Scarlett (87 page)

Mrs. Fitzpatrick wiped Scarlett’s temples and cheeks with a cool damp cloth. “If you don’t bring him, Colum, I’ll do it. I’ve a knife and a pistol in the desk at your house. It only needs showing him there’s more certain things to fear than ghosts.”

Colum nodded. “I’ll go.”

Joseph O’Neill, the blacksmith, crossed himself. His face glistened with sweat. His black hair was plastered to his head from walking through the storm, but the sweat was fresh. “I’ve doctored a horse once, same as this, but a woman I cannot do such violence to.” He looked down at Scarlett and shook his head. “It’s against nature, I cannot.”

There were lamps along the edges of all the sinks, and lightning flashing one jagged bolt after another. The huge kitchen was brighter than day, save for the shadowed corners. The storm raging outside seemed to be attacking the thick stone walls of the house.

“You’ve got to do it, man, else she’ll die.”

“She will that, and the babe too, if it’s not dead some time past. There’s no movement.”

“Don’t wait, then, Joseph. For the love of God, man, it’s her only hope.” Colum kept his voice steady, commanding.

Scarlett stirred feverishly on the bloody mattress. Rosaleen Fitzpatrick sponged her lips with water, squeezed a few drops between them. Scarlett’s eyelids quivered then opened. Her eyes were glazed with fever. She moaned piteously.

“Joseph! I order you.”

The smith shuddered. He raised his thick muscled arm over Scarlett’s mounded belly. Lightning glittered on the blade of the knife in his hand.

“Who is that?” said Scarlett distinctly.

“Saint Patrick preserve me!” cried the smith.

“Who’s that lovely lady, Colum, in the beautiful white gown?”

The smith dropped the knife on the floor and backed away. His hands were stretched in front of him, palms outward, fending off his terror.

The wind swirled, caught a branch, hurled it crashing through the window above the sink. Shards of glass cut Joseph O’Neill’s arms, now crossed over his head. He fell to the floor, screaming, and through the open window the wind screamed in above him. Shrieking noise was everywhere—outside, inside, within the smith’s screaming, around and on the howling wind, in the storm, in the distance beyond the storm, a wailing in the wind.

The flames in the lamps jumped and wavered and some went out. Quietly in the midst of the storm’s intrusion the kitchen door was opened and closed again, A wide shawled figure walked across the kitchen, among the terrorized people, to the window. It was a woman with a creased round face. She reached into the sink and twisted one of the towels, wringing out the blood.

“What are you doing?” Rosaleen Fitzpatrick snapped out of her terror, stepped toward the woman. Colum’s outstretched arm halted her. He recognized the
cailleach
, the wise woman who lived near the tower.

One by one the wise woman piled blood-stained towels atop one another until the hole in the window was filled. Then she turned. “Light the lamps again,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had rust in her throat.

She took off her wet black shawl, folded it neatly, placed it on a chair. Beneath it she was wearing a brown shawl. That, too, came off and was folded, put on the chair. Then a dark blue one with a hole on one shoulder. And a red one with more holes than wool. “You haven’t done as I told you,” she scolded Colum. Then she walked to the smith and kicked him sharply in the side. “You’re in the way, smith, go back to your forge.” She looked at Colum again. He lit a lamp, looked for another, lit it, until a steady flame burned in each.

“Thank you, Father,” she said politely. “Send O’Neill home, the storm is passing. Then come hold two lamps high by the table. You,” she turned to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, “do the same. I’ll ready The O’Hara.”

A cord around her waist held a dozen or more pouches made of different-colored rags. She reached into one and withdrew a vial of dark liquid. Lifting Scarlett’s head with her left hand, she poured the liquid into her mouth with her right. Scarlett’s tongue reached out, licked her lips. The
cailleach
chuckled and lowered the head onto the pillow.

The rusty voice began to hum a tune that was no tune. Gnarled stained fingers touched Scarlett’s throat, then her forehead, then pulled up and released her eyelids. The old woman took a folded leaf from one of her pouches and put it on Scarlett’s belly. Then she extracted a tin snuff box from another and put it beside the leaf. Colum and Mrs. Fitzpatrick stood like statues with the lamps, but their eyes followed every move.

The leaf, unfolded, contained a powder. The woman sprinkled it over Scarlett’s belly. Then she took a paste from the snuff box and rubbed it over the powder and into Scarlett’s skin.

“I’m going to tie her down lest she injure herself,” the woman said, and she lashed ropes from around her waist below Scarlett’s knees, across her shoulders, around the sturdy table legs.

Her small old eyes looked first at Mrs. Fitzpatrick, then at Colum. “She will scream, but she will not feel pain. You will not move. The light is vital.”

Before they could reply she took a thin knife, wiped it with something from one of her pouches, and stroked it the length of Scarlett’s belly. Scarlett’s scream was like the cry of a lost soul.

Before the sound was gone the
cailleach
was holding a blood-covered baby in her two hands. She spit something she was holding in her mouth onto the floor, then blew into the baby’s mouth, once, twice, thrice. The baby’s arms jerked, then its legs.

Colum whispered the Hail Mary.

A whisk of the knife cut the cord, the baby was laid on the folded sheets and the woman was back beside Scarlett. “Hold the lamps closer,” she said.

Her hands and fingers moved quickly, sometimes with a flash of the knife, and bloody bits of membrane fell to the floor beside her feet. She poured more dark fluid between Scarlett’s lips, then a colorless one into the horrible wound in her belly. Her cracked humming accompanied the small precise movements as she sewed the wound together.

“Wrap her in linen then in wool while I wash the babe,” she said. Her knife slashed through the ropes binding Scarlett.

When Colum and Mrs. Fitzpatrick were finished, the woman returned with Scarlett’s baby swaddled in a soft white blanket. “The midwife forgot this,” the
cailleach
said. Her chuckle brought an answering throaty sound from the baby, and the infant girl opened her eyes. The blue irises looked like pale tinted rings around the black, unfocused pupils. She had long black lashes and two tiny lines for eyebrows. She was not red and misshapen like most newborns because she had not passed through the birth canal. Her tiny nose and ears and mouth and soft pulsing skull were perfect. Her olive skin was very dark against the white blanket.

S
carlett struggled towards the voices and the light her sedated mind vaguely perceived. There was something… something important… a question… Firm hands held her head, gentle fingers parted her lips, a cooling sweet liquid bathed her tongue, trickled down her throat, and she slept again.

The next time she fought for consciousness she remembered what the question was, the vital, the all-important question. The baby. Was it dead? Her hands fumbled to her abdomen, and burning pain leapt at her touch. Her teeth bruised her lips, her hands pressed harder, fell away. There was no kicking, no firm rounded lumpiness that was a questing foot. The baby had died. Scarlett uttered a weak cry of misery, no louder than a mew, and the releasing sweet draught poured into her mouth. Throughout her drugged sleep slow weak tears seeped from her closed eyes.

Semiconscious for the third time, she tried to hold on to the darkness, to stay asleep, to push the world away. But the pain grew, tore at her, made her move to flee it, and the moving gave it such strength that she whimpered helplessly. The cool glass vial tipped, and she was freed. Later, when she floated again to the edges of consciousness, she opened her mouth in readiness, eager for the dreamless darkness. Instead there was a cold wet cloth wiping her lips, and a voice she knew but couldn’t remember. “Scarlett darling… Katie Scarlett O’Hara… open your eyes…”

Her mind searched, faded, strengthened—Colum. It was Colum. Her cousin. Her friend… Why didn’t he let her sleep if he was her friend? Why didn’t he give her the medicine before the pain came back?

“Katie Scarlett…”

She opened her eyes halfway. Light hurt them, and she closed the lids.

“That’s a good girl, Scarlett darling. Open your eyes, I’ve something for you.” His coaxing tone was insistent. Scarlett’s eyes opened. Someone had moved the lamp, and the dimness was easy.

There’s my friend Colum. She tried to smile, but memory flooded her mind, and her lips crumpled into childlike bubbling sobs. “The baby’s dead, Colum. Put me to sleep again. Help me forget. Please. Please, Colum.”

The wet cloth stroked her cheeks, wiped her mouth. “No, no, no, Scarlett, no, no, the baby’s here, the baby’s not dead.”

Slowly the meaning became clear. Not dead, said her mind. “Not dead?” said Scarlett.

She could see Colum’s face, Colum’s smile. “Not dead, mavourneen, not dead. Here. Look.”

Scarlett turned her head on the pillow. Why was it so hard, just to turn her head? A pale bundle in someone’s hands was there. “Your daughter, Katie Scarlett,” said Colum. He parted the folds of the blanket, and she saw the tiny sleeping face.

“Oh,” Scarlett breathed. So small and so perfect and so helpless. Look at the skin, like rose petals, like cream—no, she’s browner than cream, the rose is only a hint of rose. She looks sun-browned, like… like a baby pirate. She looks exactly like Rhett!

Rhett! Why aren’t you here to see your baby? Your beautiful dark baby.

My beautiful dark baby. Let me look at you.

Scarlett felt a strange and frightening weakness, a warmth that washed through her body like a strong, low, enveloping wave of painless burning.

The baby opened her eyes. They stared directly into Scarlett’s. And Scarlett felt love. Without conditions, without demands, without reasons, without questions, without bounds, without reserve, without self.

“Hey, little baby,” she said.

“Now drink your medicine,” said Colum. The tiny dark face was gone.

“No! No, I want my baby. Where is she?”

“You’ll have her next time you wake up. Open your mouth, Scarlett darling.”

“I won’t,” she tried to say, but the drops were on her tongue, and in a moment the darkness closed over her. She slept, smiling, a glow of life under her deathly paleness.

Perhaps it was because the baby looked like Rhett; perhaps it was because Scarlett always valued most what she fought hardest for; or perhaps it was because she’d had so many months with the Irish, who adored children. More likely it was one of the wonders that life gives for no cause at all. Whatever the origin, pure consuming love had come to Scarlett O’Hara after a lifetime of emptiness, not knowing what she lacked.

Scarlett refused to take any more pain-killer. The long red scar on her body was like a streak of white-hot steel, but it was forgotten in the overwhelming joy she felt whenever she touched her baby or even looked at her.

“Send her away!” Scarlett said when the healthy young wet nurse was brought in. “Time after time I had to bind my breasts and suffer agonies while the milk dried up, all to be a lady and keep my figure. I’m going to nurse this baby, have her close to me. I’ll feed her and make her strong and see her grow.”

When the baby found her nipple the first time and nursed greedily with a tiny wrinkle of concentration on her brow, Scarlett smiled down at her with triumph. “You’re a Momma’s girl, all right, hungry as a wolf and fixed on getting what you want.”

The baby was baptized in Scarlett’s bedroom, because Scarlett was too weak to walk. Father Flynn stood near the Viceregal bed where she was propped up against lace-trimmed pillows holding the baby in her arms until she had to give her over to Colum, who was godfather; Kathleen and Mrs. Fitzpatrick were godmothers. The baby wore an embroidered linen gown, thin from washings, that had been worn by hundreds of O’Hara babies for generation after generation. She was named Katie Colum O’Hara. She waved her arms and kicked her legs when the water touched her, but she didn’t cry.

Kathleen wore her best blue frock with a lace collar, although she should have been in mourning. Old Katie Scarlett was dead. However, everyone agreed that Scarlett should not be told until she was stronger.

Rosaleen Fitzpatrick watched Father Flynn hawk-like eyes, poised to snatch the baby if he faltered for a second. She’d been speechless for a long minute after Scarlett asked her to serve as godmother. “How did you guess how I feel about this baby?” she asked when her voice returned.

“I didn’t,” said Scarlett, “but I know I wouldn’t have a baby if you hadn’t stopped that monster woman from killing her. I remember a good bit about that night.”

Colum took Katie from Father Flynn when the ceremony was over and put her in Scarlett’s outstretched hands. Then he poured a tot of whiskey for the priest and the godparents and made a toast: “To the health and happiness of mother and child, The O’Hara and the newest of the O’Haras.” After that, he escorted the doddering saintly old man to Kennedy’s bar where he bought a few rounds for all there in honor of the occasion. He hoped against hope that it would stop the rumors that were already flying all over County Meath.