by Paul Beatty
‘But ma’am, the baby will die.’
‘None of our affair. When more have died then they’ll give us back our rightful place, come away.’
‘The mother I know has done wrong but the child is innocent and is a child of the community. Let me go at least.’
‘No! Go and you can never come back to us. Do you hear me?’
Rebecca looked at her chief. ‘I can’t let a community child die without trying.’ She turned to Francesca. ‘Take me to them.’
Back in the Infirmary it was clear that Anya was in more pain and Elizabeth more desperate. Immediately Rebecca took charge. She inspected how far the baby had come and probed round the baby’s head as Elizabeth had done.
‘You were right,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘The cord that connects the baby to the mother is caught up. The baby is too closely wedged in the birth canal for us to release it and the pulling the contractions produce on the baby will soon damage the cord to the mother if it hasn’t already done so, cutting off the blood supply to the baby.’
‘Can you do anything?’ said a fearful Elizabeth.
‘Yes, but it will be difficult and I’m going to need everyone’s help. Is there any poppy juice and suspension of valerian in the Infirmary?’
‘Yes,’ said Hermione. ‘I got the steward to make sure that we had access to all the drugs the Infirmary had and a complete set of surgical instruments in case we needed them.’
‘Good. Well done. But we may need something that only the Crèche Nurses normally are allowed to have. Jonathan, will you run to Sylvia and ask her for the some tincture of hemlock. She will not be willing to give it you but you must convince her that I am the one asking for it. Tell her it’s for the baby and I cannot go back and beg some from the Crèche Nurses. Go quickly; Francesca will take over helping Anya while you’re gone.’
As soon as Jonathan was off on his errand Rebecca told them all, including Anya, what they were going to do. ‘We’re going to slow the force of the contractions down and help Anya not push as hard as she has been when they come. That will be painful so I’m going to give her a large dose of both the poppy juice and the valerian to help her. With things a little less stormy we’ll see if we can free the cord, in which case the baby will come quickly and easily. There is a risk that Anya will start to become too drowsy and her breathing will get shallow. Francesca, it will be your job to see that that doesn’t happen. You must tell me the minute Anya starts to fall deeply asleep or her breathing becomes shallow. If she doesn’t breathe properly then the baby will die soon after and I’ll have to act very quickly to save it. If that happens then you all must do what I tell you without question.’
Hermione passed two beakers of valerian suspension and poppy juice to Rebecca. ‘Hold her head up, Francesca.’ In turn she pressed the beakers to Anya’s lips to drink. ‘Anya, just swallow slowly. I know that you’ve no reason to trust me considering how we first met but I’ll not let a community child die or its mother if I can help it. Francesca, is here and she’ll look after you. I know how much she loves you and she’d stop me doing anything bad even if I’d a mind to.’
Anya was so weakened that the herbs took effect quickly. In minutes her contractions were diminished, or at least they didn’t seem as painful, and Anya was more relaxed so that Rebecca and Elizabeth could get to work. Francesca stroked Anya’s hair and talked to her.
‘Just keep breathing steadily.’ Anya held her hand tightly.
‘I want to say something in case I never get another chance,’ Anya said.
‘Shush. Don’t think like that. Rebecca knows what she is doing. It will be alright.’
‘I’m sorry I did all this to you. I still love you. If the baby lives, and I don’t, please take care of it.’ As Anya said this, Francesca realised that her voice was getting weaker.
‘We think we’ve moved the cord. Can you ask her to bear down when the next contraction comes?’ It was Rebecca.
‘Did you hear that?’ said Francesca
‘Yes. I’ll try.’
Rebecca started to count. ‘Your muscles are tightening, I can feel them. One…two…three…four…five Go’ Anya contorted her face as she strained at her stomach muscles.
‘Good. Was there any movement Elizabeth?’
‘A bit I think.’
‘Right. Same again Anya. Here it comes One…two…three… four…five. Go’
Anya tried harder this time and she squeezed Francesca’s hand more tightly as she strained. But as the contraction passed, Francesca could see that the effort had weakened her. The pupils of her eyes were tiny and her face was even paler than it had been before. She tried to say something but her eyes rolled and her head drooped to one side.
Francesca felt the pit of her stomach fall. ‘Can you hear me Anya?’ But there was no reply. ‘Rebecca, she is unconscious.’
‘It she still breathing?’
Francesca looked across her chest and tried to judge if it was rising and falling. ‘Yes but very shallowly.’
‘There’s a lot of blood coming from round the baby’s head, Rebecca.’ As Elizabeth spoke Francesca heard a door open.
‘Just in time, Jonathan,’ said Rebecca.
A bottle was thrust into Francesca’s hand. ‘Pour as much of this into her mouth as you can and get her to swallow it by stroking. Elizabeth, is she still bleeding?’
‘Yes! I can’t stop it.’
‘Try to make sure that the blood runs away and doesn’t drown the baby.’
Francesca looked up as the last of what she realised must have been the hemlock left Anya’s mouth. The current contraction had stopped and she saw Rebecca, a sharp surgical knife in hand, cut a deep line across Anya’s exposed stomach.
‘Don’t mind the blood everyone. If she’s bleeding then her heart’s beating and she’s still alive but we must get the baby out. Jonathan, Hermione, pull back the muscle below and above the incision I’ve made. How hard doesn’t matter even if it tears at the edges. I must be able to see what I’m doing.’
Jonathan and Hermione pulled, tears running down Jonathan’s face as he did what was needed despite the fact that it would hurt Anya. Rebecca struggled to feel and to see inside Anya.
‘I can see the womb.’ She picked up the knife again.
Francesca realised Rebecca was picking the right place for a second decisive cut. Anya gulped in air with one great breath as the knife went home and was suddenly awake. The knife rattled on the floor as Rebecca dropped it and thrust her hands into Anya’s stomach. A second later she was holding up a blood-soaked but crying baby boy. Seeing Anya was awake she pushed the child into her arms. ‘There you are. He’ll do. Francesca, see she holds him as much as she can and clean him up as best you can.’ Then, as Francesca watched, the young Crèche Nurse sank back exhausted, to be enfolded in the bloody embrace of Elizabeth, as one of the Infirmary staff stepped forward to staunch the bleeding, clean the wounds and stitch Anya back together.
Chapter 18
It was Mayday dawn and Francesca was standing with all the rest of the community on the hills above the burial ground to see the first rays of the sun come over the eastern horizon.
Though officially the start of the growing season, much had been done well before this Mayday. As winter had released Heron Fleet and outside work became possible, furious activity had started.
Tobias’s boat was pulled up on shore so that the damage below the waterline could be properly repaired. The steering gear had been inspected in detail, damaged parts replaced, and everything greased and maintained. The second attempt at setting the new mast, the one that Timothy had built, was successful. But there was no cheering when it finally went home, just relief that it had not cost any more lives.
Once the boat was fit for sea Tobias and Sylvia could be caught in conversation about what Heron Fleet could give to help the new community get a good start. Seeds were obvious and enough was packed aboard the boat to set a reasonable first harvest.
‘Th
e Shepherds tell me we can spare the basis of a herd. Can you take a tup and half a dozen ewes?’ Sylvia asked him.
‘You’re very kind,’ Tobias said. ‘But I don’t know how long it will take us to find a suitable place. If you’ll let me come back when we’ve found the site, it might be better to take them then.’
‘That might be a problem. All who go might well be considered banished when they leave. The Council have not yet finally voted on that.’
Plants in the Glasshouses started to shoot on their own well before time and the Gardeners were suddenly stretched to the limit with clearing beds to make sure there was room for all the plants which demanded space to grow. Francesca was busier than most in the propagation chamber, sowing early marrows and squashes for the curcubit house, and chitting early onions and potatoes.
Anya was up and about, though still sore after the difficulties of the birth. She had stayed about a week in the Infirmary and after that had needed rest in the roundhouse but she had been walking round with the baby for a fortnight and everyone had been able to see the boy who had been named David.
Francesca had accompanied Rebecca back to the Crèche Nurse house to see if the Nurses would have her back after the help that she had given Anya. But the Head Crèche Nurse turned Rebecca away with several curses that made Francesca very angry. She was amazed how well Rebecca took the rejection and when Anya moved out with Jonathan onto the boat, as head of the roundhouse, she invited Rebecca to join them, at least until it could be agreed what she would do.
In many ways Francesca allowed all the activity and excitement to bury the decision that was coming. But now the morning was clear and there could be no more evasion.
As they all watched, over the distant island of the great bay, the sun rose, its golden top curving and shimmering. The river cliffs emerged out of a pallid, grey mist, immediately resolving into purple and dark red. At the same time the fields between where she stood and the river turned gold and Francesca could feel the warmth of the sun on her face cut through the cold of winter. The children with the Crèche Mothers cheered, and the Apprentices and Gatherers applauded. Quickly the sun’s disc rose clear of the island towards a clear sky and the warmth increased.
‘A fine day for a fine year,’ said a voice at her shoulder. It was Tobias. ‘Isn’t that how the saying goes?’
‘Yes, that is how it goes,’ replied Francesca. ‘If the sun is clear on Mayday morning, as it is today, there will be no typhoons, the harvest will be good and all the children born will be straight and true.’
‘But where will you celebrate the next Mayday, here or in a new community that your skill has brought safely through a harvest and a winter?’
‘Whichever it is, I will celebrate that I have done no more than my duty.’
‘Is there nothing that I can say that will sway you? Will you not trust me and come with me? I know I have no right to ask. I deserted you and your mother. I will understand if you desert me now.’
‘It’s not a matter of desertion. I trust you not because you are my father but because of what you did to comfort me when I remembered about what Anya had done. I respect you for how you fought for Anya and Jonathan during the Testing. I love you because you gave me the courage to stop being frightened of every difficulty or threat to the community, even typhoons and autumn storms. I would follow you willingly for how you behaved when Timothy was killed and I blamed myself. Heron Fleet gave me the responsibility of being a Gatherer but you showed me what it was to be one.’
‘So you’ll come with us tomorrow? When Sylvia asks who will stand with Anya, Jonathan, David and me you will be with us?’
‘The truth is I don’t yet know.’
‘But if what you’ve just said is true, isn’t your decision obvious?’
‘Just because what I said is true is the very reason that the answer is not obvious. When you told me how Heron Fleet tore Lucia and you apart, you said you betrayed her and me because you had a choice to come back for us and not sail away when you got free.’
‘That I did. But you won’t betray anyone by going, it’s the opposite. You’ll betray people if you don’t go.’
‘You mean I’ll betray you. That’s the trouble with you. You see things too easily through only your own eyes. It gives you courage and clear-sightedness on many occasions but it makes you stubborn and selfish as well. I am caught between two things I love, you and Heron Fleet. If I stay I betray you and many of those who will go with you who are my friends. If I go I betray not simply the Heron Fleet as an idea but all those who trusted my example during the Testing. Worst of all I will throw my own words back in my own teeth; the promise I made when I was made a Gatherer last Harvest. Father, you will have to wait until this evening when Sylvia calls for those who will go with you to stand forward. Before then I doubt if I shall know myself.’
Francesca started the day visiting places around the community that meant something special to her, the Glasshouses, Timothy’s grave. But it was difficult to find quiet to think the thoughts she needed to think.
Mayday was a day of rest, a day for friends to count blessings, a day for partnerships to be suggested and love to be considered. But she wanted to be alone not to see images of herself reflected from anyone else’s eyes no matter how precious those eyes might be to her.
Intending to visit the fields where she had planted and tended the millet before last year’s harvest, she crossed the river bridge. But when she got to the bottom of the combe where the path to the beach branched to the right, she stopped and considered whether even in the fields she might be too easily disturbed. The beach would certainly not be quiet. Down there she would find many groups lighting fires and reminiscing about the past year. So she struck out from the path and started to follow the edge of the wood upstream.
The further she went the higher the river cliffs got and the higher she had to climb. She had been walking for about three hours when she found her way blocked by the cliffs on her left and by a high line of rock running down from an overhanging crag above her. She realised that she must now be beyond the limits of Heron Fleet, for although along the river the pasture the community claimed and used went on further than where she was, the northern edge of the wood was not of any interest to the community and they did not claim it.
She stood on the edge of the cliff and looked down. Perhaps there was a third way of dealing with the problem of her choice, the one she had sought the night of the storm. If she fell from here, even if they found her body they would think it a terrible tragic accident, not an act of deliberate cowardice. She was looking at the drop and wondered what it would feel like to fall, when an irregularity on the cliff face caught her eye.
Almost directly below her there was a roughly semicircular ledge. It poked out of the cliff and there was more undergrowth on it than on any other of the small ledges on the otherwise sheer rock. It seemed to be an extension of a spur of rock from the wall that had barred her way. Curiosity about what the view would be like from that platform seized her and she wondered whether using the spur of rock she might be able to get down to it. After a few minutes she located the place where the spur joined the larger wall and after scrambling over some boulders found she could follow the smaller spur downwards. She slipped and nearly went over the edge at the point where the spur went abruptly over the cliff edge but found that afterwards climbing down got easier as the spur traversed the cliff face. At the end where it reached out for the ledge, part of it had fallen away and she had to do a bit of rock-climbing across the gap. If I ever come back here I’ll bring a rope, she thought to herself. But one last effort and she was on the ledge.
It was bigger than it had seemed from above. A good eight metres across, it was only thinly covered in dead brambles and other scrub. She realised that had it been later in the year then it would have been camouflaged with thick, growing undergrowth. In fact the ledge was likely to be visible and accessible only in the spring or winter.
She smash
ed down the brambles and pushed through sprouting creepers and bracken. At the edge of the platform was an irregular rim of boulders that made a convenient low parapet. She pulled back some of the undergrowth over them to get a better look at what was underneath. There was indeed a low line of stones, some placed neatly on top of others. It was remarkable how regular nature could be. How, having rolled off the cliff face, these boulders had stopped in these positions, making an effective marker of the dangerous edge of the platform.
She turned her attention to the back of the ledge. The more she looked, the more convinced she was that there was an entrance of some kind at the back. She pulled down some of the creepers growing down from above. She was right. Some more steady work cleared enough to let the late afternoon light into a cave about four metres deep.
There had been many roof falls and there were irregular piles of chippings and boulders of various sizes in several places. On the oldest parts of the roof there were signs of what might have been soot from fires. Two piles of boulders and chippings stood out from the others. They were regular rectangles and faced the cave opening. At the far end of each were two larger stones. Into these stones someone had hammered letters which had not been well made in the first place and were now badly worn. She traced them with her fingers. They were names: James and Charlie.
She went out into the full sunlight and sat on the parapet. From the river far below a tall grey bird shrugged itself into the air. Tucking its long legs up and neck back, its sharp bill cut the air, pointing its way. It looped downriver a few steady wingbeats until it turned left and started to climb. It rose towards her. As it passed no more than two metres over her head its great wings blocked the sun so that she was in shade. Then its shadow passed and she was back in glorious sunlight as if the bird had brought the warmth and light back specifically for her. She too would make her pact as long as it was necessary for the good of all.