Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [224]
I closed my eyes and waited, feeling my inner walls adjust to this odd intrusion, the inflammation subsiding bit by bit as he probed gently deeper.
Now he touched the center of my loss, and a spasm of pain contracted the heavy walls of my inflamed uterus. I breathed a small moan, then clamped my lips as he shook his head.
The other hand slid down to rest comfortingly on my belly as the groping fingers of the other touched my womb. He was still then, holding the source of my pain between his two hands as though it were a sphere of crystal, heavy and fragile.
“Now,” he said softly. “Call him. Call the red man. Call him.”
The pressure of the fingers within and the palm without grew harder, and I pressed my legs against the the bed, fighting it. But there was no strength left in me to resist, and the inexorable pressure went on, cracking the crystal sphere, freeing the chaos within.
My mind filled with images, worse than the misery of the fever-dreams, because more real. Grief and loss and fear racked me, and the dusty scent of death and white chalk filled my nostrils. Casting about in the random patterns of my mind for help, I heard the voice still muttering, patiently but firmly, “Call him,” and I sought my anchor.
“Jamie! JAMIE!”
A bolt of heat shot through my belly, from one hand to the other, like an arrow through the center of the basin of my bones. The pressing grip relaxed, slid free, and the lightness of harmony filled me.
The bedframe quivered as he ducked beneath it, barely in time.
“Milady! Are you all right?” Sister Angelique shoved through the drapes, round face creased with worry beneath her wimple. The concern in her eyes was underlaid with resignation; the sisters knew I would die soon—if this looked to be my last struggle, she was prepared to summon the priest.
Her small, hard hand rested briefly against my cheek, moved quickly to my brow, then back. The sheet still lay crumpled around my thighs, and my gown lay open. Her hands slid inside it, into my armpits, where they remained for a moment before withdrawing.
“God be praised!” she cried, eyes moistening. “The fever is gone!” She bent close, peering in sudden alarm, to be sure that the disappearance of the fever was not due to the fact that I was dead. I smiled at her weakly.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Tell Mother.”
She nodded eagerly, and pausing only long enough to draw the sheet modestly over me, she hurried from the room. The drapes had hardly swung closed behind her when Raymond emerged from under the bed.
“I must go,” he said. He laid a hand upon my head. “Be well, madonna.”
Weak as I was, I rose up, grasping his arm. I slid my hand up the length of forge-tough muscle, seeking, but not finding. The smoothness of his skin was unblemished, clear to the crest of the shoulder. He stared down at me in astonishment.
“What are you doing, madonna?”
“Nothing.” I sank back, disappointed. I was too weak and too light-headed to be careful of my words.
“I wanted to see whether you had a vaccination scar.”
“Vaccination?” Skilled as I was at reading faces by now, I would have seen the slightest twitch of comprehension, no matter how swiftly it was concealed. But there was none.
“Why do you call me madonna still?” I asked. My hands rested on the slight concavity of my stomach, gently as though not to disturb the shattering emptiness. “I’ve lost my child.”
He looked mildly surprised.
“Ah. I did not call you madonna because you were with child, my lady.”
“Why, then?” I didn’t really expect him to answer, but he did. Tired and drained as we both were, it was as though we were suspended together in a place where neither time nor consequence existed; there was room for nothing but truth between us.
He sighed.
“Everyone has a color about them,” he said simply. “All around them, like a cloud. Yours is blue, madonna. Like the Virgin’s cloak. Like my own.”
The gauze curtain fluttered briefly and he was gone.
26
FONTAINEBLEAU
For several days, I slept.