Page 103 of My Hero
Cynthia nodded her thanks. Heat glowed between her palms now as she rubbed them together. “Lift her knees and look beneath her skirts to see—”
“What? Oh, nay, you don’t!” Duncan roared, shoving Garth aside. He pushed up his own sleeves and knelt, grumbling, before his wife. “Don’t worry, Linet,” he muttered. “After this is over, I’ll beat Garth for his impertinence.”
Cynthia was too busy laying her hand on Linet’s damp forehead to see the glower Garth gave his brother. She closed her eyes. Almost at once she received a brilliant picture…a healthy girl infant, a smiling mother—but no herbs. She frowned. She should at least see primrose. She took a deep breath and relaxed her mind. Nothing—not a single leaf. She pursed her lips in frustration. Why would there be no…
“Faith!” she exclaimed, popping her eyes open as it suddenly became clear. “Has the babe crowned already?” She nudged Duncan aside to see for herself. Sure enough, a patch of fuzzy black the size of a crest medallion appeared. There’d be notimefor herbs. “All right, Garth, move behind her. Help her to sit up and push with the next—”
Linet groaned. Sweat stood upon her fair brow, and she screwed up her features in a grimace of determination.
“That’s it,” Cynthia encouraged as she moved her palms over the laboring mother’s belly. “Squeeze Garth’s hand. Push hard. Duncan, what’s happening?”
Concern etched his brows. “It’s…it’s coming out. Nay, it’s going back in. I can’t…”
Linet panted as the wave passed.
“All right, in a moment, we’ll try again,” Cynthia said.
She glanced at Garth. He held Linet’s hand with true de Ware fortitude, though his knuckles were squeezed bloodless.
Linet sucked in a few deep breaths, then bore down again. The cords of her neck stood out in relief as she pushed with all her might.
“That’s it!” Duncan said. “That’s it! I can see it! I can see… Damn! Lost again.”
“Breathe slowly,” Cynthia told Linet. “You’re working very hard. You must rest between.” She carefully unpinned the veil about Linet’s head and pressed it into Garth’s hand. “You can use this to mop her brow.”
“But…” Linet puffed. “That’s…silk from—”
“I don’t care if it’s the Golden Fleece,” Duncan muttered anxiously. “Go ahead, Garth, use it.”
Garth swabbed the cloth across her forehead.
“Of course…youdon’t care, Duncan,” Linet complained. “You didn’t have to…bargain for it with…” Her indignant retort was interrupted by the wave of another contraction.
“One long push now,” Cynthia said, laying a healing palm upon Linet’s furrowed brow.
“I see it,” Duncan said as Linet groaned with strain. “It’s increasing. Aye. It’s large as a plum now. And now an apple. Aye…aye…nay.” He looked up in disappointment. “It’s slipped back in.”
Linet pounded a discouraged fist on the ground and slumped back against Garth’s chest.
“It’s all right,” Cynthia told her. “You rest now.” She chewed at her lip. She’d seen this before, when the head of the infant was too large for the mother. Linet was strong. She was pushing with far more power than most. It would weary her soon. But she was getting nowhere. Too long a delay might harm the infant. And, to add more fodder to the fire of her troubles, the first fat drops of rain began to pelt the ground.
“Let’s try something,” she decided, rubbing her hands together and placing them atop Linet’s belly. “Duncan, get ready.”
“Ready?”
“To catch.”
Cynthia caught a glimpse of terror on Duncan’s face just before Linet gulped in a quick breath, then squeezed hard. As she pushed, Cynthia laid the full weight of her arms over the top of the bulging mound and pressed down.
“Aye!” Duncan cheered. “Aye! It’s coming now. I can see the brow. And the nose. And…Lord!” His voice cracked with fear, and he suddenly dove between Linet’s legs. “Got him!” he cried in victory. But his look of triumph soon turned to wondrous terror as he held the bloody, squirming, squalling bit of humanity.
Cynthia rocked back on her heels and winked at Linet, who lay breathless but smiling in relief against Garth’s chest. “Men,” she said, shaking her head. “Himindeed.” Then she whispered, “It’s a girl.”
She tore a sizable swatch from her own wedding gown, ignoring Linet’s weak protests, and, taking the tiny girl from Duncan, swaddled her appropriately in Linet’s “finest Italian blue.”
By the time she cut the cord and delivered the afterbirth, a veritable deluge pounded the sod. Duncan and Garth, on speaking terms again as they tried to out-brag each other regarding their part in the delivery, shielded their women and helped carry Linet to shelter. Once inside, Elspeth made raspberry infusion for the new mother while Roger comforted the shaken Prior Thomas.
It wasn’t till much later, when the prior returned to the monastery, when Linet was tucked comfortably into bed beside her new babe, when the skies cleared and the harvest moon shone golden through Cynthia’s window, upon the marriage bed she shared with Garth, that Cynthia realized they’d forgotten something.
