Page 104 of The Frozen River

“Here she is, Gran.”

“Thank you, Walter. Now go wait on the stairs in case I need you again.”

I watched him go, then turned to Elspeth. With one old, gnarled hand she stroked the arm of a girl who lay on the bed, her huge, rounded stomach pointing to the ceiling. The girl looked every bit as alarmed at my presence as I felt.

“Mistress Ballard?” Elspeth asked, and I realized I’d not said a word since entering the room.

“Yes?”

She turned at the sound of my voice and suddenly I understood. I’d not seen Elspeth in eighteen months. And her eyes had been dark then, darker than mine. But they’d turned a total milky white since. Elspeth Horne was blind.

“Come in,” she said. “And take off your coat. You’ll need your arms free.”

“I will?”

“Get on with it. You’re letting in a draft.”

I shut the door, shrugged out of my cloak, and peeled off my gloves. Then I took a deep breath and went to stand beside her. I told her the truth. “I don’t understand why you called for me.”

“You are going to help me deliver this child.”

The girl was plenty young. She still had the full, round face of adolescence and the scared look of a child. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, but that didn’t mean much, as half the men I knew were too poor to give one to their wives.

“Has she no women?” I asked.

“She won’t say, one way or another. But then she hasn’t said much to begin with. No one knows where she came from or where she’s going. Only that she showed up, Wednesday last, and has plenty of coin to pay for her room. The innkeeper called for me early this morning when he heard her crying. Rightly assumed her pains had begun. Walter got me here, but he’s no use otherwise. So it’s the two of us who will get the job done.” She paused, nodded toward the light. “There should be another chair somewhere in the room. If not, send Walter to get one from downstairs.”

There was one, beside the window. I grabbed it and joined her beside the bed.

“Why me?”

Elspeth pushed a long, silver ribbon of hair away from her forehead, but it flopped forward again, and, absentmindedly, I reached out and tucked it behind her ear. She felt the gesture. Tilted her head. Looked at me without seeing.

“Because you don’t panic in a birthing room. You didn’t with Cyrus—and that was as hard a birth as any I’ve ever seen—nor did you with Lucy. And if I’m going to teach what I know, then I want it to be someone not given to hysterics. Ain’t nothing worse than a screamer or a crier or a silly girl in a room like this.”

An hour ago, I was eating lunch with my little family, and now I’d just been told that—without my knowledge or approval—I’d become apprenticed to this woman.

The girl lay there, looking back and forth between Elspeth and me as though she wanted to stand up and run. But there’d be no running for her, not for a long while, because I could see the first hard wave of pain wash over her. The groan that followed was familiar, and I winced in sympathy. I was almost twenty-two when I had Cyrus, but this girl couldn’t be seventeen.

I reached forward and set a hand on her belly, feeling it harden. “I am sorry that you don’t have anyone with you for this,” I told her. “But I’ve done it twice, and there is no better midwife in the state than Elspeth. We will help you.”

“She’s blind,” the girl hissed.

“She has my eyes for seeing, and her hands work just fine. There’s no need to worry.”

Elspeth patted my knee, and I knew I’d said the right thing.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“Ask her name.” Elspeth must have sensed my confusion because she added, “The first thing, the most important thing in a birthing room, is to ask the woman’s name. If you mean to put your hands on her body, she must trust you. And she will never do that if you don’t even know what to call her, because you will be doing a great deal more than simply putting your hands on her by the end.”

“My name is Martha Ballard,” I said to the girl. I felt silly. Like a child standing before a cranky teacher, but I did it anyway. “What is yours?”

I could see her debate, as though saying it aloud would be a total surrender to our care. But another contraction hit her, this one worse than the last, and when it ebbed several seconds later, she said, “Triphene. My name is Triphene Hartwell.”

Elspeth nodded. “Good. Now hand me my medical bag. It’s at the foot of the bed. I will tell you what every item is for, and you will do with them exactly as I say. And Martha?”

“Yes?”