Page 50 of My Hero
The other three women in the room quailed at his voice, but Cynthia didn’t spare him a glance. She only barked at him to close the door.
He resisted the urge to slam it, astounded by her impertinence.
“Now,” she hoarsely urged her patient.
“I…cannot…” the woman whimpered from the bed. “Let me…die.”
“Nay, Milla! You’ve got to use every bit of your strength,” Cynthia told her. “Your babe may yet live. We must save it if we can.”
Garth felt the blood drain from his face. He’d burst into the cottage, burning with righteous indignation. He’d never noticed the drama unfolding in the long shadows. A wan peasant woman shivered on the bed, her head lolling across a filthy pillow. Lady Cynthia worked feverishly between the woman’s legs, her own face dripping with sweat, her eyes fierce, her hair hanging in damp strings about her shoulders.
Garth averted his eyes and took a mortified step back.
“Push!” Cynthia commanded. “I can see the babe’s head.”
The woman on the bed let out a high, thin whine.
“What are you doing?” Garth demanded, a sheen of sweat rising on his lip at the tortured whimper. “Can you not see how she suffers?”
One of the peasant women spoke meekly. “That’s always the way of childbirth, Father.”
“That’s it. That’s it,” Cynthia chanted to the laboring woman.
The woman screamed as if she’d been knifed in the abdomen. Garth clenched his hands at the horrible sound, which roused his maiden-rescuing de Ware instincts. Indeed, he would have bolted forward to save her had not the attending peasant women looked upon him with pure horror at his very presence here.
“Again,” Cynthia urged.
“For the love of God, lady, let her be!” he demanded. He knew he was about as welcome as a wolf in a lady’s solar here, but it was too late to leave. He had to do something, anything, to end the suffering. “You’re killing her!”
“Aye, the mother is dying,” Cynthia hissed at him over her shoulder. “But the babe will survive.”
“You can’t know that,” he murmured back. “It’s in God’s hands.”
“I do know that,” she insisted, leaning forward to wrap her fingers about the baby’s tiny head. “Good, Milla. Push once more.”
“You’d challenge the will of God?” he whispered incredulously.
She never gave him answer, for at that moment, to his utter amazement, the child emerged, slithering out into Cynthia’s hands, its reddening face screwed up with fury, its tiny fists trembling in futile rage. It let out a terrific bawl.
The women seemed neither surprised nor troubled. They immediately fell into a pattern of attending to the babe’s needs, a task as familiar to their hands as that of reaping winter wheat.
But Garth could only blink in wonder at the infant. Cynthia had snatched a morsel of life from the very jaws of death. Even now, the poor mother rattled out her final breath.
Cynthia bent to close the woman’s now sightless eyes with blood-spattered hands. She drew a thin sheet over the woman’s face, crossed herself, and rose from the bedside.
He’d witnessed a miracle. Cynthia had pulled a new life, kicking and squalling, against all odds, into the world. And whether it came from God or some strange force of nature, Cynthia had been the instrument of that miracle.
For a long moment, her eyes locked with his. They were dark with pain, weary with fatigue, deep with mystery. And as beautiful as truth. Cynthiadidhave a gift, he realized. She was courageous, determined, compassionate…
And she was fainting. As he gazed on, her eyelids fluttered, and she pitched forward. His heart vaulted into his throat, and he dove forward in time to catch her, hefting her up into his arms.
Shouldering his way past the peasant women, he carried Cynthia into the fresh air. As he emerged, the two men of Cynthia’s guard greeted him with sharp glares. One of them drew his sword.
“What have you done?” the man barked.
“Is she dead?” the other hissed.
“Nay!” Garth denied adamantly. “Nay. She lives.”
