Chapter 17 A Life for a Life
The first thing I notice is the heat.
Charlotte’s chamber is suffocating with it—banked fires, closed curtains, too many candles, too many bodies, and the sour-sweet smell of sweat trying to hide beneath lavender water. It is the kind of room designed by people who believe illness can be out-polited.
It cannot.
Princess Charlotte lies propped among damp pillows, her hair plastered to her temples, her skin pale except for two feverish spots high on her cheeks. Her eyes open when I enter.
“Miss Hartford,” she whispers.
Relief hits me so hard I nearly miss the fear beneath it.
“Your Royal Highness.” I move to the bedside and curtsy because apparently one can still remember etiquette while internally screaming. “I am here.”
“They keep saying soon.”
Her voice is hoarse. Too dry.
No. No, no, no.
Three physicians stand near the foot of the bed.
One I recognize from the earlier consultation: the silver-haired man with a spine composed entirely of disapproval.
Beside him is a broad-shouldered accoucheur with red-rimmed eyes and forceps case on the table behind him, unopened.
Dr. Thornbury stands slightly apart, mouth tight, gaze cutting to me like a blade finding an old wound.
Of course he is here.
History has a flair for casting.
“Labor is progressing naturally,” the silver-haired physician says before I can ask. “Her Royal Highness is fatigued, as is expected.”
Expected.
There are words doctors use when they have run out of answers but refuse to surrender authority.
I look at Charlotte’s cracked lips. The tremor in her hands. The way her belly tightens beneath the sheet, contraction rising, and how her entire body seems too tired to meet it.
“How long since she last passed water?” I ask.
The men blink.
“Miss Hartford,” Thornbury says, “this is hardly—”
“How long?”
One of the attending women answers from near the washstand. “Several hours, miss. Very little.”
“Broth?”
“She could not keep it down.”
“Water?”
“A little.”
“Sleep?”
No one answers.
That is answer enough.
Charlotte grips the sheet as another contraction crests. Her face drains of everything but pain. Prince Leopold steps toward her, but the silver-haired physician raises a hand.
“Best not excite her,” he murmurs.
Charlotte makes a sound I will hear in nightmares.
“With respect,” I say, and there is so little respect in my voice that Beatrice would wince, “she is already excited.”
Kitty appears at my shoulder with the medical bag, eyes enormous but steady. Good girl. Brave girl.
“Soap,” I tell her. “Boiled water if they have it. Fresh linen. Open the curtains.”
The silver-haired physician stiffens. “The room must be kept warm.”
“Warm, yes. Airless, no.”
“You cannot simply order—”
“Leopold,” Charlotte rasps.
The room stops.
The prince is at her side instantly. “My love?”
Her hand fumbles toward his. “Let her.”
He looks at me then, and everything royal falls away. He is just a terrified husband in a room full of men who have told him to wait while the woman he loves is being worn down hour by hour.
“You heard Her Royal Highness,” he says.
Curtains open. Cold gray air slips into the room like mercy. Kitty finds soap and a basin. I wash my hands until the skin feels raw, then look pointedly at every physician in the room.
The accoucheur hesitates first.
“If you touch her,” I say, “you wash.”
Thornbury’s expression could curdle milk. “This obsession again.”
“Yes,” I say. “Tedious how survival repeats itself.”
The accoucheur washes.
The silver-haired physician follows, offended to the marrow.
Thornbury does not.
“Then you do not touch her,” I say.
His eyes go flat. “You forget yourself.”
“Not once today.”
Charlotte laughs weakly, then gasps as pain takes her again.
The humor dies.
I lean close. “Your Royal Highness, I need to examine you. I will explain everything before I do it. You may tell me to stop.”
The silver-haired physician actually makes a noise.
Consent: shocking men in every century.
Charlotte nods, sweat sliding down her temple. “Do it.”
The examination is brief, careful, and terrifying.
Fully dilated. Head low but badly angled, not descending enough with each contraction. Swelling. Exhaustion. Her pulse too fast, too thready. A woman running out of strength while everyone waits for nature to remember mercy.
In my time, alarms would be sounding.
Here, the alarms are me.
I straighten. “The child is not well positioned. She is exhausted and drying out. Waiting is no longer neutral.”
The accoucheur’s jaw tightens. “I have considered the forceps.”
“Consider faster.”
“They are dangerous.”
“So is doing nothing.”
The silver-haired physician draws himself up. “Young woman, many labors are lengthy. Interference may cost both lives. Her Royal Highness requires calm, perhaps a little bleeding to reduce—”
“No.”
The word cracks through the room.
Everyone looks at me.
I do not care.
“No bleeding. She is already weak. You will not take from her the one thing she is losing too much of already.”
“You presume—”
“I observe.”
Thornbury steps in. “And if your observations kill the heir to the throne?”
The silence after that is absolute.
There it is. The real accusation. Not medical disagreement. Treason with a pulse.
My heartbeat stutters.
Then Charlotte speaks.
“If I die waiting,” she whispers, “will anyone say you killed me?”
No one answers her.
Smart men.
Her eyes find mine. “Help me.”
That is all.
Not history. Not monarchy. Not succession.
A woman asking another woman to help her live.
“We change position first,” I say. “Then, if the head remains trapped, forceps. Cleaned. Boiled if possible. Used between contractions, with the mother’s efforts, not dragged like furniture across a floor.”
The accoucheur looks offended, but not ignorant. Good. He knows the instrument. He fears using it on a princess. I cannot blame him.
I can, however, move him.
“Kitty, linens. Your Highness, I want you on your side first. Then we try hands and knees if you can manage it.”
The room reacts as if I have suggested delivering the royal child in a tavern.
“Improper,” Thornbury snaps.
Charlotte’s laugh is a broken thing. “I believe that concern has sailed.”
Leopold helps her turn. I guide pillows, support her belly, keep my voice low. Kitty moves with quick, silent competence, handing cloths, wiping Charlotte’s forehead, watching the attending women and copying what matters.
The next contraction comes.
“Breathe,” I tell Charlotte. “Not because breathing is magic. Because panic steals strength, and we need yours.”
“I have very little,” she grits.
“Then we will spend it carefully.”
The first position eases her back pain but does not move the child enough.
The second takes every person in the room and all of Charlotte’s remaining dignity, which she surrenders with more courage than anyone gives women credit for.
Sweat drips from my chin. My bruised ribs scream when I brace her.
Time narrows to pulse, breath, contraction, rest. A little honey water between pains.
Cool cloth. Reassurance that is half truth and half architecture.
Then, finally, descent.
Not enough.
But enough to act.
The accoucheur meets my eyes.
I nod.
“Now.”
The forceps are brought. Washed, boiled because I make enough noise to rattle the windows, cooled in water that has also been boiled. Not sterile. Nothing here is sterile. But cleaner. Better. Sometimes progress is not a miracle. Sometimes it is fewer invisible knives.
Charlotte sees the instrument and goes still.
I take her hand. “It is to guide the child. Not to punish you. Not to hurry for anyone’s convenience. You tell us if the pain changes sharply.”
She nods once.
Leopold stands at her head, pale as paper, whispering to her in a language I do not understand. Love, fortunately, translates.
The accoucheur works with shaking hands and hard-won skill. I watch everything. Angle. Timing. Charlotte’s pulse beneath my fingers. Her breathing. The horrifying seconds when nothing happens. The worse seconds when something does.
“With the contraction,” I say. “Not before. Now, Your Highness. Push now.”
Charlotte screams.
The head crowns.
The room stops breathing.
Another contraction. Shoulders. Blood. A rush of fluid.
And then the child is born.
A boy.
Silent.
No.
The accoucheur lowers him, face already shifting into the solemn mask men wear when they are preparing to call death inevitable.
I take the baby from him.
“Clean cloth,” I snap.
Kitty is already there.
The baby is limp, blue-gray, slick and terrifyingly still. Cord around nothing obvious. Mouth clogged with fluid. I clear what I can with cloth-wrapped fingers, turn him slightly downward, rub his back hard enough to make everyone in the room flinch.
“Come on,” I whisper.
Nothing.
Charlotte is trying to lift her head. “The child?”
“Working,” I say, because anything else will break her.
I rub. Clear the mouth again. Tiny chest unmoving.
In my time, there would be suction. Oxygen. A neonatal team. Here there is me, terror, and a room full of people waiting for permission to mourn.
No.
I cover the baby’s mouth and nose with my mouth and give the gentlest breath I can, just enough to lift the chest.
Someone gasps.
I do it again.
“Miss Hartford!” Thornbury barks, horrified.
“Be quiet,” Kitty snaps.
Bless her forever.
I rub again. Another breath.
The baby jerks.
Once.
A thin, ragged sound slips out of him.
Every person in the room freezes as if the noise is a ghost.
Then he cries.
Not prettily. Not musically. He screams like an indignant wet cat with royal lungs, and I have never heard anything so beautiful in my life.
Charlotte sobs.
Leopold covers his mouth with one hand and bends over like the sound has struck him in the chest.
Kitty is crying openly and pretending very hard that she is not.
I wrap the baby, still rubbing, still watching his color. Pink. Not perfect, but better. Breathing. Alive.
Alive.
History cracks.
Then Charlotte says, very softly, “Emma.”
I turn.
Blood is spreading beneath her.
Too much.
The joy falls through the floor.