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“I’m sorry I couldn’t save the mother.”
“She’s left us another mouth to feed.”
“There must be some way to get hold of the baby when it’s stuck like that, high in the birth canal… Dr. Chamberlen has some sort of device, I know it. If he would only let me see…”
“Maybe he thinks there’s enough pauper brats born in the world, without dragging out the unwilling ones.”
“Will you call me if you get another breech birth, or a woman laboring after her waters break?” A silver coin passed from his pocket to her waiting hand.
“Of course,” she amended. “Of course, sir.”
Rob bowed his thanks, put on his black beaver hat against the drizzle, and turned into the darkness. He did not see the figure on the opposite side of the road, beneath the shelter of a tree, watching the doorway of the workhouse. He was so absorbed in his sense of his failure that he did not even hear the footsteps behind him. He was thinking of the woman, the young woman, her legs splayed, her belly straining, the stink of sweat and the reek of the spirits that they forced down her throat as she screamed and cried and begged to die.
“A nightmare,” he said to himself. “A terrible death.”
“Sir?”
Rob turned. “Matthew? What are you doing in the streets like this? It’s not safe, there are gangs around everywhere. My carriage is picking me up.”
“I was waiting for you, sir.”
“Is it about the betrothal?” He started walking again, his head bowed against the rain, which was getting heavier.
“No, I wanted to see you, sir. They said you were attending a lying-in.”
“Small good it did me. Or her.”
The young man fell into step beside him. “Is it charitable work you do?”
“Little charity to them.” Rob was speaking to himself, in a monotone of frustration and anger. “God knows, I did no good for the poorwoman tonight. But there has to be a way. I keep thinking that I will find a way…”
“A way of what, sir?” Matthew quickened his pace to keep up.
“If a baby presents its haunches first, not its head, you understand, or even lying sideways, or God knows what it is doing, presenting an elbow or its foot, it can get stuck. Sometimes the midwife gets hold of it, like a farmer might rope the leg of a stuck calf and pull it out. My mother could do that. More, she could turn a baby from stroking the woman’s belly. She had such a gift. But the Chamberlen family has a device, it must be some kind of loop to pull the baby out without cutting it or breaking its bones. They have something. Their babies live and the mothers live too.”
“Can’t you ask them?”
“It’s their secret. But they boast they can get a baby out, even a breech birth, even high.”
For the first time the young man’s interest was genuine. “And it’s true?”
“Aye. I’ve seen the babies—live babies. And the mothers who lived through it.”
“What do the mothers say?”
“They blindfold them, so they can never tell. They get hold of a dying woman and they make her wear a blindfold before they will save her. God knows it’s a wicked thing when doctors make a profit from medicine.”
“They charge women for the use of their device?”
“A fortune. That’s why they won’t tell anyone the secret but the physicians in their own family.”
“They won’t tell you?”
“For me to save pauper babies? No. What’s the profit in that?”
They came to Rob’s waiting carriage; in the distance they could hear the crash of someone breaking a window and cheers.
“So what d’you want, Matthew?” Rob said. “The streets aren’t safe, you should be at home. Are you worried about the betrothal? I’ll help you withdraw, if it’s against your will.”
