker crooned, slowing down to finish. “ ‘Wait till I see the morning break on the golden shore.’ ”
A sigh hovered around them as his final note drifted off in the wind.
“What a lovely song,” Mercy said in a choked voice. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it. But then, out here on the prairie we miss the tunes folks out East have been singing for years.”
Journey to Love (Angels of Mercy) Page 9