“Respiration,” I said, raising my voice slightly to be heard over the baby’s rhythmic—and loud—cries. “If they’re yelling, they’re breathing. Come down here and cut his cord for him, Daddy. Fanny, come down here, too; the placenta will be along any minute.”
“Where’s Da?” Brianna said, lifting her head.
“Just here, lass.”
Jamie, who had been lurking in the doorway, tucked his rosary into his pocket and came in to Bree, bending down to kiss her forehead and murmur something to her in Gaelic that made her tired-but-smiling face blossom.
The room reeked of blood and shit and the peculiarly fecund, swampish smell of birthwaters.
“Here, sweetheart.” I rose, knees stiff from an hour of kneeling on the hard floor, and put the naked baby into her arms. “Be careful, he’s still a little slippery.” He had the faintly waxy look of a newborn, still coated with the protective vernix that had sheltered him in the waters he’d just traversed. It took a moment for my back to unkink sufficiently for me to stand fully upright, and I stretched my arms up, groaning.
“I’m not seeing it yet,” Fanny said. She was still kneeling, peering intently between Brianna’s splayed legs.
“See if he’ll suckle, will you, darling?” I said to Bree. “That will help your uterus contract.”
“That’s just what I need,” she muttered, but nothing touched the beatific smile that flickered on and off through the exhaustion that veiled her face. She tugged down the neck of her sweat- and bloodstained shift and carefully guided Junior’s squalling face to her breast. Everyone watched, riveted, as he rubbed his face to and fro on the breast, still squawking. Bree squinted down her nose, trying to move her nipple with one hand while holding the baby with the other. The nipples each showed a tiny drop of clear liquid.
“See?” I said to Fanny, nodding at them. “That’s colostrum. It comes before the real milk. It’s full of antibodies and useful things like that.” She turned her head to me, squiggle-eyed. “It means the baby will be protected from any illness—well, most illnesses—that his mother has had,” I explained.
The baby squirmed, and Bree nearly dropped him.
“Whoa!” said nearly everyone. She scowled at Roger, who was closest.
“I have him,” she said. Junior threw his head back and then flung it forward, found the nipple, and latched on with a sigh of exasperation that said, “Well, at last!” so eloquently that everybody laughed and the room relaxed.
A light tap on the doorjamb announced the advent of Patience and Prudence Hardman, their faces alight with curiosity.
“We heard the baby cry,” Prudence said. “What is it, pray?”
“And is thee well, Friend Bree?” Patience asked, smiling tentatively at Brianna, whose hair was beginning to dry and fluff, and who looked like a lion that had gone three rounds with a rhinoceros and wasn’t yet sure who’d won. She was still smiling, though, and stroked the baby’s head, looking down at him.
“He’s a little boy,” she said, her voice rough from screaming, but soft.
“Ooh!” Patience and Prudence said together, then looked at each other and laughed. Patience recovered, though, and asked whether Bree would like something to eat.
“Mummy’s made some soda bread with jam, in case thee should be famished, and there’s sweet milk aplenty,” Prudence added. “What is thy son’s name?”
“I’m starving,” Bree said. “As for … urgh.” She broke off, her eyes closing in a grimace. “Mmph.”
“There it is!” Fanny exclaimed. “It’s coming, I see— Oh!” She was on her hands and knees, peering intently, and jerked upright as the placenta slithered out and landed with a healthy plop! on the straw-strewn floorboards. Roger and Jamie looked hastily away, but the two young Quakers nodded in solemn approval.
“That looks just like Mummy’s, when she gave birth to Chastity,” Prudence said. “We made a tea of it.”
The placenta, dark with its writhing network of blood vessels and trailing the ropy remains of the umbilical cord, added its own meaty aroma to the pungent sweat and the smell of trampled fresh straw.
“I think perhaps we’ll bury it in the garden,” I said hastily, seeing the look on Bree’s face. “It’s very good for the soil. As to names—have you thought of any?”
“Lots,” she said, and looked down, nestling the baby closer. “But we thought we’d wait until we met him—or her—to decide for sure.”
“We thought perhaps Jamie?” Roger said, raising an eyebrow at the present holder of that name, who shook his head.
“Nay, ye dinna want to have a Jemmy and a Jamie,” he objected. “They’ll never ken who’s bein’ called. And Jem’s already named after your own da, Roger Mac—but maybe the Reverend?”
Roger smiled.
“It’s a kind thought, but the Reverend’s name was Reginald, and I don’t think … and you’re already named for Jamie’s father,” he said to Bree. “Claire? What was your father’s name?”
“Henry,” I said absently, glancing at the miniature buttocks. A diaper would be needed momentarily … “He doesn’t really look like a Henry, does he? Or a Harry?” The blood flow had slackened after delivery of the placenta, but it was still coming. “Sweetheart, I need you to move to the bed so I can knead your belly.”
Roger and Jamie got Bree up, baby attached, and safely removed to the bed, where I’d spread a canvas sheet. The discussion of names—with everyone, including Fanny and the Hardmans, adding suggestions, and Bree declaring emphatically that she wasn’t having little Anonymous going without a name for months, like Oggy-cum-Hunter—went on for some time, while I kneaded Bree’s large, increasingly flaccid belly—pausing momentarily to check her normally beating heart—and then, feeling the uterus stir sluggishly into action, stitched the small perineal tear and gently washed her legs clean.
“Aye, well, there’s David, I suppose,” Jamie was saying. “That was my da’s second name. And it’s the name of a King, forbye. Well, two, really—the Scottish one and the Hebrew one—a great warrior, though given to fornication.”
A moment’s silence, and a small hum of thoughtful consideration.
“David,” Bree said, beginning to be drowsy. The baby had gone to sleep, the distended nipple pulling slowly from his mouth as his head lolled. “Wee Davy. That’s not bad.” She yawned and looked up at Jamie, who was looking at the little boy with such tenderness that it struck me in the heart and tears came to my eye. “Could we give him William for his second name, Da? I’d like that.”
Jamie cleared his throat and nodded.
“Aye,” he said, his voice husky. “If ye like. Roger Mac?”
“Yes,” Roger said. “And Ian, maybe?”
“Oh, yes,” Bree said. “Oh, God, is that food?” I’d vaguely heard footsteps on the stairs, and now Silvia, holding a tray with bread and jam, fried potatoes, a bowl of stew, and a pitcher of milk, edged carefully into the room.