Chapter 17 A Life for a Life #2
“Uterus,” I say, already moving. “It must contract. Now.”
The physicians stare.
“Pressure here.” I place an attending woman’s hands where they need to be, then replace them because she is too frightened to press hard enough. “Firm. I know it hurts. I am sorry.”
Charlotte makes a broken sound.
“Stay with me,” I tell her. “You have done the impossible. Do not become dramatic now.”
Her mouth trembles. “Rude.”
“Famously.”
I massage through the lower belly until my arms ache, trying to force the uterus to clamp down, trying to make muscle remember its one urgent job. Blood soaks linen. Kitty brings more. The accoucheur finally wakes from shock and assists properly. I order the baby placed to Charlotte’s breast.
“She is too weak,” the silver-haired physician protests.
“The child may help the bleeding slow.”
“Absurd.”
“Try absurd faster.”
Leopold supports the baby against Charlotte. Tiny rooting movements. A weak latch. Charlotte cries out, then laughs, then nearly faints.
“Eyes open,” I say. “Look at me.”
“Tired.”
“I know.”
Her pulse is racing beneath my fingers. Skin clammy. Lips pale.
No blood transfusion. No IV. No operating room. No modern medication except knowledge stripped down to hands and nerve.
“Broth,” I say. “Sweetened. Now. Small sips.”
“She cannot—”
“Now.”
No one argues with me this time.
The bleeding slows.
Not enough.
I keep pressure. Keep massage. Keep Charlotte conscious by the force of my voice and possibly personal offense.
“Tell me his name,” I say.
Charlotte’s eyes flutter.
“Not chosen.”
“Then think of one. You cannot leave him with Parliament for naming. They will choose something depressing.”
Her breath catches. It might be a laugh.
Leopold says something hoarse and tender. Charlotte turns her face toward him.
The bleeding slows more.
The uterus firms beneath my hand.
For several seconds I do not trust it. Hope is a liar. Bodies can rally and fail. I wait. Count pulse. Watch color. Watch the linen.
Slower.
Still slow.
Contained.
My hands begin to shake only when the immediate crisis passes, which is considerate of them.
“She needs warmth,” I say. “Clean linen. Small sips as often as she can manage. No bleeding. No laudanum unless absolutely necessary and in the smallest measure. Someone watches her pulse and bleeding every quarter hour.”
No one speaks.
So I look at the accoucheur. “Repeat it.”
He blinks.
“Repeat it,” I say.
He does.
Good.
Charlotte’s eyes are half closed, the baby tucked against her. Alive against alive.
Leopold looks at me as if he does not know what language gratitude belongs to.
“Miss Hartford,” he says.
I want to sit down on the floor. Or vomit. Or sleep for approximately three years.
Instead I wash my hands in water gone pink and try not to think about the fact that it is royal blood, infant breath, altered history, and my own trembling reflection all in one basin.
Charlotte’s voice pulls me back.
“Emma.”
I go to her.
Her hand finds mine, weak but deliberate. “Both?”
I understand.
The answer barely clears my mouth.
“Both. You and your son.”
Tears slip sideways into her hair.
Leopold bows his head over their joined hands.
For a moment, the room is not a palace. It is not a political chamber, not a historical hinge, not a battlefield between centuries.
It is a bedroom where a woman lived.
Where a child cried.
Where the future changed because someone finally stopped waiting.
Charlotte’s fingers tighten faintly around mine. “My physician,” she whispers.
The silver-haired doctor stiffens.
Leopold lifts his head.
Charlotte’s eyes open enough to find the room. Weak as she is, exhausted as she is, the look in them is pure command.
“Miss Hartford is to be named among my attendants,” she says. “As physician to my household. Write it.”
The silver-haired physician looks as if he has swallowed a candle.
Thornbury looks worse.
I should feel triumphant.
I feel hollowed out and remade.
“Your Royal Highness,” I whisper.
Charlotte’s eyes close. “Do not argue. I have been in labor for longer than civilization should permit.”
A laugh breaks in the room, shaky and disbelieving. Even the accoucheur smiles.
Kitty wipes her face with her sleeve and mutters, “Royal and sensible.”
I look at the baby, at Charlotte’s pale face, at the bloodied linens being carried away. I think of the history I knew: a dead princess, a dead child, a nation grieving, a throne passing through absence.
That history is gone.
Or bent.
Or waiting somewhere like a wave that has not yet reached shore.
I do not know what comes next.
For the first time, that does not feel like proof I am lost.
It feels like proof I am here.
* * *
Dawn is gray over Carlton House by the time I leave the chamber.
Kitty has been sent with food she pretends not to need and instructions she pretends not to be proud of.
Charlotte sleeps. The baby breathes in a cradle under the watch of three women I personally threatened into handwashing.
Leopold remains beside his wife, one hand on the cradle, one on the bed, as if touching both will keep the universe obedient.
My gown is ruined. My hair is mostly pins and despair. My hands smell of soap, blood, and lavender no matter how many times I wash them.
The corridor outside is quiet in the strange way palaces become quiet after surviving themselves.
I descend the stairs slowly. My ribs ache. My knees feel unreliable. Every step seems to ask the same question.
What have you done?
I have saved them.
What have you changed?
Everything, maybe.
At the bottom of the stairs, the doors stand open to the pale morning.
And James is waiting.