Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (31 page)

“Not for you,” I said. “We will find you some water.”

She swore. “What? You will deny me wine? My head aches and I need to sleep.”

“I will be happy if you never have another sip of a spirit,” I said. “Be it beer or wine, and especially not rum. Do you have any idea how much your little tantrum cost last night?”

She looked away. “Do you?”

“Not yet,” I sighed, “but I dread being informed of it. Your house was destroyed, and this one must be cleaned and refurnished, and every cistern for a block in all directions is empty.”

“Oh, well,” she said. “It looks as if you will have to build that bitch another one.”

“You stupid…” I sighed. “I am not seeking to marry Miss Vines.

There was merely talk of Gaston doing so. Gods, I should divorce you.”

“I thought you were,” she snarled.

“So did I,” I snapped, “but I realized I stand to make my father far angrier by keeping you for now.”

She regarded me with sharp surprise. “What?”

Henrietta had returned to stick her head in the doorway. She appeared quite glum as she waved me over.

“Never mind,” I said tiredly. “We will discuss it when we have both had sleep, and I know the entirety of the damage you have wrought.”

Gaston handed Agnes – who had been listening to my exchange with Vivian with great curiosity – the baby, and came to join me in speaking to Henrietta in the atrium.

“First,” I told the woman. “Your mistress is not to be allowed anything to drink except water or tea, or chocolate. No spirits: no rum in any concoction, no cider, no brandy, no wine of any type, and no variety of beer.”

“Aye, my Lord,” Henrietta said with wide eyes. “She’ll not like that a bit. An’… I do not know if I can keep her from it once she’s up and about. Unless you wish for me to watch her every moment.”

“I expect she will not like it at all. I expect she will become quite mean,” I said. “Most drunkards do. We will not expect you to bear the burden alone.” I looked to Gaston, and he nodded with an amused smile. “And we shall see she does not go out and find her own,” I added.

“I just do not want you to bring her any when she asks.”

“And she will beg before we dry her out,” Gaston said.

Henrietta nodded sadly. “It’s for the best, I know that, my Lord. But, by God, she will get mean. And she gets the sweats and…” She sighed.

“She tried to stop after she got with the babe and we moved into the house. She said she didna’ need it now that she had her own house and no one to make happy but herself. But she… it made her so sick, and what with the sickness in the mornin’… Well, she just decided she would drink less, an’ she drank wine instead of rum.”

She looked away sadly. “Maybe that’s…” She looked to us again, her teeth worrying her lip. “The midwife said the baby is sickly because it were not blessed by the angels.” She made a curious gesture of touching her upper lip. “She says it’s a whore’s baby.” Henrietta winced at the word. “That many times women who live in sin have sickly little babies that are unblessed.”

“What?” I asked.

“This here,” she pointed at the indent beneath her nose.

“The philtrum,” Gaston said with a frown. “There are old beliefs that it is the mark of an angel’s finger on the lips of a baby, from when the angel seals the new soul in the body.”

“So what does that have to do with…?” I began to ask, but he was already gone, back into the room.

“She don’t have it,” Henrietta whispered, as if the angels would hear her.Gaston returned with the child and Agnes. As I did not hear Vivian yelling in their wake, I assumed she had fallen asleep again, despite the lack of wine. He turned the little one’s face toward me and pointed at her lip. There was no indentation.

“Well, do all babies have one, or is it a thing we grow?” I asked.

“I want a second opinion,” Gaston said. “One that I trust. I have not seen enough babies to know.”

“I seen them real small,” Henrietta said. “But I never seen one sickly, an’ I never looked at their lip afore. An’ this little babe, she be very wee indeed.”

“Shall we locate another midwife?” I asked. “Is there another midwife? And, is that Mistress Engle the one who will deliver Sarah’s baby?”

Agnes nodded. “I do not like her. She is simple.”

Gaston shook his head and sighed. “We will address that later. Right now we are going to the Theodores’.”

“Oh,” I said.

And so, still wearing only filthy breeches and tunics, we left the house with the baby.

In the harsh noonday light, I was appalled to see the damage, and amazed it was not worse. Sarah’s house was black with smoke, but not charred, and the other neighbor was slightly singed – some of their roof and sideboard would need to be replaced – but in between them was a smoldering tangle of black wood, one-third the size of the structure that had stood there yesterday. I supposed I should speak to Theodore while we were there about the cost.

At the Theodores’, Hannah regarded us with alarm, and Mistress Theodore met us in the foyer to whisper, “He has only just gotten to sleep.”

Gaston nodded and whispered, “We are here to see you.” He proffered the child.

Rachel frowned, but quickly took the babe and led us into the back room where her child, Elizabeth, was crawling about on a blanket on the floor, next to a rocking chair and a sewing basket. Rachel laid our infant on the table and unwrapped her carefully.

“He said she had the child,” she said. “And how is the little one?”

she cooed. Then she was frowning as she examined the baby. Next to her, Hannah was frowning as well.

“She is very small,” Rachel said. “Elizabeth must have been twice this one’s size.” She looked to Hannah for confirmation, and the forbidding Negress nodded with a grim smile.

“Her head’s too small,” Hannah said.

“Aye,” Rachel said with a sigh.

“Do all babies have a philtrum?” Gaston asked, and pointed at her upper lip and then his own. “This little indent here.”

Hannah and Rachel frowned at one another and then looked at the baby with new concern.

“Aye,” they said in unison.

“Well, not all babies,” Rachel said. “This one doesn’t. I haven’t seen that before. And…” she added with a new frown. “She’s sleeping very soundly.” She pinched the infant’s thin thigh, and the child did not stir.

“So she is deformed and sickly,” Gaston sighed with a thick voice.

“She might not be sickly,” Rachel said kindly. “Has she… Has her mother fed her the first milk?”

We nodded.

“Has her mother had rum, or…”

“She was on such a drunk she is still not sober,” I said ruefully.

Rachel nodded. “My mother used to say that if you want a child to sleep and you cannot get them down any other way because they’re sick, then you drink some wine before you nurse them. It gets the baby drunk and they sleep.”

“It goes into the milk?” Gaston asked with horror.

She shrugged. “That’s what they say. But I have not heard of it with a mother’s first milk. It takes days before a woman’s breasts swell with true milk. The first milk is different, but if the mother was pickled all through her pregnancy…” She sighed.

“So we have a drunk and deformed baby?” I asked, wondering why I should not be surprised that the Gods would make such a jest of the matter.

“She’s not ugly,” Rachel said. “She’s just not as other babies are.”

Gaston was distraught. “That damn woman.” He rubbed his eyes angrily and asked Rachel, “Can we feed her anything else until we wring the rum out of her mother?”

She smiled. “I’m still nursing Elizabeth. You can leave her here for a time and I’ll feed her. She won’t need much right away, and by the time she does, my breasts will produce more.”

“You would do that?” he asked.

She nodded. “Only for you and this little one, not for her mother, but aye, I will do that.”

“Thank you,” he breathed and embraced her.

Hannah was still frowning at the infant, and she touched one little hand with a long brown finger and shook her head sadly.

“Now you two go and get some sleep,” Rachel said kindly. “And keep her mother out of trouble. We will see to this one. Does she have a name?”

“Nay,” I sighed. “It has not been discussed.”

She frowned. “If… well, if she is sickly, you should think of a name soon and get her baptized.”

I nodded sadly and followed Hannah to the door. Gaston stayed behind for a minute.

Hannah regarded me in the cool and quiet of the foyer. Her voice was low and for me alone when she spoke. “Master Will, you need to tell your… God, that you wish to keep that child, if you wish to keep her on this Earth. Otherwise, she is just a guest.”

I took a deep breath and considered her. “I understand.”

She nodded solemnly and left me.

Gaston appeared a moment later, and we stepped out into the bright light and heat. I told him what Hannah said as we began to walk home.

“I feel the same,” he said sadly. “She ails. I cannot tell you the medical reason why, but I can see it. I feel it is the rum. If it can truly get into a woman’s milk, could it not get into her womb? If it can, the child has been pickled.” He swore. “But… What did Hannah mean we should do? Pray, or baptize her? I do not think either will solve the problem.”

“Perhaps we should pray in my fashion,” I said.

He smiled grimly. “Perhaps we should, and name her.”

“And claim her,” I sighed.

He frowned at me. “If you do that, you will be stuck with that damn woman forever.”

“Do you want the pickled baby?” I asked.

He turned to regard me with hope and regret, and I sighed.

“Will, I do not…” he started to say, but I pressed a finger to the indentation above his lips.

“You need not say anything,” I said. “Your face could inspire me to sign a thousand baptismal records.”

He sighed, and smiled at me with great regard. “My heart aches.”

“As does mine,” I said softly.

He shook his head. “Non, not that way: I wish to kill her damn mother.”

I laughed. “Well, perhaps that will be necessary someday.”

Vivian was, of course, quite incensed we had left her child with Rachel Theodore. She cursed us a great deal. Gaston began to lose himself, but as he had with his father, he chose to leave the room with control and dignity despite the Horse glinting in his eyes.

When much of the yelling abated, I told her all that had been said by the midwife and Mistress Theodore. And then I added, “I believe we originally agreed you should like a wet nurse; well, now you have one for a short time. When you no longer sweat rum, I suppose we will have to bring the child back, though.”

“I do not want one now!” she screamed, and threw what she could reach at me. “And I did not make the baby sick!”

I checked what remained of the room’s furnishings carefully for any stashed bottle of spirits, and then hauled Gaston’s medicine chest away and left her alone. Agnes and Henrietta had already retreated from her wrath.

Pete, Striker, and Sarah were sitting in the atrium eating soup. It smelled delicious and made my stomach rumble, but I had much yet to do. “Is Gaston in the stable?” I asked.

They nodded.

“LookedAngry,” Pete said. “We Let ’Im Be.”

“That was wise,” I sighed. I gestured at the parlor door, behind which Vivian was still yelling and throwing things about. “The baby is at the Theodores’: Mistress Theodore is still nursing. We must dry my damn wife out. It will not be pleasant. If you would rather it were not done here…” I stopped: I did not know where I would take her if it were not to be done here.

Sarah shrugged.

“That room does not lock,” Striker noted, and looked about as if considering the usefulness of the house’s other rooms. “I’ve had to dry men out before; it’s always the quartermaster’s duty when the drunkards show up to rove. If you don’t watch them, they get into the stores.”

“What would you suggest?” I asked.

“Put her irons in the hold,” he sighed. “We don’t have a hold. I guess there’s the stable.”

“Nay, it is a happy place,” I said. “I will not have her sully it.”

Pete chuckled.

“Leave her where she is and put her in irons,” Sarah said.

“We’ll have to drill a hole to anchor the chain,” Striker said.

She shrugged with a long sigh and looked about her soot-stained house. “That is the least of my concerns.”

“I am guessing we do not have the necessary irons on hand…” I said.

Striker grinned. “Nay, the need has not arisen here.”

Sarah smacked him playfully.

“You can buy them at the blacksmith’s,” he said with a grim smile.

“All the planters need them.”

“And a sad thing that is,” I said, and went to find Gaston. He was sitting in the stable with the puppies. He appeared much calmer. “I am going to the blacksmith’s to buy leg irons to chain her in the parlor until she sobers,” I told him.

He smiled quite glumly. “That should solve the problem, unless someone brings her something.”

“I doubt anyone here is so inclined,” I said. “And I will threaten to beat Henrietta if she should allow the damn woman to talk her into it.”

“Would you?” he asked with a frown.

“At the moment, oui.”

He decided to accompany me, and we went to the blacksmith’s and bought a set of anklets suitable for a woman, and a dozen feet of chain and a bolt to attach it to. Vivian had exhausted herself by the time we returned, and at first she did not wake as we drilled the hole at the base of one of the wall beams. Then she did wake and asked what we were about. Then she saw the chains. Pete had to sit on her as we wrapped her ankles to keep them from chafing, and applied the anklets, and locked them to the chain and the chain to the bolt. She had nearly screamed herself hoarse by the time we left her.

Henrietta had hovered by the door the whole time, her big eyes filled with tears. I towed her out with us.

“I will see to her later,” I assured the woman kindly. “She will not be abused or go without food or water. I would rather you did not tend her for a time, though.”

She frowned. “I will not bring her anything, my Lord. You can trust me.”“I believe that, Henrietta, but I am ordering you to stay away from her for your benefit. You have long cared for her, have you not? It hurts you to see her thus?”