And yet the vivid joy of the first birth was still fizzing through my body—I could hear the baby yelling his indignation, and Susannah’s breath, a deep, slow panting, low voices and the crackle of the fire, the bubbling of water in the cauldron—but all of it was wrapped in silence, the beating of my own heart all I felt. It was peace, a deep peace, not yet sorrow, and I held the tiny body, and used my hem to wipe her—yes, her—tiny face, eyes closed, never to open. A moment longer, and then I placed her on a clout that Agnes had brought, and turned to take care of her mother.
“You have a son, Susannah,” I said softly. “Agnes—bring him, will you?” She did, biting her lip in concentration, not to drop him. He was a good size, considering his prematurity and the fact that he was a twin, but still weighed less than five pounds. I set him on Susannah’s chest and her arm came slowly up to hold him, cupping his head.
“It’ll be all right, darlin’,” she said to him, her voice ragged and deep from screaming. “Don’t take on, now.” Her eyes were closed, but she spoke to me. “The other one?”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, and squeezed her hand. “You have a son.”
She drew a breath that went all the way down to her ravaged womb.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she whispered.
The little boy was still making noises like an angry hornet, but she moved him to her breast and thumbed the nipple into his mouth, and the noise stopped abruptly.
Sweat was stinging my eyes, running down my neck. I sat back on my heels and wiped my face on my skirt. Susannah made a deep gasping sound and the swollen leg pressing against my shoulder stiffened. The afterbirth was coming; I took hold of the umbilical cord, this still attached to the still body on the hearth, and the placenta, quite large, tumbled out like a deer’s liver, dark and bloody. Susannah grunted again, and the second placenta slithered out.
“All right,” I said, gathering myself. “Agnes—put a quilt over your mother. Susannah, I’m going to knead your belly, to help your womb contract and make the bleeding stop. It—” I had turned to find a menstrual cloth from my kit, and as I turned back, I saw Jamie. He was on his knees on the hearth, looking down at the dead little girl, with an expression on his face that stopped my heart.
He looked up, feeling my glance, and we read the name in each other’s face.
Faith. I nodded, my throat closing with a grief as sharp as it had been when I lost her. Jamie bowed his head, and reaching out, touched the tiny, wrinkled body, his hand nearly covering her. A tear fell and glistened on the back of his hand, another on the curve of her forehead, red in the firelight.
Moved by the deepest of memories, I leaned over and picked her up, holding her against my breast, tiny head cupped in my hand. In an instant, I was holding my lost daughter, grief knifing through me. I closed my eyes, knowing I had to put her down, had to go about my job, but unable to let her go, feeling the slow beating of my heart against the fading warmth of her fragile skin.
I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t let Faith go; they had taken her from my arms, finally. Left me empty, alone, in that place of cold stone.
Snot was running down my face, tickling my lip, and I rubbed at it with my sleeve, still holding the child to my breast, listening to my heart break again.
“Let me take her, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered, and held out his hands.
I swallowed hard. I had to let her go.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.” And bowed my head over the little girl I’d lost, rocking back and forth on my knees, feeling my heart beat, in chest and ears and fingertips, trying to make up for the heart that would never beat again.
I didn’t know how long it was that I stayed there, curled around the child, trying futilely to give her my heat, my life. There was nothing sudden, no sound, no movement. But in the midst of the searing grief, I slowly realized … something. It didn’t happen; it was already there. But I hadn’t felt it and now I did.
“Claire?” Jamie’s hand touched my shoulder and I seized it with my free hand and held on. Warmth, strength.
“Stay,” I said, to him and to her, breathless. “Stay.”
My heart. I was still feeling it, distinctly, slow and regular. I let go of Jamie’s hand, but he didn’t take it away. Holding the baby in one arm, I laid my other hand on her back, feeling. No sensation, nothing I could really say I felt—but there was something there.
I pressed lightly on her back, waited for the space of a breath, pressed again. And again. Hearing my own heartbeat in my ears, in the pulse of my blood. Pressed my heartbeat into her back, into her chest where it pressed against me.
Push.
My fingers were warm, and so was the child. The fire, I thought dimly. Crackle of fire and the sound of my heart. Thup-tup, thup-tup, thup-tup … And suddenly I heard Roger, telling me what Dr. McEwan had done, a hand on Buck’s breast, tapping slowly and patiently, over and over, in the rhythm of a beating heart.
Thup-tup … thup-tup … thup-tup …
There were more sounds in the room now, soft voices, the spitting of a cracking log, the wind under the eaves of the roof, the rushing sound of pines and the sloshing of water. Movement, warmth, life. Jamie’s hand, solid on my shoulder. I heard it all, I felt it all, but it was removed from me, happening in another world. All I was, was the sound of a heartbeat.
And in some enormity of time, I knew that there were two of us in that sound, a sharing of the beat of a heart, the knowledge of life. My finger tapping, slow and sure.
Thup-tup … thup-tup …
Malva … I saw her in my mind’s eye, dead in the garden, and the smell of blood and the scent of birth. The tiny boy I’d taken from her body, barely alive. A blue spark in my hands, that dwindled and died.
A blue spark. I saw it, saw it and looked deep into it, willing it to stay, holding it safe in the palms of my hands.
Thup … My finger stilled, and the small sound answered.
Tup.
I gradually became aware of my own breath, and after that, felt the solidness of Jamie and realized that he was holding me upright, an arm around my middle, his other hand on my breast, above the baby’s head. I lifted my own head, nearly blind from the brilliant darkness I’d been in, and saw the silhouette of a girl against the fire, her body dark and thin through the white of her shift.
“I cut the cord for you, Mrs. Fraser,” Agnes said. “And I kneaded Mam’s belly like she told me. Do you want a cup of cider? Pa drank all the beer.”
“She would, lass,” Jamie said, and gently let me go. “But first bring a wee blanket for your sister, aye?”
IT WAS DARK outside; the moon had set and dawn was some way off. It was cold, but the cold didn’t touch me.
I’d let him take the baby, at last. Felt his hands on mine as he took her, warm and sure, his face filled with light. He’d knelt carefully and given the baby to Susannah, placing his hand on the child in benediction.
Then he’d stood and wrapped me in my cloak and walked me outside. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet, or see the forest, but the cold air smelled of pine and lay like a balm on my heated skin.
“All right, Sassenach?” he whispered. I seemed to be leaning against him, though I didn’t remember doing it. I’d lost track of where my body began and ended; the pieces seemed to be floating about in a loose sort of cloud of exaltation.